More is More

I've often heard the term "less is more," a claim that minimalism and simplicity make for better design. A perfunctory Google search found that the phrase is originally attributed to poet Robert Browning who, in 1855, wrote:

Who strive - you don't know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,-
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter) - so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia.

When it comes to New York City, though, more is more. Everything is bigger, brighter, noisier, busier. For the past two weeks I have sweat more, walked more and shopped more than I have all year. And apparently the city is embracing this concept and centering its marketing campaign around the word "more" - more to see, more to do. And perhaps it was the incredible East Coast heat and humidity, or the fact the I am currently dairy-free and more prone to notice, but I am fairly certain that NYC has more ice cream trucks than any other city in the nation.

When I first moved to Seattle it was still summertime and I remember the first ice cream "truck" I encountered. Since then I've seen all sorts of ice cream selling vehicles. Here are a few examples:



Ice cream for sale at the Fremont Solstice Parade








An ice cream van in Green Lake Park





While these sightings are relatively rare around Seattle (is it true that Molly Moon's has an ice cream truck this summer?), nearly every park, alley or street corner in New York has its own ice cream truck. In honor of National Ice Cream Month and Day I've compiled an album of NYC ice cream trucks. At first I took a picture of one to show to my friends in Seattle. Then each time I passed another I felt compelled to photograph it too. I couldn't help myself, but more is more, right?

Even Better Than the Real Thing

I grew up during the 1980's. I would later learn that this was a time of war - the Cold War, the Iran-Iraq War, the Lebanon War, but back then I only knew the Cola Wars between Coca Cola and Pepsi. And while the Cola Wars may have ended, with Coke going on to become one of the most widely recognized brands worldwide, the number of casualties continues to grow as the American public's waistlines expand and grow with increased consumption of empty liquid calories.

I am one of the lucky survivors; I don't like soda.When I was eight or nine I had the flu and stayed home from school, slurping chicken soup and noodles. After a day or two I got bored of this and decided to introduce some sweet variety into my diet. I went straight for Coca Cola and chocolate ice cream, but my immune system was in overdrive, affecting my sense of smell and taste and these favorite foods tasted awful. Eventually I learned to once again enjoy chocolate ice cream, but had developed a lifelong aversion to Coke. Over the years I would on rare occasion drink diet soda, but for the most part I lost my desire for soda before the age of ten. Today it doesn't even cross my mind to buy it for guests. The proposed soda tax, then, would not affect my life at all. I'm going to talk about it anyway.

The issue first attracted my attention last year when I was visiting New York and noticed the anti-soda ad campaigns. Mayor Bloomberg's health crusades had already changed the face of New York in so many ways. First he banned smoking in bars, which not only reduced secondhand smoke but saved New Yorkers countless dollars on dry cleaning bills (if dry cleaners were unionized they might have fought this proposal). Then he banned the use of trans fats in restaurants. Finally, he launched ad campaigns against soda citywide and proposed that the state impose a tax on soda - an idea that is being taken seriously by Governor Patterson.

There are many sides to this debate, but here's how I see it: not everyone who drinks soda will become obese and diabetic just like not everyone who smokes will develop lung cancer or emphysema. The arguments then for obesity, diabetes, rising health care costs, etc may not be universally applicable. However, we can all agree that soda has no nutritional value whatsoever. It should therefore be a luxury - an item that you can purchase if you enjoy it, albeit at a higher cost, with the additional tax money funding an improved health care system. Foods that we need in order to subsist and live healthfully should be more affordable, not less, than cans of soda that temporarily quench our thirst but leave us hungry for actual nutrients. When a can of Coke is cheaper than a piece of fruit, it's time to reassess our food system. I hope that one day this will mean that quality fruits and vegetables, free of chemical toxins, can be available for less. Until then, we should be willing to pay more for soda.

The Great Salt Debate

It provides an essential nutrient that is naturally occurring across most of the earth's surface. It is one of the five basic flavors. It is cheap and tasty and is innocently sitting on my table right now, begging me not to betray it. But my dear salt, I must say, you have stirred up quite a controversy.

