Sugar in food: Come out, come out, wherever you are!

Having been diagnosed at a young age with reactive hypoglycemia, I've long been aware of the fact that modern food products hide alarming amounts of sugar, and conceal sugar in foods you'd never think contain it.


Like in food labeled as "Sugar Free":

Or ketchup:

Britain's FSA (Food Service Authority) defines high-sugar content as being 10%. Heinz Tomato Ketchup contains 23.5%. (British info source. Percentage from Heinz U.S. website.)

The following facts are just a taste (sorry!) of what investigative reporter Michael Moss uncovered in his book Salt, Sugar, Fat, about America's food industry. (Via buzzfeed. More fun facts there!)

The American Heart Association's recommendation for women's sugar intake is just five teaspoons a day. That's half a can of Coke. Or one and a half Fig Newtons.

Another source puts it like this: The American Heart Association recommends that women eat no more than  six teaspoons of added sugars per day or nine teaspoons for men. But, one 20-ounce bottle of soda contains about 16 teaspoons of sugars from high-fructose corn syrup. In other words...

(By the way, Coca-Cola executives refer to consumers who drink more than two or three cans a day as "heavy users.")

And as I said before, sugar is hiding in unexpected places. There's as much sugar in 1/2 cup of Prego tomato sauce as there is in three Oreos.

This fact alone (reported in Moss's book) is particularly telling...

Some packaged food executives don't actually eat the products their companies make.

John Ruff from Kraft gave up sweet drinks and fatty snacks. Bob Lin from Frito-Lay avoids potato chips. Howard Moskowitz, a soft drink engineer, doesn't drink soda.

Go thou and do likewise.

10 things to do with a bacon-weave

My husband once wove some bacon together and draped it over a pork loin (yes, redundant, I know), but I had no idea that the bacon weave was a "thing." 

But it is. A little googling prooves that it most certainly is!

First, the most obvious {forehead smack} use: ensuring that every single bite of your BLT is bacony!

Food blogger SavoryNotes makes a mean bacon weave and takes a mighty-fine pic, above. (But a BLT on white bread -- untoasted?! That ain't right!) Her method involves whiskey and brown sugar. Hmm.

Lifehacker commenter JaySinn divulges his secret for a simple, single-serving bacon weave:

I find 2 slices and a microwave do the job nicely - cut the slices in half, then do a similar weave, but just three parallel and one perpendicular slice woven in the middle. Paper towel underneath and on top, into the microwave for 3-4 minutes and you get a nice crispy square of bacon, that is all stuck together in one easy to apply slice. The microwave method is much faster and you don't have to drain the fat off while cooking as the paper towel absorbs the excess.

The Republic of Bacon claims the best BLT ever, featuring a bacon weave and chipotle mayo. They certainly have a brilliant idea on how to efficiently cut your bacon in half:

Here are just a few of the other, dare I say, stunning things people have done with their carefully woven bacon...

A grilled bacon-weave turkey from BarbequeMaster:

Here is it topping an Easter ham, studded with cloves and glazed with a pineapple-juice/brown-sugar/7UP concoction, from the appropriately named LifeCandy:

The "baco" - a bacon taco - via This is Why You're Fat (also appropriately named):

Bacon weave as a stand-in for pizza crust, via FoodBeast:

In the same vein, bacon-weave as a stand-in for bread, via the DailyBacon:

Have you heard of a fatty? AKA, "bacon explosion." It involves bacon wrapped around sausage and, depending on the recipe, possibly other things. (Ah, America!) Most of the ones I've seen are really too grotesque for me to share here, gentle reader, but if you are made of strong enough stuff, you can find detailed instructions at Grilling24x7:

Things get curioser and curioser...

Bacon-weave-topped apple pie - via Is This Thing On?:

A bacon-weave salad bowl, also via FoodBeast:

And last but not least: Turtle burgers:

No, those aren't actually turtles: the center is hamburger and the legs, heads and tail are hot dogs.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to take some Maalox and lie down...

Recipe review: White Bean Chicken Chili

I saw a yummy-looking recipe pinned on Pinterest the other day and thought it sounded like great food for a snow day. But when I looked up the recipe, it didn't sound so great. The recipe was scaled to feed a crowd, and used very little actual chicken.

I still loved the idea, though, so I hit AllRecipes and found this one there.

Photo from AllRecipes.

I made a couple minor tweaks: I only used one can of beans, and skipped the cayenne. I also used already-roasted chicken breasts from Dillon's deli to cut down on some time and effort. (The secret to getting juicy roasted chicken at the grocery store? Pick it up at 3:30 or 4 pm. By 5 or later, they've been sitting under heat lamps too long and have become nasty-dry.)

This was a hit with my husband -- and that's sayin' something, because he is an avowed soup-hater! And he even commented on how good the chicken was. He's not really a huge fan of chicken, either.

I liked it because it was fairly simple to throw together. And yes, yummy! (A tiny bit too spicy for me, but then, I'm a spice wimp.)

If you've already made traditional chili in the last week but you're not out of snow days yet, this is great cold-weather food! White Bean Chicken Chili, via AllRecipes. Husband and wife approved.