Keeping a tag on drinkers

BBC News - Ankle tags to monitor offenders' alcohol consumption:

"Offenders convicted of alcohol-related crimes will have to wear ankle tags to monitor whether they are still drinking, under a new pilot scheme.

The tags will record levels of alcohol in their sweat.

The 12-month trial in four London boroughs - Croydon, Lambeth, Southwark and Sutton - gives courts the ability to ban people from drinking alcohol.

Up to 150 people are expected to be made to wear the tags for four months to make sure they comply."



'via Blog this'

Why your fancy "whiskey" could really be mass produced

Why Your 'Small-Batch' Whiskey Might Taste A Lot Like The Others : The Salt : NPR:

It's a good time to be a whiskey maker, and craft whiskeys are all the rage with names like Bulleit, Redemption, Templeton and George Dickel.

But according to a report on the Daily Beast, some of those producers tossing off hazy, golden adjectives like "hand-crafted," "small-batch," and "artisanal," are well, not. There's a factory in Indiana churning out massive quantities of beverage-grade alcohol, and some distilleries are just buying it and putting it in their pretty bottles.
Steve Ury is an attorney by day and Recent Eats blogger by night who is tracking where the good stuff comes from. He tells All Things Considered's Audie Cornish that over 50 different brands from different companies appear to be bottling whiskey from this big Indiana factory, which goes by the name of MGP, Midwest Grain Products.
Ury says that one of the tell-tale signs on the bottle is the wording. "Does it say it is 'distilled' by that company, or does it say it's 'bottled by or 'produced by' that company? That sounds like a small difference, but it has a big legal meaning." 

(From the Daily Beast)

He also looks for the recipe because the Indiana distillery uses 95 percent rye, which is very distinct. That's a red flag that it might be from Indiana.
As for the taste, Ury notes that different barrels taste different. "Sometimes they blend it with other whiskeys; sometimes they put it in a barrel that previously held port or rum to give it a slightly different flavor," he says. "Sometimes they'll filter it. But there's a commonality of flavor of these MGP ryes because they are so distinct."

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Another alcoholic drink from Mexico on the way

Tepache sounds like something for an enterprising Queensland micro brewer to begin experimenting with.



This note Why You Should Be Drinking Tepache Cocktails is from 

"It only took a few centuries, but tepache, a Mexican pineapple beverage with pre-colonial roots, has now arrived at bars all over the United States. The gently boozy drink ( less than 2% ABV) belongs to a family of ancient Latin American ferments like pulque (made with maguey nectar) and chicha (made with corn) that are brewed in a, let’s say, improvised manner. Usually concocted at home and then sold by street vendors in central Mexico, most tepaches don’t follow a recipe or a strict set of rules. 

“Traditionally, they just use pineapple scraps to make tepache,” explains Wes Mickel, owner of Argus Cidery in Texas, “but there are a hundred different ways to make it.” Usually, the whole pineapple (including the skin, fruit, and core) is combined with water, aromatic spices like cinnamon, and piloncillo (unrefined Mexican brown sugar). After fermenting for several days, the wild yeasts yield a sweet and sour brew with a subtle pungency. 

Until recently, buying tepache in the United States meant seeking out under-the-radar homebrews at taquerias and Mexican groceries. Now, however, Argus Cidery and Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider in Oregon are bottling commercial versions for regional distribution. Wherever you get it, tepache is nice served over ice, or combined with light Mexican beers for a simple, thirst-quenching buzz at summer cookouts."

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Judging the methods of a wine magazine's wine judging

Reprinted from Glug website - the recommended place to buy wine on the web
Monday, 21st July, 2014  - David Farmer 

In my note Applying financial analyst John Moody's rating system to wine show judging I discussed how the judging or grading of wine is fraught with difficulties. I then pondered if a better system was possible and found encouragement in the methods of John Moody in his rating of financial paper.

To restate the problem in a different way, consider two teams tasting the same set of wines in different rooms at the same time. What we know is they will come up with different results. The results will diverge further if the wine classes do not have a narrow focus; and for example included wines from all countries, many varieties and many vintages.

That Moody article mention was made that knowing such things as the region, the provenance, the lineage or the length of history of the wine, its ability to age and the maker, would give an extra dimension to the tasting and such factors need exploring.

Great wines have taken their position in the wine hierarchy after countless assessments by the market place over many years and such considerations cannot be dismissed.

So let us return to the Winestate tasting. 'World's Greatest Syrah and Shiraz Tasting', of 582 wines.

I have been reading Winestate for decades and know its style pretty well. I confess though that despite the process of judging and scoring wines being clearly set out I have always thought something was missing, no doubt because of my sceptical view of most things.

Winestate say: " ..the wines are not know to judges. The three judges taste the wines blind and assign a score without reference to each other. Only then do they compare scores, and if there is dissension they re-taste the wines and come to an agreement. Scores are compiled using the 20 point international system... These final 'medals' are then converted into a star rating system... A gold medal means 5 stars, silver is 4 stars and bronze is three stars."

