What's in a Name?

The question I'm interested in exploring for this post is whether name brand food items are "better" for you, as many people (including myself, most of the time) assume. "Better" in this case would be defined as of higher quality, meaning healthier ingredients and taste.

My method was to compare the ingredients list, nutrition label, and price of the brand name products with their generic counterparts.

Welch's vs Safeway Grape Juice

The best identical side-by-side comparison of ingredient/nutrition lists I found was between the Safeway 100% Grape Juice and Welch's 100% Grape Juice. Juice is a pretty straight-forward item on the grocery shelves (let's hope the 100% juice doesn't have a huge list of ingredients, anyway), so it's fairly obvious that the two products should be the same. However, I bet many people reach for the Welch's juice anyway based on the company's labeling and TV advertisements-- simply because it looks better on the shelf-- even though it's the same product as the $1.00 cheaper Safeway juice.

Lucerne (left) vs Yoplait (right) light raspberry yogurt

I browsed the aisles a bit more and came to a product where, I believe, the generic brand was actually better in quality than the name brand. I compared Safeway's brand of Lucerne light raspberry yogurt with Yoplait's light red raspberry yogurt. The ingredients were roughly the same, except the Yoplait yogurt also listed Sugar, Citric Acid, Acetate, and used Aspartame as a sweetener whereas Lucerne used Sucralose. The Lucerne product was 0.40 cents cheaper per pound and had a much more familiar ingredients list. On this particular product I decided to do a taste test, and bought the two items. My conclusion was that the Yoplait item was more flavorful and sweet, but the items were definitely similar in taste quality.

Kellogg's ($3.50) vs Great Value ($2.68)

To further explore generic quality items, I ventured to Moscow's Walmart. There I found the sugary wonder of Walmart's generic substitute for Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, named Great Value Sugar Frosted Flakes. Again, there was about a dollar difference in the two items (Great Value for $2.68, Kellogg's for $3.50) but it became quickly apparent that they were different products, ingredient-wise. The Great Value listed degermed yellow corn meal (rather than Kellogg's milled corn) and high fructose corn syrup. In the nutrition label, the Great Value box displayed 13 grams of sugar per 3/4 cup (compared to Kellogg's 8 grams for 3/4 cup), 200 mg of sodium (vs Kellogg's 160mg), and only 2% fiber (compared to Kellogg's 10%.) I didn't buy these two for a taste test, but it seems that the slightly-more-spendy Kellogg's would be the healthier choice.

As Michael Pollan put it in a recent article on his website, "there are generics, and then there are generics." His point here is that some generic brands are nearly identical in terms of ingredients to the brand name foods (meaning you're just paying for the fancy label and advertising if you buy the brand name), but other generic brands actually compromise quality by being reformulated or made with cheap ingredients. The link to the article is here:

http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/michael-pollan-answers-readers-questions/

I was able to discover both of the two "types" of generics on the grocery aisle shelves-- the one essentially the same as the brand name (i.e. Welch's vs Safeway Grape Juice) and the one made with varying (and often questionable) ingredients (i.e. Kellogg's vs Great Value's Frosted Flakes.)

So, the brand name doesn't always mean the product is "better" than the generic item. If you're smart about your grocery shopping, taking time to compare and contrast labels can keep you from spending unnecessary money on brand name items, or expose some unsettling generic substitutes you should avoid. There's always merit in investigating.

A Novice Critique

This week's prompt was to perform a local restaurant review. I've often heard about and passed by the Alehouse in Moscow, but the first time I ventured in was a few weeks ago, wandering in with a couple of friends around 7 p.m. on a Saturday night. The place was packed, but we found the wait was worth it and it became one of my favorite restaurants. I wanted to review it for this blog not only because my first experience lured me to go back, but because I was curious to experience the Alehouse on a night when it didn't require a 20-minute wait or an hour and a half to complete a meal. So, I chose a Sunday evening. Here's the critique:

ALEHOUSE

Quality: 8.6 stars
Atmosphere: 8.2 stars
Cost: 7.2 stars
Service: 8.8 stars
(*based on a 10-star scale, with 10 being the most favorable)

Credit Cards: Visa, American Express
Attire: Casual
Features: Outdoor Seating, Rotating Bottle Selections, Local Drafts





The Sunday-night experience begins with a casual greeting from a "Please Seat Yourself" sign posted near the entrance. The typical college-going student and group of friends have a choice of booth, wooden tables, or bar for seating amidst strategically placed flatscreen TVs displaying the Sunday night football game.You choose a booth and sit down to find paper menus already in place, and a laminated flip chart offering a variety of beverages. The drink options are expansive, ranging from many types of beer to martinis to whiskey. You also flip through an appetizer menu, and are surprised to find "Fresh Local Hummus" as an option, but your guy friends aren't really into hummus.

