Tag Archives: fruit

Grilling & Food Contamination

Summer is here! What a perfect opportunity to get outside and enjoy the warm summer air we’ve all been craving! For some individuals, spending time outdoors could involve hiking, boating, or reading in the shade, but one thing we can all agree on, summer is the perfect time to enjoy some of our favorite foods on the grill. Whether with family, friends, or even coworkers, cooking food on the grill appears to be a popular summer activity. With summer holidays approaching, like the Fourth of July, it is important to keep your celebrations healthy and safe by following food safety tips to prevent contamination while grilling.

According to the FDA and the USDA Food Safety organizations, there are grilling food safety tips to be followed for all food types:

  • Be Clean: First, make sure to wash your hands thoroughly, especially after touching any form of raw meat. Before consumption, make sure to rinse off fruits and vegetables as there may be bacteria on the surfaces. Never rinse off raw meat as this can increase your risk of cross-contamination.
  • Separate: Keep raw meats away from other foods such as salads, dips, or fruit. Be conscientious of not using the same utensils for putting raw meat on the grill, and for taking cooked meat off the grill. Using the same utensils that touched raw meat could be covered in harmful bacteria, which can contaminate the cooked meat.
  • Temperature: Use a food thermometer to check if food is fully cooked. Sometimes grilling can give you a false impression where food looks fully cooked on the outside, but is under cooked on the inside. The recommended internal temperature for beef, pork, lamb, and veal is 145°F, ground meat is 160°F, whole poultry is 165°F, and fish is 145°F.
  • Fruits and Vegetables: Lastly, make sure to be aware of how long fruits and vegetables should be cooking on the grill. Thicker cut fruits and vegetables will have to cook longer than thinner pieces. Although, fruits and vegetables do not have to reach a minimum internal temperature like meat, it is still important to cook them thoroughly.

Although grilling out in the summer can be a fun thing to do, it is important to take action and be careful in preventing the harmful spread of bacteria to our food. To learn more about additional tips and guidelines to follow when cooking various foods this summer, check out the FDA and USDA Food Safety organization websites to learn more.

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The (In)Famous Fruitcake

A light snow falls on a cold December afternoon. Up pulls the delivery person with a parcel for you. As you eagerly await them to make their way up to the entryway, you can’t help but wonder what kind of treasure may rest inside. After feigning indifference to the whole excitement at the door, you quickly make your way to the kitchen table and open it up. Inside, your favorite aunt has dutifully and carefully wrapped…a fruitcake. You do which of the following:

A. Excitedly reach for a plate and a nearby knife.
B. Sob uncontrollably in disappointment and throw it.
C. Rewrap it and go visit your sister and her kids.
D. Hide it away only for your consumption (along with those boxes of chocolate covered cherries).

Perhaps the answer is obvious to you…perhaps not. No holiday dessert has drawn in such debate like the fruitcake. As The Society for the Protection and Preservation of Fruitcake (yes, indeed) stated, fruitcake has been “the butt of many jokes and practical jokes-and yet” fruitcake is “esteemed by many, and an important part of many folks’ holiday.” This is certainly true, perhaps even within families: with the pro-fruitcake consortium on one side and the fruitcake defamation league on the other side.

Johnny Carson once famously launched a thousand fruitcakes out of the front door when he quipped, “The worst gift is fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.” The amount of energy that has been put into picking on the fruitcake has been met on the other side with a passion for promoting this cake, often filled with nuts and fruit, and sometimes soaked in liquor or wine. For instance, “Isabelle” is the author of the blog, “Mondo Fruitcake.” The blog is meant to be a means of sorting through her frustration with “the state of this nation’s attitude toward fruitcake.” It features a year-round look into the world of fruitcakes.

Made in monasteries, bakeries, home ovens, and in many other places, the fruitcake pulls in some heavy support from a diverse crowd of consumers, just as it draws its detractors. Wherever your passions may rest, we can all appreciate that the fruitcake is a standard for the holidays in the United States. Its long history (dating back to ancient Rome!) and its ability to draw in such passion and detachment is a pretty impressive mark on American culture during the holidays. So, grab a knife and a cup of coffee, or package it back up and send it off…no matter, the fruitcake will persevere.

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Science Fare

Food Science Blog Pic

Source: Institute of Food Technologists

The science of sustenance. Diet developments. Munchie modification. Whatever alimental alliteration you choose, it’s all covered under a food processor’s “Research and Development” department. Almost all food manufacturers have an R&D division whose responsibility it is to improve existing products and manufacturing processes, extend current product lines and develop entirely new foods. Today we highlight some of what’s trending in food development.

Apples and Orange (Bananas)
Color is extremely important when it comes to food perception. Studies have shown that when it comes to our experience of food, food color is more important than food labeling or food taste. On a related note, food presentation garners similar results. Enter the “Arctic Apple”, a new breed of non-browning apple. Arctic Apples look and taste like a regular apple, but do not brown like traditional cut apples unless they sustain significant damage, like a fungal or bacterial infection. Proponents of the Arctic Apple feel that nonbrowning apples are more attractive to consumers, and thus will reduce food waste and increase fruit consumption.

