At my local grocery store the other day I wandered down the cereal aisle and started checking out jellies and jams.  I noted quite a few more organic options, a dubious plethora of "natural" options, and one very annoying stand-out: "Reduced Sugar Strawberry Jam".  As a fan of both jelly and strawberries, I thought, GREAT- this won't point me towards a sugar coma.  But regrettably, sometimes "Low" still means "High".  Sigh.

So the 2nd ingredient on the list is "Sugar".  I understand that jellies and jams typically need a bit of sugar as a preservative.  But I also happen to know that they don't NEED it- "Fruit", as we're fond of saying here at Peeled Snacks, "is sweet enough"!  Indeed, the "Reduced Sugar" preserves has a little less than half as much sugar as the regular jelly.  But still, it shouldn't need ANY sugar.

And I ask you- how can you REDUCE anything by ADDING the thing that you're REDUCING?  It's not "Reduced Sugar" Jelly, it's really "Less Sugar Added" Jelly.  Or rather, "we've reduced the amount of sugar that we've added to this product, which really means that we're still adding the thing that we're telling you we're reducing, sorry about the confusion".

In all fairness, I can't really hold it against the jam's manufacturer- they're basically just giving the people what they want (i.e. sugar).  Our taste buds have been so trained to crave sugar that this product does represent a step in the right direction for them.  To truly "Reduce" the sugar in this product, we'd need to reduce the sugar that a whole generation eats, and that ain't easy.

And all this makes me think of the film "The Gods Must Be Crazy".  Not only is it one of Peeled Snacks' founder and president Noha Waibsnaider's favorite films, not only is it a gut-bustingly funny slapstick comedy, not only does it hold up astoundingly well almost 30 years after it was released, but it is also a marvelous indictment of our crazy, modern comnsumerist society.

If you haven't seen the film, do so- it's fun for the whole family.  In short, it's about a man from an isolated tribe in the African bush who tries to return an unwanted coke bottle to the "Gods".  On the way to the gods he runs into white people, and hilarity ensues.

So when he first sees white people, just typical white people of medium build, the film reveals his first thoughts about them:

"He saw the ugliest person he'd ever come across. She was as pale as something that had crawled out of a rotting log; her hair was quite gruesome, long and stringy and white, as if she was very old; she was very fat - he'd have to take the whole day to find enough food to feed her"

To people that don't get to "Reduce" the sugar in their food by adding it, we modern, civilized people look very fat.  Have you read your ingredient labels today?  Sigh.

Happy Snacking,

Peeled Skinny 

Posted by iankusc at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As of my birthday last year (some day in September, now do your research), the FDA passed a regulation requiring all purveyors of meat products to display, clearly, the country of origin for their meat products.  Great, love it, we all enjoy a little accountability every now and again.  But I shudder at the roll out of this program, I groan at the loopholes, and I toss and turn at night thinking of the implications.  As of Monday, those regulations went into effect, and now we enjoy the aftermath....

Something like this took place a couple of years ago in my industry when the FDA required us to track the origin of every single ingredient's origin, albeit we didn't have to display the records.  This standard was naturally inspired by Chinese produce spoiling just about everything with which they came into contact.  Sure enough, the only time we tried to use a Chinese fruit, the results were disasterously gross.  So here, I get it.

Now, however, grocers need to display in store the origin of their meat products.  Great, wonderful, disclosure's always a splendid thing.  But consider the exemptions: Restaurants and Butcher Shops.

I avoid vulgarity as a principle, but forgive me if I ask, "What the F#CK?"

I understand the intent- accountability and traceability.  If something goes wrong, it'll be easy for consumers to know what they have to toss out, because it'll be right there on the label.  But why forgo such accountability in restaurants and butcher shops?  I ask again, WTF?  In theory, the butcher and ched will make sure their wares aren't tainted, but while we're at holding people accountable, why don't we, you know, ACTUALLY HOLD PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE?

Does not compute.  I ask you if you can think of a really good arguement for this oversight.  I've thought of a couple- the cost, the burden of signage, the constant changing of menus, but I'm unimpressed.  If grocers have to di it, why not the others?  I'm going to track this as the weeks go on and look for signs in my local purveyors.  Implications are potentially heart-warming.  Execution?  Potentially heart BURNING....

Peeled Skinny

Posted by iankusc at 01:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May I refer you to the following poignant article from the reliable reporters at The Onion, the nation's finest fake-news source....

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/fda_approves_salmonella?utm_source=a-section

Is it me, or does this joke seem to be a few months too late?  While I'm not sold on the current administration, they're supposed to be the new yahoos (as opposed to the OLD yahoos) who clean up thinks life FEMA and the Fed and the FDA, thereby making the world a safer, more just, less contagious place (queue heart-swelling music).  The FDA under the previous yahoos are the ones who should have been caught signing off on great ideas like "Butteos" breakfast cereal (with 3 brands of cigarette butts in every box), encouraging the mixing of spent nuclear fuel into your hamburger (for that explosive taste!), and dubbing Salmonella "Vitamin S".

But maybe The Onion is just predicting (probably wisely) that the poor state of the FDA won't be tackled by the new guys anytime soon, and that such tomfoolery will continue unrelenting for a while longer. The peanut scare (which broke just as the old yahoos were packing their bags) certainly chills my bones- I've got a young son, and I LOVE peanut butter.  Surely there's no better cure for the peanut butter blues than to chuckle about "Salmonella-o's", is there?

Regardless, the joke strikes me as either too early or too late, or just off target.  Tragedy plus time equals humor, but this is a case of tragedy plus not enough time, or too much.  That at least expresses where MY mind is regarding the current administration's take on food- hopeful, but dubious, and expecting, as usual, to get my heart broken....

Still, I love The Onion.  Happy Snacking,

Peeled Skinny

Posted by iankusc at 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

To Julia Moskin, Dining In section, new York Times

re: "Superfood or Monster from the Deep", September 17, 2008

I greatly appreciated your article on the strange new world of "Nutraceuticals" in last week's New York Times.  With all the claims being made by most of today's food manufacturers, it gets more and more difficult to figure out what to eat, what's healthy and what's not, and what actually makes up 'FOOD" anymore.  Nutritional trends come and go, often being overturned (remember when margarine, with it's loads of trans-fats, was the HEALTHY alternative?) be the new new thing.

The entire paradigm of "nutritionism" deserves intense scrutiny.  Claims on a package that such and such product has oodles of Vitamin C doesn't make the product healthy.  As your article points out, how the body absorbs the goodness in, say, a carrot can't be exactly replicated by inserting a bunch of beta-carotine into a muffin.  "Vitamins" can't be swapped as simply as clothing accessories or car tires.

How did so many people come to think that just FOOD wasn't good enough to eat?  Have people gotten to picky to maintain a healthy diet, or have food companies just perfected the art of up-selling food by adding dubious claims?

Human civilization didn't get to where it is by extracting oils from fish and inserting them into popcorn or "craisins".  By and large, it seems that the further we get as a society from real FOOD, the less healthy (and more over-weight) we get.

Thanks for bringing this to your reader's attention.  Hopefully people will take more time to scrutinize the claims made by the packaging in the grocery stores, and get back to eating the good stuff: FOOD.

Posted by iankusc at 02:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So this past Sunday, I became a Daddy.  That's right, "Peeled Skinny" became "Peeled Daddy", and I couldn't be happier or more proud.  His name is Oren Kelleher, and though he came early, he gave me the best Father's day present EVER: himself.  Of course, that means that he's set me up for a lifetime of dissappointing Father's Day presents, but somehow I think I'll manage.

That's all that I have to say right now, because happiness like this needs nothing more than a picture.  Meet the newest Peeled Snacks consumer (his mother is HOOKED on Go-Mango-Man-Go), Oren Kelleher. 

Posted by iankusc at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently took a trip to Louisiana where I ate like a king, drank like a fish (mostly NON-alcoholic beverages, mostly), sweated like a pig (which don't sweat), and heard LOTS of great Jazz.  A Yankee like myself can't trundle through Bourbon street's smelly stretches without comparing them to, say, New York's Lower East Side, which certainly is just as smelly, but lacks the Jazz, and lacks...

Sweet Tea?  Apparently i have sorely missed the boat on my beverage consumption, in that the entire South has for generations been awash in this grand concoction of uppers (caffeine and sugar) mixed together in water with some ice thrown in to take the edge off.  Seeing as this brew fuels the majority of Southern productivity, McDonalds has jumped on the Southern Rock Band-Wagon and come up with its own version.

I ran into a friend the other day who was proudly bragging about the tea's virtues, declaring unabashadly that it's delicious and energizing, "and not so bad for you like pop".  Forgive her- she's from the Mid-West where "Pop" takes the unwieldy term "soft drink" and chops off a syllable.  Knowing I'm a foodie, she dared me to scrutinize this tea and find fault with it.

Full disclosure- while I do appreciate many a soda, I prefer the less sweet sodas (though NEVER diet), and when it comes to both coffee and iced tea, I never add sugar, EVER.  So this Sweet Tea just ain't for me, and I'm not going to bother trying it just as an excuse to rag on it.  Obviously there are people that really like it, and I say more power to them.

My question is, is it better or worse for you than McDonalds' other beverage of choice, Coca Cola?  The Sweet Tea isn't yet listed on the McDonalds' Nutritional Information Website,  nor are the ingredients listed, but the grape-vine has informed me that, unlike Coca Cola, McDonalds makes its Sweet Tea with genuine Sugar, which shows some integrity.  They must be getting KILLED by the price of Corn Sweetner.

Calorie wise, the info isn't totally official, Associated Info reports that Coca Cola actually has 50% more sugars and calories (210 calories vs. 150 calories) than the Sweet Tea.  So maybe this stuff will actually improve the average McDonalds goer's health (however slightly).  I don't really know if this new product will stick, but in attempting to research excuses to call it a boondoggle, it turns out to be not so offensive a beverage as I initially guessed.

But I still won't be drinking any.  I like my coffee, BLACK, and I like my Fizzy Lizzie, GRAPEFRUIT! 

Posted by iankusc at 02:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So last week, to celebrate the Peeled Snacks move to Brooklyn, I took a trip to Louisiana.  Former French colony Acadia (the term for whose citizens, when mutilated by Yankees, somehow turned into "Cajun"), Louisiana is home to the mouth of this continent's longest river, the worst natural disaster in USA history, lots of tasty food, impeccable Jazz, institutionalized corruption, and most of the US's Sugar Can production.

The history of food can easily be filtered through what makes food sanitary and palatable.  For thousands of years, whole economies and histories were built around the Spice trade.  Populations started exploding after the invention of refrigeration.  And Sugar, that cheapest, most efficient form of a carbohydrate, has driven the American diet since WAY back in the day.

Picture Ben Franklin and George Washington chewing the fat after their victory against the British in 1783.  When Martha served cake for dessert, it was baked with sugar from Sugar Beets.  Same thing with the beer Mr. Franklin so famously brewed.  After the Louisiana Purchase, production of cane sugar exploded, and Louisiana grew 90% of the nation's sugar for well over 100 years.

Now why, tell me, did the entire US agricultural economy shift away from sugar to Corn?  Look on most packaged food's ingredient lists (outside of your local Whole Foods, that is), and you'll find High Fructose Corn Syrup in the top 3 ingredients.  Sugar can't be found anywhere but in "Hippie Food" these days.  After checking out a Sugar Cane plantation, I now know why....

Most of the world's sugar comes from Brazil, which has no Winter.  Almost all of the sugar in the US comes from Louisana, which, contrary to typical Yankee belief, DOES have a Winter, or at least enough of one to curb any chance of a growing season.  Brazil plants sugar cane in August and harvests in May.  Louisiana plants in September and harvests in November....

November, 14 months LATER!!!!

Long have I wondered why US corn-sugar production has "kicked sugar cane's butt" (to quote the cane sugar plantation tour guide), and now I get it- American sugar cane takes TWICE as long to grow, and time is money.  Corn grows tall and bounteous every year, particularly since the feds have subsidized it so heavily.  That's twice the production, which can be seen as half the cost.

There's plenty of other factors, like the fact that Corn can be grown in 40 American states, while Cane can be grown in 4 states or so.  There's the multiple uses of Corn, whereas Cane really only has one use.  And there's the very recent pipe dream of corn-based fuel, but that's hardly a factor to corn's proliferation (and I bet will hardly be a factor in future energy policy, in spite of the hype).

Cane Sugar, as sweet and wonderful as it is, turns out to be a pain to grow in the Northern Hemisphere.  All that American Heritage turns out to come from deep knowledge of the soils and season, lots of hard work, and PATIENCE.  It's that last one that turns out to be bad for business, at least for Sugar's sake (and, therefore, for the sake of the State of Louisiana)....

Posted by iankusc at 01:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Do you ever buy dried fruit?  I assume that you've eaten Peeled Snacks, but Peeled Snacks are different.  They're, you know, BETTER.  But have you ever had just plain old Dried Fruit?  The kind that they sell at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods or your local bus depot?  The kind with raisins and cranberries and apicots, and maybe some M&Ms thrown in for good measure?  Then you've eaten OIL!

I don't get this- most dried fruit, especially the generic varieties (Whole Foods' 360 and Trader Joes brands being chief perpetrators) gets sold to you coated in oil- canola oil or safflower oil, some kind of vegetable oil.  When you buy a candy bar, okay, you expect to get some oil in it.  When you buy a Greek salad, okay, there's be some olive oil in there.  But dried fruit?  Oil? Huh?

I don't get it- who ever expected food manufacturers to coat raw ingredients in oil?  This is NOT based on demand- your average dried fruit purchaser does no chew on a prune and think to him or herself, "you know what this needs?  More COTTONseed oil!".  No, they just don't think of it at all, because if they did, they'd have to think to themself, "oh gross, oil, where's an appropriate place to vomit?"

I can give you some "industry" reasons for the oil- it lengthens the product's shelf-life, it makes it easier to pack in a plastic bag, it gives it a shiny sheen, and the penultimate reason, that homosapiens think fat tastes GOOD.  But 2 seconds of thought about this "fat fruit" thing and, whoosh, all advantages fly out the window like so much regurgitated apricot....

