Celiac Disease Apps & Wheat-Free Resources for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry

Whether your smartphone of choice is an iPhone, BlackBerry or Android, several gluten-free mobile software applications can help streamline your quest for wheat-free foods. With comprehensive features that include UPC scanning, personalized dietary profiles and diet-safe substitutions, these mobile apps let you ditch bulky shopping guides altogether. From cookbooks for gluten-free home chefs to interactive restaurant databases for those who prefer to dine out, these apps will help you maintain your gluten-free lifestyle in the digital era.

iCanEat OnTheGo Gluten & Allergen Free ($2.99, iTunes)

The iCanEat iPhone app pulls together menus from 20 restaurant chains that address wheat allergies, including McDonald’s, Chipotle, Subway, Wendy’s, KFC, Corner Bakery and Sonic. Five of these restaurants — Wendy’s, Chick-fil-A, Carl’s Jr, Arby’s and Burger King — have separate gluten-free menus. Users can drill down the 2,100 menu items using a combination of nine allergens: wheat, soy, shellfish, milk, gluten, fish, peanuts, eggs and tree nuts.

Best For: Those who frequently dine at casual restaurants

Is That Gluten Free? ($7.99, iTunes)

At just under $8, Is That Gluten Free is the priciest iPhone app on our list, but it’s easily the most comprehensive. It contains over 23,000 gluten-free products from over 510 brands; each item is verified by the manufacturer to be gluten-free. Users can rate or add notes to products and add their own brands, categories and items, according to the app’s product page. Items include cross-contamination information directly from the manufacturer, and every entry has the manufacturer’s website and phone links. Developer Midlife Crisis Apps has a second version of the app for dining out ($3.99, iTunes) with 1,700 gluten-free menu items from 36 restaurant chains.

Best For: Those who want to ditch printed shopping guides

Gluten Free Registry ($1.99, iTunes)

If dining at casual restaurants isn’t your thing, Gluten Free Registry is an online location-aware database of businesses with gluten-free menu options. Its collection includes caterers, coffee shops, grocers and bakeries; each item links to a Google Maps entry and has comments and ratings from gluten-free customers. Like the two previous apps, Gluten Free Registry doesn’t need Internet connectivity to load. Links to each business’ website and phone number make it simple to verify store hours and menu item availability.

Best For: Those who want to discover gluten-free establishments in their neighborhood

Cook IT Allergy Free ($4.99, iTunes)

Cook IT Allergy Free is an attractive cookbook app that features over 200 gluten-free recipes for home cooks. Users can modify each recipe to suit additional dietary restrictions; the app will swap out safe substitutions on the fly. The “Recipe Box” function lets users save recipes for offline use and even add customized notes for next time. The app also includes a “Grocery List” function that simplifies shopping for recipes, organizing ingredients by aisle or by recipe with a checklist.

Best For: Home cooks who must juggle a host of food aversions and allergens

GlutenScan ($1.99 plus subscription after 30 days, iTunes)

GlutenScan is a constantly updated database of over 30,000 products from 10,000 manufacturers; it adds over 500 new or updated products each week. Users can enter a product’s UPC or product name to instantly view its ingredients; the app also suggests gluten-free alternatives for scanned products that contain gluten. GlutenScan does require Internet connectivity, so you’ll need 3G service or Wi-Fi access to use it. The experts on the app’s medical advisory and research team have 40 years of combined experience in celiac disease and the gluten-free diet.

Best For: Individuals who want to save time reading labels and avoid the risk of hidden gluten

Gluten Free Ultimate Solution ($3.99, AndroidPIT)

Gluten Free Ultimate Solution for Android phones combines a gluten-free restaurant locator and an interactive, searchable cookbook with wheat-free recipes and alternatives. The app ties in with the G-Free Foodie website and YouTube channel for a complete online resource for those with celiac disease or who live a gluten-free lifestyle. Gluten Free Ultimate Solution uses GPS and search to drill down restaurants near the user’s location; its recipes feature video and photos to make cooking wheat-free meals more convenient.

Best For: Android users who want an all-in-one gluten-free solution

ScanAvert ($1.99 for one-month subscription, AndroidPIT, iTunes)

ScanAvert asks users to create a dietary profile; from there, they can scan a product’s UPC with the smartphone’s camera to instantly discover whether that product is compatible with their diet. If a scanned item has been recalled, ScanAvert immediately displays that information. The app supports several targeted diets besides celiac disease, with options for those who have diabetes, pregnant women, individuals who keep kosher, those who are taking specific prescription drugs and those who wish to lose weight.

