Free From Food

On Friday, June 10, I went to the European Food Bloggers Convention in Amsterdam for my internship at CuliNice. It was a whole day of tips for food bloggers, but also food. The kinds of food they showed at the event were all ‘free from food’ which meant that they were either gluten free, sugar-free, lactose-free or all of these things. It was an interesting day, but it made me think about what kinds of ingredients are in those foods, if there isn’t any flour, eggs or milk. The hype around gluten free food is somewhat ending a little, but it’s still very popular. Many people who don’t have an allergy to gluten are still not eating gluten for other health reasons. So there seem to be two different groups. One who must eat gluten, sugar or egg and milk free, and people who just want to avoid these things because they think it’s more healthy.

Also, I read an article (this one) about light products and that it has been proven that on long-term, these products can lead to bad health instead of improving it. That’s because people think they’re eating healthy, which makes them eat more of it and along the way also more of the non-light products besides the light ones. If you then count the total amount of calories, the people always using light products ate more calories than people who just ate normally.

So, what to do with this movement? I’m eating low carb myself, also for personal health reasons and not for allergies. But I can only keep up this lifestyle with results, if I keep on doing it. The same goes for all those ‘free from foods’. Does the quality of life really improve on long-term by eating all those strange products from which we don’t even know what  they’re made of? I don’t think so. Okay, when you’re allergic you’re not in this group. But if you’re thinking you’re healthy by eating all light products, you’re not. You may feel less guilty and your quality of life can go up for a while, but after a while, it doesn’t go up anymore, or even down.

So, can we all just eat normally? Okay, I’m a fan of healthy food, but I like unhealthy food just as much and I still consider myself quite a healthy human. To conclude with a Star Wars reference: there has to be a balance (in the Force), without evil there’s no good either.

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On the menu: plants and flowers

They already appear more often, the edible flowers, plants and even mosses. We already eat mushrooms and herbs for a very long time, but grasses and seaweeds are also up and coming as culinary delicacies. So today, we will give this day a moment of thought with everything that Mother Earth has to offer. So do you want to surprise someone with a nice flower bouquet, while you also want to eat something, keep on reading!

Seaweeds

Let’s start with eating seaweed. This isn’t strange at all anymore because we all know them from Japanese restaurants, who serve weeds as wakame. Maybe you have already heard of this dish or even eaten it yourself. Also up and coming is the weedburger, a hamburger made of wakame. Which is also regularly eaten are the well-known weed leafs from which we make sushi. This species of weed called nori has been integrated into our cuisine for a long time. Nori and wakame are full of calcium and are also rich in protein and several vitamins and minerals.

Grasses

Basically, you can eat grass. The only problem is that us humans can’t digest grass in its normal form. However, grasses are perfectly juice-able. In Japan, China and Southern Asia they have a desert made of grass, namely grass jelly. This is made of a plant which is a relative from the mint (from mint tea). Last year it was the year of wheat grass and therefore, it was hot to make wheat grass shakes. What people may or may not know is that you can also do that from normal grass from your garden or neighborhood. Just watch out that the grass isn’t polluted, as well by pesticides as by animal excrements before you’re about to consume it. Therefore, it’s a good idea to grow your own grass in your home, in case you’re super enthusiastic after reading this.

Mosses

In fact, all mosses can be edible unless you cook them in the right way. If you don’t, they will taste terrible or will affect your digestive system. Not strange that the Danish top restaurant  Noma has something like that on the menu. They know particularly well how to prepare these mosses. Even the table decorations are edible and contain pieces of moss. The mosses on the menu are fried. Because mosses grow very slowly and can take in a lot of polluted substances, it’s not a good idea to just go to the forest, fry some moss and eat it. Let that to the professionals for now.

