junk food – EcoSalon

How to Detox Your Skin Fast After a Sugar, Salt, or Alcohol Binge

Liz Thompson — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 08:00:00 +0000

Ok, so you’ve overdone it. How to detox your system fast, and look your best, post sugar, junk food, or boozey binge.

Girls night, weddings, birthdays, Sundays…we overdo the junk. And reap the consequences afterward in the form of puffiness, sallow complexion, dark circles, and bloating.

You may have to suck it up and suffer through some of it for a few days, but there are ways to get your skin back on track fairly quickly. And we are not just talking cover-up here.

How to Detox Fast and Get Back to Looking Your Best

Hit the ice. Too much salt, sugar or alcohol can leave you just a pinch on the puffy side. To reduce swelling, put your face on ice. An ice cube smoothed over skin calms swelling. A swipe or two will do.

Cool as a cuc. Cucumber is cooling and also helps to reduce swelling and inflammation. Drink a glass of water with a few slices of cucumber to get the soothing started from the inside. Keep 100% Pure Organic Aqua Boost on hand, and spritz face several times throughout the day to hydrate and revive. Or make your own cucumber face mist.

Vinegar for vigor. Apple cider vinegar is good for boosting lymph drainage and detoxing the system. It also helps to balance the body’s pH, which will make your skin look better. Add a tablespoon of Bragg’s Raw Organic Apple Cider Vinegar to a glass of water or buck up and down a shot.

H2O yes. The best way to flush your system, reduce swelling, revitalize the complexion, and hydrate the body is by drinking water. Bust out your bkr bottle and get some agua flowing, pronto.

Exorcise through exercise. Get rid of those toxic demons by moving some muscle. Whether you opt for light yoga or go for a hearty run, getting blood pumping helps to expel toxins and regulate digestion. It also makes you feel good.

Lay off the hard stuff. This probably goes without saying, but steer clear of sugar, junk, and alcohol for a few days after indulging. Sugar can be especially hard to steer clear of post binge. Opt for fresh, healthy foods and those cravings will dissipate in a day or two.

Hey, no one is perfect. Take these steps to getting yourself back in check and you’ll be looking and feeling better quickly.

*Disclaimer: Help support EcoSalon! Our site is dedicated to helping people live a conscious lifestyle. We’ve provided some affiliate links above in case you wish to purchase any of these products.

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Image of tired woman trying to exercise via Shutterstock

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McDonald’s New Advertising Proves the Fast Food Chain Really is Evil (And Not Because It Hates Kale): Foodie Underground

Anna Brones — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 08:00:19 +0000

ColumnMcDonald’s does not have your best interest at heart.

I saw a video last week from a new McDonald’s advertising and marketing campaign. It irked me. No, it pissed me off. Not because the video showed some super sized glossy burger with comments like “vegetarians, foodies, and gastronauts kindly avert your eyes” and “you can’t get juiciness like this from soy or quinoa.”

I couldn’t care less that McDonald’s is coyly trying to offend me. Making fun of foodies isn’t evil in any sense of the word, even if you spat out your chia seed smoothie in disgust.

No, what pissed me off is that McDonald’s gets to continue serving up terrible food that keeps workers underpaid, continue to contribute to a host of environmental and health problems and continue to ensure that millions and millions of people keep consuming junk that’s getting worse and worse for them without having to pay any consequences.

The video in question is an attempt at reminding eaters that McDonald’s is not some pretentious, foodie haven. That the fast food chain is in some way the “people’s” restaurant. It takes a crack at what the world of good food has become: elitist.

But if there ever were a restaurant that had the good of the general people in mind, it certainly isn’t McDonald’s. While the burgers may be cheap, the company is as much out to make a profit as anyone making kale chips. It’s not out of kindness or charity that it hawks its Dollar Menu. It’s to bring in more customers to build its global empire.

How a company is allowed to continue in this way, when we know all the harm that it does to our health, is beyond me.

As one blogger wrote, “For those of us brave enough to continue watching, we’re treated to extreme close-ups of a perfectly styled burger, and I gotta hand it to them, it made me want that decidedly not vegetarian, not foodie-endorsed Big Mac.”

