810 Eat Your Greens -- Here’s How
A lot of us aren’t fond of green vegetables, even though we know how healthy we’re told they are.
There are certain widespread anti-favorites: broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower for example. Maybe asparagus. Many people who dislike these and other veggies have taken to smothering them with stuff. Cheese (both melted and grated,) salt, pepper, hot sauce, ketchup, mustard, salad dressing (never oil and vinegar, only bleu cheese or French or ranch.)
In most cases, this balances out the health factor, making the vegetables either nutrition neutral or even bad for you. Many anti-veggie types make a few exceptions. One is potatoes. But they’re likely to smother them in sour cream or butter or both, or to eat them as home fries or french fries. And, again, that can make them nutritionally neutral.
So, the puzzle is this: how do you get people to eat their veggies? And the answer is in modern food chemistry. The chemists at Big Food can make anything taste like anything.
Example: microwave chocolate cake. Watch it as it heats. It doesn’t bake, it develops. Like a photograph. Read the label. There’s little to nothing on the ingredient list you have heard of or that you can pronounce. But it tastes looks and tastes like chocolate cake.
So why not meat-flavored vegetables?
Asparagus that tastes like bacon. Broccoli that tastes like ribs. It’s not the same as smothering cauliflower in A-1 sauce. It’s internal, not a cover. Thing of how delicious a steaming plate of cilantro would taste if it tasted like braunschweiger. Bok Choy that tastes like chicken.
Probably wouldn’t need to do anything with corn or mushrooms, avocados, celery, onions or spinach. But most greens? Bring on the lamb flavoring. Or the beef.
You mean to say ConAgra can’t grow stuff like this? Of course they can. But if they don’t want to, here’s one way to revitalize the family farm.
The best tasting naked vegetable isn’t a vegetable at all. It’s a fruit: tomatoes. The closest thing to beef you can grow yourself.
Shrapnel:
--Time for our annual Martin Luther King day rant... this year the short version. We miss him, still. But it is an insult to him, to his work and to his memory to try to guess what he would think, say or do now, almost 43 years after his death.
--In response to our question about how to teach curiosity, one reader, a college student, writes in part: “...I hate science and math.” Do you? Or is it the need for rigor and precision that requires you to emerge from your drinking, video games, chat rooms and dream world that you “hate?”
--A British company is offering personalized photo-pillow cases for about $20 each. So now you can sleep on photographs of the kiddies. Or you can be smothered by them while you’re asleep, not just while you and they are awake.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
© 2011 WJR
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
A lot of us aren’t fond of green vegetables, even though we know how healthy we’re told they are.
There are certain widespread anti-favorites: broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower for example. Maybe asparagus. Many people who dislike these and other veggies have taken to smothering them with stuff. Cheese (both melted and grated,) salt, pepper, hot sauce, ketchup, mustard, salad dressing (never oil and vinegar, only bleu cheese or French or ranch.)
In most cases, this balances out the health factor, making the vegetables either nutrition neutral or even bad for you. Many anti-veggie types make a few exceptions. One is potatoes. But they’re likely to smother them in sour cream or butter or both, or to eat them as home fries or french fries. And, again, that can make them nutritionally neutral.
So, the puzzle is this: how do you get people to eat their veggies? And the answer is in modern food chemistry. The chemists at Big Food can make anything taste like anything.
Example: microwave chocolate cake. Watch it as it heats. It doesn’t bake, it develops. Like a photograph. Read the label. There’s little to nothing on the ingredient list you have heard of or that you can pronounce. But it tastes looks and tastes like chocolate cake.
So why not meat-flavored vegetables?
Asparagus that tastes like bacon. Broccoli that tastes like ribs. It’s not the same as smothering cauliflower in A-1 sauce. It’s internal, not a cover. Thing of how delicious a steaming plate of cilantro would taste if it tasted like braunschweiger. Bok Choy that tastes like chicken.
Probably wouldn’t need to do anything with corn or mushrooms, avocados, celery, onions or spinach. But most greens? Bring on the lamb flavoring. Or the beef.
You mean to say ConAgra can’t grow stuff like this? Of course they can. But if they don’t want to, here’s one way to revitalize the family farm.
The best tasting naked vegetable isn’t a vegetable at all. It’s a fruit: tomatoes. The closest thing to beef you can grow yourself.
Shrapnel:
--Time for our annual Martin Luther King day rant... this year the short version. We miss him, still. But it is an insult to him, to his work and to his memory to try to guess what he would think, say or do now, almost 43 years after his death.
--In response to our question about how to teach curiosity, one reader, a college student, writes in part: “...I hate science and math.” Do you? Or is it the need for rigor and precision that requires you to emerge from your drinking, video games, chat rooms and dream world that you “hate?”
--A British company is offering personalized photo-pillow cases for about $20 each. So now you can sleep on photographs of the kiddies. Or you can be smothered by them while you’re asleep, not just while you and they are awake.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
© 2011 WJR
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
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