I should mention that Peeled Snacks doesn't add oil to its fruit, but that's not a shameless plug.  It's just common sense- you don't add ketchup to breakfast cereal because it makes it easier to eat, and you don't add salt to tea because it makes it boil faster.  You don't add oil to fruit because, well.....

....because that's really disgusting....

Yours, disgusted,

Peeled Skinny 

Posted by iankusc at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

....But they will, SOON!

 The housing "crisis" demonstrates the flexibility of the American economic engine and its willingness to milk a trend till its dry as a bone.  But to me, the housing bubble demonstrates a disturbing trend in American culture.  For the sake of argument, let's start with a couple of postulates....

1: The Housing industry requires home-owners to regularly inject money into their homes

2: For home-owners to inject money into their homes, the home-owners need jobs

3: Home-owners in America live on fixed, finite incomes

4: Whatever home-owners are spending on their homes, they are NOT spending elsewhere....

Argue any one of these statements on your own- I accept them as truisms, and have never heard any arguments that convince me otherwise.  These 4 postulates tell me that, no matter how hot the market, no matter how hyped the housing development, no matter how fast the turn-over of housing in America, the Housing market is only as solvent as the rest of the economy....

....Which right now is crap, THANKS to the housing market.  I believe that the Housing bubble stems from the dissolving of the Dot-Com bubble, whose demise drove investors flock to whatever other market seemed hot, which at the time was housing.  I'm not convinced of that origin, but doubtless, starting in about 1999 housing prices started rising at STUPID rates, and you can hardly blame investors for wanting to jump on-board.

I don't give a hoot about high-risk loans to shady borrowers or unethical practices on the parts of shifty banks.  I don't care about grift-life business models making margins off of trading mortgages, a couldn't give a rat's hienie about artificial hype for developer's faulty housing schemes, all of which have made a lot of headlines lately.  People keep looking for scapegoats, and all these goofy practices on the various players' parts make easy targets.

Forget all that.  To me, all that matters is that, in America, everyone needs housing, and whatever people spend on housing, they DON'T SPEND ELSEWHERE.  If we make a market where people spend 35%, 40%, 50% of their incomes on their homes (more than that here in New York City), that means that they AREN'T spending on their businesses, on their savings, on buying American made goods (or, as is more often the case, Chinese made goods), on education....

That means that they aren't spending enough on food!

Unless productivity is way up in America, there cannot be a booming housing market.  That's that.  Try to make a counter argument, I dare you.  I would take it a step further and say that, if productivity is up, and people spend more on their homes, then you get inflation, but that's a different, longer argument. 

I've heard arguments of positives outcomes from the housing bubble, like the rejuvenation of old housing stock (which is good), and the accumulated value of middle-income families' homes (which is a dangerous assumption).  But these, to me, are micro-climates, and rooted in the foolish assumption that people can just pump money into their houses forever.

If we have no manufacturing economy, if as a culture we don't MAKE anything, then we are not entitled to our housing bubble.  This is not me speaking from hind-sight.  I figured this one out back in 2001.  Ticks me off, because SINCE then I became an American manufacturer, and now fewer people can afford our tasty snacks because everybody's busy paying off their userous loans!

-a ticked off Peeled Skinny, who thinks you should spend less on housing and more on ANYTHING else....

Posted by iankusc at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Greetings from Italy, where once all roads led.  From the sculpted coasts of Calabria to the snowy Alpine heights, Italy boasts indisputably some of the world's best vittles, be they snack food or otherwise.  The Pasta, the Cheese, the Prosciutto, the bread all sets standards that could quickly spoil a belly, and please note that I didn't even mention the wine.  Oh, THE WINE!!!!

The country's no slouch when it comes to junk food, of course- Italian sweets abound, and pizza haunts every corner store.  Gellatto, be it junk food or ambrosia (I vote for ambrosia) seems to be on the lips of half the nation at all hours of the day.  And yet, the average Italian waist line seems enviably trim, though never emaciated.  In general, though, Italians have tiny butts.

Yes, here at Peeled Snacks, we're not afraid to point out features of Italian posteriers.  Try to find THAT on another Food Blog!

Naturally, whenever I go ANYwhere I look for new sources for Peeled Snacks, and if the dollar were a little stronger versus the Euro, your next Bing Bing Cherry would perhaps have a Tuscan origin.  But with the Euro so punishing, I'll return to the Americas empty handed.  My searching have come to naught, but I did stumble upon a little, juicy factoid that's very worth sharing:

Italy is the world's #1 producer of Organic Food!

That's right, the heirs of the Roman Empire have created a delectible food industry that's nearly devoid of any pesticides, genetically modified food stuffs, or hormones.  The fields of Puglia have never been washed in abimectin or sulcatol or DDT, and the average Italian farmer works less than 100 acres of land (as opposed to the average American farmer, who works nearly 800 acres!!!).

With a long, rich culinary history, Italians can brag about having some of the world's most respected and delicious cuisines.  With a long, rich history of an untainted food chain, Italians have an ENORMOUS jump on the rapidly growing organic food market (Mexico, somewhat counter-intuitively, comes in second place).  Were the dollar stronger, we;d all be eating organic Italian tomatoes and hormone free prosciutto every day, and we'd all be happier for it....

Except, that is, for Jews, who don't eat pork.  Or, for that matter, the Muslims.  Vegetarians would be out too, I guess....  Hmmm....  Well, in my Italian-food-filled fantasy world, that just means more prosciutto for me!

Happy Eating,

Ian K, Peeled Skinny 

Posted by iankusc at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a Blog entry from Peeled Snacks Summer Intern Extraordinaire, Amanda Arrington....

Before I started my internship at Peeled Snacks, I had no idea what to expect. In fact, I wasn’t even sure how much I liked dried fruit and nuts. I guess for a long time, I had a very poor misconception of what dried fruit is. I had no idea that most fruit could be dried and preserved in various ways to maintain its flavor for easier snacking. My experience of it was limited with hard, crunchy banana chips and malodorous prunes. I was, in fact, basically ignorant about all of the wonderful ways in which dried fruit could be quite satisfying.

Let’s just say ever since my first day at Peeled Snacks, I have had the opportunity to try almost every kind of dried fruit possible, including sugar coated, dried potatoes -Yuck! Let me assure you that dried potatoes are not a Peeled Snacks product, simply an endeavor for us to experiment with the many possibilities of dried produce. However, I have become a huge Bing Bing Cherry fan. Who knew dried apples, cherries, and peaches were so good? I guess Noha and Ian did, but I plead ignorance or I would have been eating this stuff a long time ago. 

My time at Peeled Snacks, however, has consisted of a lot more than just eating the countless varieties of dried fruit. Last week the duties of a Peeled Snacks’ intern took me to the Fancy Food Show, where eating became a new kind of sport. I had the opportunity to walk around and the taste the infinite assortment of specialty food from premium olive oil to what can be described as designer marshmallows. Even amid all these choices, finding good food remained a challenge. And by good food, I mean something equally nutritious, satisfying, and flavorful. Every variety of cheese ever made from just about every country made an appearance at the show. There was soup, sugary beverages, chocolates, more chocolates, cakes, sugar free cakes, pickles, cookies, salsa, and pastry puffs. Anything you can imagine seemed to find its way to the Fancy Food Show. The event was spectacle for entrepreneurs, retailers, distributors, and just general foodies. 

The Peeled Snacks team debuted its new line of 100% natural, single serving dried fruit and nuts, Fruit Picks + Nut Picks, at the Fancy Food Show. I can assure you the pine-4-Pineapple, my favorite Picks flavor, as well as the other Picks varieties, are just as tasty as the Bing Bing Cherry. By the time most people stopped at the Peeled Snacks booth, they felt so over laden with sugary indulgences and sinful pleasures. “Finally something healthy!” they would exclaim. I loved watching peoples’ skeptical faces light up with delight after they tasted the Peeled Snacks’ new pineapple from the Picks line. I guess I am not the only uninformed one when it comes to dried fruit. “This actually tastes like pineapple and its sooo juicy!” most people would exclaim surprised, quickly picking up another piece to munch on.

Even a week later, I am still recovering from the massive quantities of food I consumed at the show. Things have been crazy at the Peeled Snacks’ World Headquarters, as we have been following up after the show and making big things happen. As my time at Peeled Snacks begins to culminate, I realize I have gained a lot of knowledge about the food industry in general, as well a liking of dried fruit – besides sweetened, dried potato that is! 

Posted by iankusc at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week I took an emergency vacation with my enormous extended family to "The Beach".  "Which beach?", you might ask, though the question hardly matters- American beaches, from Santa Cruz California to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, all share some keen defining qualities that make them all kin- sand, souvineer shops, cheesy rides, sun burn, and VERY, VERY BAD FOOD....

We here at Peeled Snacks World Headquarters generally keep fairly healthy diets- our breakfasts are loaded with fiber, our lunches full of veggies, and our dinners splendid balances of meats, grains, and still more veggies.  So you might think that we'd sscorn the vittles available at American beaches- we'd turn down the funnel cake and the fries, spurn the ice cream, forgoe the fudge.... But no, this time at the beach, I ate ALL that stuff, and then some!

First it was Thrasher's French Fries, followed by corn-syrup filled soda, greasy pizza ("I'd like a large pizza, extra grease, please"), and then topped off with the ubiquitous funnel cake.  Round that out with a raid on the local candy store, and I managed to do truly terrible things to my body, as well as the bodies of my cousins and nephews and niece.

But MAN did it score me some "Uncle Points"!  My family never lets any of those kids eat ANY of that crap, and while I did spend the week loading them up with Peeled Snacks, the little side-trip to junk-food city made everybody feel, well, more "American".  Indeed, "Junk-Food" is an American tradition, and one that I won't bother to criticize.  I'll just say that the 4th of July is an American tradition too, but we only dabble in that one but once a year....

So next Sunday evening, the whole Peeled Snacks crew, along with our buddies from Fizzy Lizzy, Rick's Picks, and Maya Kaimal, are hosting a Happy Hour to usher in this year's "NASFT Fancy Food Show".  We're getting together Sunday night at Hell's Kitchen's "Hallo Berlin", located at 44th and 10th Avenue.  Come meet the team, if you're game, and we'll load you up with Beer and Red Cabbage!

Posted by iankusc at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This past week took the Peeled Snacks team to San Francisco again on business- talks with brokers, showdowns with distributors, a love-in with our wonderful co-packer, and (as always) some scouting for new places that have earned the right, nay, the PRIVELAGE, to sell Peeled Snacks.  In spite of all that work, we did somehow manage to squeeze some fun when we snuck off to....

SIX FLAGS  WILD KINGDOM!!!!!

For the sake of disclosure, nearly ever Summer during my adolescence, I took a couple of trips to my local amusement park.  Sure, I was lured in by whatever was the latest thrill.  The Berserker?  did it.  Thefirst roller coaster to go under water? Road it many times.  The Wayne's World Hurler?  No, I have NO shame....

So I dig the screams and the cheesiness and the heat, and I even dig the shows- the big-grinned dancing girls, the cartoon characters coming alive in weight-loss foam suits, and the clearly stoned magician/baloon blowers.  At parks I have known, I have mourned the loss of this license or that (I miss you "Smurf Mountain"!), and still brag about roller coasters I've ridden that were closed for safety concerns (DRACHEN FIRE!).

But one thing I've never enjoyed, for very good reason, is the food.  American cuisine is distinguished by its fast food, and a quintessential, American institution like the Roller Coaster deserves quintessential, awful, American food.  But if you take such "food" and mix it with, say, a ride that simulates the exhiliration of being inside a washing machine, the results can be ugly.

I have no one but myself to blame, but this past weekend, while nearly going delusional, courtesy of an empty tummy bashed by a wooden Roller Coaster, I went to the nearest eatery that I could find and ate the healthiest crap I could get (Fish and Chips, hah hah).  Had I spent, oh, say, 5 seconds longer scrutinizing a map, I surely would have noticed a Subway sub shop around the corner....

But no.  I ate crap, and then road on "The Tasmanian Devil", which is like one of those pirate ship rides, only spinning.  What do you think was the outcome of that mix?  Well, just rest assured that something, EVERYTHING, did come out.

I don't regret the ride at all.  It was a strange, wonderful ride, offering points of view that I'd never before experienced, and it was WORTH a little ex-paristalsis.  But that fish deserves an apology.  It dserved better than to be caught, killed, fileted, battered, frozen, shipped, thawed, deep-fried, eaten, jostled, and then barfed.  We all deserve better. 

Keep Peeling,

Peeled Skinny, courtesy of bad food 

Posted by iankusc at 08:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday a series of Wizard-of-Oz-worthy wind and rain storms moved through Manhattan, and I just happened to get stuck in one as I was looking far, ahem, a place to relieve myself.  As the first rain-soaked gusts began pelting me, I ducked into the place of business nearest to me that might offer a: shelter, and b: a urinal.  That establishment was none other than the golden arches themselves, McDonalds....

Well, I wasn't the only soggy cat to creep through those doorways just then, nor was I the only one there seeking, uh, relief.  So I waited out the worst of the storm with other drenched passersby and took in all that was a mid-town McDonalds for a good 15 minutes or so.  And you know what?  I'm alive to tell the tale!

In fact, some things about the experience were distinctly surprising.  For instance, this Mickey D's has in it a baby grand (it's at 56th and 8th avenue for the unbelievers amongst you), and a guy was playing chopin on it rather nimbly.  Likewise, contrary to my expectations, not everyone in the joint was overflowing with billowing corpulence.  Some customers, but not all.

The place was hardly clean, but it was busy enough to warrant some forgiveness in the anal arena. Midtown that far north of Times Square isn't particularly kid-filled, and this store had no "Playland", or anything of the sort.  It did however boast its more than fair share of teenagers, some swapping fries, some canoodling in the corners, some narfling down lard they'll spend their 20s shedding.

