On Curing Salts (and Fearmongering)

Have you seen this commercial for McCain's frozen pizza?

"What do other companies put in their pizzas? Something called sodium nitrite..." Those last two words are pronounced with a blend of confusion and self-righteous disgust. The molecular diagram of the compound is flashed across the screen for further effect.

The food industry is quick to pick up on trends.

My generation was taught to read labels, and to mistrust "chemical" ingredients. However:

The resistance to... 'scientific' ingredients has always seemed to me misguided. In the objector's mind a line is drawn between science and cookery, which usually turns out to be entirely arbitrary. No one objects to table salt (sodium chloride) or table sugar (sucrose) in a recipe, but an ingredients list that includes fructose or sodium citrate is viewed by some with suspicion.^[1]


The Complete Skinny on Curing Salts

How salt preserves food

Imagine microbes within a piece of meat. When salt is first added to the meat, there is a relatively high concentration of salt outside the microbes, and a relatively low concentration inside. The cells of the microbes try to equalize the salt concentration on both sides of the cell membrane by expelling water and taking in salt. This ultimately either kills the cells or severely reduces their functionality. The meat itself also loses water and takes in salt, thus making it inhospitable to any microbes that show up later. That is how salt preserves food.

The difference between table salt and curing salt

Cured meats were once made with table salt, sodium chloride. This is the salt on your kitchen counter, and the salt you taste when you swim in the ocean. However, for hundreds of years we have known of other salts, naturally occurring in small quantities, that are even better at improving the flavour and storage-life of cured meats.

One such salt is potassium nitrate, or saltpeter, which is still used in Europe. In North America, potassium nitrate has been replaced by sodium nitrate, which was found to be more reliable.

The reasons why these nitrates are better than table salt at preserving meat are several and complex. Here's an example. Iron oxidizes fat, turning it rancid. When added to meat, nitrates form nitric oxide, which binds to iron atoms, preventing them from oxidizing the fat, and prolonging the storage-life of the meat.^[2]

The difference between sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite

While nitrates have been added to cured meats since at least the 17th century, in the 19th century it was discovered that salt-resistant bacteria in the meat convert the nitrates to nitrites, and that nitrites are actually the active curing agents.

Now sodium nitrite can be added directly to curing mixes. Meats that will be cured for only a short while (say, a few hours in a smokehouse), are treated with sodium nitrite. Meats that will be hung in a cellar for several weeks are treated with a blend of sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate, which is slowly converted to nitrite, thus protecting the meat for the entire curing process.

Retail forms and terminology

Here's where it gets really confusing.

You can't buy 100% sodium nitrite (unless you work at a pharmacy, maybe). It will always be cut with regular salt. In the US the most common form is a mixture of 93.75% sodium chloride, and 6.25% sodium nitrite. Brand names include Insta Cure #1 and Prague Powder. When buying from butcher suppliers in Edmonton, the most common mixtures are actually 95% sodium chloride, and 5% sodium nitrite, possibly with trace amounts of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), which is an anti-caking agent. The mixture will likely be called F.S. Cure, which is made by a company called First Spice, then packaged for the supplier that you are buying from.

In the US, curing salts are tinted pink so that they aren't confused with table salt. This gave rise to the terms "pink salt" and "tinted cure mix" (TCM) for sodium nitrite. For some reason, this precaution is not taken in Canada. The curing salts I buy are white as snow, though they are still sometimes called pink salt. It's commonly believed that the pink colour of cured meats is from the pink die in some curing salts. This isn't true: it has to do with the chemical reactions taking place in the meat.

In the US sodium nitrate is sold in a mixture of 92.75% sodium chloride, 6.25% sodium nitrite, and 1% sodium nitrate. It, too, is usually died pink in the US, but left white in Canada. The most common brand name is Insta Cure #2. From butcher suppliers around Edmonton you are more likely to be sold the F.S. Salami Cure, which can be used for all kinds of dry-curing, not just salami.

Health concerns

Curing salts have been demonized as a carcinogens. Here is a quote on the subject from the preeminent food scientist, Harold McGee.

...at present there's no clear evidence that the nitrites in cured meats increase the risk of developing cancer. Still, it's probably prudent to eat cured meats in moderation and cook them gently.^[3]


Conclusion

Curing salts are in fact what make traditionally cured meats safe to eat. The simple truth is that dried sausages like salami that will be hung in a cellar for several days or weeks must be treated with nitrite and nitrate.

