Food and Food Culture

Seriously, the idea of restricting candy and fast food only to adults is something a Kids Next Door villain would do.

It literally happens, actually. A villain bans soda, resulting in a whole-plot reference to the prohibition.

In fairness, there probably should be something done about sugar consumption. Personally I'd go with limiting the size of drink cups sold at fast food restaurants.

For example, with a big bottle of soda, you're not supposed to drink it all yourself, at least not all at once. But with those giant cups you get at fast food places you kind of are, and that's not great.

Edited by Protagonist506 on Apr 9th 2024 at 6:46:26 AM

Yeah, that show had some pretty peak writing. I remember that one episode where Numbuh 4 ate some healthy food, and the rest of the team had to shrink and go journey inside his body to extract it.

I get it's supposed to be a comical take on Kids hating vegetables but.....

Good ways to lower sugar consumption is to utilize more sugar substitutes. Despite alarms raised on how bad they supposedly are for you, most Sugar alcohols and artificial sweeteners are still better for your body then Sugar is in general. Stevia and Monkfruit are also really good as Natural substitutes instead of Aspartame or Sucralose if you can handle the higher priciness a bit.

The worst side effects would be certain sugar alcohols giving you the runs, lol.

Speaking of fast food and candy, I don't understand why pizza is considered fast food. Making that stuff is a frickin' art.

It really depends where you get it from. I wouldn't consider a good pizza to be fast food at all.

It's fast food because it's fast.

Sure, quality pizza isn't fast food (since it takes time to prepare it well). But you can say the same for big ol' fancy burgers.

x3 Speaking from experience, eating a bag of sugar free gummy bears was not the smartest move I ever did but damn does it clean up your plumbing.

As for pizza, yeah. Good pizza I don't consider fast food. Fast food pizza be something like Domino's, Pizza Hut and Little Caesars. Caesars being not great but damn is it dirt cheap.

See, I think those chains are fine. Not top restaurant quality of course, but fine. For the most part, I think I'm paying a fair price for what I get from those places.

On candy: In an inversion from the thread's original post, nerikiri cakes look as beautiful as they come, but they taste terrible. They're just overly sweet white bean Play-Doh.

Been trying to brew robusta coffee with condensed milk, and then I found out the hard way that the tiny plastic straw is not good at stirring condensed milk at all.

At least the coffee tastes like coffee.

Would you like a cicada salad? The monstrous little noisemakers descend on a New Orleans menu

I've never tried insects before, but crunchy protein sounds like an intriguing concept.

I've eaten insects on multiple occasions. I had roasted grasshoppers with chipotle and lime seasoning at a baseball game. Those were a tasty and crunchy, and I'd recommend them. The second is some weird water beetle that I had in a restaurant once. Those were weird. More floral flavored than any flower I've ever eaten, if that makes any sense. It's something I'm glad I ate once, just because of how unique the flavor was, but I'd never go out of my way to eat them again.

Only insects I've eaten are those roasted crickets you can get in tiny boxes at farmers markets.

Pretty good, especially the salt and vinegar flavors.

Not sure if this thread is the appropriate place for this but...

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Nestlé is adding more  sugar and honey to the infant milk sold in third-world countries, in comparison with products sold in Switzerland and other EU countries.

A couple of days ago, the  Swiss investigative organization Public Eye  in colaboration with the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN), published an investigation report titled   How Nestlé Gets Children Hooked on Sugar In Lower-income Countries.

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The report exposes the fact that Nestlé is adding a higher percentage of Sugar and honey to its infant milk and cereal products (Nido, Cerelac and others) sold in Africa, Asia and Latin America, for babies aged 6 months or older.

The report tested 150 of the products sold in poorer countries and found that each serving contained 7.3 grams for children 6–12 months old, and 2–5.3 grams for children older than a year.

Which encourages children to get addicted to Sugar from a young age.

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WHO guidelines for the European region say no added sugars or sweetening agents should be permitted in any food for children under three, because sugar can cause obesity and other more serious diseases later in life.

