Peeled Skinny

Peeled Snacks offers a clearly vegetarian (and Vegan) snack, but we're not a vegetarian company.  Obviously, everybody here eats their veggies, and many of us (myself included) have been off-and-on Vegetarians (I, currently, am OFF).  But we all also respect what Meat can do to the diet, and since seeing "Food Inc." this summer, we've all become much more aware of how our meat is sourced.  So there's no disrespect for "Vegesauruses" around here, nor for "Carnisauruses" either.

Let's assume as axiomatic that there's room for improvement in the meat industry (if you doubt, just see "Food inc.").  But allow me to make the argument that there's room for improvement in the world of vegetarian cuisine.  Tofu, sorry, just ain't that good unless VERY well prepared, and seitan, as much as I love it, turns out to be pretty terrible for you.  Try flavoring vegetables to meet all tastes and usually you'll fail, and, though I love them, most folk out there HATE beans.

But there IS good Vegetarian food out there, if you're willing to look (or, more often, cook it yourself), though a dilemma for Vegetarians is how difficult such things are to find.  Yesterday evening, though, I stumbled across an attempt at creating some good, CONVENIENT vegetarian food, and the results were, to my taste, mostly satisfying.  I stumbled across "Maoz".

For full disclosure's sake: while I was a "mostly vegesaurus" I luckily traveled through the Middle East and found a place to consistently get affordable Veggie vittles: bus stations.  Inevitably at a bus stop in, say Jordan, you'll find a falafel stand, and I'll put the quality of the grimiest Jordanian bus stop Falafel stand up against any American restaurant option any day.  I am clearly not alone.

Maoz seems to ape that Middle Eastern fast-food experience, and it does so with at least a cleaner presence than your average Jordanian bus stop.  All that Maoz really sells is falafel in a pita, with a "fixins bar" full of a menagerie of salads, plus fries for a little extra.  The "fixins" were all fresh and tasty (taboula? good.  Chick peas? good.  Beets?  YUM!  Sun dried tomatoes? uh....), and with fries the meal came out to more than I could eat.

It also (unfortunately) came out to more than I would usually want to spend: a vegetarian quasi-"happy meal" ran me $9.25, and this place was 3 doors down from a McDonalds where that much money might have fed a family of 4.  But Maoz isn't likely to give me a heart attack any time soon.  And I suspect that my falafel was fresh, fresh, fresh.  It's been a long time since I ate at McDonald's (since July 29th, 2006, in fact), but I'm pretty sure what I ate then wasn't NEARLY as fresh as my Maoz meal.

So here's a good, fresh, well located fast-food Vegetarian option to consider.  I've had better falafel, but not in the States, and I've certainly paid less for a meal, but not too much.  At Peeled Snacks we're always looking for new trends, and this over-fed, under-nourished country could certainly use a fast-vegetarian-food fad to shake things up.  Anybody know of any other contenders?  Where do YOU go for Vegetarian Vittles?

Hungry tummies want to know,

Peeled Skinny

Posted by iankusc at 04:20 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

April 24, 2009

Low Sugar still means High Fat: Smuch Off!

At my local grocery store the other day I wandered down the cereal aisle and started checking out jellies and jams.  I noted quite a few more organic options, a dubious plethora of "natural" options, and one very annoying stand-out: "Reduced Sugar Strawberry Jam".  As a fan of both jelly and strawberries, I thought, GREAT- this won't point me towards a sugar coma.  But regrettably, sometimes "Low" still means "High".  Sigh.

So the 2nd ingredient on the list is "Sugar".  I understand that jellies and jams typically need a bit of sugar as a preservative.  But I also happen to know that they don't NEED it- "Fruit", as we're fond of saying here at Peeled Snacks, "is sweet enough"!  Indeed, the "Reduced Sugar" preserves has a little less than half as much sugar as the regular jelly.  But still, it shouldn't need ANY sugar.

And I ask you- how can you REDUCE anything by ADDING the thing that you're REDUCING?  It's not "Reduced Sugar" Jelly, it's really "Less Sugar Added" Jelly.  Or rather, "we've reduced the amount of sugar that we've added to this product, which really means that we're still adding the thing that we're telling you we're reducing, sorry about the confusion".

In all fairness, I can't really hold it against the jam's manufacturer- they're basically just giving the people what they want (i.e. sugar).  Our taste buds have been so trained to crave sugar that this product does represent a step in the right direction for them.  To truly "Reduce" the sugar in this product, we'd need to reduce the sugar that a whole generation eats, and that ain't easy.

