To me, it is. But I also don't care one iota about sports (though I can make exceptions for women's rugby and any sort of obstacle course competition on Animal Planet).

On that note, The Washington Post is currently featuring a fun alternative (or addition) to March Madness. The lucky participants started taste-testing 32 beers and have so far gotten the contenders down to a precious 16. But three rounds remain - the quarterfinals, semis, and finals on April 6 - before a champion is named.

Tasters downed their fair share of beers, which ranged from Miller Chill to Wolaver's Oatmeal Stout, and represent the mainstream to the microbrew; the wheat-y to the hoppy; the ale to the stout, and back again.

A few of my personal favorites in the bunch include the Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA (deliciously full of hops) and the Sea Dog Blue Paw Wild Blueberry Wheat Ale for those summer nights down the shore, but the Post really did choose a fine array (including a few classics - or duds, depending on your taste in beer - Schlitz, Michelob Lager, and the aforementioned new Miller Chill).

Head over to the site now to track your favorite, er, player.

Happy Fat Tuesday, everyone.

The whole idea behind having pancakes on Fat Tuesday is to use up the butter, milk, eggs and other indulgent ingredients that you might having lying around the house so that you won't be tempted during Lent. But because everyone likes pancakes and not everyone observes lent, calling the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday "National Pancake Day" makes the tradition open to all - and I think that we can all agree that more pancakes are not a bad thing.

For my pancake day breakfast, I opted not to go with something decadent, but instead with something more wholesome so that I don't feel too bad about starting the day with a couple more pancakes (topped with maple syrup, of course), than I need.

Unfortunately for those who are gluten-intolerant, the standards for gluten-free foods aren't exactly standard, so it can be risky when buying many foods, especially processed foods, at the store. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is in charge of regulating the nutritional information that gets put on food labels and they have drafted a proposal that would set a standard definition for the term "gluten free" and set standards for food producers to follow to meet it.

"Currently there is neither a regulatory definition of the term 'gluten free,' nor is there agreement among manufacturers or consumers as to what this term means," said the FDA. Their new rules state that "gluten free" foods must not have any type of wheat, rye or barley, including hybrid grains that use them. They allow for the use of such grains if the gluten is completely removed before processing, however. The terms that will be imposed on those who violate the new guidelines, assuming that they are accepted, has yet to be determined. The FDA will take comments on the proposal (PDF) for several weeks before revising it and making their final ruling.

Now that Bulgaria has joined the European Union, some of the previously high taxes on Bulgarian goods have been eliminated. Bulgaria is known for having good wine, but it is beer that has people from other EU countries flocking to the stores to buy it now that some of the taxes have been lifted. Boza beer apparently claims to help women's breasts grow larger.

Upon hearing of its claims, your first thought might be why taxes would matter, since there are surely people who would pay anything for a product - let alone a beer - that could do that. The following thought, of course, would be about how accurate this claim is.

Boza is made from fermented wheat and/or millet and has a low alcohol content. The original recipe has been around for thousands of years and dates back to Pre-Ottoman Turkey. It has always been considered to be a very healthy drink, a "warming and strengthening beverage" with approximately 1,000 calories per liter. For comparison, milk has about 630 calories per liter.

It is unlikely that Boza actually does increase the size of women's breasts, although with the high number of calories it contains, it is certainly possible that it could cause weight gain in general if enough is consumed.

Shortly after I wrote about the bread manga Yakitate!! Japan a while back I started watching episodes of the anime on YouTube. It's fascinating as anime, but also because its Alton Brown-like discussion of yeast and flours is actually teaching me quite a bit about baking bread.

Lately I've started to nosh on sweet Japanese bread while sitting in front of my computer and watching Yakitate's hero Azuma Kazuma face off against other bakers. You can't imagine how excited I was to learn that the Japanese have developed sweet wheat, a hybrid variety with twice as much sugar as common wheat. Its developers say that the wheat will eliminate the need to add sugar when its flour is used to make baked goods.

Japan's National Agriculture and Food Research Organization and Nippon Flour Mills created the sweet wheat by repeatedly breeding varieties with lower and lower starch production thus resulting in a final product with a much higher concentration of sugars. Now that's some sweet science.

Back in August, we started looking at a category of beer that is getting increasingly popular as awareness of celiac disease and gluten intolerance grows: gluten free beer. At the time Anheuser-Busch was just starting to test their own gluten-free brew, but it must have been a success because the company is now ready to release their newest product. Redbridge beer is completely wheat and gluten-free and is described as a "full-bodied lager brewed from sorghum for a well-balanced, moderately hopped taste." It contains 4.8% alcohol per bottle and will be sold in six packs at higher end grocery stories (described as "stores carrying organic products) and in some restaurants.

This marks the first truly mainstream GF beer on the market, as others like Bard's Tale Beer's Dragon's Gold and Ramapo Valley Brewery's Passover Honey Beer are all produced by small breweries in small batches and are not available everywhere.

The recommended daily guidelines for Americans suggest that at least half of all the grains consumed during the day be whole grains, which comes out to be 3 -5 servings daily. Aside from whole grain breads, like those made from whole wheat flour instead of wheat flour, there are quite a few other foods that will let you get those servings in. The ten most popular sources of whole grains are whole wheat (flour), whole oats/oatmeal, whole-grain corn, popcorn, brown rice, whole rye, whole-grain barley, wild rice, buckwheat and triticale, and as they are the most popular, they are also the most readily available.

Oatmeal, corn, popcorn and both brown and wild rice are easy enough to add into your weekly diet, and barley can stand in for rice or potatoes at many meals. Rye and buckwheat can be found in many breads, most of which will make superb sandwiches during the week. To add them in at home, you can try buckwheat pancakes or a blueberry buckwheat bundt cake. Triticale is a hybrid of rye and wheat, found mostly at health food stores, and can also be incorporated into many recipes.

A great source for some whole-grain recipes online is Bob's Red Mill website, which covers recipes for all of the top 10 grains.

After disclosing that its fries contain more trans fat than the nutritional information claimed, McDonald's revealed that their frence fries also contain potential allergens from dairy and wheat. The fries had always been considered to be safe for customers with a gluten intolerance, as the suppliers of the potatoes remove all potential allergens before shipping them, but the flavoring agent that McDonald's uses has derrivatives of both wheat and milk ingredients.

The revelation comes following the laws passed at the beginning of the year which require companies to disclose potential allergens, including eggs, nuts, fish, shellfish, wheat and soy. The director of nutrition at the company says that proteins found in the wheat and dairy are what cause allergic reactions and that they are not present in the flavoring agent. She also notes that if you have been eating the french fries without experiencing an allergic reaction, you will be able to continue to do so.

Even if it does not affect those with allergies, vegetarians may be concerned that the fries contain ingredients derived from dairy.

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]

This month's Economist features an article entitled "Ears of Plenty: The Story of Wheat." While it would be impossible for a magazine-length article to cover all the nuances of such a ubiquitous staple crop, this piece does well to cover some of the major factors and figures in the development of wheat. It begins with a short discussion of the current decline of wheat production, which the author later attributes to the grain's distaste for genetic modification(wheat is apparently much more complex than other staple grains like corn and rice). What follows are short descriptions of how wheat spread across the globe; how its demand for fertilizer sparked revolts and plunged guano into the spotlight; and asides on some of the major players in the wheat world. Although the article ends with some loosely-related digression on world hunger and population changes, it's still worth a read.