The star rating also includes 3.5 stars and 4.5 stars, which in my view mean it is a ten point scoring method. It is worth remembering that Winestate is a buying guide and to my knowledge they do not review wines with scores lower than three stars, presumably because these are not worth drinking.

It worries me that judges use the 20 point system to make assessments and this is converted backwards into the published five star system. Doesn't it make more sense to judge from the start using stars, or publish the score out of 20.

It is also stated: "Wine judging is an inexact art, not a science-even at the highest levels of proficiency. Accordingly, Winestate uses the star rating system which reflects a range, rather than a specific point score. Point systems indicate a level of accuracy that simply does not exist."

Then to clarify a star versus a point score, Winestate produce a table which shows for example a 4 star wine equals, 17 -17.9/20 which becomes 94-95/100.

Here is the Winestate comparison table.

This triggers another worry. Scaling up a 20 point system to 100 points means 4 stars equalling 17-17.9 should become the range 85-90. As I understand it the Winestate comparison table illustrates how the stars compare to magazines which use the 100 point method. Thus four stars undergo a correction factor and become 94-95.

Further clues about the judging process were set out in the Winestate editorial by Peter Simic.

"Of course the problem we face at Winestate, and the reason why our scores tend to be lower, is that we use the International 20 points judging system with three judges tasting each wine blind. Then we use the Winestate \'majority rules\' system where rather than averaging scores, two judges have to recommend the wine and the closest two scores go through. So, for example, if two judges give a wine 15/20 and the third gives it 18 points it is out because two judges have said it is out, rather than averaging up."...

I see no logic in the 'majority rules' method which does at least confirm my suspicion that the results instead of being fearless are massaged. Why not average the three tasters, and where is the case that this 'majority rules' leads to more accurate judging? It strikes me as the opposite as if the judges are equal how can one judge be dismissed even if that score is at a large variant to the others. [Note: Similar pressure or correction is used in Show Judging as well.]

All this confirms is that stars and numbers are a useful buying guide but customers must remain wary. I also have the view that for the five stars rating to offer 'a range, rather than a specific point score' the divisions of 3.5 and 4.5 stars should be excluded as the divisions between 15.5 and 20.00 are not stepped evenly when they are re-calibrated to stars.

The editorial also says:

..."At the higher priced level it is like 'taking the Rolls out on a dirt track for a spin', ...without giving extra points for the provenance of history and reputation. But of course we cannot make allowances for some iconic brands when all our wines are judged blind."

I have already offered caution that not taking into account the pedigree of the best wines can lead to very odd results and I often remark that at the top level it is not the wine being judged so much as the judges themselves.

So a total of 17 different judges worked their way through 582 wines over 6 days. The large number of judges also worries me and adds another random factor to the final result. For example did each panel taste a random selection across all price points or did they know the price category they were judging. We are not told.

My difficulty over decades of reading Winestate is a simple one and revolves around the wine price. Surely a four star wine at a low price cannot be better than a three star wine selling for say ten times the price, yet we are told this is not so.

So what do we find? A few bargains were unearthed at the low price end with 4.5 stars going to Brookland Valley, Taylors Promised Land and Red Knot McLaren Vale while 4 stars were given to Shot in the Dark, Johnny Q, Wolf Blass Red Label and a few others.

Going back to the Winestate table I read 4.5 stars equates to 18-18.4 and 96-97 on the 100 point scale. These are indeed bargains, but what room is left for the far more expensive great wines of this challenge?

So I turn to the eight wines priced over $200 to find two with 5 stars, one with 4 stars and 5 with 3 stars. The 3 star bracket caught some beauties including Guigal (France), Penfolds Grange 2008 and Hill of Grace 2008.

So as a consumer I am expected to believe that Grange, which the Wine Advocate for example gave 100/100, is a lesser wine than a humble Wolf Blass Red Label.

As Winestate has said all wines are judged equally I graphed the results.

Much of the towering edifice of the wine business is built on the basic idea that expensive wines will taste better. Thus the graph should rise as the wines increase in price.

Thankfully I am saved from having to offer a detailed view of the results as my experience allows me to take the easy path by saying I do not believe the results of this tasting.

I turned back to John Moody to see what he might have advised. Moody charged the investors of financial paper for his company's opinions; advice worth paying for if it helps in avoiding losses. Built into the grading is another useful feature as it can assist in deciding your appetite for risk. In 1970 Moody's joined similar firms in also charging the issuers of financial paper for their helpful ratings.

To walk both sides of the street is very hard and I am ever mindful that Moody's with a bunch of others had some role to play in the recent GFC debacle. Collecting money from the issuer and the investor it seems can lead to the corruption of ratings.

Thus I will be very careful about how I use Moody in thinking about wine tasting.

I have the increasing suspicion that some large International tastings are beginning to walk both sides of the street. Tastings have evolved from a service to wine makers, to being offered for a small charge to assist consumers, to the current vision of a global event that can be a useful money maker, with fees being gathered to enter while charging for the use of the results.

Winestate of course has always been scrupulously fair with their assessments but whether the results of this Shiraz tasting are helpful is what this article is about.

