A little rice never killed a baby.
You know you’re a new foodie mama if…
1.Your baby regularly has food particles stuck to them due to hanging out directly below your mouth.New babies like to chill on your lap, especially if they are breastfeeding. And it’s not like I’m NOT gonna eat just because there is a baby there, right? DUH. Hence, rice on baby (see photo above).
Two interesting studies have been done that suggest the power of food marketing on children. In one study, researchers found that cereal boxes with cartoons on them actually made the food taste better to the children than those without.
This research was piggybacked off of another study done by Sesame Workshop that involved giving children a choice between eating broccoli or chocolate. 4 out of 5 kids went for the chocolate, but when they put Elmo on the broccoli and an unknown cartoon character on the chocolate, at least half of the kids went for the broccoli.
Even though I don’t have children yet, these studies intrigued me because 1. They prove that food marketing to kids can easily have a negative impact on what kids eat, especially if the product being marketed is unhealthy. But on the other hand, 2. They show that food marketing can be used to to influence kids to eat healthier products, which is definitely not a bad thing.
What do you think? Should we use food marketing to promote healthy eating to kids? If you have kids, have you witnessed popular food characters influencing the way they want to eat? Feel free to spit your words in the comment section.
Happy Friday!
~LTG!
So I’m pretty sure my unborn child is entirely against my culinary happiness. Hear me out on this one.
For the first four months of pregnancy, I had severe nausea. I’m talking puking morning till night, so doped up on reglan and zofran all I could do is sleep and shove a few crackers down my throat the few minutes I was awake. Culinary happiness? Around -10.
The first shot from James Reynolds "The Last Supper"
James Reynolds is a London photographer who documented the last meal choices of former death-row inmates after seeing a list in Schott’s Food and Drink Miscellany. Reynolds purchased remakes of trays they use in maximum security prisons to help recreate the meals, which he calls “Last Suppers”. Read more about these photos, and see the entire slideshow of photos, click here.
Regardless of if you are for or against the death penalty, seeing these photos will definitely make you think twice about what your own last meal would be, and whether you would want it to nourish you, or leave behind a message to the world. Cool stuff.
Happy Friday!
~LTG!
I had just moved from Chicago to the west coast, and I ate a ton of food along the way. This post is on a Chicago restaurant called Nightwood, where I had a delicious night before leaving the city. Enjoy!
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Being the gastronomic slut that I am, restaurants with unbelievably delicious food in a comfortable atmosphere are the peanut butter to my jelly, the Vegemite to my butter-schmeared toast. If you’ve had the pleasure to dine at Blackbird in Chicago’s West Loop or Lula Cafe in the Logan Square hood, you know what I mean. These restaurants are everything I never knew I needed and more.
More after the jump Read the rest of this entry »
Do you think you could lose weight eating only sugary processed foods like Twinkies? According to nutrition professor Mark Haub from Kansas State University, you can, and you’re health might not suffer.
Haub performed a ten week experiment where he only consumed mini cakes, Dorito chips, sugary cereal and other junk food items. Occasionally he would eat vegetables, like a can of green beans, and he took a multivitamin every day.
Find out the results after the jump.
As seen in my first post on the eater and second post on the traveler, that little phone in your pocket has already started, and will continue to greatly shift the world of food. But it doesn’t just impact the individual. Mobile phones and other devices will also alter the actual dining experience and how chefs and restaurateurs manage the business of food.
Do you own a restaurant or food related establishment? Or are you at all interested in how individuals engage with food experiences? Then it’s incredibly important to understand how mobile can play a role from discovery to digestion for your customers. Let’s go through the experience:
Amanda taking her first glimpse of the finished cookbook!
Meet my friend and fellow food writer and photographer, Amanda Simpson. She started off like many of us, just blogging about really good food she cooked and ate. A few years and three websites later, Amanda runs What We’re Eating and Food Porn Daily, and just published her first cookbook, Food Porn Daily: The Cookbook. If you like eating food or looking at food, first off, check out her website, which posts a new photo of food porn daily, and secondly, buy this book! I spoke with her about what it was like to go through the process of publishing a cookbook.
Answers to my questions and more after the jump.
Written by: Adam Grenier
Over the last decade the internet has turned the world of food on its head. When I was growing up, my mom had five cookbooks and a box of recipe cards from family and church friends, whereas now, I can access literally millions of live recipes being edited, rated and improved by people across the globe. Food and restaurant happenings used to be a weekly newspaper treat. Now, thousands of authors, bloggers and tweeters provide live 24/7 updates. Believe it or not, Gourmet Magazine even used to be … wait for it … a magazine.
I hope you enjoy change
Mobile (which includes cell phones, tablet computers, portable gaming devices, etc.) is the next great food disrupter. From applications and text messages to Foursquare and iPads, mobile communication is revolutionizing the way people interact with food … again.