A waiter introduces himself, and gives you a few moments to browse the impressive number of local drafts. The drafts have entertaining nicknames, such as "Pike's Kilt Lifter," or "Rogue Dead Guy Pale Ale," and as you are generally confused about the differences between a Porter or a Stout, you decide to split whichever pitcher your guy friends order. They choose the Bitteroot Huck N Honey draft from Hamilton, Montana. They also order an appetizer of the Alehouse's seasoned chili fries. Once more, you go with it.

A few other college students trickle in while you wait for your order. You notice the dark wood on the bar they sit at; the chalkboard menus posted behind them and the hunter-green accents of the place. There are murmured conversations, the faint drone of the sportscaster, and it is growing dark outside. You decide there is a laid-back rustic quality, something cabin-esque about the place, and you relax. From this vantage you can see the top-halves of the chefs working in the kitchen, and hear the soft clink of dishes. You notice rows of coffee mugs hang from the ceiling above the bar, and as you survey them you decide to add "personality" to your positive list of descriptors.

Soon the beer arrives. Your friend pours four glasses and you, not being much of a beer drinker and not having high expectations, are pleasantly surprised. From your inexperienced pallet, you assign the adjectives "light" and "sweet." Your friend remarks on the "honey vibe" and another describes a fruity aftertaste. Shortly after, the fries arrive, warm and heaped to perfection. Sprinkled with Rosemary, loaded with small black beans, and "Real cheese!" as one of your friends puts it. The taste doesn't disappoint-- the fries are crisp, not soggy (or aren't given the chance to become so), and are heartily devoured.

Time for the main meal. The menu is pleasantly varied, including interesting picks under each of the subheadings of Soups and Salads, Wraps, Sandwiches, Burgers, and Grain Room (pasta options). You choose the Hula burger, and substitute the beef patty for grilled chicken. Upon arrival, the aesthetic appeal doesn't disappoint (at least for the hungry college kid.) The chicken has been draped with a large slice of ham and melting swiss; a beautifully grilled pineapple ring sits juicy on top. You pick up the lightly-grilled top bun on the left of your plate to find pickles, onions, and lettuce waiting underneath. You eat the pickles separately first, avoid the onions like usual, and then simply place the bun on top and take your first bite. It's glorious. Moist chicken with a burst of sweet pineapple and hint of salt from the ham blend harmoniously in your mouth. Your next bite is a crisp french fry, also pleasantly sprinkled with Rosemary and still warm. You rinse it down with a sweet swig of Huck N Honey. Life is probably complete. Or at least dinner is.

The check comes to around $20, after splitting the appetizer and pitcher, but you're satisfied with the quality of your meal, timely service, and good company. You're impressed they include a survey with the check, encouraging reviews on menu variety, service, and restaurant cleanliness, and well as prompting for beer or brewery suggestions on tap. You give it a high review, "Like" the Alehouse's page on Facebook, and rank the overall appeal at 8 stars in your blog for class.

You make plans for Tuesday evening there.

Transforming Top Ramen

This week's challenge: create a gourmet meal with $7 or less using Top Ramen as the main ingredient. Here's the breakdown:

The Ingredients

Inspiration cuisine/culture: Asian

Attempted taste profiles: salty and sweet

Ingredients to buy: Oriental Top Ramen ($0.38), Stir Fry Veggie Mix ($1.48)

Ultimate goal: Create a gourmet (loose term, right?) stir fry with good flavor to disguise the Ramen noodles.

I chose an Asian-inspired cuisine route because I had the most experience cooking with noodles, rice, and chicken, and thus creating a stir fry gave me the best chance to turn anything I cooked into "gourmet." [I don't have the best reputation as a cook, and when I told my husband I had to create a gourmet meal he laughed, until I told him he was my taste tester.] I used three additional ingredients I already had in my cupboard: Vegetable oil, a can of Kirkland Chicken Breast from Costco, and Yoshida's Original Gourmet Sauce (it had "gourmet" in the title!) I figured the addition of these three ingredients would still have kept my budget under $7 if I had purchased them in the store. And thus began my attempt at a meal.

Adding Stir Fry Veggies

Chicken breast & veggies in wok 

Step 1: Boil 2 cups water, Add Top Ramen noodles, and stir occasionally for 3 minutes. [*note, the silver package of powder "oriental" flavoring should be promptly discarded in the trash.]

Step 2: Drain Ramen noodles; set aside. 

Step 3: Heat about 3 Tablespoons vegetable oil in a wok over medium-low heat.

Adding Yoshida sauce

Step 4: Add 1/2 package of Stir Fry Veggie Mix. Stir until veggies are golden-brown.

