Link Banana

In an excerpt from his book, Mike Steinberger lays some of the blame for the decline of French cuisine at the door of what is usually considered its ultimate judge.

Someone finally asked the Green Lantern the question I’d been meaning to since Slate started the column:

Green Lantern, you’re always telling us how bad meat is for the environment. I’m willing to throw some more zucchini kebabs on my barbecue this summer, but are all meats equally awful? Or are there some that I can grill with a little less guilt?

The answer’s pretty much in line with what had been my assumption: the bigger the animal, the less efficient the meat.

Also, this chart (pointed to by this post) provided a less thorough answer.

While I think this

…so I attached no value to time.

is probably a mistake, I found Jennifer Reese’s exploration of the cost-effectiveness of making some basic foods at home quite interesting.

Ceaselessly patrolling the boarders of our corporeal liberties, William Saletan notes the looming attack on “sugared beverages.”

New York City’s health commissioner, Thomas Frieden, is leading the way. He’s the guy who purged trans fats from the city’s restaurants and made them post calorie counts for menu items. Lately he’s been pressuring food companies to remove salt from their products.

Now he’s going after soda.

That paragraph put into my head this line: “First they came for the transfats, I said nothing…” Apologies to Niemöller fans.

Though it’s not exceptionally deep (not to mention aged in my Instapaper account for a few months), Sara Dickerman’s story of the cows historical journey from farmer’s field to feedlot and hamburger patty is pretty good.

It reminds me of my argument — which I’ve thus far failed to live up to — that no one should be able to eat meat that hasn’t (at least) watched an animal killed for that purpose in front of them.

As Matt Yglesias exlpains, Pew just found that most of those things you think about the difference between Starbucks and McDonald’s customers are true:

The more money you earn, the more likely you are to want a Starbucks. The more education you have, the more likely you are to want a Starbucks. The more liberal you are, the more likely you are to want a Starbucks. The younger you are, the more likely you are to want a Starbucks. White people like Starbucks more than black people.

The one moderately surprising fact is that in aggregate Hispanics actually prefered Starbucks more than white people.

I really like Mike Dresser’s idea.

I’d always figured that the making of hot dogs was one thing better left unseen, but the unsavoriness of the watery “meat” is just incredible.

(via Kottke)

First, sorry for the title.

Second, the chart attached to this article answers a question I’ve been meaning to ask a knowledgable person for a while: different kinds of meat really are different in the amount of carbon dioxide their raising produces. While chicken produce relatively little CO₂ per pound, beef makes quite a bit. Pork, shrimp, and salmon all fall between those two. All of those are (obviously) much less efficient than grains and other plants.

Also interesting: cheese is actually roughly as efficient, in CO₂ per pound terms, as shrimp.

(via Buzzfeed)

My fake restaurants never got trashed (yet loved) by a reviewer on the internet. I feel unloved.

(via BuzzFeed)

Obviously you wouldn’t want to use this to judge a proud carnivorium (that is: steakhouse), but I definately think this idea has some merit.

I have a theory that you can tell how much a restaurant thinks about its food by the quality of its veggie burger. The item has become the quintessential menu add-on for restaurants that want to show that they “care” about vegetarians. Restaurants, let me share a tidbit right now: Warming a pre-packaged Gardenburger, slapping it on a bun, and charging $9 for it is not caring for vegetarians. It’s caring for vegetarians’ friends who want to go to a restaurant and say, “Oh, look, they serve something for you.” Meaning: you eat boring meatless crap, and this place serves one boring meatless item.

(via Ideas)

A very interesting daily chart from The Economist. The basic analysis:

Those [children of international parents] craving an unhealthy diet should make for America, where more than half of the expat parents said that their children had eaten more junk food since relocating. Keen gamers should consider China and Canada, whereas telly addicts should nag their parents to move to the United Arab Emirates or India.

Though I’m guessing (perhaps hoping) that the nostalgia-filled Circus Animals will remain on store shelves — someone has to buy those memories and make money by allow us to keep revisiting them, no? — this feels like a blow.

(via Slashfood)

Lebanon has announced plans to sue Israel over the food copyright for tabouleh, kubbeh, hummus, falafel and fattoush. The suit relies on the absurdly named feta precedent; as David Kenner describes:

Six years ago, Greece was able to win a monopoly on the production of feta cheese from the European Parliament by proving that the cheese and had been produced in Greece under that name for several millennia.

I debated for a while whether to Twitter or post this new-to-me neologism (discovered here), I obviously chose the latter.

The etymology of this is a little vexing; my guess is that it grew out of the belief that the people who make or serve dogfood should try it before giving it to canines. Ah, Wikipedia confirms.

Strange Maps points to an interesting one: you can map the northern extent of America’s South by seeing how far north in Virginia McDonald’s has sweet tea.

There’s nothing too remarkable in Gizmodo’s interview with Alton Brown. They breifly discuss his new show — Feasting on Waves — and talk at length about the technology he used while filming it. So, I guess the point is that I’m mostly just linking to this because Alton Brown is cool.

Spoke the BuzzFeed:

Colonel Sanders’ secret handwritten recipe for fried chicken was relocated to a temporary location today. Security details included a locked box being handcuffed to a security guard who boarded an armored car under police escort. Apparently, it’s so important that only two executives have access to it, making this paper one of the most closely guarded corporate secrets.

My only question is: was this operation financed by their marketing department?

I thought this line, noted by Noreen Malone, was good enough to share. After tasting the spit bucket after a sampling of wines from a smattering of American states, Joel Stein writes:

As I took a swig and swirled it around to gross out my friends, I thought it tasted like America. It was sweet, funky, simple, aggressive and not as bad as you’d been led to believe.

There’s something about this “Anthropomorphic Cannabalism” Flickr set that’s undeniably good.

(via Boing Boing)