Forget Take a look at cricket scores and desire costs – mango selling prices are the summertime figures to check out. Mango period is set to peak in early December, with some 600,000 trays flooding the current market each individual 7 days, according to the Australian Mango Marketplace Association. Production of the tropical fruit is up 14{d2b09b03d44633acb673e8080360919f91e60962656af8ade0305d5d8b7e4889} from final 12 months, with amplified offer translating to falling prices for people.
Mangoes and beer, with each other at last in this mango shandy. Photograph: Dan Matthews/The Guardian
Kensington Prides, also recognized as Bowens, are characterised by their slight pink blush and solid aroma. They’re the archetypical Australian mango, but the dilemma continues to be: when will this mango shandy grow to be the archetypical Australian tipple? Also on your summer time cocktail record: the mango tango, and a champagne lassi.
Calypsos are prized for their sleek, organization and fibre-much less flesh. They maintain their condition well when sliced or cubed, building them suitable for tropical fruit salads, boozy fruit salads, and the topper to Adam Liaw’s pavlova.
Thomasina Miers’ chilled mango salad in anise-lime syrup, with optional tequila. Photograph: Johanna Parkin
It’s heading to be a Honey Gold kind of Xmas, with crops from Katherine entering the industry from mid to late December. Their sweet, prosperous flesh holds up in this chilled rice pudding with the heady aromas of pandan and passionfruit. Marginally underripe mangoes work effectively in this paneer and mango salad with tamarind and shallots.
Underripe mangoes? They’ll perform perfectly in Meera Sodha’s paneer and mango salad with tamarind and shallots. Photograph: Emma Lee/The Guardian
Imagine environmentally friendly mangoes – the sort best suited for cooking in south and south-east Asian savoury dishes – and you are likely imagining of unripe Nam Dok Thai mangoes. You will most probably discover them in Asian grocers get a several and transform them into Palisa Anderson’s “party dish” of yum mamuang (deep-fried snapper with green mango salad), or this salty, spicy and bitter som dtum from her late mom and doyenne of Thai cookery, Amy Chanta. Past salads, there’s also this Keralan fish curry with mango.
Yum mamuang, deep-fried snapper with green mango salad. Photograph: Brett Stevens/Chat Thai
Experience additional like a lazy summer time? Attempt this no-churn mango ice-product, and this no-bake mango, ginger and lime tart. The recipes from our British isles colleagues connect with for tinned mango pulp, but Australians have the luxurious of opting for new. Kensington Prides are the best Australian substitute – they have softer, far more yielding, far more blender-welcoming flesh. They’ll also function very well in Meera Sodha’s mango and cardamom lassi.
And if, for some motive, you’ve remaining your mango to overripen in the fruit bowl, panic not – it is destined for this mango sizzling sauce.
Every cook loves great gear and these next-level kitchen tools will upgrade your culinary … [+] experience.
Apres Supply Co
Once you have the essentials in your kitchen, then the fun really begins. That’s when you can start adding special equipment that makes cooking and baking easier and more stylish.
The following is my eclectic list of next-level kitchen tools. Some of the items on this list are things that I never thought that I would buy, and now that I have them, I cannot live without them.
The gorgeous handmade wooden biscuit cutters from Tennessee native Riley/Land come in a size for … [+] every biscuit maker and feel great in the hand.
Joseph Riley Land
Beautiful Handmade Wood
The Riley Land Collection is curated by Joseph Riley Land and each piece is sourced by him directly from the maker. The beautiful wooden biscuit cutter is a must have for any baker. If you make biscuits, or if you’ve always aspired to make biscuits, this is your new family heirloom.
The biscuit cutter is “ hands-down, my best selling item. It is my star…” said owner and founder Joseph Riley Land. Fittingly, the wood that the biscuit cutters are made from comes from his family farmland, and his neighbor Mr. A. makes them. The cutters come in black walnut, cherry and ambrosia-maple wood, as well as four sizes, the Riley/Land Biscuit Cutter, the Fat Cat, The Kittenhead, and the Cathead biscuit cutter. The biscuit cutters start at $18.
Super-premium Stella Falone kitchen products are made from the pieces of Ebony and American-walnut … [+] wood that are leftover after making Taylor Guitars.
Stella Falone
I think a few premium wood cutting boards are the most important upgrade in your kitchen after three really good knives. There are lots of cutting boards on the market—some are disposable and some are family heirlooms. If you invest in a really good cutting board, and take care of it, it will last you a lifetime. Two companies that make handcrafted cutting boards that are as beautiful as they are functional are The Boardsmith, and Stella Falone.
The Boardsmith is proud to be a “Mom and Pop” family business and they make each board by hand, paying careful attention to details like woodgrain direction and seamless joinery. This craftsmanship is recognized by many chefs and they have a loyal following. They use hardwoods including maple, cherry, and black walnut sourced from sawmills who use sustainable forestry practices (FSC). They will also engrave a name, initials or logo on the boards which is a very nice touch for yourself or your favorite cook. The boards start at $125 and can be purchased at theboardsmith.com
Do you love music and food? If so, there is a Stella Falone cutting board or paddle for you. Stella Falone was established by Bob Taylor, co-founder of Taylor Guitars. [ICYDK, Taylor Guitars is the leading acoustic guitar brand and they are played by many of the superstars in the music world, including Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney and Shawn Mendez.]
In an effort to minimize waste, Stella Falone uses the leftover pieces of Ebony and American-walnut wood from making the guitars, to make kitchen products. The cutting boards and wooden paddles are super-premium and absolutely gorgeous. The paddles and boards start at $59 and can be purchased at stellafalone.com
The Premium Grill Master apron is made of waxed recycled cotton with leather and brass accents and … [+] gets better the more you wear it.
Apres Supply Company
Clothes for the Cook
Every cook needs a bad-a** apron. And Apres Supply Co., is just that company. These are not your average, everyday aprons. The owner and creator of Apres aprons, Michael Wendland, was looking for a special apron as a gift for his wife, and when he couldn’t find what he was looking for he decided to create his own.