Bananas are also getting a makeover. Scientists are currently testing a “super banana” with orange flesh that’s derived from genetically-modifying the banana’s amount of beta-carotene. The peel is yellow and it tastes like a normal banana, but the inside fruit is an attractive shade of cantaloupe orange. The hope is that the super banana will eventually help to prevent blindness in malnourished children around the globe.

A new variety of “Burgundine” asparagus is currently being trialed in the United Kingdom. Burgundine asparagus is the result of crossing normal green asparagus with an heirloom breed of purple asparagus. The resulting violet-hued stalks contain less lignim, the substance that makes asparagus fibrous, and can be eaten raw or cooked. Bring on the dips!

There’s Diamonds in Them Thar Jars
Put down the spoon and back away from the jar. That peanut butter that you were about to lick might be better suited for your home safe than for your cupboard. By mimicking the conditions of the earth’s mantle, a researcher in Germany has turned peanut butter into diamonds. What the what? Yes, peanut butter diamonds. Diamonds need carbon combined with intense heat and pressure in order to form, and, as it turns out, peanut butter is a pretty good source of carbon. Don’t run to Costco just yet, though. The peanut butter diamonds are small, fragile and impure, and eventually disintegrate.

Lick Or Treat
A Google search for “licking the yogurt lid” yields over 90,000 results, Facebook pages and blogs are dedicated to the activity, and ad campaigns by Yoplait and Muller have been based around it. Until recently, however, there was no solution to the obligatory-yogurt-stuck-on-the-lid phenomenon. Morinaga Milk, a Japanese company, has changed that. They’ve developed a nonstick technology for yogurt lids that’s inspired by the lotus leaf, which is known for repelling water and staying dry and clean. As to the obvious question as to why no one’s thought of this before, apparently it’s quite difficult to simultaneously repel yogurt while maintaining container sealability. Pesky physics.

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Crouching Carrots, Hidden Spinach

Brace yourself—you’re in for a shock. The “Food Pyramid” of our childhood is no more. “What?!?,” you wonder aloud. “That ambiguous, theoretical nutritive guideline is defunct? To which geometric graphic will I turn for my daily nutritional suggestions now?”

myplate_greenWell, never fear my diet dilettante, the nourishment experts at the USDA have replaced the familiar triangular doctrine of food intake with a straight-forward graphic of a dinner plate. “My Plate” depicts a plate setting divided into 5 food groups: Vegetables, Grains, Proteins, Fruits and Dairy. The message is pretty clear – this is what your plate should look like at every meal if you want to optimize your health. Oh, and, no, you’re not imagining things – half of the plate IS vegetables and fruit. Basically, the USDA is sending a not-so-subtle message that it’s time to buff up on “Meatless Monday” recipes.

As a new mom, this message hits pretty close to home. My daughter is almost a year old, and increasing her intake of solid foods every day. Right now, her palate is pretty malleable. There’s no need for the hard-sell where vegetables are concerned. I mean, she’s just discovered opposable thumbs. Plying various veggies on my (literally) captive audience of one isn’t the most difficult part of my day. However, even at 11 months, I am starting to see food preferences emerge – cheese, yogurt and bread strong among them. It doesn’t take a giant leap of thought to imagine that these food propensities will only grow to be more pronounced and may soon edge out the vegetable category altogether. So, what’s a responsible, health-conscious mother to do?

I am clearly not alone in this dilemma. American’s overall consumption of fruits and vegetables has been stuck at less than half of the recommended amount for quite some time. The statistics are worse among children under the age of 18. Only about 16% of kids are meeting the government’s vegetable and fruit guidelines, with fried potatoes accounting for approximately a third of vegetable consumption and juice making up more than a third of fruit consumption.

It appears that the tide may be turning however, if food processors have anything to say about it. Two main pro-vegetable strategies are emerging among food manufacturers. The first is to make vegetables more attractive and user-friendly. Examples include pre-prepped fresh vegetables, such as fancy-cut baby carrots or shaved brussels sprouts. The other approach is to actually make veggies “stealth” by slipping them into other more widely-accepted foods, such as casseroles and baked goods.  Along those lines, Green Giant recently introduced “Veggie Blend-Ins” – prepackaged pureed vegetables that can be added to less-healthful foods. Similarly, Kraft added pureed, freeze-dried cauliflower to a variety of its Macaroni & Cheese Dinner and Chef Boyardee has increased the amount of tomato in some of its canned pasta.

Each of these strategies is decidedly different – one is rooted in good-intentioned deception, and the other speaks to our busy lifestyles while appealing to our fondness for the aesthetically-pleasing. I am happy that the food industry is actively tackling the kid vs. veggie challenge, and am sure that I will be practicing both approaches with my daughter. Because something tells me that there will be no shortage of grilled cheese sandwiches in my future – grilled cheese with veggies, that is.

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