I recall that the Winestate results came out about the time Wine Australia ran its Savour Australia 2013 programme with guest arriving from overseas to listen to experts explaining why they should buy Australian wine. I wonder if any visitors stopped to think why two of our most famous wines, Penfolds Grange and Hill of Grace, had put up such a miserable showing in the country's premier wine magazine.

I have wondered for a long time about the point of large omnibus wine tastings and those saying 'we assess all wines equally and masked', seems to offer no better approach than that of the marketing genius Robert Parker and others who knew it made sense at the top end to know what they were tasting.

As you move from agricultural shows which helped instruct amateur makers how to avoid faults to shows becoming part of marketing so they must constantly evolve. I have also learnt that having forthright opinions on wines can leave you badly exposed and to stare down the market place is very risky.

Keeping things in proportion is often hard to do and I do this by reminding myself that wine is just a drink.

Applying financial analyst John Moody's rating system to wine show judging

Reprinted from Glug website - the recommended place to buy wine on the web
Thursday, 1st May, 2014  - David Farmer 

John Moody age 88 in 1956

Can you make a living out of the salmon that John West rejects? I think so as while I know nothing about grading salmon I find I can discover and buy plenty of interesting wines that never make the grade in the show judging.

I have a high opinion of scientists as they place numbers on things which can be duplicated and because of that their theories and opinions make sense. As you move away from measurement by instruments and enter fields where experience and 'feeling' take over from hard numbers I get increasingly nervous.

Tasting and grading wines seems pretty simple. Presented with a long line of wines the idea is you pull forward the good wines and push back the poor ones. Then you further sub-divide the good ones. If required you then give a number to the good wines based on the system being used at that tasting. In essence this is how grading wines has developed over the last 100 years.

I developed a cautionary approach very early in my career. The light went on a great number of times and I vividly remember one moment at the National Wine Show in Canberra in the early 1980s. I was closely comparing wines in a Chardonnay class with the judging results and kept coming back to the number 3 wine which did not even rate a bronze but was my best. The wine was from the Neudorf winery, Nelson, New Zealand, a new region making wines with unfamiliar tastes.

As any winemaker knows entering shows is a lottery and being awarded no medals in Brisbane does not mean you will not do well in Adelaide. I was having a coffee with a local winemaker in Tanunda the other day and he related that at the local Barossa Show he was awarded zilch but a few weeks later and 100 kilometres away at the Adelaide Wine Show the same wines collected three gold medals.

Even so while we accept that well trained professional will make mistakes and lots of them, on the whole a group of judges should be able to indicate the better wines. It helps if the judges are given some clues such as the vintage or the variety and wines are generally grouped such that like goes with like. Without these hints the difficulty barrier is raised to high.

So a judging is seen as the best result on the day, by dedicated experienced professionals, and you must expect the results will vary between tastings.

Tastings of this nature are what I call flat tastings as they are one dimensional. Like many others I have wondered if a better method of grading is possible, one perhaps bringing in other dimensions about a wine.

This issue needs to be debated as no matter how you view judging, the results of numerous statistical studies now question whether results can be duplicated and indeed how expert are the experts.

Searching for a Three Dimensional Judging System

Here are some factors, all well known, which cause concern and might be considered in a more complex judging system which expands the ratings of a few judges. I have added a short note to clarify what is suggested though many of these points could be expanded into an essay.

1. Judging the judges. I came across this quote the other day; "A panel of 13 expert wine judges started to swirl, sniff, sip..", which tells us it is considered some tasters are rated as experts judges while others presumably have the lower rating of judges while the rest of us are amateurs or worse.

2. Comparing like with unlike wines. When appraising different styles together it is incredibly hard to have a just result. Who can say the Champion wine of a show is an old port or a young chardonnay.

3. Comparing wines from different regions or countries. Should wine from Lebanon be judged against wine from France?

4. Comparing different varieties. Can you compare a tarrango with a cabernet?

5. What is the tasting trying to achieve. Is the tasting narrowly defined or does it judge the wines of the world.

6. Comparing the ages of the wines.

7. Comparing the vintages of wines. Some vintages are better than others and if a wine from a poor vintage is judged as better than that of a greater vintage should we be concerned.

8. Should you compare wines from regions with little history with those that have a long history? In my experience it takes a long time for wines from new regions to reach a satisfactory level.

9. Does the wine already have a medal history?

10. Is the wine from a family or lineage with a long history of making great wines?

11. Does the wine have ability to age?

12. The price of the wine. This is a very contentious issue with no easy answer. Alas it must be considered as if the public are constantly told that experts cannot tell the difference between cheap and expensive wines, which is what they are now regularly told, there will be consequences.

The price the wine is sold for must be considered an important clue to wine quality though this is such an important topic it is best covered in separate articles.

13. The wine price also intermingles with the investment grade of the wine and can it be readily turned into cash.This relates back to the provenance of the wine

14. The ability of the winemaker or respective entity of the maker. Here I ponder whether a Penfolds or Guigal wine should have a rating added to the final score i.e. the issue of provenance.

15. The fashions of judging. Certain styles may be favoured which down-grades others. To think judges are unaffected by swings of fashion and practice their craft at a level floating above market swings is to not consider the problems we have in making decisions.