The aprons are made from premium materials including leather, waxed canvas, premium denim, recycled cotton, and premium cotton blends as well as brass grommets and heavy duty trims. And this could be the last apron that you ever buy, because they have a lifetime guarantee—something I have never heard of in the apron business. Apres offers free exchanges for the lifetime of the product, but the real reason to love it is that it’s both fashionable and functional.
If you’re looking for a seriously heavy-duty apron, the Premium Grill Master is like a Barbour coat for the outdoor cook. It is made of 16oz waxed recycled cotton with leather trims and interchangeable straps. You have an option to personalize the apron and it include a bottle opener.
The Premium Pizza Master apron is made of lighter-weight 10oz recycled cotton canvas and features two faux-fur lined pockets. If you live in the Northeast, Midwest, Canada or another cold and blustery area, you can put your hands in your pockets while you are waiting for your pizza or steak to cook, and keep them warm. Even if you don’t need the fur-lined pockets for warmth, they feel good and are a nice touch.
The premium aprons are competitively priced at $115.00 but there are other choices that start at $89.00. The aprons ship for free to anywhere in North America and come in a premium black gift box. They can be purchased at apressupply.com.
Frieling is well known in coffee circles for their heavy-duty insulated Double-Walled French Press … [+] and this fall, they added six decorator colors to the line.
Elizabeth Karmel
Coffee and Tea
Coffee and tea are two of the biggest rituals that come out of the kitchen. And, coffee snobs have long loved the French Press. Top on their list is the Frieling Double-Walled Stainless Steel French Press. The 100{d2b09b03d44633acb673e8080360919f91e60962656af8ade0305d5d8b7e4889} stainless steel French Press is double walled to keep the coffee hot longer. In fact, it keeps coffee hot four-times longer than glass French presses.
This fall, Frieling launched a double-walled French press in six colors so that you can add a pop of color to your morning ritual. The lacquered French presses hold 34 fluid ounces, have a double screen to filter out maximum sediment, and a no drip spout. The French Press can also be used for looseleaf tea and is a “top tip” for tea aficionados. The presses have a suggested retail price of $99.95.
Once you use an electric tea kettle to heat water for tea or your French press, you will never go back to a stovetop kettle. It is so much faster than waiting for the water to boil (on the stove).
If you’re looking for an electric tea kettle that looks as good as it performs, SMEG fits the bill. This is one of those appliances that I swore that I didn’t need. And then I fell in love with my red SMEG mini Tea kettle. The mini version offers the same 50s design in a compact size that is especially welcome when space is limited. The kettle sits on an anti-slip 360° chrome base and has a double-wall structure with a stainless-steel lining and water level markings inside.
The internal water level indicator is very helpful. I found that just above the minimum water mark is good for one cup, and filling it at the maximum water level is good for 3 cups of hot water. The mini SMEG electric kettle is available in seven colors including white, black, cream, pastel blue, pastel green, pink and red. The Mini kettle is available at Williams-Sonoma.com for a suggested retail price is $149.95. The SMEG Basic full-size kettle has a 56-ounce capacity and starts at $189.95.
Send a message with the ice in your drink with a customizable, monogrammed silicone ice-cube tray … [+] from Siligrams
Siligrams
The Ice Cube Makes The Drink
The cocktail ice-cube tray just got personal. Ice cubes make a big difference in your drink, especially if you are drinking whiskey on [one] rock. Siligrams has upgraded the silicone ice-cube mold with personalization. The trays are custom-made with your monogram, company logo, or a unique design.
The silicone ice-cube trays are easy to fill, and it is easy to release the cubes one-by-one as you need them. Siligrams makes the customizable ice cube trays in three square cube sizes as well as a “whiskey ball” mold, ice shot-glass mold and other shapes. You can also opt to buy the trays with or without a lid. But if you are going for a monogrammed ice cube tray, I say go all the way and order a lid. I really like the matching silicone lid that fits over the ice tray as it keeps the ice pristine. The trays start at $29.00 with free shipping and take about two weeks to customize.
The 3-cup Zojirushi rice cooker makes perfect rice and so much more including steel-cut oatmeal that … [+] you can set on a timer so that it is hot and ready to dish up when you wake up.
Zojirushi
Perfect Rice and Oatmeal Too
I admit that that until a few months ago I was the person who said they would never buy a rice cooker. I didn’t want another appliance that I only used a few times, but I finally had to come to grips with the fact that I am the world’s worst rice cooker, and I needed some help. My ‘in-the-know’ friend, Anthony, recommended Zojirushi and I soon discovered that if you buy the right rice cooker, you can also use it to cook oatmeal and grits among other grains.
You can also set the cooker on a timer and have hot oatmeal waiting for you in the morning. The rice—for the first time in my life—is fluffy and dry, and waking up to hot Scottish pinhead oatmeal is a game changer.
I purchased the 3-cup, Micom Rice Cooker and Warmer with both a GABA brown and steel-cut oatmeal setting. The rice cooker also has technology that they call fuzzy logic technology, which allows the rice cooker to cook all kinds of different grains, and ensure a consistent finished product even if you put too little or too much water in the machine.
The 3-cup capacity will make approximately 6 cups of cooked rice. It is lightweight and has a retractable cord which makes it very easy to store. Suggested retail is $157.99.
Smart Appliances
The ChefiQ Smart Thermometer not only monitors the internal temperature of the food but the app … [+] walks you through the cooking process.
Elizabeth Karmel
Using an app on your phone and wireless cooking thermometers are not new, but the CHEFiQ Smart Thermometer is the thinnest one on the market, and it is very smart. The diameter of the thermometer is important because you want to make as small a hole in your food as possible. The larger the hole, the more the internal juices can escape.
Besides the size of this clever device, it tracks the internal temperature in real time while your food cooks, and alerts you when it is time to take action. It is heat-safe up to 572°F and has an internal food temperature range of 32°F to 225°F making it a great choice for smoking barbecue meats that you want to temp over 200°F. The thermometer is safe to use on the grill, in the oven, and even in air fryers and deep fryers. The packaging is very sleek and the charging case is super premium with a cool silicone tray in the lid that fits 2 thermometers like a glove.
