[rogerhb]

I'm Lovin' It

The author is excellent, great TV series, he makes blackpudding from scratch....

[Magus]

That's great news for all you peakers in the UK!

Unfortunately, it will probably be awhile before they start closing down around here.

The last time I ate one of their burgers was years ago. Put me off them permenately. By the time I got home, I was so sick...

[eastbay]

Now THAT's the kind of news that will help brighten up my entire day!! Thanks!!

[spudbuddy]

This seems to be the right place for random musings...

the term "burger flipper" seems to denote the ultimate fall from grace for any worker (first to service - then to Mcjobbed...)
makes me wonder:
How did we look at burger flippers in the 1950's?
Brings to mind all those stylized Hollywood re-creations of classic cars pulled up to the rotunda, while sexy uniformed roller-skated burger queens delivered trays to the customers...(but you never see the flipper in those scenes)

My own memories as a teenager are of an inner city burger joint - just down the street from the highschool...everybody walked there...no parking...run by first generation Greek immigrants...called it Titans Burgers...char-broiled...independent and family owned.

High school students work a lot harder to get into university, than I ever did. They work a lot harder once there, to qualify for post-grad. They incur far more debt in the process. Their liklihood of attaining the same kind of purchasing power after graduation is a 50-50 coin toss, at best.

Globalization doesn't increase the well-being of working people around the planet. It just sucks wealth upward.

The more I examine the issue of Peak Oil, the more I come to realize it's the political history of it, not the economics of it...is where all the juicy bits hide.

There's a new Marco Polo trade route. The original one used camels and took years to traverse.
Now we have a highway that stretches from China's western provinces all the way to the Bosporous (ultimately connecting up the EEU). The trucks are monsters - moving along in White Line Fever convoys...traveling through some of the most volatile territories on the planet. I know what's being shipped westward - but what's going back the other way?
(converted tankers?)
I watched the chortling BIZpersons interviewed on camera - they and their Marco Polo dreams. Gigantism is alive and well.
(reminded me of the plans afoot to enlarge the Panama canal - to allow the portliest of supertankers through.)
Dream machines...baby.

The bigger brighter better future resembles a one-armed bandit in a desert casino. Risk management as a predominant lifestyle choice.

[Dreamtwister]

How to flip a burger:

1) Go to New York and buy a Big Mac for 2 bucks
3) Go to New Orleans during a hurricane and sell said Big Mac for 12 bucks

[0mar]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dreamtwister', 'H')ow to flip a burger:

1) Go to New York and buy a Big Mac for 2 bucks
3) Go to New Orleans during a hurricane and sell said Big Mac for 12 bucks

[The_Virginian]

GO to N.Y. and Buy for 2 Bucks, Go to N.O. durring Katrina and Get your AZZ whuped for trying a stunt like that.

In the tussle it would flip...

[JoeCoal]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dreamtwister', 'H')ow to flip a burger:

1) Go to New York and buy a Big Mac for 2 bucks
3) Go to New Orleans during a hurricane and sell said Big Mac for 12 bucks

[Dreamtwister]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JoeCoal', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dreamtwister', 'H')ow to flip a burger:

1) Go to New York and buy a Big Mac for 2 bucks
3) Go to New Orleans during a hurricane and sell said Big Mac for 12 bucks

[rushdy]

Be careful, too many burgers with not enough nutrients will impair your IQ

Unless of course theyre organo-vegan-chickpea burgers, then youre allright. Just dont hydrogenate the fat..

[ohanian]

Taste buds of children destroyed by junk food


"Are you familiar with the term 'taste numbness'?" — food critic and activist Tsukasa Abe, writing in Sapio.

Restaurants good enough to be noticed by Michelin are among the world's finest. But Abe's focus is on children whose taste buds have been so corrupted by artificial food additives that natural flavors are simply lost on them. That's what he means by "taste numbness." He has watched it spread over the past decade, and believes it now afflicts some 30 percent of Japanese children.

Abe, 56, knows something about food additives. He used to sell them. In the 1980s, he was a top salesman for a food-additive trading firm. One day, during a rare meal at home, he was horrified to see his daughter eating his own company's additive-soaked meatballs. The experience changed his life. Quitting his job the next day, he began lecturing and writing against the evils he had been blindly perpetrating. A book he published last year has sold 600,000 copies.

His cross-country lecture tours have brought him into contact with daily eating habits "that leave me speechless," he writes in Sapio. Children drinking nothing but cola, drowning rice in mayonnaise, mixing pudding with soy sauce — "it makes you sick just to think of it," but the kids love it; it's what they've grown up on, and if you feed them less outlandish, more traditional fare, like homemade miso soup for example, they insist it's tasteless and won't eat it.

There's much to be said, Abe admits, for cheap, convenient instant meals. Parents are busy, and mothers have won the right not to spend their days in the kitchen bent over a hot stove.