I didn't inspect the menu beyond a passing glance at the dollar menu.  In spite of any inferred value in that menu, all it offered was cookies, pie, and 4 McNuggets!  Far be it for me to actually EAT a McNugget, but if I did, I sincerely doubt that 4 of them would satiate me.  But now we're in a twisted cycle here:  "The food in this restaurant is TERRIBLE, and the portions are SO SMALL!!!"

In all honesty, I went in expecting dystopia and just found a subdued dispenser of convenience.  There's really no argument to make against McDonalds- Ray Kroc found a loophole back in the day and exploited it to high heaven (or low hell, if you actually eat there).  It's a financial system that in the short term makes for INSANE profits.  In the long term, who knows?  Ever seen "Idiocracy"?

I didn't eat the food, so I can't comment on that aspect of the business.  I assume it's dreck, but I have a place in my heart for their french fries, so consider me a proud hypocrit.  One thing's for sure though- nice music in the background, comfort food for cheap, and a shelter from the storm raging outside in no way makes up for....

...the most disgusting bathroom I've ever seen in the first world....

Posted by iankusc at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My dear friend (alluded to in my recent GUNK! blog) and I started grappling the other day with my perspectives on poverty.  You see, I'm a bit of a conspiracy nut, in that I truly believe that America's economic engine benefits from cheap labor, and so we have numerous systems designed to keep the poor, poor.  His argument lies in the spirit of self-determinism versus "misery loves company", and while he expressed it well, I'll leave it to him to tell you all about HIS conspiracy theories.  [Ed. Note: My friend has no real conspiracy theories]

But let's get back to mine- America LOVES its poor, and makes sure that they're never in short supply.  There are all sorts of ways that we guarantee the supply (shoddy inner-city education, anyone?  How about limited access to capitol for minorities?  Would you prefer institutionalized racism?), but one of the perhaps accidental yet undeniable guarantees comes from FOOD.

Michael Pollan published another indictment of the food industry in this past week's New York Times, which he started with this strange puzzle: if you're a fat American, you're probably a poor American.  Hold it, WHAT?  The term "Fat Cat" assumes the opposite: the richer you are, the fatter (and, apparently, more feline) you become.  Well, that phrase no longer works, it seems.

And neither does our country's "Farm Bill."  Pollan, in his article, takes to task the current $25 billion "Farm Bill" (which has impact far beyond farms) for encouraging the growth and consumption of corn, wheat, and soy, and basically nothing else.  This pathetically structured, forgotten bit of legislation encourages industrial agriculture, and nothing's easier on the machinery than corn.  Hence, the cheapest thing out there is cookies full of useless high-fructose corn syrup calories.

I highly recommend that you read the Pollan article- there are MANY points in there worth toying with and mulling over.  But my take-away from it is that our government has sanctioned (nay, INSTITUTIONALIZED) the fattening of the poor by insuring that the worst food for you is the only food that most Americans can afford.  In short, we're paying taxes (about $100 per person per year) to keep poor America fat.

Right now it takes about 2 farmers to work every 1000 acres of American farmland, courtesy of industrialized farming.  The impact, on our poor, on foreign markets, on the environment, is tremendous and frightening.  But if we re-organized our agricultural systems so that more people would work less land, well we sure would have a lot more jobs for people, no?  For POOR people....

No, as Pollan points out, there's no easy solution to this problem, but the current situation helps NOBODY....

Except (back to my conspiracy theory) the corporation owning Americans who benefit from a cheap labor market.  This should make us all sick.  Frankly, all that High Fructose Corn Syrup DOES make me sick....

I wrote a poem about this earlier, and here is its encore presentation. That's right, returning to our pages from Mars are your favorite green skinned, people eating Martians, Zergplek and Metzelfark.  Thanks for making the trip back to our pages, guys.  Now please stop chewing on the intern's arm....

It's about time, Zergplek.

Yes, Metzelfark, it's almost harvest season.

Olympus Mons' Southern Face is turning

from amber rust to crimson fire,

and the Valles Marinaris runs full with squabe.

Zergplek, get your plucking gloves on-

It's time to reap the fattened terran crop.

Yes, all the fat little morsels

on yon planet so blue

will taste so deliciously like Cheetohs...

...and sweet, corn-syrup filled Pepsi...

..oh yes, and pepsi, 

at this October's harvest barn dance.

My moorsaphate has knitted me a snazzy bib,

lest I spill saturated transfats

all over my brand new vyxerpus vest.

Fire up the interplanetary drive,

and let's go harvest some fatsos!

Posted by iankusc at 03:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Okay, I have this friend, a DEAR friend, a man for whom I hold tremendous respect.  He's an entrepreneur, and a successful professional actor, a great guy, and a truly fantastic karaoke-er.  He had me and some other friends over to his swank Central Park West pad last weekend for some relaxation and PG-13 fun, during which he introduced me to....

"AGEL" 

From the website; 

"Athletes use gels to pound carbs right before competition or in the middle of a race. What if anyoneother could pound nutritional supplements in the same way—when it's most convenient for them? Could a highly accessible delivery system like the one athletes use be versatile enough to work with consumable products?

The answer launched a powerful new delivery mechanism called Suspension Gel Technology."

I know the writing ain't pretty, but they make up for it with TECHNOLOGY!  Suspension Gel Technology, huh? Well, let's take a look at what's "suspended" inside one of their little capsules, the one called "UMI"....

In a  21 gram serving (.75 oz), you get Fucoidan, a seeweed extract proven by the japanese to actually kill lymphoma cells.  You also get some Apple Cider Vinegar.  Under "Other Ingredients," you'll find Water, Fructose (read: sugar), Malic Acid (an artificial flavor), Citric Acid (which, contrary to popular belief, ISN'T vitamin C but IS a natural preservative), Xanthan Gum  and Guar Gum (thickening agents), "Natural Flavoring" (whatever that is), and Sodium Benzoate, a preservative that we use for our figs.

Now let's look at the amounts:  The "Good" stuff, being the Fucoidan and Apple Cider Vinegar, amounts to 235 MILLIgrams, making it just over 1% of the contents.  The rest of it is sugar, water, and stuff that makes you think that you're eating more than sugar and water. 

The packaging promises that "UMI" is a powerful punch of Fucoidan, and offers a "wealth of benefits," though specifics are tough to come by.  Of the line of 6 Suspension Gels, one boasts a littany of added vitamins, but all of them are basically made of sugar, water, thickening stuff, and.... something else- vitamins, seaweed, ginseng, whatever.  The promises are bold, the packaging schnazzy, the product....

Well, come to think of it, I haven't tried the product.  If I'm going to be able to properly address it, I'd better put my belly to the test, so here goes, I am now ripping open said "UMI" and getting .008 ounces of Fucoidan....

Wow.  I feel like somebody did something in my mouth that I really didn't want them to do.  It's gunk, allright, and the packaging is such that you really do splurt it into your eat hole.  Overall, that was a frighteningly unpleasant experience.  However, if I happen to have lymphoma (do you hear me Fred Thompson?), then I'm at least .008 ounces closer to being protected from it.

It tastes, for the record, as if someone's trying to cover up the flavor of pencil shavings with a gross, artificial Green Apple concoction.  Said shavings are somewhat masked, but there's just enough of a hint to make me nervous.  So it's got a frightening texture, an unnerving (though not awful) taste, and dubious nutritiounal value.  Why, exactly, is it here?

Well, for one, it's being marketed through a "Network Marketing" system.  That is to say, people that sell it aren't actually selling it- they're just trying to get OTHER people to sell it, from which they get residuals, much like Avon or Amway or Albania.  No offence to Amway or Avon- they're cool, I think.  And I feel bad for Albania- they got BURNED.  Networking Marketing works wonders for high margin products, and AGel's certainly that.

AGel's packaging is definitely dangerously slick, and I can see a jogger slipping one of the packs into a pocket for portage, taking it out when he/she needs to "go to 11", and then casually littering said attractive package (but, it's so small, who'll notice?).  But the real attraction is the notion that this food is as functional as it gets- it's food without that pesky, you know, "FOOD" in the way- just the nutrition, or energy, or the sexy ginseng, or the cancer-killing seaweed agent.

Can you see why I'm upset that a dear friend of mine is involved in peddling this purported "pocket rocket"?  AGel is, to put it bluntly, huckstering the "Anti-Peeled Snack"- something that eliminates "food," that gets beyond "ingredients," that's so OVER agriculture.  It's the way of the future, man, it's Soylent  Green! 

It's proof that man is greater than his/her creator, because we can, through "science," root the sin out of the apple, the slither out of the serpent.  We can do better than food, we can do better than "seaweed."  We can do better than GOD!

I just have to find a way to root the "AGel" out of my buddy.  I know that there are people out there that believe that "Funcitonal Food" is the way, and that's fine.  Good for them.  They'll make some chemists very happy and rich.  Our target market is people that like to, you know....

...."chew." 

Keep Chewing,

Ian, Peeled Skinny 

Posted by iankusc at 02:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

a conversation overheard between two dogs, one a west-coaster (Greeley), the other an east-coaster (Shenandoah), when they met at a Florida barbeque last week....

Shenandoah:   Hey Greeley!  Hey Greeley!  I remember you!  How you doing?

Greeley:  Hey Doah!  Good, good, how's your butt smell?... 

S: Not as good as yours, kid.  Hey, you smell that?

G:  Are boy-dogs all sons of bitches?  That smells like some grade A organic grass-fed hamburger!

S:  Smells like WHAT?  Whatchoo talking about Greeley?  What's Organic?

G:  You know, like, REAL.  Like, whoever grew that cow didn't stick it with, you know, chemicals and hormones and stuff.

S:  Chemicals?  They put chemicals in cows?  COOL!

G:  No way is that cool.  It's totally gross!

S:  Come on, Greeley- Chemicals are the way of the future!  In a few years, you and I could be super-dogs, thanks to chemicals!

G:  We ARE super-dogs, Shenandoah...

S:  SHHHHHH!  Anyway, I hope one day I get some chemicals stuck in me.

G:  Well what about hormones?  How would you like to be stuffed full of gunk that makes your muscles all swell and bloat?

S:  Would it make me more attractive to other dogs?

G:  NO!  It'd make you a sick disaster of science run amok!

S:  Greeley, I'm a dog.  I LIKE to run amok.  I LIVE to run amok...

G:  Hormones would turn you into a FREAK!

S:  They seem to have turned that cow into delicious meat!

G:  I said that the meat smells ORGANIC, not pumped full of hormones.

S:  How can you tell?

G:  Well back in California, everybody's cooking with that organic, grass-fed meat.

S:  SO?

G:  You can really tell the difference.

S:  SO?

G:  So it's better for you and tastier.

S:  So you'd turn down a steak that smelled like it had hormones?  Are you telling me that you, a DOG, would spurn a big hunk of hamburger just because it came from a hormone injected cow?

G:  Well, I'm a dog, so I probably couldn't help myself....

S:  Darn tootin!

G:  But I'd prefer a grass fed cow.  It's better?

S:  How?

G:  I don't know.  It just tastes better.

S:  I eat what I can get.  That's how we New York dogs so it- we eat what we can get, and we LOVE it!

G:  Well you New York dogs gotta wake up and smell the hormones.

S:  And you California dogs gotta wake up and smell any meat that you can smell, cause it's ALL good!

G:  True.  But....

S:  But?

G:  No, butt- that dog's butt.  Let's go sniff it.

S:  NOW you're talking! 

Posted by iankusc at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Welcome home to New York- snow, sleet, chills, ice.... yet, it's still better than San Francisco's chill.  Here, at least, they shut the frickin' doors!

Can I say "frickin'" on the internet?  It'll have to read up on that.

Of all the many things that I miss from San Francisco, NUMERO UNO on the list is the Berkeley Bowl, with it's long aisles full of vegetables (organic or otherwise), or its butcher offering grassfed, meat from grass-fed cows who spent their afternoons dancing in the fields and only passed away when they were good and ready, nay, EAGER to feed the wealthy hippie carnivores of Berkeley. 

I come back to New York and trundle through my old grocery store (and I use the term VERY loosely), and I see the shoddly veggies haphazardly arrayed without any descriptors, demonstrating all the variety of a "Police Academy" sequel and the pricing of Tiffany's.  The "meat" aisle comes courtesy of Mr. Purdue (even the beef!), and I bristle at the cereal prices, none below $5.00 per box!

But I need to eat, right?  So I grab some mediocre veggies, some lousy boxed pasta, and some canned tomatoes, head home, and start cooking up.  Ask anyone that's eaten my spaghetti sauce and the worst you'll hear is "yeah, it's good."  The best will make you beg me to cook for you.  BEG!  So the veggies are chopped, the garlic diced, the oil hot, the tomatoes....

...packed with High Fructose Corn Syrup?!?!??!

Okay, that's comPLETELY insane.  When I buy canned tomatoes, I expect the ingredients to be:

tomatoes

I'm willing to put up with additions like "salt", or "water", or, if it's a particularly frisky company "love".  But CORN SYRUP?  That's a sure sign that whichever company made said canned tomatoes was significantly more concerned with profit than product.  And while I'm loathe to mention the name of the company, I will say that it's name rhymes with "Hell Jaunty".  Figure it out.

And never, EVER, buy their CRAP!  I'm so enraged that I fell for such a scam.  Tomato sauce companies like Ragu and Prego add Corn Syrup (in their organic lines, ORGANIC corn syrup.... welcome to the end of Western Civilization as we know it) in order to cut quarterly costs- if last Summer not enough soccer moms cashed in their Prego coupons, make them pay for it in useless calories courtesy of the cheapest crap around, government subsidized CORN SYRUP!

Sure, it's nice to see my friends again (though Ellen, I miss you three times over, my dear), and it's nice to be able to enjoy the fruits of the city once more (figurative, not literal).  But the food here?

Fuggeddabowdit!

TOMATO POETRY!!!! 

Dear tomato,

you're just not good enough at being a tomato 

though red you be, and sweet you taste,

riddled through and through with flavor,

destined for salad, sauce, or paste.