Don't forget the Ramen!

Step 5: Open can of Kirkland Chicken Breast; Drain. Add chicken breast and Yoshida sauce (about 1/2 cup) to veggies in wok. Mix well.

Step 6: Add Ramen Noodles; Mix well. Let stir fry concoction mingle over medium-low heat for a few minutes, to ensure saturation of Yoshida sauce into bland Ramen noodles.

Step 7: Serve stir fry to yourself and a taste tester, and record the results.

Results:

The finished product!

Alright, so the stir fry didn't end up looking too terrible. It looked like it could pass as a hearty side dish, even. Upon tasting, my husband decided that it was . . . still a little lacking. He said I needed to add some heat to the dish (recommending chili peppers or hot sauce, perhaps) as it was a little bland, despite the Yoshida sauce. His direct quote about the dish as a whole was, "well, it's better than regular Top Ramen." My own taste buds found the dish lacking as well-- I could pick up on the saltiness that I'd been going for, and the sweet-tang of the Yoshida sauce, but the Ramen noodles were characteristically mushy and bland. We both, however, finished our bowls. 

So, I'd like to think I transformed Top Ramen into a creative, tasteful dish (I had good intentions?), but my taste tester and I still found it lacking in the heat and spice one would expect from Asian-inspired cooking. Points for trying? It was, after all, a cheap meal that differed from the straight-forward college meal of Ramen noodles with salt-laden flavor packet.

I'm leaving the "gourmet" status of the meal up for debate.

The Taste Test

This week's prompt: perform a blind-folded taste test of the same food item from two grocery stores of varying quality and judge purely the taste of eating healthier. I chose to shop at Moscow's Winco and Safeway stores. I was looking for produce that I could buy at both, because I thought produce might be an easier source to differ in quality, and settled on buying two ears of sweet corn from both.






WINCO
Type: sweet yellow corn
Price: 0.76 cents for two ears
Origin: Wissel Farms-- Nampa, ID




SAFEWAY
Type: sweet yellow corn
Price: $1.00 for two ears
Origin: USA



Price conclusion-- the corn from Winco was 12 cents cheaper. Now for the taste test results. Below are the initial taste responses from myself and a friend, both of us blindfolded:


                                              Corn #1 (Winco Corn)            Corn #2 (Safeway Corn)
Blindfolded Friend:

                                              Good Sugar                                More Bitter
                                              Ripe                                            Distinct "leafy" flavor
                                              Very Sweet                                 Fairly Crisp
                                              Very Crisp

Blindfolded Me:

                                              Really Sweet                               Not as Sweet
                                              Very Firm                                    Not as Fresh/Crisp
                                              Juicy                                            Soft/ Mushy
                                                                                                   Bland


Overall, the first corn (from Winco) was much better than the corn from Safeway. My blindfolded friend said he could tell it was picked before it was ripe by the "green" flavor he could distinguish. After taking off the blindfold, he said he could also tell it had been picked earlier by looking at the top of the ear of the corn: the one from Safeway with the "green" taste had not been allowed to fully mature all of its kernels (in the photo at right, the cob on the left is the one from Safeway, whereas the cob on the right from Winco has a full ear of kernels.) That made me suspect that the corn from Safeway (pinned down only to the location of somewhere-in-the-USA) had probably been picked early in order to be shipped across states.


The results of the taste test surprised me a little bit at first (I have to admit I was just assuming that the more expensive produce from Safeway was going to taste better.) But the corn from Winco was the overwhelmingly better, tastier choice-- and cheaper as well. So my main conclusion was: it doesn't necessarily matter which store you buy your food from, but where your food comes from before it hits the grocery aisle shelves.

The source of the Safeway corn was vague to say the least, and it was disappointing to only trace it as specifically as its "product of USA" label. I had no idea what farm or even what state the corn had come from. The corn from Winco, however, named its direct provider and (fairly local) location. After researching Wissel Farms from Nampa, ID, I was pleasantly surprised to find that their mission statement on their website even declared no GMOs:

"The most important thing about produce is that it is FRESH. Also we absolutely do not use any genetically modified seeds (GMO). With that in mind, our main focus is to grow and deliver our produce directly to our retailers and customers, so that it is fresh as possible."

The website went on to list all the farm's produce and retailers in the Idaho Treasure Valley Region. Wissel Farms also provided a family history background on their homepage, describing the progression of their farm.


Here's the link if you'd like to check it out:

http://www.wisselfarms.com/wissel-farms.html

So, in the end, if you can track where your food is coming from (preferably a local, non GMO source) chances are you'll enjoy a healthier and tastier meal. And if that meal comes from a cheaper provider like Winco, there's no need to write off cheaper food as automatically being of lesser quality.

