Tag: Food

New Foods

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I tried a new food combination today, chicken & waffles.

I rather liked the textural combination of the fluffy waffle and the crisp skin off the chicken as well as the juxtaposition of the sweet syrup (real maple syrup next time) and savory/salty chicken.

Eating out was a bit of a challenge, fried chicken is best eaten with the hands and waffles and syrup is certainly fork and knife territory. (The wings were a particular challenge.)

I actually googled how to best eat chicken & waffles before ordering.

I enjoyed the culinary combination, and I would recommend it.

I’m not entirely sure of its origins, but I get the sense that hung over musicians played a significant roll in the origins of the dish.

An Interesting Take on Pommes Frites

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Natalie came across a french fry recipe online.

First, you pickle them in brine before you fry them up.

After a week or so, open the jar and rinse the fries off and then pat dry.

Fry up as you would normal fries, and add salt immediately after cooking is done, and put on paper towels to drain the oil.

Some notes:

  • Rinse very thoroughly.
  • The fries turn brown much faster than regular fries, well before they are done.  I think that some of the starches are converted to simple  sugars.
  • They are a lot like salt and vinegar potato chips.

I rather liked them.

OK, This Explains a the Furor………

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As a part of the Brexit, the UK is renegotiating export deals with the US.

One of the sticking point is chlorine washed chicken.

In the EU and the UK, cleanliness is required at every step of the process, while in the US, the carcasses are washed with a solution of water and chlorine because the chickens are raised in in extreme conditions, and the chlorine washing is required to make ensure that the chickens are safe to eat:

The disturbing prospect of chlorine-washed chickens from the US going on sale in British shops in a post-Brexit trade deal last week sparked an explosive row at the heart of Government.

 But beyond the politics lies the story of why American poultry needs such drastic chemical treatment – and of the horrendous conditions at the farms where they are bred and reared.

 Now whistleblower farmers have revealed the full horror of the suffering to The Mail on Sunday, including how:

  • Tens of thousands of super-sized ‘Frankenstein’ birds are crammed in vast warehouses.
  • The chickens, which weigh up to 9lb, often buckle under their weight and must live without natural sunlight.
  • Chickens frequently die before they reach maturity and many are left covered in their own faeces, turning warehouses into vile breeding grounds for disease.

Unlike in the UK and Europe, there are no minimum space requirements for breeding chickens in the US. America also does not have any rules governing lighting levels in the sheds and, crucially, its farms have no maximum allowed level of ammonia, which indicates how much urine and faecal matter is present. This means there is no limit on how much can fester inside the sheds.

 There is no legal requirement to wash US chickens in chlorine or other disinfectants, but 97 per cent of its birds are cleaned in this way after slaughter.

………

Another reason poultry in the US is chlorinated is that farmers are not required to vaccinate against diseases such as Salmonella. Britain and the EU have widespread vaccination programmes.

………

Leah Garces, of the Global Animal Partnership, an animal welfare group, added: ‘The fact we have to wash our food in chlorine to make it safe indicates that we are not doing farming right in the first place. It indicates how unhealthy we are raising our birds.’

While UK chicken farmers are not wholly free from criticism from animal welfare campaigners, there are strict regulations that must be followed. In the UK and Europe, poultry farmers must not keep more than 17 chickens per square metre in their sheds. There are also rules governing available natural light, temperature and the maximum levels of ammonia.

………

Shraddha Kaul, of the British Poultry Council, said: ‘We strongly reject any move to import chlorine-washed chickens as part of a makeweight in trade negotiations with the US.

‘Chlorine is used as a catch-all. It is an approach which means it doesn’t matter how badly you treat your chicken, you can just clean it away at the end of the process.’

This reflects a very big difference in philosophy, the Europeans bake in sanitation throughout the process, while in the US, you hose the chickens down with disinfectant when they hit the slaughter house.

Of course, lousy chicken and a race to the bottom is the par for the course in free trade deals, so limeys need to eat their mutant steroid and antibiotic fetid chicken, and they need to like it.

One of My Coping Mechanisms

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The past week was not (and hasn’t been for my adult life) a good time for me.

So, today, I decided to do something that I haven’t ever done before culinarily, home pickling. 

It gets my head into a better place.

I did the whole megillah, using Ball (mason type) jars, to create a pickle that does not need refrigeration.

It’s a canned pickle.