To completely avoid curing salts is to avoid the unique flavours and textures of traditionally cured meats like salami and bresaola. As for the "nitrite-free pepperoni" on McCain pizzas: traditional pepperoni is dried, and therefore requires the addition of curing salts. If McCain pizzas have nitrite-free pepperoni, this means one of two things: either they are improperly curing their meat, or they are not drying their pepperoni. Obviously the latter is what is happening. I would argue that the sausage on their pizza cannot properly be called pepperoni, as it isn't dried. Too bad pepperoni isn't a protected designation.


References

1. This is Heston Blumenthal in the history section of The Fat Duck Cookbook. I wrote the quote on a scrap piece of paper, without the page number, and have since returned the book to the library. Bad journalism.
2. McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking. ©2004 Scribner, New York. Page 174.
3. Ibid. Page 125.

Food Legislation

Public health food regulations, and all other laws regarding food in Canada, are well-intentioned, and drafted to protect consumers. Most make perfect sense within the context of the industrialized food system, where people do not, and cannot, know everything about the food they eat.

When cooking, eating, and drinking outside the industrial system, food legislation often conflicts with food culture and individuals' rights. Here are some examples.


Alberta Public Health Food Regulations

The provincial public health food regulations apply to operations such as restaurants, food stands, farmers' markets, bake sales and the like. While I consider the restaurant scene only a peripheral component of our food culture, some of the restrictions put on restaurants clearly reflect how we think of food. In fact, several of the most pleasurable ingredients and preparations are misunderstood and considered too dangerous to allow.

In our food regulations, temperature is the only wholly acceptable way to control bacterial growth. Temperatures below 4°C inhibit bacterial growth, while temperatures above 60°C kill most bacteria. Perishable food can be in the "danger zone" between these two temperatures for no longer than two hours before it is considered unsafe and unfit to serve.

In the food safety courses of Alberta Health Services, there is mention of the other ways to curb bacterial growth (such as controlling acidity, moisture, and sugar content), but none supersede the two hour danger zone rule. Restaurants can't, for example, dry cure salami or saucisson sec by the traditional methods. For these sausages, ground meat is mixed with curing salt and a bacterial culture that produces acid, which inhibits the growth of pathogens. This is what gives salami its characteristic tang. Next the meat is hung in cellar conditions (between 8°C and 15°C) for a few weeks to dry. The removal of moisture further prevents the growth of pathogens. Even though bacterial growth is precisely controlled by salting, pH adjustments, and thorough drying, a health inspector would see that the meat is being held in the "danger zone" and document a critical violation of food safety.

Some of the greatest "low and slow" cooking methods, like confit and smoking, hold meat in the danger zone for more than the allotted two hours.

The health inspector's mantra is, "Hot food hot, cold food cold," meaning that food should be held and served with an internal temperature either above 60°C, or below 4°C. Serving food at these temperatures can be disagreeable, especially cold dishes. Several high-fat foods should be eaten at room temperature. Examples include pâtés, rillettes, the bacon on caesar salads, and cheese. The fat has to be at room temperature for two reasons. First is appearance: you want the bacon on your caesar salad to shine, not have globules of congealed white fat. Second is flavour and mouthfeel: the warm fat coats your tongue and helps distribute the bacon flavour. High quality cheeses should be taken out of the fridge hours before being served. I would make the same argument for hard-boiled eggs.

Which reminds me, raw eggs in all forms are discouraged: mayonnaise, and, incredibly, meringue. Even when meringue is baked, the mixture doesn't get hot enough to pasteurize the egg whites, and is therefore not safe to eat.

I agree that controlling temperature is the most effective way of controlling bacterial growth. I also admit that most of the restaurants in Edmonton have no desire to cure their own meat or smoke ribs for ten hours. Restrictive food regulations obviously don't cripple the restaurant scene. I just think they reflect our general lack of food knowledge and appreciation.

Unpasteurized Milk

This is probably the most publicized conflict between public health and individual rights: both provincial and federal legislation prohibit the distribution of unpasteurized milk. There is, however, a now-famous Ontario dairyman who sells shares in his cows, enabling him to legally distribute raw milk to the many "owners".

To me the most interesting discussion surrounds raw-milk cheese, as pasteurization kills naturally occurring bacteria and enzymes that help develop the flavour of ripened cheese.

