Food Qualifiers ???

[Chuck]

I go out to eat, and these days, it seems everything is qualified by some phrase such as..
Free Range
Grass Fed
Organic
hand picked....

Does it really matter or is it just to make the food seem more "special" ?

[Jack]

Some of the phrases are meaningful but others are just used with reckless abandon.
Free range chicken tends to be leaner and has a more "interesting" diet. Grass fed beef seems marginally tasty as opposed to the alternative. Kobe or Mishima cows which I believe eat some grass and have taste the best.

The stuff you should look out for are the lies and redundancies.
By Lies, i mean stuff like "Diver Scallop". No restaurant in Philly even Le bec Fin serves scallops that are hand harvested by divers. they are so ridiculously expensive, each scallop costs about $5 Raw.
They may be dayboat scallops but definitely not diver Divers.
Redundancies are just plain silly descriptions that end up reflective of a lack of knowledge.
Examples :
"aged" balsamic vinegar.
All balsamic Vinegar is aged.

"Ahi" Tuna
Ahi is the hawaiian name for tuna, its sorta like saying "shrimp scampi"

"penne pasta"
Penne is pasta, thats as silly as saying "spaghetti pasta"

"Chardonnay...(or any other name wine) sauce".
once you reduce the hell out of a wine for sauce, it does not much matter what white wine it is.
it is particularly funny when menus say "champagne Vinaigrette".
the sauce has no bubbles so whats the point, besides it was probably sparkling wine from California.

Silly descriptive words like , enrobed, laquered or annointed for saucing food.
i guess the new hot word since gulf war 2 started last week is embedded. just wait, in 2 weeks it will creep into restaurant menus, I can see it now...........Roast Chickn breast embedded with goat cheese with shiitake mushrooms enrobed with a montrachet sauce.
hope you have a sense of humor.

[Jim Tarantino]

On a same note, there's the "Furniture Factor". I use to freak at the amount of menu listings that featured "...on a bed of...". At the rate some of these were going you'd think you were eating in a dormitory.

[Jo]

I'm with you Jack on most of the points you make. However, I do disagree about champagne vinaigrette. I make it all the time. It's made with champagne vinegar.

[Jeannie]

I couldn't believe I was hearing myself when I was leaving Rx a few weeks ago. I was returning my out-of-town friend to the airport after a weekend here, and we stopped for brunch.

This guy is well traveled, but he declared that was the best omelet he ever had, and he wondered why. Well, maybe it was the fresh asparagus, or maybe the roasted garlic, etc. Of course I am as brainwashed as the next guy, so I declared (very convincingly) that it had to be the free range eggs that made it so good. And I guess since the people from the mid-west are not as brainwashed as here, he didn't know what they were, so that left me in the position of trying to explain how the chickens get to run around, and then I started speculating at what they eat, etc.

Boy, I really sounded ridiculous.

*Is* this stuff really hype?

[gabe]

This is a good question. Sometimes, when things are labeled organic, grass-fed, etc., there is a difference in taste. Sometimes the difference in taste is negligible. Like Jack said, some terms are meaningless, like your Ahi tuna or "diver" scallops.

Of the terms you listed, here are the ones that mean something:

"Organic" does mean that fruits/grains/vegetables were grown without the use of pesticides. This winds up being better for the environment because fewer toxic chemicals foul the water supply and the ecosystem. Often organic produce (nowadays) looks and tastes better than conventially grown produce, in my opinion.

"Grass-fed" meat is generally (but not necessarily) from animals raised without the use of antibiotics, the overuse of which can lead to antibiotic-resistant "superbacteria" that will eventually become a major health hazard to humans. The animals (usually ruminants -- cows, sheep, etc.) eat grass in the fields rather than the typical antibiotic-laced feed. I haven't had enough grass-fed meat to be able to tell you what the difference is tastewise. Some say it's richer tasting.

"Free-range" livestock are allowed to roam and graze rather than being kept in cages. Animal rights activists say this is more humane. I say it makes the meat leaner and better-tasting.

As for hand-picked, well, I imagine it means what you think it means. Don't know if it makes much of a difference. Maybe if it's a fruit/vegetable that can be "bruised" or otherwise damaged by mechanical picking.

That's what I know... hope that helps. Ultimately, you're at the mercy of your restaurant as to whether you're really getting what they say you're getting, unless you're in the 1% of the population that can definitively tell the difference.

Link: http://www.cspinet.org/ar/ar_livestoc...