You're just not that Great-O

Tomat-O

The thing is, my plump, red friend,

that you cost three cents more per pound,

than our stock can bare this fiscal quarter's end.

Our accountants have come up with pricing that's sound.

You're just not that Hot-O

Tomat-O

Your friend from the field next door,

the one with pointy green stalks and yellow ears,

Will be taking your place in store.

No one'll know- we've been conditioning them for years.

One day they'll all Hate-O

Tomat-O 

Posted by iankusc at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night, the Peeled Team went to check out a showdown between Berkeley journalism professor Michael Pollan (he of The Omivore's Dilemma), and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, who Pollan ferociously took to task in his New York Times Bestseller.  The event took place at The University of Caifornia, Berkeley's 2,000 seat Zellerbach Hall, which usually hosts theater and dance and opera and the like.  Last night, it hosted a power point presentation and some chit chat.

But rarely has chit-chat been SOOO entertaining.  We were treated to about 2 hours worth of back and forth from two of the most influencial foodies of our time.  Hmmm.  There's an interesting notion.  "Our Time" is one that has room enough for several foodies.  No more rabid focus on Julia Childs or Alice Waters.  Now the pot is thickened with a multitude of opinions about just how much food should be in food, how organic is organic, and what's the future of fish in the sea.

But the evening started out with a lecture on hunting and gathering.  Huh?  When Pollan gave up the stage to Mackey, Mr. CEO put before us a macro-history of eating.  I suppose in some respect he was trying to frame the "big picture", but more than anything he was trying to gain a little sympathy.  He had, after all, wandered into a room full of people who had read Pollan's partly-anti-Whole Foods book.  And he was, after all, in Berkeley California, where hissing is an art form.

Sympathy he earned, through plain speaking, broad perspective, clear points, and a cheerfully intellectual take on all that we eat.  Going in I certainly carried none of the anti-Mackey prejudices bared by most of the audience, but walking out I considered myself a Mackey-fan. 

After the slide show, which also gave Mackey a chance to curry some favor thanks to his anouncement of a couple of bold initiatives for foodies and bleeding hearts, the two sat down for a tet-a-tet.  Pollan asked some civil questions (and some politely uncivil ones), but it took a while for a real conversation to get going.  They agree on a lot, like the dreadful state of the meat industry, and the disasterous consequences of over fishing.  But agreements make for boring talk.

The battlezones were mostly about the consequences of big business organics, which Mackey believes can be done responsibly, but which Pollan assumes will quickly dilute the value of Organic.  In an interesting concession, Pollan imagined what the world would be like if Coca-Cola when Organic (it'd be better.  Only slightly.  Mostly on corn farms.  Corn farms still suck).

For us at Peeled Snacks, such an engagement is better than the Super Bowl or the Oscars or the Premier of Indiana Jones part IV.  Here are two big thinkers bashing their heads together, chomping at each other, yet finding common ground, all in the public arena.  Thanks so much to the new Peeled Snacks team member, Matt, for snagging us the tickets.  He had a dentist's appointment, so he couldn't go.  Boy did he get the lousy part of that deal.

Both speakers really took to task the American meat industry, and I walked out of there seriously considering a return to vegetarianism (which, for the record, almost killed my northern-european rooted self).  Yet Mackey eloquently spoke to my reaction by saying that his consumers don't want to know all the terrible things there are to know about food-  there are so few options for getting good, responsibly grown meat, yet dining without meat would really suck.

The biggest, most interesting battle, and the only one which actually elicited hisses from the audience, occured around the COST of organic and local food.  Asked what Whole Foods can do for poor people with poor eating habits, Mackey tepidly offered that Americans are getting richer, and soon they'll all be able to buy all the organic, locally grown, nutrient rich, fair trade food that they want.

Boy did he look at the floor a lot when he was rolling out that spiel, and the Berkeley audience gave him a severe hissing for it.  Let's face it- health food is a luxury right now.  The cheapest thing to eat is corn syrup (thanks to government subsidies), which will keep you alive but will rot your brain.  To assume that eventually the huge gap between wealthy and poor in America will just naturally close is akin to assuming that pigs will one day fly.  Sure, it's possible, but it'll take a HECK of a lot of catapults.

Afterward the show we joined up with fellow foodie and friend Dana, the Queen of Goat Milk Ice Cream.  She offered this interesting insight into John Mackey:

He's a Vegan.

The nation's most influential grocer, a man who impacts decisions that determine the fates of MILLIONS of animals per month, doesn't even eat cheese.  I find that a scary, scary thought.  Sure, he's right- the meat industry scares the be-jeezus out of me too...  But I don't want to give it up.  Sigh

Ian "Peeled Skinny" K 

Posted by iankusc at 01:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you know me (or my blog babbling), you know that I've a weakness for sodas, particularly the super-funky, fruity, bitter, or odd-ball variety.  I'll take as strong a ginger-beer as you can find me, or as fruity a grapefruit soda as you can concoct (and oh, can Fizzy-Lizzy make one fruity grapefruit soda).  In NYC, I know exactly which shops dabble in the funky sodas, but here in Cali?  I just didn't know where to go for the odd, the ambitious, the enticing soda or "pop"....

Then I discovered "The Berkeley Bowl"....

What do you look for in a grocery store?  Perhaps you look for variety?  Or maybe you look for your particular brands.  Maybe you're price concious.  Maybe you want all organic.  Do you like to discover new stuff?  In need of bulk?  Curious about the butcher shop?  Have high standards for veggies?  Are you (like my dear friend Eirik) a cheese addict?  What if you're into ALL these things? 

I kind of am.  I like my organic meats and produce, but I also like inexpensive bulk cereals and grains.  I know exactly what kind of canned tomatoes I like, but I want to have a lot of options when it comes to olive oil and tea.  The "Bowl" caters to ALL my needs in a bewildering, blinding fashion.  It's enormous, yet it has a density of substance (unlike, say, your box-store grocery, or anything in New York short of Fairway).

When I first walked into the Bowl, I was flabbergasted.  Piles of freshly baked bread loomed overhead as a maze of wines lurked behind, and aisles upon aisles of canned goods beckoned, while an army of veggies waited in the wings.  I felt like Theodore Davis must have felt when her first uncovered King Tutankhamen's tomb.  So much to SEE! So much to DO!  So many MUMMIES to FIGHT!

No, wait.  Scratch that last part.  Though there were a LOT of "Mommies" (Berkeley, much like NYC, seems to be experiencing a sizable Baby-Boom).  Frankly, I was in heaven, and what was supposed to be a quick trip to pick up some rice-milk turned into a veritable ORGY of shelf-gawking.  I dare-say that I've never, NEVER, seen such a perfect arrray of produce in all my life.  And anyone that knows me well will tell you that I'm a total produce SLUT!

But that's the great thing about California, isn't it?  You can pick up a locall grown, organic orange pepper for $1.09 per pound (and I did), and buy mushrooms by the wheel-barrow full (if you happen to own a wheel barrow).  Considering the cold-snap that my co-workers in New York are enduring, I can't rightly complain about the San Fran weather anymore, but if I COULD, I'd have to say that the produce makes it all worth it.

Now, if you'll forgive me, I'm going to go pick up some grapefruit soda.  And some carrots.  And some cereal.  And some lamb chops.  And some cheddar cheese.  And some olives.  And some...

...you get the point... 

Posted by iankusc at 04:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Recent source of inspiration: Michael Pollan's (he of The Omnivore's Dilemma) article in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine about Nutrition trends.  He comes up with the perfect diet for everybody:

Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.

Yes, that's it.  It reminds me terrifically of a wonderful article in The Onion from way back when...

His plan reads: Avoid saturated fats and simple carbohydrates, eat mostly fresh vegetables and and exercise.  As the son of a physicist, I've always been attracted to the "Theory of Everything", which is to say, a real theory is as simple as possible.  Pollan's new plan is pretty friggin simple, no?

So this Summer's Fancy Food show was a gas- all that cheese, all that wine, all those hot sauces.  This Winter's show was a lot of the same, with some big-boys showing up to strut their stuff (Ghirardelli OWNED that place).  Surprisingly, though, it didn't really distinguish itself from the Summer's entry- lots of sauces, lots of crispy snacks, lots of refined foods trying to follow trends into the sunset.

I guess I expected that since we were in sunny California (whch hasn't seen the sun all week) there'd be lots of, you know, "Healthy" stuff.  But WOAH was I wrong.  Aside from some regional farms, orchards,  and fruit growers (YAY Bella Viva!!!), it was all just the same old processed crap, mixed in with lots of innovators from the plain states and the East.  Go figure.

This of course links to Pollan's article, Unhappy Meals, because he basically asserts that processed food is getting us further and further away from what we should be calling food.  An early assertion in the article is that supermarkets have less and less "food," yet more and more "food-like substance".  He takes on the notion of "nutritionism" (eating by nutrients rather than by food) as a grave trend in American diets.  But isn't all that "nutritional" stuff supposed to be GOOD for you?

My Father-in-law once entertainingly lambasted me for just this sort of thinking.  He caught me taking a Vitamin C pill with something like 25,000 mg of C (or something silly like that).  I believe he put it something like, "boy, your pee sure will be loaded with citric acid!" (excess, unused vitamin C gets flushed through the kidneys).  I defended my action as being, you know, "nutritional."  But rarely, if ever, had I bothered to really define "nutritional".

Pollan makes a great case for ditching such notions, and focusing on FOOD.  You know, CARROTS.  APPLES.  RICE.  All that good stuff.  Sure, we can presume to get all the "nutrition" in a carrot from some kind of a pill.  But what's in a CARROT that they can't get in a pill?  Something, surely, that will be missed.

Pollan supports a "5 ingredient rule":  Eat things with that many ingredients, because then it's still food.  While I must respectfully disagree (Peeled Snacks have 6 ingredients), I think I'll take his comments as an unintended, accidental thumbs up for our tasty treats.  I'll also take them as a "tisk-tisk" for most of the over-processed muck I saw at the Winter Fancy Food Show.

This being California, I can, surely, get plenty of REAL "food."  All I have to do is go to my local supermarket, the Berkeley Bowl, which is (simply put)...

THE GREATEST SUPERMARKET IN THE WORLD!!!!!....

But that's for the NEXT Peeled Skinny.

But that's for the Peeled Skinny that comes NEXT.

Happy Groundhog Day,

EN "Peeled Skinny" K 

An Omivore's Dietary Haikus

Eat Food.   Eat REAL food.

Don't eat too much food, fatso!

Mostly plants, tubbsy! 

I ate food today.

Not too much, though.  Just enough.

Mostly plants?  As IF!!!

Ask me what "Food" is.

All that fits within my mouth.

You included, chump.... 

Posted by iankusc at 04:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Recently Peeled Snacks has formed a partnership with the American Diabetes Association to help get the word out about healthy lifestyles and diets.  One of the key missions of Peeled Snacks is to give people a healthy snack option, and that's a mission that the ADA can certainly get behind.  It's certainly worth asking, though, are Peeled Snacks fit for diabetics?

Hmm... tricky question, that.  And unfortunately, the answer can't be a simple "yes", as much as we'd like it to be that way.   Peeled Snacks' fruit is loaded with carbohydrates, and though they may be loaded with vitamins, minerals, and fiber, all those carbs inevitably convert to sugars.  That should make any person diagnosed with diabetes at least a little bit leary.

This dried fruit stuff has plenty of health benefits, but being low in sugar isn't one of them.  Yet compared to most of the snack food out there, dried fruit is an excellent snack for diabetics.  Thanks to our national addiction to corn-sweeteners, a snack without any added sugar is suddenly a healthy alternative, even if it's mostly made of sugar.  Addicted to oil?  Get over it.  Corn Syrup is the new Crystal Meth... or, rather, the OLD one.

Still, in a sampling of 5 websites that discuss diets for diabetics, Dried Fruit got at best a cautious endorsement (and in one case, a flat out "avoid").  The clearest message for diabetics regarding dried fruit seems to be "it depends upon your body's reaction."  Dried Fruit could be just what the body ordered.  Or, they could be a problem.  But you never know till you try, so try in moderation....

So much focus diabetes in recent years has been on dealing with it via diet and habit.  Folks with type 1 diabetes have to moderate whatever they eat with insulun, but type 2 can be moderated by, well, moderation.  Easier said than done, with every little diagnosis having it's own, distinct dos and do-nots.  But at least for some, for many, Peeled Snacks are a great alternative to, as we call it around the office, "all the rest of the crap out there".

Posted by iankusc at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

First and foremost, Happy New Year.  I'm please to announce that the Peeled Skinny is now publishing in its 2nd year, and unlike many other bloggers, I don't need to make the New Years Resolution to Blog more- I've got 42 entries over 6 months.  That's over 1 per week, about which I feel, well, pretty gosh-darn good.

What I feel not-so-good about is my liver, which after a month of wassailing is definitely due some tee-to-tattling.  Starting from the week after Thanksgiving, we averaged 5 holiday parties per week, with several doubled-up days.  Back in November I couldn't finish a beer without getting woozy.  Now, thanks to a month of Rocky-worthy "spirited" training, I'm ready for my OWN bottle of tequila, thanks.

What I'm on the fence about (feeling strangely curious, yet absolutely anxious about) is the enormous bag of home-made cookies that my wonderful co-worker Cassie brought into the office this morning.  Cassie, you should know, adds fairy dust to her cookies, making them magically delicious, so I know that every one of those gooey morsels (and there's QUITE a variety) holds heaven inside.

In a normal week-in-the-life, I'd probably average one cookie per day of Cassie's creations, slowly carving the supply down bit by bit, with occasional escapes courtesy of hungry visiters.  But this past month, with all its buffet tables and hors d'oerves, has greatly expanded my appetite (not to mention my waist-line).  I live in fear, now, of insatiation- can I, you know, reign myself back in?

