Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic: Plus TV and Events You Won't Want to Miss
By Andrew Zimmern
Want a great recipe aggregator that will truly help you figure out what you want to eat and when? Check out Yummly’s facts and figures on Thrillist. Yummly is a site from some of the same smart young minds who brought you eBay. I think it’s awesome.
Speaking about aggregating, I couldn’t be at this year’s Food and Wine Classic in Aspen because I was shooting overseas, but I kept up with all the news on eater.com, which gave us some great reportage. I also couldn’t be at SOBE this year for the same reason, but I will be at the New York City Wine and Food Festival in a big way . . . so go get your tickets now before they sell out. Go to nycwineandfoodfestival.com, click on events, and scroll through all the offerings. Get your tickets now for Cart in the Parc, the festival’s salute to street food hosted by yours truly. It’s going to be awesome. Tickets went on sale Monday and several events have sold out—the bigger ones, like mine, have not. This is indeed one of the largest events of the weekend, BUT space is limited.
There is no better way to experience food, taste your way around the city, and meet every conceivable food luminary on the planet than to be in NYC that weekend. But without tickets you are hosed. You can also call 866-969-2933. All proceeds from this event, and I mean ALL PROCEEDS, benefit Share Our Strength and the Food Bank For New York City.
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So I was reading the City Pages online, and I found this blog listing the “top ten foods that kill.” I know that lists are great and strong leads sell best—see some of the crazy junk posted on huffPo’s new food page such as the story below—but I also know that saying that raw milk kills is specious b*llsh*t.
E. coli is one of many culprits associated with all things bovine and we put it there. I regularly eat raw milk products and drink it from time to time, and I know the risks therein. But if you are going to write about potatoes, cassava, and grilled meat as being "deadly," I think you need more than what is offered on this post to make your case. The author righty says that drinking raw milk is akin to Russian roulette, but that’s because of the way it’s handled, not because of the product itself. Pizza can kill too, so can a lollipop. Oy vey.
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My pal Myke Hawke and his wife have a new TV show that airs on Discovery on July 16 at 9 p.m. The show throws Myke and his wife, Ruth, out in the field with only their clothes and a knife each week. It should be awesome. I spent a week with Myke doing my Survival Special for Bizarre Foods and trust me, this guy is amazing.
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Doug Lansky has this on HuffPoFood and I think it’s a canard. Food in these countries can be phenomenal and I could care less what a poll says . . . it's bunk. This is exactly what’s wrong with Internet reportage—it gives a sexy jump but is sampling the "everyday" folk, most of whom have never been abroad to more than a handful of locales. If you want to know whose food sucks, and where and why, then go talk to people who dine abroad. I travel and eat more than almost anyone I know and even I couldn’t make a list like this. Not to mention, if you made a real list the result would be racist and ethno-centric at best. This is truly online reportage at its worst.
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Doing the math doesn’t add up here. Are these guys going to spend their own money!?!?!?!?
Curtis Stone, (NBC’s The Biggest Loser, Take Home Chef); Steve Ells, founder, chairman, and co-CEO of Chipotle; and Lorena Garcia, executive chef and restaurateur, join Bobby Flay (Iron Chef America, Throwdown, etc.) as investors and judges on NBC’s new alternative competition series: America’s Next Great Restaurant, premiering next season. Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz of Magical Elves (Project Runway and Top Chef) will produce the show, which features contestants vying for the opportunity to see their ideas turned into a new restaurant chain in three cities across America.
Thousands of potential restaurateurs submitted ideas, which were narrowed down to the select the few candidates featured on the series. Each week the judges/investors—Flay, Stone, Ells, and Garcia—will put the chosen few through rigorous business and cooking challenges to discover which contestant’s concept has the greatest potential for success.
Either this is going to be a huge hit, or could go down in flames. Not sure there is a middle ground with this one. Thoughts?
© 2008 MSP Communications, Inc. All rights reserved
Mr. Zimmern,
I am a longtime fan of your television show and writing, and I am a Minnesota native and love Minneapolis and all of the foods here that you cherish and publicize. I am also a student of public health and would humbly like to reframe your statement regarding the risk of death from foodborne illnesses from raw milk.
The facts are, from numerous veterinary and environmental studies, that milk cows suffering from Bovine Mastitis (infection of the udder) can shed pathogenic bacteria in milk products. Mastitis is not always obvious and can go undiagnosed and untreated. Cows can also lay in bedding or rub on equipment that is contaminated with their own fecal bacteria and contaminate their own udders with an invisible amount of deadly E. coli or Salmonella. Pasteurization reduces the amount of deadly bacteria in milk by 5 logs or 99.999%. Regardless of how many on-the-farm practices are used to prevent the contamination of raw milk, it can and will happen, and pasteurization is key to reducing the risk of foodborne illness and death from consuming these products. While states that allow the sale of raw milk in stores typically test raw milk dairies, the tests are not perfect and outbreaks continue to occur.
I appreciate that you acknowledge some risk in consuming raw milk, and I just want to make sure that that risk is clear to all readers. The risk of foodborne illness from consuming a standard, cooked, name-brand lollipop is in no way comparable to the risk from consuming raw milk products, which are handled in the presence of manure and have no microbiological kill step before reaching the consumer.
It is absolutely your freedom to advocate for raw milk products, and I absolutely believe a food journalist of your caliber when you write that they taste absolutely heavenly, I just plead with you, as an influential food icon, to communicate the risks of foodborne illness from raw milk products in a way that is consistent with current veterinary and environmental health science. There are likely followers of yours who choose what to feed their kids based on your influential preferences, and children, the elderly, and the immunocompromised are all especially vulnerable to death from what are to you and me, standard and short-lived foodborne illnesses. Those followers deserve to have honest and current information from our animal health experts so that they can make informed and healthy choices for themselves and their loved ones, whether or not they choose to consume raw milk.
For more information I urge any reader to visit www.realrawmilkfacts.com
Sincerely, your fan,
Evan Henke
Student
University of Minnesota School of Public Health
Posted by: Evan Henke on June 24, 2010 at 7:58 PM
Evan,
It is still a bit preposterous for the City Pages to lead a story entitled "Foods That Kill" with a food that hasn't killed anyone in this state.
I agree with the quote on the front page on the site to which you have provided a link. We should be able to buy raw milk if we want, and we should understand the risks. I'm glad we're on the same page. Many at your University have been engaged in an irrational propaganda campaign against the food. I'm glad you are not.
May I ask a question? Per the website, the Michigan study indicating that the benefits to lactose intolerance was not published, and ostensibly invalid therefore.
Has anyone published a study on the correlation between consumption of raw milk and lactose intolerance? If not, why not?
Posted by: kevin s. on June 26, 2010 at 11:48 PM
ON MAN WOMAN WILD I just watched several minutes of man woman wild and I would rather lick the stinky python than watch anymore. I think I counted "BABY" 50 times already. This show will flop. Ditzy woman does not belong in the wilderness. She complains every second. I do not see how those two are together. I noticed the guy actually draws cartoon pictures of himself on myspace too. (I still dont believe they are married.) DONT WASTE YOUR TIME WATCH DUAL SURVIVOR INSTEAD THEY SUCK
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