And all this makes me think of the film "The Gods Must Be Crazy".  Not only is it one of Peeled Snacks' founder and president Noha Waibsnaider's favorite films, not only is it a gut-bustingly funny slapstick comedy, not only does it hold up astoundingly well almost 30 years after it was released, but it is also a marvelous indictment of our crazy, modern comnsumerist society.

If you haven't seen the film, do so- it's fun for the whole family.  In short, it's about a man from an isolated tribe in the African bush who tries to return an unwanted coke bottle to the "Gods".  On the way to the gods he runs into white people, and hilarity ensues.

So when he first sees white people, just typical white people of medium build, the film reveals his first thoughts about them:

"He saw the ugliest person he'd ever come across. She was as pale as something that had crawled out of a rotting log; her hair was quite gruesome, long and stringy and white, as if she was very old; she was very fat - he'd have to take the whole day to find enough food to feed her"

To people that don't get to "Reduce" the sugar in their food by adding it, we modern, civilized people look very fat.  Have you read your ingredient labels today?  Sigh.

Happy Snacking,

Peeled Skinny 

Posted by iankusc at 10:24 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Event Horizon #1: Food Revolutionaries UNITE!

May I please direct your eyes towards a great article from this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/business/22food.html?_r=1&em

There's been a whole lot of hubbub about food again ever since Michelle Obama expressed interest in creating an organic garden on the White House lawn.  As a political and social statement, that's a marvelous endorsement to Foodies across the GLOBE.  As a first step, it's kind of flashy but nice.  As a solution to what some of us see as a major food conundrum in America, it's unfortunately dismissable.

Consider that the Farm Bill comes up every 5 years, and it last came up this past Summer.  That means that is won't come up AT ALL during President Obama's term.  Consider also that land reform on the White House Lawn is a heck of a lot easier than land reform in Iowa.  Consider finally that the people that really have the power to change legislation, i.e. Congress, are beholden to large companies which aren't terribly interested in land reform.

Hold it.  Why do I keep talking about land reform when we're just discussing a cabbage patch out front of the West Wing?  Well, when discussing organic food, or the food revolution in general, you need to start somewhere, and in my humble yet powerfully well informed opinion, the real place to start is with the LAND.

In Sunday's article from the Times, the author gives considerable voice to a generation of Foodie thinkers (Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, sort of a triumvirate of Food-a-sauruses), all of whom champion more focus on ingredients, nutrient rich foods, and local food.  On the "Dark Side of the Force" side are companies like Monsanto, which basically wants America fattened up on corn.   Well, that's not entirely true.  What they want to do is turn a profit for their shareholders.... by fattening America up on corn.

There in lies the problem- the Triumvirate of Food-a-sauruses all imagine a world where food is REALLY EXPENSIVE.  I had one of my favorite meals of all time at Alice Waters' restaurant, but I paid a Benjamin per head to get out of there, and most people (myself included) can't afford that Benjamin too often.  Pollan encourage local food growth, but that doesn't play too well in Bangor, Maine in February.  And while Monsanto sells a vile product, they sell it at prices people can afford.

The Food Revolutionaries (with whom I allie myself, frankly) don't have too much of an argument without addressing affordability, so to me the place to start is how to make healthy food cheaper, and that would require wiping out all the subsidies to farmers that allocate millions upon millions of American farm acres to corn and other low nutrition crops, subsidies that were written into the FARM BILL.....

which won't come up again for 4 and a half years.

In the coming series of blogs, I'm going to lay out my crazy ideas about the order in which things might happen to accomplish they startlingly challenging goal of...

Providing Healthy, Affordable Food To America.

Call it PHAFTA for short.  Keep peeling,

 Peeled Skinny

Posted by iankusc at 10:21 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

March 20, 2009

What's COOL? Not what you think, not what they want

As of my birthday last year (some day in September, now do your research), the FDA passed a regulation requiring all purveyors of meat products to display, clearly, the country of origin for their meat products.  Great, love it, we all enjoy a little accountability every now and again.  But I shudder at the roll out of this program, I groan at the loopholes, and I toss and turn at night thinking of the implications.  As of Monday, those regulations went into effect, and now we enjoy the aftermath....

Something like this took place a couple of years ago in my industry when the FDA required us to track the origin of every single ingredient's origin, albeit we didn't have to display the records.  This standard was naturally inspired by Chinese produce spoiling just about everything with which they came into contact.  Sure enough, the only time we tried to use a Chinese fruit, the results were disasterously gross.  So here, I get it.

Now, however, grocers need to display in store the origin of their meat products.  Great, wonderful, disclosure's always a splendid thing.  But consider the exemptions: Restaurants and Butcher Shops.

I avoid vulgarity as a principle, but forgive me if I ask, "What the F#CK?"

