(Deep Cover via GoComics.com)
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Speaking of empty promises, the NYTimes Business section brings news of the next step towards the tree-borne Twinkie(tm):
A small company is trying to bring to market a genetically engineered apple that does not turn brown when sliced or bruised. But it has much of the rest of the apple industry seeing red.
The company, Okanagan Specialty Fruits, says the nonbrowning apple will prove popular with consumers and food service companies and help increase sales of apples, in part by making sliced apples more attractive to serve or sell.
While Americans have been eating genetically engineered foods since the 1990s, those have been mainly processed foods. The Arctic Apple, as it is being called, could become one of the first genetically engineered versions of a fruit that people directly bite into.
But the U.S. Apple Association, which represents the American apple industry, opposes introduction of the product, as do some other industry organizations. They say that, while they do not believe that the genetic engineering is dangerous, it could undermine the fruit’s image as a healthy and natural food, the one that keeps the doctor away and is as American as, well, apple pie…
Consumption of fresh apples in the United States has fallen from about 20 pounds a year for each person in the late 1980s to about 16 pounds now, according to the Agriculture Department.
Apple slices are already becoming more popular as a healthful snack, sold in bags in supermarkets and included by McDonald’s in its Happy Meals for children. The slices are often coated with vitamin C and calcium to prevent browning and preserve crispness. But that can affect the taste, Mr. Carter said….
If you read the article, this is the one and only use of the word “taste”. Even those food-industrial favorites “flavor” and “mouthfeel” are avoided. Because if the USAA were being honest, they’d admit that people haven’t stopped eating apples because they’re commitment-phobic — it’s because the average grocery-store apple has the consistency and flavor of damp styrofoam, in a vaguely chemical-scented waxed jacket.
The apple industry would like to produce a “reliable” apple to slice & serve as the dessert analog of the modern industrial tomato — a highly-colored chewproduct as a “healthy” accent after the turkey-bacon lite-cheese near-burger and baked-not-fried potato sticks. And they may succeed, because it’s tough to go broke underestimating what Americans are willing to accept as edible, as long as the marketing campaign is sufficiently pervasive. But it’s going to be hard to find a calorie-conscious niche to match the tomato’s real hold on the American palate: as an emulsifier of enough HFCS and salt to disguise any potential reminder that the thing under the ‘ketchup’ might have some untrustworthy connection to field or flesh.
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Apart from maybe a Friday Document Dump (I bet a 7-11 cookie on some kind of tax-form fakery from the Romney campaign) what’s on the agenda today?
WereBear
It’s so true about taste.
One of the motivators which keeps me Paleo is how much better food tastes when it is food.
I’ve realized one has to develop a tolerance for what passes as food in many corners of our society; and the more we tolerate it, the more we lose the ability to distinguish.
I was at our local gourmet lunch counter, and a grown woman there was balking at the offerings. “Too much taste,” she said with disdain, and ordered chicken nuggets.
Joseph Nobles
I’ve completely gone over to Gala apples now as my apple of choice. But in the last couple of years, every now and then I hit a few Red Delicious mealy patchs in even the Galas. I’ve had apples half Gala and half mush.
Older_Wiser
Took very “unattractive” homegrown tomatoes and made fresh “cream” of tomato soup last night (2% milk used, tomatoes, salt and pepper–nothing else). The flavor was outstanding and it was a no-guilt soup, took about 10 min, including the prep.
My 21 yr old grandson proclaimed it the best he’d ever tasted (well, it’s not that hard to beat Campbells). He works in fast food and loves my cooking best. Smart kid.
And you’re right about the apples. Fruits and veggies should be eaten fresh in season, not shipped thousands of miles from some GM field or orchard.
If we didn’t demand “variety” all year round, we wouldn’t be having this kind of crap foisted on us.
Boudica
@Joseph Nobles: Yes, Galas became our apple of choice for the past few years, but they are losing quality. Now, my kids prefer Jazz…which you used to could only get in the spring, but they’re still in the store this week, so the industry is obviously doing what it can to change it to a year-round apple that s tasteless and mealy.
kay
I will just offer a tip. IMO, kids don’t eat “modern” apples, the giant, perfect imported apples, because they are too big. They don’t want an apple that is as big as their head. They can’t eat the whole thing anyway.
