Wendy's Explained

Sunday, May 31, 2009

The shock in their voice is always completely genuine. Inevitably, we'll have just finished talking about the merits of fleur de sel or why I prefer Malbec to Merlot. Then, "Hey, do you want to pick up some Wendy's?"

For me, grabbing a Spicy Chicken Sandwich from Wendy's is as natural as logging into Facebook or shaving in the morning. It's not even something I think about anymore...just something I do. And yet, what is the source? Of all the foods and all the restaurants to be obsessed over--why this?

I've actually never really known. As other sandwiches and restaurants come and go, I can still remember riding my bike for 45 minutes across Peachtree City at the age of 15 (A DECADE AGO) with part of the $20 I got from mowing the lawn...all to get this unusually delicious sandwich. 10 years of this obsession and it has shown no signs of abating (even though I worked at Wendy's for about six months in high school, partially with the hope that I would tire of the food).

It seems David Kessler has stumbled onto something.
His resulting theory, described in his new book, "The End of Overeating," is startling. Foods high in fat, salt and sugar alter the brain's chemistry in ways that compel people to overeat. "Much of the scientific research around overeating has been physiology -- what's going on in our body," he said. "The real question is what's going on in our brain."

...

The labels showed the foods were bathed in salt, fat and sugars, beyond what a diner might expect by reading the menu, Kessler said. The ingredient list for Southwestern Eggrolls mentioned salt eight different times; sugars showed up five times. The "egg rolls," which are deep-fried in fat, contain chicken that has been chopped up like meatloaf to give it a "melt in the mouth" quality that also makes it faster to eat. By the time a diner has finished this appetizer, she has consumed 910 calories, 57 grams of fat and 1,960 milligrams of sodium.

Instead of satisfying hunger, the salt-fat-sugar combination will stimulate that diner's brain to crave more, Kessler said. For many, the come-on offered by Lay's Potato Chips -- "Betcha can't eat just one" -- is scientifically accurate. And the food industry manipulates this neurological response, designing foods to induce people to eat more than they should or even want, Kessler found.


This shouldn't actually be much of a surprise. After all, foods that taste good can release endorphins (especially sugary foods), and the body is just about always interested in the euphoria they create. But it's at least interesting to see that perhaps science can explain 10 years of Wendy's cravings.

Some time off

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

You ever get so hungry that you order/make a ton of food/desserts and scarf the whole thing down without breathing?  The kind of scarfing where you don't realize you've eaten so quickly you've outpaced your "full" feeling by quite a bit, leaving your stomach to continue to expand for a half hour after you've finished loading the dishwasher in a misery that can only be relieved in a way that makes me feel like I have an eating disorder?

Anyway, that was all a metaphor for how I feel about my last run of cooking.  It was great, don't get me wrong...but after all that food for weeks on end, I had to get back to my roots (Wendy's and Chick-fil-A...don't hate).  And while there's been plenty to write about in politics, I didn't really feel like anything warranted a full post of my personal commentary.  So just a few notes to get me back into this cooking (and blogging) thing.

  • It hasn't JUST been Wendy's and Chick-fil-A.  It's also been chocolate chip cookies!  The New York Times ran an article a while back about the perfect chocolate chip cookie...including recipe.  It calls for chocolate "discs" rather than chips and letting the dough rest for an unreal 18 hours.  Aside from a pretty obvious typo in the amount of chocolate (1.25 POUNDS???) this recipe was just about perfect.  In my second batch I added the sea salt after baking and could find absolutely nothing wrong with these warm, moist, chewy, droooool.

  • Speaking of Chick-fil-A. Oh. My. Goodness.
  • I'm finally doing this twitter thing.  To pre-empt your arguments, I refuse to update about bathroom habits or what color pen I'm writing with--I'm only going to update things of substance or hilarity.  Tune in if you'd like!
  • Watching lots of NBA playoffs and sending tons of love to my hometown Hawks!  By the way, why does Doc Rivers sound like he has emphysema?
  • Wolverine was downright RE-DONK-ULOUS.  The critics are haters.  Seriously.
  • Arlen Specter switched parties, and promptly voted against everything the Democrats have put to a vote in the last few weeks, went on national TV to claim he wouldn't be loyal, and rooted for the Republican lost cause in the Senate in Minnesota.  Can we send this one back?  I think it's defective.  (Even better, maybe we can upgrade to the Sestak model.)
  • Are you reading 2birds1blog?  Start.
  • Look what I discovered at The Gibson.  New favorite EVER.
What y'all been up to?