In general, the Peeled Snacks diet plan is a simple one- eat real food that counts, and don't worry about when you eat crap, so long as you eat very little of it.  Sure enough 11 out of 12 months, it works like a charm, and I'm proud to boast little in the way of a belly.  But here it is, barely past noon, and all that I can think of is a bag of admittedly heavenly tasting cookies waiting 20 feet away.

An article in last month's O, the Oprah Magazine went into the notion of compulsive behavior and its bio-chemical roots- habits you have that you enjoy (but that are, you know, "naughty") give you a little endorphine boost, thus becoming actually actually chemically addictive in a way.  Defeating such habits takes LOTS of work, especially for adults.  That little up-lifting article swims through my
head head heavily as I try, Try, TRY not to think about Cassie's cookies.

Sigh.  The habits of December lead to the resolutions of January.  And just as I'm not going to resolve to blog more, I'm also not going to resolve to not eat cookies.  I'm just going back to my pre-December cookie consumption index rating.

And that sucks, because MAN can Cassie bake!

Happy New Year,

EN, the Peeled Skinny, not quite as skinny as he once was

apeel@peeledsnacks.com

A Cookie in the Life

I read the news today, Oh boy

About some cookies that your Cassie baked

And though the cookies looked bad-ass,

Well I just had to pass

Because of my tremendous mass.

She baked them from a recipe

She didn't use a Betty Crocker box

All my co-workers turned and stared.

We'd had her sweets before

Nobody was really sure if she would ever bake some more.....

 

I wrote a blog today oh boy.

The Oprah magazine discussed Pavlov.

A crowd of people hate's his hounds

But I just had to try

His dogs make me cry.....

 

Woke up, got washed and dressed. 

2007, now I'm depressed.

Found my breakfast quick and drank a cup,

and looking up, I had another cup. <gulp gulp gulp gulp>

Brushed my teeth and read my mail.

Put my car on line for sale.

Found my way to work, said "G'morning" to the team.

Cassie brought in sweets, and I went into a dream ...

Ah...Ah...Ah..Ah........

 

I read the news today, Oh boy.

Four thousand resolutions broke by noon.

The resolutions sure were small.

And yet they broke them all.

Now you know how many people take 12 hours to have a fall....

I love to eat..... cooooo...kieeeeeeesssss.....

(I Burried Cassie) 

Posted by iankusc at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tonight, Peeled Snacks officers will descend upon a yearly holiday party hosted by a dear friend in honor of her dear husband's birthday.  The theme of the party isn't the holidays or the solstice or anything of that sort.  Rather, said husband suffers from a "sweet tooth".  No, I take that back.  Not a sweet "tooth", but sweet "teeth".  Whether or not 32 teeth remain in his mouth I can't say, but I DO know that whatever IS there CRAVES desserts.

And so we'll trundle down to Brooklyn with a treat in hand and bask in the wondrous sweet treats abounding.  Surely there'll be rice crispy treats, and brownies galore.  I expect to eat a cookie or two, and no doubt egg-nog (the SWEET kind) will be in attendance.  Cheesecake, perhaps, and cakes will tempt, though the birthday boy's a butterscotch lover, and butterscotch has many unpredictable delivery boys....

Notice what I'm not mentioning, what mostly WON'T be available, lest we bring it?  Dried fruit & nut snacks will NOT be there, almost guaranteed.  In lieu of anything that's remotely, you know, "healthy", there'll be gobs of things definitively "UN"-healthy.  Chocolate chip this-es, marshmallow thats, sugar-coated honey (and likely honey-coated sugar), and no doubt PLENTY of now illegal trans-fats.

Likely I could lament long and languidly upon such culinary sins (there will be NO crudite'), and chastise all holiday parties for their propensity to pack on pounds.  I could join my mayor (that Bloomberg guy) in lambasting all poly-unstaturate-saturated soiree sinners, or assault wassailers for alcohol abusings.  And I might remind all cookie cookers, intending to leave a plate of pecan-chocolate-chip wonders out for Santa that he probably already has type 2 diabetes...

But no.  Tis the season to Eat, Drink, and be Merry.  That's what this time of year is for, when the Sun curls down to the end of the Earth, the trees are all bare, and the cold winds blow (warmer and warmer every year, THANKS Al Gore!), it's time to turn out attentions indoors towards our friends and family, and towards our own insides- our hearts, our bellies, our livers....

Seasons like this help us understand the true meaning of eating healthy.  If all we ever ate was wheat-grass and rice cakes, we might fool ourselves into thinking them tasty.  After years of such a diet, imagine the trauma of tasting a truffle- if the stomach survived it, the head would surely explode from the pleasure.  Better to have regular chocolate dosages to avoid such a fate....

A Happy Holiday to all, and a special Happy Birthday to Lowell Kaplan, birthday boy, sweet tooth "sufferer", and daddy to one HECK of a cute little girl.  Tomorrow's all Winter, so from here on, every day is brighter.  Thank goodness....

EN, Peeled Skinny, but this season, rather happily fattened up 

Addendum:

It's the morning after said birthday party, and I'm required by law and honor to state that there WAS dried fruit in attendance.  Figs, dates, and apricots abounded, though the organic apricots reminded me of why we use sulfites in ours- organic apricots don't take like apricots, they taste like mollasses!  And they certainly DON'T compare to the lovely hostess' BANANA PUDDING!!! (yum)

It was a wonderful night, filled with great gabbing with meaty people.  It was NOT, however, the egg-nog fueled Solstice Schnockerrer that I was expecting.  Such are the symptoms of maturity- alcohol fuels fewer feuds, fewer fun (I'd say "less", but it doesn't alliterate).  Instead, people we just talk and eat, and insure a salvagable tomorrow.  While I'm heartbroken at the loss of mirth, I can't help but see the sense of it.  Sigh....

Happy Winter... 

Posted by iankusc at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm beginning to wonder just what it means to be "natural".  When a baby is born into the world, is the baby "natural"?  If so, when does the baby become "UN-natural"?  When he/she eats his/her first Pringle?  After finishing its first tin of Pringles?  What if the mother ate Pringles every day while carrying the baby?  Was the baby then ever natural to begin with?  Where does the line between natural and unnatural lie?

This weekend that question struck me like a punch in the gut as I got suckered in to buying something "natural"... and suffered because of it.  Allow me to give a absolutely emphatic thumbs DOWN to Blue Sky Natural Soda's "Jamaican Ginger Ale".  I believe that this is my first online condemnation, and I suspect that once word gets out, the thugs from Blue Sky will be knocking at my door and inviting me to "swim with the fishes".  But this news I just can't keep in...

I have of late developed an appreciation for exotic soft drinks.  I like how the bubbles sooth my tummy (yes, I call it my "tummy"), and I like strong flavors.  I appreciate the less sweet varieties (though never diet), and have developed a keen interest in ginger beers, malt beers, and ginsing sodas.  I've sampled many a variety, and stumbled as often as I've soared.  This weekend, though, I found the ass-end of sodas.

In a local bodega I found a stack of "natural sodas" courtesy of Blue Sky, and decided to give it a try.  At $3.00 a six pack, it seemed reasonably priced (there's certainly worse), and I'm always up for something new.  I took it home, chilled it, cracked open a can, and...

Suffered.

So bad in so many ways, I can't even begin to describe the let down.  The taste, while not at all akin to any ginger beverage I've ever tasted, IS akin to certain motor oils that I've smelled, and the smell of certain dead pidgeons I've stepped over on the sidewalk.  It was so un-drinkable that it made me wonder if its creators a: bothered to taste is before selling it, and b: if they have taste buds at all.

But I bought it, and I bought it because of its MARKETING; words like "natural" and "Jamaican" lured me in, as did its "Save Pets" icon and attractive, mountainy design.  Frankly, I'm the target market for this supposed thirst quencher (20-45, scenester, disposable income, influencer), so they hit their target.  But MAN, what lousy ordinance!

There's a slew of fancy sodas of late- the big boys roll out their tweeks (cherry vanilla coca-pepsi, kumquat-power-slice, etc), and little guys try to muscle in (Jones, Jolt, Tab's making a comeback...).  There are occasional attempts to redefine the category (dry soda anyone?), and occasionally products that could totally change the world for the better (like Fizzy Lizzy, and their superlative Grapefruit soda!)and some of us fall for this or that (but never, NEVER, for Blak- I like my coffee coffeeish).

But not every one of those can make it, though not all that fail are lousy (Good-O's West Indian Ginger Beer?  AWESOME!!!), and not all those that succeed taste of ambrosia (why, oh why, is there such a thing as Grape Soda?).  If, however, you're trying to pass a beverage off as natural, such an adjective just ISN'T ENOUGH!  Natural isn't satisfying on it's own... or IS it?

There's the question for Peeled Snacks- should we make a "natural product" (i.e. use ingredients without sulfites) simply because there's a market, even though it might taste bad or look bad or, you know, just BE bad?  Is "natural" and end, or a justifiable means?  Usually around here, we find dub it a GOAL, but that's not the same as saying it's a product.  The destination requires the journey, and so far, Peeled Snacks' journey has, technically, been an unnatural one.

But believe me, we taste a HECK of a lot better than Blue Sky Jamaican Ginger Ale...

An ode to the Blue Sky thugs knocking on my door:

No you can't come in,

you can't, I won't let you, you'll pound on my chin.

No, I won't open the door,

I won't, I can't, because you'll pound me to the floor.

Sorry, the door stays locked.

I've bolted and latched it, and with the couch in front it's blocked

No chance, you can't have the key.

I know that you'll use it, come in here, and then beat me.

Don't try the fire escape.

I've pterydactyls guarding it, and coated it with soda (GRAPE!)

There's no asking my Landlord.

I already paid my bill this month, so my cache with him has soared.

And don't bother with the windows.

I've set laser beams and booby traps...

...I really wouldn't mess with those. 

But should you try to come in here,

worst of all, for you I've got in hand,

a case of Blue Sky Jamaican Ginger Ale,

the nastiest of nasties in all the land... 

So there! 

Hello? 

Blue Sky Gangster men?

Where did you GO?!?!

Another great Peeled Snacks HIT...

Happy drinking... 

Posted by iankusc at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This past weekend, we here at Peeled Snacks World Headquarters took a little field trip to go see Richard Linklater's newest gab-fest, Fast Food Nation.  We've all obviously read the book (vigorously nodding our heads in agreement at every page turn), and we'd all seen at least SOME (I've seen them all) of Richard Linklater's flicks.  So we all hid our Peeled Snacks in our jackets (BBC for me), found our seats in one the 3 New York theaters still playing the film (it's done poorly), and took in the show.

What would you expect from a fictionalization of a non-fiction expose', huh?  Would you expect characters barraging you with facts and figures, and the villification of dastardly Fast Food Executives?  I went in expecting some tirades and polemics, and angry characters shaking their fists at every golden arch past which they drove.  I expected to see secrets exposed, and society shaken up by some anti-french-fry revolution....

Nope.  Nothing in the film like that.  Nothing at all....

Where the book is a disclosure of what's going on in an industry run amok, the film is a different bird entirely.  It's not a documentary, and not "info-tainment".  Rather, it's a humanization, an attempt to analyze the impact that the fast food industry has on people.  Linklater's film casts a wide net which catches up Fast Food execs, Mexican immigrants, idealistic liberals, conservative ranchers, jaded teenagers, and regular American families, and he tries to paint the impact of an unscrupulous McDonalds clone on their lives.

The film centers around a Colorado meat packing plant and the discovery by a fast food exec (nicely underplayed by Greg Kinnear) that there's quite a lot of cow poop in his "Big One Burger" meat.  He investigates, rubbing shoulders with the illegal immigrants who work the plant, poor families who eat the crappy burgers, and college kids who just can't find a way to wake people up to how aweful this all is.

Linklater's made this sort of film before.  The film's scope mirrors Dazed & Confused, which meanders through the last day of high school in a Texas suburb in 1977.  That film was filled with archetypes from everyone's high school days, and it asked you to find YOURSELF in the film, and think about where you were on that day.  It was like a Japanese Tosa painting where you're supposed to figure out who you'd be in the panorama.

Unfortunately, that makes the "disaster films" of the 70s its closest film cousins.  But the effect worked for me- I associated with an uncle (played by Linklater regular Ethan Hawke) who rolls into town and tries to inspire his niece to set high standards for her life (and diet).  As a marketer for, you know, this healthy snack company thing, I'm certainly eager to inspire good dietary decisions (and, apprently, good film-watching decisions as well).

But there's a strange rub in there- the most common target in the film isn't the meat processing plant (though it does come under fire), but the marketers who have to sell the crap that the plant churns out.  Greg Kinnear's character wrestles with the ethics of selling burgers filled with sh!t, even though he combs through chemical BBQ scents and thinks up BS slogans for a BS-filled burger.

But "liberal" marketing gets attacked too.  Bruce Willis pops in as a fellow Fast Food exec who defends the meat packing plant, pointing out that if you cook fecal matter, it won't kill you.  He challenges the prissy, sterilized notions of liberal foodies, and informs our sullen hero that "sometimes, we all have to eat a little sh!t."  Willis nails his delivery, and skewers the films supposedly liberal premise.

Likewise, when the college kids dream up a scheme to wake everyone up to how wrong it all is, they just can't understand why no-one gets the point.  There's an unsubtle allegory involving a bunch of cows NOT wanting to be freed from their captivity "get it?  The HERD doesn't WANT to be free...", and the puzzlement on the co-eds faces reminded me of the morning after George Bush got ellected the second time around ("you mean people really ARE that stupid?!?!").

A lot of pot-shots are taken at America today, from the abuse of eminent domain to the patriot act, from the illegal immigrant question to metha-emphetamine abuse, and all of it underscores Linklater's clear goal of using the Fast Food industry as a symbol of over-arching societal ills.  He's taking on exploitation, but is perhaps more concerned with apathy in the face of exploitation (see Borat).  Frankly he's attacking every marketer everywhere, and every schmoe that buys our stupid little spiels.