I used Romanesco “Fractal” broccoli, but I am also going to do carrots, green beans, normal broccoli, zucchini, yellow squash, and Brussels sprouts, because I have a sh%$ load of pickling brine left over.

I used pickling spice, bay leaves, chipolte peppers, juniper berries, dill, salt, apple cider vinegar, and garlic in the brine, and in about 1/3 of the jars, I added some sugar for sweet pickles.

Not Enough Bullets

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Hedge fund workers in London, England, have been given a button on their desk to order Champagne:

Soho office workers will be able to order a glass of champagne for their desks at the touch of a button in a new £100 million “five-star” development.

The planned “at desk” champagne buttons will allow the hedge fund workers expected to be its occupants to order a celebratory drink after a “good day at the office”.

The buttons were inspired by one of Kylie Minogue and Tamara Ecclestone’s favourite restaurants, nearby Bob Bob Ricard, where every table has a “press for champagne” button.

Workers will be able to order cocktails or caviar, as well as bubbly, from the ground floor Sticks’n’Sushi restaurant. They will delivered to the relevant office floor by dumb waiterstyle lifts running through the building.

On the bright side, they can’t do any worse than they did sober.

Still, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Also, this is not The Onion.

You Heard about What Happened in Portland?

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I’m not referring to the white supremacist terrorism, I am referring to the giant hissy fit over burritos.

A couple of chefs went down to Mexico to review and recreate their cuisine, and once they did, the Social Justice Warriors immediately started screaming “Cultural Appropriation” and said chefs closed down their food stand.

This is complete crap.

Restaurants steal from each other, both within and across cuisines, and have from time immemorial, and to suggest that there is something wrong with that is to infantilize the surveyors Mexican cuisine:

My thoughts on cultural appropriation of food changed forever in the research for my 2012 book, Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. One of my personal highlights was discovering the restaurant that Glenn Bell of Taco Bell infamy had cited in his autobiography as being the source of “inspiration” for him deciding to get into the taco business. How did he get inspired? He’d eat tacos the restaurant every night, then go across the street to his hot dog stand to try and recreate them.

Bell freely admitted to the story, but never revealed the name of the restaurant. I did: Mitla Cafe in San Bernardino, which is the oldest continuously operating Mexican restaurant in the Inland Empire. I was excited to interview the owner, Irene Montaño, who confirmed Bell’s story. I was upset for the Montaños, and when I asked Montaño how she felt that Bell had ripped off her family’s recipes to create a multibillion-dollar empire, I expected bitterness, anger, maybe even plans for a lawsuit in an attempt to get at least some of the billions of dollars that Taco Bell has earned over the past 50-plus years.

Instead, Montaño responded with grace: “Good for him!” She pointed out that Mitla had never suffered a drop in business because of Taco Bell, that her restaurant had been in business longer than his, and “our tacos were better.”

It’s an anecdote I always keep in mind whenever stories of cultural appropriation of food by white people get the Left riled up and rock the food world. The latest skirmish is going on in Portland, where two white girls decided to open up what the estimable Willamette Week called “a concept that fits twee Portland”: a breakfast burrito pop-up located within a hipster taco cart. The grand sin the gabachos committed, according to the haters, was the admission that they quizzed women in Baja California about how to make the perfect flour tortilla.

For their enthusiasm, the women have received all sorts of shade and have closed down their pop-up. To which I say: laughable. The gabachas knew exactly what they were doing, so didn’t they stand by it? Real gumption there, pendejas.

But also laughable is the idea that white people aren’t supposed to—pick your word—rip off or appropriate or get “inspired” by Mexican food, that comida mexicana is a sacrosanct tradition only Mexicans and the white girls we marry can participate in. That cultural appropriation is a one-way street where the evil gabacho steals from the poor, pathetic Mexicans yet again. 

………

What these culture warriors who proclaim to defend Mexicans don’t realize is that we’re talking about the food industry, one of the most rapacious businesses ever created. It’s the human condition at its most Darwinian, where EVERYONE rips EVERYONE off. The only limit to an entrepreneur’s chicanery isn’t resources, race, or class status, but how fast can you rip someone off, how smart you can be to spot trends years before anyone else, and how much money you can make before you have to rip off another idea again.

When Oberlin (where else?) students accused food services of cultural appropriation for serving allegedly crappy sushi, the REAL issue was not cultural appropriation, it was bad food.

When a friend was saying that dreadlocks were cultural appropriation, because white people could wear them, and black people were told that it was unprofessional, I said, “That’s not cultural appropriation, that’s racism.”