Buy local apples (I buy MI apples, so maybe ‘regional’ is what I mean). They’re the size of an apple.
Kids will eat a normal-sized apple and you don’t have to slice it for them.
JPL
The local news covered the Bain, Mitt controversy. It appears that the new line admits the ceo thingy but not involvement.
Felony charges are costly and take time away from politicking.
“elect me, I was a shitty CEO”
Leave my apples alone..btw
JPL
Must thank TPM
Dork
I hate Apples, which is why I stay away from the Macbooks and iPads.
Mino
@WereBear: Huh?
stinger
Cortland apples are naturally slow to brown when sliced. And I don’t understand why apples would need to be sold pre-sliced anyway.
Patricia Kayden
It’s great how President Obama has made it almost impossible for Romney to use his experience at Bain in a positive way. Romney’s on the defensive about it, which is not a good look for him.
amk
Democrats Dump Oppo Research On Top Vice Presidential Contenders.
It’s a great read. Dems are gonna bust some balls under this prez.
bemused
I have a sick doggy question. Our senior citizen dog was in and out in the middle of the night urping up liquid grass. She still had an upset stomach this morning, drinking tons of water and eating grass. I’m following her around the yard thinking I will be taking her into the vet when they open if this continues when she urped up a rag. A cleaning rag. I have no idea where she got that from, there wasn’t anything left out in the house and what possessed her to eat it. She has done this once before but what the hell. Anyway, her tummy is still not settled and she’s not ready to eat her breakfast yet. I’m pretty sure she has puked up everything. I am just wondering if we should just wait for her stomach to settle or if we should give her anything to soothe her tummy.
Steeplejack
@bemused:
I would just let her stomach settle on its own. Dogs (and cats) have pretty good self-healing systems. But of course watch her to see how it goes.
Anya
@amk: I think they’ve waisted their time with Rubio. He’s a male latino Sarah Palin. Romney is so insecure to allow anyone else to get more attention. Besides, he has nothing to add other than the Cuban vote which Romney was going to get anyway.
JPL
@bemused: A had a pup who opened a cabinet door and sucked on a brillo pad..not good.
I did bring him to the vet and he had medicine prescribed that helped to settle his stomach. I then went home and put baby locks on the lower cabinet doors.
amk
@Anya: Just working the percentages. Forearmed and all that.
bemused
@Steeplejack:
Thinking the same. She’s not a small dog, 63# and bigger dogs can handle eating weird crap better than smaller pups. The dead deer or fish parts they’ve managed to find usually come out the other end and they have had to go on the rice/hamb/cottage cheese regime a few times. She’s13 though so we worry a little more about her than the younger dog.
bemused
@JPL:
Good grief. I can’t imagine the lure of a brillo pad unless it had food odors. We have to make sure the drip pan under the grill is kept clean or the same dog is sure to make a beeline to it.
Chyron HR
@amk:
There’s also an incentive for the Obama campaign to hype Rubio (or even Rice) as potential VP picks, just so their demographic groups can feel betrayed when Romney inevitably goes for a white guy.
NonyNony
@Anya:
This is actually a really weird thing to do period. If you’ve spent all that time compiling oppo research on vp candidates, why dump it BEFORE the selection is made? Wouldn’t you want to wait until after Romney has made his choice and then dump it to show that he made a bad choice.
Unless of course your intent is to make him second guess his choices – scare him into picking someone who is insufficiently vetted in the hopes that opposition research wouldn’t have been compiled on that person in time. I suppose it might work, but I don’t know.
It’s coming from a SuperPAC and not the actual campaign, though, so who knows what they’re thinking.
tomvox1
Another day, another horror show from the Catholic Church:
Legion revamps girls’ school program after abuses
As the saying goes: read the whole thing.
