Genoa, the culinary capital of the region of Liguria in Italy, has one of the most colorful indoor food markets that I have ever been to - Mercato Orientale. Some of the narrow cobblestone streets surrounding the market are permeated by a smell of fresh focaccia bread. As you enter the market, you'll notice various cheese stalls, meat stalls, and bakeries that border the market. In the center, there are produce stalls with some of the brightest fruits and vegetables that I have ever seen.
The produce display is gorgeous and informative. Each item has a sign explaining where in Italy it's from. The vendors are more than willing to explain what makes their produce unique and the best way to eat it. If you speak even minimal Italian, I encourage you to interact with these friendly vendors. For me the highlight of the market was the produce.
If you live in a large city in the U.S., you can find nearly any kind of produce, but often it's in questionable condition. Either it's way too under ripe or the quality is just horrendous. At the Mercato Orientale, I was overwhelmed by the incredible quality of nearly every vegetable and fruit. If you're going to be in Genoa, I highly suggest you visit this market located at the corner of Via 20 Settembre and Via Galata.
We all know that we're supposed to wear sun screen to protect us from harmful radiation from the sun, right? Well did you know that fruit or vegetables grown in the sun need it too?
I know that thought has never occurred to me before, but I can see the reasoning. If human skin can get sunburned, why not apple skin? Apparently about 20 to 40 percent of some crops are destroyed every year from solar radiation, according to an article in the Mercury News. That's bad for farmers, who can only use the damaged fruit for juice, as well as the environment, as crops that are more susceptible to sun damage need more water.
The article features a company that makes sunscreen for produce, Purfresh which makes the veggie sunscreen Purshade among other things. I just thought that this perspective on sunburn was very interesting and worth sharing. How do you feel about sun screen for produce?
So you want to buy at least some organic food, but you can't afford to be/don't want to be the person buying organic garlic powder and organic jelly beans. How do you know when it's best to go organic and when it's absolutely OK to go conventional?
Boy, the mayor and city council of New York City really want you to eat healthily. First they banned trans fats, then they made restaurants post calorie counts on menus, now they're making a push to get more vegetables on the streets.
New York is getting ready to issue about 500 licenses to food carts that sell only fresh fruits and veggies. Mayor Bloomberg says that while he respects the hot dog cart as a New York institution, he hopes that the vegetable cart gets just as much respect. He also hopes that by making fresh fruits and vegetables more available, especially in lower income areas, New Yorkers will lose some weight and reduce skyrocketing levels of obesity-related diseases.
The move has its critics, of course. Mainly the critics say that just because the fresh produce is available doesn't mean people will it it. What do you think about New York's veggie cart plan?
We get our daily dose of food porn with Marisa's Food Porn Daily, but still I have to point out the photography of Rick Lee, a photographer out of Charleston, West Virginia. Rick has a blog where he showcases his photography, and because every Thursday is grocery night, there's an entire section dedicated to produce. When Rick goes, he takes incredible photos around the produce section, making basic things like corn and cabbage look positively sex-ay.
Who knew a picture of an onion could make you almost cry?
Broccoli forests sprouting from powdered cumin soil. A cauliflower coral reef. A pea pod boat drifting on a sunset sea of pink salmon.
London photographer Carl Warner constructs elaborate landscapes made completely of food, from mozzarella clouds to an entire village sculpted from chunks of Parmesan. There's a photo gallery of his work up on the BBC website. It looks look ultra-time consuming and amazingly cool.
We clearly have a deep-seated fascination with edible landscapes - think about the candy testing room in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, with its lollipop plants and chocolate river, or the lunch pail trees in Return to Oz. Or remember the town of Chewandswallow, where it rained juice and snowed mashed potatoes in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, a seminal text for the (4-year old) budding foodie?
Anyway, check out the photos. They'll have you gnawing on the nearest tree limb.
The saying is that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but it never specified which kind. According to research from Chang Y. Lee of Cornell University, apples, as well as bananas and oranges, might keep brain doctors away. Antioxidant compounds found in those fruits seem to prevent neurotoxicity in cells. In other words, eating apples, bananas and oranges "may be beneficial to improve effects in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's."
By now we've learned the drill: organic is best. However, not everyone has the budget required to switch totally to organic foods. Thankfully Dr. Andrew Weill has put together a list of 11 fruits and vegetables that are OK to buy in their conventionally grown form. In alphabetical order, the list is as follows: Asparagus, Avocados, Bananas, Broccoli, Cabbage, Corn, Kiwi, Mangos, Onions, Pineapples and Peas.
I'm guessing that most of these items are on the list because they have fairly burly skins or peels that protect them from absorbing too much in the way of pesticides. I'm a little stunned that broccoli is on the list as I would have thought that its many little flowers would happily soak up problematic chemicals.
But, on the flip side, you might be wondering exactly what produce is best to buy organic? The Environmental Working Group has created a guide that can be printed out in handy wallet guide form. Check out our gallery of these 12 foods that really are the best organic investment.
Gallery: Produce Best Bought Organic
So there it is. Consider yourself slightly better informed about buying organic than you were five minutes ago.
Del Monte's brand new Fruit Chillers line is sure to be a hit with both kids (and adults) this summer, even though it is a little on the cold side right now in most parts of the country. The Chillers are individual sorbet cups, but there are a couple of things that set them apart from the average individually portioned kids dessert. The first, and most important, thing is that they are made with real fruit purees, rather than concentrated juices that have artificial colorings and flavors added to them. In fact, there are no artificial flavors in them at all and they contain 100% of the recommended daily value of vitamin C (150% in the mango flavor) and 3/4 serving of fruit, based on the nutrition pyramid. The other interesting thing about these is that they are not found in the frozen foods section of the grocery store. They are packed sealed and unfrozen, so you can simply pop them in the freezer before you are ready to eat them. The Chillers are fat free and contain about 190 calories per 4.5-ounce serving.