The only cultures that don’t appropriate from others are dead ones.

Cultural borrowing is a fact of life, and it more prevalent in cuisine than almost anywhere else.

I don’t like crappy mass-market bagels, a food of my people, but my problem is not cultural appropriation, it’s that the mass market bagels are complete sh%$.

If you are ranting about cultural appropriation, you are an imbecile.

If you are ranting about how outsiders have gotten a cherished aspect of your culture wrong, you are just like the rest of us.

Adding to Your Vocabulary

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I was in kitchen, and the radio show Wait Wait ……… Don’t Tell Me was on, and they were talking about the Canadian sex toy manufacturer who has been sued for collecting data from their internet enabled vibrator.

I casually commented to Charlie, who was drinking a Coke at the time, “They caught them coming and going.”

Charlie was caught mid drink, started to laugh, and proceeded to spew Coke from his nose, thankfully he made it to the trash can before he started to completely lose it.

This raises the obvious question, what is the term for spewing a drink from your nose caused by laughter?

According to the Urban Dictionary, there are two words, snork, and schnarf.

I should note that it was not my intention to get Charlie to schnarf his drink, but I might have chuckled.

I am a bad, bad man.

I Revisit One of My Earliest Posts

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In the Pan


Close-up Showing Non Stick Properties and Crust

The month that I started my blog, I posted my recipe for baked spaghetti and cheese.

I referred to it as the The Ultimate Comfort Food.

On a lark, I decided to try cooking it in a preheated (350°F, heated in the oven) cast iron pan.

It turned out marvelously well.

I used two pans, one of which had a slightly less robust seasoning.

There was a small amount of sticking, but only in a few places, but the outside crust was glorious.

My basic technique was to heat the pans in a 350°F oven, and cook the spaghetti to very al dente/slightly underdone.

You then rinse the pasta in cold water to stop the cooking.

While this was all going on, I was making the melted cheese mixture (see above link).

Once the pasta and sauce was done, I mixed them together using the mark-1 human hand (with gloves, because otherwise this will be under your fingernails for a week).

I then took the pans out of the oven, sprayed with some oil , and put in the pasta/cheese mixture and pressed it down until it was flat and at the level of the edge of the pan.  (There is some rather satisfying sizzling)

Cook at 450°F for 30-45 minutes. (Yes, it cooks a bit faster)

Unlike the aforementioned recipe, there is no need to cook covered, and then uncover.

I love playing with cast iron.

You might also want to do this in a dutch oven.

Get the F%$# Over Yourselves

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The British have come up with a new fiver, and vegetarians are losing their sh%$ because there are tiny quantities of animal fat used in the process of making the notes:

Britain’s new £5 note contains animal fat, the Bank of England confirmed on Twitter.

In reply to a user who asked if the substance is used, the central bank said that there is “a trace of tallow in the polymer pellets used in the base substrate of the polymer £5 notes.”

Tallow is the fat that surrounds a cow’s organs and is often used in soaps and candles.

Vegetarians and vegans reacted furiously to the news that animal fat is used in the note, which is the first to be made of polymer and has been touted as Britain’s most advanced ever.

Twitter user Steffi Rox asked “what consideration was given to vegans & their human rights,” while another user said the news gives a whole new meaning to the term “blood money.”

As an aside, this tallow is also used in credit cards, many plastic toys, wire insulation, etc.

Still, this does not prevent the Granola crowd from going full Sepoy Mutiny over this.

Sorry, but society does not have any obligation to accommodate your particular lifestyle choices in the production of currency, though if I were in Parliament, I would put forth a bill to replace the plastic bills with ones made from dried beef, but I’m kind of a jerk.

On second thought, I would make the currency from veal confined in boxes until the calf’s throats were slit.

Wisdom from Katz’s Deli

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For those of you who don’t know, Katz’s Deli is an institution located on Katz’s Delicatessen located at 205 East Houston Street in Manhattan.

Their pastrami is considered to be akin to a religious experience, and the 3rd generation owner gave an interview just chock full of profound wisdom.