It is legal to sell cheese made from unpasteurized milk, so long as the cheese has been aged for more than sixty days, as the salt and acid in the cheese make it impossible for pathogens to survive this period of time. The problem is that soft, ripened cheeses such as Brie and Camembert reach their peak flavour and texture after only thirty days of aging.

The sixty day minimum aging applies to all provinces except Quebec, which in 2008 passed a law allowing the sale of raw-milk cheese aged less than sixty days. My understanding is that this cheese could not be sold in Alberta, as food moving between provinces is regulated by the Food and Drugs Act, which upholds the sixty day aging minimum for raw-milk cheese.

The last time raw-milk cheese was in the Alberta news was in early 2003, when an E. coli outbreak was traced back to a cheesemaker in Leduc called Eyot Creek. There was a flurry of articles on the outbreak, and distribution was stopped immediately. The results of Capital Health's investigation were never thoroughly discussed in the media. To my knowledge, Eyot Creek didn't violate any regulations, and their cheese, while made from unpasteurized milk, was aged for at least sixty days. It seems to me that the E. coli would have been introduced after the aging process, and therefore didn't originate in the raw milk. This wasn't addressed in any article or press-release that I have come across. The media coverage enforced the public's mistrust of raw-milk cheese.

To quote Harold McGee: "It will be genuine progress when public health officials help ambitious cheesemakers to ensure the safety of raw-milk cheeses, rather than making rules that restrict consumer choice without significantly reducing risk."^[1]


Game Meats

Selling game meat, or "trafficking in wildlife", is prohibited by the Alberta Wildlife Act Regulations.

Larousse's entry on Canada gives an idea of how important game could be in our cuisine. "Four-fifths of the country consist of stretches of water and forests, rich in ground game ... and game birds... However, the state forbids the sale of these delicious foods which are reserved for private consumption." This includes restaurants. If you have ever had venison, boar, pheasant, rabbit, or any other "game animal" in a restaurant in Canada, is has been farmed and slaughtered in an abattoir.

Game meat is flavourful because of the variety of plants on which the animal feeds. Farmed animals never have access to the same quality or variety of feed as wild animals. In farming, the robust, complex flavour of the animal is lost, and the meat becomes a simple novelty.

I don't mean to malign the many hunting regulations that ensure future generations of Canadians will be able to hunt and taste game meat: it's just strange that someone who lawfully kills wildlife can't sell me the meat.


Home-Distilling

Most food-related regulations only restrict the sale of potentially harmful goods. For instance, it's not illegal to drink raw milk, or to make unripened raw-milk cheese, it's only illegal to sell it.

The Alberta Gaming and Liquor Act, however, prohibits any manufacture of liquor without a license, even if in small quantities for private consumption. To obtain the Class E Liquor License required to distill alcohol you must be running a commercial operation that produces hundreds of thousands of litres of alcohol a year.

The dangers of home-distilling are completely exaggerated and misunderstood. Most ridiculous is the idea that the stills often explode. This myth is a vestige of the days when open flames were used to boil the mash and evaporate the alcohol. If home-distilling were practiced regularly in modern homes, I'm sure electric burners would be used. (Maybe don't smoke while you distill.) To convince you that ordinary people can practice alcohol distillation safely, we recently partook in homemade schnapps from Austria, to no ill effect (besides, obviously, the intended intoxication.)

Given our historic association with grain-growing, prairie home-distilling would be a boon for our food culture.

On a completely unrelated note, 83% of the price of liquor goes towards federal and provincial taxes.^[2]

Abattoirs

I have come across a few articles saying that provincial meat inspection regulations can be prohibitively expensive and sometimes result in the closure of small slaughterhouses. This is especially a concern for producers in isolated regions, such as coastal British Columbia, and producers of niche animals, like sheep, because there are fewer abattoirs they can use. The closure of local abattoirs means that these producers have to travel farther, sometimes much farther, to kill their animals. Travelling not only adds to the cost of the product, but stresses the animals and reduces the quality of their meat.

I recently spoke to an Albertan pork producer who was interested in selling blood sausage, but who couldn't procure his pigs' blood fresh enough, due to travelling time between his farm and the abattoir.