To that end, it really shouldn't be "Fast Food Nation: the Movie", it should be "Upton Sinclair's The Jungle: the Movie"- Sinclair's novel coaxed the federal government into overhauling the meat packing industry, but that wasn't Sinclair's target.  He was aiming for the impact on the PEOPLE in the industry, not the cuts of meat.  Linklater doesn't care about the statistics- he just wants you to understand the human cost.

That take on the material actually rubbed Peeled Snacks' founder and president quite wrong.  She found the film rather pointless, and was let down by the lack of any call to action (beyond a request to go to www.participate.net that played over the closing credits).  Likely many viewers expecting a rallying cry will be similarly dissappointed.  But it's a film, not a protest, and it works best as drama, not revolution.

Posted by iankusc at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday I was preparing one of our snazzy gift boxes for a friend visiting from out of town.  I won't bother plugging the gift boxes beyond saying that they're REALLY sexy.  Anyway, they're made out of firm paper (almost but not quite cardboard) that requires a simple bit of folding to turn it into a box.  You poke here, fold there, snap this, link that, and voila, a box, and a nice looking box at that.

It's the simplest thing, really- just carefully cut paper of a certain density.  It's the sort of thing that could have been made thousands of years ago.  The ancient Egyptians, for instance, could have made these boxes out of papyrus, or the romans could have made it out of flax paper.  You could call it a "technology", but it's really just a very simple way of folding paper.

And yet, cutting and folding boxes like this didn't occur till the 19th century.  17th century Japanese folded paper to make origami, but that's not quite the same thing as cutting this rigid paper to make a box.  It's so basic and simple, and achievable by the means of the most ancient of civilizations.  Yet we only got cardboard boxes recently.

There must be thousands of other examples of such "technologies" that could have been made by the ancient Romans or the Toltecs, but didn't surface till recently.  Somehow, innovation comes in starts and fits, and not just when it CAN come, but instead when it DOES come. 

I think about this strange notion right now as I ponder what Peeled Snacks is, and what it adds to the snacking world.  Peeled Snacks have a very simple "technology" behind them that makes them what they are- our 2 bag system keeps the fruit juicy and those nuts crunchy, and allows us to do it all without adding sugar.  Technically speaking, that could have been done 400 years ago in glass or masonry jars, but as far as I know, we're the first to do it.

There's no real innovation there, just smart application.  The result is a snack that's MUCH healthier than most of the crap out there (we just got a big thumbs-up from the American Diabetes Association), and its impact COULD be to greatly improve snacking habits, or coax other players in the snack industry to create healthier products.

But just like folded paper COULD have been made by the Pharoahs but wasn't, Peeled Snacks might not succeed in fighting off the obesity epidemic (or, as we call it around here, the "Pringle Problem").  We're trying to apply simple systems to create better options.  Perhaps if George Crum (the inventor of the potato chip) had spent a little more time back in 1853 considering health concerns, we wouldn't be in this dietary mess.  But we are.  And not enough companies are doing anything about it.  Sigh...

An unfortunate admission- due to a frantic Thanksgiving, I've still yet to see Fast Food Nation.  This weekend, I PROMISE... IF it holds out.  It's done poorly.  Double sigh... 

An Ode to George Crum...

I've flecks 'bout my bib,

greased heavy with mar'grin or lard.

I've salt upon my lips,

scalding me, my gums are  charred.

I've  eaten each chip

that you've layed out before me

and utzered a sigh 

because I'm so stuffed I can't see.

My fingers are peppered

with your kitechen's oil-drenched salt,

and I'm now quite certain

that my innerds have ground to a halt.

Fooled me you did,

to eat your savory crisps,

And from me they'll not soon be parted,

as they've all grafted onto my hips!!!

EN, the Peeled Skinny

Posted by iankusc at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This Friday, Richard Linklater's filmic fictionalization of Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation arrives in a theater near you (if you live in New York or LA, at least), and we here at Peeled Snacks just couldn't be more excited.  The material in Schlosser's book obviously is close to our hearts and minds, and Linklater's novel (or novelistic, if you like) approach to the Schlosser's non-fiction certainly deservers some attention.

 As I wrote in a previous blog, I'm a rather orthodox Linklater fan, which means that I've seen all of his films, for better (Dazed & Confused, School of Rock, Before Sunrise/Sunset, A Scanner Darkly) or worse (The Newton Boys, Tape).  I haven't yet seen his latest, but its very creation means that either prominant members of our society are finally taking a stand against the ridiculously awful fast-food industry, OR that someone in Hollywood wants to follow 2004's Oscar nominated Super-Size Me to boxoffice gold (it made nearly $30 million on a $65,000 budget).

The film takes stabs at the sanitation standards and hiring practices of national fast-food chains, and apparently drenches the screen in abattoir gore (the scenes from slaughterhouses are supposedly gut-wrenching, LITERALLY).   One subplot revolves around revalations revealed in Schlosser's book that your average hamburger contains a little (just a smidge, hopefully) poop. 

This territory was dramatically laid out 100 years ago in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which featured sausages instead of hamburgers (there were no burger joints in 1906), and Lithuanian immigrants as opposed to Linklater's Mexican ones.  But the two pieces have clearly similar goals in terms of exposing industrialized food production's impact on people, be they exploited workers, or just sad suckers who happen to fall into the meat grinder and get served to kids in bologna sandwiches.

Taking on fast food today is taking on myriad topics.  Super-Size Me mostly focused on fast-foods impact on an individual's health and well-being.  But there's the exploitation of workers to take into account.  There's the diabetes epidemic and malnutrition.  How about the ethical treatment of animals, or the creation of super-bacteria by feeding livestock anti-biotics? 

On the other hand, there's the economic impact on families- fast food is certain to feed a family of 8.  And if fast-food companies could be coaxed into serving healthier foods, could they perhaps be the most effective vehicles for positive change in the American diet?  In the film, supposedly Bruce Willis comes in to play the devil's advocate, and at least a couple of reviewers have referred to his scene as the film's most thought provoking.

Well, I'll find out this weekend, and write it up next week.  As a bonus, the film features  Catalina Sandino Moreno (from Maria Full of Grace), Patricia Arquette (From Nightmare on Elm Street 3: the Dream Warriors!!!), and Avril Lavigne (from, uh, the Sk8R Boi Video?)!!!  A MUST see, indeed.

-EN, Peeled Skinny 

Posted by iankusc at 02:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

How do you like your snacks?  Do you like them salty, or sweet?  Do you like them healthy, or sinful?  Do you snack for flavor, or to fill the belly?  What's your favorite snack, and what's your least favorite? Everyone'll have a different answer, as everybody (and every BODY) has his/her/its own tastes and needs.  But lately, this crazy health-food trend has taken on conventional ideas about snacks and snacking, and those of us trying to help the hungry masses survive from 4pm till the end of work are scrambling to keep up.

Thus I submit to you a noble attempt by our friends at Frito Lay to make a buck off this crazy health stuff.  Please be warned that the following article contains vulgar language...

Frito-Lay Angrily Introduces Line Of Healthy Snacks

Snacking trends are tough to keep up with, so hats off to Frito-Lay for getting on the bland/healthy bandwagon.  For the record, though, this article raises a doozy of a conundrum faced by all of us snack manufacturers- how do you deal with social or cultural trends that contradict basic biology? We are (all of us that might read this blog, anyway) basically overgrown monkeys (or divine creations, if you prefer), and we all somehow are programmed at a very deep level to savor salt, crave fat, and slurp up sugar whenever possible.  And NONE of those cravings are met by particle-board-like parsnip crisps.

In a strange way, I feel for the beleaguered and bitter Frito-Lay CEO Carey as he rails against health nuts and their unwanted impact upon his products.  We struggle right now against the Whole Foods mandate that none of the food they sell (except their red wine) contain sulfites.  Please don't get me started on sulfites.  I'll simply say that 90% of what I hear about sulfites is just wrong, and unless you have asthma, you have nothing to fear from the SMIDGE of sulfites in our products.

And yet, here we are, preparing to roll out a sulfite-free product come January or February, solely to cater to unfounded food trends.  Sigh.

Here at Peeled Snacks World Headquarters we regularly scrutinize our competition (as ought every good corporation).  We comb through snack racks and bins at the check-out counters, looking for trends, new products, and updates to classic snacks (like last January's  "Doritos Bag" update.  Frankly, we're all still in shock).  Everyone here had their own sort of "snack specialty"- there's the trail mix chick, the everything-with-seeds lady, the candy girl; I count as the chips and crisps dude.  Lucky me.

Any irony you might find in a bunch of healthy-snack peddlers eating blatantly awful snacks, please keep to yourself.  It's important to know what the kids are noshing on these days, and insights gained from seeing the bright colors behind the glass at a vending machine simply DO NOT COMPARE to actually tasting the lurid staleness within.  Most of the snacks we buy to try go uneaten, either because we have other snacks to try, or because they're just gross.

One final note- congrats to the Democratic Party, who (thanks to the endless campaigning and leadership of George W. Bush) have just taken over 1/3 of our government.  I recommend that, whatever happens in the next two years, you all DON'T SCREW IT UP!!!!

An Ode to Frito-Lay

I'm pretty sure that they put that salty powder on there

on purpose.

They coat their chips and curls with grains of flavor

and salt,

and after every cheetoh moves from oranged fingers

to mouth,

I must wash my cheetoh grabbing digits clean with my lips

and tongue.

Should perhaps I worry about my saliva-coated fingers

and thumb,

when sharing my Doritos, Cheetohs, or lime-drenched Tostitos,

so addictive?

Or does that orange and yellow dust somehow cauderize

all hands?

I think I'd rather not know, and just finish

my bag. 

Posted by iankusc at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I LOVE Halloween.  If it's not my favorite holiday, that's only because I'm Irish, and Joyce's Bloomsday is June 16th.  I like the idea that for one gerat day of the year, everyone in America and elsewhere (minus overly-religious wet blanket types) get to try to SCARE one another, or at least out-glam one another.  Tonight, kids will crawl all over their cities and towns searching for sweets and frights, though most will hope to find the former and avoid the latter.

Weeners.  Frights are what make Halloween special, what make it distinct from the other "candy" holidays (Valentines Day and Easter which, I'm told, is not ONLY about candy).  Halloween, coming as it does right after Daylights Savings Time wraps up for the season, marks a sort of cultural "Return to Nighttime," a time when peoples interest turn away from fun, frolicky daytime activities towards nocturnal nonsense and, yes, naughtiness.

Halloween has naturally been attacked as a celebration of sin, a savoring of carnality, an orgy of lechery, and so on.  To all those who make such accusations, I retort, succinctly, YOU ARE CORRECT!  Halloween is a night of the year when you can take a moment and be nasty, be naughty, get dirty, get dangerous, and get away with it.  It's not a time to really truly act bad and break the laws and stuff.  No, that's the day after and only in Detroit.  Halloweens just a time to revel in the fact that naughtiness abounds, it's a human trait, and mostly we act with dignity and sense.

Halloween has likewise been attacked as the "Devil's Holiday," or a time to worship Satan, whoever that is.  Who that is, according to the Book of Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Book of Isaiah, is a creation of the almighty, and party of the whole program.  The word Satan comes from the simple butchering of the Hebrew word for adversary.  And yet many a zealot will blame Satan for this or that or whatever.  Certainly they'll blame Satan or the Devil for Halloween.  POPPYCOCK!  Don't blame anybody for Halloween that isn't associated with candy industry.

I'll not waste a key-stroke lambasting candy.  Say what you will about your dentist bills or the diabetes epidemic, but there's absolutely no arguing with a snickers bar.   It's been a long time since I watched Saturday Morning Cartoons, but I sure hope that Reeses Peanut Butter Cups still has those commercials where a somehow a Republican eating from a jar of Peanut Butter and a Democrat eating a chocolate bar get into a fist fight and somehow invent those sublime little discs.

Halloween manifests the recognition of sin principally through candy, giving kids a chance to gobble up something that most of the year most of them are denied.  Obviously, as a representative of a healthy snack company, I'm supposed to talk about how candy's terrible for kids, and how everybody should be giving away Peeled Snacks instead.  I certainly agree with both of those statements, the first because there's no denying it, the second because I'm a self-serving goof.

But you want to know the truth?  Take candy out of Halloween and you MISS THE POINT!  Take sin and gore away from October 31st, and all you've got is the responsibility to dress up.  A friend of mine who shall remain nameless and awesome says that Halloween is an excuse for girls to dress super-sexy.  They can dress up like any professional, be it a nurse or a teacher or a firefighter or a superhero or whatever, so long as its supersexy.  Its an excuse to, for one night, let it ALL hang out, and then go back to being good little girls and boys.

 Lets all get back to being good little girls and boys TOMORROW.  Tonight, LET IT ALL HANG OUT!!

A Halloween ode to Shel Silverstein... 

There's poison in the apples, dear

and spider in the gin.

Your costume's lined with razor blades

to help you get more thin.

I wrapped a cobra round your hat

and hypnotized your granny.

So when the cobra bites your head,

your granny will kick your fanny!

There's booby traps all round the lieu

and trap-doors in your closet.

I hooked a blood bag up to the sink

so don't turn on the faucet!

Werewolves came to my house last night,

I gave them your address.

They asked if you were tasty meat,

I told them all, "oh YES!"

A ghost I met had lost his house,

when witches burned it down.

I told them all just where you live,

the address and the town.

Vampire coffins in your garage

will soon be opened up.

They quietly sneak in your room

and on your blood they'll sup!

You might ask why I tell you this.

I just thought that you should know.

Oh, for one other reason-

You're STANDING ON MY TOE!!! 

Posted by iankusc at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Have you by chance heard the strange news that the New York Health Department is considering imposing a ban on trans fats?  Read about it HERE, then continue reading...  Don't worry, I'll wait for you.  You done yet?  No, no, take your time, I'm not going anywhere.  Through yet?  Okay then...

There's a lot of press about this right now, so if CNN's not your thing, google NYC trans fats and see what comes up.   If you don't google, then I can't help you.

