Supermarket / Russia 5

I was intrigued to see lots of familiar brands in the grocery store in Siberia.  If you need a junk food fix, you're in luck.

The local hooch is cheap -- you could get a bottle of low-end Russian vodka for $3; Stoli is only $7.50 for a half liter.  (Why is the Stoli label all in English??)

By contrast, MY local hooch, made just down the road from us, is pretty steep -- $27 for a fifth of Jim Beam, $35 for Wild Turkey.

Compared to prices in US liquor stores, that's about a 50% markup on US booze imported to Russia, but about a 300% markup on Russian booze imported to the US. We might infer that Russia feels no need to impose sin taxes on liquor; they might even like cheap booze for its role in crowd control.  Just speculating.

Buyer beware

I am a huge fan of Smartfoodwhite cheddar cheese popcorn.  No kidding, it has saved my life on more than one occasion, once being when I was on a two-stop flight home from Los Angeles, trapping me on the snack-free airplane for almost six hours.  I was late and had to rush through the airport early in the morning without breakfast, and contemplated starvation until I remembered a pack of Smartfood in the goodie bag from my convention.

Another time being when we landed hungry in Las Vegas at 4:30 pm, needing to eat before we boarded a shuttle for a two-hour trip into the boonies, and found all the restaurants outside security closed for the day.  Fortunately I had packed Smartfood in anticipation of needing snacks in the wilderness, hardly expecting that the wilderness would begin in the airport.

I could go on and on about how I love this stuff.  So when I was in the grocery and discovered that they have come up with a low-cal version, I had to try it.

Well, dear reader, do not make the same mistake. Low-cal Smartfood is Dumbfood in my book, only slightly more appetizing than styrofoam.  Nice texture, no flavor.

It's the opposite of the movies, where the white hats are the good guys. With Smartfood the white bag is the bad guy.  Save up your calories until you can afford a black bag of the real stuff.

Reading the fine print

We all know that junk food is bad for the body, but sometimes it's exactly perfect for the soul.  And while I have a pretty high resistance to most forms of junk food, there are a few on my short list.  One of which is Pringles, although I'm contemplating removing it after what I discovered at the grocery store last week.

Since Pringles introduced "reduced fat" versions several years ago I have always bought them, rationalizing that it wasn't quite so junky as regular.  And sure enough, a casual glance at the package would lead you to believe that you're saving 25% of the calories compared to the regular.  Or something like that -- since fat is an essential ingredient in junk food, you would expect that reducing it by 25% would make a big difference.

But when you flip the can and read the back, you discover that you're only saving 7% of the calories, the difference between 150 and 140 for a serving.

So what's happening?  Yes, we've saved 20 calories worth of fat, along with 4 calories worth of sugar, but they've compensated by increasing the carbohydrates (adding 8 calories) and apparently some other rejiggering that you can't decode from the nutritional label.

I don't know why I was drawn to read the label before putting the can in my shopping cart, but after I did I put the can back on the shelf.  I don't like to feel like a dupe.  And by the way, reducing the fat from 9 grams to 7 isn't 25%, it's 22%.

Whatever happened to truth in advertising?

The wilderness begins...

... in the Las Vegas airport.  We arrived at 5 pm with a bit more than two hours to kill before getting our shuttle to Utah.  We walked past some food stands near the gates, but didn't want to leave our suitcases endlessly circling on the baggage claim, so we went through security.  Thus stepping into a virtually food-free zone.

Outside of security, there was a sit-down restaurant, closed.  And a sandwich/deli counter, closed, despite the posted hours of operation.

This being a Wednesday, one might have expected at least 45 more minutes of "service."  But you have to wonder about an airport that has such variable schedules.  Does nobody go anywhere on Saturday, Tuesday, Thursday or Friday?

My husband, more desperate than I, tracked down a limp pre-wrapped sandwich at Starbuck's.  But I was undaunted.  After all, I began the vacation with three bags of junk food in my carry-on, for exactly these moments of impending starvation.

By the way, all three of my bags had popped open in flight.  Apparently pressurized cabins aren't all that pressurized.  So I didn't even have to use my teeth to open the bag.

Packing for vacation

This afternoon we're heading off into the wilderness.  Well, maybe not the total absence of civilization, but pretty close: we're off on a tour of the national parks in southern Utah and northern Arizona.

