Food Drink Archives - Page 27 of 36

Science Has Decoded Comfort Food

Posted on17/11/202230/11/2022Author

When you think of your favorite food, what do you picture? For me, it’s nachos. Yet even as I’m thinking about the delicious pile of toppings that can really make the platter pop, I’m also picturing cozying up with a big old plate of the things in front of my favorite movie, sharing them with friends. When I crave nachos, I’m not only craving the taste but also the warm and fuzzy emotions that have surrounded my past nacho-eating experiences. And some of the nachos have been objectively bad, with burnt cheese or too many jalapenos, but even so, the dish maintains its association with positive memories. The New York Times posits that this mental connection defines our favorite comfort foods, more so than the flavor does.

What makes a dish “comfort food”

There is some direct science behind the notion of “comfort food”: eating anything at all triggers a release of opioid-based chemicals in the brain, and carbohydrates in particular increase serotonin levels. If you identify as someone with a sweet tooth, that simply means that you have stronger brain-reward responses to sugary foods.

But it’s our association with memories that makes certain foods more comforting than others. Comfort foods are different in different cultures, The New York Times explains, because that association is with foods we were given by people who cared for us early in life. This is why foods typically associated with healing during sickness, like soup, are often seen as comfort foods. The meals that you’re drawn to during times of emotional distress as an adult were actually determined by your parents or grandparents or whoever was feeding you as a child.

There’s another sense that has a strong association with both memory and food: smell. We process smells in a part of the brain that connects directly to the part of the brain that processes emotions and handles memory, so the smell of a specific food can instantly trigger a comforting memory. If you enjoy cinnamon rolls on a particularly pleasant day with your family, for example, the smell of cinnamon rolls will quickly bring you back to that feeling.

Of course, the flip side is also true: associations between food and memory can also lead to a list of “never again” foods that are associated with bad times. It’s one of the reasons one bad experience with tequila may turn you off the stuff for life.

How brands are cashing in on nostalgia

Brands are, naturally, always hoping to capitalize on those positive mental associations. Earlier this month, Whole Foods declared “retro products” a trend to watch in 2023, and we’ve already seen some major brands hopping on board this year. McDonald’s appealed to our inner child with the return of its Happy Meal Halloween Pails, White Castle has introduced an entire menu harkening back to 1921, and social media pages like @Snack_Memories serve as a reminder of all of our favorite snacks from a bygone era.

Some brands are even setting themselves up to cash in on future nostalgia by discontinuing beloved items, like Klondike’s Choco Taco and McDonald’s McRib. Testing the waters of how people emotionally respond to a product’s demise can be a good indicator of how deep the memories of that item run. It’s those positive memories that will push people to line up for the next chance to taste it.

Rabbi serves kosher food to Jewish travelers at the World Cup

Posted on04/11/202230/11/2022Author

Rabbi Eli Chitrik’s phone buzzes. A woman is about to show up at his Doha hotel to pick up her lunch: two bagel sandwiches.

It’s one of the many calls and messages Chitrik is receiving these days for bagel sandwiches, freshly made in a designated kosher kitchen set up for Jewish World Cup fans who want to comply with Judaism’s set of dietary regulations during the tournament in Qatar.

Chitrik said the kosher kitchen has been making 100 sandwiches a day to feed fans from around the world, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, the United States, Uruguay and Israel. Recently, production has increased to more than 100 to meet demand.

On Fridays, the kitchen makes challah, special bread, usually braided, which is traditional food on the Sabbath.

“There were some people telling me that they would only be able to come because of this,” he said. “Some people (were) telling me that they thought this was going to be their first Shabbat without challah and now they could send the picture to their mother that they have challah.”

Rabbi Eli Chitrik’s bagel business has helped Jewish travelers keep kosher at the World Cup.

Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the New York-based Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, said he had been involved in discussions with Qatari officials for the past five years to help accommodate the attendance of Jewish fans at the tournament. Besides making kosher food available, he said, discussions included the attendance of Israelis at the World Cup and direct flights from Tel Aviv to Doha, despite Israel and Qatar having no diplomatic relations.

“It’s a very important step from an interreligious point of view … from a Qatar-Israel point of view,” he said. “There are so many levels here.”

Qatari officials, with their history of public support for Palestinians, have insisted on the temporary opening to Israelis was purely to comply with FIFA hosting requirements — not a step to normalizing ties as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates did in 2020. Qatar, which often serves as a mediator between Israel and the Hamas militant group in Gaza, has warned that a spike in violence in the occupied West Bank or Gaza Strip would derail the arrangement. Despite a surge in deadly fighting in the West Bank in recent days, however, it has taken no action.

Having ties with Israel is a contentious topic, unpopular among many Arabs, due to factors such as Israel’s 55-year West Bank occupation and a lack of a resolution to the Palestinian issue. Israeli social media has been filled with videos showing Israeli TV reporters receiving hostile receptions from Arab soccer fans in Qatar.

The Qatari World Cup organizing committee did not respond to emailed questions about the kosher kitchen.

Early each morning, Chitrik heads to the kitchen. There, he supervises the sandwich-making process — from opening the ovens himself to inspecting ingredients for compliance with kosher standards. Sundried tomatoes in jars, for example, were excluded for containing non-kosher ingredients; tomatoes are dried in the kitchen’s oven instead.

