Science serves up new foods

[Isa]

Science serves up new foods

Tired of eating the same old food? Stick around. It's sure to change. Food scientists and marketers seem to be especially busy lately developing better, healthier and sometimes stranger things to eat.

Here's a sampling.

- White cranberry juice will be in stores nationwide by early December. It's smoother, less tart and less likely to stain, which may make it more appealing to families with children, but it still has the good-for-you properties of regular juice, the cranberry industry insists. OceanSpray will sell it in three varieties: plain and blended with peach and strawberry. The juice, which is about the color of white grape juice, isn't from some mutant fruit; it's squeezed from regular cranberries harvested a few weeks before they turn red.

- How about fish-oil ice cream? A Massachusetts food-development and research company, Arthur D. Little, claims to have figured out how to add fish oil's healthful omega-3 fatty acids to our favorite dairy treat without adding its fishy odor. Don't look for the ice cream in stores soon; it still needs FDA approval and a manufacturer.

- Health-food french fries are also in the pipeline. Ranjit Kadan, a scientist for the USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in New Orleans, has developed a rice-flour french fry that closely mimics the texture and cooking properties of potatoes. The rice flour not only absorbs 25 percent to 50 percent less fat during cooking, it's hypoallergenic, nutritious and might even be fortified with vitamins, protein and other good stuff.

- Also on the fries front, a new light yellow sweet potato has less sugar and soaks up less oil, so it can be used to make more nutritious french fries and potato chips. Developed by the Agricultural Research Service in South Carolina, the new sweet potatoes make leaner, crispier fries because their greater density allows them to absorb less fat. One medium sweet potato has more than a day's supply of vitamin A, plus high levels of fiber, vitamin C and folic acid.

- Spaghetti with more vitamins A and B and 25 percent more protein than normal has been developed from corn gluten meal, a by-product of corn milling and fuel-alcohol production, says the August issue of the American Chemical Society's peer-reviewed journal. Trained testers who've tried it give it good marks for texture and flavor, the journal says.

- And then there are the Japanese farmers who've figured out how to grow square watermelons, so they'll take up less space in the fridge. According to a report on abcnews.com, the melons are grown inside square glass boxes. They were expected to sell this summer in Tokyo for about $83 U.S.



By Sylvia Rector
Knight Ridder/Tribune
Published January 9, 2002
Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune

[cape chef]

God, will it ever end!!!

Lets leave good enough alone,

Just a simple example of munipulation of food, Fruits and vegetables are designed (By whoever you wish) to be enjoyed at there peak...Now, Not all things ripen off the vine so to speak, and cranberries are one of them. The lack of sun and time to mature will leave these berries so sour that you will need a pound of sugar to every cup of picked berries. So the juice is white, Great!!! but our teeth are decayed
cc

[chrose]

All I can say is go away! Leave me alone

[Athenaeus]

Don't worry guys. Those things will visit your table one way or another, whether you like it or not.

If they actually produce those things we will read them next year as "The 20 trends of 2003 ".

So, after some articles of this kind, next time you will go to your favourite restaurant they will tell you that they serve only square mellons.

Poor restauranteur! Even if he doesn't like them, he will have to buy those square mellons. They will be cheaper and the distributor will always deliver square mellons on time and in a better price and his wannabe VIP clients, who read about the trends and they want to be trendy they will ask for a square mellon.

Can the owner of a restaurant in a hot spot deny something to a trendy person?
Of course not! He cannot afford a bad review from a trendy journalist, for not serving square melon ...

So the poor man, will send his cook to a culinary forum to ask for recipes for square mellon and of course someone will type "square mellon" to Google and he will have his square mellon recipes...!

I love how life goes...Enchanting!

[Isa]

Food fright: Mad cow, blue margarine, and fish oil ice cream?
I'll just have an apple, thanks

By CATHY BARBER
The Dallas Morning News



People are never satisfied with the status quo. Our food must be better, or at least different: a different color, or with less fat, or ready to eat sooner.

Mankind's eternal quest for a new nosh has this year produced purple ketchup, and blue and pink Parkay margarine. Grey Poupon showed itself behind the curve by making a splash about its yellow mustard.

Critics colored TV chef Emeril Lagasse red when he ventured into acting with an NBC sitcom, and despite an eleventh-hour reprieve in mid-December, the series was finally canceled. Maybe he should stick to gumbo.

Here's a look at some of the more colorful food news that didn't make these pages the first time around.

Houston, you got a problem


Men's Fitness magazine listed Houston as the "fattest city" among the top 50 cities in the country. The story noted that Houstonians watch too much TV, drink too much, eat poorly, and generally don't stay in shape.

Orange you glad?


It is a fact of life that some children grow up eating only macaroni and cheese. The makers of Annie's Homegrown pasta dinners – made with no artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives – finally caved in to kid demand by coloring their mac-and-cheese dinner orange. You know, like that other brand. Annie's pulls it off using South American annatto seeds. Look for it in natural foods stores.

Mad about you


People reacted in their own ways to fears about mad cow and foot-and-mouth disease. The French ate less beef and lamb, instead serving up more horse meat. Reports showed a 30 percent increase early in the year. In Italy, Dario Cecchini, the "butcher of Panzano," held a memorial service for the region's beloved cut of beef, bistecca alla Fiorentina , posting a marble memorial on the front of his tiny shop.