In the past two weeks salt has come under attack as the latest evil in our food system. Several years ago major cities across the U.S., including New York City and Philly, passed bans on trans fat in restaurants, and most recently the state of California jumped on board in effort to reduce the risks of obesity and heart disease. Now hypertension or high blood pressure is in the spotlight as a major risk factor for chronic conditions like atherosclerosis and kidney failure, among others. One of the real threats it poses is that it goes largely undiagnosed - many people don't know they're prehypertensive, so they don't take the necessary precautions to avert the full blown diagnosis. Reduction of sodium intake is one of the ways shown to reduce hypertension leading to arguments that propose decreasing the amounts of sodium in our food supply by federal mandate. For years the FDA has requested this voluntarily of food manufacturers, but with little compliance, increasingly bleak health statistics, and a new report issued by the Institute of Medicine, The Washington Post reported that the FDA may soon impose sodium restrictions.



Not surprisingly this has generated some outrage. It does set something of a bad precedent - oh now, wait, that bad precedent was set by Prohibition. Granted, this opinion piece in the New American crying "nanny state" is not entirely reflective of my beliefs (especially the reader comments), nor is it entirely correct, particularly in it's mention of kosher foods (no, kosher foods will not be supervised by federal authorities instead of rabbis!) but it does make the point that it can be a slippery slope when the government intervenes in personal health in this way (though, for the record, I'd be okay with federally mandated exercise). Since salt is only one in a host of factors leading to hypertension, the FDA is ignoring some other important facts.

Salt is essential to the body. It plays an important role in balancing fluids and other key minerals like potassium and calcium. The ban itself gives salt a bad name and that can be misleading to the public. I realized this the other day while leading a grocery tour (been doing a lot of these lately) and I pointed out the sea salt to a group doing a detox. "Salt is ok?" one of them asked. I explained that not only was salt okay, but sea salt contains many other minerals that were health promoting. And, I pointed out, your food tastes pretty bland without it. Not because adding salt makes it salty. Actually, one of the reasons salt is added when cooking is that it is a taste enhancer and modifier. If you've ever made a soup without any salt it probably tasted like ... nothing. You may see the vegetables or beans in it, but they haven't released their flavors. A pinch of salt while cooking could have saved your soup. Adding salt to a dish after it has been cooked only adds salt to your tongue registering "salty" on your taste buds. Salt is so important that Harold McGee devotes close to five pages to it in his encyclopedic tome, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. The ban is not meant to deter people from cooking with salt, in fact if you refer to the table in the Washington Post article, that only accounts for 5% of salt intake. Additionally, there are ways to prepare foods with herbs and spices that decrease the need for salt, so that a minimal amount is required. The intended target is the food manufacturers who account for 77%. Why is there so much sodium added to processed foods and why can't they reduce it? A quick glance at the IOM's prepublished report, Strategies to Reduce Sodium Intake in the United States, provided this nugget:

Many foods prepared by manufacturers and in foodservice operations are necessarily highly processed; they are cooked at high temperatures for relatively long periods of time, and they must remain acceptable for extended periods. These contingencies may work against using certain flavoring techniques and fresh ingredients to reduce salt in some parts of the food supply. Further work to find alternative approaches is required.

So the question for the average American consumer remains: what's the deal with salt? Well, it depends. Are you at risk for hypertension? This is information worth knowing. Regardless, it's a good idea to decrease your intake of processed foods. But if that's not an option, a great way to offset sodium intake is to increase potassium which is found in plants. The Nutrition Action Newsletter offers some great ideas on how to defuse a salt mine by adding more vegetables to your meal. (A good rule of thumb when in nutritional doubt is to add more vegetables.) Increase your water intake, increase exercise and live healthfully. And then you can choose whether to add a grain of salt.

Free Ice Cream!

On Wednesday night my friend and I had just completed a grocery tour for clients going through a month-long detox and we drove by a Baskin-Robbins with a line out the door and down the block. What was going on? I later learned that it was 31 cent scoop night and understood the power of such marketing schemes. I'd had my fair share of scoops on Ben & Jerry's free cone days, sometimes waiting on line for up to half an hour. The allure of free ice cream is something that has long fascinated me. Years ago when I was in Israel there was a blood drive called "Pints for Pints" where you received a free pint of ice cream for donating a pint of blood. Dangling the carrot in front of the donkey has morphed into dangling the free snack item in front of the donor, walker, runner and it reminded me of the freebies I used to get at races, something overlooked by Clyde Haberman in his otherwise amusing New York Times column this week, "Walk, Run or Maybe Nap for a Cure."