"But look at the dark side," he urges. "Taste numbness" is only part of it.

One serving of instant Cup Ramen, he says, contains 5 grams of salt, only 1 gram under the maximum daily intake sanctioned by the World Health Organization. Some instant meals contain as many as 10 grams of salt — not to mention, he adds, suspected carcinogens.

Food additives — artificial coloring, artificial flavoring — "give new life to old vegetables," he says. It's a dubious resurrection; "these are 'garbage vegetables' just at the point of being inedible." Health and taste issues aside, this undermines Japanese agriculture and "the meticulous work of Japanese farmers."

The France-based Michelin Guide's pathbreaking coverage of Tokyo restaurants — Tokyo is the first city outside Europe and North America to be so honored — reminds us that Japan has a food culture of a very high order. Can it last? Can it survive "taste numbness?"

"It's not too late to recover our sense of taste," Abe writes — "if," he warns, "we start now. I am not saying we should get rid of all food additives. But surely we can serve home cooked meals more often, gradually reducing the quantity of additives we ingest."

At an apparently exceptional nursery school where lunches consist primarily of organic fare tastefully prepared, Abe recently tested the kids with instant soup. "Disgusting!" they cried.

Their taste buds had not lost their innocence.

[perdition79]

Processed and prepackaged food relies upon fat, salt, and additives to be considered edible. Even so-called health foods and diet foods are loaded with insane amounts of bad ingredients. The only way to eat healthy these days is to prepare your own food.

I'm surprised that article doesn't mention hydrolyzed protein additives (MSG is such an additive). They're the worst of all; they specifically make food taste irresistible and alter your brain's appetite suppression controls, which basically makes food a drug.

Studies show that hydrolyzed proteins increase the chances of obesity. Go check any box in your kitchen cabinets, other than breakfast cereals, and most of them contain either monosodium glutamate or hydrolyzed vegetable protein.

[dinopello]

I never thought of the problem with kids eating as 'taste numbness'. I always thought much of the fast food was pretty bland. Although high in fat, salt and sweet. I can see how a high salt/sweet diet can numb your tastebuds though. I eat a lot of spicy food Thai, Indian etc and I still seem to taste food fine.

[Eli]

Yeah, I think this is actually true.

Processed foods add so many flavor enhancers it is ridiculous. The reason they do it has to do with cost. Take a natural fruit flavor for example, it is whole lot easier and much cheaper to get an intense fruit flavor by artificial chemical means than with natural fruit. To do it using fruit you would have to cook and reduce the fruit down to increase the flavor.

[dinopello]

If a kid said store-bought tomatoes or apples had no flavor, I'd be hard pressed to argue against that.

[I_Like_Plants]

And now, a list of oversaturated taste junk foods!

Jolly Ranchers. Crack for the tastebuds.

Cheetos.

"Red" flavored anything.

Coca-cola. Any cola in fact, I guess Moxie is the ultimate (and I still want to try one.)

Slim-Jims. Read the label, no actual beef in them!

Lik-M-Aid - remember that stuff?

Jello-O when eaten straight out of the box, as any kid will tell you and have gotten in trouble for unless they've led a sheltered life.

Can anyone think of any more?

[FoolYap]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('I_Like_Plants', 'C')an anyone think of any more?

[jasonraymondson]

You should never ever let your daughter eat meaty balls

btw if any of you have a cute 18 - 19 year old daugters please send them my way and inform to disregard the last statement.

[Ohcrap]

Debating The viability of Fast Food Franchises as we slide down the Gorge


What will happen to Fast Food Franchises as we slide down the Gorge and head for the Age of Stone?

I remember the times way back when for $2.99 at CiCi's pizza one could eat an unlimited amount of Pizza, and drinks were less than 99 cents, kids 12 and under FREE!!

Howadays the Total Package at CiCi's costs you more than Seven US Falling Dollars and everybody pays.

As we head into 2008, what will be the predicted EROEI of fastfood restaurants? Will Subway fair better than CiCi's?

CiCi is still a classic example of VALUE.
While Subway is classic of "class"/"quality"/"health

Most other's are somewhere between the two extreme positions.

Both Model's have its pros and cons, CiCi's is Wal-mart Style
and Subway is catered to the healthy conscious and more affluent.
CiCi makes it money by selling a lot but with low margin, Subway doesn't sell much but makes a lot of $$$ profits off each meal..

But Peak Oil changes everything... Maybe what is working today will be turned upside down by next years.

My question to you good people is can you help predict which business model type is more able to survive in the next coming years?

[I_Like_Plants]

They go back to something like today's Tacofest, I think I had 5, my buddy had 4....

made at home, all ingredients fresh and some leftovers, we're getting good at cranking 'em out.

In the future, maybe Abuelita has a stand where there are people, for the horse market or the weekly swapmeet, etc. Good old Abuelita, with her blonde braids and blue eyes....