I understand the intent- accountability and traceability.  If something goes wrong, it'll be easy for consumers to know what they have to toss out, because it'll be right there on the label.  But why forgo such accountability in restaurants and butcher shops?  I ask again, WTF?  In theory, the butcher and ched will make sure their wares aren't tainted, but while we're at holding people accountable, why don't we, you know, ACTUALLY HOLD PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE?

Does not compute.  I ask you if you can think of a really good arguement for this oversight.  I've thought of a couple- the cost, the burden of signage, the constant changing of menus, but I'm unimpressed.  If grocers have to di it, why not the others?  I'm going to track this as the weeks go on and look for signs in my local purveyors.  Implications are potentially heart-warming.  Execution?  Potentially heart BURNING....

Peeled Skinny

Posted by iankusc at 10:18 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Finding Food Funny: when the gas stops, the laughter starts

May I refer you to the following poignant article from the reliable reporters at The Onion, the nation's finest fake-news source....

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/fda_approves_salmonella?utm_source=a-section

Is it me, or does this joke seem to be a few months too late?  While I'm not sold on the current administration, they're supposed to be the new yahoos (as opposed to the OLD yahoos) who clean up thinks life FEMA and the Fed and the FDA, thereby making the world a safer, more just, less contagious place (queue heart-swelling music).  The FDA under the previous yahoos are the ones who should have been caught signing off on great ideas like "Butteos" breakfast cereal (with 3 brands of cigarette butts in every box), encouraging the mixing of spent nuclear fuel into your hamburger (for that explosive taste!), and dubbing Salmonella "Vitamin S".

But maybe The Onion is just predicting (probably wisely) that the poor state of the FDA won't be tackled by the new guys anytime soon, and that such tomfoolery will continue unrelenting for a while longer. The peanut scare (which broke just as the old yahoos were packing their bags) certainly chills my bones- I've got a young son, and I LOVE peanut butter.  Surely there's no better cure for the peanut butter blues than to chuckle about "Salmonella-o's", is there?

Regardless, the joke strikes me as either too early or too late, or just off target.  Tragedy plus time equals humor, but this is a case of tragedy plus not enough time, or too much.  That at least expresses where MY mind is regarding the current administration's take on food- hopeful, but dubious, and expecting, as usual, to get my heart broken....

Still, I love The Onion.  Happy Snacking,

Posted by iankusc at 10:14 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Expo West Exposed

So I've taken a little break from blogging lately, having spent the better part of 2009 taking care of business and taking care of my little one.  Part of what's kept me at bay has been the economic climate, which few would describe as rosy.  In spite of the stimulus package, in spite of the whole "Hope" thing, the economic world remains in the doldrums.

Or DOES it?????

Well this past weekend Peeled Snacks took a little excursion to the annual Natural Products Expo West  held in Anaheim, California.  We were understandably a little leery of heading out to Anaheim for the show, seeing as the East Coast version held in October in Boston was rather sleepy, and seeing as 2009 is, well, what it is.  But we went out anyway, just to see what the scene looks like.

I am pleased, Pleased, PLEASED to report that the scene looks rosy after all!

Shocking, I know but the show was busy, packed, and the mood was downright optimistic, if carefully so.   Seeing as usually I'm the "Sales Guy" here at Peeled Snacks, I had a whole heap of conversations with other sales people, and in case after case, companies were growing and finding markets to move their products, though perhaps many were having to think out of whatever box they might have spent the better part of the last few years in.

On the financing end, though, things were mixed at best.  Several of our buddy companies had found investors that have helped them fulfill all those orders, but plenty were looking at business opportunities that they weren't entirely sure that they could afford.  Here's where the banking debacle of the past year really hits companies like ours- when you can't get credit enough to make good on orders PLACED, then EVERYBODY loses.  Thanks a bunch, greedy banker people.

So once money and credit start moving again, I think that the food industry will be a place where growth, REAL growth (as opposed to REAL estate) happens.  Hopefully the guys that are shoring up the banks have that sort of movement as a goal.  If their efforts end up fruitless, well all I can say is GULP.

Two trends to note: gluten free remains a growth industry, and I'm all for it, seeing as there's plenty of room for improvement in that underserved category; and there are even MORE companies making freeze-dried or bake-dried fruit products.  Is it just me, or do all those products taste like dust and cardboard?  No, it's NOT just me.  Go figure.

One serious disappointment from the weekend- I missed the best NYC weather that 2009 has had to offer thus far.  Huge bummer, that, but I'll take economic optimism in lieu of the meteorological variety.  How pleasant to think that 2009 might have some promise after all....

Peel Well,

Peeled Skinny

Posted by iankusc at 10:06 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)