AmericanStomach.com

Food Aesthetics

Can food be a work of art? Have been looking into the question, and found the following from Marienne L. Quinet:

It seems to me that knowledge of the nutritive aspects of a certain food product might very well be relevant to our aesthetic appreciation of it. For this reason it might very well enter into our recognition of it as a genuine work of art.

We've know all along it's not enough to be a beautiful tomato. You must have some nutritional value!

Purged in Paramus . . . and Elsewhere

Lizzie reported that the kimchi did the trick. And speaking of purges, how about this nugget of wisdom from Professor Walter Trösch of the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology in Stuttgart: "Water is one of our most valuable resources," opined Professor Trösch, "and far too precious to waste on transporting fecal matter." While Germans consume an average of 130 liters of clean water each day, they drink only three. A third of the total amount goes right down the toilet. For the full report, see one of American Stomach's favorite websites, WaterOnline.

Purification in Paramus

Lizzie headed out the door this morning to the King Sauna in New Jersey, where she will sweat it out and purify herself with a dose of herbal kimchi for lunch. She will report to AmericanStomach tomorrow.

Decaffeination Globalized

The American Stomach demands caffeine for its soda -- and the trimethylxanthine from your decaffeinated coffee may be the source. Here's the lowdown on decaffeination and the world's biggest marketer of the white energy powder that makes Coca Cola what it is today.

The Order of Food

Here's the great philosopher, D. W. Prall, on taste:

Cooks and perfumers are in their way refined and sensitive artists, as tea-tasters and wine-tasters are expert critical judges. But such art and such criticism have no intelligible, or at least so far discovered, structural or critical principles, simply because the elements they work with have neither intelligible nor apparently any discoverable order in variation.

Is my scrambled egg not intelligible?

Hot Dog Nation

The greatest compendium yet of the dog, brought to the attention of foodies worldwide by ethnic food expert Cara De Silva. Click here.

Construction of the Eating-Self

Time to sign up for the American Comparative Literature Association's  annual meeting in Long Beach, California. Conference theme: "Arrivals and Departures." And so the call has gone out for papers on such topics as the "construction of a sense of the eating-self on the road," and "culinary epiphanies." See you at the bar . . .

What Other Reasons Could There Be?

In the aftermath of the collapse of Topps Meat, Christopher Drew and Andrew Martin reported in today's New York Times that ". . . the amount of harmful E. coli in beef may be increasing as part of a natural cycle or for other reasons outside the control of the meat industry." Perhaps there is nothing anyone can do. Or . . . perhaps a simple change in diet would do the trick?

Calling All Locavores

If you happen to live on the east coast, what would be the most environmentally sustainable food choice for home fries: Idaho or Maine potatoes? The debate over "food miles" has boiled over into this latest report from Reuters.

How Would You Spend Five Million?

The National Science Foundation used the dough to sequence the tomato genome -- and they still haven't finished the project. A prize to the first reader who can post the current dollar amount for asparagus genomics. Hint: You may want to start right here . . .