Also,
victimssurvivors blog here: http://www.49weeks.blogspot.comlamh35
I’m here at hospital in Cincinnati waiting for them to take my mom in to the OR to put in a 2nd shunt into her heart. Wednesday evening, she had an apparent heart attack at work. she thought it was just indigestion, but her coworkers took her to the hospital right up the street from her job. the doctors told her their insistence probably saved her life! so I’ve been thanking God for her coworkers since I got here. they found that one her arteries had 100% blockage so they placed at shunt there, then realized that she had another one that was 90% blocked so today they will place a shunt there too.
my family notified me yesterday morning that she was in the hospital & me and my youngest sister caught the next most available flight from DFW to Cincy and we’ve been here since about 7pm yesterday. if everything goes as smoothly as possible she may be out by Monday & then we’ve got some decisions to make about getting her the hell out of Cincy and back home to the fam in NOLA.
Chris
Sitting in a McDonald’s before work listening to the three gruff sounding Old White Guys behind me grouse about how the Washington Post is too biased in favor of… Romney.
Granted this is Montgomery County MD, but still: good way to start the day.
Snarki, child of Loki
“chewproduct”, that would be LOLworthy, but for it’s accuracy.
I guess we can now expect to see that term on all kinds of stuff in the supermarket, none of that ‘expectation of edibility’ that adheres to terms like ‘food’.
PeakVT
@lamh35: Best wishes to you mom.
HRA
@lamh35:
My best wishes to your mother for a good recovery and more best wishes for being able to get her close to the family.
We just had an incident of the same in getting an old relative back here rather than being alone in FL. Two weeks later he went back to FL to the home we were led to believe he had sold. (sigh)
Anya
@NonyNony:
You’re right. Also, isn’t this a distraction from the Bain issue? Romney campaign might bounce on the vp thing just to change the subject.
Anya
@lamh35: best wishes to your mom for a speedy recovery.
amk
@lamh35: Best wishes to your mom.
Linda Featheringill
@lamh35:
Good luck to your mom. They can do some pretty amazing things with stents these days. Hope she recovers well.
And good thoughts to you and the rest of the family.
[[hugs]]
R-Jud
@Snarki, child of Loki: When I was in the States last week I noticed that the label on Velveeta no longer says “pasteurized processed cheese food” but “cheese product”.
Linda Featheringill
@R-Jud:
Velveeta might actually be processed to the point where it is no longer cheese. But it’s also good. Lots of foods turn into something very strange if you mess with them too much.
I like cheese and I also like Velveeta, and tend to think of them as two separate foods.
Peter
@NonyNony:
That’s probably exactly what they’re hoping for. They would love a repeat of Palin.
NonyNony
@Anya:
Naw – the Bain stuff is a slow, longterm burn kind of thing. It’s character defining for Romney – and the more he denies with non-denial denials the more he looks like “a typical douchebag Wall Street CEO” and “a whining bully who can dish it out but can’t take it” (but I repeat myself).
He might try to change the subject, but he can’t. And I don’t mean “they’ll hold his feet to the fire and make him talk about this” can’t, I mean “he’s built his whole electioneering persona around the fact that he’s a successful CEO, so the subject of the company that he built HAS TO COME UP”.
Romney has exactly two pieces of experience that could get people to think he’s qualified to be President (he thinks he has three, but his work for the Olympic bid isn’t going to make people think “ooh – Presidential!”). One is his tenure as governor of Massachusetts – which is cut off for him as campaign fodder because his most well known gubernatorial success has been turned toxic by the right wing of his party. The other his his image as a “successful businessman”. He wanted to run on that. That’s all he’s got, and it’s turning out more and more that making the decisions that lead you to big short-term profits in today’s modern business climate are not the kind of record you want to have when you’re running for President.
And that’s what this Bain record foo-fa-rah is really about. Yeah there’s the whole “did he falsify documents” thing, but that’s not going to go anywhere. What it boils down to is that he told one thing to the SEC about his business and a different thing to the public and the FEC when he wanted to distance himself from the actual record of his business. If he was a successful business owner he’d be embracing the success of Bain. If he was a successful governor he’d be embracing his successes in MA. Instead he’s running away from his own record.