September will mark ten years since I first "raced for a cure" in the eponymous Susan G. Komen Foundation event. At the time my mother was in remission from breast cancer and since we'd been walking partners for a while we signed up for the 5k in Central Park together. When we picked up our materials she was given a special pink survivors shirt and baseball cap and was asked how many years she was in remission so they could adorn the brim of her hat with the appropriate number of stickers. Since it was just under six months, they cut the pink ribbon sticker in half and pressed it onto the hat. That day there were 27,000 participants and it was powerful and moving to see so many bodies and to read the notes pinned to people's backs with names and faces of loved ones whose lives they were celebrating or commemorating. It was also the slowest "race" we could ever imagine. In that sea of chatty women sipping their morning coffee, pushing strollers, catching up with old friends, my mother, a lifelong New Yorker bred to walk with purpose, who strolls at around 3 mph and powerwalks closer to 5, began to weave through the crowd in effort to find a better stride, her longs legs extending forward, her elbows pumping high to gain speed and to knock anyone else out of the way. Next year, we decided, we would start with the runners. But the following year the race was on the morning before Yom Kippur and so my mother opted out and I went on my own. Again it was crowded, so I moved to the front behind the runners where I figured that walking fast would be better accomplished but when the race started I found myself jogging, and then running all the way to the finish. I haven't stopped since.



By now I've run just about every distance from 1.7 to 26.2M for many causes and cures: for child abuse and domestic violence, for leukemia and lymphoma, breast, colon, prostate and lung cancers, heart disease and hepatitis. In some cases I've raised thousands of dollars, other times I simply paid the registration fee and was looking to challenge myself and maybe set a PR. I've run alone, with friends, with my ipod, with my sister and could go on and on about my tumultuous ten year love affair with the sport, the challenges of hydration and nutrition and injuries and life. But while sports nutrition is something I hope to hit upon later, more curious to me is the gluttonous post-race binge. If you've ever done a race, hopefully you've made it to the finish line. And after having your chip removed you may have taken a photo, received a medal and grabbed a cup of water. And then depending on the scale of the event, you were likely treated to a host of goodies. I've gone to post-race parties with everything from bagels and bananas to Krispy Kreme donuts to Trophy cupcakes to Jamba Juice to Sabra hummus. But all that was nothing compared to the New York City AIDS Walk.

Perhaps because New York City is the epicenter of the U.S. HIV/AIDS epidemic, or the way the event was popularized by a Seinfeld episode, the AIDS Walk stands in a field of its own. Several years ago my sister and I signed up for it, assuming it would be like all other races. Though it was promoted as a walk, we would edge our way to the front to clear a running route for ourselves. But when we got to Central Park to find some 40,000 or more people there, we had to change our plans. We were unsure why we were given shopping bags and why everyone was moving so slowly. It started out just fine. Marching bands played along the way. Groups of high school volunteers giving out orange wedges and Capri-Sun drinks, many of which had already been discarded and were paving the road. We turned these down, but as other walkers stepped on the packets with their straws in place our ankles got juiced. Slowly the items grew more enticing. Boxes of cereal, pretzels, chips, cookies, Turkey Hill ice cream, followed a mile later by Ben and Jerry's, followed a mile later by Haagen Daaz and then Starbucks ice cream bars at the finish. After nearly two hours on this very slow and crowded course, my sister and I were incredulous. Other walkers had two or more full shopping bags of goodies by the time they finished, and after what felt like full-scale trick-or-treating session, it was entirely possible to actually gain weight on this six mile walk. And while it was wonderful to see that so many companies were supporting AIDS work, we wondered if all this food might have been better donated to those in needs, to food banks to shelters or institutions. Or had anyone suggested to the homeless population that they make their way to Riverside Drive with a shopping bag or two to collect some free food? I haven't participated in an AIDS Walk since but my suspicion is that the economic turn has led to fewer freebies and I don't think that's such a bad thing. Did we really need five different kinds of free ice cream? And what was the secret to keeping them all from melting?

