Tag Archives: obesity

A Fair Fight?: Not-So-Fun Facts from “A Food Designed to Addict”

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scooby-snackI’m not sure anyone who loves to eat as much as I do can properly call herself a health nut. I did, after all, write a wistful tribute to Dairy Queen Blizzards on this blog just a couple of weeks ago. And I do have a deep belief in free will and the necessity of people taking responsibility for their own actions. (When I got called for jury duty on a personal injury lawsuit, the corporate defense attorney found me delightfully amusing before the plaintiff’s lawyer dismissed me.) Those two facts combined mean that I often have mixed feelings in the junk food debate. Yes, I like Cheez-Its, but I don’t eat them every day, and that kind of restraint doesn’t feel all that difficult. So should we really be able to hold food companies responsible for the obesity epidemic?

Well…actually, maybe we should, at least partly. A recent article in the New York Times magazine by Michael Moss makes a compelling case that the public doesn’t stand much of a chance against the unhealthy foods that the junk food kings are pushing. Really, you should just go read the actual article right now. But for the record, here are the tidbits that I found most interesting…and disturbing:

The Bliss Point
Any Malcolm Gladwell fans out there will already know about Howard Moskowitz, the guy who revolutionized the food market by testing in excruciating detail every possible permutation of a product (61 versions of Vanilla Cherry Dr. Pepper, say, to find the perfect balance of vanilla and cherry and, um, pepper-ness). He calls that balance the “bliss point,” and he finds it through surveying thousands of taste testers and crunching the numbers across dozens of factors. Which is all rather fascinating, but here’s the nagging thought I couldn’t get out of my head as I read about his process: can you think of anything that sounds less like cooking? Continue reading →

Dead Man Gnawing: Rock n Roll Dinner Demise II (1972)

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Last week I wrote about Duane Allman’s death and the lore surrounding the band’s subsequent album, Eat a Peach.  Now on to Mama Cass.

Long before I knew who Duane Allman was, I knew that Mama Cass died from choking on a ham sandwich.  I don’t know why I knew about Cass and not Duane, except maybe that my mother would have appreciated the Mamas and the Papas’ harmonies and have had no idea whatsoever of what to do with the Allman Brothers.  As I type this, though, I now recall a Scooby Doo episode with the Mamas and the Papas.  I never dug Scooby Doo that much, except for those celebrity guest stars.  Hello, Laurel and Hardy.  And didn’t Don Knotts and the Apple Dumpling Gang make an appearance?  Am I making this up?  Somebody help me out.

Anyway, word was that Cass choked to death on her sandwich in a London flat.  This word was passed because the doctor who pronounced her dead on the scene reported to The Daily Express, “She appeared to have been eating a ham sandwich and drinking a Coca-Cola while lying down – a very dangerous thing to do.”

Firstly, why is the combo of sandwich and soda dangerous?  The implication is that drinking, say, water would be better if lying down.  Is there a similarity here to the stone-cold fact that you should never mix carbonated beverages with Pop Rocks?” Continue reading →