Omnivore Atlanta

Here’s another example of human weirdness. Just thinking about eating a salad gives you permission to eat French fries instead:

Just seeing a salad on the menu seems to push some consumers to make a less healthy meal choice, according to a Duke University researcher.

It’s an effect called “vicarious goal fulfillment,” in which a person can feel a goal has been met if they have taken some small action, like considering the salad without ordering it, said Gavan Fitzsimons, professor of marketing and psychology at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, who led the research.

In a lab experiment, participants possessing high levels of self-control related to food choices (as assessed by a pre-test) avoided french fries, the least healthy item on a menu, when presented with only unhealthy choices. But when a side salad was added to this menu, they became much more likely to take the fries.

No wonder Mickey D’s and others have added salads to their menus!

(Graphic courtesy of Find Fitness Here.)

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We paid a visit to Evos (5590 Roswell Rd., 404-252-4022) at the Prado in Sandy Springs last week. The restaurant, part of a popular chain headquartered in Florida, provides healthy alternatives to the usual fast food.

Fries, for example, aren’t fried at all. They are “air-baked” and quite tasty, especially with one of the flavored ketchups (right). We liked the mesquite best.

Burgers are low-fat and made with beef free of chemicals. Other alternatives include crispy fish sandwiches and wraps that are also prepared with the air-baking process.

More in this week’s Grazing.

(Photos, including the best magazine in America these days, by Cliff Bostock)

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I just filed my end-of-year Grazing rant, part of which was devoted to the rise in consumption of fast food because of the recession. In looking around the Internets, I came across this clip of Andy Warhol eating a hamburger in Jørgen Leth’s 1982 film “66 scener fra Amerika,” a Danish film whose title means “66 scenes from America.”

The scene is reminiscent of Warhol’s own early style of sitting cameras before people for hours and hours. As a teenager I used to go to a hidden-away art theater owned by George Ellis, who played the horror-show host Bestoink Dooley on local TV, to see Warhol’s films. I’m talking the super-boring ones like 8-hours of the Empire State Building, just standing there, in “Empire.” And there was the 3-plus hours of “The Chelsea Girls,” actually six hours projected on a split screen.

At one point, Ellis owned a theater at Ansley Mall, where he screened Warhol’s “Lonesome Cowboys,”. I was there the night the theater was raided by the police and the projector shut down.

Eating a fast food burger — Burger King, I think — seems like a perfect performance piece for an artist who was obsessed with repetition, icons of pop culture and tedium. Have a look and imagine yourself in his place.

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Yay! The Popeyes on Boulevard at Ponce de Leon reopened yesterday.

My favorite fast food was unavailable for several months after a fire closed the place. Because of my continual complaints about the service there, I have been frequently accused of setting the fire myself. Never mind that my car’s windows were busted out there and 80 percent of my orders were screwed-up. I ain’t no arsonist.

The place was festooned with balloons yesterday and I became immediately suspicious when an alarmingly cheerful staff member said “Welcome to Popeyes” as soon as we came through the door. There were at least 10 people working the counter and kitchen.

We ordered the 10-piece special — spicy fried chicken with five biscuits and two large sides of coleslaw and red beans and rice. The latter are as good as you find most anywhere in the city and the chicken is better than average too.

Did they mess up our order? Of course. We were handed a box of mild chicken, instead of the spicy kind we’d ordered. (We insisted they get the order right, which didn’t seem to go over too well.)

It’s good to know that very little has changed at Popeyes, even with a staff of 10.

I started a cycle of Prilosec soon after eating.

(Photos by Cliff Bostock)

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We had another amazing meal at Dynamic Dish last night — spanokopita, arugula salad with lots of fresh veggies, carrot-ginger soup and a carrot soup. You can taste spring in owner/chef David Sweeney’s cooking, and the cafe was doing brisk business last night.

One thing you won’t find at Dynamic Dish is low prices. We happily pay what’s charged — more than $14 for a slice of the spanokopita with roasted potatoes and some tomatoes — because the quality of the ingredients is so high.

