HAND-OPERATED MEAT GRINDERS
The hand-operated meat grinder was standard equipment in many home kitchens before the food processor invaded home kitchens in the 1970s. Soon thereafter, it became standard equipment at garage sales.
Today, although you won’t find one at Williams-Sonoma, the chic cookware store, the grinder retains a small but loyal constituency. Edward Don, the restaurant supply outlet on Elston Avenue, reports we can’t get enough” of the $39.95 model from Universal Gourmet that hooks up to a kitchen table.
— William Rice
FOUR FOOD GROUPS
Remember the four food groups, a.k.a. the Basic Four? Dairy and Eggs, Meat and Poultry, Breads and Grains, and Fruits and Vegetables? Why did we have to raze that construction and build a Food Guide Pyramid in its place? All those levels, all those categories …
“The Basic Four had been around since the ’50s, and it offered some relatively simple messages about variety,” said Lorri Fishman, manager of consumer education with the American Dietetic Association.
“Since the ’90s we know there’s a lot more to eating right than just variety,” including the key concepts of balance and moderation, Fishman said. The three-dimensional taper of the USDA’s pyramid is meant to “provide a personal guide for making food choices” that is “visual, practical and flexible.”
Furthermore, the pyramid is designed to be consistent with the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which are updated every five years.
— Andy Badeker
CYCLAMATES
Whether consumed in diet sodas or those effervescing drink tablets for kids (remember Fizzies?), cyclamates were everybody’s favorite artificial sweetener starting in the 1950s. They were typically teamed up with saccharin, another sweetener with a checkered past. Though saccharin remains on the market, complete with a scary label warning about its link to cancer, cyclamates were banned in 1970 for their role in the formation of bladder tumors in rats.
Although Abbott Laboratories has repeatedly petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to allow cyclamates back on the market, according to Rosetta Newsome, senior food scientist at the Institute of Food Technologists in Chicago, they remain banned in the U.S. Not in Europe and Canada, though.
A cancer-related aside: Cyclamates got their big break in 1937, when a University of Illinois scientist named Michael Sveda rested his cigarette in a pile of the crystalline acid derivative he was working with. With his next puff, he noticed how sweet it was.
Fizzies fans can take heart, because the tablets now are sweetened with aspartame.
— Andy Badeker
IRRADIATION
Irradiating foods is one of those trends that seems to come and glow.
Food processors have been toying with it ever since 1923, when a University of Wisconsin biochemist named Harry Steenbock declared that ultraviolet light trained on different ingredients produced rich levels of vitamin D.
But in the post-atomic era, consumers have been leery of being exposed to lab-produced rays, which is why the irradiation industry has been introducing in fits and starts the concept of sterilizing food with low levels of radiation.
More Top Picks Garlic Seeds
What many consumers don’t realize is that many imported spices and some poultry products are already being irradiated; late last year, the government approved the use of irradiation by food processors to kill E. coli, salmonella and lysteria bacteria in raw beef, pork and lamb. Irradiated meats must bear identifying labels.
Consumer advocate groups, who say possible long-term problems associated with irradiation are yet unknown, continue to protest its use.
— Kristin Eddy
More forgotten food stars
Our list of forgotten foods and food-related items and personalities continues:
CHIPPED BEEF
We won’t go into how the Army dish called SOS got its name (though it had something to do with a shingle). But it is a classic: dried chipped beef cooked in a flour-based gravy and served over toast.
Chipped beef (salted and smoked dried beef sold in small jars or plastic packets) is one of those versatile products, right up there with Spam in our book. The bottled kind lasts forever on the shelf. You can mix it with all sorts of ingredients. It carried American families through the ’40s and ’50s. But, although it still can be found on supermarket shelves, you don’t hear cooks bragging about using it any more. In the interest of bringing it back, here’s a recipe for creamed chipped beef for 4:
Cook 4 ounces of chipped beef in 1/4 cup butter in skillet until browned. Add salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle with 3 tablespoons flour. Cook 1 minute, stirring. Add 1 cup milk. Cook, stirring, until sauce thickens, about 5 minutes. Serve on toast or biscuits.
— Carol Mighton Haddix
ADELLE DAVIS
When nutrition guru Adelle Davis published her book “Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit” in 1954, she was just the latest in a long line of American food faddists. But the success of this and her other books, which trumpeted the supposed benefits of mega-doses of vitamins, helped popularize the mass consumer health food movement.
Davis also was a champion of protein diets, recommending the generous consumption of such foods as milk and liver.
Derided as a quack without credentials by the medical community, Davis’ advice nonetheless appealed to many readers, who credited her vitamin theories with curing diseases from arthritis and epilepsy to kidney disease. Davis was sued by the families of other readers who died supposedly from overdoses of vitamins.
Although Davis is no longer a household name today (she died of cancer in 1974), her legacy lives on in successive food fads that promote specific foods and ingredients as the key to good health.
— Kristin Eddy
SARSAPARILLA
Derived from dried roots of tropical smilax vines (ginger root), and a precursor to ginger ale (though its taste is closer to root beer), this intensely spicy carbonated beverage reached peak popularity during the 1880s. In this century, it has appeared from time to time in Western movie bar scenes, ordered by teetotalers–such as Clarence the Angel in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Sometimes called “sassparilla” and available still, it now is made from artificial flavorings. The National Soft Drink Association listed six producers or distributors in various parts of the nation, but none is made in Chicago. Owner Guy Bataglia says it has a secure place at his New Jersey firm, Briar’s Old Fashioned Soft Drinks. “Sarsaparilla works, at least in the Northeast,” he says. “I’d eliminate ginger ale from our line before sarsaparilla. But the younger crowd doesn’t know much about it.”
— William Rice