Conclusion: Underground Food Culture

The good news is that, with the exception of distillation, none of the above regulations dictate what you can do in the privacy of your own home. You can dry-cure meat, even though is stays in the danger zone for weeks. You can eat raw eggs and wild game and even ripen raw-milk cheese to perfection. In a weird way, if you take a few tentative steps outside of the industrial food system, the above legislation will force you into very close contact with your food. For instance, since I can't buy wild venison from a butcher shop, I need to learn to hunt, or at least befriend a hunter. Either way, I am being brought closer to my food than I would at a butcher shop.

That's my lame attempt at a silver lining.


References

1. McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking. ©2004 Scribner, New York. Page 56.
2. Kendall, Kay and Bokji, Sandi (Ed.). Distilling Industry from The Canadian Encyclopedia. ©2010 Historica-Dominion. Site accessed on Monday, July 19, 2010.

Also, all the above-mentioned legislation is available online.

Language and Food

The precision of the French language in describing the actions, equipment, and raw materials of the kitchen is unmatched, and it reflects their strong appreciation and understanding of food.

Consider the diagrams of pigs that show where the different cuts of pork come from on the animal.  The British, North Americans, and French all have traditional ways to divide the animal.  You'll notice that, on the French diagram, not only are more parts of the animal used, but where the British and North Americans discern only one cut of meat, the French often have many.  The part of the animal that we call the shoulder, or butt, forms at least three cuts in French cuisine, each with their own name: palette, épaul, and plat de côtes.  To the French gourmand, each section of the shoulder has distinct textures and flavours.  A discerning English-speaking diner might be able to detect these differences, and could probably come up with good descriptors as to their location ("the front part of the shoulder," "the back part," and so on), but the fact that we don't already have names for those unique parts shows that we don't consider it an important distinction.

The greatest showcase of the relationship between language and our appreciation of food is the word "fond".  It's a French word, so the "on" is nasal and the "d" is silent. Fond is the caramelized stuff that sticks to the bottom of a pan, especially when cooking meat.

Capturing fond is important to developing the flavour of a dish, especially when making stocks, sauces, and braised dishes.  When meat is seared in a stainless steel pan, fond will develop.  To reclaim the fond and its deep caramelized flavour, you must degalze your pan.  Simply add a liquid (wine, stock, even water) then scrape the bottom of the pan to release the fond, which will dissolve into the liquid.  This liquid is now gold, and almost as valuable as the meat itself.

Despite the transcending depth of flavour fond adds to a dish, there is no English word for this stuff.  Believe me, if there was, I would use it.  French words sound pretentious.  We should really invent a short, descriptive, Saxon word for fond.


The relationship between language and understanding is so intimate, it's hard to tell which is more accurate: we don't use fond in cooking, so we don't have a name for it; or we don't have a word for fond, and so we don't use it in our cooking.

To say that fond has been neglected in our culinary heritage is misleading, because there is actually an entire industry devoted to eliminating fond from our lives: the non-stick cookware racket.  The reason that we have non-stick cookware is that generations of housewives spent an appreciable part of their lives scrubbing fond from their pots when they could have simply deglazed, which would have made their food better and the dish-washing quicker.

And so when people ask, "What's so French about French onion soup?  It's just onions in beef stock.  It could just as easily be called English onion soup,"  I say that the answer is in the luxurious use of fond to develop the flavour of the onions.  If you caramelize onions over very low heat, a delicate fond will form .  If you shake or stir the pot so that the onions are pushed and pulled over the surface, the moisture from the onions will pick up the fond and clean the pot.  The secret to French onion soup is doing this again and again for several hours.  As English-speakers we owe our knowledge of the existence of fond to the French, so we should gracefully relinquish any claim to a decent onion soup.

Slow Food says that the primary way to preserve tradition and combat industrial food is taste education.  I propose that the foundation of "taste education" is giving people a precise, vivacious language with which to talk about food.  For instance, you don't need a sophisticated palette to detect tannins in wine, as they are a pronounced textural sensation.  The trouble is that people don't know that the granular mouthfeel of some red wines is a result of tannins, and end up using words that stifle conversation and understanding. (People often describe tannic wines as "dry," which is descriptive, but confusing, as in winespeak "dry" is the opposite of "sweet".)

It is almost never the case that someone lacks the faculties to detect a certain flavour, just a combination of their never having stopped to think about taste, and then not having an adequate arsenal of words to employ.