So the article barely covers trans fats, what they are, and what they do.  Thanks to my girl Nina Planck, I got the skinny on all that, and it ain't pretty.  It's a lurid tale of politics, commerce, and bad press, and it cuts to the core of crazy American industrialized agriculture.  Consider for a moment the roughly 10,000 years of mostly-recorded human history... then consider that trans fats have been part of the human diet for about 1% of that time.

No Mesopotamian ever ate a trans fat, nor did any Ancient Roman.  Trans fats arrived on the global dinner table somewhere in the 19th century, when chemists (not, mind you, chefs) found that animal fat could be solidified by simply bombarding it with hydrogen atoms (hydrogenating).  Thanks to the sponsorship of Napolean III, someone in the 1870s figured out that the same process works on vegetable fats (which until then had only been liquid), and thus, courtesy of the FRENCH, margarine was born.

The history and politics behind this fat is fascinating without even bothering to ponder NYC's recent efforts to sully its reputation.  As early as 1873, the US government heavily regulated margarine's sale, basically just to protect the US dairy farmers from some upstart French margarine onslought.  By the 1880s, an expensive tax was put on every tub of margarine.  And all this was instituted long before there was any evidence that trans fats cause heart disease.

When in the early 20th century the US department of agriculture started promoting margarine, it certainly wasn't for health reasons- it was to promote farms in the face of the slowly growing industrialized agriculture sector.  This of course kicked into high gear around WWII, but the dairy industry in the US and abroad had some interesting ways to fight the fake fat front- they made sure that margarine stayed ugly!

Sounds weird, I know, but when vegetable oils are hydrogenated, they turn a pale white color typically associated with the skintones of certain zombies.  It's unflattering, and clearly chemical.  To assuage the flinching eyes of doubting consumers, margarine manufacturers started adding yellow dyes to make their goop look more like butter.  But the dairy cabals all over the world fought to make such dyes illegal.  They only became legal in Australia in 1980.  In Quebec, they're STILL illegal, and accordingly, the Quebecoise eat a lot of butter.

Round about the 1980s, as industrialized agriculture in the US insured that, as an employer, agriculture accounted for less than 1% of the workforce (down from 50% in 1861) , the margarine boosters out there tried to ridea health kick and position of margarine as a HEALTHIER alternative to butter.  I recall floods of commercials from back in those days as "I can't believe it's not butter" tried to demonize what it wasn't, and cholesteral was zoomed in as the future end of civilization lest something were done about it.

Flash forward to today, when the tables have been turned, and now margarine is being given treatment as cruel as cigarettes garnered in the late 90s.  Health and food trends flow a buck, and us poor consumers find it ever more difficult to know what to eat, much less who to trust.  But this legislation of diets seems rather extreme, whatever the health implications of eating margarine.  More on this next week, because there's so much to cover...

Margarine, butter...

My biscuit needs moistening.

Better go with jam.

Hydrogenate me.

Bombard me with your atoms.

Soon, I'll nuke your heart.

Time was, health made sense.

Once men ate meat, and loved it.

Now, each bite is fear.

EN "Peel'en" K 

Posted by iankusc at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Truth be told, I wasn't always a purveyor of healthy snacks.  There was a time, oh, a long time ago, when I was in fact a provider of UN-healthy snacks.  My very first job, besides mowing suburban lawns, was selling ice-cream in my hometown's local, homemade ice cream store.  The store was called "Temptations," and we mixed all of our own flavors, including some doozies like "Chocolate Chocolate Chip A'la Orange", "Black Raspberry", and the heaven sent "Chocolate Peanut Butter Coconut."

I mention this because earlier this week, the entire Peeled Snacks sales team took a junket to our packing facility in quiet upstate New York where we found that after 8:30, the only place in town that was open was the Great Escapes ice cream shop.  The whole bunch of us got in line at a cute, family run, walk-up homemade ice cream joint, and after tasting this and that (Grape ice cream?  No thanks.  Cookie Dough?  YES!), we all ordered scoops...

Scoops that were fit for King Kong!!!!

This lovely, perfect little ice cream store scooped out TITANIC portions of their delicious ice cream, scoops so big that upon the first person receiving their "single" scoop, everyone else asked for a kiddie-cone instead.  And still, with cones supposedly fit for the pre-pubescent, most of us STILL didn't finish our desserts.  You could perhaps make the case that all this posh, svelte New Yorkers simply haven't developed their ice cream eating skills, and you'd be right, I suppose.  That doesn't change the fact that this ice cream joint was dishing half pounds of goodness for about $2.00.

Now what, pray tell, might this have to do with Peeled Snacks?  Ice cream can certainly be seen as a snack, and if most Americans might perhaps assume that it's best eaten in the summertime, that's because they haven't had a chocolate chocolate chip a'la orange milkshake during the dead of February (and they should adroitly change that). 

This fantastic pricing per pound makes me feel like Peeled Snacks has one tough battle winning over customers from the junk-food purveyors of the world.  Not to call ice cream junk (I love it, I Love it, I LOVE it), but it certainly isn't the most nutritional of bites to nibble. And yet, you can get about 5 times more of it for your dollar.  Simply speaking, for a lot of the public at large, that just makes dollars and sense.

 There's no easy reconciliation of this disparagement.  If the public recognizes the health benefits of Peeled Snacks (and, in all likelihood, their long-term implications upon the wallet), then dried fruit and nuts is king.  But the wallet is a fickle fan, and one quickly swayed by the simplest of measures.  Sure enough, after eating my pile of ice cream, my stomach was a mess... but my soul was happy, and my greedy inner gnome felt like it had gotten a great deal.

Hmm... Sounds like there's a poem in there...

Single ply, not double.  It only goes to the dumpster, for sure...

Generic butter only, the organic stuff probably gives ya gas.

Movies only before 6 pm, and only in that theater with the sticky floor,

Sure, it'd be NICE to take an ambulance, but we'll have to walk, alas...

Storm windows in the Spring?  I'll just put in plastic wrap... 

I don't know about that Honda, better get the Yugo...

I only fly AirTram, anyone who pays more is a Sap!

Capitolism's a crock- I'm voting for Hugo! 

Yours, EN 

Posted by iankusc at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Two confessions: I DO eat fast food, only in the particular forms of Subway sandwiches and/or Baja Fresh burritos.  As I admitted in an earlier entry, I have within the past couple of months eaten a McDonalds hamburger, and while I'm not proud of the fact, the subsequent stomach rumblings and such were sufficient penance to prevent that from happening again for a VERY long while.

Second, I'm a rather orthodox Linklater fan, having seen all of his films but one (last summer's Bad News Bears, I'll check it out some day) and relished both his personal pieces (Slacker, Before Sunset/Sunrise) and his Hollywood hat-tips (School of Rock, A Scanner Darkly, and the failed Newton Boys).

So that said, understand that I'm not going to be the most objective critic of the film when it comes out.  I may suffer from a bit of a "it's not as good as the book" complex, though that may be less like thanks to the novel touch of turning non-fiction into fiction.  I'll certainly be a convert to whom the preaching is directed, though most of the audience is likely to be in a similar position.  I somehow find it unlikely that the film will do gang-buster business in the director's home state of Texas, currently the fattest state in our fattest of nations.

But, alas, Schlosser's book, for those unfamiliar or not recently acquainted, begins with several words about the origins of the fast food giants, and in particular their giant creators- the Ray Krocs, the Carl Karchers, the Colonel Sanders.  Schlosser details their tales through a surprisingly flattering lens, and gives them all credit for being passionate, creative, progressive entrepreneurs.  Schlosser's writing in these sections portrays a changing America (thanks in large part to the Highway system being put in place), and a bunch of guys trying to change business accordingly.

Well that doesn't sound so unreasonable, does it?  Frankly, I feel substantial affinity to the spirit of those gents, as I suppose our Supreme Leader, Ms. Waibsnaider, is likewise feeling as she reads.  We here are, after all, doing our best to adapt to changing eating habits and agricultural practices, and crafting our product accordingly.  For us these are spirited times requiring adaptability, entrepreneurialism, and LOTS of hard work.  I suppose Pete Harman, the guy who made KFC what it is, felt similarly.

I'm going to have to touch on this a few times over the next few weeks as we build up to the movie.  It's worth paying the topic attention, not just because the film might rock, but because of the cultural force that fast-food has become in our culture, and what Peeled Snacks is trying to do about it.

A Poem...

in 1848 there was gold found in them California hills,

Gold rushing down like pennies from heaven,

really expensive pennies.

Folks set their eyes on them shiny nuggets and saddled up.

Some made it, trotting all the way from Boston to San Fran.

Some didn't make it, and founded Fargo instead.

Everyone wants gold, everyone hopes to find it

in whatever hills they confuse for California

But everyone sure would find gold a hekuva lot faster

If those wide open highways went everywhere.

None of them 1848ers made it to Cali in 48,

So they all became 49ers, and now we got yon football team.

But how'd it look today if gold was found in, say, Maine,

and all people'd have to do was jump on 95,

and head north for a few hours?

Sure, the traffic might delay the gold rush of September 06

to October, or so,

but those roads'd get people there, quick as quitters,

and line the pockets of today's prospectors

with shiny shine, with igneous pearls. 

Posted by iankusc at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

People have since the very conception of Peeled Snacks asked, "so why aren't they Organic"?  Notice how I wrote the "O" word with a capitol "O"?  These days, "Organic" food is treated with the utmost respect, so it feels only natural to appoint it, you know, a wider letter.  Wiser people than I have written much larger volumes than I'll ever attempt about the virtues of "Organic" food, and I won't question their insights in my little entry.

I will, however, put forth a theory that people in the Organic world are nicer than, say, your average Joe (who is nice enough to begin with, if perhaps occasionally a little crusty around the edges).  I say this because I have just moments ago received in the mail a tin of my favorite, my Favorite, my FAVORITE organic tea from my favorite organic tea company, Ineeka (shameless plug, check out www.ineeka.com for BANG up tea, and then write me and thank me).

They sent me this tin of tea because of some minor favor that I did for them, and in fact they were the ones who told me that Organic food producers are nicer.  They therefore not only pepper my thoughts with new ideas, but also back up those ideas with action, creating in me a conviction, thus forcing me to actions of my own, like telling you all about them.

But in this little shameless plug I must confess I find a terrible fault, at least in terms of Peeled Snacks' own Organic aspirations.  Some of you may know this already, and most the rest hopefully already assume, but we have our eyes on creating an Organic (there goes the O again) line of Peeled Snacks, and have been pursing this goal in many ways, several of them involving sampling a lot, a Lot, a LOT of Organic fruit (see the blog entry A Delicate Sound of Puget for more details).

Ah, and here we have the challenge before us- we aspire to make a nicer product with the help of nicer people, and we have found many great orchards and farms that are eager to get on board... yet this darn Organic food costs twice, Twice, TWICE as much!  That HURTS!

It doesn't just hurt- it nearly negates the whole idea.  Peeled Snacks is obviously a new, up and coming company, and we're just getting our bearings in several aspects of our business.  Our margins are thinner than we'd like, though understandably so given that we're building our brand and our client base and our, uh, blog.  The idea of doubling (DOUBLING) the cost of our ingredients seems like pure insanity, however good the cause.

Quite a pickle this all is- the clear, worthy goal of going organic (or, rather, Organic) is quickly met by the cold, hard slap of the hand of reality- Organic food costs more to produce.  That's one of the curses of industrialization- it cheapens THINGS, which inevitably cheapens PEOPLE.  One of the MANY, Many, many curses.

Funny little secret: many of Peeled Snacks ingredients are actually Organic.  Often we find some O fruit or nut that we can afford, and we use it.  We don't make a stink about it, but I daresay that the pickiest of taste buds out there would pick them out, probably favorably.  Oh, if only Organic were always affordable, we'd only use it and never look back.  More on this before the month's out....

Three Haikus about Ineeka, though it would help if you looked at a picture of their tea bag on their website...

tear bag,  pull wings, steep.

drink tea after 5 minutes.

whipe leaves off your nose...

Afternoon tea's fun.

We push bags with our noses

Looks ridiculous.

This must be your first.

I can tell by your nose tip.

You've a bag stuck there.

I love that stuff, and I love you, whoever you are.

EN "Peel-en" K

Posted by iankusc at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Do me a favor- got to www.google.com and search for "Snack".  Then look and see which link comes up in the upper left hand corner of the page.  For those that don't fret about Google tags, the link in the upper left corner of most Google pages represents the COMPANY that has PAID the most MONEY to be associated with whatever words for which you just searched.  Paying most for "Snacks"?...

... McDonalds ...

They seem to be marketing some new "snack wrap".  If you really want to find out what's in it, I encourage you to go to McDonalds, buy one, eat it, find a place to sit, and then re-think all the decisions that you've ever made in your life.  I feel compelled to ask the reasonable question of, what separates a "snack" wrap from any other kind of wrap?  Is it smaller?  Is it more, or perhaps less nutritious?  Do they not serve it during the lunchtime rush?  What makes a snack?

Well, for good-old McDonalds, what makes a snack is the marketing department.  If they believe that a new product will sell best between meals, then they give it a name like "snack" and add it to their dollar menu.  I suppose then the better question is, what do YOU, or I, or, you know, the REST of society consider a snack to be?

McDonalds has enough cultural and culinary clout to certainly redefine what makes for a snack.  I must confess to being susceptible to their marketing machine- I have, in fact, recently eaten one of their "cheeseburgers" (quotations required) for a midnight "snack", and I can say that I enjoyed it insofar as a person can enjoy a quick bite followed some hours later by a stomach ache and projectile flatulence.  But, sigh, I did pay for it, and I ate it.

Google may not be a major location for finding snacks, but it may well be THE place right new for driving new commerce in general.  One way or another, the OLD ways are threatened- think of the tumult in the recording industry since Napster, or the film industry since DVDs, or the auto industry since Honda, or the grocery/retail industry since Super-WalMarts.  The old playing fields are being demolished to make way for new fields, and new conversations are taking place about the games.