  • There’s only one way to eat a hot dog, with mustard and sauerkraut. None of that Chicago dog nonsense: no relish, no pickles, no salad garnish, no ketchup. Well, ketchup is okay—if you’re under six years old. Don’t hate me, Chicago. I was rooting for the Cubs, but you don’t know how to eat a goddamn hot dog. [Katz’s hotdog is also considered to be sublime]
  • Pastrami is meant to be eaten with mustard.
  • Interact with the guys that cut the meat. [May apply in New York City only]
  • When you say white bread, I think of Wonder Bread, which is … I don’t know what it is. But it should be illegal.
  • If we’re calling a spade a spade, a reuben is not a real sandwich. No true Jewish deli would have had cheese [with meat], ever. So how could you make a reuben without cheese? The short answer is, you can’t. It’s a fictional sandwich.  
  • My goal is to make the world’s second best latke; your first should be made by a family member.

I would suggest reading the rest. It is a hoot.

Drunk Blogging the Election

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For those of you on Facebook, please click through for updates.

  • 9:00 PM:  I just turned on the TV, and I am alternating between MSNBC and CNN.
  • 9:02 PM: I just hard that Evan Bayh lost his race for the Senate.  Good.  I hate that smarmy entitled asshole.  He is the archetype of a preening corrupt conservative Democrat.  Joe Lieberman with a bit more charm.  Take a drink in celebration.
  • 9:07 PM: CNN is doing a county by county breakdown.  I love it on the screen or on paper, but on the TV, not so much.
  • 9:09 PM: On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow is unbelievably chipper.  She really loves this stuff.
  • 9:15 PM: Reports that Tammy Duckworth has beaten Mark Kirk.  Take a sip.
  • 9:21 PM: Trump is definitely outperforming polls.  Take a shot.
  • 9:30 PM: Florida is too close to call.  Not again!  Take a shot. 
  • 9:35 PM:  My cat, Meatball, is demanding my attention.  It’s hard to focus on politics when a cat is demanding your attention, particularly when I am already a little bit toasted.
  • 9:41 PM: The crawl on MSNBC says that Fl, PA, OH, GA. MI. NC. VA. MN. NH, ME.  This is going to be a long evening.  Take a sip.
  • 9:50 PM: A picture for your perusal.
  • 9:55 PM: I hate listening to listening to Chris “Tweety” Matthews.
  • 10:16 PM: Rubio beat Murphy.  Not a surprise.  You cannot beat an incumbent, even an incumbent nothing like Rubio, with a nothing like former Republican trust fund baby Patrick Murphy..
  • 10:20: Trump wins Ohio.
    • We are  completely f%$#ed.  Take a drink.
  • 10:24 PM: This is as close as it is because the status quo is 
  • 10:26 PM: MSNBC just called Virginia for Hillary Clinton. 
  • 10:33 PM: I hate Steve Schmidt on MSNBC, but I hate everyone on CNN more.
  • 10:36 PM: I should note that the entire Democrat Party establishment really needs to be fired.  ……… Out of a cannon, into the Sun.
  • 10:39 PM: If you are Jewish, here is the link for aliyah, if you want to trade Netanyahu for Trump.
  • 10:41 PM:  Dow Jones futures are down by something like 600 points, and the Mexican Peso is in freefall.  People are panicking, which means that people with level heads are doing them like a drunk sorority girl.
  • 11:03 PM: Russ Feingold was defeated by the wingnut Ron Johnson. A truly decent man lost to a walking piece of sh%$.  Take a shot.  I am bumming. 
  • 11:05 PM:  Sh%$.  The Daily Show is on.  Changing Channel. 
  • 11:15 PM: Meh. On today’s Daily Show.
  • 11:30 PM: Trump is called to win Florida and Utah.  I am drunk and depressed, and I think that Donald Trump will be President-elect in the morning.  I am done for the evening.

    I Will be Drunk Blogging the Election

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    I will be bouncing around various channels, but here is the game
    Take a sip:

    • Every mention of exit polls. 
    • Any mention of the ground game. 
    • Any mention of millennials. 

     Take 2 sips:

    • Any mention of Reagan. 
    • Any mention of Bill Clinton’s penis. 
    • The word “Battle Ground”. 
    • The Democrats regain control of the Senate. 
    • Someone disparages millennials. 

    Take a full shot:

    • CNN unveils a stupid flashy tech gimmick.
    • Evan McMullin wins Utah. 
    • Race is called for a candidate. 
    • Voting problems in Florida. 
    • Trump Refuses to Concede. 
    • Trump starts trying to sell the Trump network.
    • A winner is declared.
    • The Republicans retain control of the Senate. 
    • The Democrats regain control of the House. 

