Holiday Leftovers and You

During the season of overcooking, over buttering, and overeating, we still end up with a lot of leftovers in the fridge from mom’s famous butternut squash soup to the 16th turkey to make it to your fridge since Thanksgiving.

In the spirit of not getting sick during the Holidays (you want all of your energy for the Feats of Strength at tomorrow’s Festivus celebration), here are a few tips on how to keep those leftovers fresh and safe to overeat the next day:

Storage:

-Store leftovers within 2 hours of cooking to avoid bacterial contamination.

-Cold food should be stored in the freezer at 40 degrees F or cooler.

-ALWAYS allow hot food to cool at room temperature for 30 minutes before placing into refrigerator.

Refrigerator Lifespans:

-Turkey: 3 to 4 days
-Stuffing/Gravy: 1 to 2 days
-Frozen Leftovers: Eat within 4 days of thawing

Reheating:

-Solid leftovers should be reheated to 160 degrees F; sauces, gravies, etc. should be reheated to a rolling boil.

-If something was reheated and not eaten, throw it out.

Happy Holidays!

Children to Boycott General Mills Cereals in Near Future Citing Gym Locker Taste, Health to Improve

Your child may soon leave the house for school everyday not as hyper as usual thanks to General Mills. The cereal giant announced that they plan on lowering the amount of sugar per serving to single digit grams per serving causing a massive rebellion amongst children across the country.

“The company came under fire recently when its Cocoa Puffs cereal – among sugary cereals made by other companies – was included in the Smart Choices food labeling program, despite containing 33 percent sugar, or 11 grams per serving..

General Mills’ sugar reduction announcement comes just weeks after researchers at Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity found that cereals marketed directly to children have 85 percent more sugar, 65 percent less fiber, and 60 percent more sodium than cereals marketed for adult consumption..

The cereals affected by the pledge are Cocoa Puffs, Cocoa Puffs Combos, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cookie Crisp, Cookie Crisp Sprinkles, Frosted Cheerios, Honey Nut Cheerios, Lucky Charms, Reese’s Puffs, and Trix.”

The above rebellion may not have been organized or publicized but parents are sure to feel the effects of this at the breakfast table where children will be hard pressed to enjoy the new taste of the lower sugar content, despite the positive effects on their health.

This move by General Mills is a step in the right direction after widespread criticism of overuse of the misleading “Smart Choice” labeling system that lead consumers to believe that certain foods were healthier than they actually are. For example, a cereal boasting a “Smart Choice” label boasts whole grains and being an excellent source of Vitamin C but fails to mention that it contains more sugar than a slice of red velvet cake.

How the reformulation will affect the taste remains to be.. tasted.

The Real Smart Choice Label

Whether it’s to count calories or see how hyped up on sugar a food with make your kid, many of us are familiar with the “Nutrition Facts” food label. Some parts are clear to understand like calories and serving size. Other parts can seem a little more daunting like the ingredients list where scientists have a field day with terminology that scares more than it does educate (ex: ascorbic acid is actually just Vitamin C).

So it only makes sense that a makeover is in order. Don’t worry, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is on the case.

Of the changes, the most important one to note is that the CSPI hopes the FDA will enforce stricter regulations regarding claims a brand can make such as strengthening your immune system, saying a product contains whole grain but doesn’t disclose how much, and boast the lack of trans fat to cover up the copious amounts of saturated fat.

Here’s a breakdown of changes you can expect:

“1. Put calorie and serving size information in larger type at the top of the label so it’s immediately clear how much you are eating.
2. Make the ingredient list easier to read by printing it in regular type instead of all capital letters. Use bullets to separate ingredients rather than allowing them to all run together.
3. List minor ingredients and allergens separately from the main ingredient list. Highlight allergy information in red.
4. List similar ingredients together and show the percentage by weight. For instance, sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup and grape juice concentrate are all forms of sugar and should be listed in parenthesis under the catchall heading “sugars.”
5. Use red labeling and the word “high” when a product has more than 20 percent of the daily recommendation for fats, sugars, sodium or cholesterol.
6. Make it clear which sugars are added to the product versus those that occur naturally.
7. Display prominently the percentage of whole grains contained in a product.
8. List caffeine content.“

What You Wish You Didn’t Know About Restaurants

It’s like watching a scary movie. You’re hands cover your face but your fingers are just slightly separated because you can’t look away from the horror in front of you. Brace yourself because Reader’s Digest released not one but two articles that cover restaurant tips, tricks, and painfuly true food handling practices that will make you think twice next time you dine out.

