How much sugar in your food ?

Interesting and very pedagogic web site, Sugarstacks shows you how many cube of sugar will you eat with a single portion of classic food. They calculated it as 4 calories per gram of sugar and taking as a basis cube of 4g of sugar (the standard in the US, when the french standard is 5g per cube).

http://www.sugarstacks.com/

Food is becoming a sin

so much wasted food !

Who never heard his or her grand mother telling him to finish his/her plate and eat the damaged fruits ? Well, it seems that habits of this kind have disappeared whereas food prices are rising fast. An interesting article found in The New York Times explains that aprox. 1/4 of the total food in the US is wasted (27% of all edible food). That represents 0,5 kg per day per US citizen and it happens in supermarkets, restaurants, personal kitchen,...

Recovering just 5% of this amount could feed 4 million people everyday calculated the Department of Agriculture. Will the rising prices of food will be a sufficient incentive to care more ?

Interested in the topic of wasted food ? Have a look at the blog wastedfood.com by Jonathan Bloom.

Should we ban strawberries in winter ?

Some retailers like Casino in France begin to communicate on the packaging of their Private Label the greenhouse gas balance. Beyond the Marketing effect, it raises some questions for the consumers. It surely may afraid a bit more shoppers and if it’s used to compare products in shelf, anyone must be sure of the method used to measure it. Imported products are on focus for the transportation impact on CO2. Some groups are flourishing in the west coast of the US, the locavores, which purpose is to "eat locally" so they only consume food produced in an area of 100 miles around San Francisco bay.

But nothing is simple and we may perhaps be once more victim of a counterintuitive situation. A study from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the Carnegie Mellon University (here) demonstrates that even carried on large distance (mean of 6700 km) transportation represents only 11% of greenhouse gas emissions. In fact 83% of the gases has to be attributed to production mode.

By the way, and that’s even more interesting, the kind of food shows very disparate rate of gas balance. Indeed, red meat is around 150% more greenhouse gas intensive than chicken or fish. Conclusion, to save the planet, it’s more efficient to switch your diet, reducing the consumption of red meat and dairy products than quiting strawberries in winter…

When more is too much !

I shot these "gorgeous" photos in Mexico, maybe in a Comercial Mexicana supercenter. Beans is a traditional meal in the Mexican gastronomy and may sometimes appear a bit strange for the European palate. I should say that just the view of the pics keeps out hungriness !

Those interested in that kind of stuff may find much more recipes here. (take care !)