Do hamburgers cause crime?

According to her research, U.S. counties that have slaughterhouses consistently have higher rates of violent crime than demographically similar counties that don’t.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

A month-long diet of fast food and no exercise led to dangerously high levels of enzymes linked to liver damage, in an unusual experiment inspired by the docu-movie “Supersize Me.”

But investigators, reporting their findings on Thursday, were also stunned to find that a relentless regimen of burgers, fries and soda also boosted so-called good cholesterol, seen as a key measure of cardiovascular health.

Researchers in Sweden asked 12 men and six women in their twenties, all slim and in good health, to eat two meals per day at McDonalds, Burger King or other fast-food restaurants over four weeks. The volunteers were also told to refrain from exercising. (…)

Blood samples were taken before, during and after the experiment to monitor levels of an enzyme called alanine aminotransferase, or ALT, a potential marker for liver damage often seen among heavy drinkers and patients with hepatitis C. (…) “The results scared me,” he told AFP. “One of the subjects had to be withdrawn from the study because he had 10 times the normal ALT levels.” (…)

That signs of liver damage were linked to carbohydrates was another key finding, he said. “It was not the fat in the hamburgers, it was rather the sugar in the coke,” he said. (…)

But the most startling result implies that an intensive fast food diet might have some health benefits too, apparently from fat. “We found that healthy HDL cholesterol actually increased over the four-week period — this was very counter-intuitive,” Nystrom said.

HDL, sometimes called “good cholesterol,” seems to clean the walls of blood vessels, removing excess “bad cholesterol” that can cause coronary artery disease and transporting it to the liver for processing. Nystrom has yet to publish the cholesterol findings, but said they were consistent with the so-called “French Paradox.”

For nearly two decades, scientists have wrestled to explain how the French can consume a diet rich in fats — from abundant butter, cream, cheese and meat — yet have generally low levels of heart disease and hypertension. “The study showed that the increase in saturated fat correlated with the increase in healthy cholesterol,” he said.

{ AFP/Yahoo | Continue reading }

A McDonald’s employee spent a night in jail and is facing criminal charges because a police officer’s burger was too salty, so salty that he says it made him sick. Kendra Bull was arrested Friday, charged with misdemeanor reckless conduct and freed on $1,000 bail. Police said samples of the burger were sent to the state crime lab for tests. { Chicago Sun-Times | continue reading }

related { Limits proposed on fast-food restaurants }

photo { The Cobra Snake }

The New York Police Department has fired a veteran counterterrorism detective who flunked a drug test, finding that claims his wife served him marijuana-spiked meatballs “simply weren’t credible,'’ NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said Thursday.

Chiofalo, a 22-year-veteran assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, was suspended without pay in 2005 after a random drug test found marijuana in his system. The officer denied ever using drugs and demanded a hearing.

During an investigation, his wife said she had secretly substituted marijuana for oregano in her meatball recipe in hopes of forcing him to leave police work.

The detective’s lawyers also presented evidence that she had passed a lie-detector test, and offered testimony from a toxicologist that the excuse was valid.

{ AP/1010 WINS | Continue reading }

“Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.” is a trademarked slogan first used by McDonald’s in 1975.

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Ground beef usually comes from one of three cuts: chuck, round or sirloin. Chuck is my favorite; it’s a little fattier than the others, but that translates into great flavor. { Washington post | Continue reading }

A favorite recipe in the neighborhood called for garlic powder, an exotic ingredient in 1958; chopped onion; and — gasp! — Worcestershire sauce. The key is to avoid packaged ground meat. { NY Times | Continue reading }

• In 1985, Sports Illustrated magazine published a story that a rookie baseball pitcher who could reportedly throw a ball at 270 kilometers per hour (168 miles per hour) was set to join the New York Mets. Finch was said to have mastered his skill — pitching significantly faster than anyone else has ever managed — in a Tibetan monastery. Mets fans’ celebrations were short-lived.

• In 1998, a newsletter titled New Mexicans for Science and Reason carried an article that the state of Alabama had voted to change the value of pi from 3.14159 to the “Biblical value” of 3.0.

• Burger King, another American fast-food chain, published a full-page advertisement in USA Today in 1998 announcing the introduction of the “Left-Handed Whopper,” specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new burger included the same ingredients as the original, but the condiments were rotated 180 degrees. The chain said it received thousands of requests for the new burger, as well as orders for the original “right-handed” version.

• Noted British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on the radio in 1976 that at 9:47 am, a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event, in which Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, would cause a gravitational alignment that would reduce the Earth’s gravity. Moore told listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment of the planetary alignment, they would experience a floating sensation. Hundreds of people called in to report feeling the sensation.

{ Continue reading }

There’s something fishy about our seafood.
Even when you pay top dollar for a seafood dish, you might not get what you’re expecting. About 70% of the time, for example, those Maryland crab cakes on the menu weren’t made using crabs from the Chesapeake Bay. Because of high demand, crabs are often from other eastern states or imported from Thailand and Vietnam. (Look closely at the menu: “Maryland-style” crab is the giveaway.)