All joking aside, I don't think anyone is signing up for races in order to get the free food at the end. My sister will joke that she does it for the t-shirts, another friend likes the medals, but each of us has some deeper reason. Whether to connect to a cause in a meaningful way, to join a friend in their cause or to set a new personal goal, I intend to race for a cure this season and maybe you will too. And if you're interested in free ice cream, that's also fine. Just sign up here.

The Prince and the Pauper

I first tried Little Lad's while working in Lower Manhattan a few years back. A vegan colleague of mine who knew I had vegetarian-like tendencies recommended it as a lunch spot and kept trying to drag me with her. Wary of this card-carrying PETA member's intentions, I repeated declined. But she had managed to pique my curiosity. The place was run by a Seventh Day Adventist family from Maine and I had fond feelings for such establishments since my summer studying in Prague, where I became a regular at a Seventh Day Adventist-run vegetarian eatery called Country Life where I would anticipate walking through the door to the cheerful daily greeting, "dobry den!" Recalling the delicious buffet where I'd first discovered a love for carob and buckwheat (not together), one day I snuck out during lunch to try the famous $4 buffet at Little Lad's.

Tucked beneath street level in one of the office buildings on Broadway, Little Lad's is like an old dingy lounge with an outdated 1970's feel. It offers an array of soups, salads and veggie-rich entrees which you can pile on your plate cafeteria style. Before leaving you must wait in line to pay for the all-you-can-eat goodness. Captive as you wait on line, they subject you to graphic videos detailing the cruel treatment of animals and advocating why eating an animal-free diet is the only humane thing to do. The images were jarring and I remember trying to look away, instead fingering through the goodies on sale near the checkout - most notably Little Lad's popcorn, the pride of their business in Maine. I escaped relatively unscathed and returned there for lunch a few more times, even bringing some friends who I knew would appreciate the experience. Each time I went I was amazed to see how crowded this secret subterranean site was with Wall Street types. So when a friend of mine started a new finance-related corporate job Lower Manhattan last week I couldn't resist. This friend, whom I will call "Derrick," had just moved from Seattle back to New York and the basis of our friendship was an ongoing joke about how I was a "dirty hippie" while he pretended not to be. If not for our mutual love for The Godfather we would never have been friends in the first place, but over time we became regular movie buddies and would split dinners, which meant he had to tolerate my food intolerances. If he was not the one to coin the term glutard, then he was surely the one who introduced it to me. Over time he softened and was even sensitive to my dietary constraints - probably because a ridiculous number of his friends were equally glutarded. So last week when he declared on Facebook that he was now working Downtown, I innocently suggested he try Little Lad's for lunch, that it would remind him of Seattle.

Then I got the call. I saw it was "Derrick" and was curious what he wanted midday, and when I picked up he shouted something like, "you sent me to a hippie den!" He proceeded to describe his lunchtime foray to Little Lad's where he didn't care for the conservatively dressed home-schooled owners' daughters' tirades about subjects ranging from misguided American eating patterns to, not surprisingly perhaps, the obsolescence of school. He was shocked to hear these young girls - who instead of being in school were working at their parents' restaurant - go on and on about how to eat. He said they had some silly phrase: "breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper." I was amused to hear him saying this, having sat through a lecture last week where my instructor recited the same dictum, not the least bit ironically. And though he was bewildered by the number of people eating there, he admitted that the food was delicious. Not only did it remind him of Seattle, but he met somewhere there who was from his old neighborhood, Capitol Hill. We laughed about that and said our goodbyes. I later noticed that before he called he'd actually sent me a text message: "At your hippie vegan propaganda place. Videos and everything. They won't get me!"

Approaching the end of my second year in Seattle, I feel like less and less of a New Yorker. But there are still moments when I can beam with pride for knowing some of the insider secrets. Like the hidden subway station under City Hall. The tiny community garden on Jane Street. The Vanderbuilt Motorway and the greenway to Fort Totten. Hidden gems. Like Little Lad's, which I'm happy to learn has survived the decline of Wall Street. It's reassuring that there's still a place in Manhattan where you can eat like a prince and not leave a pauper.