Over the course of the last year, schools have come under fire for putting unhealthy options in on-campus vending machines, prompting some states to ban junk food and others to try and work out healthy snack plans with the food companies. As a result, many schools have been left without snack and soda vending machines. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you can bet that at least some of the kids are disappointed.
To try and take up some of the slack that the departure of unhealthier fare left, the Dole fruit company has taken its own initiative to start a program "that will put vending machines selling healthy food products into schools." Dole's machines will stock fruit, fruit bowls, salads, sandwich wraps and milk. The salads and sandwiches will be prepared fresh at a nearby (or possibly on-campus, if available) cafeteria.
The machines will be launched in 15 schools in four states - Mesa, Arizona; Denver, Colorado; Shawnee Mission, Kansas; Corpus Christie, Texas and Conroe, Texas - in February, but the company has high hopes and is already working on plans for expansion.
Fruity Pebbles, Fruit Rollups and fruity candies are just a handful of the myriad products aimed at kids that promote their fruitiness. Not only are fruit flavors appealing, but the use of the word implies that that flavoring is natural, or at least that it has been derived from fruits. Of course, this is not necessarily the case and the Strategic Alliance for Healthy Food and Activity Environments proved it by doing a study entitled "Where's the Fruit?"
The study looked at 37 different products, all product aimed at children, where images of fruit and/or fruit ingredients were pictured on the packaging and found that half of them contained no fruit of any kind. Another 16% contained only "minimal amounts of fruit despite prominent fruit promotions on the packaging." For example, Yoplait's Strawberry Splash Go-Gurt Yogurt contained no actual fruit, nor did Berry Berry Kix.
Using a picture of fruit on a box isn't exactly false advertising, but it is misleading and the study certainly illustrates how important it is to read the ingredients and nutritional information on packaging when shopping for food if you really want to know what you're getting.
Mendiants are small disks of chocolate that are studded with dried or candied fruits and nuts. Traditionally, they are part of the Christmas celebration in France, where the fruits and nuts on top of the chocolates were chosen to represent "the four mendicant monastic orders and the color of their robes." The original toppings were raisins for the Dominicans, hazelnuts for the Augustins, dried figs for the Franciscans and almonds for the Carmelites. Now, chocolatiers are just as likely to get creative with the toppings for these bite-sized treats as they are with any other confection.
You can always buy a batch that is already made, but making mendiants is a simple process. Start by assembling a selection of toppings, such as cacao nibs, nuts (pistachios, walnuts, pecans, almonds, hazelnuts), dried fruits (cranberries, raisins, cherries, candied orange peel) and anything else that pairs well with chocolate, like small chunks of butter cookies or fleur de sel , as recommended by Clotilde. Melt some good quality chocolate and drop spoonfuls of it onto a sheet of wax or parchment paper to make circles. Place a small assortment of toppings on each disc and set aside to harden. Peel off when ready to serve.
Researchers at the USDA have developed an edible coating that will actually kill bacteria on fresh produce. It is intended to be an alternative to conventional or chemical produce washes that will keep the food just as fresh, if not fresher, and reduce the risk of food-borne illness that is associated with fresh produce. The coating is made of apple puree and oregano oil. The oregano oil is a natural antibacterial agent and did a better job at eliminating bacteria than other oils, while the apple puree helps the coating adhere to the fruit/vegetable and takes the edge off the oregano flavor. So far, it has only been tested on E. Coli, where the oregano has been shown to kill at least half of all present bacteria in under 3 minutes. The are planning on developing wrappers in other flavors, as well as targeting different bacteria in the future, including salmonella and listeria.
The products could be commercially available in as little as two years, but they are now being tested by some selected companies and stores.
Although research is still in preliminary stages, early results from a University of Queensland study presented at the Australian Health and Medical Research Congress indicated that compounds in mangoes may offer some surprising health benefits. They seem to act on the "same pathways that diabetes and cholesterol drugs target," blocking or activating receptors known as "peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors." These receptors play key rolls in people with diabetes and high cholesterol, but are also being linked with some types of cancer. If the mango compounds do target them, it is possible that the fruits could ease the effects of diabetes and high cholesterol, or even be able to combat cancerous cells.
The name "nutritional bioactive" is given to the unique components of fruits and vegetables that have particular health effects and study of these bioactives has been primarily directed at temperate, highly common fruits and vegetables (broccoli, etc). The researchers at Queensland have focused on tropical fruits, which is what led to their current findings.
A cucumber. A pickle. They're the same thing, but are they fruits or vegetables?
_on_flickr_thumbnail.jpg "Apples")
Over the course of the last year, schools have come under fire for putting unhealthy options in on-campus vending machines, prompting some states to 
Fruity Pebbles, Fruit Rollups and fruity candies are just a handful of the myriad products aimed at kids that promote their fruitiness. Not only are fruit flavors appealing, but the use of the word implies that that flavoring is natural, or at least that it has been derived from fruits. Of course, this is not necessarily the case and the Strategic Alliance for Healthy Food and Activity Environments proved it by doing a study entitled 
Mendiants are small disks of chocolate that are studded with dried or candied fruits and nuts. 
Researchers at the USDA have 
Although research is still in preliminary stages, early results from a University of Queensland study presented at the Australian Health and Medical Research Congress indicated that 
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