Big Brother is watching you…eat.
No one likes having their every move scrutinized, but that may be just what’s happening at your favorite restaurant. Cameras are popping up everywhere, from four-star eateries to the place where you grab your lunchtime sandwich. “Cameras are pointed at the wine rack.” Their primary purpose: deterring employee theft. At some restaurants, however, the cameras are indeed trained on the tables. At New York City’s four-star Daniel, for example, four closed-circuit cameras monitor the dining rooms, offering a bird’s-eye view of every plate. “It’s about maintaining a quality of service,” says Daniel spokesperson Georgette Farkas. “With the cameras the chef can tell when each course needs to be plated and served.” So much for that romantic dinner for two.

There’s no such thing as too much butter.
Think that salmon fillet you ordered for dinner is good for you? Think again. Restaurants load even their healthiest fare with butter and other calorie-heavy add-ons. Restaurant meals average 1,000 to 1,500 calories. (…) While most Americans assume that fast food is the worst offender, similar fare at casual sit-down restaurants can be even more caloric. The classic burger at Ruby Tuesday, for example, has a whopping 1,013 calories and 71 grams of fat. The McDonald’s Big Mac, with its 540 calories and 29 grams of fat, seems downright diet-worthy by comparison.

Nice tip — too bad your waiter won’t get it.
Just because you tip your waitress 10 bucks, it doesn’t mean she’s going home with that money. More than likely, she’ll have to pass on some of it to the people who helped her serve you: The bartender might get $2, and the busboy $3 to $5. It’s called a tip pool, and it’s becoming standard practice in many restaurants. According to federal law, only employees who customarily receive tips — waitstaff, hosts, bartenders and bussers — can participate in the tip pool. But sometimes management takes a cut. In 2006, waitstaff from the Hilltop Steak House in Saugus, Mass., won $2.5 million in damages after complaining that managers dipped into their tips.

Never go out to eat on a Monday.
If you think that Monday, when restaurants tend not to be crowded, is a great time to eat out, think again. “You’re being served all of the weekend’s leftovers,” says Francis, coauthor of “How to Burn Down the House.” Distributors typically take Sunday off and make their last deliveries Saturday morning — which means that by Monday any food not used over the weekend is at least three to four days old. And it will be served before the same ingredients arriving in Monday’s delivery.

{ 10 Things Your Restaurant Won’t Tell You | Continue reading }

photo { Ellen von Unwerth, Sticky Finger, 1996 }

The question of who invented the hamburger is in the news again. Texas lawmakers want to declare their state the official burger birthplace.

Texas state legislator Betty Brown has introduced a bill to codify the oft-repeated claim that “Fletch” Davis, an Athens, Texas, grill man, created the burger and introduced it to the world at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. (…)

A small library of food histories has for years been circulating this tale, which was popularized by a Dallas newspaper columnist, Frank Tolbert, in his 1983 book, “Tolbert’s Texas.” Invariably, they repeat Tolbert’s assertion that a reporter for the New York Tribune wrote from the 1904 fair of a new sandwich called a hamburger, “the innovation of a food vendor on the pike.” My research assistant, Andrea Murphy, and I have painstakingly looked through the Tribune’s archives and can safely say that this report does not exist. Furthermore, there is no Fletcher Davis on the fair’s concession list. In fact, we found no documentary evidence for Texas’ claim at all. (…)

The sandwich we think of today as the hamburger was almost certainly invented by Walter Anderson, a Wichita, Kan., grill cook who first made the sandwich in either 1915 or 1916. Anderson was the first to cook standardized, flat ground-beef patties on a custom griddle and to serve them on identical white buns. The claim is supported both by nearly contemporaneous newspaper accounts and by the fact that Anderson, with his partner, E.J. “Billy” Ingram, founded in 1921 a restaurant called White Castle, which still makes a nearly identical sandwich today.

{ Los Angeles Times }

+ previously { Red meat and sexy waitresses at the Heart Attack Grill }

The Heart Attack Grill (Arizona) opened a year ago with a Hooters-like formula of red meat and sexy waitresses. Diners choose from among four cheeseburgers: the Single, Double, Triple and Quadruple Bypass. The Quadruple is a towering monstrosity with four half-pound beef patties, four pieces of cheese and a mound of bacon.

The waitresses wear skimpy, cleavage-baring outfits, high heels and thigh-high stockings — a male fantasy that some nursing organizations say is an insult to the profession.

If “patients,” as customers are called, finish a triple or quadruple bypass, waitresses will push them out to their cars in wheelchairs at no additional charge.

Several nurses have complained to the Arizona attorney general’s office, and a national nursing group has repeatedly asked Heart Attack Grill owner Jon Basso to stop using the outfits.

The most serious complaint Basso has faced was made to the Arizona attorney general’s office by the state Board of Nursing. In September, the attorney general’s office wrote Basso a letter informing him that he is illegally using the word “nurse” at his restaurant and on his Web site. Citing Arizona Statute A.R.S. 32-1636, the attorney general said only someone who has a valid nursing license can use the title “nurse.”

Basso refused to remove “nurse” from his Web site but inserted an asterisk next to every nurse reference and included the following disclaimer:

“The use of the word ‘nurse’ above is only intended as a parody. None of the women pictured on our Web site actually have any medical training, nor do they attempt to provide any real medical services. It should be made clear that the Heart Attack Grill and its employees do NOT offer any therapeutic treatments (aside from laughter) whatsoever.”

Basso said the complaints have been good for business, “all they’ve done is ensure there’s going to be a gajillion of these all over the country.”

{ MSNBC }

related { Barry Ritholtz’s best burgers in NYC | Schnäck’s miniburgers in Brooklyn | world’s most expensive hamburger ($110) }