The Corn-Free Grocery Challenge

So what's the impact when a crop like corn does become king? The answer is that the surplus of corn infiltrates our food system in some unexpected ways: being genetically modified and scientifically engineered to become usable in the most unlikely of food products (Yoplait yogurt, Heinz Ketchup, and Bush's Baked Beans to name a few.) And the addition of genetically-modified corn derivatives to the ingredient lists of many grocery items isn't necessarily good for our health.This excess of high fructose corn syrup and other disguised corn derivatives in so much of our food is causing some series health problems for our generation. So, the challenge? To buy a week's worth of groceries that don't contain corn, on a college-student budget. Here's my process:

A trip to the local Winco to pick up Thursday night dinner supplies after class had piqued my interest-- how hard was this corn-free assignment really going to be? I strolled through the aisles trying to think of a filling food that shouldn't contain corn. Brilliant idea number one: Top Ramon. The classic, college-budget staple that could sustain a student for a week. A quick turn down the soup aisle proved disappointing though: a short way down the ingredient list I found "hydrolyzed corn protein." A scan of other nearby soup options-- Campbell's chicken noodle soup? Nalley's Chilly?-- yielded similar results. While scanning labels, I also had a haunting suspicion that many of the ingredients I was reading-- the complicated, scientific-sounding ones-- probably contained corn derivatives that I was completely unaware of.

So the next step: researching the names of corn derivatives and printing off a comprehensive list to take with me to the grocery store. Five pages of a Word document later . . . I was slightly disheartened. A few off the top that I would have never associated with corn: astaxanthin, citric acid, calcium lactate, hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, and xanthan gum. Yeah.

And another trip to the grocery store (this time my hometown Safeway in Ephrata, WA), still proved challenging. I quickly acquired a list of food items that I would have normally picked up without a second thought, but were now banned from stocking my college pantry due to some form of corn on the ingredients list: Eggo Waffles, Doritos, Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing, Simply Asia microwave noodle bowls, Bush's Baked Beans, Tree Top Applesauce, Snack Pack Chocolate Pudding, Instant Breakfast, JIF Peanut Butter, Coffee Mate creamer, and Betty Crocker Fudge Brownies.

Browsing through organic selections proved a bit more successful. I found Odwalla juice had no corn derivatives (although it's competitor Naked did), and neither did the "mexican" Coca-Cola made with cane sugar. Surprisingly, the Odwalla label even stated: "No gmo. Odwalla does not use ingredients that were produced using biotechnology if bioengineered versions exist."Aside from that, my drink options were limited-- even my usual favorite, "healthy" V8 Splash had high fructose corn syrup (as the second ingredient after water!)

I found a corn-free soy sauce (Kikkoman) which would provide several fairly cheap meals of seasoning white rice (not a particularly balanced or varied meal, but something to fill up on.) I also found Amy's Organic Soups (chunky vegetable) that contained simple and corn-free ingredients ($2.99.) It was almost a relief to come across items like Green Giant green beans or Bumble Bee canned Tuna where I could read (and understand) every ingredient on the list. The pasta aisle was a challenge, but I managed to find that Annie's Shells & White Cheddar Macaroni & Cheese was corn-free (dinner for a week!) Comparatively, though, Annie's mac & cheese was twice the price of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, which contained corn. And this pricier trend was all over the store: there were Mission Organics White Corn tortilla chips, also about a dollar more expensive than the un-organic Mission bags. Similarly, Cascadian Farm organic chocolate chip chewy granola bars (6-pk) were nearly $5, twice as much as the Chewy brand.

Considering myself as a college kid with a budget, or a mom with several kids to feed, or just about anyone strapped for cash, I could see that the obvious choice on the shelves would be the cheaper product, almost all of which contain corn derivatives. The corn-free organic brands are available to those who can afford it, and even then health-conscious people reading labels are challenged by complicated lingo and confusing labeling. For example, I found a box of Kellogg's Nutri-grain bars which boasted "No High Fructose Corn Syrup" in the upper left corner, but a close inspection of the ingredient list for the filling of the bars showed that it did, in fact, contain high fructose corn syrup on the inside.


Also, just a note on the correlation between youth diabetes and a high consumption of high fructose corn syrup-- this mystery liquid vampire candy, placed conveniently by check-out at Winco just in time for halloween--corn syrup as its very first ingredient (yuck):

Why is corn everywhere?

First off-- to understand why corn has become a concern in the American food system and diets, here's a link to an article by Michael Pollan that sums it up nicely:

When A Crop Becomes King

The article is from 2002, so the numbers are outdated, but it's a good start to understanding why we're at where we are today.