16. Should judges only judge what they know? I believe we all develop easily a cellar palate no matter how hard we try not to. Thus I am not a believer that all judges are equal and can be called up to tackle any wine style without fear or favour. To ask judges from Central Otago to judge Barossa wines asks for trouble.

Examples of Three Dimensional Judging

The Royal Adelaide Show has a Trophy called; the Gramp, Hardy, Hill-Smith Prize for Outstanding Wine of Provenance which was created in 2009, to recognise wines that reflect their region, lineage and longevity.

Another judging system is the Langton's Classification of Australian wine which links a lengthy history of excellence with the interests of consumers in buying the wine.

A further example is the interesting innovation of an eastern states show, from I recall the Southern Highlands, where wines in one class were from vineyards above a certain height, I think above 500 metres.

It is true that a competent judge is meant to take all of these factors into account and no doubt a good judge after a long apprenticeship can and does consider many complex factors.

Looking for a Better Way

Questions such as those listed from 1-16 illustrate some of the problems while the examples above offer imaginative ways forward. There may be a better way to explain to customers the grading of wines by moving beyond the current flat one dimensional way. This in turn made me ask did a better system of grading already exist, perhaps in education, business or science, which could be applied to wine.

After a bit of searching I stumbled across the inventiveness of John Moody who in 1900 developed a rating system for financial paper. I found his ideas had a three dimensional character to grading which offered, if not solutions for wine judging, a display of technique which could perhaps be adapted.

The Thinking of John Moody and Judging

Moody tackled the task of rating the likelihood of a borrower paying the agreed interest and the principle back on a loan. This is a grading system with money on the table and the judgements lead to real gains or losses.

Moody divides the ability of an entity to repay debt with a simple ABC rating but added lower case letters and numbers for the many sub-divisions needed to highlight variants to the basic risk.

A good example is classifying the difference in the likelihood of repayment of short term versus long term obligations.

Moody's system evolved into this grading: 

Aaa Aa1 Aa2 Aa3 A1 A2 A3

Baa1 Baa2 Baa3 Ba1 Ba2 Ba3 B1 B2 B3

Caa1 Caa2 Caa3 Ca C

As I studied the Moody system I found it offered many parallels to wine judging and I list some of the striking features. Moody offers hundreds of indicators which he used in his rating system and below I offer seven to illustrate the complexity of his rating system.

1. Short term versus long term debt. This reminds me of the ability of a wine to age.

2. The rating of the issuer of the debt. Some issuers of debt have a poor record and I see parallels in the divergence of winemaker's abilities.

3. A sovereign state has a different ability to pay to municipals. As the classified growths and other Bordeaux's differ should we have a base rating of some regions over others?

4. The investment manager rating of the advisor to the offer. This of course points at the quality of judges and asks if they should be graded.

5. The rating of the country which considers its past history of servicing debt and outstanding debt levels. This is harder but all things being equal I would sooner cellar Australian wine than Argentinean, at this moment, on a risk reward assessment.

6. The corporate rating. This goes right to the heart of grading as a Penfolds wine is safer to buy and cellar than other companies no matter how they have been judged.

7. A speculation grade liquidity rating which is a punt on a new entity with no history. I particularly like this idea as it asks should we invest in the new region or the new wine maker.

I had these thoughts in my mind when I opened the Winestate September/October, 2013 edition and turned to 'The World's Greatest Syrah and Shiraz Challenge' with 582 wines tasted.

To say the result puzzled and disturbed me is an understatement and I will explain why in another posting - Judging the methods of a wine magazine's wine judging.

Waste not want not - Chinese recycling

A grill restaurant in Beijing was discovered serving food processed from the leftover by the previous customers Mon. pic.twitter.com/3ysj033j8F
— People's Daily,China (@PDChina) July 28, 2014

Svetlana Acquired Taste Heartbreak Grape and Galway

Friday, 4th July, 2014  - David Farmer 

Years ago Ben gave me with the insight that in the eastern hills of the Barossa, the region we call Eden Valley, lived Svetlana the keeper of Gruner Veltlinger, or as he called her the Lady of the Eastern Hills. I had doubts if such a person existed and even more doubts about the future, if any, of gruner veltlinger.

Last year I drank a remarkable wine, the Stift Goettweig Gruner Veltlinger Gottschelle Kremstal Reserve 2010 13.5% which by all measures is a breathtaking masterpiece.

I should have known better as experience has taught me that all the varieties in the world will somewhere in someone's arms make unbelievable wine.

Thinking of ripeness, alcohol and flavour I opened a Mount Pleasant Elizabeth Hunter Valley Semillon 1995 11% and found it most agreeable. A wine like this is picked early and the flavour develops with time. It is also an acquired taste and will not come naturally to most consumers, meaning you will have to work to understand the beauty. McWilliams know how hard it is to sell as they seem to be forever discounting these remarkable wines.

On the 22nd June, 2014 I noticed a Mount Pleasant Classic Semillon 2007 being sold on line for $9 a bottle.