The thermometer was developed to work with the CHEFiQ app and that’s what makes it really smart. Using the app, the thermometer has the ability to guide you through the cooking process. Follow a few prompts such as type of meat, type of cut, thickness, cooking appliance, etc. and the thermometer will map out your recipe step-by-step, like GPS for cooks. The alerts include when to flip the food, if necessary, when to pull it off the heat and how long to let it rest.
Like all smart appliances, it needs to be fully charged and it takes some time to set up before your first use, but that’s true for any smart wireless appliance. The key to success is positioning the probe which needs to be fully inserted at the thickest point of the food so that none of the stainless steel is showing. Beware that inaccurate placement can cause inaccurate readings.
The app is user friendly and you can tell it was designed with the help of really good cooks. I have used it many times because the CHEFiQ Smart Cooker is my favorite pressure cooker, and the thermometer uses the same app. The app has hundreds of recipes created in-house by their expert test kitchen staff of former chefs, food magazine editors and recipe developers. The recipes work and there is a great variety.
Even if you cook for a living and don’t think you need one more recipe I guarantee you’ll find one that you will make over and over again. For me, it is the brilliantly simple and delicious Mushroom Bisque that I have made more times than I can count. The CHEFiQ thermometer and Smart Cooker will enhance your cooking experience and make you a better cook.
Besides the recipes, the multi-pot has an integrated scale for weighing ingredients, more than 100 built-in presets and functions for virtually every cooking need including sous vide.
It’s a smart appliance, and what that means is that it just keeps getting better as the company creates updates. You don’t have to buy a new appliance, you just update your smart cooker with the over-the-air firmware updates and this is exactly the same for the thermometer.
This fun interactive kitchen appliance makes anything you can freeze into a creamy treat from a can … [+] of fruit or a carton of store-bought yogurt to from-scratch custards, gelatos and boozy cocktails.
Ninja Creami
Turn Your Kitchen into an Ice Cream Shoppe
Making ice cream at home has never been easier and the new Ninja Creami Deluxe 11-in-1 Ice-Cream Maker now makes frozen boozy drinks. The Creami is known for turning just about anything into ice cream, including cans of fruit. It is fun to use and makes a pint at a time so you can experiment with just about anything that you want to eat creamy, cold and frozen.
The premise is simple. You freeze the base for 24 hours—ice cream custard or whatever you want to make into a frozen treat/ice cream—and the paddle of the Creami literally “creamerizes” the contents. The new Creami Deluxe can also spin slushies, make Italian ice, frozen yogurt and creamy coffee drinks. There is a setting for mix-ins and this is where the fun begins. Make a simple base like vanilla and add your favorite toppings, candy, sauce etc., to unleash your inner Ben and Jerry and customize it how you like it.
For those who prefer it super creamy, there’s a new re-spin function to make a creamier soft- serve style ice cream. The Creami Deluxe has a suggested retail price of $249.99
Each individual food has its have nutrients, but sometimes consuming two or far more of them with each other can be beneficial to your physique. When we believe of healthy foods, the to start with factor that pops in our head is some green leafy vegetable. Obtaining it on your own is superior as well, but if you add tomatoes to it, it can be even greater, claimed an professional. This is not the only healthier food mixture that you can go for. There are lots of extra, so browse on to obtain out how to combine the substances to raise your health and fitness. Really do not worry as style will not be compromised.
Our eating plan need to be like our clothes. Just the way we mix and match out outfits, we ought to also club healthy substances and consume.
You have to try to eat healthy meals combinations. Graphic courtesy: Shutterstock
Health and fitness Shots attained out to Payal Sharma, Senior Dietician at Dharamshila Narayana Superspeciality Healthcare facility, to know extra about the nutritious food items mixtures.
1. Beans and rice
Both these food items by yourself are balanced decisions, but you can have them alongside one another way too. Sharma stated that a total protein foodstuff is the one that is made up of “all the amino acids which your overall body necessitates, and the amino acids discovered in rice complements those people that are in beans.” This makes it a food that is rich in large good quality protein, so take in the two collectively.
Also examine: What tends to make rajma chawal a comfort foodstuff that is also terrific for pounds decline
2. Leafy greens and tomatoes
Of course, leafy greens almost certainly tops the checklist of healthiest food in the environment. And why not? Following all, dim leafy greens these as kale, spinach, and collards consist of iron, but it’s tough to take in the iron from these eco-friendly vegetation devoid of the assistance of vitamin C. To get great combination of nutritious and tasty foods, basically blend fresh new or sautéed leafy greens with tomatoes, a splash or lemon juice or even items of strawberries if you adore the juicy red fruit.
3. Egg and cheese
A glass of milk is commonly sufficient to preserve solid bones. Apparently, calcium and vitamin D do the job in synergy to assistance in producing bones healthful. So, an egg and cheese sandwich, a frittata or an omelet are superior choices than just a glass of milk. Even though egg yolks comprise vitamin D, cheese has calcium in it.
Eggs are superior for wellbeing! Graphic courtesy: Shutterstock
4. Oatmeal and water
This may possibly by now be a part of breakfast for several, but you could be accomplishing it incorrect. Oatmeal cookies and a warm bowl of oatmeal are a very good blend for wellness, but be confident to consume lots of drinking water much too, proposed the skilled. She reported that the oats will need to take in water in buy to get the job done correctly and give their lots of rewards. Oatmeal is a superior source of fibre which aids in lowering blood cholesterol levels and aids in keeping you complete for a longer time.
5. Tomatoes and olive oil
Tomatoes give daily life to a lot of dishes. Cooked tomato solutions like handmade tomato sauce, tomato soup, and tomato paste are the very best resources of lycopene, which is an antioxidant. In accordance to Sharma, it can help in building one’s heart wholesome and might reduced the hazard of colon most cancers. Merely mix it with coronary heart-healthier monounsaturated olive oil for utmost absorption.
The moment you head to the kitchen area, make certain you get the wholesome foodstuff mixtures appropriate.