A prune by any other name still doesn't sell


It's still a prune. California growers renamed their product "dried plums" in an effort to get the under-65 set to snack. The market didn't bite, resulting in a glut of fruit that sent prices plummeting.

A Mir miss


Taco Bell promised a free taco for every American if Russia's crippled Mir space station landed on a floating target the company anchored in the Pacific Ocean. Alas, the Mir missed.

Save the fruitcakes


English researchers report that "even a stale fruitcake that's been sitting for years can be revived." We'll spare you the science and get to the method: Simply wrap the cake in foil and place it in a 130-degree oven to "freshen" it before serving. The scientists also noted in a release that the tannins in the fruit actually help fruitcakes improve with age, just the way wine does. How about some Ripple with that cake?
For the birds


Here's something to do with your microwave besides heating frozen dinners. Homestyle Easy Meals Bean Pastamoré is a microwaveable Italian-style meal for birds. It contains pasta, beans, vegetables, and dehydrated fruit. We all scream

The Arthur D. Little company crowed about its fish oil ice cream. Noting the health benefits of fish oil, the company set out to find a way to get people to eat the darn stuff. The answer, explains the firm, was to add the oil to a reduced-fat ice cream, whose cold storage reduces oxidation of the oils and eliminates the fishy flavor and odor.A few questionable comestibles

We'll pass on this year's crop of strange foodstuffs:
• With typical Japanese efficiency, growers have discovered a way to grow square watermelons. The idea was to come up with a fruit that fits more efficiently in the fridge. Farmers place growing melons in square tempered glasses.

• Kneipp, a German-based "wellness company," introduced a line of Pure Plant Juices. The press release includes this recipe to help detox after a night of overindulgence:

Detox Merry: Combine 2 cups V8 juice, black pepper, and 3 tablespoons Kneipp Pure Stinging Nettle Juice. It's guaranteed to make you think twice next time.

• "Move over chocolate Santas," read the headline on a press release touting foods from the Pacific Northwest. First on their list of better ideas: salmon jerky. Santa can stay right where he is, thanks.

• It wasn't enough to make a heatless jalapeño; Texas scientists tackled the heatless habanero, taking the burn out of one of the world's hottest peppers.

• The winning recipe in the Comstock/Wilderness fruit and pie filling contest was Raspberry Walleye – walleye fillets baked and topped with tomatoes, raspberry pie filling, herbs, and feta cheese.

• A candy company in Ukraine sells a candy bar called "fat in chocolate," which is actually fat in chocolate. They say it's a joke, poking fun at the Ukrainian snack of salo, or salted pork fat. We couldn't score one here in the States, so food stylist Christine M. Carbone fashioned this replica out of lard.

[nancya]

What's the point of heatless chiles?

Chocolate covered fat?

All natural artifical orange color?



I've seen soy pasta lately...is this for vegetarians? Or is it just insane like the rest of this?

[chefboy2160]

I can still remember the sixties and a square was not a good thing . Peace love and hippie beads .
I like to garden and I think I shall have to do more of this for the future . Aint nothing like the real thing baby , of course thats just my opinion.........................

[marmalady]

Chefboy, I most definitely concur with you! Am going to pay a LOT more attention to my garden this year! Fish oil ice cream - eeuuuwwwwww!

[Risa]

Here's another article on funky-coloured foods:

Pink and blue margarine!!!

Margarine on it's own is bad enough. Squeezed margarine is doubly bad. Now there's blue and pink squeezed margarine! When does this madness end!

[chrose]

Other than that...viv....... too funny!

[Peachcreek]

What will be next? Food that jumps out of the cupboard and into the microwave, sets the time and shuts the door after itself.....

[foodnfoto]

I don't know, those new food items that Isa posted about don't seem so bad. Come on, society evolves, language evolves, tastes evolve, so does food. I'm a fan of pasta with soy in it, it lowers the glycemic index and increases the level of beneficial soy isoflavones. Pomme Frite with sweet potatoes, more nutrition and less fat? I'm okay with that.
Square watermelons? Well, I'm not paying $85 dollars for ANY watermelon, but if growers are lauded for growing pears inside glass bottles that are then filled with superlative pear brandy, what's the problem with a watermelon grown in a glass jar?
Honestly, we need to choose our food battles wisely, guys. Now green ketchup, pink and carolina blue margarine and fake foods that are marketed to children are issues to get worked up about in my mind.

[kokopuffs]

I'll throw in the towel when meat starts trimming itself.

[shroomgirl]

Watching the line.....what really gets my attention is reading about large corps running the majority of our food system, buying out the seed companies or policing farmers who save seeds.....If more and more people lose the farm connections there may not be a farm to connect to. If the seed companies are all bought out and food is raised to be less labor intensive and shippable.....we'll not have Creole tomatoes, white peaches, fraise du bois, Heirloom tomatoes, fingerling potatoes etc.....
It's not just the colors and preservatives, it is quality of FOOD.

[foodnfoto]

I have to agree with you there, Shroomgirl.
Here, Here!