Best For: Individuals who live in households with multiple allergies and food aversions

Gluten Free ($3.99, BlackBerry App World)

We haven’t left BlackBerry users out of this roundup; Gluten Free lets users search a constantly updated food database to create and save a customized shopping list. Users can then share this saved list with friends or family members — a helpful feature when the app owner isn’t doing the food shopping. Users can also search the app’s database to find gluten-free items by category, brand or grocery store.

Best For: On-the-go BlackBerry users who want a comprehensive, shareable and customizable gluten-free food search

(By Marissa Brassfield for CalorieLab)

8 Gluten-Free Mobile Software Applications is a post from: CalorieLab

Hold the Pickle… and the Syrup

The first question one might ask about the Bruxie Burger is just why Bruxie, being a celebrated waffle house, even offers a hamburger? Well for one thing, Bruxie bills itself as a “Gourmet Waffle House,” which means it can get away with all kinds of culinary weirdness, and for another, it’s located in Orange County, where weirdness is pretty much at home to begin with.

In any case, this month’s winner of our Worst Burger honors goes to Bruxie’s version: beef patty, cheese, tomato slices, lettuce and pickle… inside a folded waffle. It’s what you might get if a taco truck crashed into an IHOP, and is apparently designed for persons who feel that the simple hamburger bun just doesn’t deliver enough calories.

You Want Arteriosclerosis With That?

(CC) WALLYG/FLICKR

Meanwhile, The Daily Beast recently set out to discover and identify the worst french fries in the land of the free, using four categories of badness: calories, carbs, saturated fat and sodium. Somewhat surprisingly, the major fast food chains were conspicuously absent from the worst offenders list; McDonald’s didn’t even make the Top (worst) 30. Here are some monstrous misuses of potatoes that did.

Any one of them would go perfectly with a waffle burger, but especially Friendly’s Waffle Fries. Better alert your cardiologist beforehand, though.

Coals to Newcastle? More Like Coals to a Burning Coal Mine.

Leave it to the most brazenly-named and -themed burger joint in America to come up with the most brazenly unhealthy promotional gimmick: diners who weigh more than 350 pounds eat free. Then again, in a perverse way it’s a fitting angle for an enterprise called the Heart Attack Grill, which for unknown reasons seems to be trying to thin out its own customer base through cardiovascular disease.

Ironically, even astonishingly, the owner of this joint used to run a chain of Jenny Craig franchises in Oklahoma. Perhaps he finally just decided that if he couldn’t eliminate the obese that way, he’d try a craftier method. Or perhaps he now owns a chain of mortuaries.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

Worst Hamburger, Worst Fries, Worst Marketing Ploy is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News

C’mon McD’s: You Can Do It!

According to a law passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, fast food restaurants in San Francisco have one year to improve the nutritional quality of their kids’ meals if they want to continue to lure the younger set in with cute and collectable toys. Although vetoed by the city’s mayor, the veto will probably be vetoed unless one of the eight supervisors who voted to pass the bill changes his mind, and the new law will take effect December 2011. (Update: The Board of Supervisors overrode the veto on November 24.)

We think that’s plenty of time for restaurants to come up with some new ideas for cutting some of the fat, salt and sugar from their family fare. In fact, in just one week, we created a few of our own healthier fast-food meals, and we offer our ideas up to McDonald’s and any other fast-food restaurant that wants to use them as a basis for meals that will allow San Francisco’s children to continue to pick up a coveted prize when they go out to eat, and all children to enjoy fast food that won’t compromise their health.

Lose the Fryers and Soda, Cut the Salt

For guidance, we turned to Susan McQuillan, a New York City food writer, dietitian and mom, who is the author of Sesame Street’s C is for Cooking and who currently writes the health pages for Parent & Child magazine. She says it’s just not that difficult to come up with healthier fast food that’s still fun for children to eat.

“Get rid of the fryers and soda machines,” Susan says. “And watch your portion sizes when it comes to higher calorie foods and ingredients.” Replacing high-sodium condiments such as ketchup, tartar sauce, salsa, dressings and dips, with lower-sodium varieties will greatly improve the salt situation, she adds, because that’s where a lot of the excess sodium in fast foods is coming from.

