New York Salt Initiative Leaves Me Feeling Salty.

New York has always been on the forefront of food laws and change. The McDonalds in NYC were the first to add calories counts on all of their products. Something that left most of us fast food lovers cringing. 


I know it's for the best, and every American should know what they are putting into their bodies. But frankly, I'm not going to McDonalds to count calories, or 'watch what I eat', I'm going there to stuff my face with greasy food and salty french fries. 


Yes, French Fries. And this leads us to Mayor Bloomberg's new initiative, the "National Salt Reduction Initiative". According to sources, New York wants you to reduce your salt intake and has partnered with 16 companies and restaurants who have agreed to reduce salt in their products by 25% over the next 5 years. 

"According to New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Americans get 80 percent of their salt intake from packaged foods and restaurants in the form of preservatives. Adding salt yourself only accounts for about 1 percent of salt consumption. About nine percent comes from sodium that occurs naturally in food. Health organizations recommend about 1500 to 2400 milligrams of salt per day per healthy adult.

Reducing salt intake has been shown to help reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes; city officials say that as many as 23,000 New Yorkers could reduce their risks of dying from those problems.

Officials promise that the reduction will be gradual--and that New Yorkers won’t even notice the difference." 

Some of the restaurants that are part of this initiative and pledged gradual decrease --

• Starbucks
• Heinz
• Au Bon Pain
• Subway
• Boars Head 
• Goya

I'm all for every American's right to eat as much crap as they want. I'm a big fan of junk food and I don't think that there should be restrictions on personal choice. However, I have to agree that decreasing salt in some restaurants and companies is a good idea. 


The initiative is voluntary so needless to say McDonalds and my other favorite food establishments (ahem-chicken joes) won't be taking part. Thank God. But for establishments like Subway and Starbucks, and companies like Goya and Boars Head I think it might not be such a bad gradual change.

Why not? If you start out with less salt, you can always add more. This is why, when the initiative takes a hit, and I'm left with less delicious/salty foods, I'll just bring my own salt everywhere I go and add it to my dish as I wish. Take that Bloomberg, you can't stop my salt intake. 

Cross-Breeding Food!

This is a pineberry, it's a mix between a pineapple and a strawberry. It will be available in the UK soon, weird, right? Would you eat it? It looks like a zombie strawberry. 

Bacon pancakes? Is this an Iowa thing? I've never heard of the two being combined, makes me want to try it though. Also makes me wonder why it hasn't stuck and that's probably because it tastes like shit. 

Thoughts on the merging of these foods? 

Screw Earth Day, I Love Jellybeans!

Aside from being Earth Day, it's also National Jelly Bean Day! 

My favorite source Wikipedia taught me something I felt was worth passing on to you all - 

Did you know that in the 1920s, the term "jellybean" was used to describe a young man who dressed stylish and tried to pick up women; also a synonym for pimp. The term was memorialized in the 1940s Phil Harris song "Jelly Bean (He's a Curbstone Cutie)"

It wasn't until the 1930s that they became associated with that ass-hat the Easter Bunny because of their egg-shape.  Crazy, right? I say we bring the slang term back because Jellybean is way more fun to say than 'pimp'. Thoughts? 

Did you know? I like all flavors of jellybeans except black licorice and white. 

Here's a video from Discovery Channel's "How It's Made", Jellybean edition -- 

Earth is great and all, but I prefer to celebrate the great things on this Earth invented by man - electricity, the wheel, fire, and jellybeans. 

Peace. 

German's Didn't Know What Cupcakes Were? WTF??

I could not live without cupcakes. 

APPARENTLY, up until recently German's didn't know what cupcakes were. Thanks to America, in the form of McDonalds, they now know what cupcakes are. Shitty cupcakes, but cupcakes none the less.


Mcafe just introduced New York themed cupcakes to it's menu. Nicholas Kulish from the New York Times went to Berlin to try them out.
He writes, "The cupcakes themselves were rather small for the price of $2.40, and cold from the refrigerated display case, which made the icing hard. The cake itself was dense rather than fluffy and more sweet than flavorful." Yuck. A 26 year old engineering student described them as "artificial". Boo. 

The four cupcakes are New York themed, they go as follows -- 

Chelsea - Chocolate

The East Village - Cappuccino 

Central Park - Strawberry 
SoHo - Vanilla 

I don't know why we are bothering giving these German's bad cupcakes, they are unnecessary. I love cupcakes so much that I'm ashamed an American brand name is being associated with such crap. If we keep good ol' fashion Funfetti Cupcakes from Germans and the rest of the globe, I don't know what kind of world citizen's we think we are. 

Cupcakes for everyone! 

Love Burgers? Me Too.

Food is Art. Yummmm... 

The Naked Chef's New Show is Mmm..Mmm..Gooood.

Resident Food Network hottie Jamie Oliver's (aka The Naked Chef) new television series on ABC premiered this past March 21st to 6.20 million viewers (thanks wiki). I watched an episode, and I must say - as cynical as I am about network television, it was actually entertaining. What am I talking about - I love everything else Ryan Seacrest has done (Kardashians, American Idol), just nothing he says. 

Jamie Oliver takes on an entire town - Huntington, West Virginia named the unhealthiest state in America. His goal is to reach schools, children, restaurants, individuals, and even the non-believers. He is determined to drastically change the way Americans think about food.

Ok, opinion time --- I think that all the kids being obese these days is outrageous, and very sad. I have a thirteen year old brother and a ten year old sister and I can hardly imagine how having a young active healthy child around the house can lead to obesity, if anything the two of them growing up kept the rest of us active. Laziness has just become accepted and its our own faults for letting it get this way. However, i'll be the first to admit that taking vending machine's and soda dispensers out of public schools is not the answer.

The show is pure entertainment. He uses striking visuals to get his point across. He shows an elementary school what a year's worth of their fat intake looks like in a dumpster. He shows a critical radio host a funeral parlor that caters to the overweight boasting caskets that look like king sized beds. He asks young children to identify fruits and vegetables and it is immediately clear that they can't tell a potato from a tomato. Jamie Oliver gets angry, he jokes and has fun with the kids, and -spoiler- he even cries! Haha.

I think it's a great idea for a show, the right kind of show we need in this fatass country right now. No more bachelor or biggest looser, enough changing individuals physically, this sexy brit is gonna teach us how to change our minds. Just make sure you sit down to watch it with a heaping bowl of potato chips or popcorn (extra salt and butter).