Food Archives - Page 27 of 36 - nalrestaurant.com

Israel’s vegan revolutionary now spreading the word on plant-based food in New York

Posted on19/11/202230/11/2022AuthorAuthor

At the forefront of the vegan revolution in Israel, Omri Paz, the founder of Vegan Friendly, has now set his sights on bringing his model to the United States market.

Vegan Friendly, a self-sustaining nonprofit founded in 2012 to promote veganism and animal rights and improve access to plant-based food, is planning to expand its activities to the US after launching in the United Kingdom about two and a half years ago.

“What makes us unique is that we have created a huge ecosystem that gives businesses and restaurants benefits, much more than just the labeling or certification of being vegan friendly,” Paz told The Times of Israel. “With us, they can participate in our events, and we can connect them to thousands of our members through exposure on social media, our app and the website.”

In Israel, which hosts the world’s highest per capita vegan population, 1,800 businesses including restaurants and hotels are certified with the pink and green Vegan Friendly heart sticker. Over 500 food manufacturers such as Unilever, Nestle, and Strauss use the Vegan Friendly seal to label over 10,000 plant-based products certifying that they meet strict criteria.

Additionally, Vegan Friendly has built a community of over 6,000 people in Israel who donate a monthly sum toward the organization’s attempts to raise awareness and encourage veganism or vegetarianism, Paz said. Together with the Tel Aviv Municipality, Vegan Friendly this year hosted a three-day Vegan Fest touted as the world’s largest vegan event, with cooking classes, food stands, food-tech and health stalls.

“From the businesses who sign up with us we get discounts or products to try out, which our members can enjoy at hundreds of businesses and restaurants across the country,” said Paz. “Our model gives businesses and restaurants a lot of value for certifying and that helps us to promote veganism and make it more accessible.”

With the use of big campaigns involving billboards, YouTube lectures and prime time TV ads, Vegan Friendly seeks to create a dietary change.

Omri Paz, founder of Vegan Friendly. (Courtesy/Vegan Friendly)

“We applied our model to the UK two and a half years ago and today we have a team of almost 10 people with about 200,000 followers on social media, 1,200 businesses or branches certified as being vegan friendly, and over 3,000 products labeled as vegan friendly ,” said Paz.

“I don’t think there’s any big organization in the US that is going to focus on dietary change, which is important to us,” he noted.

Vegetarians make up about 5% of the US population. For the US launch, Vegan Friendly went through 50,000 restaurants and businesses and selected about 15,000 that met the criteria to be certified as vegan friendly. Initially, the nonprofit will focus on restaurants located in New York City.

“At the first stage we aim to launch a community through social media, on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, and to get users on our app and the website before we plan to approach restaurants and ask them to be certified as vegan -friendly by adding options to their menu,” said Paz. “We already have 20 businesses that signed with us to become vegan friendly certified businesses.”

Paz disclosed that the first restaurant that received its vegan friendly certification in the US is The Gray Dog, a neighborhood restaurant with five branches spread across Manhattan.

“Two years from now we aim to have about half a million followers and about 5,000 businesses that sign up with us either for the restaurant certification or product certification,” said Paz.

Looking ahead, Vegan Friendly seeks by 2029 to grow to a team of about 160 people generating revenue of $60 million and being completely self-sustainable, according to Paz.

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