Chicken on eggs May 2, 2011
For breakfast this morning, I cut up some chicken and put it on my eggs, which made me feel like the world might end or something.  I guess it's similar to a cheeseburger, except that cheese requires some processing whereas eggs come directly from chickens.  So far, no world ending. #food
Peanut butter satiation Mar 31, 2011
I made some changes to my diet recently, and one of the immediate downsides was that no matter how much I ate and how full I felt, I never felt satisfied.  Someone recommended peanut butter because it has a good fat-to-carb ratio or something like that.  Sure enough, peanut butter is a great satiator (that's not a word; I just created it).  I eat spoonfuls of it at various times throughout the day, and it magically takes my hunger away.  Hence my concern regarding aflatoxins. #food
Aflatoxin Mar 24, 2011
Aflatoxins are naturally-occurring fungi-produced toxins that are found on foods like corn and peanuts and are known to cause liver cancer.  Developing countries are most at risk, but thankfully the FDA tests for these substances and has certain stated limits for ingestion.  This is of particular interest to me because of the frightening quantity of peanut butter I eat on a daily basis.  It's easy to find murmurs on internet message boards about how [X] food causes [Y] deadly problem, and this is no exception, but since there are so few (or perhaps no) documented cases of aflatoxicosis due to peanut butter ingestion, I'll continue eating it to my heart's content. #food
Radioactive bananas Mar 24, 2011
Bananas are a good source of potassium, but some of that potassium comes in the form of the radioactive isotope potassium-40.  Thankfully the human body does a good job of self-regulating the amount of potassium it stores, so there isn't really a chance for a deadly buildup.  And just because bananas contain a radioactive substance doesn't mean they're unhealthy.  Different radioactive elements affect the body in different ways, so potassium-40 from bananas won't affect a person the same way as uranium-238 from a nuclear reactor.  Other foods with naturally-occurring radiation include Brazil nuts, carrots, potatoes, and lima beans. #food
Real cinnamon Mar 23, 2011
LA Times on cinnamon (via Mental Floss): 
There are actually two spices known as cinnamon. Both come from the dried bark of evergreen trees of the Lauraceae (laurel) family. True or Ceylon cinnamon comes from Cinnamomum zeylanicum, a tree native to Sri Lanka and the southwestern coast of India along the Arabian Sea... The less expensive Chinese cinnamon, otherwise known as cassia, comes from the related tree C. aromaticum and is produced more widely. From China it is exported as Kwangsi, Yunnan and Honan cinnamon; from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam as Saigon cinnamon; and from Indonesia as Korintje, Padang and Vera cinnamon. Most of the cinnamon imported by the United States is cassia.
Whoa.  "Brown sugar and cassia" doesn't evoke nearly the feeling of elation that comes with the phrase "brown sugar and cinnamon." #food
Canola oil Mar 7, 2011
Canola oil is actually made from crushed rapeseed and processed to reduce erucic acid, a system developed in Canada.  The name "canola" comes from the phrase "Canadian oil, low acid." #food
Lager vs. ale (2) Feb 7, 2011
This is a topic that comes up regularly in conversations, so hopefully writing (typing) it will help me remember:  What's the difference between a lager and an ale? 

Lagers originated in Germany and are brewed at lower temperatures (40-50°F) and use bottom-fermenting yeast, leading to a mild, crisp, fruity taste. 

Ales originated in England and are brewed at higher temperatures (60-75°F) and use top-fermenting yeast, leading to a nutty, often bitter taste. #food
Steamed spinach (3) Jan 18, 2011
I've been eating a lot of spinach lately, and I'm a newly-converted fan.  It's good raw in salads, and it's even good fried in omelets.  One way it's not good is the way I ate it my entire life, leading to my intense hatred of it:  Steamed or boiled.  I had an excellent meal at a restaurant the other day, consisting of red snapper on a bed of steamed spinach.  Everything was going great, until I got to that slimy, bitter mess of green nonsense underneath the fish.  I don't understand how a simple cooking technique can transform a food in such a horrific way. #food
Simple foods Dec 22, 2010
I've recently become a fan of simple foods, i.e. processed foods with few or simple ingredients.  Skippy Natural Peanut Butter has the following list of ingredients:  Roasted Peanuts, Sugar, Palm Oil, Salt.  Land O' Lakes Butter with Olive Oil is made of the following:  Sweet Cream, Olive Oil, Salt.  Those are all things I can understand without researching them on the internet.  There's no potassium chloride or xanthan gum, or any of the other millions of food additives with complicated names that may or may not cause limb loss and brain seepage.  I try to stay away from the "chemicals are scary" mindset; I realize most things have a complicated chemical name (dihydrogen monoxide, i.e. water) and many chemicals are benign or even beneficial.  And of course just because something is made from non-processed ingredients doesn't make it healthy.  But I guess I get a little peace of mind knowing my food was grown in the dirt, cleaned up, and essentially sold to me as is. #food
Eating horses Nov 9, 2010
As I watched a few minutes of this past weekend's Breeder's Cup, I couldn't help but think, "Why don't we eat these giant, muscular mammals?"  Horses are essentially equal to cows in both size and dietary requirements, and beef is one of America's favorite foods.  As usual, Wikipedia has lots of information about this.  Also as usual, the internet has an offensive yet funny cartoon about it. 

One common argument against eating horses is that they're like pets, and we have problems with consuming the flesh of dead pets.  My counterargument is this:  Pets are only pets in America.  In every other country on earth, dogs are equivalent to rats and are hated as such.  And when people are hungry enough, they'll eat anything.  Personally, my aversion to eating pets consists of two parts:  (1) Dogs and cats eat things like bugs, poop, and other inedible objects, and I don't like my meal being furnished by those types of things; and (2) many pets, especially smaller ones, really aren't worth the trouble of butchering because they offer so little meat.  We have two pets rabbits, and if you decided to come into my house to kill them and eat them (provided you killed me first, because I will mess you up if you touch my rabbits), you'd be sorely disappointed to find yourself with less than 5 lbs of dead animal, and after gutting and deboning, I doubt you'd even have enough meat for a single meal.  (Plus you'd have my ghost on your hands, and I would mess you up.)  Horses, on the other hand, have the benefit of being vegetarians and being gigantic, so they could easily provide a lot of meat without being gross. 

[Sidenote:  Yes, I realize pigs are omnivores too, and they regularly eat garbage and rotting food and things like that.  But the cool thing about food processing is that you can make the final product completely separate from the original animal.  This is especially true of larger animals, where you're served a chunk of meat instead of a whole body part like a leg or a wing.  And of course, there's always ground meat, which is the farthest you can get from the original product.]

Another argument against eating horses is that the slaughter process is inhumane, or something to that effect.  While that's a legitimate concern, it can't really be used in an argument unless you're a vegetarian, since pretty much all food animals are raised and killed inhumanely (except the locally-raised happy cows and chickens Wendy buys from a nearby farm).  You know what's also inhumane concerning horses?  Forcing them to run around a muddy track with a little person on their back who insists on whipping them mercilessly all so some rich people can bet on them and become richer. 

A final argument against eating horses is that some religions forbid it.  Thankfully, I subscribe to the one religion that's pretty lenient about this, Christianity, which says, "All food is clean." 

My opinion:  We should eat horses. #food