The biggest challenge is complying with the 200-calorie limit for individual items. It’s easy enough when you’re talking about fresh fruit and vegetables, or a handful of baked fries, but how do you make a 200-calorie cheeseburger? “That’s a tough assignment,” Susan says. “But it’s possible.” She created a turkey burger but says fast food restaurants could offer a choice of beef or turkey burgers if they grind only lean cuts of meat and keep their patties down to 2 cooked ounces.

Breading Alternatives

To keep her fast food fun, Susan coated chicken nuggets with crushed, salt-free pretzels crumbs and her fish fingers with crushed, lightly salted baked potato chips, which she “glued” to the meat with an egg white and yogurt mixture that adds no significant amount or calories or any fat at all. That way, the nuggets and fingers can be baked, and the coating is nice and crisp, without the benefit of frying.

Kids love dipping, but Susan says fruit can stand alone; save the dips for the veggies and make them with a yogurt base and low-salt or no-salt seasoning. And fries? Why not? Just stop frying them! A small order of lightly salted baked fries with low-sodium ketchup will satisfy a child and fill the nutritional bill.

Susan’s basic menus for healthier versions of fast-food meals won’t break any laws in San Francisco, or anywhere else for that matter, should other towns and cities follow suit. In fact the calorie counts, fat content and salt levels are so low, you could sneak in a little more of each and still escape the nutrition police! C’mon McD’s, you can do it!

The 3 Happy Meals: Cheeseburger, Fish ‘n Chips, Chicken Nugget

Cheeseburger Meal

• Turkey Burger in Pita Half with Lettuce, Tomato and Cheddar Cheese
• Steamed Broccoli with Yogurt Dip
• Baked “Fries”
• Sliced Apples
• Milk (1%), Apple Juice or Water
• 474 calories, 11 g fat, 454 mg sodium

Fish ‘n Chips Meal

• Turbot Fingers Coated in Crushed Potato Chips
• Steamed Green Beans with Salsa Dip
• Baked “Fries”
• Sliced Mango
• Apple Juice, Milk (1%) or Water
• 469 calories, 10 g fat, 432 mg sodium

Chicken Nugget Meal

• Pretzel-Coated Chicken Nuggets
• Carrot and Sweet Peppers with Yogurt Dip
• Baked “Fries”
• Pineapple Cubes
• Milk (1%), Juice or Water
• 473 calories, 15 g fat, 396 mg sodium

Beverages

Drink up, but stick to lowfat milk, 100% juice or water. Kids need to know that sugary soft drinks are not an option if they want to take home a prize.

We Made 3 Kid-Captivating Meals That Pass the San Francisco ‘Happy Meals Ban Law’ is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News

If You’re Big, Stand Tall

It takes a certain amount of effort to maintain good, upright posture. Indeed, just by doing so, you can burn as many as 350 extra calories per day.

Walk the Walk

Is walking really that beneficial an exercise? Well, you use fully 100 bodily muscles every time you take a step, so it’s clearly having a positive effect. The question then becomes, how much walking do you need to do, and are you walking enough? The answer obviously varies somewhat depending on one’s physical condition and age and so forth.

But if you’ve been wondering about that question yourself, the American College of Sports Medicine has come up with four categories of activity-level broken down by the number of steps taken daily. As follows:

• 10,000 steps or more: Active.
• 7,500 – 9,000 steps: Somewhat active.
• 5,000 – 7,490 steps: Low active.
• Under 5,000 steps: Sedentary.

The average American logs in 5,117 steps per day. If you fall below that number, there’s simply no avoiding the wince-inducing play on words: for the sake of your health, you’ll have to take steps.

We’re Pretty Sure there’s Chicken in there Somewhere

(CC) NICOLESUSANNE/FLICKR

There are no less than 35 ingredients in Burger King’s Chicken Fries, 30 ingredients in Wendy’s Chicken Nuggets, and 29 ingredients in McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets (7 in the “chicken meat” part alone).

Calories In, Waistline Out

Why is America experiencing a national wave of overweight and obesity? Here’s a hint: If you take in more calories than you burn up, you add weight in the form of fat. Of course, health and nutrition experts note that it’s not that simple, there are numerous social and environmental factors and work, etc.