I mean, really? Knowing what you know, you still want that burger? If that’s the case, then McDonald’s advertising really is effective. I watch that video and feel dirty afterwards. We all should. This isn’t about real food. It’s about food products that make us sick.

Liking kale, or Brussels sprouts, or cauliflower, or whatever else the Internet determines is the food of the moment doesn’t make you pretentious. It makes you a person who eats real food.

But we also need more restaurants and people in the food world that can help do democratize real food, so that McDonald’s doesn’t keep getting away with what it does. Good food doesn’t have to be expensive, and no, it doesn’t need to be infused with anything. Want proof? Try this Real Food for the Broke, a meal plan comes out at $.95 per person per meal. And it doesn’t come with a side of diabetes or heart disease.

Let’s all get back to basics. Let’s cook more, and use more real ingredients. Let’s make sure that McDonald’s and all its nasty counterparts don’t continue to get away with all the harm that they do.

Related on Foodie Underground:

Fight for 15, Poverty and Our Broke Food and Economic Systems: Foodie Underground

10 Fast Food Chains to Steer Clear Of

Fast Food, Fast Fashion, It’s All About Choice: Foodie Underground

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Mike Mozart

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Is that Trader Joe’s Junk Food You’re Eating? Foodie Underground

Anna Brones — Mon, 19 May 2014 07:00:41 +0000

ColumnJust because it’s from Trader Joe’s doesn’t mean it’s not junk food.

There’s no denying that Trader Joe’s has a cult following. It has made food shopping fun. And not only has it made it fun, it makes people feel good about what they’re buying–proud of the fact that they got something seemingly healthier and better for them than the usual grocery store fare. There are vegetables! There are organic foods at affordable prices! There’s hummus!

Let’s call it the “Trader Joe’s effect,” an effect that seduces the consumer and turns them from a conscious one into a blind one. Because when it comes down to it, just because it came in a Trader Joe’s bag, does not make it good for you.

This is not to say that all food at Trader Joe’s is bad. Certainly, the store has probably gotten more people eating nut butters than any other large chain, they do have a corporate policy against GMOs and you’ll often find that the ingredients list on the pack of packages is much shorter than what you find at your average grocery store.

But it concerns me that Trader Joe’s often gets touted as a health food store. People see the TJ label and immediately think “organic and healthy!” Maybe it’s the organic virgin coconut oil, but the store’s reputation is so strong that consumers fail to peel back the layers.

Recently, the store released its 25 most popular items of 2013. So if people go to Trader Joe’s because they’re getting healthier items cheaper than they would elsewhere, customers must be loving the rice milk and organic canned black beans, right? No. The top three items are more junk food than anything else, and the other items (besides maybe the almond butter) don’t really scream “real, clean food.”

1. Triple Ginger Snaps

2. Speculoos Cookie Butter

3. Joe Joe’s Cookies (All Varieties)

4. Reduced Guilt Chunky Guacamole

5. Charles Shaw Wine (All Varieties)

6. Pumpkin Coffee

7. Mac ‘n Cheese

8. Pumpkin Butter

9. Almond Butter (All Varieties)

10. Pumpkin Pecan Instant Oatmeal

I like a junk food treat as much as the next person. Eating well is all about a little indulgence once in a while. But let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that shopping at a certain store means being able to shop blindly. Gourmet junk food is still junk food.

Eating well is about buying real food, whole ingredients, and the occasional cookie. I can assure you that Joe-Joe’s don’t have a top spot because people just buy them occasionally. If your daily dinner is consisting of Mac ‘n Cheese followed by Triple Ginger Snaps doused in Speculoos Cookie Butter (which as the “crack” of the food world, has its own Facebook page), you probably have some work to do.

And while Trader Joe’s often has a very “green” image, the chain is in the market of selling marked down name brand products, which forces them to be very secretive about where the food comes from and how sustainable the business operations really are.