On August 7, National Review published an article lambasting the US Department of Agriculture’s decision, announced in May, to broaden the prohibition of discrimination in federally funded nutrition programs, including the National School Lunch Program, to include sexual orientation and gender identity. The writer’s argument centered on a Christian school in Tampa, Fla., that, he wrote, was being “forced by the government to choose between adherence to the laws of man and those of God.”1
There is disagreement over what the broader prohibition actually means, with the department insisting it is aimed only at ensuring that LGBTQ+ students and others are not denied access to these nutrition programs, either explicitly or through intimidation. But many conservatives say the change opens up schools and other institutions to lawsuits for not having gender-neutral bathrooms or for using pronouns that correspond to biological sex.2
There is much here to unpack, but that’s for another day. The relevant story, for our purposes, is in the op-ed’s headline: “A New Low in the Radical Left’s Culture War: The Weaponization of Food.”3
The “weaponization of food” is nothing new, of course. For as long as there has been human conflict, food has been used as a weapon. The Romans starved Carthage. The Germans starved Leningrad during World War II. The CIA force-fed hunger-striking prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. And just this year, Russia bombed the Ukrainian port of Odessa to disrupt grain exports.4
National Review, though, was getting at something different: food as a front in the nation’s ongoing culture war, a proxy for larger issues of character, morality, and patriotism.5
The magazine’s finger-pointing at “the radical left” notwithstanding, it was the right that pioneered the use of food to smear its opponents—in this case, to frame liberals and progressives as “elite” pushers of the nanny state. The strategy took hold in the 1990s and evolved over the ensuing decades, as what we eat and how it’s produced became a national debate, and as culture clashes—over affirmative action, gay marriage, school curricula, abortion, and so on—seeped into every corner of our lives.6
As the final decade of the 20th century dawned, the nation’s politics were changing. There was a growing clamor on the right, led by Georgia Representative Newt Gingrich and firebrand pundit Pat Buchanan, to abandon what they described as the “morning in America” pragmatism of the Reagan era and exploit the cultural divides that had opened up a generation earlier around the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the environmental movement.7
Buchanan summed up the sentiment in 1988: “The Republican moment slipped by…when the GOP refused to take up the challenge from the left on its chosen battleground: the politics of class, culture, religion and race.” Buchanan’s GOP convention speech in 1992, in which he invoked a fight for the “soul of America,” is often cited as the opening salvo in the modern culture war.8
While the right was reorienting around a politics of grievance, America’s relationship to what it ate was also undergoing a seismic shift. The 1980s had birthed the “celebrity chef” with the likes of Wolfgang Puck, Jonathan Waxman, and Alice Waters. “California cuisine,” a vegetable-centered approach that blew up at Chez Panisse, Waters’s Berkeley-based temple of seasonal eating, provided an earthy (and earnest) counterpoint to the fusty steakhouses and French restaurants that had long dominated the high-end dining scene. As Ronald Reagan enshrined trickle-down economics, kneecapped the federal regulatory regime, and unleashed Wall Street’s rapacious id, those who thrived in this greed-is-good era feasted on smoked salmon pizza at Spago in Los Angeles and truffled chicken breast at Jams in Manhattan.9
Over the next 10 years, this highbrow “foodie” culture spread beyond the scene-makers to become something resembling a national obsession. Whereas the main concerns at mealtime had traditionally been quantity, cost, and convenience, food was now—as David Kamp described in his book The United States of Arugula—“a fundamental facet of our cultural life, a part of the conversation, something contemplated as well as eaten.”10
Food, in other words, became cool.11
Signs of this shift were all around. The Food Network launched in 1993, driving an aspirational entertainment industry that turned cooking into a spectator sport. That same year, Chipotle was born, marking the rise of the fast-casual restaurant. Farmers markets cropped up around the country. Fusion cuisine, from fajitas to Chinese chicken salad, was everywhere. The food blogger crawled from the digital swamp, and people gathered on message boards to trade tips on where to find the best barbecue or tacos in town. The US Chamber of Commerce declared 1999 the “year of the restaurant.”12
To the right’s new Kulturkrieger, eager to recast themselves as populist champions of “real America,” all this gustatory fuss proved irresistible. Painting coastal liberals as out-of-touch elites rhapsodizing over French cheese and expensive wine was a natural extension of the “limousine liberal” line of attack used by earlier generations of culture warriors. In 1988, Rush Limbaugh launched his decades-long rant against brie-eating liberals as he took talk radio to the dark side and made it a force in conservative politics. That same year, foreshadowing what was to come, Dan Quayle, the Republican candidate for vice president, swiped at the Democratic presidential nominee, Michael Dukakis, for suggesting to Iowa farmers that Belgian endive was a viable alternative to corn and soybeans. “His idea of farm production is growing flowers in Harvard Yard,” Quayle said of the Massachusetts governor.13
It would have been easy to dismiss this new food fight as little more than a fashionable twist on routine political posturing. But as the conversation around food got bigger in the ’90s, the stakes also got higher. Mounting evidence that the American way of eating was causing serious health problems spurred talk of reform. Obesity, which had risen sharply over the previous decade, was deemed a national crisis. Rather than engage with reformers, however, the right simply broadened its culture war around food, politicizing the debate in ways that had significant consequences, not only for public health but, eventually, for the nation’s response to climate change. Indeed, the weaponization of food would escalate beyond partisan name-calling, becoming a matter of life and death.14
Obesity v. the Twinkie Tax
By the time Bill Clinton was elected president, in 1992, obesity was just emerging as a prominent public-health concern. Between 1980 and 1990, the percent of American adults who were obese jumped from 15 percent to 23 percent, and a series of reports had raised the alarm about the nation’s growing weight problem.15
Before long, medical authorities began using terms like “national crisis” and “epidemic” to characterize the problem. Rates of diabetes and other diet-related health issues also were rising, and the soaring cost of treating them became part of the argument for action. Dr. C. Everett Koop, the former surgeon general, launched “Shape Up America!,” a national campaign to get people to exercise and eat a healthier diet. “Smoking kills 500,000 people a year; obesity-related conditions kill 300,000,” Koop said at the time.16