But underlying all this is one very simple and compelling statistic, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey: In 1971, American men consumed 2,450 calories a day, and women consumed 1,542. In 2000, the numbers were 2,618 for men and 1,877 for women. The dots almost connect themselves.

Sources:
Posture — Uncle John’s Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader, 2009 edition, page 414.
Walking — “How many daily steps…,” Snapshots, USA Today, 11/10/10, p. 1A.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

Random Numbers: Standing and Walking, Fast-Food Chicken Unmasked, Our National Calorie Count is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News

I recently posted here in defense of a San Francisco law requiring fast-food and other restaurants that offer toys along with certain children’s meals to limit the calories, fats and sugar content of the toy meals. This produced a number of comments taking issue with my position. I would like to respond to a few of the points the commenters made.

Today, I’d like to reply to this observation made by Kevin D.:
“I believe you are… misrepresenting the nutritional value of the Happy Meal. For example, the Chicken Nugget Happy Meal with Apple Dippers and 1% milk represents less than 1/3 of the USDA recommended fat, sodium, and calories. If you choose fruit juice, you can lower the total even further, with 380 calories and 12 g of fat (only 2.5 of which is saturated).”

He’s quite right in this regard. You can order the Happy Meal with apple slices instead of fries and juice instead of a soft drink. Moreover, most of the fast-food chains offer some form of “healthy” version of their standard kid’s meal. But there are two problems with this.

(CC) DESIGNFACTS/FLICKR

First, the actual number of those healthy options is almost vanishingly small. Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity analyzed the nutritional information for kids’ meals provided at eight major chains: McDonald’s, Wendy’s Taco Bell, KFC, Burger King, Dairy Queen and Subway. Out of a grand total of over 3,000 childrens’ meal combinations, they found exactly 15 that met the accepted nutrition standards for elementary school kids. There were 20 more that met the kids’ calorie limit, but exceeded other limits such as on fats and sodium. And while some offered as few as 300 calories, there were plenty that topped out at 1,000 or so. In short, a minuscule 0.7 percent of all possible kids’ meals studied qualify as “healthy.”

The second problem is that you, the parent, have to know which chains offer the healthy options, and what those options are, and make a point of asking for them. At every chain but Subway, if you fail to specify otherwise, you’ll be given their default combo, which is in most cases is the entree (usually a burger or breaded chicken) plus fries and a sugary soda.

Since 84 percent of parents surveyed say they take their kids to a fast-food place at least once a week, the numbers mount up impressively. One Yale researcher estimated that if the healthier kid’s meal options were made the default choices, America’s youth would consume literally billions of fewer calories per year.

Source: “Choosing meals is not child’s play,” Nanci Hellmich, USA Today, 11/8/10, p. 6D.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

Fast-Food Children’s Meals: Odds of Getting a Healthy One are Roughly 150 – 1 is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News

Using Lures to Tempt Kids into Making Bad Choices? Isn’t that what Pederasts do?

As you’ve probably heard, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has just passed a new ordinance, effective December 1, which restricts the ability of fast-food and other restaurants to offer free toys with children’s meals. Under the new rule, toys can only be given away with kids’ meals that (1) contain less than 600 calories or 35 percent of their calories from fat, (2) include fruits and vegetables, and (3) come with drinks that are low or moderate in fat and sugar content.

San Francisco isn’t the first locality to do something like this — Santa Clara County, just south of the city, passed a similar law earlier this year — but it is the first major American city to do so, and it is San Francisco, after all, and inevitably this is being ridiculed in some quarters as nanny statism and/or liberal interference with the free market run amok.

Unsurprisingly, it has been strongly criticized by the National Restaurant Association and McDonald’s, which introduced the free toy ploy with its Happy Meals in 1979.

As it happens, I live just a half hour across the Bay from San Francisco, and as it also happens, I wholeheartedly support the new restrictions, and below are a few of the reasons why I rise to defend it.

