Fugu

On an average evening in Japan, 3800 restaurants will serve discerning customers pieces of potentially lethal "river pig."

For Westerners, the apex of dangerous eating usually involves eating an expired Snickers. But in the untamed Orient (antiquated patronizing language intentional), culinary brinksmanship is best represented by the fugu.

According to one article I found on the fugu, or blow fish, there are "13 tips you must know before eating [it]." Thirteen things? The maximum amount of things I've historically had to know about even the most alien foods has fallen between one, in the case of couscous (the texture of couscous is repulsive) and perhaps four, in the case of sushi (sushi should be fresh, salmon roe makes good impromptu confetti, don't fill up on soup and salad, Meijer gets an 'A' for effort but not much else when it comes to sushi). I'm not sure I ever want to eat a course that requires a syllabus. But maybe you will. So what do you need to know? I'll tell you what you need to know... and a whole mess of stuff you don't.

 The blow fish, or puffer fish, or fugu, is filled with tetrodotoxin. Several species of fish carry the toxin, and said toxin is in fact named for them. In fact, the toxin also lives in a species of octopus, a type of newt, and a species of flatworm. "Lives, you say?" Yes, yes I do. Tetrodotoxin is a bacterium, living symbiotically in the blow fish and his gang of poisonous friends. As a side note, you know who has developed a resistance to the toxin? You friendly local garter snake.

If you're not a snake, how much blow fish toxin will kill you? Your mileage will vary, but it's far, far more toxic than cyanide. Given the choice, I would sooner eat a plate of couscous than tetrodotoxin.

Ever attracted to the counter-intuitive, humans began messing with the puffer fish sometime before 2000 BC in China. The ancients knew that the fish was toxic, but believed that the right amount of toxin could actually be curative. Why? Because people just love when something is counter-intuitive, I guess.

According to Engelbert Kaempfer's A History of Japan (1727), the Japanese knew the fish was toxic, and even used it for suicide, when they weren't making it a delicacy. In fact, soldiers were not allowed to eat the fugu for many years.

In 1774, Captain James Cook learned what many Easterners already knew. When his men ate some puffer fish and fed the rest to their pigs, the result was a pile of dead pigs. The men survived, despite some difficulty feeling and breathing for a spell.

Despite its toxicity, the people of Japan have eaten the fugu for centuries. Despite being outlawed entirely at times, eat it they did. When the shogunate relaxed regulations, they at it some more. The Meiji era (1867-1912) saw the fish banned entirely, but the tradition carried on. Because it's so delicious? Well, I've never had it, but people say it tastes like chicken, with a "raw fish" kind of texture.

In modern Japan, anyone can eat fugu—except the Emperor. (I wonder if he ever resents his lot in life.) The only stipulation—introduced in 1958— is that fugu must be prepared by specially certified chefs. As a part of their training, these chefs must indeed eat their own fugu preparation. It's nice that the program sort of weeds out the amateurs. Only about a third of prospective chefs pass the course.

Despite the fact that the tetrodotoxin is a potent neurotoxin, some folks enjoy eating the fish with a tad of the good stuff still inside. This apparently adds a tingling sensation about the lips to the dining experience, which is part of the charm for some people. Each year, a handful of people in Japan die from fugu poisoning. There is no antidote.

People are currently hard at work breeding diet-controlled poison-free fugu. This is called "cheating." Even still, this might be the way to go if you're curious about trying a slab of gelatinous poisonous chicken-tasting fish. Or you could eat a chunk of raw chicken breast, which actually checks most of the same boxes.

If you live in the U.S., your restaurant fugu options are all located in New York, Los Angeles, Bethesda, and Seattle. It usually costs a few hundred dollars for a serving.

As long as there are symbols of annihilation, man will thumb his nose at them, that is certain. Beyond the thrill of privilege and the draw of rarity, I think eating the puffer remains popular because we don't like to be told what we can and can't do, as a species. It's humankind's way of asserting its dominance over common sense. The resulting sense of empowerment is delicious. That said, I'm not Japanese, and I have no idea what I'm talking about, really.