Clinton himself played a role in the heightened attention to obesity. During the 1992 campaign, his weakness for fast and otherwise unhealthy food—and his corresponding struggle with his weight—was widely discussed and lampooned in the media, including in an iconic skit on Saturday Night Live. Clinton’s nickname was “Bubba,” and it was suggested that his love of chicken enchiladas (made with something called “smooth-melt cheese”), jalapeno cheeseburgers, barbecue, pie, and the like was integral to his regular-guy appeal with voters—kitchen-table issues, you might say.17
When he came to Washington, though, Clinton quickly ran afoul of the critics of the American way of eating. Before the president-elect even settled in the White House, a group of prominent chefs—led by Alice Waters—sent a letter urging him to eat a more healthful diet and set a better example for the nation. “Just seeing what Clinton eats is pretty distressing,” Waters told The Washington Post. “McDonald’s and Cokes. It’s a terrible image.”18
The retort to this tsk-tsking came quickly. A Boston Globe columnist told the “culinary busybodies” to “get out of [Clinton’s] kitchen.”19
US presidents are, of course, routinely picked at by all manner of interest groups. It comes with the job. But in this instance, the nit being picked had staying power, and the stage was set for a more consequential fight over fat.20
In December of 1994, Kelly Brownell, then the director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, published a short op-ed in The New York Times in which he called for a tax on “foods with little nutritional value,” as part of a strategy for addressing the nation’s obesity problem. The focus on “personal responsibility” and “willpower” was misguided and punitive, he wrote, shaping a “view that the body can be molded at will and that an imperfect body reflects a flawed personality.” Instead, Brownell argued, we should treat obesity as a product of the physical and economic environments in which we live. Just as we taxed alcohol and cigarettes, a tax on fatty and sugary foods would, he claimed, reduce their consumption and “the revenue could be used for public exercise facilities—bike paths and running tracks—or nutrition education in schools.”21
The right’s culture warriors pounced, dubbing Brownell’s proposal the “Twinkie tax and Brownell himself a member of the “high-fat Gestapo.” Needless to say, Congress never embraced Brownell’s proposal, and the debate over taxing unhealthy food continues today. When Donna Shalala, Clinton’s Health and Human Services Secretary, was asked if she supported a “Twinkie tax” on junk food, she quipped: “Not with this president.”22
What could have been a moment of reckoning for a complex problem that cuts across political and socioeconomic lines instead became mired in the rapidly expanding culture war.23
It’s no coincidence that the Center for Consumer Freedom (known at the time as Guest Choice Network) rose up in 1995, backed by money from the tobacco and restaurant industries, and began inveighing against the “growing cabal of activists…meddl[ing] in Americans’ lives.” Its targets included the “self-anointed ‘food police,’ health campaigners…animal-rights misanthropes, and meddling bureaucrats” who “all claim to know what’s best for you.”24
Big government had been effectively demonized during the Reagan years (with Clinton carrying the torch into the new century). This response by the Center for Consumer Freedom to a 1997 Wall Street Journal op-ed urging the government to spend more money to fight obesity illustrates how the center leveraged the specter of the dreaded nanny state to defend the interests of the food industry:25
We know too well what happens when government gets an open invitation to go into its “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” role—more regulations. Can you imagine government regulation of menu selections or mandatory calorie contents by each menu item? This may sound unlikely, but the industry must pay attention when the Wall Street Journal devotes a half-page editorial to the public’s eating habits.26
Each year, it seemed, the rhetoric escalated. In 2000, when the latest installment of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the federal government’s main source of nutrition advice, came out, Clinton spoke on the need to improve the nation’s diet. “We’re eating more fast food because of our hectic schedules, and we’re less physically active because of our growing reliance on modern conveniences, from cars to computers to remote controls.” In response, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed that likened the president’s message to fascism. “[I]f Bill Clinton really wants ideas for a healthy eating crusade, he must surely look to the only political regime that thoroughly made them part of national policy: Nazi Germany.”27
Meanwhile, Americans kept getting heavier. In a 1999 report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said obesity “spread rapidly during the 1990s across all states, regions, and demographic groups in the United States.”28
Can you libel a cow?
In terms of symbolic value, few foods can rival meat. Throughout history and around the world, the consumption of meat has been tied to virility and prosperity, even to our very human-ness. In the US, beef, and the culture that surrounds it, is iconic, the embodiment of how Americans like to see themselves: free, independent, strong. It has always been central to this country’s aspirational culture—getting ahead meant meat on the table—and we built a food system that ensured it remained abundant and cheap. Today, we consume more of it than any other country.29
It’s no surprise, then, that meat would figure prominently in the nation’s ongoing culture war over its diet. As the food fights unspooled in the ’90s, meat had yet to move to the center of the ring. Nevertheless, the decade still managed to provide a glimpse of what it would look like when it eventually did.30
It may be hard to recall, more than a decade after her eponymous talk show ended its 25-year run, just what a phenomenon Oprah Winfrey was in the 1990s. She was the biggest of stars, wealthy and beloved. On an average weekday, some 13 million people tuned in to watch her discuss everything from her own struggles with weight to formerly taboo subjects such as rape and incest. The Oprah Effect, as her influence was called, shaped everything from the business of television to book publishing to charitable giving. Her cultural power was unrivaled—and unbeatable. In 1997, some Texas cattle barons found this out the hard way.31
They had sued Oprah over a comment she made on her show the year before, during a segment about “mad cow disease”—or bovine spongiform encephalopathy—a brain disorder in cattle that can spread to humans via infected meat and tissue. It is rare, incurable, and fatal. At the time, the British government had recently acknowledged that people were dying from mad cow disease, after years of downplaying the risk, and even though no human cases had been recorded in the United States, concern was growing, along with media coverage of the issue.32
Among Winfrey’s guests that day was Howard Lyman, director of the Humane Society’s Eating with a Conscience Campaign. Lyman, a former cattle rancher turned vegetarian, insisted that the risk of mad cow infecting the US beef supply was high, because of the widespread practice of adding rendered animal parts—ground-up tissues and bones of cattle, sheep, goats, and other animals—into cattle feed as a cheap source of protein. Visibly alarmed, Winfrey said to her audience, “Now, doesn’t that concern you all a little bit right there, hearing that? It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger. I’m stopped.”33