Do we want McDonalds to be a referee?  That's what their little add at the top of the Google page means- they are a major voice in a strange conversation, thanks not to the quality or value of their product, but thanks instead to the might of their bank accounts.  This IS America, and nothing that they're doing is illegal, or even necessarily immoral... it just sucks.

So what does make a snack?  Fruit and nuts?  Well, not for everyone.  But I doubt what McDonalds considers a snack would suffice as a definition for anyone still maintaining a few tough shreds of dignity.  Let's not let them dominate the conversation.

Poem For the Day:

I McMowed my Wal-Lawn this StarbucksMorn,

The Petsmart-Swallows darted amongst the Home Depot Oaks,

And my Brought-to-you-by-CSI terrier brought me in my CNN

As the Haliburton-Officers McTicketed McTeens for MTV-loitering.

It seems these Yahoo.com-days that EVERYTHING (tm) is owned

By something- not someone, but someTHING,

And a THING, at that, which I will never meet.

I wonder who bought the trademark to ME-

Surely someone has found a way to comodify me,

Just as my Estee' Lauder wife was recently bought out

from her former capitolizers, NASCAR.

I hope I'm owned by Toys'R'Us, or at least Southwest Airlines.

WHAT!?!  I seem to have lost two fingers

And sprouted a  pointy tail.

I guess from now on you can call me Disney-E...

EN 

Posted by iankusc at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I eat a very healthy breakfast- high fiber cereals, organic skim milk, and coffee that's single-handedly saving the Alaskan rainforests.  I find, though, that all that "health" just can't go down my gullet lest I'm reading, reading something, reading ANYTHING.  Usually I take in the New York Times along with my obscene dose of non-soluble fiber, but today, for a lark, I picked up AM New York.

AM New York, for those not in the know, is one of those advertisement based weekday rags that basically puts together some AP articles, some pictures of Lindsey Lohan, and some Sudoku, and tries to pass itself off as "news".  The genius behind them is that they GIVE themselves away, thus giving morning subway commuters no excuse NOT to pick one up.  Li-Lo and Sudoku win the day.

This morning's AM NY had an interesting little 3 paragraph AP teaser entitled "Obesity worse than hunger".  The snippet points out that there are more obese people in the world than starving people (thanks TEXAS!), and it blames the problem on "a global dietary shift away from cereals and grains to animal products and vegetable oils."

I've naturally been tracking this problem for a while, what with my interest in bad eating habits and all.  Peeled Snacks has naturally positioned itself as an anti-obesity campaigner, and articles like this, however modestly positioned they may be, just float my boat.  Have you ever checked out:

www.blogher.org ?

Granted, I'm probably not supposed to be snooping around there, what with my XY thing going on, but there are a great number of passionate writers in the Food and Drink topic section (I LOVE Denise) who are taking on such issues with wit and candor.  A recent post basically labeled obesity as a form of malnourishment, given that all that excess weight that's inflating our kids has no real value, or at least not until the Martians come down and harvest those plump little spuds for their version of Thanksgiving.

In my family there's an old saying- "It's not what you do, it's what you over-do".  Obesity in this country, to my mind, stems from an over-doing of worthless carbohydrates and saturated fats.  Plenty of outlets would like to blame individual eating habits, but I see it as a form of economic warfare- cheap, lousy food for America's poor insures that they stay poor.  Cheap labor is good for business.  Our country has always relied upon its poorest and most disenfranchised to make money for the already-moneyed, and corn syrup is a cheap way to do that.

Don't confuse this for a conspiracy, though- it's just dollars and cents.  BAD cents, but bad cents that makes cents. 

Poem for the Day:

It's about time, Zergplek.

Yes, Metzelfark, it's almost harvest season.

Olympus Mons' Southern Face is turning

from amber rust to crimson fire,

and the Valles Marinaris runs full with squabe.

Zergplek, get your plucking gloves on-

It's time to reap the fattened terran crop.

Yes, all the fat little morsels

on yon planet so blue

will taste so deliciously like Cheetohs...

...and sweet, sorn-syrup filled Pepsi...

..oh yes, and pepsi, 

at this October's harvest barn dance.

My moorsaphate has knitted me a snazzy bib,

lest I spill saturated transfats

all over my brand new vyxerpus vest.

Fire up the interplanetary drive,

and let's go harvest some fatsos! 

Posted by iankusc at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday whilst browsing trough New York's famous Strand Bookstore, Peeled Snacks founder and president (and my gorgeous wife) Noha Waibsnaider stumbled upon Real Food- What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck, a food thinker and enjoyer who actually is speaking tonight at the Strand.  Noha picked up Ms. Planck's book, plowed through it, and then passed it to me to peruse.

I'd be slightly understating it if I were to say that we agree with Ms. Planck.  If I may be so bold as to summarize her thesis, the way in which we grow, raise, and plan for the foodstuffs we eat greatly determines how healthy or unhealthy those foods turn out (much more so even than the actual preparation of a meal).  Today's food industry undercuts nutrition for the sake of a quick buck, but the long-term health and environmental costs of how most food is raised makes for a long-term disaster.

Check out her website: www.ninaplanck.com

She pays a great bit of attention to the science of farming, which we in our nice little Consumer-Packaged-Goods Society don't bother to mess with much.  In one juicy bit, she dissects the interplay between grass, flies, cows, and the chickens that peck at the cow patties.  It's a fascinating look through a microscope that we rarely tarry with, and I recommend her highly.

These days it feels like a lot of the sort of "Peeled Snacks Mission" is about consumer education- we're trying to impress upon potential customers why spending 3 dollars for 2.6 oz. of dried fruit and nuts is better than spending half that for twice as much weight in pringles.  So many people are trained to think that cheaper is better.  Since when did "Cheap" stand for American values?  Why is it so difficult for people to get past price to get to quality?

But I'll banter about that another time.  Poem for the Day:

The sun shines down onto dirt,

on the little clover seeds,

which grow into, you know, clover.

The gravely cow tongues pull up the grass,

and all those churning stomachs,

mull over every little grain,

grabbing all the good stuff, so much good stuff to grab.

The poop comes out- yeah, I said POOP!

and flies buzz around,

doing fly business (don't laugh- everybody's got business),

making little baby flies in the POOP.

Along comes the chickens, pecking pecking pecking,

eating up the baby flies, making their own

happy happy baby chicks.

All of this, and the sun, and the raindrops, and the poop,

falls back to the dirt.

We eat all the glory grown from this stuff,

then we fall, too, to the clover. 

Posted by iankusc at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The search at the Fancy Food Show for something truly, scaldingly, blisteringly spicy continued yesterday, much to no avail.  I dedicated some ample time to trying Buffalo and Jerk sauces, in hopes that somewhere amongst their ranks would be the sauce that could vaporize my pancreas.  Not to be- only sweet sauces, or tangy sauces, or sauces labelled "XXX" yet less spicy than 70s porn.

There were two standout exceptions, though.  And let me just porpose that I'm no food critic, I'm no paid journalist, and I'm certainly no gourmand.  I'm just a guy looking to batter around every cell in his body courtesy of a little capsaicin.

#1, Rene's Nuckin' Futs hot sauce, the dabble of which I tasted having dripped through my torso like the oozing hydro-chloric acid blood of the aliens from the Alien movies.  Simply put, Nuckin' Futs was distilled evil with a red tint.  Pure spice, vicious and unforgiving, really without any flavor to speak of.  I tip my hat to any man (or woman) that willingly and intentionally creates a liquid that could have ended World War II 10 months earlier.

#2, Bart's Delicatessen's Peruvian Hot Chilli Paste, a tangy, flavorful neutron bomb to the mouth, not quite as completely poisonous (and I mean that in a good way) as Nuckin' Futs, but something that must have killed all the free-radicals, residual mercury, trans-fats and long-ago swallowed pieces of bubble gum hiding in my body.  Bart's sauce, to my tongue, was actually delicious, but blended with a full-bodied ass-kicker of spice.  Really something special, that.  Oddly enough, Bart's is a British company.  Naturally, I'm not inclined to associate spicy food with the Brits (rather I'll lend them the adjective "bland").  But proof's in the pudding, that That sauce was simply THE sh!t.

An ode:

Upon my burning palate place what you will,

The cauldrons of Acheron may boil and singe

All the sooty, smeared Underworld,

Yet I'll not break any more a sweat

Than currently pours forth from my tortured brow.

For I have just sampled the spice of Hell's window box.

Vesuvious and Aetna may tag team against my tongue

And burb forth lava like the world's end,

But my tongue won't lash or dash a bit- it's already done.

Open my maw and feed me North Korean warheads,

But don't expect me to shed one tear more,

For this awful, evil heat, courtesy of <insert your hotsauce here>

Has purged my passioned tear wells of all irrigation.

Count me as dry, sated, and completely insane. 

Posted by iankusc at 08:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Are you a New York Times reader?  If so, if not, check out Sunday's NYT Business section page on for a lovely little big of smoke screening about high fructose corn syrup.  In case you need a link, try...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/02/business/yourmoney/02syrup.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fW%2fWarner%2c%20Melanie&oref=slogin

The article, courtesy of NYT Business section staff writer Melanie Warner, proposes that the recent demonization of high fructose corn syrup is based on bunk science, and that it's really no more harmful than good old refined sugar.  Ms. Warner takes care to cite many a scientist and food expert about the health effects of HFCS, constantly correlating them to the rise in obesity, but insisting that the chemical makeup of HFCS just can't be the cause for such a, ahem, ballooning.

Hats off, Ms. Warner, for utterly, completely, pathetically missing the point.  I'll get right out and admit to having enjoyed MANY of Ms. Warner's articles lately (her Wal-Mart organic article is a stitch).  When I saw that she was taking on HFCS, I thought that there might be much to learn from her, or entertainment value at the least.  What I read was a 2,933 word explanation about how corn syrup is our sweet, processed friend, and we shouldn't give it such a hard time for being so sweet.

Forget the sweet.  Real critics of HFCS don't waste their time with such nonsense.  Sweet is sweet, however you get it, and sometimes it's too sweet, sometimes not sweet enough, and sometimes, oh yeah, it's just the sweetest sweet ever.

 The beef with corn syrup isn't the sweet, it's the CHEAP.  The United States government in a bid to prop up our agricultural sector heavily subsidizes corn and its byproducts.  Between 1995 and 2004, corn subsidies in the U.S. totaled $41.9 billion.  That's hardly chump-change.  This year congress passed a $190 billion farm subsidy package, over a fifth of which is targeted at corn subsidies (and yet somehow the democrats are considered fiscally irresponsible?).  That money is all aimed at supporting what was until the civil war 70% of our economy, and now represents less than 1%- agriculture.

Our proud heritage of agrarianism, however, has its costs when super-processed products like HFCS are the most supported output- products with HFCS become CHEAP.  REAL cheap.  So cheap that there's really no reason to buy anything else.  The ever-swelling poor masses of our great country end up buying goodies loaded with HFCS because it's all that they can afford.  They eat it, they get NOTHING from it (no satisfaction, no nutrition) except calories, and they go out and buy more.

High Fructose Corn Syrup is not food poisoning- it's social and economic poisoning.  I won't even bother with the wastefulness behind processing the heck out of any given product- others' arguments are surely more sound.  Consider, though, that in the 1930s Americans spent as much as  22% of their money on food.  Today, we spend less than 6%. That money I assume has been reallocated into places like housing, automobile expenses, and body armor.  It's certainly not going into the very fabric of one's body, and it's certainly not doing much for the American farmer.

Ms. Warner wasted an opportunity to open up an argument by taking advantage of an opportunity to close an argument.  I expect better from the writers and editors of the New York Times.  They aren't supposed to put the lid on things; they're supposed to blow the lids off!

 Poem for the day

Black and white summer smear

inching down my chin like a snail,

half chocolate, have vanilla,

like 1859 Virginia, 

all good, guaranteed by the sweaty man

smiling in the ice cream truck,

oh smear, of what are you made?

From the churned white nectar

of satisfied bovines humming and cooing

amongst the tall grasses of summer?

Or are you made from the mashed, dashed,

split, ruined, pulped, spun, dunked, thrashed,

spoiled, soiled, flushed, smushed remnants

of ears of corn long gone? 

Posted by iankusc at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Will "Spark" make as many waves as jolly Malcolm Gladwell's "Tipping Point"?  Tough to say, but it hardly matters.  Books of this nature, books with this heavy marketing theme, now litter Barnes & Noble's tables (not the shelves, the TABLES), and receive heavy mentions by TV talking heads, newspaper columnists, and probably (though we're as of yet unacquainted) Ma and Pa America.  Ideas like "Activation" and "Opportunity Costs" now get played around with in the kitchens of Burger Kings, and half of America’s eyes are scoping for niche markets.

I'm under the impression that Marketing used to be the work of the Wizard of Oz.  That is, it used to be concocted behind the proverbial green curtain, and the razzle-dazzle that issued forth from behind said curtain wasn't scrutinized for how much eye of newt it contained.  Today, though, at least on an intellectual basis, marketing ploys are open to being dissected by whoever wants to take a crack at it:  there goes 20% of America paying attention to that man behind the curtain.

Marketing seems to have gone civilian, much like border patrolling recently went courtesy of our patriotic, paranoid minutemen brethren.  Perhaps this has happened before, when thanks to cynicism, irony, or just intellectual mustering, the public pierced Madison Avenue's veil, forcing those yahoos (of whom I suppose I can count myself a member) to start over from scratch.  Thank heavens that Peeled Snacks isn't marketing driven.  I mean, it'd be nice if marketing would take the wheel for a while, but for the time being it’s just the quality of the fruit and the nuts in the driver's seat.  Of course, those that have read Spark will see right through that last sentence....

Poem for the day:

At long last I have finished thee,

Ended your life on my shelf, swallowed you

My whale, your Jonah.

Staring at me you have dared me

threatened me with nourishing eyes,

and finally I fell for you, hard.

Last me throughout my belly, no further.

Fulfill my coffers with fruit and nuts.

Afterwards, I care not what comes of you.

I have finished thee, snack. 

Posted by iankusc at 09:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)