Last night, after dinner, I happened to read an article about fast food in Ode Magazine, which characterizes itself as a magazine for “intelligent optimists.” (I’m not sure how the magazine got in our house, since nobody by that description lives here.)

The lead story in the April issue of the magazine is about the “greening” of fast food. In a long article that seems indeed optimistic in view of the actual information it provides, the author praises several regional fast food places, like Burgerville in the Pacific Northwest, Better Burger in New York City and EVOS in Florida and Nevada. She gives Chipotle, which is a nationwide chain, special attention.

Mainly, she documents that using local, organic and cruelty-free produce and meats produces much better taste without costing consumers a whole lot more. She also notes that these same restaurants also tend to be more environmentally conscious and provide employees with better pay and benefits. The latter is especially important, since restaurants are the largest employer in the U.S. after the federal government. Other relevant facts: Restaurants are the largest consumer of electricity among U.S. retailers; fast-food packaging accounts for 20 percent of litter in the country.

Read the entire story here.

The same issue of Ode also has a piece entitled “The 2008 Organic Top 20.” It includes everything from chocolate to coffee substitutes and mac and cheese. Here’s their favorite organic beer:

Healthy and ethical consumption can be fun, and Orlio Organic Beer proves it. Throughout the year, Orlio offers a Common Ale that’s smooth, firm and not too heavy. For the winter, the Seasonal Black Lager makes a bolder impression. Its rich flavour will please beer enthusiasts, and its playful hint of chocolate helps separate it from the pack. As summer grows closer, try the Seasonal India Pale Ale for a sharp, slightly bitter taste. Orlio’s markets are rapidly expanding — click the “locator” function on the website to find the provider closest to you. A six-pack of Orlio’s Common Ale costs $8.99. orliobeer.com

(Images from Ode Magazine website)

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Speaking of fast food, NPR’s “Morning Edition” featured a brief piece about Burger King this morning. Unlike McDonald’s and other companies, Burger King refuses to pay an extra penny per pound for tomatoes from Florida. The extra penny is to improve the lot of Florida’s migrant tomato pickers, who have not had a raise in 20 years!

Listen to the 3-minute piece, including Burger King’s lame excuses, here.

(Image from Duncan’s TV Ad Land)

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Ugh. Ben Stein, the prolific former Nixon speechwriter and conservative gadabout, apparently has been hanging out in Atlanta lately. If you wondered where he dined, here’s a hint from his column in the American Spectator:

I have been meaning to say a few things since this summer and now I will since it’s still Indian Summer here in Atlanta where I am.

One, food. I spent a good chunk of the summer in Germany and England. The food there is amazingly expensive. A typical meal in London for 3 people is $400. I’m not kidding. In Germany, a typical mea of Wiener schnitzel that I feel very guilty about eating is about $300 for three people.

Now that I am back, I eat at a lot of expensive restaurants in many cities. They are sometimes good, sometimes horrible. (The worst meal I ever had in my life was at a sickeningly pretentious restaurant in a converted home in Seattle and it was also the most expensive; the second worst meal I ever had was at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco and it was also sickeningly expensive.)

But here is a truth: a freshly cooked Crisp Taco Supreme at Taco Bell tastes better than almost any food at any restaurant. A fresh McDonald’s cheeseburger on a fresh bun tastes as good as any meal at any $100 a person restaurent [sic].

We spend so much time criticizing fast food for being bad for us. But like anything else, it’s only bad for us in excess. In decent amounts, it’s delicious, inexpensive, and healthful. Fast food has given us sturdy, reliable food all over the nation. Not only that, it’s served without surly, pretentious waiters with bad attitudes. You just get it, eat it, enjoy it, nourish your body, and out you go to face the world.

Junk food is not the problem. In fact, in normal quantities, there is no such thing as junk food.

Junk thought is the problem.

So go ahead, food peeps, order the tapas plates at Mickey D’s and thank God you’re not dealing with uppity waiters.

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