It’s all a reminder that as consumers, we need to stay informed and continue to be vigilant about what we buy. In an article published in 2010 in Utne Reader, Danielle Maestretti wrote, “The Trader Joe’s brand of milk, for example, claims to be organic—but it won’t disclose which dairies it buys from. Ditto for the soybeans it uses in its brands of soy milk, tofu, and other products. And a recent report found that its store brand of veggie burgers are made using hexane-extracted soy protein.”

So where does all the Trader Joe’s food – junk food and healthy food – come from?

“It is very hard to figure out sourcing with Trader Joe’s. They heavily depend on private label products which are based on secrecy. We have said that private-label organics is an “oxymoron.” Organic consumers want to know “the story behind their food.” They want to know where it was produced, how it was produced, how the animals and workers involved have been treated, etc. None of that is possible with Trader Joe’s. Unlike the majority of all responsible brand marketers in organics they have refused to participate in our research studies and are thus rated very poorly on our scorecards that critique dairy foods, eggs and soy foods (etc.),” Mark Kastel, Director of the Cornucopia Institute told Food Babe.

So, even if those tasty chips are organic, doesn’t mean you can know the story behind them.

A little junk food here and there may not kill you, and I have personally spent many an hour drooling in a Trader Joe’s aisle, but there’s an argument to be made about knowing where your food comes from and what your eating. And that requires conscious consumption, not just blindly pulling items off of a shelf at a store that has a smart and healthy image.

Related on EcoSalon

Behind the Label: Trader Joe’s Secretive Sourcing Practices

10 Fast Food Chains to Steer Clear Of

A Penchant for Gourmet Junk Food: Foodie Underground

Image: Guian Bolisay

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The Green Plate: Frito Lay, How Green You’re Not

Vanessa Barrington — Thu, 26 May 2011 16:41:49 +0000

ColumnFrito Lay may be a natural at greenwash, but they’re not green.

The other day, when a banner ad touting the greening of SunChips popped up on the granddaddy of green blogs, Treehugger, we were dismayed and confused.

It goes like this: Treehugger = the green original. Sunchips is a Frito Lay brand. Frito Lay is owned by Pepsico. What’s wrong with this match made in HTML? Frito Lay/Pepsico are masters at greenwashing. To see a green ad for one of their brands show up on a blog that is considered to be the moral authority of environmentalism is fairly demoralizing.

I don’t know what Treehugger’s ad policy is or if that ad is displaying as part of a package (our editor did some digging and it appears to be a Discovery network campaign; Discovery is Treehugger’s parent company). Sometimes, with ad networks, what ads pop up is at least temporarily beyond a publisher’s control. But giving space to a Pepsico brand lends an air of credibility that just smells bad. Here’s why.

1. Pepsico wants to keep America hooked on sugar and junk food.

Despite what the marketing arm says about wanting to help people eat better, PepsiCo spent $3.6 million in the first quarter of 2011 alone on lobbying to combat legislation to tax sugar-sweetened drinks.

2. Pepsico’s Refresh Project is just a line item in the company’s ad budget and a strategy to get its brand logos in front of a many children as possible.

In 2010, Pepsico decided to forgo spending millions to go up against rival Coke during the Super Bowl, in favor of a new $20 million social media-leveraged campaign that provides cash grants for community improvement projects, including many in public schools. Though the campaign has come under fire by good food advocates, notably Michele Simon, some socially conscious blogs, such as Tonic, have breathlessly praised the project. I find it depressing that public schools, parks, and programs are so thoroughly defunded that community groups must scramble for coins tossed by disreputable corporations to repair infrastructure that should be publicly funded.

3. Frito Lay is nothing more than a “corn launderer” with a big ad budget.

Snack food company Frito Lay practically exists to utilize the overproduction of corn that is the pillar of our farm subsidy system. They are masters at transforming corn kernels into any number of syrups, solids, powers, and masses and then reconstituting them into snack foods (see number 6 below) that generate huge marketing budgets for campaigns to convince consumers that the foods are healthy.

4. Frito Lay works humorously hard to convince consumers their products are healthy and “natural.”

Last week Frito Lay conducted a PR stunt in Times Square to prove to consumers that “fully half” of its products are “all natural” (see numbers 7 and 8 below).

