There’s no doubt about it, vending machines have a bad rap. It’s true. Tell someone you drank coffee from a vending machine and they look sympathetic. Tell someone you had to assemble your lunch from a vending machine and they offer you a chair. Tell someone you’ve been eating from a vending machine for a week and they call social services and get you into a treatment program.
But, what if vending machines were filled with things that are good to eat? Would you use them? A company in Denmark is testing this idea out by providing vending machines to farmers so that they can work in their fields and sell their wares to the public, too. The idea is that they fill them with freshly harvested foods and then people driving by stop and buy the chilled, fresh fruits and vegetables.
Likewise, Spain’s Lofresco is marketing a vending machine program that will make fruit snacks and other healthy produce foods available wherever you buy a Coke.
Would you buy farmers’ market fare from a vending machine? What about healthy snacks like fruit salad?
When I was growing up, my mother was pretty earnest about nutrition. Bran or wheat germ made its way into almost every weekday recipe and chips and candy were definitely not part of her regular shopping. Except at Christmas. During the holidays my mom turned into a different kind of shopper altogether. Candies, pop and all kinds of treats made it into her holiday shopping cart. She even bought chips and wacky stuff like bugles. It certainly made the holidays a genuine time for rejoicing! (My mom is completely different these days, by the way. As a grandmother she continues to cause me chagrin by being a complete junk pusher – I’m taking it personally!).
Research I stumbled across recently stated that chips are North America’s favourite snack with 1.2 billion pounds (yes, that’s billion with a ‘b’!) of them being crunched up each a year. The chip as we know it was invented in 1853 by Chef George Crum who created it as a mock response to one of his clients who claimed that his frites were too thick. Lucky for us George was the kind of guy who liked to push his point!
Today, chips come in a plethora of flavours inspired by all kinds of real foods such as fried chicken and baked potatoes; British snack maker Tyrrell’s even sells a honey roast ham and cranberry chip during the holiday season. I’m partial to chips with a tangy edge like salt and vinegar or a bit of spice like the Buffalo Blue Cheese chips from Kettle Chips.
What about you? Do you have a favourite crisp to crunch?
According to a recent article in Marketing Daily, comfort foods choices differ depending on age.
While baby boomers say they find classic comfort foods such as braised meats, casseroles and ice cream soothing, Gen X-ers cite fast food hamburgers and burritos near the top of their lists. While this may seem discouraging, the good news is that Gen-Y-ers like burgers but also mention sushi and fruit as comfort foods.
For me, almost all food is comforting (seriously, I get quite uncomfortable at the first signs of hunger), but one of my favourite meal choices to massage away the tensions of a long day is veal Parmigiana with spaghetti and tomato sauce; homemade is ideal but I often settle quite happily for the take away version from Abruzzo Pizza. When I need some mental health food and I’m not actually hungry, coffee-flavoured Hagen Daz ice cream is my treat of choice.
I’m not quite a baby boomer by age (that age group cut off is 1964 and I was born in 1966) but as my comfort food choices attest, I’m more like the Boomers than the Gen X-ers. However, the fact that my choices are bought foods that I note by brand is distinctly like a Gen X-er. Confusing.
What foods do you find soothing? And, if you don’t mind sharing, what age group category best defines you?
I’m wondering if anyone else got the memo about how North Americans are fat and make bad food choices. No? Just me? Okay then, listen up: apparently we should treat fried and battered meal and snack choices as sometimes foods. Sorry for the let-down, but it’s true.
And I’m pretty sure 99% of the people who order fried food know that information, too. Yet, we still keep buying it.
In fact, as this article in Restaurants & Institutions Magazine points out, some restaurants are thwarting the recession by offering more fried food menu items. Apparently this is one of the categories of foods that people prefer not to make at home so they visit restaurants specifically to get their fried food fixes. As a small consolation, more chefs and cooks are frying up battered veggies as well as fries and fish but they’re still selling a whole lotta fried food including pickles, twinkies and bacon at places like the Burger and Cheesesteak Factory in Athens, Georgia.
Why do we keep succumbing to the lure of crisply-cooked, lavishly-salted chicken, fish and potatoes? QSR Magazine (yeah, I know, my nightstand reading selection really could be racier!) reports on a Technomic study that asked American consumers what qualities they associate with fried food. The results reveal that these foods hit a lot of emotional triggers:
• 89% tasty
• 86% satisfying
• 83% filling
• 80% something I crave
• 77% comforting
• 71% good value
I’m guessing that a Canadian study would net fairly similar results. How about you? Do you dream about donuts, fantasize about French fries or swoon for shrimp tempura? Come on: admit it. When’s the last time you feasted on fried food?
