The Food Skinny is a blog written by a chef who, as they say, also happens to be a consumer. I've owned restaurants for 25 years, and when I'm not in the kitchen, I'm in the dining room talking to my customers. My restaurants happen to be on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, so my local regulars are titans of the business world, movers in the art world, entertainers, and politicians. I'm a naturally curious person, so I feel like I've earned a Ph.D. from an Ivy-League University of Life just from schmoozing with them!
Mix that up with my passion for food, my own odyssey of weight loss and quest for health, my dyslexic steamroller personality, and add a dash of good ol' 1970's consumer awareness. That's how The Food Skinny was born.
At The Food Skinny, I'll be tackling all sorts of topics having to do with food and consumerism. The deceptions, misnomers, and facts, from supermarkets to national restaurant chains to farmer's markets: everywhere food is sold. We'll see who's telling with truth, and what's just plain hogwash. We'll see who's making an effort to provide healthy alternatives, and who's blatantly not! The Food Skinny will give you information and ideas to help you shop, eat, and dine out responsibly for you, your family and the environment.
During my lifetime the American food landscape has changed almost as much as the actual terrain. One of the most subtle and pervasive changes is in the way food manufacturers sweeten shelf-stable and prepared foods -- you know, the packaged foods that take up most of the shelf space in the average supermarket. Around 1975, food manufacturers started replacing sugar in soft drinks, cereals, and baked goods with another sweetener: high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).
HFCS is made from genetically-modified corn, which is more abundant a crop than either sugarcane or beets. It dissolves faster than sugar, and gives products a longer shelf life than sugar. Of course it also helped that the government started imposing tariffs on importing sugar, and paid farmers subsidies to grow the genetically-modified corn. Any manufacturer who wants to use sugar will pay twice the global market price for it. This makes it almost impossible to stay competitive without using HFCS.
The U.S.'s (and Canada, too, by the way) artificially high market in sugar borders on isolationism and price fixing. And there's not an aisle in the supermarket that doesn't have an abundance of products containing HFCS. It's in even products like salad dressing, where you would least expect it. Today's children start consuming it in mass quantities from the moment they begin to eat solid foods.
Doctors and scientists are increasingly questioning the role of HFCS in our diets. The farm lobby says the health risk is the same as sugar. However, studies are increasingly linking our high HFCS consumption to the growing obesity epidemic. In 2007, a study linked HFCS to possible liver damage when combined with a high fat diet and sedentary lifestyle (in other words, the typical American fast food consumer). There is evermore evidence for taking the poison that is HFCS out of our foods. Fortunately, some food companies are getting the message and are going back to using sugar as a sweetener. But not yet enough.
We all know obesity is a national epidemic. But more alarming is when experts say that our kids may be the first generation who will have a shorter life span than their parents. HFCS may have given us cheap soft drinks, but we are paying in other ways.
The Food Skinny recommends being vigilant in avoiding foods with HFCS. Read labels and use your consumer power to support companies that swear off this stuff.