5. Most Frito Lay products are anything but healthy, though they all benefit from the halo of health-driven advertising/PR efforts.

Company officials admit that they will not be making any changes to best-selling Doritos and Cheetos snacks. I live near a school and I see children walking to school eating these things for breakfast.

6. The incredible almost-onion Funyuns.

You might be forgiven for thinking that Flaming Hot Funyuns contain onions. A gander at the ingredient label shows lists 39 ingredients, of which at least seven are corn derivatives. The remaining ingredients include MSG, artificial colors Red 40 lake and Yellow 6 lake (I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to swim in those lakes), sugar, disodium phosphate, and sodium diasiphate. Toward the end of the ingredient list we see onion powder. The penultimate ingredient is “extractive of onion.”

7. “Natural” doesn’t mean anything.

The FDA has not defined the word “natural” for use on product labels, nor has it regulated front of package claims. This means any claim you see on the front of the package has been defined by the company making the claim. The FDA only regulates the “nutrition facts” on the back of the label. Many companies selling processed snack and junk foods rely on the “natural” label to bolster their appeal as a harmless thing to consume.

8. The vast majority of Frito Lay’s products are not natural, anyway.

Even under Frito Lay’s definition of natural, at present, only five product lines out of 33 are listed as “natural.” Nowhere near the touted half (see number 4 above). And Sunchips isn’t even one of them. Here’s a full list of Frito Lay brands. You’re free to look at all the ingredient labels.

9. Frito Lay’s compost smells bad.

In 2010, Frito Lay got a lot of positive PR for introducing a compostable bag – for one flavor in one product line out of 33 lines. Even then, all it took was a little whining by consumers for the company to abandon the trial temporarily. Then it was revealed that the newly re-engineered quieter compostable bag was hardly compostable at all. Why bother?

10. Frito Lay is accidentally green, not proactively green.

The New York Times reported in 2007 that Frito Lay’s efforts to save energy and water, though good for the planet, are more about saving money. Of course it’s smart to save money, but their marketing would have us believe that they’re doing it for philanthropic reasons.

Remember that corporations are in business to maximize their profits and everything they do is aimed at that goal. Though some corporations may do things that benefit some people some of the time, the ultimate goal is profits. Any advertising, anywhere, should be evaluated with a critical eye.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: jronaldlee via Flickr

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Targeting Tiny

Andrea Newell — Wed, 25 May 2011 15:42:11 +0000

Kids are at once prime marketing targets, financial liabilities, and cheap labor.

The business sector seems to have children in its crosshairs. If they aren’t reporting child labor in their overseas supply chains, companies are aggressively marketing junk food to kids, denying them health care coverage and teaching them the benefits of dirty energy.

Leading Them Down the Garden Path

Scholastic is a brand that has long been synonymous with educational materials, and it won the hearts of millions by bringing the Harry Potter stories to the U.S. However, the company recently had to recall a fourth grade educational curriculum it developed in collaboration with the American Coal Foundation after a major public outcry.

Scholastic materials are used in 90 percent of American classrooms, and children, parents and teachers alike have come to trust them. But Scholastic has made questionable decisions about partnering with companies that many feel have compromised the quality and integrity of their materials. Are sponsored educational materials developed for learning, or are they just ads disguised as schoolwork?

The United States of Energy champions coal as an essential energy source, ignoring the issues that come with it, such as greenhouse gas emissions, toxic waste, and mountaintop removal. This book discusses the different energy alternatives, but does not steer students to ask any questions about which one might be harmful, or consider any consequences due to production.

The materials went out to 66,000 fourth grade teachers and were used for three years until child advocacy groups kicked up a fuss and The New York Times criticized the sponsored materials. After expressing enthusiasm over the partnership and hoping to expand it to fifth grade materials, the CEO of Scholastic released a statement declaring they would no longer produce or distribute the title beginning May 2011.

This isn’t Scholastic’s only partnership misstep. Advocacy groups have also protested a previous campaign encouraging kids to drink SunnyD, a sugary, fruit-flavored drink, to earn free books. Scholastic, you’ve disappointed us so.