The cattlemen sued under Texas’s False Disparagement of Perishable Food Products law, one of more than a dozen such laws—known as “food-libel” or “veggie-libel” laws—adopted in the early ’90s to protect the food industry against consumer advocates and other critics. The legislation was spurred by a 60 Minutes report, in 1989, that said exposure to alar, a chemical used to regulate the growth of apples, posed a long-term cancer risk, especially in children. Later that year, the Environmental Protection Agency banned alar, citing its “unacceptable risks to public health.”34
Panic ensued. Supermarkets pulled apples from their shelves; schools in New York City and Los Angeles—the nation’s two largest districts—removed apples and apple products from cafeterias; and apple growers lost a lot of money. In 1991, a group of growers in Washington State sued for defamation, but the case was dismissed because the growers were unable to show that the 60 Minutes report was false. The veggie-libel laws came quickly on the heels of the alar case, designed to make it easier for food producers to sue for defamation.35
Under the Texas version, it is illegal to knowingly make false claims about a perishable food product’s safety for human consumption. The cattle barons claimed that they lost more than $10 million in business as a result of Winfrey’s comment.36
The trial, a spectacle from start to finish, took place in the panhandle city of Amarillo, in the heart of Texas beef country. Texas Monthly described the case as an “uproarious Texas range war,” pitting “a group of rich Texas cattle barons, the classic symbols of old frontier Texas, against an even richer black Chicago talk-show hostess, a classic symbol of modern-day American success.” It drew “an array of down-home West Texans and East Coast-educated lawyers, solemn New York Times reporters and bubbly Entertainment Tonight correspondents, bombastic vegetarian protesters, courthouse demonstrators wearing cow costumes, and even a marching kazoo band that stood outside the courthouse one bone-chilling winter day to play the Andy Griffith Show theme song, allegedly Winfrey’s favorite tune.”37
If the plaintiffs were expecting a home-court advantage, they were mistaken. Oprah moved her weekly show from Chicago to Amarillo for the six-week duration of the trial, and the city swooned. Per Texas Monthly, “phone lines across the Panhandle temporarily shut down one afternoon after an 800-number advertising tickets to tapings of The Oprah Winfrey Show in Amarillo flashed across television screens. A spokesman for the show said 215,000 calls came in within 30 minutes.” One prominent local trial attorney grumbled, “I don’t know if our local cowboys are going to come out on top of this damn deal. We’ve already got wives of respectable ranchers sneaking around town, trying to get tickets to Oprah’s show.”38
The cowboys did not come out on top. Oprah and Lyman were acquitted, in part because the judge ruled that cows were insufficiently perishable to be covered by the Texas law. But for the meat industry, the case was not a total loss. In fact, it may have done exactly what the leaders of that industry wanted: intimidate. There was considerable discussion in the trial’s wake of the chilling effect the new defamation laws could have, given that most consumer-advocacy organizations, to say nothing of private citizens, don’t have Winfrey’s financial resources.39
And those laws remain in force today. In 2017, Disney, the parent company of ABC News, reportedly paid at least $177 million to settle a lawsuit by Beef Products, Inc., brought under South Dakota’s food-defamation law. At issue, you may recall, was a news report that questioned the safety and nutritional quality of “pink slime,” a low-cost filler used in mass-market ground beef that was officially known as “lean finely textured beef.”40
Here’s the beef
In recent years, the meat-driven culture war has reached new levels of absurdity, with right-wing Internet memes about “soy boys,” meant to denigrate men who choose a plant-based diet as insufficiently masculine, and claims that liberals want to ban meat. When Texas Senator Ted Cruz was running for president, in 2015, a campaign ad showed him cooking a strip of bacon on the muzzle of an assault rifle. Earlier this year, the Southern home-cooking chain Cracker Barrel was accused of going “woke” by outraged customers when it announced the addition of plant-based sausage to its menu.41
This nonsense is driven in part by the degraded discourse of the Trump era, but more so by the increasingly embattled state of the meat industry. A growing chorus of critics—including animal-welfare and environmental activists and health-conscious consumers—have begun filing lawsuits and posting damning videos that indict industrial meat production for everything from chickens reared in tiny cages to water and air pollution caused by the tons of waste that giant feedlots generate.42
Climate change, though, is where the game is really changing for meat. The food sector, top to bottom, generates nearly 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. And the meat industry alone, by some estimates, accounts for nearly 60 percent of all greenhouse gasses produced by the food system. We cannot address climate change without changing how we produce our food, and that will likely involve reducing the amount of meat we eat.43
The issue of climate change began to emerge in the national consciousness in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But the role of agriculture in climate change, including animal agriculture, was not a significant part of the public conversation back then. In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the 2006 book that galvanized the food movement in America, author Michael Pollan mentions climate change only in passing, observing, “We seldom focus on farming’s role in global warming, but as much as third of all the greenhouse gasses that human activity has added to the atmosphere can be attributed to the saw and the plow.”44
Over the last decade, though, as the effects of climate change became increasingly observable across the country, from extreme drought and heat to heavy rain and floods, it was no longer possible to ignore agriculture’s role. The wild weather hit farmers hard, forcing the conversation about climate change into areas of the country that have been most resistant to accepting its reality.45
At the same time, newreports, from the UN and other international authorities, drove media coverage of the myriad environmental problems with industrial meat. Cow burps, which release a significant amount of methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, became a hook for endless news stories. Plant-based burgers and nut-milks began snatching market share, with proponents crowing (prematurely, as it turns out) about putting an end to the meat industry.46
The narrative around meat in America was shifting.47
