This is still one of the funniest scenes I've ever seen on the silver screen:
I've been somewhat adventurous an eater. There are a few dishes I can't stand; one is canned chicken, which is somewhat unintuitive because I love fresh/frozen chicken--baked, fried, grilled. All parts. Since my low carb days, I've been into organ meats on a periodic basis, and I've probably averaged at least a package a month of chicken livers, hearts and/or gizzards.
But I don't know what it is about the brine or liquid, but I can't stand canned chicken--even if I'm hunger. I remember my maternal grandfather loved it; we were staying with him (a mom-and-pop grocer) while Dad was securing family housing at his next military assignment. My mom's female cousin lived with her own family up the street from us; after school, my younger siblings and I would stop by the cousin's apartment and watch TV or play with her school age daughters. I think Mom called to let us know that dinner was ready, and I got the word we were having canned chicken sandwiches. I got myself invited to dinner with the cousin's family.
I also don't like chicken on pizza, at least without a tomato-based sauce. Other idiosyncrasies: I'll eat pineapple by itself, but not on pizzas or ham. But I'll eat duck with orange sauce. However, there have been other dishes my family liked that I didn't--in particular, cream corn and jellied/pickled pigs feet. It's not that I have a hangup about pig parts but the jellied/pickled presentation. As for corn, I love popped corn and fresh corn on the cob; frozen corn often retains the corn-on-the-cob taste, but I usually take a pass on canned corn.
But I would be adventuresome within the context of my experience. I wanted to try venison, even though my Dad didn't hunt (to the best of my knowledge) and my Mom never prepared it. I've seen ads for jerky from more exotic animals like alligator, boar, snake, or kangaroo; I would probably try these. Now I realize millions of people have eaten different types of cuisine from different parts of the globe, but most people I know are wary of dishes they aren't accustomed to. I remember when I went to my first Taste of Chicago festival; I sampled this African goat stew with bananas; surprisingly tasty!
Some things I try and I'm just not into. To me, squid is like chewing on flavorless gum. I don't get the yuppie sushi thing at all; I've had it more than once. I did a project in Brazil (see below) where millions of Japanese-Brazilians lived and there were lots of ethnic restaurants; my teammate loved sushi and would eat it daily (within reason our meals could be expensed; I remember one time he pleaded with me that he would find a restaurant that would cook fish). And sake is definitely an acquired taste; in my experience, it tastes like something fermented in an old army boot
When I visited São Paulo, Brazil back in 1995 for a few months at a client site, I experienced many new for me dishes; I developed a taste for very strong coffee, a wonderful concept of churrascarias (sort of a one-price Brazilian steakhouse where you start out with a lavish salad bar, and waiters constantly patrol with cooked meats, chicken hearts, etc. on skewer that are carved onto plates. I once hadn't noticed a green/red button near my plate; I pointed out my plate was full. He shrugged his shoulders and put a second plate in front of me. Even though the waiters couldn't speak English and I spoke a limited amount of Portuguese, I ate well enough to put on 20 pounds in 3 months, which didn't make my girlfriend happy. (There were some things that I wouldn't eat; in one of the more American-friendly hotels, they often put out some eggs on the buffet line (more standard fare included sandwich fixings, fruit, etc.); one day I started to scoop up some scrambled eggs, when I saw some greenish coloring to the eggs--I wasn't that adventurous.)
But next to churrascarias, there was feijoada, typically served on Wednesdays and Saturdays. (The story I was told by my client hosts is mentioned in the Smithsonian piece, that it was a slave or peasant feast of beans and leftover parts of animals not served to the upper class in the old slave days, like ham or bacon.) You might see dishes exotic to me, like tongue and pig ears. Feijoada was the yuppie thing to do . I think I sampled a little of everything, probably on dares from my hosts. I remember trying a pig's ear; it was okay, but not my thing. Been there, done that.
Where is this all leading to? Insects, in particular crickets. Now I've known for some time that vendors (e.g., on Amazon) sell chocolate-covered insects (although a little too pricey to interest me in buying them, same as with exotic jerky). There is a (new to me) high-end protein bar which is based on a key ingredient of cricket flour. Consider the following image:
 |
| Courtesy of Exoprotein |
Lab-Grown Burgers?
I covered this topic recently with some British video clips; what intrigues me is not so much the scientific process (not that it doesn't interest me: see sample clip below) but how you could scale up the process to mass produce product for supermarket distribution. The cost of a burger has come down from nearly a third of a million dollars to about $11:
Post expects to be able to produce the patties on a large enough scale to sell them for under $10 a piece in a matter of five years. "Once we can grow the tissue in a reactor the size of an Olympic swimming pool, we should be able to achieve that sort of volume," Post said. "For perspective, half a swimming pool would allow us to feed about 20,000 people for a year."
While the price of the burger has dropped to almost-reasonable prices, Post told ABC that it will still be another 20 to 30 years before it's commercially viable. Among the hurdles still left to overcome: figuring out how to produce test-tube meat at scale, and coming up with a way to produce it that doesn't use fetal calf serum (currently, cells are grown in the serum, which is taken from cow fetus blood).Some human testers argue that they miss the juiciness and the satiating fat of a regular burger; others think that consumers will be too squeamish to try "frankenmeat"; as for me, I would try it in a heartbeat (see above segment).
Do Artificial Sweeteners Interfere With Nutrtition or Metabolism?
This is an interesting topic, although I rarely use artificial sweeteners beyond an occasional cup of coffee and low-calorie drink mixes. I drink a lot of ice tea, which I normally sweeten with stevia. I rarely eat artificially-sweetened foods or soft drinks; over the last 4 or 5 years, I've almost never bought soft drinks unless traveling or moving between cities (which hasn't been that often). Even when I drank soft drinks more frequently (always diet versions), I normally rationed myself to one glass or can a day.
The research from what I understand is far from comprehensive and suggestive that the significant use of artificial sweeteners may desensitize the body from more efficient metabolic responses, not unlike the boy who cries wolf one too many times. See this WebMd source for a more detailed, technical discussion. There is enough there to want me want to taper down the nominal use of sweeteners I'm now consuming.
Plateau Month on the Renewed Diet
This has been an exasperating month with little or no loss over the past month, after an early 10-pound or so drop in restarting my diet in August. On a positive note, my weight is down for the year, but I'm still triple-digits away from my goal weight. I've been cycling up and down roughly the same 6-pound interval all month extending from late last month. For example, yesterday I lost nearly a pound to find myself up 2 pounds this morning. Obviously I didn't binge yesterday. Mid-month I stopped weighing myself out of frustration, and I found myself at the tail end of a whoosh the other day, nearly taking out my month low. In the past, I've been in similar ruts when all of a sudden I get a monster whoosh/drop of 10-12 lbs.over a few days. I figure I'm overdue a 5-6 lb. drop any day now. So I thought I was going to crash through the month low this morning, but found myself back up two, which sucks. I'm not happy with the scale I have--I can get consecutive readings up to 2 lbs. apart; I usually log a repeated scale readout. Yesterday my first reading was a new month low, but I had to revise it up a pound because it wouldn't repeat.