What Do You Mean You Use Child Labor?

Apple makes stunning products, even their packaging is elegant. However, they build many of their products overseas, requiring them to utilize foreign suppliers, and the computer giant has uncovered some very ugly practices in their supply chain. In addition to health and safety violations and negative environmental impact, Apple has found that their suppliers have employed child labor.

Apple’s Supplier Responsibility 2011 Progress Report showed that the company discovered 49 underage workers across nine facilities, and 42 underage workers in another facility. Apple has pledged to make “social responsibility a fundamental part of the way we do business, we insist that our suppliers take Apple’s code as seriously as we do,” but what is their responsibility regarding third-party contractors? As a condition of doing business can they compel them to meet certain criteria? It is a question that many companies that use third-party labor struggle with.

In this case, Apple split the baby. For the first nine facilities, the company mandated that the suppliers must support the underage workers’ return to school. They also demanded that those facilities change their recruitment practices and age-verification procedures. Since these suppliers have indicated that they would comply, Apple has chosen to continue to do business with them.

As for the remaining facility with 42 underage workers, Apple instituted the same requirements, but later decided the supplier was non-compliant. Apple has since voided its contract with this supplier.

But should Apple have terminated its business with all of these suppliers? Isn’t using child labor until being forced to stop indicative of a less-than-ethical supplier? This has been a recurring problem.

Sweets to the sweet

Food marketing is big business, but the Federal Trade Commision (FTC) limits the amount of time companies can market junk food to children on television. However, marketers have found a new avenue around that restriction – the web. Obesity experts are concerned since much of the food being marketed to kids is sugary, high-calorie snacks and drinks, and companies are finding multiple, innovative ways to attract kids.

Companies like General Mills (LuckyCharms.com), McDonald’s (HappyMeal.com and McWorld.com), and Kellogg’s (AppleJacks.com) have developed multimedia games, online quizzes and cell phone and tablet apps designed to lure young internet users. In the past, companies had to sell parents on their products. Now, they can largely bypass the parents and appeal directly to kids.

The Atlantic’s Marion Nestle quotes Advertising Age statistics that show that over half of parents surveyed believe their children should be able to go online on their own by age six, and can use a cell phone for games by age five. The New York Times says that hundreds of thousands of visitors are hitting these sites each month, and about half are under the age of twelve.

Many say it’s the parents’ job to run interference, but it’s difficult when the messages are coming from all directions. The obesity problem in the U.S. has reached epidemic proportions, and experts trace much of the issue back to childhood eating habits. With children influencing household spending while inundated with images and games of sugary foods, parents are losing the battle.

Federal agencies have decided to step in. The Federal Trade Commission, Food and Drug Administration, Center for Disease Control, and United States Dairy Association all partnered to propose new nutritional standards for food marketed to children ages 2-17. Foods either had to contain certain nutritional elements (no sugary drinks or fatty food allowed), or they could not be marketed. So, companies could choose to continue to produce fattening food with limited avenues of marketing, or produce more nutritional food that falls within the guidelines of marketing to that all-important age group.

To date, those guidelines have not been passed, leading to speculation that the companies are fighting these regulations behind the scenes. A decision should be made in the next few months. Just as they forced Joe Camel into retirement, will the Keebler Elves and their brethren receive their marching papers, or will they find themselves promoting healthier fare?

Don’t Come to Us for Help

The redesign of America’s healthcare system has caused so much anger and distress that politicians are literally at each others throats, health care lobbyists are working overtime, and the public doesn’t know what will come next or how it will impact them.

In early 2010, President Obama signed into law health care reform legislation. One of the major provisions of the bill was that insurance carriers must offer insurance to children with pre-existing conditions. In response, several major U.S. insurance carriers announced that they were dropping individual child-only insurance plans just days before parts of the health care law were to go into effect. WellPoint, CoventryOne and Aetna, Inc., among others, announced their intention to discontinue offering the plans in several states.

Insurance companies began to fall like dominoes, and within a few months there was hardly a child-only plan to be found anywhere. Insurance companies claimed that the new legislation allowed families to avoid paying insurance premiums for their children until they were sick, and then signing them up for insurance, potentially costing insurance companies millions.