• Nobody’s “consumer rights” or “freedom of choice” have been impinged. Parents can still buy fat- and sugar-heavy meals, there simply won’t be a toy included. And they can still get the toys, simply by buying one of the healthy meals, which can then be eaten or thrown away, as they wish.
• What we have with the free-toy reward is an enticement, pure and simple, and moreover an enticement to do something that is not in one’s own best interest. The basic psychology is the same as the abuser who uses candy to get the child into the car. I know, this sounds like a wildly hyperbolic comparison, it’s just a damn hamburger, right? Wrong. In the case of the Happy Meal, it’s a hamburger or chicken McNuggets, fries, and a soda or low-fat chocolate milk or juice, totaling 580 calories and fully 26 grams of fat; roughly half the entire recommended daily calorie load for 4-5-year-olds and 40 percent of that for 9-year-olds. And it’s not just one meal, but millions upon millions of such meals, at a time when some 37 percent of Americans ages 2 to 19 are overweight or obese. They virtually guarantee soaring increases in our national diabetes and heart disease rates down the road.
• The problem with the free toy concept is that it works: it effectively lures the kids and their parents to choose the accompanying meals over other options. How effective? Well, fast-food chains spent over one-half-billion dollars on toys and ads to promote kids’ meals in 2006 alone, the latest year we have data for. You don’t spend that kind of money on something unless it’s moving the product like hotcakes.
• In essence, all the S.F. ordinance is doing is saying that if you have a gimmick that has been shown to effectively channel kids toward certain menu items, you can only use that gimmick to promote items that are beneficial, not detrimental, to the kids’ health.
• And don’t dismiss this as just another “only in lefty-loony San Fransicso” news item. A lot of localities have enacted or are considering similar restraints on the sale or marketing of trans-fatty foods, sugar-laden beverages and other nutrition-challenged restaurant offerings.

(CC) pyxopotamus/FLICKR

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has threatened McDonald’s with legal action over the Happy Meal toys used as a lure for minor children, and don’t be surprised if they file a suit before the month is out.

It’s really just this simple: McDonald’s and other fast-food chains are bribing children to choose food items that are at best insufficiently nutritious and at worst downright unhealthy for them. That may not qualify as child abuse, but it’s definitely child manipulation and exploitation. I applaud almost any measure taken to rein it in.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

In Defense of San Francisco’s “Happy Meals” Law is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News

Carry Cash, Cut Calories

One of the cardinal rules of smart and healthy eating is “Never go grocery shopping when you’re hungry,” the premise being that when you’re hungry, all manner of unwise food choices become overwhelmingly tempting, leading to impulse purchases guaranteed to cause dietary regret. Well, there now appears to be a corollary rule to that truism. It’s this: “Never go grocery shopping with your credit cards.”

A team of researchers from Cornell and the State University of New York have dissected the purchasing patterns of 1,000 households and found that those who buy with plastic are much more impulse-prone than those who pay cash. In the realm of food purchases, this means the former buy more fattening junk food and the latter more fitness-friendly fare.

(CC) SSHB/FLICKR

The researchers theorize that paying in cash causes us more emotional angst than using a credit or debit card, and that this anxiety acts as a strong buffer against impulsive urges. In layman’s terms, having to fork over actual folding money seems to trigger the mental question, “Do I really need this. Is it really worth the price?”

As to how this theory applies to our dining habits in general, the authors of the study note that we Americans make around 40 percent of our purchases with credit/debit cards, and that about 34 percent of us are obese. Whether they’re on to something or not, one thing is certain: If you only have cash when making food purchases, at least there is a limit to how much you can buy.

Just Say Nyet

Leave it to a foreigner to nail in short, concise terms the fundamental problem confronting the typical American weight-watcher. In this case, that would be Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who on a recent visit here in the company of Vice President Biden, tucked into a cheeseburger at Ray’s Hell Burger in Arlington, Virginia, and observed, “Not quite healthy…but it’s very tasty.”

The American Dilemma, obesity division, in a nutshell.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

The Credit Card Curse, and from Russia with Perceptiveness is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News

Fat is Fine…able

Providing people with products that contain excess fats or that lead to excess fatness can’t get you arrested just yet, but there are hints of a trend in that direction. Several U.S. city councils have discussed the possibility of placing legal restrictions on the amount and kind of fats that dining establishments can serve up, and at least one city, Baltimore, is serious about it, having enacted a legal limit of 0.5 grams of trans fat per food item.

So far they’ve sent warnings to over 100 local restaurants, and just slapped a $100 fine on one eatery for racking up more than one violation. Given that some studies suggest trans fats may cause up to 30,000 premature deaths, our hat is off to Baltimore. But what really caught our attention was the name of the cited restaurant: Healthy Choice.