That said, Foods For Living is proud to announce that the deli will soon be featuring... all the same stuff, and no blow fish.

Be well.

 

   

Hitting the Brix

Is it consoling or depressing that everything in the universe can be reduced to math? That might rank as #1 among things beyond the purview of the Foods For Living blog. Let's narrow our scope a tad, and talk about fresh produce.

Part of what makes biting into the perfect apple (or peach, or pear) such a joy is the mystery, yes? Will this fruit be a particularly good one? And even all those out-of-season, white, sad tomatoes serve a purpose--their lack of luster throws the juicy, plump, red tomatoes of the world into greater relief. The sheer spectrum of quality in the produce world keeps the experience fresh, even when the fruit isn't. Even identical-looking strawberries may yield vastly different amounts of sweetness. But what if you could forgo all of this mystery, and make your produce adventures more predictable (if less mysterious)? 

Welcome to the world of high-Brix cultivation.

If you Google "high Brix," you'll get acquainted with the late researcher and lecturer Carey Reams. This wouldn't be a problem if the late researcher and lecturer Carey Reams wasn't so totally insane. So before this becomes a hit piece about a charlatan you've never heard of, let's figure out what Brix is. (Then we can take a few parting shots at Carey "Dr. Oz of his generation" Reams).

"Degrees Brix" is a measurement of the sugar present in an aqueous solution. (Refresher: an aqueous solution is any solution in which water is the solvent.) 1 degree Brix is 1 gram of sucrose in 100 grams of solution. So Brix measures the amount of sugar substance in a liquid, for those of us who don't like fancy words. 

Why is Brix thus?

In 1798, in the sleepy little city of Wesel, Germany, a man was born by the name of Adolf Ferdinand Wenceslaus(!) Brix. He was a sharp guy, working for the Ministry of Trade, and ultimately rising to the lofty position of Director of the Royal Prussian Commission for Measurements. 

Brix, along with some of his contemporaries (for which other units measuring the same thing are named), made tables by which one could see how a known quantity of sugar related to a certain specific gravity. This remains useful for brewers who want to know how much sugar is in their wort, for instance. 

Industries that use degrees Brix as a measurement have their own methods, but today, almost anyone can measure degrees Brix using, of all things, a refractometer. 

A refractometer can measure a drop of liquid's sugar and mineral content by the way in which said drop distorts light passing through it. (Technically, it references a refraction index against the degree to which the drop rotates a plane of linearly polarized light.)

What's this mean to the consumer and gardener?

You can purchase a refractometer for $20-$100. You can then carry this device with you at all times like some sucrose-obsessed mad scientist, constantly imposing on grocery store personnel and farmers market merchants for drops of fruit juice to test. 

OK, so maybe that's not the best idea. But you could use such a device in your garden to measure the immeasurable: how "good" a piece of produce is. And this is a great, precise metric if you're serious about horticulture. 

If you're anti-woo, like I am, it's important to understand that everything above reflects legitimate science. Degrees Brix is a standard metric used by many industries. It's confusing and unfortunate that a corner of the Internet has created a relationship between the concept of measuring degrees Brix and the aforementioned "Dr." Carey Reams. 

Reams, like so many before and after him, is the originator of many a compellingly wild pull quote, such as "All disease is the result of a mineral deficiency." He was the brainchild of many a quack theory, and was prosecuted in the 1970s for practicing medicine without a license. Oh, and he was also an advocate for high-Brix produce. But some of his other pet ideas, which I won't lend incidental credibility to by using his ridiculous names for them, lie between dangerous and hilarious. But the Brix thing is legit. 

Given the way that food costumer evolution has trended thus far, it's not unreasonable to imagine an era in which fussy (discerning) shoppers are pricking apples in the supermarket and consulting their pocket refractometers. And that may be a good thing. But if that's too weird for you, measuring Brix levels is still a great way of honing your home gardening skills. And it makes you seem like a scientist. And now that I've armed you with knowledge, you won't fall into the many pits of misinformation surrounding the study of high Brix cultivation online. 

