Potato Chips

Public Enemy No. 1 in America's battle of the bulge isn't cupcakes, soda or double bacon cheeseburgers. It's the simple potato, according to Harvard University researchers. Daily consumption of an extra serving of spuds — French fries, crispy chips, mashed with butter and garlic, or simply boiled or baked — was found to cause more weight gain than downing an additional 12-ounce can of a sugary drink or taking an extra helping of red or processed meats. Altogether, after tracking the good and bad diet and lifestyle choices of more than 120,000 health professionals from around the country for at least 12 years, the research team calculated that participants gained an average of 0.8 of a pound a year, close to the U.S. average, according to a report published in Thursday's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Thousands of roses and boxes of chocolates will be exchanged this Valentine's Day, but maybe it's time to rise above the cliche. Man up. Roll up your sleeves. Kick the sweets to the curb and toss those fresh flowers in favor of something called the "broquet. "  What, you ask, is a "broquet"? It's a bouquet of "flowers" made of crunchy potato chips. Because nothing says romance like salty potato chips and fingers ready for licking. Ruffles is encouraging people to create their own "broquet" and share them on the brand's Facebook page.

Three new Lay's potato chip flavors will hit grocery stores next week. Only one will prevail and be added as a new chip flavor to Lay's product line. Frito-Lay launched a promotional campaign titled "Do Us a Flavor," in which consumers nominated various flavors. A panel of food experts waded through 3.8 million submissions and culled a list of 20, that's now been winnowed down to 3: Sriracha, Chicken & Waffles and Garlic Cheesy Bread. The new flavors are expected to be in stores Tuesday, and fans will be able to vote for their favorite one through Twitter, text message and Lay's Facebook page . The person who submitted the winning flavor will win $1 million or 1% of the chip's 2013 sales, whichever is more, the company said.  The interactive contest follows a similar move by Hasbro Inc. to replace certain Monopoly game pieces after fans voted.

Three new Lay's potato chip flavors will hit grocery stores next week. Only one will prevail and be added as a new chip flavor to Lay's product line. Frito-Lay launched a promotional campaign titled "Do Us a Flavor," in which consumers nominated various flavors. A panel of food experts waded through 3.8 million submissions and culled a list of 20, that's now been winnowed down to 3: Sriracha, Chicken & Waffles and Garlic Cheesy Bread. The new flavors are expected to be in stores Tuesday, and fans will be able to vote for their favorite one through Twitter, text message and Lay's Facebook page . The person who submitted the winning flavor will win $1 million or 1% of the chip's 2013 sales, whichever is more, the company said.  The interactive contest follows a similar move by Hasbro Inc. to replace certain Monopoly game pieces after fans voted.

It's a rare quiet night, and I'm ecstatic that I've found a "Law & Order" marathon on TV. All I need is something to eat that's good enough and not bad enough (translation: tastes good but not high-calorie). Potato chips should do the trick. Freshly made, oil-free chips, cooked in the microwave. That's right. Thinly sliced potatoes (or other produce) can be laid out on a silicon tray and microwaved. The results taste fresher than bagged fat-free chips, and the produce can be seasoned any way you like.

Many people go to Sycamore Kitchen for the sticky pecan rolls, the kouign amann , or the chewy peanut-coconut bars, and it is hard to blame them. The restaurant is the new breakfast-lunch project of Quinn and Karen Hatfield, of the estimable Hatfields Restaurant , and it is a chance to taste Karen's pastries without the expense or trouble of a long tasting menu. Sycamore Kitchen is mostly shady patio, which is nice this time of year; the limeade is delicious, and they are one of the very few places at the moment serving the cult coffees from Stumptown, a brand Portland and Brooklyn have in common.

Two of four youngsters aged 4 to 13 will be charged with manslaughter in the death of a 6-year-old deaf and mute boy who was beaten at a playground in a dispute over a bag of potato chips, authorities said today. Charges also may be filed against the two other youngsters who admitted taking part in the Nov. 25 beating of Torrence A. Davis, Lt. Jerry Winebrenner said. The victim died the day after the beating.

Stress is a major factor in many of our health-related problems. A key way to reduce stress is to simplify. By reducing clutter, commitments, tasks and expenses, your life will streamline into the Stress Free Zone. Elaine St. James tells us how. Dear Elaine St. James: While I'm eager to cut back and live more simply, my husband is out buying every new computer gadget that comes along.

California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown announced last week that he'd settled lawsuits against leading makers of potato chips and French fries over levels of a cancer-causing chemical in their products. At first blush, this looked like a laudable example of the public and private sectors working together to safeguard consumers. In reality, it was a textbook illustration of how companies all too often have to be dragged screaming and kicking to do the right thing.

Frito-Lay plans to open a potato chip plant in Visalia next year, increasing the city's work force by as many as 150 people. The Texas-based subsidiary of PepsiCo Inc. said it will begin manufacturing Lay's and Ruffles potato chips in a plant where Eagle brand snacks used to be made. Anheuser-Busch closed the plant a year ago. Frito-Lay will renovate the plant at a cost estimated as high as $60 million. City enticements included the waiver of $300,000 in sewer hookup fees.