And indeed, Nestlé seems to observe those guidelines in Switzerland and other European countries.

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It is worth mentioning that in the 1970s  similar accusations were directed at Nestlé, and after a long campaign, new rules were enforced to protect children's health, but it seems Nestlé did not really change that much, at least for third-world countries.

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The original report: https://stories.publiceye.ch/nestle-babies/

An article on the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/apr/17/nestle-adds-sugar-to-infant-milk-sold-in-poorer-countries-report-finds

There was also an article in the Egyptian Stand when I read  about this first, but since it is in Arabic, I won't post the link.

One day someone will write a cyberpunk novel and use Nestle as the template for the MegaCorp

Going back a few posts:

Crickets in guacamole are good. London's "Santo Remedio", which is probably one of the best & most authentic Mexican restaurants in the UK (mostly because it's run by Mexican chefs...) has made them a standard option.

I've had ants a few times too, scattered as a dressing or used as the basis for a sauce. Surprisingly lemony due to the acid.

I half-remember having bbq mealworms once — but that was very definitely the "students ordering a bag of the weird snack for kicks", and they had no real flavour or selling point beyond the spices.

So I found a video on YouTube exposing a shocking scam. In Las Vegas, a number of popular local restaurants are being impersonated by low quality ghost kitchens on food apps. The ghost kitchen gets the orders and the money, the customer gets crappy food, and the resturaunt gets poor reviews. It’s shocking. Here is the video in question.

I feel bad because what I’m seeing of the local business’ food looks good and I hate that everyone is getting ripped off like this.

And apparently chain restaurants are getting in on these practices to sell their own food through brands resembling mom and pop shops.

Edited by BigBadShadow25 on Apr 24th 2024 at 11:40:13 AM

I recall a similar controversy happening during the COVID-19 pandemic, where Chuck E. Cheese operated a ghost pizza chain that wasn't immediately obviously them (albeit it used their established Spaghetti and Gondolas character Pasqually as the branding mascot).

I do have to wonder if that inspired the scam here at all, both the deceptive branding aspect and the end goal of delivering subpar food to customers.

Ghost kitchens have been around since the pandemic and have only exploded since. Another common issue was that there were a lot of restaurants that didn't want to be listed under apps like DoorDash but getting listed anyway, often with incorrect/outdated menus or without even informing the restaurants themselves. This was a common issue for more expensive, higher-end restaurants that functioned off of revolving menus.

Eddy Burback did a pretty deep dive into corporate ghost kitchens in a video last year, and basically 44 "restaurants" in his local area were all from one ghost kitchen, IIRC. It's basically the ghost kitchens spamming the hell out of the app to crowd out the legitimate restaurants.

Now, the concept of ghost kitchens is actually something I'm not against. It massively cuts down on overhead, prime real estate isn't as big of a concern, and they're exponentially easier to launch than a standard restaurant. An individual running one is actually something I'd be all for; it's when companies like Virtual Dining Concepts get in on it that it gets ridiculous.

Edited by ITNW1989 on Apr 24th 2024 at 8:43:55 AM

I actually have a ghost kitchen near me. They’re pretty good, if a bit expensive. They have a Bon Chon. I’m addicted to the bulgogi fries.

USDA updates rules for school meals that limit added sugars for the first time.

USDA updates rules for school food menus for breakfast and lunch to limit added sugars to meals, set to start taking effect for the 2025-2026 school year, starting with placing sugar limits on cereals, yogurt, and flavored milks. By the 2027-2028 school year, the rules restrict added sugars for a full week's breakfast and lunch meals to be no more than 10% the total calories.

Edited by HeyMikey on Apr 24th 2024 at 9:34:21 AM

That’s great, but the cynic in me (as in, just me) just wonders how long it’ll take before some asshole finds a loophole to get around these restrictions in order to continue feeding kids crap.

Sugar as being 10% of calories a day is well within Low Carb range, so thats a good shift.