Fat is Flavour (A short tirade)

Fat is perhaps the main source of flavor [sic] in meat. -Professional Cooking for Canadian Chefs, Sixth Edition


Nothing in particular inspired this post, but it could have very easily been a piece of low-fat cheese, or the pastry icing at a health bakery, or maybe just a dry pork chop. I want to write a bit about the judicious use of fat to make eating more pleasurable.


Fat content in specific cuts of meat. The most common cut of pork in the supermarket is the loin centre steak (usually erroneously labeled as a boneless centre chop - there's no such thing as a boneless chop). The centre steak is the leanest part of a very lean muscle. It also happens to be the toughest, driest, and least flavourful cut of pork. This is not a coincidence. The fat marbled throughout a piece of meat gives flavour, moist mouthfeel, and tenderness, as the fat separates bundles of protein. The sirloin steak, from a section of the loin closer to the hind legs of the pig, while not as uniform or lean as the centre steak, is more flavourful, juicy, and tender, largely because it has more fat marbled throughout its mass.

The same comparison can be made between beef sirloin steaks and porterhouse or t-bone steaks, or white and dark meat on poultry.

The removal of fat from supermarket cuts of meat is health-driven, but it is part of a larger trend that distances us from the origin of our food, as well as several of the chief pleasures in consuming it. Think of the boneless, skinless chicken breast. Bones are flavourful, and crispy skin gives textural contrast to succulent meat. If the rarity of fatty cuts is health-driven, what's the excuse for removing bones and skin? It's like a weird control-tactic from Brave New World: take away all reminders of mortality so we are more content and docile.

I digress.


Cooking with rendered fat. When searing meat in a pan we most often turn to neutral oils with high smoke points, like canola and grapeseed. If we really want to make our dish flavourful, why not sear our meat in its corresponding fat? Start a beef stew by searing chuck in tallow. Sear and baste a pork chop in lard.

Rendered animal fats can elevate non-meat dishes, too. Potatoes benefit immeasurably from the added depth of flavour. Duck fat is a common choice in France. Interestingly, McDonald's used to cook their fries in pure beef fat, before "the public's concern about cholesterol forced them to change to pure (though dangerously partially hydrogenated) vegetable oil."¹

Try pie dough with lard instead of butter, especially if you're making tourtiere.

If you're wondering how to obtain rendered fat, here are some ideas:

• The simplest way is to ask your butcher for scraps, then render them yourself. It sounds like an ordeal, but it's easy. There's tons of resources online for rendering fat at home. All you do is put your scraps in a pot, add a little bit of water to distribute the heat evenly, then put the pot on a burner or in your oven on the lowest possible setting. The key is gentle heat for several hours.
  
• You can also save scraps yourself. Buy larger cuts of meat that you have to trim yourself, then save the fatty scraps in the freezer until you have enough to render. Having raw (that is, un-rendered) fat in your kitchen also opens up the world of sausages, pâtés, and traditional mincemeat pies.
  
• Start making stocks at home. Buy whole poultry instead of just breasts and save the carcasses in the freezer until you have enough to fill a large stock pot. The gently simmering stock renders the fat out of the meat trim. That fat rises to the top. When you cool your stock, the fat will solidify and is easily removed in one solid mass. The amount of fat you are left with depends on how thoroughly the carcasses have been picked over and (obviously) the amount of stock you are making.
  

Cooking with craft foods that release fat. The most common example is bacon. Countless classical French recipes begin by cooking bacon, then searing other meats and sweating vegetables in the rendered bacon fat. Most notable are braised dishes like boeuf bourguignon and coq au vin, to which the bacon is later reintroduced. My great aunt used to save bacon fat to fry bread for breakfast.

Sausage works well too, but free-form sausage is better than cased sausage. The key to preparing quality cased sausages, like bratwurst, is to keep the casing in tact so that no fat is lost. This is done firstly by not scoring or puncturing the skin, and secondly by cooking on medium-low heat to prevent rupture.

Free-form sausage, on the other hand, is usually cooked and then added to a more complicated dish. The best example is Mexican-style chorizo, which is a spicy, fresh sausage. No casing means that more fat ends up in the pan, and the fat leached by chorizo is almost as valuable as the meat itself. It is bright red, and infused with paprika and chile. Try cooking some free-form chorizo, then remove the meat form the pan, leaving the fat. Fry some eggs in that fat and add the meat back (at left). Chorizo also works wonders on rice dishes. Cook chorizo with some onions. Add raw rice and coat it with the rendered fat. Add chicken stock, bring to a simmer, then cover and place in the oven until the rice is cooked. The pilaf will come out stained with the spice and pork-flavour of the chorizo.