Actually, the Healthy Choice owners got off easy. Instead of Baltimore, they might have been located in Sao Paulo, Brazil. That’s where a former McDonald’s franchise manager sued the company, claiming that the requirement that he sample the fare each day to ensure quality, and the provision of free meals to employees, caused him to put on 65 unhealthy pounds over 12 years. The court bought the argument and ordered Mickey D’s to pony up a $17,500 settlement. We trust that the plaintiff will apply some of the funds to exercise equipment.

Putting the Din in Dinner

Weight Loss Tip # 7,449: Play CDs of bagpipe bands very loudly whenever you’re eating. Or hire someone to scrape their fingernails on a blackboard during your meals. Or eat your takeout lunches at the nearest auto body shop. Or set off a car alarm just before tucking into breakfast.

Why? Because research at the University of Manchester has determined that diners find food to be less flavorful when accompanied by loud noise, and their overall satisfaction with the food is aligned with whether the sounds they’re hearing strike them as pleasant or not. Based on that, just imagine the pounds you could shed simply by taking every meal while listening to the recorded speeches of either Nancy Pelosi or Sarah Palin, depending on your political persuasion.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

Busted For Dealing Trans Fats, and the Noise Pollution Diet is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News

Contributor: “Dr. J”
Dr. J offers his irreverent, slightly irrelevant, but possibly useful opinions on health and fitness. A Florida surgeon and fitness freak with a black belt in karate, he runs 50 miles a week and flies a Cherokee Arrow 200.

I think most of us would guess that pizza is America’s favorite food. Although not every pizza has a nutritional profile of 5,210 calories and 286g fat like this one, many of them are still extremely high in calories, sodium and fat. And eating one too often with, in my opinion, unhealthy toppings can have you topping off your scale at weigh-in time. I may be unusual, but I am very selective in how I order a pizza, and I look at it as an occasional treat, not an every-few-days event. Because of this I can, so to speak, have my pizza and eat it too!

How I do it:
When I get a pizza, I make certain requests of the chef di pizzeria that you can also apply whenever the pizza urge hits. That way you can still enjoy your meal, yet not derail your fitness efforts. Will this be a Chicago-style deep-dish cheese bomb? No, but it will also not be a cardboard Franken-pizza either!

1) Ask them to make it vegan:
If your favorite pizzeria knows how to make a vegan pizza, you are all set. Most of the requests I make are already taken care of if the pizza is vegan. This means no animal products such as meats, butter, or cheese.

2) Adjust the cheese:
Whenever I’ve traveled in Europe, where I believe pizza originated, it is very common to have no cheese pizzas. If you feel you cannot go without cheese, ask them to put much less on. You can probably trade out the cheese for a different ingredient also.

3) Minimize the meats:
Almost every meat product that is on a pizza is, well, bad for you! They are almost always high in saturated fats and salt. You can see if they have a non-meat product like tofu, seitan, or tempeh for additional protein if you want, just be aware that these products can be high in fat and salt also.

4) Make specific requests in regards to fat and salt.
It doesn’t hurt to ask about added fats and salt it you are concerned about these. When I asked them not to add salt to the pizza in the video, I was told that none of their pizzas have added salt.

5) Maximize the veggies:
Good, healthy toppings are what pizza is all about, so ask for anything and everything that you like. The shop in the video offered white and shiitake mushrooms, red and white onions, roasted red peppers, green peppers, banana peppers, artichoke hearts, pineapple, carrots, spinach, zucchini, broccoli, jalapenos, tomatoes, green and black olives, and I’m sure you can find others at your favorite local pizza kitchen.

A visit to Satchels:
I made a video of a recent trip to a local pizzeria, Satchel’s Pizza.

The 18 inch large pizza was made half vegan and half their regular way. The ingredients were:

• Mushrooms, white and shiitake
• Onions: red and white
• Roasted red peppers

If you look at the pizza in the video, and think of it as a clock with 12 o’clock at the top, the left side is the regular pizza, and the right side is vegan.

Buon appetito!

Making Pizza Healthier: Ordering Vegan and Video is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News

Maybe They Should Call It the Loon Star State

As noted in yesterday’s post, every September seems to produce an unusual outpouring of questionable new food ideas, the most extreme of which are presented at the Texas State Fair, which each year holds a contest to see who can come up with the most over-the-top deep-fried food concept.