Then a brace of new world pinots, the variety assured to break the heart of the pioneering wine maker and his or her bank account. We can be thankful that many wine makers have the pinot obsession which comes with the character to try and try again. And we can also thank the small army of pinot-philes who buy these experimental wines and travel the globe attending pinot festivals.

You will find more in Marq de Villiers 'The Heartbreak Grape' (1984) which is a pretty good read.

On the day I liked the Littorai Cerise Vineyard Anderson Valley Pinot Noir 2010 13.5% a tad more than the Old Wika Pass Road Bell Hill Pinot Noir 2009 13.5% of which they made 930 bottles. How can you survive making 930 bottles? Marcel Giesen and Sherwyn Velduizen looked for limestone bedrock, found it and in 1997 densely planted the small vineyard.

Then an early Glug bottling, a Wheatsheaf Barossa Valley Shiraz 2005 14%, from a time when we were beginning our own dream which meant some extraordinary wine was sold under slip labels, simple bin numbers and early attempts at labels.

This was matched with a Yalumba Galway Vintage Barossa Shiraz 2011 13.5%. I recall a Galway 1941 was opened in the late 1990s and the tasters said it still had life. It feel Galway has followed me all my career and Yalumba credit me with reviving the brand, I think back in the 1980s, where I found it unloved in the cupboard of brand discards.

The re-launch job had sales rocketing though ever since a procession of marketing executives have played with the brand position, the contents, the label, the pricing and anything else till the new life ebbed away.

In the late 1990s I was living in Sydney and was invited to a private showing of the new brand positioning for Galway and assuming they wanted my thoughts happily went along. They did not want my views while unfolding the new scheme which changed Galway from a stand-alone brand to being one of a family group which included oddities like the white blend Christobels and a strange merlot. Galway died that day.

I'm reminded that I told them what I thought and after the meeting went to the Oaks Hotel with a friend where we discussed marketing and the future of wine in blue bottles which was the current craze. I like to say brands are like humans and if you cut them enough they bleed to death.

The new, sombre, dark label will not help Galway while the wine quality of the 2011 offers no help. The back label comment; 'Our contemporary interpretation of the traditional, authentic, old-style Aussie red', filled me with sadness.

I recall being at Yalumba in the Barossa Valley in the 1980s where I met the sales and marketing team while noting the dress code was the South Australian tweedy look. It is often said that the status of a man is revealed by the shoes and as the salaries advanced these changed from pale and deep tan brogues to the more casual, soft leather look of loafers with tassels, some with that extra adornment, the frilled leather flap.

At this stage I was introduced to a sales representative who had flown in from the east and was told he had the skills and background to make a real contribution to the company. I looked at his shoes and knew he would not last.

Milk for the Melbourne coffee craze

Inner-city micro dairy brings milk to Melbourne's cafes the old-fashioned way - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation):

"In a back street in the inner-city Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, a small dairy has quietly opened its doors.

Saint David Dairy, named after the street in which it is located, started a year ago with no customers and a dream to bottle milk the old-fashioned way.
 Today, it has more than 100 customers - mostly the inner-city cafes frequented by hipsters and coffee snobs.

Saint David Dairy is the brainchild of dairy industry professional Ben Evans, a former production manager for the big players." ...
The secret, [Evans] says, is to do as little to the milk as possible, leaving in all the cream and the protein.
"Essentially the irony about milk is that the less you do to it the better it is, so the aim is to essentially bottle it as close to the way it's produced naturally as you can," he said.

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Farm to counter chain restaurants the growing thing

Hold the Regret? Fast Food Seeks Virtuous Side - NYTimes.com:

"A handful of rapidly growing regional chains around the country — including Tender Greens, LYFE Kitchen, SweetGreen and Native Foods — offer enticements like grass-fed beef, organic produce, sustainable seafood and menus that change with the season.
Most promise local ingredients; some are exclusively vegetarian or even vegan. A few impose calorie ceilings, and others adopt service touches like busboys and china plates.

And despite the higher costs and prices, all are thriving and planning national expansions, some directed by alumni of fine dining or of fast-food giants like McDonald’s. 

(Click to enlarge)

Their success marks a milestone: After decades of public hand-wringing about the empty calories and environmental impact of fast food, the farm-to-table notions that have revolutionized higher-end American restaurants have finally found a lucrative spot in the takeout line. The result already has a nickname: farm to counter.
“This is not a passing fad,” said B. Hudson Riehle, the research director for the National Restaurant Association, who added that locally grown food and sustainability were the top two customer priorities reported this year in the group’s annual poll of American chefs. “It’s only going to get stronger.”"

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Testing your alcohol consumption with the help of your smartphone

Key Chain Blood-Alcohol Testing May Make Quantified Drinking Easy : The Salt : NPR:

(Click to enlarge)

"The quantified self movement has turned monitoring steps, sleep and other activities with technology into a self-improvement pastime. Could the next frontier be alcohol consumption?

 It turns out that the industry that makes blood-alcohol testing devices has been trying to turn us into quantified drinkers for years. And new products on the market are making monitoring even easier by linking it to your smartphone.

One company, BACtrack, has just released a key chain alcohol test about the size of a lighter for $50."