FDA: Hero or Villain?

The FDA is a lot like a traffic cop. It is often unpopular. The average citizen sometimes has less-than charitable things to say about both. But without them, systems we've come to rely upon would slowly slide into self-policing and chaos.

Some Foods For Living shoppers have indicted the FDA for being a typically inefficient government agency, bloated past usefulness by bureaucracy. But the FDA won some hearts and minds in August 2014 when it finally made "gluten-free" mean something. A law passed the year before had finally taken effect, and we semanticists of the world experienced a rare moment of joy.

Like many other food-label terms, "gluten-free" has always been a term defined by the manufacturer. (See also, "all natural," "fresh," "artisan," etc.) A company could create a gluten-free product in a facility that also created gluten-packed products, or had trace amounts of gluten, and it was up to the wary consumer to investigate these claims. As of last August, the definition became very specific: "gluten-free" products cannot contain a detectable amount of gluten, period, or contain wheat, rye, barley, or their derivatives. 

This is a huge win for those with celiac disease, for whom even trace amounts of gluten can be damaging. (For those simply pursuing a gluten-free diet lifestyle, trace amounts wouldn't matter.) The move was praised by the American Celiac Disease Alliance. And we can thank the good ole FDA. This is an example of a government agency protecting consumers.

So why do some people hate the FDA?

Well, for one, they test products on animals, and they source studies by agencies that do the same. Clearly, this is a line which, when crossed, brands the FDA as a villain for some people. They work with Americans for Medical Progress (AMP), whose webpage features a banner with a white mouse that says "research needs advocates." For those against animal testing, the FDA is complicit in untold suffering.

The FDA's legendary inefficiency is another reason some people bristle at the mere mention of the the organization. Stories about the FDA dragging its feet on approving crucial drugs are numerous. Like any large government organization, the FDA is a bureaucracy. The machinery of bureaucracy is inefficient by nature. But only a large organization with the power and reach of the FDA could conceivably police our food and drug supply. The United States has one of the world's safest food supplies. But even with its tremendous power, the FDA may not be doing enough, according to this article from the Daily Beast, which argues that simple food-borne illness isn't our largest dietary threat, but rather the contents of the "nutritionally hollow" modern diet itself. Many nutrition advocates would like to see the FDA take an active role in legislating nutritional guidelines, but this opens a Pandora's box that's already crowded with Michelle Obama's Let's Move program and illegally-sized New York soft drinks.

Of course, the FDA is invisible when it's working properly. There are innumerable cases where the FDA caught a flaw during testing or denied approval to something dangerous. Many of us take for granted the safety of everything we consume, forgetting that safe food is by no means the default setting. Few would argue with setting high standards for food safety.

But there are many gray areas when it comes to protecting people from themselves. Take the case of consumer genomics, for instance. Consumer genomics test kits, such as those manufactured by 23andMe, can provide people with personal genetic data. If a person finds out they have a predisposition to a certain condition, this may allow them to take appropriate (or inappropriate) action. Previously, 23andMe was including recommended actions with its results. The FDA thought this could lead people to take harmful steps, such as unnecessary surgery. The FDA ruled that 23andMe can keep marketing their tests, so long as they do not dispense medical advice alongside them.

The FDA often ends up seeming like a well-intentioned, crippled watchdog. When potentially life-saving drugs are up for the organization's approval process, all eyes are on the FDA, and they receive understandable scrutiny every step of the way. But they are making strides. 2014 saw the FDA hit an 18-year high in drug approvals. (Cue due cynicism regarding Big Pharma.)

The one area where the FDA has remained aloof is the world of dietary supplements.  According to the FDA, manufacturers are responsible for policing their own process and product. If something poisonous or blatantly mislabeled makes it to the shelf, then FDA will step in.