Other scenarios include parents who work for companies that don’t cover dependents and need insurance just for their children, or parents who are out of work and decide to just cover their children because they can’t afford a more expensive family plan. Children with or without pre-existing conditions were still covered under a family plan that includes an adult, and children with existing child-only plans were not immediately affected.

In early 2011, states started to fight back, passing their own legislation that levied harsh punishments on insurance companies who refused to offer child-only plans. Many companies, realizing they would lose more revenue due to the state sanctions, grudgingly reinstated the plans. Others instituted enrollment at certain times of the year. What’s up in the air is how much premiums will cost families.

Child-only plans represent a small percentage of insurance business, yet many children in the U.S. still aren’t covered. Taking this step to make it that much more difficult to insure children left many insurance critics with a sour taste in their mouths.

A Better Future?

The good news is that many of these companies are voluntarily making changes, some due to public pressure, some due to company conscience, but changes nonetheless. In some cases government or governing agencies are stepping in and mandating compliance. Are children disproportionately targeted by businesses to increase profits or minimize financial risks? Children are a booming market so the temptation will always be there, but it’s up to the public to keep it from being a dog-eat-puppy world.

image: thejbird

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Foodie Underground: A Penchant for Gourmet Junk Food

Anna Brones — Mon, 16 May 2011 22:40:57 +0000

ColumnBeing a junk foodie has never been so hip.

It’s always good to leave your bubble. In Portland, Oregon, my bubble is food related and consists of farmers markets, New Seasons and buying quinoa in bulk. But for the past few weeks, I’ve been on the road, which has necessitated numerous gas station stops. Entering a gas station in general is rare for me, and the experience is much like sitting down to watch an hour of regular television and getting completely sucked in by the commercials. A sensory overload of sorts.

These interstate gas stations and mini marts offer much of what you’d expect: bad coffee, beef jerky sticks and an assortment of chips and high fructose corn syrup packed candies. In fact, I certainly don’t expect to find examples of fine cuisine at trucker stops, but the amount of strange food products above and beyond the standard is mind-blowing. Consider Tum-E Yummies, a 100% fake drink that’s the color of a neon set of Crayolas, a gummi spread of Mexican inspired food and a two pound bucket of cheese balls. How can it be that people really eat this stuff?

But it’s not just late night road trippers in need of a sugary fix. Even in a world of organic and local, junk food is all the rage. In fact, at a recent monthly supper club with my usual gathering of like-minded foodies, there was a plate full of crab bruschetta. Lovely. Until I overheard the maker of said bruschetta say, “You know what I rolled the crab in? Ranch Pringles.” I cringed.

You can go so far as to call it “Gourmet Junk Food.” Twinkie Napoleon, Mountain Dew Jelly and Fruit S’Mores – there are plenty of recipes waiting to go around, making the simple fried onion, green bean and mushroom soup casserole look tame. These days even lollipops have celebrity status and you can send all kinds of junk food gift baskets to your nearest and dearest. No matter what your personal take on the trend, from five star restaurants to books, being a junk foodie, for better or for worse, has never been so hip.

Andrew Freeman & Co.’s annual Trend List for 2011 was spot on when it announced that “Munchies are moving to the forefront as chefs reinvent junk food in gourmet ways.” The list cites Cereal Milk Ice Cream at Momofuku Milk Bar in New York City as one of the examples of culinary destinations taking a stab at classing it down, but there are certainly many more restaurants and chic bistros out there incorporating junking their gourmet, like the Junk Food Platter at Simon L.A and deep fried Twinkies spotted in Honolulu. In Philadelphia you can even take a Junk Food Tour, which touts a First Class tour and dining experience.

Incorporating bad foods into classier creations isn’t just happening out and about at finer restaurants. The real gourmet junk food movement is happening right at home. Just look at Mini-Mart a la Carte. This book probably has its greatest following in the hipster crowd, but bad food is unfortunately back, from Vienna sausage pigs in a blanket to Sardines Rockefeller. I’ve been drawn to perusing this book on several occasions simply because of mere disgust; reading the recipes are akin to staring at a traffic accident, when you know you should look away but you can’t.