Last year’s finalists, for example, ranged from the elaborately exotic — Deep-fried Sweet Jalapeno Corn Dog Shrimp — to the simply mind-boggling — Deep-fried Butter, which was the winner. Other frankly insane achievements in fried fair stuff over the years have included Fried Peanut Butter, Jelly and Banana Sandwich, Deep-Fried Peaches & Cream, and Fried Banana Split.

Among the finalists this year were Fried Beer (beer inside a battered and fried pretzel), Fried Club Salad (spinach wrap filled with sandwich stuff, deep-fried and served on a stick), Fried Lemonade (actually a lemon-flavored pastry) and Deep Fried S’mores Pop-Tart (you’re better off not even knowing).

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up. But I Tried Anyway.

One might ask oneself, upon reading all this, “Jeez, what wouldn’t the Texas Fair people try deep-frying and serving?” At least, that question occurred to me, and I thought it might be amusing to come up with a fanciful list of “Ten Things Even The Texas State Fair Wouldn’t Serve Up Deep-Fried.”

It turned out to be not as simple as it might sound, given the list of things that actually have been deep-fried, and it’s even harder if you limit such a list to things that could actually be eaten, which rules out deep-fried sweatsocks and bicycle tires and toilet seats. As a result, I could only come up with “Five Things Even The Texas State Fair Wouldn’t Serve Up Deep-Fried.”

Here they are. Suggestions for additions are welcome.

Deep-fried Viagra. Not a chance, because (a) it’s designed for just half the population, and (b) no male Texan in his right mind would publicly consume Viagra regardless of how it’s prepared.

Deep-fried lox and bagel with schmear. This actually doesn’t sound that bad, but it’s just way too New York for the Hook ‘em Horns crowd.

Deep-fried tarantulas. There are actually Texans who would try this, but PETA would make such a stink that it’s not really worth the effort.

Deep-fried Alpo. Too revolting, right? So far, yes, but there are places in Texas where cat food passes for pate, so don’t count this concept out forever.

Deep-fried banana daiquiri. You might find this at the San Francisco County Fair, if there was one, but in the Lone Star State? Not a chance. Deep-fried bourbon, now, is another story.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

Bad Food Rising, Part II: Everything is Better Cooked in Boiling Grease is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News

Sort of a Hoagie From Hell

Maybe it has to do with the Equinox, the passage into Autumn, the shortening of the daylight, or just something in the air, but for some reason, September seems to bring out a bit more of the crazy in the food preparation industry than your average month. This September was certainly no exception.

Start with a new item from the folks at Carl’s Jr. (out West, that is, but Hardee’s in the South and East): the Foot-Long Cheeseburger. It’s basically just three ordinary cheeseburgers laid end to end on a foot-long sub roll, and if the 850 calories it packs aren’t enough of an affront to nutritional science, you have to pony up an extra half a buck just to get lettuce and tomato added. So far it’s only available in California, but it if works there, it goes national. Don’t bet against it.

Please, Please Hold the Anchovies

Then there’s Domino’s, which has decided that pizza for breakfast is no longer just for hungover college guys who prefer cold leftovers to actually preparing something. What they call the Breakfast Pizza starts with the basic dough and cheese and then tosses on a few eggs, sunny side up, to be topped with the pizza usuals: sausage, bacon, onions, peppers, and so forth. “It’s like quiche on a pizza crust,” says one franchise owner. Who hasn’t yearned for that combination all their life? Why Domino’s doesn’t hold the dough and just call it an omelet is unclear. As of now, you can only get one of these freaks at a Domino’s in Dayton, Ohio, but it sounds just preposterous enough to take off.

A Teaser

And finally, September is the month of the Texas State Fair, which annually hosts a contest that draws amateur and professional kitchen wizards from across the land vying to come up with the most outlandish fried food concoction imaginable. This has produced everything from deep-fried pickles to deep-fried ice cream over the years. In fact, a “Review Of Outlandish Foods that Have Been Served Deep-Fried at the Texas State Fair” would make an eye-rolling post of its very own. And indeed, that exact post will appear here tomorrow, along with an imagined auxiliary list of “Things Not Even the Texas State Fair Would Try to Serve Deep-Fried.”

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

Bad Food Rising, Part I: Twelve Inch Burgers and Pizza Over Easy is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News