During the sepia-tinged administration of Bill Clinton, in the autumn of 1994, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) was signed into law. This essentially disengaged the FDA from supplement oversight. Previously, supplements were overseen by the FDA like any other consumable. But in a post '94 world, there is no bureaucratic obstacle to coming out with a Super Goji Inhalant (at least not until after the fact). The only stipulation is a small, ubiquitous label that reads "These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease." For better or worse, the world of supplements remains a relatively safe sort of wild west. 

Whether the FDA is a bloated cyclops or a vigilant watchdog is a matter of personal opinion. Even as it stalls approval for life-saving drugs, the FDA is laboring to make our food some of the safest in the world. What do you think? 

The German Beer Purity Law

"Rine-heights-guh-boat." There. Now, instead of running in fear, you can pronounce this word: Reinheitsgebot. This is a German word that translates to "purity order," and it's probably had a profound effect on your life if you enjoy unwinding with a good brew.

Often known as the "German Beer Purity Law," Reinheitsgebot is, broadly, the reason that beer is beer. Or bier. Did you notice the word "Law" up there? Why would someone pass a law about what is or isn't beer? (Legislating about what can legally be called beer does make a bit more sense if you've ever had Miller Lite. No disrespect, Miller. It's just that your beer is undrinkable.) Time to get a bit epic.

The camera swoops through the Alpine peaks. The moon is full, and CGI bats wheel across its luminous facade. The music broods cautiously. The camera dips into the shadow of a valley, then rockets up and past a great summit to reveal... The Duchy of Munich, 1487. We see the city of Munich at night, mostly dark, but peppered with lanterns and torches. The screen probably fades in the words The Duchy of Munich, 1487, in a very serious-looking font.

In the back room of some tavern, clandestine arrangements are fast and quiet over steins of pure, Bavarian-style beer. The War of Succession of Landshut, which was some proper Game of Thrones business, would come soon after, in 1503, and still-independent Munich was smoldering with tension. But also very concerned with the purity of its beer. Presumably because of such backroom dealing (I'm quite sure the "back room" has always been the true chamber of political negotiation, not the gilded monuments that house the formal proceedings), it was decided that beer brewed in Munich must be just so:

Beer may only contain water, barley, and hops. Not wheat, or gruit, or any of that other junk. (I added that for emphasis.)

Unfortunately, due to the scope of this blog, we're going to breeze past all of the political machinations that resulted in the contention over who ruled Bavaria (where Munich was located), the war from 1503 to 1505 (which left many hamlets in ash), and the intercession by Emperor Maximilian (Archduke of Austria) that ended the war. I promise there would have been more dynamic camera work and brooding music.

By 1506, all was well in Munich, which was now officially part of Bavaria. And in 1516, all of Bavaria formally adopted the Bavarian Purity Law of 1516, which echoed its Munich predecessor. It said:

"We hereby proclaim and decree, by Authority of our Province, that henceforth in the Duchy of Bavaria, in the country as well as in the cities and marketplaces, the following rules apply to the sale of beer:
From Michaelmas to Georgi, the price for one Mass [Bavarian Liter 1,069] or one Kopf [bowl-shaped container for fluids, not quite one Mass], is not to exceed one Pfennig Munich value, and
From Georgi to Michaelmas, the Mass shall not be sold for more than two Pfennig of the same value, the Kopf not more than three Heller [Heller usually one-half Pfennig].
If this not be adhered to, the punishment stated below shall be administered.
Should any person brew, or otherwise have, other beer than March beer, it is not to be sold any higher than one Pfennig per Mass.
Furthermore, we wish to emphasize that in future in all cities, markets and in the country, the only ingredients used for the brewing of beer must be Barley, Hops and Water. Whosoever knowingly disregards or transgresses upon this ordinance, shall be punished by the Court authorities' confiscating such barrels of beer, without fail.
Should, however, an innkeeper in the country, city or markets buy two or three pails of beer (containing 60 Mass) and sell it again to the common peasantry, he alone shall be permitted to charge one Heller more for the Mass of the Kopf, than mentioned above. Furthermore, should there arise a scarcity and subsequent price increase of the barley (also considering that the times of harvest differ, due to location), WE, the Bavarian Duchy, shall have the right to order curtailments for the good of all concerned." —Bavarian Reinheitsgebot of 1516 (emphasis added), Eden, Karl J. (1993). "History of German Brewing" Zymurgy 16 (4).
So there is some standard soporific volume and price talk that's a bit outdated at this point, but why the strictures on ingredients?