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Problem for sushi eaters

Feds Consider Ban On Bluefin Tuna Fishing As Population Dips 95 Percent | ThinkProgress:

"On Wednesday, The fisheries division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that it’s considering a ban on recreational and commercial fishing of Pacific bluefin tuna. After years of large-scale fishing and rising demand in the sushi industry it is estimated that as few as 40,000 adult Pacific bluefin tuna remain in the wild, around four percent of the fish’s historic average.
With catches dropping dramatically recently and up to 90 percent of those caught qualifying as juveniles, this initial step by the federal government could result in the fish being added to the list of imperiled species that must be released immediately if caught."



'via Blog this'

Food safety Chinese style

China probes food businesses; Hong Kong bans imports in meat safety scare | Reuters:

"China's food regulator has visited close to 600 restaurants, businesses and food distributors as it investigates a fast-spreading food safety scare that has dragged in a number of global brands and hit food outlets as far away as Japan. 

Hong Kong said on Thursday it suspended, with immediate effect, all imports from the U.S.-owned Chinese supplier at the center of the latest scare. It was unclear when the company last shipped its products to Hong Kong. 

Shanghai police detained five people on Wednesday, including the head and the quality chief of Shanghai Husi Food, a supplier to foreign fast-food brands including KFC, McDonald's Corp and coffee chain Starbucks Corp over allegations it supplied out-of-date meat. 

Shanghai Husi Food is owned by Illinois-based OSI Group. \ 

Yum Brands Inc, the owner of KFC and Pizza Hut, severed ties with OSI, and McDonald's said it would move supply from the Shanghai facility to OSI's new plant in the eastern central province of Henan.

"

'via Blog this'

Catering for single diners

BBC News - Tables for one - the rise of solo dining:

"Not too long ago solo dining was synonymous with a greasy takeaway scoffed down in the car, or room service consumed in the sterile anonymity of your hotel room. This was preferable to the thought of dining alone in a proper restaurant, and the associated stigma of being seen as a "friendless loser".

Some of that sense of unease surrounding booking a table for one no doubt dates back to our childhoods, when sitting alone in the high school cafeteria was tantamount to social suicide. Yet today, a growing number of us live alone - including one out of every seven adults in the US - so the stigma surrounding solo dining has started to dissipate, says Aaron Allen, a Florida-based global restaurant consultant.

With more and more people choosing to dine out alone, Mr Allen says savvy restaurants around the world are trying to make themselves more welcoming to solo diners, for example by fitting more bar seating, or encouraging waiting staff to be more attentive to customers sitting on their own." ...

At the San Diego restaurant Top of the Market, executive chef Ivan Flowers was brought in last year to make some changes, with one main aim being to increase the number of people dining alone.

He felt that while the eatery already had bar seating in front of the open kitchen, it was underutilised because the chefs weren't interacting enough with the customers.

Mr Flowers says solo diners sitting by the kitchen now get "to see a show", which includes cooking demos, free tastings and conversations with the chefs.

"If you catch our eye, we'll ask, 'Would you like to try that?'

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The Eater website gets it right

Here's What Every Trendy Restaurant Menu Looks Like - Eater IDK - Eater National:

(Click to enlarge)

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The Tour de France is an epic marathon of eating.

The Epic 2,200-Mile Tour De France Is Also A Test Of Epic Eating : The Salt : NPR:

The cyclists now competing in the 101st rendition of the race are burning an average of 700 calories per hour while riding and, to keep their weight up and maintain their health through the three-week event, they must eat 6,000 to 9,000 calories every day.
... The almost nonstop eating begins with juice as soon as the athletes wake, according to Nigel Mitchell, head of nutrition forTeam Sky. After joining their teammates in the hotel dining room, they devour a massive buffet-style breakfast, heavy on carbs and sugar, and moderate in fiber, which can add unwanted bulk to the cyclists' bellies.
When they've finished this matinal meal, they pile into a bus, and keep eating, taking in hundreds more calories in energy drinks and bars before arriving at the starting line. Once they begin pedaling, team support vehicles shadow the riders, and assistants hand them energy gel packets, homemade rice cakes and Panini sandwiches.

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The Mexican food boom

Chart: Americans can’t stop eating Chipotle’s burritos - The Washington Post:

There are few things as smooth as Chipotle's ability to sell more and more burritos seemingly each day, week and month, but certainly each quarter and every year.

The Mexican fast food chain, which now slings billions of dollars in burritos (and burrito bowls) each year, saw its second quarter sales jump by 29 percent compared to the same period last year.

Chipotle's performance didn't merely beat analyst estimates — it crushed them. The chain was forced to raise its prices earlier this year, after rising food costs swallowed a hefty chunk of the company's profits. The expectation was that it would have a negative impact on store traffic, but instead same-store sales — sales at Chipotle restaurants open for at least 13 months — jumped by 18 percent.