And while Mini-Mart à la Carte certainly doesn’t attempt to label itself as a cookbook for foodies, Junk Foodie does exactly that, taking advantage of the word with which so many of us use to define ourselves. A cookbook for “the lowbrow gourmand,” it’s all about taking office snacks and turning them into something classier, like Oreos and Hot Tamales blended together to make an Aztec Coffee Cake. The author, Emilie Baltz, is quick to remind us that nothing in her book is good for us, but that somewhere in between the aisles of jelly beans and potato chips, we can find inspiration for new creations.

Need some real inspiration? Head on over to Fancy Fast Food, a blog devoted to fast food makeovers that look almost like they could be served with a white starched napkin and your finest silver. Except for the fact that some of these photos, which turn combo meals like Popeye’s Fried Chicken into Spicy Chicken Sushi, might induce some gag reflexes.

Foods and desserts that incorporate some of the worst ingredients that the food industry has to offer? Bring your bismuth.

Of course, no matter how conscious we are about the negative effects of these junk foods that we’re cooking with, we’re still popularizing products that shouldn’t have a place in a healthy food society. I doubt you’ll see Alice Waters making a homegrown, organic spinach salad sprinkled with crumbled Doritos anytime soon.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Images: Junk Foodie, Anna Brones, Anna Brones, Chronicle Books, Junk Foodie

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Foodie Underground: American Food Fetishes Abroad

Anna Brones — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:35:29 +0000

ColumnWhy is it that America is only known for hamburgers and hot dogs when we have a burgeoning foodie culture?

A surprising discovery when I lived in France was L’Americain. In the land of gourmet cheeses and perfected baguettes, food is more than something that you just consume for nourishment; it’s art. Which is why I was a little shell-shocked the first time I came across L’Americain, a late night favorite, post-pop music dance party, made up of a baguette stuffed with hamburger meat, french fries and ketchup.

If the French vision of American food had been unclear before, after this particular sandwich run in, it was very clear. For the French, there was no point in glorifying this version of junk street food, when they could just call it what they thought it represented: America.

As a nation, we have often been at the bottom of the list of culinary tradition. Sure, at home we’ve created a foodie culture and mastered combining dishes from around the world, but abroad, there remains a view that we’re all about pizza, hot dogs and chips. Our global foodie reputation is defined more by sugar and fat than by local ingredients with a cosmopolitan twist.

In fact, enter any “American” food store in another country and you’ll get a handful of classic ingredients. I’ve seen everything from swirled jars of peanut butter and jelly to marshmallow cream (things my American counterparts would never dream of buying at home), and much less abroad. But the international crowd loves this stuff. One of my best Swedish friends has specifically requested that next time I come visit she wants Reese’s Miniatures and several bags of Sour Patch Kids.

What is it that has made the rest of the world crave some of our most terrible exports and glaze over our more respectable creations? You don’t see Alice Waters shrines or bookshelves stocked with Mark Bittman translations abroad, but you’ll most certainly come across a sampling of the following.

Hamburgers

McDonald’s has swept the world like a virus, but it’s not just Big Macs that have made their way around the world. Grab an “American” menu in Southeast Asia and you’re sure to find some version of a meat patty wrapped in a bun. For some reason this American classic has other people hooked, albeit poor spellings on menus and misconceptions of what a bun should look like.

Pringles

It’s not just chips in general, but there’s something about “once you pop you can’t stop,” that has seduced the international consumer. Turns out they’re marketed in at least a hundred countries and bring in $1 billion in sales. Sure, in other countries the packaging is often smaller, because other places know better than to serve up ten servings in one container that we’re sure to down in a single sitting — but those brightly colored canisters with the goofy, mustached man are all over the place.

Mediocre – yet complicated – coffee drinks

Leave it to the global coffee chain Starbucks to make it perfectly acceptable to order a caramel machiatto in countries where coffee consumption is holy. The result is, well, abhorrent. Thanks to the chain it’s trendy to cruise the streets of Paris with a disposable cup and you can now buy Frappacinos in Guatemala. The company’s new instant product alone was responsible for $100 million in global sales last year.