He truly is one of the worst candidates I’ve seen run for office in a long time, perhaps ever. He’ll still get 45% of the vote because a portion of our politics is completely divorced from the actual merit of the candidates these days, but damn – he and his team are amazingly inept at this “running for office” stuff.
lamh35
@PeakVT: @HRA:
thanks.
her coworker literally saved her life. if she had gone home the blockage would have never been discovered and she would have died. that was probably the hardest thing to swallow, that since she is all alone here in Cincy no one may have noticed her absence.
unfortunately I have to be back at work next Wednesday, but luckily I have 4 other sisters. the one in college is gonna drop her classes for the summer and stay with my mom until we are ready to get her back to NOLA. luckily my new schedule allows for me to be off every other week, but slowly but surely we will get her back to NOLA
gelfling545
@stinger: I guess I don’t either. The great thing about eating an apple is no prep needed. Just bite.
Our local apples are great here (WNY) in the fall. Any apples in the stores now were picked long ago & far away.
Valdivia
@lamh35:
hope she has a speedy recovery!
Scratch
Back in the late 80s and early 90s, I worked some at an orchard. One fall, the owner showed me an old tree in a far part of the orchard. It was a Red Delicious tree, but the apples on it weren’t a bright red. Lots of green streaks. The apples still had the 5 bumps on the bottom.
It was that tree which taught me what a Red Delicious apple used to taste like. Much sweeter, much crisper, a somewhat stronger apple flavor as well. I loved getting apples off that tree.
Now that orchard is gone and there’s a housing development sitting around where that tree once stood.
Linda Featheringill
BTW, Newt Gingrich is apparently still alive:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/newt-gingrich-preparing-for-the-next-outage/2012/07/12/gJQAI1QQgW_story.html?hpid=z2
He wrote an article about the safety of the nation’s power grid. It’s a pleasant article, with a we’re-all-in-the-same-boat feel.
I think he’s just saying “Hello, I’m still here.”
Edited. Grammar. Ugh.
hueyplong
In a sane world, Darth Cheney’s strong endorsement of Romney would be THE story today, with the theme being to ask whether this has effectively sewed up the election for Obama.
Ash Can
@lamh35: I hope all goes well.
NonyNony
@hueyplong:
In a sane world the Republicans would have fielded a candidate with actual accomplishments he could talk about in public, or at least an actual vision for his presidency that he could talk about in public.
Steeplejack
@lamh35:
My prayers are with you and your mom. Good luck to you getting this sorted out.
NCSteve
Oh please. Yes, the Frankenapple is an abomination and the first step toward doing to supermarket apples what’s already been done to supermarket tomatoes. But spare me the hippy sniff of disdain. The truth is that we’re in a golden age of apple varieties. The new apples varieties available in supermarkets today are insanely tasty and have far better mouth feel than the mealy red delicious and other supermarket varieties of the 70s when I was growing up. It started with the appearance galas, but since then we have the honeycrisps, the fiesta/jazz, the delectable ambrosias. (I was going to include Cameos, but, damn something has gone really wrong with those things in the last several years-).
Yeah, like everything else, there are apple snobs who have taste criteria that seem wildly at variance with popular opinion and who refuse to eat an apple that grows on more than a couple of hundred trees in some obscure part of the apple growing world. But for those who are supermarket apple shoppers, things have never been better.
And, btw, why would that be? Because of that government sponsored university research so loathed by our Randian overlords.
smintheus
This is crazy. There already exist standard apple cultivars that don’t turn brown when sliced. They don’t taste all that great, but they exist.
NotMax
Never was big on apples. Maybe once a year get a craving, and find that Braeburns are both firm and tasty enough to satisfy that short-lived want.
smintheus
@NotMax: You might change your mind if you had a really delicious apple, such as a Golden Russet.
NotMax
@smintheus
Possible, but doubtful. Apples just don’t tickle my palate and never have.
Same goes for things such as apple juice, baked apples and apple pie. I’ll consume it if it is offered to be polite, wondering all the while why anyone would bother to serve such a thing.
The supermarket fruit which has most been made into an tasteless disaster, IMHO, is the peach.
Tehanu
The people who live in our old house took out a wonderful apricot tree, which produced several hundred fantastically delicious apricots every year, and put in a pool. Idiots. I still have some seeds tucked away but no place to plant them, alas.
Teresa
Honey crisp are the only apples I eat now. Awesome when in season.