Well, in 1516, in Bavaria, tradespeople were specialized. Bakers baked, and brewers brewed. (This was before everyone you know casually brewed a Belgian banana porter with a hint of cardamom in his basement with $100 of supplies from Frandor.) Bakers required wheat and rye to make bread. If brewers were also using those same components, this would put undue stress on a finite supply of food. The powers that be weren't about to run out of bread, so they insisted that beer simply use different products so that it wouldn't become a problem.

2 Germans grabbing a brew.

Now I should mention that there is another, very multifaceted component to the law, hidden behind the ingredients. During this era, Martin Luther, author of Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants, as well as other writings, kicked off a little party called the Reformation. At the time, the Roman Catholic Church's monastic orders were brewing with gruit—a mixture of mugwort, yarrow, ground ivy, horehound, heather, and sweet gale (and also a sweet Guardians of the Galaxy character)—and using hops was perceived by some as a move away from the imperialism of the Church. That said, Germans were using hops for centuries before that to brew beer, so it's likely that this was a factor, but not a cause, per se. 

The Reinheitsgebot remains an important part of German beer culture to this day. No one loves the Bavarian purity law more than Bavarians, who insisted on its institution throughout Germany as a precondition of becoming part of the country in 1871. Those people are serious about their beer.

This persnickety law has remained a law for hundreds of years, with big revisions and redefinitions occurring in 1987, 1993, and 2005. Some see the law as restrictive, while some see it as an intangible piece of cultural heritage. Unfortunately for the people of Bavaria, UNESCO does not yet agree. Sorry, folks. Maybe if you hold out for a bit longer.  
  

The Crime of Food Waste

I've always loved industry dirt. I'm not talking about the piles of slag and sand that sit at construction sites. I'm talking about privileged information, behind-the-curtain access, insider juice. When my friend worked at a local eatery that serves fresh-squeezed lemonade, he told me that the lemonade was squeezed "fresh" out of a can. He said people inevitably specified "fresh-squeezed" lemonade when ordering, and it chafed him to stay silent. I loved learning that.

When I saw a recent episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on the topic of food waste, I was excited to see some grocery store insider juice making its way outside. Many people assume things about grocery items that simply aren't true, and those assumptions contribute to America's massive and egregious food waste problem. Let's talk about food waste, with a liberal dose of insider juice thrown in—because insider juice is the one juice that never goes bad.

American Food Waste

You may know that we waste a lot of food in the states. But let's take a moment to sicken ourselves with the specifics. We throw away about 40% of our food. That's enough to fill all 31 NFL stadiums with wasted food... about 23 times a year. That's about 20 lbs./person, every year. A huge majority of this food is perfectly edible when it's thrown away. (Not now.) And by "thrown away," I mean "thrown somewhere nearby, where it is quickly buried (in more food) and anaerobic bacteria produce ozone-destroying methane in terrible quantities." So not really thrown away.

The environmental toll is not as obvious as the human cost to food waste. But even that can be invisible for the average person, who might be surprised to learn that 49.1 million Americans suffer from food insecurity. That means that despite the hot button topic of entitlements, about 1 in 7 American citizens has difficulty feeding herself or her family. Meanwhile, we're emptying a stadium full of edible food in her neighborhood about every two weeks.

Food waste isn't typically a problem in places where there isn't enough food. This begs the question: why are we throwing away so much food, and how might we fix the problem?

Insider juice incoming!