[cinghiale]

I couldn't disagree more w/some of the previous postings, whose attitude borders on disdainful. I think there is an enormous difference in quality and taste for free-range and grass-fed meats. As for animal rights, I'm no big PC baby (I'm a hunter, for one), but Michael Pollan's NYT Sunday Mag articles "Power Steer" and "An Animal's Place" convinced me that there is a moral/ethical implication to what you eat. You can eat well and better if you choose to.

As for grass-fed, there IS a big difference in taste. Many friends to whom I've served grilled GF beef don't care for it. It's leaner, chewier, almost gamey. I prefer having to chew; I think we Amis have gotten too lazy and expect everything to "melt in the mouth". I get mine either from Harry Ochs in the Terminal or better, during spring/summer/fall, from the Saturday farmer's market @ Headhouse Square, where a young Lancaster County family -- B&L Grassland Farms -- sells beef, lamb and chickens raised in the GF, "free range" style. They even have pix of the kids playing w/the lamb you are now buying. I've run into Bryan Sikora from Django buying his lamb there. I also once had GF steaks from Niman Ranch in CA and they were out of this world (but very pricey, too).

As for eggs, B&L's are, in taste and baking utility, light years beyond anything you can get from any store, FR or not. They simply cannot supply enough to their Phila customers, all of whom swear by them.

Re: Organic. This term is regulated by law. But I mean, C'mon! If you have the choice, do you want to eat vegs that have been treated w/ or w/out chemicals? Do want to eat beef from cows that have been eating hormones mixed together with the ground-up remains of chickens and pigs that have been fed hormones ....? There was an interesting article in today's Inky/Food about a rider to a bill ramrodded thru Congress that guts the recent organic laws. It does shed some light on how organic has now moved from Birkenstocks to the boardroom, how larger companies are concerned about the issue as well.

One caveat: I once tried milk from GF cows (Fresh Fields), and I found it awful.

IM(not so)HO, I think these "qualifiers" do really matter

[Suzanne]

Concerning the statement "Do want to eat beef from cows that have been eating hormones mixed together with the ground-up remains of chickens and pigs that have been fed hormones ....?"

The FDA has banned the use of any animal protein in feed for cows, sheep and goats since 1997. The protein is what was used in feed.

[cinghiale]

OK, ruminants can't be fed ruminant protein, but they can be fed:
(1) Ruminant blood products (although proteins)
(2) Ruminant fat
(3) Non-ruminant animal protein (feather meal, pig and fish protein, chicken manure)

Plus, the FDS allows bovine meat and bone meal to be fed to pigs, chickens, and fish, so it's just all circular anyway.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/31/mag...

[Jack]

Tha "nature people" just want to scare us to death.
in a blind tasting, Less than 1% of "beef experts" can tell the difference.

[Caitlin McGrath]

Personally, I can't taste antibiotics and hormones I ingest through food, either. Doesn't mean I want to put them in my body.

[Persephone]

Caitlin wrote: "Personally, I can't taste antibiotics and hormones I ingest through food, either. Doesn't mean I want to put them in my body."

Well said. Sometimes I truly believe free range, organic, etc. tastes better, and sometimes I don't find much of a difference in taste. But it is much healthier not to ingest those extra hormones and antibiotics. The growth of "supergerms" due to the overuse of antibiotics has already been mentioned in this thread, and for women especially, ingesting those extra hormones is not a good idea. It can have a definite impact on one's health, maybe not everyone, but definitely for some people. Many people also suspect the use of hormones in meat and dairy products could have something to do with young girls entering puberty earlier and earlier, which is not a good thing.

[aliwaks]

All my meats & poultry is free range, grass-fed and/or orgainc. and yes gf beef has a different taste it's the taste that beef should have . Since I care about ingesting antibiotics, hormones & other chemicals I take it for granted that my guests feel the same way.

the lamb from B&L is amazing tasting free range chickens have a tase whereas (I feel) "reg" chickens are bred only for largesse rather than taste.

Sure some of it is salesmanship we restaurnatuers know that people will pay for (at least what I consider)superior product. We however have to pay for it too. Trust me I could have much lower food costs if I wasn't so picky about where it all comes from

Intersting note GF beef has less shrinkage than reg. beef since the beeves are raised w/out hormone & antibiotics & the corn that gives them indigestion they retain less water so a 12 oz steak from a Gf cow is a much larger serving size than one from a chemical cow you loose less only around 1 oz or less in the cooking process.