Italian-style sausages, usually flavoured with pepper and fennel, work well in this way, too. They are sold in casings, but you can squeeze the meat out and use it free-form.

Cheese is another example that was recently brought to my attention. Cheese is not usually a base flavour like bacon, but when a meal is starting with seared cheese, maybe a saganaki meze, don't waste that cheese fat. You could cook your keftedhes in the same pan, or at least fry some bread in it.

That about does it for my rant. I'll return to a (slightly) less self-righteous tone next post.


Reference
1. Steingarten, Jeffrey. Fries, from The Man Who Ate Everything. ©1997 Vintage Books, New York. Page 415.

Flavour Tripping

If you have not already heard of a fruit called the miracle berry, this post is going to sound insane.

I'll start at the beginning.

There is a fruit called the miracle berry. It is indigenous to west Africa. After you eat this berry, for a period ranging from thirty minutes to two hours sour food tastes sweet. It’s weird.

Miracle berries are most commonly dried and sold in tablet form. There are countless dieters and diabetics who like to sweeten their food without the added calories or insulin spike. Lisa’s sister Tara, on the other hand, recently ordered a package of these tablets (10 pills for about $15) to host a "flavour tripping party". That means that we ate the tablets and then tasted a bunch of random foods.

When Lisa and I arrived, Tara's table was set with citrus fruits, crackers, goat cheese, mustard, yoghurt, cider vinegar, wine, Guinness, sour soothers, Tobasco sauce, and unsweetened lemon meringue and rhubarb pies.

To administer the miracle berry tablets, place one on your tongue. Don't chew it, let it melt, exposing as much of your tongue to the pill as possible. It takes a couple minutes to dissolve. This is not a mind-altering drug: there is a molecule in the tab that binds to your tongue and changes your perception of taste. It's perfectly legal, but when you're sitting in a circle, waiting for a pill to dissolve on your tongue, and someone asks, "How long does it take to kick in?" it certainly feels like you're dropping hallucinogens. You're not.

The concept is so unbelievable that even after I had taken one tablet, it crossed my mind briefly that this was a hoax—a practical joke aimed at getting me to drink a bottle of vinegar. I shook my paranoia and bit into a lemon. Sure enough it tasted like lemonade. I proceeded to sample everything on the table.

The most successful experiments were the citrus fruits and the yogurt, which, with its tanginess converted to a mild sweetness, resembled a fine panna cotta. The pies were good, too. The rhubarb was so potent that some of its tartness "broke through" the miracle berry and made for a perfect balance of sweet and sour.

The least successful items were the sour soothers and the wine. The chief enjoyment of these foods comes from their tartness, without which they are simply sweet and (alcoholic content notwithstanding) boring.

The cider vinegar almost worked, but it tended to overwhelm the effects of the miracle berry, remaining uncomfortably sour.

Goat cheese tasted like sweetened cream cheese. Guinness tasted a bit like a milk shake, only with the beer's characteristic roasted flavour.

Though you can barely taste acid, you are still vulnerable to the other effects of the sour food you are eating. After consuming two whole lemons my tongue was acid-burnt and my stomach ached. I suspect that this is how most flavour tripping parties end: people start realizing that they just consumed tablespoons of vinegar and hot sauce and start to feel sick. Then it's a bit like drinking hard liquor: the hangover makes you forget the rush of excitement you felt during the first few drinks. Don't misunderstand me - I enjoyed flavour tripping, but right now I don't feel the need to ever do it again.

Maybe it mimics alcohol in that regard, too. Maybe next weekend I'll be back on the berries.

Fresh

Last night there was a community screening of the movie Fresh at the City Arts Centre. A guy named Mike, a fitness instructor by day, decided he wanted to tell people about sustainable food. He bought a screening edition of Fresh, rented the drama room of the City Arts Centre, and projected the movie onto the wall. I was there with a date and a pad of paper. I also wanted to sneak in pop-corn, but since Fresh is about challenging the industrial food system... well, it seemed inappropriate.

