A funny thing happens after you've been in space for a few days. The foods you liked on day one suddenly don't taste as good, and soon you're reaching for the hot sauce, even if you don't really like spicy foods. So why does it happen? Well, the short answer is that people lose their sense of smell in space. Astronauts have reported that food doesn't taste right after a few days on the International Space Station. Coffee is bitter, folks start craving sour and sweet foods, and everyone starts reaching for hot sauce.
Features
It’s Food Jim (But not as we nose it…)
Freedom Of Sweets
For some time now, I've been arguing that legal scholars ought to be challenging the contention of food corporations that the First Amendment gives them the right to market foods any way they like, even to kids. I simply cannot believe that the Founding Fathers of the United States intended the First Amendment for this purpose. In December 2010, I urged public interest lawyers to examine current food marketing practices in light of the First Amendment. I am pleased to see that they are now doing so.
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Tagged fat, freedom of speech, obesity, The Atlantic
Du-kan Afford It?
Following in Mr Ramsden’s footsteps, I’m off to begin my austerity Dukan diet test, involving Diarylea triangles and Value Ham washed down with own-brand cola…
The first day was difficult. There was little care or art in the food I cooked, but instead a wish to merely fill my face with as much protein as possible so that I could think about something other than food. It didn’t really work. You see, eating a single food group on repeat is a largely unsatisfying process. A plate groaning with chicken livers (cooked in sherry vinegar, onion and garlic) with herbs, chopped gherkin, low-fat yoghurt – vile stuff if you ask me – and sprinkled with smoked paprika sounds decent enough, but was crucially missing bread or, say, something green and crunchy. It wasn’t a complete dish.
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Tagged celebrities, Du-kan Afford It?, dukan diet, ham, protein
Brassica Sharks
You wouldn’t think that an artist hand-making t-shirts that promote organic produce out of his garage and a fast food giant would be fighting over a advertising slogan. Chick-fil-A, the “quick-service” restaurant with more than $3.5 billion in revenues in 2010 has taken legal action to stop Bo Muller-Moore from trademarking the phrase “Eat More Kale,” claiming it infringes on their trademarked slogan, “Eat Mor Chikin.”
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Tagged corporate, david and goliath, kale, legal battle, Treehugger.com
Starting From Zero
How would you feel if 9/11 reminded you of the night you fell in love?
On the second anniversary of 9/11, he said that he’d invited some friends to get a drink and they’d reacted as if that were a tacky way to commemorate a nation’s tragedy. I was then and am still firmly of the belief that a stiff drink is a fine way to soften the blow of a crappy memory, and told him that a complete stranger would be happy to meet him for a drink after work. Two years later, I married him.
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Tagged 9/11, blog, cake, love, relationship, smitten kitchen
Oh Deer, Drunk Again
Our ladette, binge-drinking culture has finally reached Sweden.
A stunned Swede discovered a seemingly intoxicated moose entangled in an apple tree. Per Johansson, 45, who lives in south-western Sweden, says he heard a roar from the garden of his neighbour, who was on holiday, late on Tuesday and went to have a look. There he found a female moose kicking about in the tree. The animal was likely to have been drunk from eating fermented apples.
Cod Love Hugh
The day I gave into the sustainable fish militia, and bought some fresh sardines…
After months of Fearnley-Whittingstall’s fish offensive, I officially can’t get excited by certain fish any longer. It’s hard to love a piece of well-travelled, expensive salmon when Hugh’s told you umpteem times that coley, pouting, megrim and mackerel are probably living in ponds in your back garden – and actually like being barbecued. So last weekend, as I wandered around my fishmongers in Nunhead looking for dinner material, I ignored the overfished salmon, tuna and prawns in favour of local, fresh sardines for dinner (priced at £2.75 for eight they could only be endanger of being too prolific). Continue reading
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Service with a Snarl
Breathtaking example of tasteless service in New York City! Quite wonderful, if it wasn’t so serious
Sooner or later, depending on how long it takes to get a reservation, you'll end up having a bad time at what is supposed to be a good restaurant. When that happens, you might be startled by how upset you become. It probably won't be the food that's to blame. You can always shrug off a tough steak, since the chef didn't mean to disappoint you. But everyone takes poor service personally. Get a bad table and you'll wonder if the hostess finds you unworthy. Find yourself with a disrespectful server and you'll feel worse, because you're expected to tip.
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Tagged alan richman, GQ, new york city, service
A Quick Bite in Chelsea
What could be more pleasant that an afternoon’s Sloane spotting in Pimlico over a plate of fresh mackerel?
“Ya, I’m like totally over committed… so I can’t take on anything else right now,” explains a long limbed carefully shaven gent in his early twenties to a lady friend.
Reclining club-class style in his chair, dressed in tennis gear and clutching a glass of rose at The Orange on Pimlico Road he does look stretched, admittedly.
When having lunch in Sloane-ville, I find the food tends to play second fiddle to the entertainment. And last Friday I was lucky enough to spot a Made In Chelsea style gent on my way out the door after another brilliant meal at this utterly reliable gastropub. Continue reading
The Ultimate Fat Finding Mission
Finally – a holiday fat map. Holiday destinations guaranteed to make you porky. When’s Part Two? The guide to places you get dysentery.
I remember the moment my food fatigue set in. I was at a business lunch in New York a fortnight after moving to the US and a third of the way through my ranch dressing-soaked excuse for a salad when the scene took on the quality of a nightmare. The snuffling noises emanating from a nearby table – where a man was inhaling heaped forkfuls of spaghetti carbonara – seemed to be growing grotesquely loud; the woman reaching for a spoonful of her son’s chocolate sundae predatory in her gluttony. All around, diners were engaged in the same robotic hand-to-mouth gesture, like drones with a grim job to do.
Filed under Features
Tagged America, fat, holiday, The Telegraph
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