“I know every little thing that happens in that kitchen, so that way I can tell you 100%, no question, this is a kosher sandwich,” he says.

Visitors typically make arrangements to pick up their kosher food from Chitrik. He keeps the bagel sandwiches stored in special cases in his hotel room, with labels declaring the food kosher.

Tirtsa Giller, who is visiting from Israel for World Cup-related work, came to the hotel on Sunday to pick up her lunch.

Flying into Doha, she had stuffed her luggage with dishes, a frying pan, cutlery, tuna cans and snacks to keep kosher. Working long hours and not wanting to rely on just snacks, she said she was excited when friends in Dubai told her about the new kosher offerings in Doha.

“Everyone was searching for this information, if there is kosher food,” she said. “We were afraid that it’s banned because there were rumors. I’m happy to find out it’s not.”

When he’s not in the kitchen or handing out sandwiches at his hotel, Chitrik, who was born in Israel but raised in Turkey, said he had been going out on the streets of Doha in his religious garb, including a black hat and tzitzit, a fringed garments ritual.

“I want to show that anywhere you are in the world, you can live openly as a Jew the same way, hopefully, you can live

More Minnesotans visiting food shelves in 2022 than in previous years

Posted on31/10/202230/11/2022Author

More Minnesotans have visited food shelves this year than any other year on record, continuing an unprecedented surge in demand for food assistance that began with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Minnesota’s nearly 400 food shelves are on pace to record 5.1 million visits in 2022, according to preliminary data — the highest number in the state’s history and far surpassing the record 3.8 million visits in 2020 when the pandemic first hit, spurring furloughs and layoffs. From Bemidji to Burnsville, food shelves are seeing a jump in the number of people in need, especially older adults and families seeking help for the first time.

“We’ve got more people than ever coming through,” said Michelle Ness, executive director of PRISM, a Golden Valley nonprofit that’s serving more than double the number of people it did in 2019 and more than in the past two years. “This isn’t sustainable. We’re the safety net to the safety net.”

A steady stream of clients navigated snowy roads Tuesday to pick up toilet paper, apples, bread and other essential items from PRISM’s food shelf. There was a single mother who didn’t have child care and depended on free food to feed her two children. The Russian couple that moved to Minnesota two months ago and are eager to find work while navigating a new language. The 71-year-old retired airline mechanic who cares for his ailing brother.

“A lot of people out there, they do need this,” said Zandra Ankle, a 64-year-old retiree who picked up cereal and other items Tuesday to supplement her increasingly expensive trips to the grocery store. “When hard times come, people help each other.”

As of October, the state’s food shelves recorded 4.6 million visits — a million more visits than in all of last year, according to Hunger Solutions Minnesota, a St. Paul nonprofit that operates a helpline and tracks data.

While the state has historically low unemployment rates, more Minnesotans are living paycheck to paycheck, stifled by rising rents and soaring food prices. Wages, especially for low-income jobs, aren’t keeping pace. COVID emergency relief, from federal stimulus checks to the expanded child tax credit, buoyed families’ finances in 2021 — but once that ended, lines began to form again at many food shelves.

“It’s easy for middle class people to feel like, ‘Hey, we bounced back’ … but for those who were really struggling to start with, this has only made it worse,” Ness said.

Food stamps up

More Minnesotans are also receiving food stamps this year. Nearly 450,000 people were enrolled in the federally-funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in October, nearly 20,000 more than a year ago. While that’s lower than the post-Great Recession record of 538,000 in 2013, it’s 70,000 more people on food stamps than in 2019.

“Those numbers are really high,” said Tikki Brown, assistant commissioner of children and family services at the Minnesota Department of Human Services. “Traditionally, when folks think about their budget, they’ll pay for their electricity, they’ll pay for rent, and food tends to be the last.”

Brown said a small part of the increase in food stamps was due to the state’s expansion of income limits earlier this year. Under the new limit, a family of three with an annual income of up to about $46,000 before taxes is eligible. During the pandemic, the state also made it easier to apply for food stamps online at mnbenefits.mn.gov.

Still, a large portion of the new Minnesotans using food stamps are lower-income residents, who usually take longer to stabilize financially after a crisis, Brown said.

During the Great Recession of 2007-09, the number of Minnesotans visiting food shelves doubled and never returned to pre-recession levels. Nonprofit leaders now expect the elevated need to continue into 2023 or beyond, straining organizations divvying out more food for a third consecutive year — and all while facing increased food costs and declining donations.

“Everybody is feeling the pressure to do everything we can to get the food out there, but it’s not as accessible as it once was,” said Colleen Moriarty, executive director of Hunger Solutions. “We’ve got to pitch in and find food for people in a way we haven’t done before.”

During the last legislative session, Hunger Solutions pushed for $8 million for food shelves, food banks and meal programs, and $15 million for capital investments such as expanding food shelves. Neither proposal passed.

While the food is free for its customers, PRISM must buy most of it. Grocery stores are scaling back donated food, Ness said, forcing PRISM to spend more and purchase about 60% of its produce, baby diapers and other items this year. With less money coming in from donors than in the past two years, the organization will end the year in the red.

“If we weren’t purchasing food,