    Finish off the bottle:

    • When they rip off their masks and reveal themselves to be Kang and Kodos.
    • Trump admits that this was actually the greatest practical joke of all time.

    Screw it.  I’m just going to wing it, starting at 9:00pm, after I pick up Charlie from his youth group.

      The Dirty Secret of Journalism

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      Not only can you buy off reporters, but you can do so with some free food and booze:

      When Robert Moses, the notorious New York master builder, wanted to cow the journalists who covered him, he knew he didn’t have to harangue or threaten his way to a favorable story. Food and drink did the trick. A reporter on the Moses beat, whether covering the opening of a new hydroelectric power dam or a row of toll booths, could expect to be treated to a fountain of liquor, a 40-foot buffet table, or a chartered airplane packed with celebrities. In addition to these Dionysian ribbon cuttings, Moses hosted “working” lunches for the press, a way to advance his agenda while offering special access.

      “Hospitality has always been a potent political weapon,” Robert Caro wrote in The Power Broker, his seminal biography of Moses. “Moses used it like a master.”

      This practice continues unabated, as made clear in a recent batch of hacked emails released by WikiLeaks. The meals may be smaller and the settings less lavish, but the goals remain the same: for a person in a position of power, in this case Hillary Clinton, to groom a friendlier press corps. Non-journalists, as well as conservative outlets, reacted with anger and incredulity at emails—the Clinton campaign has not disputed their validity—that showed the campaign setting up off-the-record dinners and cocktails with John Podesta, the campaign chairman, and Joel Benenson, her chief strategist. (The Huffington Post had reported on the Podesta meeting previously.) Journalists mostly shrugged at the revelations.

       Their dismissal is misguided. The emails may highlight business as usual, but it is a business practice that has helped stoke distrust of the press in 2016 and has propelled a narrative, pushed by Donald Trump, that the mainstream media is in the bag for Clinton. The implications of that will linger long after Election Day.

       On April 9th, 2015—shortly before Clinton officially announced she was running for president—Podesta cooked for at least 28 reporters at his Washington DC home. The reporters came from leading national outlets like the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NBC. According to the leaked email, the dinner had five goals for the Clinton campaign: “Getting to know” reporters closely covering Clinton; “setting expectations” for the announcement and “launch period”; “framing” Clinton’s message and the race; “demystifying key players” on Clinton’s campaign; and “having fun and enjoying good cooking.”

      ………

      If the reporters understand, implicitly or explicitly, that these events exist solely to advance the agenda of a particular candidate, why show up? Why spend a night in the spin zone over Podesta’s creamy risotto, knowing the campaign is trying to co-opt you? If reporters can document with outrage the ways in which lobbyists fete elected officials, why is the practice okay when reporters are on the receiving end?

       ………

       Before I go on, let me say that I have not always practiced what I’m preaching here. For two years, I was a member of the New York City Hall press corps and attended several off-the-record parties at Gracie Mansion, the lavish mayoral residence on the Upper East Side. I went because, in addition to thinking the visit would be good for building sources, it felt nice to amble around a mansion with a buzz. Important people were around me, so I felt important. I regret going now and I don’t intend to show up again. No knock against Mayor Bill de Blasio’s hors d’oeuvres, all reimbursed by my former employers at the New York Observer, but it makes far more sense for the mayor to host one of these soirees than for me to show up. I can—and should—do my job despite them.

       ………

       As Caro understood, the best reporting is done on the margins, away from the siren charms of power and prestige. “It is more difficult to challenge a man’s facts over cocktails than over a conference table,” Caro wrote. “More difficult to flatly give the lie to a statement over a gleaming white tablecloth, filet mignon, and fine wine than it would have been to do so over a hard-polished board-room and legal pads.”

      BTW, apparently John McCain ‘s political operation was well known for keeping the alcohol flowing, which might explain that whole “Straight Talk Express” myth tat the press ran with for such a long time.

      Musing on Whiskey

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      During the third and final debate on Wednesday, I played a debate drinking game.

      I was drinking a VERY cheap, though not awful, Scotch whiskey, Inver House Green Plaid.

      Tonight while celebrating Simchat Torah, I drank another Scotch whiskey, Glenlivet.

      The latter is a more expensive, and much better, spirit.

      Each whiskey was appropriate to its use, Glenlivet is a high quality product which is appropriate for celebrating Torah, being far less harsh, and possessing far more subtlety and nuance.