The Grocery Store 

In retail, we try and give an impression of bounty. Every hardware, grocery, and pogo stick store in America faces (pulls to the front) and straightens their products. This presents a pleasing, uniform facade of products to the customer. Studies have shown that people are more likely to buy products given this treatment. Contrast a wall of well-organized cans with a single can of tomatoes, languishing midway back on on the shelf, and it's no wonder. 

While produce can't be faced and straightened as easily as canned food, stores still make an attempt. People like to see stacks of fruit, all lined up, and full to capacity. But let's say you run an organic-only produce section. Suddenly, a single delayed shipment, missing employee, or bad crop can mean your presentation becomes lacking. And now your section of perfectly-delicious fruit looks half-full (or half-empty, for all you Cure fans). Now people are likely to see something "wrong" with the remaining fruit, as if it's been "picked over." This is happening thousands of times a day in natural and traditional grocery stores and farmers markets. No one wants that last bunch of bananas, because our instincts tell us something must be wrong with it.

That's not to say there aren't differences in produce quality. Sometimes, produce does go bad, or arrives unripe, or too ripe. But more often than not, produce is just fine. Produce pickers themselves often discard produce that doesn't look like the archetype of a peach, or plum, or strawberry, as directed by their employers.) Then, the packers may discard any non-ideal fruit that made it through round one. When it arrives to the grocery store, an employee goes through the fruit and picks out any that's questionable or bad. What's more, employees do spot checks throughout the day to ensure the produce on the sales floor is up to snuff. Finally, customers themselves are discerning, so they sort through the available produce as well. The result is that our conception of what a peach should look like is based on a narrow "platonic ideal" of a peach (for instance), and a lot of peaches go uneaten. And that's just produce.

So why don't stores (and restaurants) donate their unsold food to the hungry? Well, that's essentially asking them to store, package, sell, and/or ship a large quantity of food each day (that's quite perishable) without making a cent. The manpower and facilities involved make this a bad—even untenable—deal for a small business, even if it's morally laudable. The solution here may be to give donating businesses tax breaks. But such a measure has remained tentatively on the books for years, and the lack of certainty means that it may as well not exist, from the perspective of the food businesses. 

Besides, as any business will tell you, people can get sick from post-dated food, and they can sue you for it. Except that's completely false. Such a lawsuit has never happened, according to Last Week Tonight. In fact, something called the Emerson Act states that a business cannot be sued for donating food in good faith. Despite this, it's still a common misconception that donating food can be legally dangerous. 

But you don't want to make anyone sick with post-dated food, right? Right. But it's unlikely you will. "sell-by, freshest-by, and consume-by" dates are not FDA-regulated; they're implemented by the manufacturer. This means the dates are solely at the discretion of a company who has a vested interest in only giving people the freshest product, and having people replace that product as often as possible. That's not to say that food doesn't spoil, but its spoilage date has little relationship with its "sell-by" date. But most people don't know this—even those working at grocery stores.

A bit of education would do much to grease the wheels of food donation, help eliminate food waste, and get food into the homes of those who need it most. If this becomes a more visible issue, the result could be an educated public and donation-encouraging legislation. We're filling those stadiums, every day. It only makes sense to channel some of that food to folks who don't know where their next meal is coming from.

Cold Truths About Food

As the humid cloak of true summer is upon us, many of us are ready to prove that there's nothing comfort food can't fix. The list of digestible summer coping mechanisms is a short one, usually beginning with ice cream and ending with lemonade. Today, we're talking about temperature and food, so we'll start with a cold food turf war that's getting hotter every summer.

Ice Cream VS Frozen Yogurt

Ice cream, which is dietary guilt incarnate, has slowly been surrendering its summer market share to its yuppy cousin, frozen yogurt. Frozen yogurt companies have enjoyed significant annual growth for the last few years. This is due to the fact that frozen yogurt is healthier than ice cream—or so you believe. (A survey conducted by the frozen yogurt chain, Menchies, found that 95% of respondents thought fro-yo was healthier.) Would you care for a smidge of rain to go with that yogurt parade?