Congratulations, America! We've become a nation of healthier snackers. So says market research firm NPD, which has declared fresh fruit the most popular snack food in the country. Even better, the popularity of fresh fruit is continuing to grow. Over the course of a year, Americans snacked on fresh fruit an average of 10 times more than they snacked on chocolate and 25 times more than they snacked on potato chips, according to NPD's recent “Snacking in America” report . Fresh fruit, chocolate and potato chips were the top three snack foods identified in the report.

This should be right up Lindy and Grundy 's alley: toy butcher shops for aspiring young butchers from Victorian England. Look at that detail! The butcher's neatly tied apron, the blue scarf tucked around his neck, his knife laid at the corner of the butcher block table, the precision of the cuts. Even the bloody sawdust on the floor. This particular one dates from 1840. I came across the link to these toy butcher shops at the weirdly gruesome and eclectic Morbid Anatomy blog, "surveying the interstices of art and medicine, death and culture.” Always something to learn there, and, of course, I've got the Morbid Anatomy library and museum   on my itinerary next time I'm anywhere near Brooklyn.

Was Tuesday the perfect night at the Hollywood Bowl? The Los Angeles Philharmonic lineup was cellistYo-Yo Maand music director Gustavo Dudamel. The evening was enchantingly mild, with soft air serving as a beguiling musical conveyance. The program contained two Romantic era favorites: Schumann's Cello Concerto and Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony. The 18,000-seat amphitheater was sold out! Nothing is perfect, however, when it comes to outdoor concerts and this venue. All the usual irritants could be counted upon - Hollywood traffic, picnickers blithely crunching potato chips and toasting themselves while Ma and Dudamel poured out noble emotions, helicopter nuisance, the compromises of amplification.

Many people go to Sycamore Kitchen for the sticky pecan rolls, the kouign amann , or the chewy peanut-coconut bars, and it is hard to blame them. The restaurant is the new breakfast-lunch project of Quinn and Karen Hatfield, of the estimable Hatfields Restaurant , and it is a chance to taste Karen's pastries without the expense or trouble of a long tasting menu. Sycamore Kitchen is mostly shady patio, which is nice this time of year; the limeade is delicious, and they are one of the very few places at the moment serving the cult coffees from Stumptown, a brand Portland and Brooklyn have in common.

It's a rare quiet night, and I'm ecstatic that I've found a "Law & Order" marathon on TV. All I need is something to eat that's good enough and not bad enough (translation: tastes good but not high-calorie). Potato chips should do the trick. Freshly made, oil-free chips, cooked in the microwave. That's right. Thinly sliced potatoes (or other produce) can be laid out on a silicon tray and microwaved. The results taste fresher than bagged fat-free chips, and the produce can be seasoned any way you like.

Cigarette packages will soon carry graphic images warning about the perils of smoking, because the earnest, if understated, written message simply wasn't doing the trick. The new images have already grabbed so much attention, it appears health officials may be on to something. Perhaps this could be a way to fight weight gain. With French fries and potato chips -- and, of course, sweetened drinks -- named this week as culprits in the nation's growing girth, perhaps the same approach should be applied to junk food.

Potato chips made with phony fat are useful in treating obesity and diabetes, a group of doctors, researchers and patients told a federal advisory panel Tuesday. But several consumers told the Food and Drug Administration advisory committee that the fake fat chips cause bloating, diarrhea and nausea. The committee of experts who evaluate food safety for the FDA heard testimony related to a potato chip, sold under the name Wow, made with an artificial fat called olestra.

Nobody ate potato chips Sunday when Monterey Park commemorated the woman who was once called the Potato Chip Queen of the West. The fare was strictly coffee and cake at the celebration of Laura Scudder Day. Louise Davis, the city treasurer and president of the local historical society, never got a response, she said, to the request she wrote to Laura Scudder Foods in Orange to contribute potato chips to the gathering. No matter. The snack food company today has little connection with its founder.

The time has come, America, for a tater tax. Now that a groundbreaking study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has demonstrated that potatoes may be a bigger culprit in weight gain than sugary soft drinks or red meat, it seems appropriate to exact a little spud money. You want chips with that? Ante up. No, we're not being serious. But politicians and health advocates nationwide are very serious about imposing taxes on the culinary villain du jour, soda pop, which is thought to be a key cause of the country's obesity epidemic.

Weight gain and potatoes work well together, maybe even better than butter and potatoes -- or oil and potatoes in the case of French fries. Such seems to be the suggestion of new research concluding that a daily extra serving of spuds, no matter the form, adds up to 1.3 pounds over the course of four years. An additional serving of nuts, fruit or vegetables, on the other hand, will add up to weight loss. The researchers, who published their results in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, broke that down further into the effect – over four years – of boiled, baked or mashed potatoes (0.6 pounds)