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The glories of bone marrow from a Singapore street stall

Along with his description of a delicious meal, Konstantin Kakaes explores just where bone marrow's flavour comes from. From Guy Crosby, an adjunct professor of nutrition at Harvard and the science editor of America's Test Kitchen, he discovers that the many nucleotides present in bone marrow amplify the umami taste of glutamate by as much as 20 to 30 times. "Crosby reminded me that the function of bone marrow is to produce red blood cells. Because it is, in effect, a factory for the creation of cells, Crosby says, bone marrow is like an egg: 'a perfect food. It's got everything in it needed to create and sustain life'."

Not So Offal: Why Bone Soup, A 'Perfect Food,' Tastes So Meaty : The Salt : NPR:

I ate the best meat I've ever eaten through a straw.
When the Singaporean food stall proprietor who'd just served me a plate of bones first offered the straw, I refused. I didn't want to take any shortcuts as I worked the tastiest bits of marrow out from the skeletal hollows.
But a couple of minutes into my repast, my face smeared with the viscous broth the bones had come in, I couldn't face the thought of leaving some of this food unexploited. So I took the proffered straw, inserted it down into a bone cavity and inhaled.
It tasted like the first bite of an excellent steak, only more so. Unlike biting into a rib-eye, when that initial sensation gives way to something less exultant and chewier, the marrow lingered on the tongue. I felt as if I was mainlining glutamate, the substance responsible for umami.
These bones had been cooked for hours in a fluorescent red amalgam of tomato and chili.Sup tulang, as this dish is called in Singapore, is Malay for "bone soup." I ate it at Deen Tulang Specialist, one of a handful of stalls specializing in the dish in the Golden Mile Food Centre, one of many food courts, known as hawker centers, in Singapore.

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A sign of the decline in French cuisine

BBC News - The new sign on French menus:

"The summer rush to France - a magnet for more foreign tourists than any other country - is about to begin. And this year travellers may spot a new logo on menus, designed to flag up when food has been home-made. But how exactly is "home-made" defined?
 The bad news is that - just like anywhere else in the developed world - many French restaurants just reheat pre-prepared food, rather than cooking it from scratch.

French consumers estimated, in a poll last October, that barely half of restaurant meals were home-made, while the Union of Hotel Skills and Industries suggests that 85% of restaurants secretly make use of frozen or vacuum-packed food.
In the country of Parmentier, Escoffier, and Paul Bocuse, to many people this just doesn't seem right, so a law designed to uphold French culinary traditions was passed earlier this year, and came into force this week.

Now any restaurant that serves a home-made dish can indicate it on the menu with it new logo - in the shape of a saucepan with a roof-like lid.
From next January it will be compulsory for all menus to carry the logo - so if you don't see it, the food is not fait maison.

"We chose to represent 'home-made' with a logo so that foreign tourists could understand it," says a government spokeswoman.

"French gastronomy represents 13.5% of foreign tourists' expenses and it's undeniable that if we add value to the quality of our restaurants, it will have an impact on tourism.""

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The connection between what you eat and your mood

Stress-Busting Diet: 8 Foods That May Boost Resilience : The Salt : NPR:

"Given what we know about how different foods affect the risk of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes, "why should it be so surprising that the nature of the foods we eat can also affect our emotional and mental well-being?" Ludwig says. 

So, if eating lots of refined carbs and sugar may exacerbate our responses to stress, are there other types of food that make us more resilient? Researcher Joe Hibbeln of the National Institutes of Health believes the answer is yes. "I think there's a very strong connection between what you eat and your mood," Hibbeln says. 

He has spent the past two decades investigating links between the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish and emotional health. "One of the most basic ways that omega-3s help to regulate mood is by quieting down the [body's] response to inflammation," Hibbeln says. When you get walloped by something, whether it's a virus or an emotional stressor, you want to bounce back as quickly as possible, he notes. "You can either be good at weathering stress or you can be brittle. And omega-3s make your stress system more flexible," Hibbeln says. 

He points to studies showing that omega-3s can help protect neurons against the damage that can be done by chronic stress. He also points to clinical trials that have found that omega-3s may help control depressive symptoms. And a study of schoolchildren in England linked omega-3s to more pro-social behavior. 

Hibbeln knows that some people shy away from fish due to the cost, so he points to affordable options such as canned light tuna and sardines, which are good sources of omega-3s. There are also plant-based sources of omega-3s, such as flaxseed and chia seeds."

Would you like them with garlic and butter?

They are as big as the palm of a human hand. weigh almost a kilo and are a West African delicacy when peppered, then sautéed with onions and tomatoes, garlic and chilies. But not something that is likely to be on US menus anytime soon.
A shipment of 67 of these Archachatina marginata, or banana rasp snails, were recently seized by customs inspectors at Los Angelese airport after arriving from Nigeria. The officials described the snails as "highly invasive, voracious pests" that eat paint and stucco off houses and can munch their way through 500 plant species, if they can't find fruits and vegetables.
They were consigned to an incinerator rather than a cooking pot.

Beer from, the yeast on old whale bones

Captain Ahab's Revenge: Brewing Beer From An Ancient Whale Bone : The Salt : NPR:

What happens when an amateur paleontologist with a love for beer teams up with a microbiologist? Bone beer, or beer made from yeast scraped from a 35-million-year-old whale fossil, to be precise.
The new brew, dubbed Bone Dusters Paleo Ale, is a concoction created by amateur fossil hunter Jason Osborne of Paleo Quest, a nonprofit paleontology and geology advocacy group, and microbiologist Jasper Akerboom of the Lost Rhino Brewing Company in Ashburn, Va.