The industry and its allies responded, adopting tactics used for years by the fossil fuel companies to fight the climate-change narrative: dispute the science, tar critics as radicals, and trumpet the essentialness of the product—meat feeds the world. Big Meat has even added an audacious new twist, declaring meat part of the climate solution. Meanwhile, state legislatures, from Wyoming to Mississippi, began making it illegal for the plant-based alternatives to use words like “beef” and “sausage” on their packaging. The Center for Consumer Freedom, still on the case, took out full-page ads in The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post attacking plant-based meat for its reliance on additives. In response to a UN report on climate change that urged a reduction in meat consumption, a Fox News host told viewers, “I don’t care because I want my meat and I believe that it was placed on here for us to eat.”48
The full force of this counteroffensive was on display in the wake of the 2018 midterm elections, when Democrats introduced the Green New Deal, a legislative blueprint for dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Among its various proposals, the resolution said the government should work “collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector as much as is technologically feasible.”49
The Green New Deal said nothing about meat consumption or vegetarianism or the problems with cattle ranching. Nevertheless, as the right ginned up its culture-war attack, dismissing the resolution as a “socialist manifesto,” there was a telltale focus on meat.50
At a press conference outside the Capitol, Utah Representative Rob Bishop took a page out of Rush Limbaugh’s playbook, deriding the resolution as the product of “Eastern urbanites without a clue what it’s like to live in the wide-open spaces of the West.” Then he did Rush one better, unwrapping a hamburger and taking a bite, claiming that such an act would be “outlawed” if the ideas in the Green New Deal became law. President Trump weighed in, of course, saying there would be “no more cows” if this agenda were adopted. And on it went.51
Two years later, in 2021, the culture-war crazy resumed when President Biden announced a plan to cut US greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. As with the Green New Deal, Biden said nothing about meat consumption. But the right began spewing a preposterous stream of falsehoods. Fox News wailed that Biden’s plan would cut 90 percent of red meat from the nation’s diet, limiting people to one burger a month. Larry Kudlow, a former Trump adviser, said Americans would have to “throw back a plant-based beer with your grilled Brussels sprouts” on July 4.52
The existential food fight
Today in America, food arguably divides people more than it unites them, thanks in part to decades of manufactured controversy, done for political gain and corporate profit. The consequences are staggering: 42 percent of adults and nearly 20 percent of children are obese, at an estimated cost of $170 billion a year in health care spending. Thirty-seven million people have diabetes. One person dies every 34 seconds of cardiovascular disease.53
As awful as that is, however, it may not ultimately matter much. The USDA has projected that Americans will eat a whopping 224 pounds of red meat and poultry, per capita, this year; and—in yet another sign that the culture-war rhetoric is having its intended effect—research has shown a growing gap in demand for beef between conservatives and liberals. Still today in farm country, “climate change” is a political term, one that is mostly avoided. Instead of acting, we continue to argue about whether we have to change our relationship to food to avoid the mayhem of climate change—even as the mayhem is already underway.54
Including human varieties and animal-safe versions of magic reindeer food!
I am a Christmas FANATIC! Seriously, I’m the girl who loves to see the merchandise in stores as early as possible and would put my tree up in September if my husband allowed it. I adore everything about the holidays, but most of all, the traditions we have as a family are nearest and dearest to my heart.
Some of them I have continued from my childhood with my boys, and others are new ones the four of us have created. Plus, with the 12-year age difference between my boys, traditions the teenager has outgrown like the magic of Santa and The Elf On The Shelf is getting new life with his younger brother. Now we have one more to add to our list I know my little guy will flip over: magical reindeer food to leave out on Christmas Eve!
What holiday traditions do you celebrate as a family? Baking cookies, driving around looking at the beautiful light displays, sipping hot cocoa while watching Christmas movies…our family does them all! With all the fun activities I have found over the years to do with my kids, I can’t believe it has taken me this long to discover these recipes for reindeer food, but I am so happy I have!
Reindeer food is so simple to make, the kids can help with every step, beginning to end. Plus they will be so excited to leave something yummy out for Santa’s team! Be sure to think about what kinds of foods are in the mix before putting it outside though.
In this collection, you will find both human varieties and animal-safe versions of reindeer food. So if you’re going to go all out and sprinkle the front lawn with reindeer food (you know, so they can munch away while they wait for Santa), you will want to make sure you use the animal and eco-friendly recipes that are safe for other little critter friends who might stumble upon this jolly snack. These are animal-approved:
Some reindeer food recipes use pre-made ingredients that you can mix together at the last minute for a holiday party, classroom treat or leave out for Santa with his plate of cookies. If that is what you’re looking for, check out the Rudolph Reindeer Mix!
I hope you are looking forward to your family’s favorite traditions this holiday season. Maybe you can begin a new one with these whimsical reindeer food treats on the most wonderful night of the year and make this Christmas a little extra magical for all your little elves.
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Another day, another story about young people killing off a time-honoured tradition. First, they came for the Brussels sprouts (or are they cool again? I lose track). Now, Gen Z is cancelling Christmas pudding.
According to what can only be described as truly groundbreaking research, almost half of 10-25-year-olds say they don’t like the traditional festive dessert, despite more than a third admitting they’ve never tried it. Because of this, the traditional Christmas pudding could be extinct by 2025, the researchers declared.
I don’t know what I find more alarming about these statistics. That researchers who canvassed British 10-year-olds were astounded to learn that they don’t want a boiled fruit cake on Christmas Day, or that the blame for young people killing stuff off has finally passed to Gen Z. We ageing millennials carried the torch for so long – now we’re just as overlooked as Gen X and the boomers.
They’re hardly the first generation to be accused of killing it off. Just five years ago, I was editing pieces about my own cohort ruining Christmas – apparently we’re now wiping out marriage and the 9-5 working day. And we all know boomers are to blame for unaffordable housing and Brexit. It won’t be long before people born after 2012 will be taking up the mantle. That prospect is about as horrifying as setting a fermented, boozy pudding on fire and eating it after you’ve stuffed yourself with an enormous roast dinner.
Which begs the question: has Christmas pud ever been good?
