"healthfood" news and stories

Let's face it, all you food-loving, regular meal-eating types reading this site, you are the lucky ones. Most of you are blessed with a stove, maybe some ingredients in your cabinet, a bottle of wine half drunk atop your fridge. But if you're a city guy like me, always on the hustle for a dollar, always one dime short of a cup of coffee, always standing out in the rain in front of a hot food story, watching through rainy windows, then it's all about how to stay full and focused on the street, to not pass out while racing from one job interview to another, how to keep your nutrition at a full gallop while never actually sitting down. 

So God created the food bar! 

I'm sure to the average foodie these things are pox, a blight on nutrition and the gourmand's worst nightmare, but to us who dreamt as children of a future where we could eat candy bars for dinner, the nutrients in chocolate-flavored soy logs, are our life's blood; they keep our blood full of something other than caffeine and nicotine and urban despair. Trapped like jungle rats in a maze of dead-eyed salesman and bloodthirsty wall-streeters on their way to steakhouses and unemployment lines, we duck into the 42nd street bodega and grab our fix to go.

Here are some of the personal favorites:

Other than the cereal box treat, I've always been curious about the "recipes" that appear on boxes of cereal. Sure, I've seen people make fried chicken with corn flakes, but what about the other stuff?

My box of multi-grain flakes and nuts and fruits has a recipe for muffins. I tried it, but made several adjustments for taste and texture. I had to add more chopped nuts and raisins because let's face it, there aren't that many to begin with in a box of cereal, but other than that, the muffins weren't too bad. You just have to make sure that you crush up the flakes and let them soften before mixing into the batter, for who wants a flaky muffin?!

In the end, they taste okay, and work well if you're on the go, but I think eating cereal in a bowl with milk tastes better to me.

Now, if you'll just have this healthy beer for breakfast and for lunch, and a sensible dinner...

Beer. It could be the next product to use heart health benefits as one of its key marketing attributes, if the diet-blog's interpretation of new FDA rules catches on. According to a recent FDA announcement, "whole grain barley and barley-containing products are allowed to claim that they reduce the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD)." As we all know, beer contains barley! Next thing you know, your favorite brew will contain a label that says, "drinking this beer contributes to a healthy heart and may attract bikini-clad women!*"

Naturally, there's a catch. Evidently the beer is a bit too low on fiber to qualify. Oh well, maybe 2006 will bring more and looser FDA rules. We can but hope.

*That last part hasn't been vetted by the FDA. Yet.

[Thanks for the tip, Jim, and to Ernest von Rosen for the photo]

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