Make Groceries Last. Extraordinary Science of Junk Food. “We Are Being Manipulated”. Baby Carrots. Myth: Healthy Food Is Too Expensive. Pocahontas. Howard Hughes.

 

For “Foodie Friday”:

27 Ways to Make Your Groceries Last as Long as Possible

“The average American wastes more than 20 pounds of food every month.

Purchasing fresh food is a must if you wish to eat healthily, and there are many tricks you can use to extend the “shelf-life” of your fresh foods.  27 tips are included for how to properly store fresh vegetables, fruits, herbs, dairy products and more to significantly extend their lifespan. Such as:

‘Store onions in old pantyhose to keep them fresh for up to eight months (tie a knot in between each one to keep them separate).’

‘Chop dry green onions and store them in an empty plastic water bottle. Put the bottle in the freezer and sprinkle out what you need when you're cooking.’

‘When storing potatoes, keep them away from onions (this will make them spoil faster). Storing them with apples will help keep the potatoes from sprouting.’ 

‘Keep milk and other easily perishable items on the middle shelf in your fridge, NOT in the door where temperatures fluctuate.’

‘Get an ethylene gas absorber for your fridge; they're available online and can keep your produce fresh up to three times longer than normal.’  

Finally, for the packaged foods you do buy, they are often good beyond their expiration date. Unbeknownst to many, “best by” dates on many food packages are typically a measure of peak quality, not an indication of food safety. Typically, it is still safe to eat a food after the “best by” or “best before” date (the exception is infant formula, which has safety-based “use by” dates).”     Complete article at: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/03/25/food-storage-tips.aspx

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Four articles on “We are being manipulated”:

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

“Poor willpower is NOT necessarily what drives you to overeat on junk food. An in-depth investigation into the processed-food industry reveals there’s a conscious effort on behalf of food manufacturers to get you hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive to make

Sugar, salt and fat are the top three substances making processed foods so addictive. Sugar alone has been shown to be more addictive than cocaine, and food manufacturers use sophisticated taste science to determine the “bliss point” that makes you crave more

Recent research confirms that processed meat consumption is strongly associated with premature death. According to the researchers, reducing daily processed meat consumption to less than 20 grams a day could reduce mortality rates across Europe by three percent annually

According to a new report from the American Diabetes Association, an estimated 22.3 million people were living with type 1 or type 2 diabetes in 2012, up from 17.5 million in 2007

To protect your health, I advise spending 90 percent of your food budget on whole foods, and only 10 percent on processed foods.”

More at: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/03/21/addictive-junk-food.aspx

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The Science of Addictive Food

“Our health reporter Kelly Crowe looks at the science behind making the food that's so bad for us taste so good.”

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The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

“Any junk food company trying to focus on healthy food (instead of focusing on making the junk food ever more addictive) risks being quickly eliminated. Any executive trying to do what’s right (and make less money) will likely be fired.

So what happens if the industry is left unregulated? It turns into a rapid evolution towards ever more addictive and ever less healthy junk food. It’s what’s been happening for a long time.

Here’s how a former Coca Cola executive was secretly thinking about expanding his market and making more money:

Dunn said. “How many drinkers do I have? And how many drinks do they drink? If you lost one of those heavy users, if somebody just decided to stop drinking Coke, how many drinkers would you have to get, at low velocity, to make up for that heavy user? The answer is a lot. It’s more efficient to get my existing users to drink more.”

I imagine that’s not too different from how any drug dealer thinks.”     More at: http://www.dietdoctor.com/the-extraordinary-science-of-addictive-junk-food

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The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

“When I met with Dunn, he told me not just about his years at Coke but also about his new marketing venture. The investors recently hired Dunn to run one of their newest acquisitions — a food producer in the San Joaquin Valley. The men listened to Dunn’s marketing pitch. He talked about giving the product a personality that was bold and irreverent, conveying the idea that this was the ultimate snack food. He went into detail on how he would target a special segment of the 146 million Americans who are regular snackers — mothers, children, young professionals — people, he said, who “keep their snacking ritual fresh by trying a new food product when it catches their attention.”

He explained how he would deploy strategic storytelling in the ad campaign for this snack, using a key phrase that had been developed with much calculation: “Eat ’Em Like Junk Food.”

After 45 minutes, Dunn clicked off the last slide and thanked the men for coming. Madison’s portfolio contained the largest Burger King franchise in the world, the Ruth’s Chris Steak House chain and a processed-food maker called AdvancePierre whose lineup includes the Jamwich, a peanut-butter-and-jelly contrivance that comes frozen, crustless and embedded with four kinds of sugars.

The snack that Dunn was proposing to sell: carrots. Plain, fresh carrots. No added sugar. No creamy sauce or dips. No salt. Just baby carrots, washed, bagged, then sold into the deadly dull produce aisle.

“We act like a snack, not a vegetable,” he told the investors. “We exploit the rules of junk food to fuel the baby-carrot conversation. We are pro-junk-food behavior but anti-junk-food establishment.”

The investors were thinking only about sales. They had already bought one of the two biggest farm producers of baby carrots in the country, and they’d hired Dunn to run the whole operation. Now, after his pitch, they were relieved. Dunn had figured out that using the industry’s own marketing ploys would work better than anything else. He drew from the bag of tricks that he mastered in his 20 years at Coca-Cola, where he learned one of the most critical rules in processed food: The selling of food matters as much as the food itself.