The last time it was talked about with any reverence was at the Cratchits in A Christmas Carol, but even Dickens struggled to make it sound appealing. The smell when it comes out of the copper pot is “like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that”, he wrote. When Mrs Cratchit finally serves it, it’s a weight off her mind, while Mr Cratchit regards it as “the greatest success achieved by Mrs Cratchit since their marriage”. Not one of the family dares to pass judgement. “It would have been flat heresy to do so.”
But there are still some modern-day Cratchits that might have a thing or two to say to our 10-year-old heretics. One is Lloyd Morse, head chef at The Palmerston, a reasonably traditional restaurant in Edinburgh. “The idea that Christmas pudding will be disappearing from British tables within three years like an endangered white rhino is utterly absurd,” he tells me furiously. “This is the food that normal, everyday people have in their homes, not the food that Insta-chefs and influencers present to the world.
“Go to any top British chef’s mum’s house for Christmas and I bet there’s a Christmas pudding on the table,” Morse insists.
It seems the Christmas pudding is as divisive as it is misunderstood. Some sources say it first appeared in the 14th century as frumenty, a type of porridge with cinnamon and saffron. Recipes from the time also added beef, mutton, dried fruit, wine and spices. Others believe it stems from medieval English sausages, where the ingredients were stuffed into animal stomachs and intestines to keep them fresh for longer. Like a fruit cake crossed with haggis. Sounds delicious. Wonder why we stopped serving it…
It wasn’t until the 16th century that it transitioned from savoury to sweet and became sufficiently associated with Christmas. In the 17th century, Oliver Cromwell banned the pudding along with a bunch of other silly traditions (maybe he was onto the right idea). Skip forward a few centuries and the Victorians – with a little help from Dickens – fine-tuned the recipe into what we know it as today, but with a strict set of rules that are as follows. First of all the pudding must be assembled on Stir-Up Sunday, the last Sunday before Advent, so-called because family members take turns stirring the mixture east to west (symbolising the journey taken by the three wise men) with a wooden spoon (symbolising the manger), then it’s boiled in a pudding cloth and kept in a cool, dry place for the next five weeks (symbolism… questionable). A true Christmas pudding should have 13 ingredients to represent Jesus and the 12 disciples; traditionally these are raisins, currants, suet, brown sugar, breadcrumbs, citron, lemon peel, orange peel, flour, mixed spices, eggs, milk and brandy. When it’s finally time to serve, you must steam or boil it for eight hours, then pour over the brandy and set it alight to represent the passion of Christ. I don’t recall him being boiled alive or burnt at the stake but I suppose any old symbol would do by that point.
A woodcut illustration of a Victorian woman carrying a Christmas pudding
(iStock)
Needless to say, it’s an arduous process. Is it any wonder that Gen Z, with their air fryers, 60-second TikTok recipes and Deliveroo Plus accounts dropping whatever food they want on their doorsteps with the tap of a smartphone screen, aren’t that enamoured by a religious cake you keep in the cupboard for a month – or, if legends are to be believed, up to two years? “Tastes change and fewer people like raisins, dried fruit and booze-soaked cakes anymore,” says Amy Poon, who resurrected her family’s famous Chinese restaurant chain and turned it into a series of pop-ups, residences and fresh wonton deliveries. “Now that we have Instant Pots, hacks and recipes that can be done in 15 minutes, people just don’t have the effort and time. But food, much like history, comes in cycles. For example, who would have thought that prawn cocktail would not only be acceptable again, but quite celebrated.” That said, to appease her youngest daughter, Poon makes crêpes suzette instead of Christmas pudding, “so that we still have some flambé drama”, and she herself prefers a “good, sharp sorbet” after such a heavy meal.
Ivan Tisdall-Downes, head chef at Native, an eco-conscious British restaurant in London, agrees and says that the ability to have whatever we want, whenever we want it has made us forget that a lot of our food traditions were born out of necessity. “The tradition of having spiced foods at Christmas was originally due to their price and difficulties in shipping to Europe, meaning they were saved for a special occasion,” he tells me. Nostalgia and the memory of setting the thing alight is what keeps the tradition alive for him. But, he adds, “a lack of tradition can also be a lack of joy in food, so it is quite important to hold onto – whether that’s a Christmas pudding or a Chinese takeaway on Christmas Eve”.
Even Bob Cratchit, who had to support a wife and six children on 15 shillings a week, wouldn’t think Christmas dinner complete without the pudding. But in the middle of our cost of living crisis, the same ingredients could set you back £30 at the average supermarket. That’s a lot for a small pudding when some people would be looking to spend no more than that for their entire dinner this year. When you can buy a half-decent pre-made Christmas pudding for a fiver or less without having to conjure Christ, it seems like a no-brainer.
Christmas pudding probably won’t be facing extinction any time soon
(iStock)
But, jesting aside – and I am mostly jesting – food is an undeniably important part of culture, and traditions like these are perhaps especially precious during hard times. Recipes passed down through the generations help to preserve the history of the people who cooked them. While I imagine very few British people feel any kind of connection with their Victorian or medieval ancestors in the same way other cultures do, I’d no sooner slate Christmas pudding from ye olde England than I would French baguettes, Ukrainian borscht or Chinese tea culture, to name a few.
“I always compare Christmas here with new year in Japan, which is all about traditional food and customs,” says Shuko Oda, head chef at Koya, an udon noodle bar chain in London serving authentic udon, donburi and Japanese small plates. She spent her childhood between London, Tokyo and LA. “Not everyone likes the food you eat on New Year’s Day (known as osechi), but I still believe it’s important to have them on the table. Food is a big part of each culture, and you can only own your identity if you grew up with it.” That’s not to say traditions must be centuries old and steeped in history, though. Oda will be spending Christmas in Tokyo this year, where sharing a big bucket of KFC with friends and family is the norm – not such a far cry from fish and chips.
If it’s survived the past 800 years, Christmas pudding won’t be facing extinction any time soon, but it’s good to remind ourselves of traditions that we might have forgotten about, even while we make new ones. As Morse tells me, “you can’t be ‘in with the new’ without the old.”
After all, he adds: “What else do you eat brandy custard with?”