Frozen yogurt boasts 17 grams of sugar per half-cup, whereas ice cream weighs in with 14. Advantage: ice cream.

When it comes to fat, though, ice cream loses its edge, with 7 grams to frozen yogurt's 4. Advantage: fro-yo.

Frozen yogurt does contain probiotics, but the freezing process often renders them useless. Many manufacturers refortify their yogurts with more probiotics. These products have a seal proclaiming Live and Active Cultures, guaranteeing they contain 100 million cultures per gram. (This is still 1/10 of the weaker commercial probiotics sold in the FFL supplements section). Make sure you seek the seal if you're looking for bacterial aid in digesting that lactose.

Digestion and Temperature

Please understand that this section is the unimpressive result of a mind-numbing safari through the annals of Internet misinformation. Like any idea (e.g. the Supreme Court is a reptilian cabal poised to destabilize our country), many incompatible claims are made about the digestion-temperature relationship. Many sources assert that digestion is profoundly influenced by the temperature of the food you're eating (or water you're drinking). Many of these sources cite other articles by reputable name-brands in scientific writing, like Discovery. But follow the intellectual trail far enough, and you'll find yourself on soft ground. The origin of many of the notions about food temperature (and especially beverage temperature) is the Ayurveda.

Ayurveda is an ancient tradition of wellness native to India and it comes packaged with everything the term "ancient tradition" signifies. In other words, there may be much wisdom in Ayurvedic practice, culled from centuries of practice, but it is important to recognize that the Ayurveda was conceived long before we understood anything about the chemical reality of digestion. It is Ayurveda's claim that drinking cold water while eating will "put out the fires of digestion." This thinking is ultimately responsible for the notion that one should refrain from drinking while eating, and especially avoid cold water.

The reality, though, is that digestion requires water, and in fact will pull water from other places in the body to do its necessary work. Drinking during a meal may well promote digestion.

As far as food temperature itself, some studies conclude there may be a digestive delay when eating cold or warm meals, and some conclude the opposite. The takeaway here is that food temperature is not a decisive enough factor in digestion to make a fuss about.

Heat and Flavor

Hi deary. It's cold outside. How would you like a nice, lukewarm bowl of soup? I'll fix you a big tepid bowl of broth. Make sure you stir it because it's developed a bit of a viscous meniscus.

This is not something you'd like a grandmotherly person to say to you on a frigid day. When it's freezing outside, everyone loves a bowl of piping hot soup. But you know how the soup is actually way too hot, and you then have to watch it steam for a couple minutes before you can eat it? When you receive soup, you wait for it to cool to a temperature that you would despise if it arrived that way. It's weird.

If you ate it right away, you'd risk scalding your tongue, of course, which can erode your taste buds. Moreover, clinicians have shown that taste sensitivity decreases at 95 degrees Fahrenheit and above. So you're really getting the best flavor out of your soup by waiting. That said, the aromatic molecules that convey deliciousness to you (and begin your digestive process with saliva) before you ever taste the soup are much more active at higher temperatures. So you're really preparing your body and mind to properly receive the soup by getting it while it's hot. It all makes sense.

Other, non-soup foods have a more complex relationship with temperature. Beer gets more bitter as it gets warmer—hence the American beer market's traditional reliance on "ice cold" advertising. Cheese tastes more sour as it's served at higher temperatures. Ice cream's molecules are too excited at room temperature to be entirely palatable for many people, making melted ice cream too sweet, even though the solid version is just right.

Cooking seems like an earthy, holistic discipline (and it is), but it's also a matter of colliding molecules and electrical impulses. Breaking taste into its elemental aspects isn't very romantic, but it can produce interesting results.

Researchers have found that heating and cooling areas of the tongue can produce sensations of taste. Simply stimulating certain tongue nerves can induce the sensation of sweetness, for instance. Will heated toothpicks slowly replace candy as the after-dinner decadence of choice? If they did, it wouldn't be the most sci-fi thing to happen this year, or even this month... in fact, I have to go and Google how to file a patent. Until next time!