Later, describing his new line of work, Dunn told me he was doing penance for his Coca-Cola years. “I’m paying my karmic debt,” he said.”    More at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html?pagewanted=all

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How Baby Carrots Are Made

“Let’s face it – baby carrots do not look like regular carrots. First off, the size and rounded edges sort of resemble little “stubs,” and when you cut them down the middle you don’t quite see the same core that you would find in a regular carrot. What’s up with that?”  More at: http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2012/12/11/the-truth-about-baby-carrots/

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Myth: Healthy Food Is Too Expensive

“According to the USDA:

"Among the 69 forms of fruits and 85 forms of vegetables included in the analysis, more than half were estimated to cost 25 cents or less per serving, and 86 percent of all vegetables and 78 percent of all fruit cost less than 50 cents a serving. That's 127 different ways to eat a serving of fruits and vegetables for less than the price of a 3-ounce candy bar. In fact, consumers can meet the [Food Guide Pyramid] recommendations of three servings of fruits and four servings of vegetables daily for as little as 64 cents. Consumers trying to meet the 5-a-day challenge could do so for even less."

In 2005, Washington Post food columnist Sally Squires asked: "What about eating according to the new U.S. Dietary Guidelines? Can you do it without taking a big bite out of your wallet?" Her answer:

"A little more than $5 for a full day's worth of modestly priced nutritious food (including oatmeal, milk, fresh fruit; beans and rice; whole grain and white bread, a hearty salad and a cup of peas). That's about the cost of one average fast-food meal."

When asked whether eating a sound diet costs less, Center for Science in the Public Interest Executive Director Michael Jacobson acknowledged:

"Unprocessed, basic foods are frequently dirt cheap. Potatoes sometimes go for as little as a nickel or dime a pound in many places, and they're one of the very most nutritious foods. Beans and rice are very inexpensive."

From: http://www.obesitymyths.com/myth5.7.htm

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On This Day:

Pocahontas marries John Rolfe, Apr 5, 1614:

“Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Indian confederacy, marries English tobacco planter John Rolfe in Jamestown, Virginia.

Their marriage brought a peace between the English colonists and the Powhatans, and in 1615 Pocahontas gave birth to their first child, Thomas. In 1616, the couple sailed to England. The so-called Indian Princess proved popular with the English gentry, and she was presented at the court of King James I. In March 1617, Pocahontas and Rolfe prepared to sail back to Virginia. However, the day before they were to leave, Pocahontas died, probably of smallpox, and was buried at the parish church of St. George in Gravesend, England.

John Rolfe returned to Virginia and was killed in an Indian massacre in 1622. After an education in England, their son Thomas Rolfe returned to Virginia and became a prominent citizen. John Smith returned to the New World in 1614 to explore the New England coast. On another voyage of exploration in 1614, he was captured by pirates but escaped after three months of captivity. He then returned to England, where he died in 1631.”

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Howard Hughes dies, Apr 5, 1976:

“Howard Robard Hughes, one of the richest men to emerge from the American West during the 20th century, dies while flying from Acapulco to Houston.

In 1967, he became involved in the Nevada gambling industry when he purchased the famous Desert Inn Hotel on the Las Vegas strip. Nevada gaming authorities welcomed Hughes' involvement because it counteracted the popular image that the Mafia dominated the gambling industry. By the early 1970s, Hughes had become the largest single landholder in Nevada, and with around 8,000 Nevada residents on his payroll, Hughes was also the state's largest employer.

Although the rumors of Hughes' bizarre behavior have been exaggerated--in part due to a fraudulent memoir published in 1971--in his final years the billionaire became even more obsessed with privacy. He continually moved between his residences in Las Vegas, the Bahamas, Nicaragua, Canada, England, and Mexico. Other than a few male aides, almost nobody saw Hughes, and he sometimes worked for days at a stretch in a black-curtained room without sleeping.

Emaciated and deranged from too little food and too many drugs, Hughes finally became so ill that his aides decided that he needed medical treatment. He died in his airplane at the age of 70.”

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Yesterday:

Misty and I had our walk around here because Jay and his Yorkie, Maddie, came up here on his 4-wheel ATV.  He also brought his blower, as I haven’t bought one yet. At my age, I am hoping to find a used one at one of the thrift shops, instead of investing in a new one.

The rains had scattered thousands of those little ‘pine tree worms’ all over the place.  While I groomed Maddie, Jay blew the areas in front of Ray’s house, my house, and the parking spaces.  Then he raked the side lot.  A lot of twigs and pine cones had littered the whole area, so we had to get them removed before we can mow the grass (weeds). Everything was taken to the burn pile, but it was too windy to burn.

Terrycat’s sinuses are still stopped up, poor thing, and his appetite is still about non-existent.  If he can’t breathe right, he can’t smell the food very well.  I have tried to tempt him with so many really good cat and people foods.  He is on Baytril now.  Baytril is a broad-spectrum fluoroquinolone designed for the management of bacterial pathogens, with activity against both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria.  It is in pill form, so I am glad that I have a gentle rubber-tipped pill-popper.  Better than this:

HOW TO GIVE YOUR CAT A PILL IN TWENTY EASY STEPS:  http://www.nanceestar.com/CatPill.html  (Humorous)

But when I was getting some cheaper canned food ready for the two stray cats outside, he started brushing up against my legs asking for some, and ate a little bit of that.  I don’t care what he eats, just as long as I can get him to eat a little bit each day.