Peanut Butter

It seems like such a staple product and yet for many it’s a luxury. Some love it and some hate it, but peanut butter to Europeans is just as exotic as caviar and foie gras are to many Americans. Try tracking it down outside of the U.S. and you’ll have a difficult time, and yet somehow, everyone knows about it. A former, very typical French roommate of mine (he wouldn’t dream of keeping his smelly cheeses in the refrigerator), thought there was nothing better on his weekend brioche than some good old Jiffy, imported by friends of course.

But forget our foodie reputation for a second.

Although it would be great to be known for all the fantastic, organic and healthy items that many American chefs whip up on a daily basis, wanting to be respected for our food culture is almost a little vain. What we should be more concerned with is how we’re physically impacting the rest of the world.

With obesity rates skyrocketing around the world, and often attributed to imported food, maybe it’s time we took a step back and asked ourselves what we want our global food influence to be.

Hot dogs and high fructose corn syrup? Changing what’s on our plates at home has a larger influence than we may think.

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, taking a conscious look at what’s bubbling in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Images: USDA China, permanently scatterbrained, Brett L., Like_the_Grand_Canyon, Alaivani, egarc2

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Foodie Underground: It’s Up to the Rest of Us

Anna Brones — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 19:43:50 +0000

Trashy magazines. You know the ones I’m talking about – the ones with the glossy photos of all the throw away fashion that a conscious fashion lover should certainly never invest in, and all the celebrity gossip that takes up way more brain space than you should ever give to such a vacuous topic. But they’re a guilty pleasure of mine, only purchased when traveling for business. There’s nothing like making the person sitting in the airplane seat next to you think you’re a celebrity, fashion obsessed twit.

So there I was, from Portland to Sacramento headed to the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival, an event focused on inspiring people to do better for our planet, flipping through the latest issue of In Style. Sigh. Things were going as expected. Flashy stilettos. Flip. Au naturel makeup tips. Flip. Silky blouses that need to be in your closet. Flip. Dessert night with your lady friends menu. Flip. Wait, what was on that menu? In my brainwashed magazine perusing, I had glanced over a colorful page that didn’t grab my attention until a few seconds later. I flipped back. “Sugar Rush!” the article was called, with a huge photo of snack mix made with – what is that? Cap’n Crunch?

The entire article was devoted to “desserts” made with breakfast cereals. Pardon me while I get sick. Inventive combinations are what foodies thrive for, but $5 boxed cereal crammed full of high fructose corn syrup? Is this the latest in food trends? We’ve already seen deep fried snickers bars and Krispy Kreme hamburgers, but I was hoping that with the rise in popularity of organics, antioxidants and super foods, we would be moving away from trashy, classless, so-bad-for-you-it’s-out-of-control and onto something just slightly better.

I wouldn’t have been offended if this was a fun, DIY article on silly but fun foods, but these “mouthwatering desserts” (if you can call Crunch Berry Snack Mix and Cocoa Pebble Crunch cake mouthwatering) were concocted by an acclaimed NYC pastry chef. In an era of skyrocketing obesity, heart disease and diabetes, I believe it’s the duty of the leaders of our food industry to be pointing us in the right direction.

No, not everyone needs to serve organic quinoa spring rolls with brewer’s yeast and pumpkin seeds sprinkled on top, but if the chefs and bakers that are at the top of their game in their country continue to promote foods that are rich in chemically processed ingredients, what kind of progress are we going to make?

Which is why it’s up to the rest of us.

The more we continue to promote sweet potato fries instead of Doritos, fried brussel sprouts instead of Ore-Ida tater tots and carrot beet cake instead of fried twinkies, the more food progress we’ll get to experience. Because, in case you needed a reminder, better food is better for us and our planet. And that doesn’t include Cap’n Crunch.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground. Each week, Anna will be taking a look at something new and different that’s taking place in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to culinary avant garde.

Image: Minette Layne

The post Foodie Underground: It’s Up to the Rest of Us appeared first on EcoSalon.