Some of my personal (un)favorites:

“At a lot of restaurants, the special is whatever they need to sell before it goes bad. Especially watch out for the soup of the day. If it contains fish or if it’s some kind of “gumbo,” it’s probably the stuff they’re trying to get rid of.”
And they jack up the price 1.5 times the most expensive item to drive this point home, how clever.

“Now that I’ve worked in a restaurant, I never ask for lemon in a drink. Everybody touches them. Nobody washes them. We just peel the stickers off, cut them up, and throw them in your iced tea.”
Don’t let the citrus from the lemon fool you into thinking that most viruses and bacteria are still killed off, consider this their breeding ground.

They direct you to their website for a reason.
“If you ask me how many calories are in a particular dish, I’m not allowed to tell you even if I know. I’m supposed to say, ‘All that information is available online.’”
And here we were fooling ourselves, indulging in Houston’s spinach and artichoke dip, blissfully ignorant to the idea that the waitress didn’t give you the calorie count when you ordered it since you probably would need to take 6 Lipitor afterward.

“Some places buy salad dressings in one-gallon jars, then add a few ingredients, like a blue cheese crumble or fresh herbs, and call it homemade on the menu.”
Similar situation with the homemade cookies you bring to your office during the holidays and secretly bless the spirit of Nestlé Tollhouse for their buttery goodness.

“Even at the best breakfast buffet in the world, 99 times out of 100, the big pan of scrambled eggs is made from a powder.”
That’s very upsetting, so much for the power breakfast.

For another helping of the cringe-fest, click here.

Food Safety 101 is No Match for Tyson’s Bottom Line

The 40-140 Rule strikes again, and, not surprisingly, a food industry giant decided it’d rather save money than follow it. According to the FDA, you should be careful when eating your budget friendly Tyson Seafood Gumbo soup.

“Tyson stored fish and crab for about 18 hours between 40 and 55 degrees. The FDA said those products should be stored below 40 degrees to keep bacteria and toxins from growing on them.. Inspectors in August also cited the company for not documenting procedures for stopping bacterial growth.”

For those of you who are not familiar with the 40-140 Rule, it states that, to avoid bacterial growth, a food product such as fish needs to be kept at either below 40 degrees F (i.e. a freezer) or above 140 degrees F (i.e. cook it).

Tyson essentially threw this Food Safety 101 rule out the window, my guess is because their energy bill would have been higher to keep a temperature below 40 degrees F rather than the we’ll-take-a-guess-and-assume-it’s-safe temperature range of 40–55 degrees F. And the window of safety in which you can leave meat, poultry, and fish above 40 degrees F is 2 hours. Glad they stuck by that one.

Tyson claims this is just a documentation error, that they simply didn’t write down that they took the necessary steps to hinder bacterial growth, and that they’re thawing procedures were within proper safety guidelines. It doesn’t take a nerdy food science undergrad to tell you that, at least the latter, can’t possibly be true. Would you leave a fillet of fish in a warm refrigerator for almost a day and then think, eh, it’s fine. Probably not.

Bet You Had No Idea You Were Eating Recession Sushi

We all do our best to follow the cardinal NYC sushi eating rules. Avoid at all costs on Sundays and Mondays, proceed with caution on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and if it smells fishy, just say no.

But did you ever consider that the spicy tuna roll you slather in your perfectly concocted wasabi and soy sauce blend may actually be a spicy escolar (a.k.a. the fish famous for causing anal leakage and diarrhea) roll? A new DNA research report found that some NYC sushi restaurants are serving escolar and endangered southern bluefin tuna disguised as white tuna.

“According to the report (which doesn’t name the restaurants), ‘nineteen of 31 restaurants erroneously described or failed to identify the sushi they sold. Twenty-two of 68 samples were sold as species that were contradicted by molecular identification… The five samples of escolar sold as a variant of ‘white tuna’ are considered a misrepresentation because this species is a snake mackerel, belonging to the distantly related family Gempylidae.’”

You may recall the 2 high school students from last summer that ran a DNA bar code analysis of random sushi samples and found 6 out of 10 grocery stores sold fake fish while 2 out of the 4 restaurants were serving up cheap tilapia as expensive white tuna.

Essentially, sushi restaurants are getting a bad rap for blatantly lying about the fish they serve and have, unfortunately, been getting away with it since the general public are not zoologists and none the wiser .