Food For Thought

While food does not have the same glamor as other things, the lies are just as scandalous. Don’t have a clue, I mean that nutrition labels most of us take for granted.

When does nothing gives you more of everything? When it’s listed as zero on nutrition labels! Something under 0.5 gram per serving is zero on food label. Yes, several nothings make a lot of nothing too.

So when it comes to let says a margarine, it can list only 5 calories per serving when it actually has about 60 calories!

Click on the following link to read about this and other amazing lies!

Food Labels — Nutrition information and misinformation

Food For Thought

It’s not a true conspiracy but all its participants know that keeping the low-cal foods fad gets consumers into spending ever greater amounts, so the players are all in on it. Today, there is total public immersion with low-cal foods to the extend that low-cal foods are a consumers’ obsession.

There was a time when eating 2 to 3 meals a day is enough. In today’s diets with more low-cal foods, 4 or more meals a day is needed for a healthy person. This is not “harmless” as eating more low-cal foods leads to high levels of salts and other food additives in your diets.

The saying “hungry again after an hour” about Chinese foods now rings even more true with low-cal foods.

“Selling less (calories) for more” makes mega-billions for big food companies, as the costs of low-cal foods are a major increase to everyone’s food budget too.

Food For Thought

“Capsaicin, which makes peppers hot, can cause prostate cancer cells to kill themselves, U.S. and Japanese researchers said…” - another reason to enjoy spicy hot food!

Additional information on capsaicin’s health benefits.

Food For Thought

There is a Japanese proverb, “Two sheets of nori keep the doctor away.”

Nori seaweed has been valued as a food of longevity by Japanese people for a long time. It’s high in vitamin A, B1, B2, C and minerals, has as much protein as soybean and most easily digested.

Food For Thought

The secret of Japanese many flavors is in the three desirable taste components: glutamate acid (which tastes like kelp or konbu), inosinic acid (dried bonito), and guanil acid (shiitake mushrooms) - also called “the flavor of Japan.”

Food For Thought

With good intention, the Percent Daily Value (%DV) label gives us the big picture on what we’re eating. However, it’s also the same mean by which fancy product marketing fools us.

Using it to compare food with is a fool errant…

Read the rest of this page »

Food For Thought

The famous quote attributed to Gertrude Stein, “a rose is a rose is a rose”, is often interpreted as “things are what they are”.

It would seems most of us still remember ramen as the original cheap stuffs that we had taken for granted. That perception still bears with us when we look at the prices of some ramen todays, never mind why we willingly pay more for other junk foods…

Read the rest of this page »

Food For Thought

If you didn’t have anything else to eat or drink in the desert, which is worst? Taking a pitch of salt or a glass of water with three time as much salt?

Well, I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t hesitate to drink a glass or two of that salty water…

Read the rest of this page »

Food For Thought

So what is it that makes “natural” food labeling so appealing, good ole Mother Nature? Barbequed food results in “natural” chemicals from cooking that should be of health concerns…or maybe it’s about the way things used to be…

Read the rest of this page »

Food For Thought

Canola is a trade name for a cultivar of rapeseed developed in Canada, it’s a contraction of “Canadian oil”. Prior to this name switch, the market for rapeseed oil plummeted after World War II, as its perceived uses were for marine and industrial lubricant. With a little genetic breeding to enhance its suitability for consumption and lot of name marketing, it’s now Canada’s leading vegetable oil.

While cultivars of rapeseed grown elsewhere are just as suitable for consumption, they can not be called Canola. That explains why it’s listed as rapeseed oil in ramen’s ingredients.

Food For Thought

It’s easy to let fats in food take the fall for people’s overweight health problems. In the meantime, despite the big shift towards low-fat food, America’s waistlines are actually worst off.

Let’s have another view than in the general media.

Which provide more energy, 100 calories of fat or 100 calories of sugar or carb? Pretty silly question, but that exactly my point. Some so-called experts seem to have us think otherwise…

Read the rest of this page »

Food For Thought

The taste buds on our tongues can detect the presence of half a dozen or so basic tastes, including sweet, sour, bitter, salty, astringent, and umami, a taste discovered by Japanese researchers — a rich and full sense of deliciousness triggered by amino acids in foods such as meat, shellfish, mushrooms, seaweed and soy sauce.

It has also been said that the aroma of a food can be responsible for as much as 90 percent of its taste, i.e., “flavor” is primarily the smell of gases being released by the food you’ve just put in your mouth.

Read the rest of this page »

Food For Thought

From the same commercial-industrial complex that earlier pushed onto the public that margarines with trans fats were healthier than dairy butters, it has successfully turned the same but none the wiser public to the notion that low-cal processed foods are healthy in general.

There is a truth about food we can all pretty much agree on, if it isn’t tasty we will not eat it. So what’s wrong with low-cal processed foods? The flavorings, there’s no shortage of flavorings in low-cal foods…it’s just eating more salt and flavoring additives for a meal…you’re actually going to eat way too much salt for example before you eat enough real food for the day without getting anorexic!

Ignoring the deceptive nutrition labels, the “apparent” healthy portion is just bad without a restricted diet of it that is not followed.

Read the rest of this page »

Food For Thought

If there is one food most closely associated with breakfast for me while growing up is rice congee. It’s also enjoyed as a snack anytime, and fondly very late in the evening at special eatouts where it can be quickly served informally when nothing else is available.

So what does this have to do with instant noodles? …

Read the rest of this page »

Food For Thought

What does this have to do with ramen? Eh…not much, but it got a part.

Found this blog posting to be a voyeuristic peek into our changing culture through the lives of the guys at flexistentialist.org doing beer tasting one day and ramen groupie watching a bizarre anime production the next…as in a Woody Allen’s script.

Food For Thought

Traditionally, sushi is served with raw ginger slices in Japan as a prevention for parasites in eating raw fish.

Food For Thought

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) has been around for centuries, but its was only understood in 1908 from research in Japan by isolating this “taste-essense” from seaweed to explain why foods tasted better when served with a broth made from seaweed.

The Chinese used a “taste-essense” recipe made with dried fermented wheat gluten and/or soybean protein, often further enriched with powder dry shrimp or seaweeds. Popular sauces like soy sauce and worcester sauce, which has fermented animal protein or vegetable protein, are also good source of this “taste-essense!”

Read the rest of this page »

Food For Thought

(Warning the following may contains facts not pleasant to a vegetarian while eating!)

Vegetarianism is relative, that’s because small details often go amiss.

Read the rest of this page »

Food For Thought

Mageirocophobia refers to an abnormal and persistent fear of cooking.