Like many scientific innovations, Bone Dusters came to Osborne late one night while he was drinking a beer.
Osborne was hunched over his desk, studying ancient whale bones he'd collected on an underwater expedition, when he took a sip and began to ponder how beer has yeast — an organism that transforms sugar into alcohol — and yeast can be found almost anywhere. His gaze shifted from his glass to his fossil.
"I thought, even though this is dead, there's got to be things living on it," he tells The Salt.
And an idea began to brew.
Osborne enlisted his friend Akerboom to swab the fossil and a dozen more from the basement drawers of the Calvert Marine Museum in Maryland. Akerboom, a former research specialist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, didn't think the prehistoric bones could sustain yeast's appetite.
But in the name of science and great beer, he swabbed away. The results, he said, surprised him. While most fossils failed to create suitable yeast, Akerboom found one that fermented.
What he discovered was a wild yeast subspecies, which the pair named Saccharomyces cerevisiae var protectus, after the yeast's host, protocetid whale "Eocetus wardii," an early whale ancestor that Osborne had described in a 2011 paper in the journal BioOne.
The whale was a prehistoric beast that had hind legs, molars and canine-like teeth. Scientists say it may have been amphibious, dwelling on both land and water.

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Kelp gives a new taste in beer

Craft Beer Reaches New Depths As Mainers Brew A Batch From Seaweed : The Salt : NPR:

More craft breweries are using exotic ingredients in their creations these days. There are ales made with all kinds of fruit, beers infused with coriander and other spices, stouts brewed with oysters — even beer made from yeast scraped off 35 million-year-old whale bones. But what about a beer made with seaweed?
At the Marshall Wharf Brewing Company on the Belfast, Maine, waterfront, new beers begin their journey into draft lines and pint glasses inside two large tanks. Marshall Wharf has a reputation for making some unconventional beers — a stout with locally-sourced oysters, for example, and a wheat-infused kolsch with jalapeno and habanero peppers. A few years ago, David Carlson, the brewing company's owner, discovered a beer from Scotland, called Kelpie, made with seaweed.
"If there's seaweed in Maine and it's a good product," he says, "why not try putting it in the beer."

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Like a little wood pulp with that?

From McDonald's To Organic Valley, You're Probably Eating Wood Pulp : The Salt : NPR:



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Do not be alarmed, but you may be eating wood pulp. Or at least an additive that started out as wood.
If you buy shredded cheeses, including brands such as Organic Valley and Sargento, or hit the drive-thru at McDonalds for a breakfast sandwich or a smoothie, or douse some ribs with bottled barbecue sauce, there's likely some cellulose that's been added to your food.
Cellulose is basically plant fiber, and one of the most common sources is wood pulp. Manufacturers grind up the wood and extract the cellulose.
It's odd to imagine the same kind of pulp that's used to make paper turning up in our food. So, it's no surprise there's buzz over a spate of recent posts, from Quartz to the Los Angeles Timeson the food industry's widespread use of cellulose to help add texture and fiber to foods.
But there's not much new here. The FDA long ago green-lighted the use of added cellulose in foodstuffs. And, in our bodies this cellulose passes right through our GI tracts, virtually unabsorbed.

Explaining some of the mysteries of absinthe

A delightful explanation from Evan Rail as he explores the original distillery homes of absinthe - the spirit banned for a century throughout Europe but now back on sale and increasing in popularity.

On the Absinthe Trail - NYTimes.com:

A friend in Prague had started hosting upscale absinthe tastings at a bar there last summer, including several of the new — or renewed — versions coming out of France and Switzerland. Although both countries had banned the drink about 100 years ago, following widespread panic about the hallucinogenic and deleterious effects of absinthe, production was legalized again in Switzerland in 2005, followed by France in 2011. After a century, people no longer seemed to fear the Green Fairy, and the growing popularity of cheap, inauthentic absinthes from countries where the drink had never been banned — primarily the Czech Republic — put pressure on authorities to lift the ban in absinthe’s traditional homelands.

After sitting in on one of my friend’s tastings, I found myself unable to stop thinking about the complexity of the drink’s anise aromas, the starkness of the bitter herbs on the tongue, and deeply disappointed that I couldn’t find anything similar, not even at the city’s best bottle shops. (And though I certainly didn’t hallucinate, I missed the pleasant dreaminess the drink seemed to evoke.) As I began reading more about absinthe, I discovered that some of the most highly praised versions came from the Val-de-Travers. Indeed, it turned out that the area and the nearby province in France even had something called la route de l’absinthe, or absinthe trail, a semi-organized list of attractions related to the drink: distilleries, museums, restaurants and destinations like the Fontaine Froide. 

"Absinthe Antiques: a Collection From la Belle Époque"

The Scotch whisky drinking table

Australia clearly drinks at the cheaper end - placed 13th by volume but 15th by volume.

(Click to enlarge)