The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

photo credit: The Rocketeer

Margaret Atwood must be proud - the disgusting meat products appearing in Oryx and Crake are just around the corner, if PETA has anything to do with it. Following the current trend of offering large bounties, as Google currently does with the X-Prize, PETA is offering a $1 million prize for what NPR summarizes as the “development of commercially-viable ‘test-tube meat’ - meat grown through a lab process, not from a live animal.” PETA’s website outlines the contest in further detail:

PETA is offering a $1 million prize to the contest participant able to make the first in vitro chicken meat and sell it to the public by June 30, 2012. The contestant must do both of the following:

• Produce an in vitro chicken-meat product that has a taste and texture indistinguishable from real chicken flesh to non-meat-eaters and meat-eaters alike.
• Manufacture the approved product in large enough quantities to be sold commercially, and successfully sell it at a competitive price in at least 10 states.

Judging of taste and texture will be performed by a panel of 10 PETA judges, who will sample the in vitro chicken prepared using a fried “chicken” recipe from VegCooking.com. The in vitro chicken must get a score of at least 80 when evaluated in order to win the prize.

In vitro meat production would use animal stem cells that would be placed in a medium to grow and reproduce.

And I thought everything tasted like chicken… As long as the FDA mandates labeling test-tube SPAM, I don’t personally mind PETA and others throwing money at fake meat. Seriously though, can’t they spend the money on making tofu more appealing? And don’t members of the target audience, non-meat-eating people, already have non-meat alternatives? Does PETA really think they’re going to convert meat-eaters into vegetarians with fake SPAM?

At any rate, it’s all very interesting. It’s good to see PETA doing something that doesn’t involve bloody babies on a stick in front of McDonalds.

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photo credit: ewanr

I have the great fortune to live near Hickory Nut Gap Farm, an ecologically-aware farm using rotational grazing that produces the best beef and chicken I have ever eaten. Not everyone has the fortune to live near a source for grass-fed livestock, so I’m glad Mark’s Daily Apple recently ran an article on selecting beef when your options are limited. The most interesting piece of information I gleaned, however, was that not all grass-fed beef is the same - some, in fact, may be just as unhealthy as corn-fed beef:

Meat that is labeled grass-fed isn’t necessarily “grass-finished.” Nearly all beef cattle eat grass at some point. Others, those usually labeled grass-fed, eat grass until the final few weeks before slaughter, when they’re switched to a grain diet. During this relatively brief window, the omega ratio reverses to pretty much that of mostly/entirely grain-fed cattle. Look for “grass-finished” or “100% grass-fed.”

Yet another disappointing fact about the agricultural industry. “Free ranging” chickens don’t necessarily range free, grass-fed cows don’t necessarily eat all grass - what’s next, “original” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not cloned? It’s no wonder the organic movement feels more like a fad and less like a description of what I’m eating.

As the article points out, many farms now sell and ship meats directly to customers. It appears Hickory Nut Gap does, and the article mentions a few additional links to similar sources. In my opinion, if you don’t have grass-fed beef available near you, it’s worth the extra cost and hassle to order it from a farm like Hickory Nut Gap. When you weigh it against the hidden health costs and money-saving shortcuts taken by slaughterhouses, especially in light of the recent massive beef recalls, it’s well worth the hit you take in the wallet.

A couple of weeks ago, I figured my 2-day weight gain must have been related to the Chicken Parmigiana I ate for lunch one day. I’m a curious person by nature, and becoming much more interested in knowing the nutrition information for the foods I eat, so I decided to investigate the caloric value for my meal.

I started my search on Olive Garden’s website. Sadly, after drilling through the site map and searching for nutrition information, it appears Olive Garden’s site lists only menu items and descriptions, but no nutrition information. I recalled Consumerist had posted a huge table of restaurants’ nutrition information and checked it to make sure I wasn’t missing it - turns out they came up empty-handed too.

Recalling that Starbucks prints a pamphlet available at stores, I decided to visit my local Olive Garden. I received this one-page, front-and-back pamphlet titled “Garden Fare” that listed only “low fat” menu items:

Surely, a restaurant chain as large as Olive Garden would have more nutrition information available than this paltry disclosure! I called the Guest Relations number listed on the pamphlet (1-800-331-2729) and asked the person who answered the phone if they have more nutrition information available than what’s listed on this pamphlet - no, the Guest Relations person replied. I asked if she had nutrition information available for the Chicken Parmigiana I previously ate - no, she replied, the pamphlet listed all the nutrition information she had available. I wonder what kinds of questions these people are supposed to be able to answer?

Olive Garden breadsticks

So, this pamphlet is all I’ve got to work with. There are some interesting things to glean from it - for instance, the breadsticks that are automatically left at every table is not listed. A glance at calorie-count.com lists the breadsticks with 140 calories per breadstick. Holy crap! Remember that Subway’s 6″ Italian bread loaf has 200 calories, and there’s gotta be at least 3x, if not 4x, the amount of bread in a 6″ loaf. Breadsticks are one of those uncounted calories - they appear, you munch while talking and waiting for the real food. At 140 calories per breadstick, you can’t afford not to count these. Wonder what ingredients are lurking in Olive Garden breadsticks…

Here’s something else that’s interesting - they list Italian dressing, but not the nutrition information. Serving size is listed as 2 fluid ounces, which equals 4 tablespoons. Again turning to calorie-count, I see Olive Garden’s regular dressing is 90 calories per 2 tblsp, or 180 calories per serving. CalorieKing lists Olive Garden’s light dressing at 37 calories per “serving” (I’m assuming this is 2 tblsp), or 74 per serving. Compare this to something like Kraft’s Zesty Italian at 109 calories per 2 tblsp, and Olive Garden’s isn’t that bad. They do define their serving size as twice a normal serving size, but the salads are big enough to share anyway. That is, assuming their serving size of salad is one bowl…

And that Chicken Parmigiana? No nutrition information. The closest I can find is CalorieKing’s listing for Eggplant Parmigiana, which lists a serving at 793 calories. 1 oz of eggplant is 10 calories; 1 oz of chicken is 47 calories. The chicken pieces were definitely larger than my palm, so I’d guess they were roughly 8 oz each - 80 calories of eggplant versus 376 calories of chicken. Substitute chicken for eggplant in CalorieKing’s listing for Eggplant Parmigiana, and you’ve got a meal with 1089 calories - and that may not even include the pasta! Even eating half of my meal, I consumed 220 calories plus the pasta - no wonder I gained weight two days in a row. And to think I used to eat at least two breadsticks, half of a salad, an appetizer and an entire meal - easily 1800 calories in one sitting.

Definitely not conducive to my new healthy lifestyle.

Update - it appears Olive Garden lists the Garden Fare pamphlet on their site at
http://www.olivegarden.com/menus/garden_fare/. How about giving us all your nutritional information, Olive Garden? What do you have to hide?