      Using it to help me cope with hearing Donald Trump, Chris Wallace, and Hillary Clinton would be an affront to the efforts of the distiller.

      By the same token, drinking Inver House Green Plaid at a Simchat Torah celebration would be an affront to God, but out is perfectly suited to the fingernails-on-a-chalkboard experience of the Presidential debates.

      Each was eminently well suited to the role that they played.

      Posted via mobile.

      Live Blogging/Drinking

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      Not the good stuff, this ain’t a celebration, I’ve found a very cheap and inoffensive Scotch, Inver House Green Plaid.

      Not bad for a plastic bottle.

      9:19 pm: 19 minutes in, and none of the words.

      I’m taking a drink anyway.

      This debate seems far more substantive than the other too.

      9:28 pm: Clinton ignored Wallace for about 30 seconds. Take a sip.

      9:31 pm:“You’re a puppet.” This is a drink thing. Adding to the list.

      9:32 pm: Clinton red baits. Take a drink. Adding to the list.

      9:34 pm: Trump says that Clinton and Obama have been played by Putin. I count this as “loser” one of the words. I drink.

      9:36 pm: How could I have forgotten Trump saying, “I never said that.” He said it, I am drinking. (Sip, not whole shot)

      9:40 pm: My son said, “It’s a good thing that you didn’t put Trump saying, “A lot of things,” on your list. You would be dead by now.

      9:41 pm: I should have included Trump bringing up “NAFTA”. Taking a sip.

      9:44pm: Hillary said “Obama”. Take a sip.

      9:47 pm:Trump mentions Nafta, and says “She totally lied,” two sips.

      9:49 pm:Now we are getting hostile, Charlie quoted an internet meme, “Trump and Clinton are like the divorced parents fighting over custody. I wanna live with Grandpa Bernie!”

      9:51 pm:Hillary dropped the bin Laden bomb. Oh snap!!!

      9:52 pm: Trump says, “Yuge.” Full shot.

      9:55 pm: Trump: “I did not say that.” Finish off shot glass.

      9:58 pm: Trump says “Wrong” meaning “I didn’t say that”, drink. Hillary brought up Khan, drink.

      10:04 pm: Tax returns. I should have had it on the list. Taking a drink.

      10:08 pm: My son is worried that I will kill myself if I keep going. Putting away the alcohol and changing the channel when I can still type.

      Sugar is Evil

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      I am not referring to Glucose, or Fructose, or Sucrose, but rather the recent revelation that the sugar industry bribed scientists so that they would minimize the impact on heart health:

      Back in the 1960s, a sugar industry executive wrote fat checks to a group of Harvard researchers so that they’d downplay the links between sugar and heart disease in a prominent medical journal—and the researchers did it, according to historical documents reported Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

      One of those Harvard researchers went on to become the head of nutrition at the United States Department of Agriculture, where he set the stage for the federal government’s current dietary guidelines. All in all, the corrupted researchers and skewed scientific literature successfully helped draw attention away from the health risks of sweets and shift the blame solely to fats—for nearly five decades. The low-fat, high-sugar diets that health experts subsequently encouraged are now seen as a main driver of the current obesity epidemic.

      The bitter revelations come from archived documents from the Sugar Research Foundation (now the Sugar Association), dug up by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco. Their dive into the old, sour affair highlights both the perils of trusting industry-sponsored research to inform policy and the importance of requiring scientists to disclose conflicts of interest—something that didn’t become the norm until years later. Perhaps most strikingly, it spotlights the concerning power of the sugar industry.

      “These findings, our analysis, and current Sugar Association criticisms of evidence linking sucrose to cardiovascular disease suggest the industry may have a long history of influencing federal policy,” the authors concluded.

      ………

      After the review, the sugar industry continued to fund research into heart disease and other health issues. By the 1980s, few scientists focused on the role of sugar in heart disease. The 1980 Dietary Guidelines for Americans emphasized curbing fats and dietary cholesterol to prevent heart disease.

      Today, Nestle points out, “the balance has shifted to less concern about fat and much greater concern about sugars.” But, the story should act as a cautionary tale of the potential harms from industry-sponsored studies.

      “Potential harms” from “Industry sponsored studies”?

      Real harm, time, and time, and time, and time, and time again.

      This crap is inherently corrupting, and any researcher that takes industry money should be debarred from federal funding.

      Any researcher that takes industry money and does not explicitly and clearly reveal this should be debarred from federal funding for life.