Friday’s Food For Thought Blog
In other parts of America we are fighting obesity problems, high blood pressure in children and many other food related health issues. A lot of these stem from the fact that we park our kids in front of an X-Box and keep them indoors. Not because we are anti-exercise but because we are anti-being-a-victim-of-a-drive-by-shooting. Any conversation about children’s health has to include that factor or it will be meaningless in modern society. This is just as true in the meth-lab laden rural areas as it is in the crack addicted urban ones.
But one company is bucking that healthy eating trend and going for an all out push to market sandwiches in a can. And, because they have very clever marketing people, they are calling it the Canwidch.
No, I am not making this up.
The Candwich, which has a shelf life of a year, has just gone on sale in the US and online, selling for £7 for a four-pack or £44 for 24.
Twelve flavours are planned, including US-style peanut butter and grape jelly, BBQ chicken and pepperoni pizza.
The peanut butter version requires diners to spread sachets of the filling on to the bread but the rest have the fillings baked inside, like a pasty.
Creator Mark Kirkland, from Markonefoods, said: ‘My original idea was to stack cookies in a soft drink can to sell in soft drink vending machines.
‘I started looking for a technology for shelf stable sandwiches, which I wanted because it was a healthy and convenient meal.’
The Candwich’s long shelf life is achieved by controlling water, pH and oxygen levels in the packaging.
Yeah, nothing says “heart healthy” like chicken slathered in barbecue sauce and stuck in a Pringles can.
Of course, may people prefer their food more “au natural.” Literally. So, in an effort to placate their needs the Japanese, of course it’s the freaking Japanese, have come up with a fun way to combine cannibalism and fine dining.
What? You never once in your sordid existence thought of mixing those two? Why aren’t you just the silly Hippo?
Japan as a country never stops amazing us. I am sure you have heard of, or seen the “Nyotaimori” (literally means female body plate), where the restaurant serves sushi and sashimi on a naked woman’s body.
If that is not weird enough , Japan has just invented another way of eating, where a “body” is made from food and placed on an operating table, much as though in a hospital.
You can operate anyway and anywhere you want by cutting open the body and eating what you find inside. The body will actually bleed as you cut it and the intestines and organs inside are completely editable. It’s a banquet of Cannibalism.
However, maybe you’re a purist. You don’t want any fake blood and organs, you want your food preppared the way God intended. Or, to be blunt, you thought Sweeney Todd had the right idea. Sophie Borland tells us of the fun loving German Airmen who tried to sell sausages made from human blood.
Two German air force sergeants are facing a court martial after trying to mass produce sausages made with the blood of their comrades.
The two men, who are based at Fürstenfeldbruck, a fighter squadron headquarters, near Munich had already trialed a traditional receipe using their own blood.
But they were caught trying to recruit fellow servicemen and family members to ensure a constant flow of raw materials.
One of the soldiers posted pictures of himself on a popular German website siphoning off their blood and adding it to a recipe for the traditional Blotwurst sausage using onions, bacon, spices and breadcrumbs.
The incident only came to the attention of senior officers after one of their fellow soldiers reported the fact that he had been asked to donate some blood for the scheme.
The man is reported to have said: “I have been asked to give blood for sausage-making and I want to know if this is against regulations.”
The sergeants, aged 25 and 29 and identified only as B and G, were suspended immediately last December, the German defence ministry confirmed yesterday.
The recipe for the sausage, which apparently came from one of their grandmothers, was found in the belongings of one of the men after they were arrested.
It read: “Make sure the blood is fresh and the bacon cubes diced finely with a nice proportion of fat to lean. Do not use too many breadcrumbs but if the blood starts to curdle stir in a teaspoon of wine vinegar.”
Why Grandma, what big fangs you have.
Seriously granny? You were popping leeches on the neighbors so you could spice up your Schnitzel?
Sadly, though, granny’s not the only necrophiliac out there today. In America it used to be a common mobster expression to say “His corpse’s sleeping with the fishes.” In India they flipped that around to read “the fishes are sleeping with the corpses.”
What could possibly go wrong?
People in Tripura, India were shocked to hear the fish they purchased might have spent the night with a human corpse.
Fish traders in Tripura have been storing hilsa, a kind of fish, in the morgue of a local hospital with the help of some of the hospital’s employees.
The fish was stored in cooling boxes together with human corpses. The charge for this service was about $ 0.20 per kilogram per night. That’s pretty cheap compared to private storage charges.
The idea seemed perfect: fish traders could store their fish for no money at all and the corrupt employees made a quick buck with no effort at all.
Unfortunately, for the people involved, the scheme was uncovered by a local reporter who went undercover as a fish trader. The unsuspecting hospital employees showed the reporter how they stored the fish together with corpses in morgue boxes.
The Indian health minister ordered an inquiry and suspended one of the employees.
Only one? That seems awfully kind of him. My guess is that more heads will roll, maybe to serve as fish food, before this all is over.
Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!