Perhaps you note that the national parks are not open at the moment, thanks to the House of Representatives.  That's true, but the tour is still on, and we will be making our way across the wilds of the Kaiparowitz Plateau, whether the parks admit us or not.  In any case, we need sustenance.

And in our case, that means a couple of bags of junk food and a big plastic bottle of scotch.

The first time we took a cargo ship across an ocean we kind of by accident had a bag of junk food, which came in very handy on the days where the menu included tripe soup and blood sausage.  The second time we took a cargo ship across another ocean we made the cabbie stop on our way to the ship to buy three bags of Cheetos.  Those came in handy too, and by careful husbandry lasted us two-thirds of the way to New Zealand.

We're not planning on as extreme isolation as the middle of the Pacific, but who knows what will await us on the plateau.  So we're taking our own booze and our own junk food.  Just in case we're stranded on the airplane (no meals any more) or on the shuttle bus between Las Vegas and St. George, Utah. Or on a trail during an illicit hike in an officially closed national park.

Maybe our efforts will be laughably unnecessary.  Maybe the meals will be gourmet quality and leave us so happily stuffed that we'll need nothing to carry us through till tomorrow.  Maybe every night our motel will be next door to a magnificent grocery and a state liquor store.  But I wouldn't put money on it.  I will put money on Smartfood White Cheddar Cheese Popcorn.

What's with these low-cal fries?

Earlier this week there was a story in the paper about how Burger King is introducing a (sort of) low-cal french fry, 270 calories for a small serving, compared to 340 calories for its regular fries.  But what leaped out at me was the explanation -- "because of a new batter that doesn't absorb as much oil."

Say what?  Batter?

I always thought the basic ingredients in french fries were potatoes and oil.  So what's with this batter?

Googling reveals that fast food fries often do use a batter to improve texture.   The batter used by Burger King is apparently a slurry of starch, giving BK fries a hard shell and more crunch.  By contrast, McDonald's doesn't use a batter; its fries are dipped in a sugar solution to give that golden-brown color.

I guess it's too much to expect that industrial strength fast food would rely solely on ordinary ingredients and cooking techniques.  I rarely set foot in a fast food restaurant, so I have no dog in this fight (I used to love McDonald's fries but haven't eaten them in years) but was interested to read about BK's marketing strategy for its new low-cal item.

First, instead of using the fancy new batter for all its fries, BK will sell low-cal and high-cal fries as separate menu items.  (Even though BK says people won't be able to tell the difference.)

Second, BK will charge about 30 cents more for the low-cal fries (except for kids' meals, where you can get low-cal for the same price).

Third, in the advertising, instead of comparing the new low-cal fries to its own high-cal fries, which would mean 20 percent fewer calories, BK is going to compare them to McDonald's fries, for 30 percent fewer calories.

Fourth, BK's idea of a "small" serving is pretty big -- 128 grams (4 1/2 ounces) compared to McDonald's, 71 grams (2 1/2 ounces).

My jaundiced view of this whole campaign is that BK wants to have its fries and eat them too -- get credit for offering "healthy" food but not actually do anything to encourage people to eat it.  In fact, they're building in lots of incentives to keep eating high-cal.

The muse is hungry

I am one of the two persons in a two-person show that opened earlier this month at a gallery.  I was responsible for the food at the opening reception and when I was setting out the table, my co-artist was mildly appalled to see that the centerpiece of the spread was Cheetos.  How pitifully downmarket.

But by the end of the evening, we'd gone through three bags of Cheetos, while the healthy hummus and salsa went relatively unscathed.  Clearly our sophisticated art-loving friends were not above some seriously junky junk food.  We resolved to serve them at every future art occasion we ever have to cater.

I was reminded of an article in a recent New York Times Magazine -- well worth reading -- that probed the addictive nature of not only junk food but other popular products of the food industry.  The industry deliberately hypes their offerings with sugar, salt and fat, even in foods that you wouldn't think needed it -- for instance, spaghetti sauce.  Prego became a blockbuster partly because it's full of sugar.

According to one of the food scientists quoted in the article, Cheetos are "one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet, in terms of pure pleasure."

I will second that opinion.  As junk food goes, Cheetos are on my short list (along with Pringles and Smartfood white cheddar cheese popcorn).  I once had to take some pills three times a day that tasted noxious, no matter how quickly I tried to get them through my mouth.  I found that the best way to remove the awful aftertaste was to eat a Cheeto, which I did after every dose (perhaps the only instance in recorded history that a consumer regularly consumed just one at a time).