Flowers

A lot of people may not know it, but flowers are beside grasses, mosses and herbs perfectly edible. Of course, not all of them but still, you have a fairly big amount of the edible ones. Working with edible flowers is nice because they let your dish stand out really well and it looks very bright. Several edible flowers we all know are daisies, violas, dandelions, primroses and even normal roses. For all these flowers go that they have to be fresh, so not polluted. So did you get a bouquet of flowers from someone who isn’t that nice anymore, you can still eat them in case you’re very hungry.

So I hope that I have inspired you to eat some plants on this day. Earth itself has enough to offer which are perfectly edible and tasty for daily dishes. So go to the forest once in a while and surprise someone with a colorful and outstanding dish!

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A small step..

There are a lot of people who don’t have enough to eat, and there are enough restaurants who (have to) throw away food. There’s a solution, you would say. That’s exactly what an Indian restaurant owner thought. She thought that the many homeless people in her city, Kochi, could need some food, which would be thrown away otherwise. The solution was to put a fridge in front of her restaurant so that homeless people could serve themselves, for free of course! This restaurant owner, Pauline, leaves around 75-80 portions a day and other restaurants and travelers can also put food in the fridge for other people. She says that money belongs to the ‘system’, but that resources belong to society, so to us people.

Now is this solution immediately world-changing? No. But it’s very sweet and it serves its purpose: feeding people who are hungry with food the restaurants don’t need any more. If every restaurant or other food-related stores would do the same, then we would have a lot less hungry people. It’s a small act with big quality of life results for the hungry people.

I also like the idea that it can be used by everyone. Sharing is caring and I think people would love to help other people by leaving food in this fridge, just to make them happy. Food waste is big, and because we can all do something about it, I think this is a great idea! For more tips on the no-waste principle, read another article of mine which I wrote for my internship! Click here.

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No Waste? Say Yes!

In Holland, we throw away approximately 50 kilos of food per person, per year. What?! Of course, that cannot go on anymore. And that despite it is super easy to throw away less food. Follow these tips and start with implementing the no waste principle in your own kitchen!

The tips are being structured according to the principle of this website. The tips follow a simple framework, namely: buy smart, cook smart and store smart. https://www.milieucentraal.nl/voeding/voorkom-voedselverspilling/

Buy smart

• Make an inventory what you do and don’t have in your home. These products you don’t have to buy anymore.
• Only buy food which you really need, so look closely to what you’re about to eat that week and buy only that. Of course, a bag of chips also counts, as long as you’re eating it that week.
• Look carefully at the date of consumption. If you know that you’re going to eat a certain product, you can buy the pack of milk which isn’t the long-lasting. This stimulates you to really use it. If you know that you find this difficult, you can buy freezable products if possible.
• Use before isn’t the same as best before. On meat products often is a use before date. After this date, you must throw it away. But on other, less-perishable products there’s usually a best before date, which means that, as long as it doesn’t look green and smells weird, you can perfectly eat that bag of chips.

Cook smart

• Use reasonable quantities, so not with the motto ‘we will eat that later on this week’. Preferably, cook per day, and if you really can’t do that you can also make a little more, for example fried rice.
• Always have a stock of potatoes, pasta and rice, so that you always have these products. These products are fairly non-perishable and you will most likely use them a lot.

Stock smart

• Read the packaging carefully, then you’ll see how you can stock it the best way. Most products perish less quick when cooled, but eggs for example, you mustn’t put into the fridge.
• Adjust your fridge at 4 degrees, that appears to be the ideal temperature for keeping goods.
• First, use your leftovers before opening new packages. This way, you won’t have to throw away things so soon.

Besides this, you can always cook with your leftovers! So you can take one day a week as a leftover day on which you’re cooking creatively with all leftovers. In this article are a few tips on how to cook with leftovers.

Good luck!

Hotspot: Trust Amsterdam

A cafe where you can be the judge about what to pay. Is that too optimistic these days? Certainly not for cafe Trust in Amsterdam. The cafe operates according to the principle of Pay As You Feel. Do you feel good? Then pay with that in mind. Feeling down? Then you can pay a little less. We went to have a look!