The Amazing Japanese Snacks You're Missing

Japanese culture is often impenetrably mysterious to the Western mind. Spend enough time in one of its avenues—anime, for instance—and a sort of internal logic will become clear.  You'll learn the tropes, the big names, the history, and where is the conversation is today. But to the uninitiated, there are few nations (especially ultra-developed ones) on earth that present confounding cultural artifacts like Japan. After the confusion, however, the West usually embraces Japanese cultural exports with unparalleled fervor. Anime, sushi, ninjas, and giant robots seem as American as apple pie in 2015. So what can we expect will be popular here in the next decade, when it comes to food? Let's take a look at the best of Japanese food curios.


Mountain Dew Cheetos

I imagine that if a Kim Jong-un-style despot decided to make an America Theme Park, this is the sort of snack that would be sold there. What seems like a parody of American snack sensibilities is simply a legitimate product in Japan. While I've never had the pleasure, these pale Cheetos are described as "tingly, or fizzy" by one YouTube Japanese snack enthusiast, and favor their Mountain Dew DNA heavily. Since Cheetos and Mountain Dew are both owned by PepsiCo, I can't help but think this Frankenstein product was the result of a lost bet at a high-stakes poker game between Pepsi execs in some Tokyo penthouse.

Animal Donuts

Japanese pop culture has long been expert at pushing the boundaries of cuteness into unfathomable and bizarre directions. Pokemon, for instance. Hello Kitty. Attack on Titan. And now...animal-shaped donuts.

Donuts were already a cutest-in-class snack, with the only competitor being, perhaps, mini-cupcakes. That's not a fair comparison unless we're talking about mini-donuts, which we're not. We're talking about donuts shaped like pigs and cats. These zoomorphic disks of fried dough have been heralded as the "next cronut." Wow. The main animus behind this product seems to be someone asking, "why not?"

Weird Kit Kats

If you think white chocolate Kit Kats are exotic, then you need to get out more. In Japan, white chocolate Kit Kats are fed to birds by the elderly. (Not true, probably.) The real Kit Kat enthusiasm is reserved for flavors like...wasabi. And green tea. And soybean. It's weird how much I suddenly want a wasabi Kit Kat. I'm suspicious that the urge comes from the knowledge that I cannot have one. 




Moko Moko Mokolet

This is a candy toilet playset, essentially. You use the included plastic toilet as a sort of mixing bowl in which to mix the included fizzy treat. Then you can eat the delcious mixture from a tiny toilet. You'll be doing this either A) in public, which is really odd, or B) in private, which is somehow much worse. I'd like to see some data on consumer trends associated with this product, but I can't find any. 

Salty Watermelon Pepsi

Before I mock this, I'll just come out and say I'd like to try a shot glassful of this beverage. Frankly, I didn't know that salty watermelons were a thing to begin, and the idea of combining them with a Pepsi is the sort of mad science that just might be brilliant. In extremely small doses, of course.

Cool, Refreshing Liquid Eel Drink

Remember when you and your best friend used to ride your ten speeds down the dirt road to the corner store in the heat of summer, and the dirt would stick to your sweaty brow, and you'd bound into the store with 75 cents in your little fist, aching for that first gulp of liquid eel drink? No? Well, maybe your kids will, if Unagi Nobori ever takes off here. Unagi Nobori, which translates to "Surging Eel," is a drink that contains eel extract, vitamins, and other mysteries.

Now, for context, you have to realize that Japan loves eating generally. There is an "eel-eating season" during the summer. Eels are a delicacy, and there's even an eel black market, eel fraud, and all the other trappings of a delicacy market. So this eel drink makes sense, if you're from Japan. 







Basashi ice

I don't even want to be the one to tell you that the Ice Cream City ice cream store in the Sunshine City shopping mall in Tokyo serves raw horse meat ice cream. But how can I know this and not tell you? That said, I'm not sure I can continue at this point. Until next time...