The topic itself is a bit much for a single post, so I’ll be breaking it into three parts – the eater, the traveler and the chef.
Mobile Meets the Eater
Where the internet made vast amount of data available, mobile makes this data accessible from anywhere. For the home chef or foodie, this greatly changes your ability to buy local, change recipes on the fly, manage your ever growing shopping lists and stay updated by your favorite food friends.
The Locavore app on the iPhone is an amazing example of bridging the gap of information and location. By putting you in touch with local growers and farmers markets while also keeping you updated on what’s in season based on your location, shoppers are more empowered than ever to make convenient decisions while staying green.
Epicurious, AllRecipes, BigOven and hundreds of other service have taken the steps to make recipe decisions on the go easier to manage. Being able to choose a recipe for dinner based on what’s fresh and available in the store takes meal planning to a new level. GroceryIQ elevates the shopping list, allowing you to sync your online shopping list, get coupons, know which aisle your items sit and sync your list with friends and family. No more coming home to find out your husband forgot to buy dessert.
The portable Nintendo DS and smart phones can also spice up the actual cooking process. While we’d all love to bring our favorite TV chefs into the kitchen with us, having a computer or TV next to the stove isn’t always possible. Personal Trainer: Cooking on the DS and Rouxbe on the iPad offer video-driven cooking classes in the palm of your hand. Other video sites such as YouTube give any home chef with a phone a world of instructional videos when cooking in their own home, in someone else’s, or even the street.
Mobile phones also impact global nutrition and diet. By being able to track calories on the go, take pictures of your food so you can journal your diet or join support groups to give you encouragement when you’re out, mobile devices raise the bar on personal health responsibility. Even our first lady in her quest for healthier kids in America recognized the importance of mobile in her recent challenge for developers to build mobile tools and games that encourage healthier eating for our youth.
Obviously, mobile devices also affect dining out. Yelp, Google, Twitter, Foursquare, and Facebook Places put a new level of engagement in the dining experiences. The influences of friends are no longer limited to one-on-one connections. If I walk into a restaurant, I now have the option to see if other friends, or food experts, have been there in the past, what they thought of the place and which dishes they enjoyed. Heck, I could even see what I had last time, in case I forgot. This also introduces an entire new conversation of ethics around location based services. Is it tasteful to update twitter when you’re sitting down for dinner, if it results in a better choice of food? Are you okay that Starbucks knows you’re in Starbucks, if it means you get a dollar off your Frappe?
Do you make updates at dinner?
Finally, mobile is also transforming how we consume food media. Gourmet recently announced it is reviving their “magazine” as an iPad application. Publishers see tablet computing as the natural evolution of print media. Even though magazine readers still significantly outnumber tablet owners, the trends of each are heading in opposite directions. Does that mean it’s correct to ditch one for the other? I would argue no, as they likely work better in tandem. However, the publishing team at Conde Nast believes in it enough to make this jump with one of the oldest food publications.
People are consuming more of their media on the go,
and writers and publishers who keep that in mind, will benefit. I read all my morning news during my commute. If your blog doesn’t have a mobile friendly (WAP) experience, I’ll likely avoid it. The types of content people choose to read varies greatly when on the go compared to when they’re home on the computer. The need for super quick information will drive a higher interest in shorter content. Tumblr is essentially “blogging” 2.0. Instead of focusing on 500-1000 word entries, authors highlight pictures, videos and quick snippets of news. When I’m in a cab heading to a business dinner, a short perspective on the restaurant I’m heading to will be much more valuable than the two page story I read at home on your blog.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, barely touching the many implications of mobile in the food world. If you’re still with me, check back soon as I discuss the affect of mobile on food and travel as well as chefs and their restaurants.
Cheers,
AG
Adam Grenier is a Mobile Marketing and Emerging Media Manager with a passion for Technology, Comedy, Food (courtesy of @Leena_Eats), and Travel. Follow him on twitter @AKGrenier
Alice Waters Kitchen (photo from 7x7.com, from a Vanity Fair article)
In honor of my two weeks of Chez Panisse coverage, check out Alice Waters kitchen courtesy of 7×7.com and Vanity Fair.
What do you think of it? Is it as simple as you imagined? As green? What would you like that she has in your kitchen, or what do you think she needs? Please share in the comments!
Happy Friday!
~LTG!
A new restaurant is set to open in Berlin that features human meat called Flime. But even more shocking are the ads they put out for “members” to “donate” body parts as long as they submit medical records. The restaurant will even pay for your hospitalization! The restaurant has also put ads out for an “open-minded surgeon”.
Whoa. More on this German Cannibal restaurant after the jump.
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