From the inside, café Trust looks like you would expect. Different colored tables and chairs, nice tiles and quotes on the wall which make you happy. On the menu are really no prices, which was new to me. When I went to order I was being helped by a kind girl who asked whether I have been here before. I said no, so she asked me if she was allowed to explain their philosophy. Of course, I said yes, so she began to explain. She told me that they work with an open kitchen principle so that guests can see what they get and don’t get surprised. She also said that they work according to the ‘Happy for no Reason principle’. Which means that they want to make people happy, without having a special reason for doing so. They ask you to pay with your heart instead of your head. For me, this was a little too spiritual, but still, I like the thought behind it and I think this is an interesting concept for our economy.

We both ordered a ‘Hulk Smoothie’,  a smoothie with banana, apple, spinach and celery. Because we had been eating all day (and because I was a little sick and felt highly awkward for not ordering anything in the previous restaurant and only drank tea), was this the only thing we ordered. That was a pity because there are enough tasty things on the menu. From sandwiches and soups to tasty salads and fried egg on toast.

At the checkout, it was really the case that you could type in the amount you wanted to pay on the paying device. With some awkwardness, I typed in the amount we discussed just before. For a moment, the bad person in me awoke and I thought: what if I pay just one cent? Well, that’s possible, but still, the happiness and the philosophy worked well. Of course, there will always be people who misuse these kinds of things, but still, this store is always very crowded and it already exists for 5 years now! Who would have expected that? Possibly, an idea for all Dutch stores? In any case, it’s really something to think about.

Do you want to visit Trust one time? The café is located at the Albert Cuypmarkt and very accessible by any tram!

Johnny Bio-Goode

What is it?

It is an initiative from a group of 80 restaurants and caterers from Paris to make their food waste into biogas and compost. This can be used to warm up farms around Paris. It is an action which runs ahead on a law which makes its entrance in 2016 in France. This law obligates 1 in 5 restaurants to recycle their food. If they don’t cooperate, they will get a fee of €75.000.

Why is it cool?

This initiative gives an insight on how much food French restaurants throw away. We know a lot these days and people want to know everything. They want to know where this waste goes to and what it’s used for. In this case it’s clear what this waste does and where it’s used for. I must note that biogas is in a lot of commotion these days because of the wasted food which can also be used as food for poor people or animals which produce food. In this case it’s about waste, and you don’t want to feed someone or an animal waste, do you?

Why has it future growth potential?

Now this initiative is in France only but it can be an idea to have this law everywhere in the world. I think this will be the case in a few years, although in France waste rates are extremely high and food is being thrown away when it has not reached its expiry date. The waste problem is hot and happening and if we can use our waste into things which make it easier to warm up our homes or feed animals then it can become bigger. In the coming years our waste is growing and growing so action is needed!

Source:

http://www.culy.nl/inspiratie/restaurants-parijs-zetten-hun-afval-om-biogas/

So you think you can eat?

What is it?

A somewhat identical idea to the ‘Nationale Eettest.’ The foundation ‘So you think you can eat’ launches their tour after the summer. The plan is to go to schools all over the country to show young people how (bad) their food habits are.

 

Why is it cool?

The fact that the pilot was so popular that there where around 1000 youngsters proves that this is somewhat important to young people. Young people are interested in their health and want to improve it more and more. Through this tour they can participate in an interactive workshop where they learn about food and what it does. This, of course, is about transparency. What you see on television might not be helping you about forming your opinion about specific food items, so that’s where this tour can help. It shows you where the food comes from and what it does exactly.

 

Why has it future growth potential?

Because young people are more and more interested in their health and food and how to deal with it. Also the interactive part is very promising. It’s not boring like a documentary about how to eat, or a book. No, it’s interactive and that’s why youngsters want to participate. The need to be healthy has never been stronger and also the need to know everything about your food. So, do YOU think you can eat?

 

Sources:

http://www.foodnieuws.nl/think-can-eat-collegetour-bezoekt-50-000-scholieren/

http://sytyc-eat.nl/