Fresh is very similar to the 2008 film Food Inc. Two of the main voices in Food Inc., author Michael Pollan and farmer Joel Salatin, also feature in Fresh. For all I know, Fresh could be unused footage from Food Inc.

I don't point this out as a negative. The two movies are actually good complements: while Food Inc. focuses mostly on the problems created by the industrial food system, Fresh concentrates on solutions. Besides spending more time on Salatin's farm, we meet Will Allen, a former basketball player who has built an organic farm in the middle of Milwaukee; and David Ball, who runs a group of grocery stores in Kansas city that champion local, sustainable food.

Dan Barber on Sousa Foie Gras

On Acquiring Tastes

Olive Boot Camp

During the months preceding my 2008 trip to Greece, I had one major apprehension about travelling. It had nothing to do with passports or language or money: it was about food. I was going to spend five weeks in southern Greece, and I despised olives.

This was a problem.

I would not be able to appreciate a fruit that has been central to the country's history, culture, and cuisine for thousands of years. It would be like going to Athens without visiting the Parthenon.

So, being of a logical bent, I decided to systematically train myself to enjoy olives. I would eat one olive every day, until I left for Greece, and thereby force myself to acquire a taste for the briny fruit. This is essentially the way that I acquired most "adult" tastes. When I was younger I had a revulsion for coffee, tea, wine, beer, and blue cheese, but through gradual exposure I came to love them all. This was to be a controlled and intensified version of that natural acclimatization.

I bought two jars of olives: one green and one kalamata. The first week was rough. Each olive brought a grimace, a wince, occasionally a gag. The second week was smoother, but not enjoyable. I started to worry that the experiment wasn't going to work, so I intensified the process further and started eating a few olives every night before I went to bed.

At this rate I exhausted my two jars quickly. This is when I came upon Olive Me, a specialty shop on 109th Street that sells house-marinated olives. I didn't realize that there was such a difference between grocery store canned olives (rubbery, one-note wonders) and these "fresh" olives (better texture, a fuller, fruitier taste). I put "fresh" in quotation marks because all olives are hydrated in water, then a brine, before being eaten. The fruits at Olive Me are only fresh in that they haven't been canned.

In time the experiment was a success. I was able to enjoy the small bowl of olives that preceded most Greek meals, and even the olive paste that filled some pastries.


Scotch

One taste that I never developed naturally, despite several sporadic attempts, was that for scotch. I have a few friends who wax eloquent about the smoky, peaty, campfire tastes of a good scotch, but the drink has always made me gag. This is troublesome because of my partial Scottish heritage, and because I'll never be a worldly film noir private eye until I can drink a stiff glass of scotch.

And so I have decided to apply the system once more. By providence I was recently given a bottle of nineteen year old Bruichladdich (said "Brook-laddie"), which I plan to drink regularly in the evenings. Yes, it sounds like I'm ritualizing my descent into alcoholism, but this is really just a small step in refining my palate.

I had my first taste tonight. While I did shudder after the first sip, the scotch was much smoother than I anticipated . Maybe it's that this bottle is about three times more expensive than anything else I've tried. Surprisingly there was a fruit note. I don't know what kind of fruit, exactly: something complex and lingering. Grapefruit, maybe. And of course there was smoke. I don't know how to reconcile all these different tastes.

I can see that there's a long road ahead of me. Somehow I'll manage.

Health Check Imposter

Notice anything peculiar about this chocolate bar? Doesn't that symbol on the bottom right look suspiciously like a heart? With a check mark on it?

The really sad part is that when I first saw this, I wasn't that surprised that a chocolate bar could carry the Heart and Stroke Foundation's Heart Check symbol. After all, other "heart-healthy" items endorsed by the Heart and Stroke Foundation include Slush-Puppies, hamburgers, and tater-tots.

For thorough critiques of the Health Check system, check out the Weighty Matters blog, or this expose from the CBC's Marketplace.

Anyways, Coffee Crisp obviously does not sport the Health Check symbol. That bulbous red patch is actually Nestle's logo (so you can see the same picture on other Nestle products, like Smarties). I have no idea what it is supposed to represent. Below the check mark the wrapper reads, "Your good health comes from a balanced diet, proper nutrition and physical activity."

At first I thought the slogan "Coffee Crisp makes a nice, light, snack" was a reference to the light texture of the bar, but it's actually meant to trick people into thinking that wafers covered in chocolate might be good for you.

Unbelievable.