On Food and Bias | Wine, Foie Gras, and skin.

Today in my advanced physics lab, professor Kirkby discussed the importance of unbiased data analysis. In particular, he talked about how scientists can use a chi-squared test as a way to objectively assess the validity of one's error bars. That got me thinking about bias in the food industry.

Just last weekend, I went wine tasting in the Santa Cruz mountains, as part of a visit to Palo Alto. I was surprised by how reasonable the tasting was. Picchetti (above) winery offered 5 1oz tastes for only $5 dollars. The cheapest bottle of table wine was $21, but the price of tasting is refunded if you buy anything.

Our host - pictured above, teaching us how to taste wine - described the history of wine in California. In particular, he recounted a 1976 wine competition later known as The Judgement of Paris. It was one of the first blind-wine-tasting competitions in which California wines were invited - before that, France was neck-deep in its own pride to take them seriously (as a French citizen, I can say this). Beyond anyone's expectations, the American wines snagged first place in a significant number of categories. The results and ensuing controversy/embarrassment sparked and fueled the wine industry in California.

Though there is no doubt that Californian wines have merit, it's interesting to note that the results of the competition were disputed for a few years. Sure - these were motivated by nationalist interests, but they were not mathematically unfounded. Specifically, the Judgement of Paris competition only had about 10 judges with no common grading rubric. The resulting scores for each wine had huge deviations among the tasters. In the end, only two of the average wine scores could be identified as statistically significantly successful. In other words, the other wines were statistically indistinguishable (their error bars overlapped).

Since, the controversy has calmed, and the Judgement ultimately improved the quality (and quantity) of wine in both Europe and America. (Cool fact: Forbidden Wine is wine produced in Islamic countries, where alcohol is not religiously allowed. For example, Morroco makes about 40,000 bottles of wine a year. The majority is not exported).

It seems unbelievably appropriate, now, to bring up another French-California food topic that has recently grown in controversy! That's right - Foie Gras - literally "fatty liver" in French - is pureed liver of duck or goose. The fowl are force fed, and animal rights activists recently successfully introduced a law in California banning the production and sale of foie gras. (I wont go into this today, but I think the process is no less cruel that the conditions subjected to all other conventionally raised cattle. Stay tuned for a post about a field trip to witness cattle butchering and gutting.)

Akin to wine tasting, a recent study asked the question: Is it Foie Gras or Dog Food? The study gave 18 people 5 different pureed meats, only one of which was dog food. Only three subjects successfully identified the dog food. The report concludes "People cannot distinguish dog food from pâté intended for human consumption". Hell, what subset of the population eats foie gras (or dog food for that matter) often enough to readily remember its taste?!

I take issue with the study on several levels, but one this is clear from all these above examples: taste is an incredibly liquid, subjective sense. Consider how much smell plays an affect on taste, especially in a small kitchen:

My kitchen is tiny. When I cook something, my nose is inundated with everything we boil and broil. (Above, Ari, Mike and Jake are making a Poor Shepard's Pie). By the time we sit down, the receptors in my nose have been saturated by the ubiquitous smell of my food, which ends up tasting bland as a result.

For a long time, I would step outside for thirty seconds before eating to try and clear my nose. These days, I employ a neat trick I learned from a friend. I don't know how it works:

Smell your skin to reset your nose.

Ring Road and Radians

Preface: I'm almost embarrassed to post up a math discussion of such a simple problem, but the answer is nonintuitive enough to be interesting. Please share your thoughts!

Today is something a little different: math. I'm sure some of you have already lost your appetite - but hang on for a second. This is sort of interesting.

TL;DR I math'd a graph for Anteaters who don't know whether to take inner or outer ring mall.

As I'm sure many people do, I always wonder if I'm walking to class via the most direct path. It's a matter of efficiency and elegance. It's also a matter of trying to get to class on time.

So in the midst of mentally minimizing my mileage at UC Irvine, I considered the two main paths that make up the campus.

If the above image is not clear, the campus is pretty much a donut (geographically, demographically). (I live right next to the star-trek library on the bottom left). In fact, it's two concentric circles, one slightly smaller than the other. One can more or less travel between the two circles. The idea can pretty much be distilled as in the following image:

Lets say you're at your computer science class on the south west side of campus, and you want to get some Peets coffee on the north of campus. Both points are on the outer circle, but you have full access to the inner circle. You want to get caffeinated as soon as possible, and you ask yourself: should I cut to the inner path (red), or travel on the circumference (orange)?

We can find the conditions for the paths to be equal by setting the last equation to zero. By inspection, we find that at two radians exactly, the paths are equal.

I arrived at this answer the first time I formulated this problem, but it seemed so strange for two reasons. Firstly, the functional is independent of radius. Secondly, my intuition thought that it was strange to find an integer value of radians.

I asked my friends to find my error, and it wasn't until Mitchell Hsing pointed out that math doesn't lie that I reconsidered the validity of this conclusion. Assume for a second that it's correct:

Absurd!! Regardless of the relative or absolute sizes of the circles, the two paths are always equal at an angular distance of two radians. If you know any reason why this should be intuitive, or why it isn't, add a comment!

Anyways, I since made a handy cheat sheet for UCI to help you decide whether you should take the inner or outer path. It's a little simplified, but I hope you enjoy it! You can download the full version here.

Bread Pudding Recipe (by popular demand)

Sadly, today marks the first time in two years that Lees - a Vietnamese sandwich shop by UCI, raises its prices by 5¢. The food isn't terribly good, but they make fresh baguettes from scratch, all day. For one dollar, they'll hand you a still-crackling crusty baguette that burns your hands. More importantly, for the same price, you can buy TWO baguettes from the day before.

Woah. I know what you're thinking - you're thinking: "I thought this guy pretended to have standards!" It's true, I do. But I promise that when I buy day old bread, it's for one reason only: bread pudding. There is no easier, cheaper way to fit protein and carbs into a dozen students at a potluck. It's pretty much impossible to mess this up.

I learned that a lot of American's think of it as Southern food, but it turns out people have been sneaking day old bread into desserts to serve to unsuspecting guests for centuries - well, really, ever since the invention of sliced bread! Much more historical details here.

This recipe pairs well with "A Sunny Day in Glasgow".

Bread Pudding Template Recipe
(ie. Be sure to deviate from this recipe)

Ingredients
+ baguette, or other bread, that's too stale to eat
+ a few cups milk
+ a few eggs (1 egg per cup of milk)
+ 1 cup sugar for every 4 cups milk)
+ dash of salt
+ deep casserole dish

Preperation
Preheat Oven to 350F/177C/450K

Slice the bread up into a few pieces, with a few inches of thickness each. Use a hacksaw or axe if it's too stale. Keep the bread in the casserole dish while whisking/mixing together eggs, milk, sugar & salt until combined. It should be a pale yellow color.

You'll have to mess with the amount of the mixture, since it'll depend on your bread density and amount. Generally, I make enough mixture to reach a third of the height of the bread. At that point, I squish the bread into the mixture to help it soak up the liquid. If your bread is too stale, leave it for an hour. Add your dried fruit now too (I like raisins best).

Shove it in the oven for 30 minutes, or until browning on top.

Serving
By itself, or Maple syrup or Ice cream. You can't go wrong.

Instant Granola Recipe

Yes, this author is a little obsessed with oatmeal, though certainly the subject is not nearly exhausted. In fact, today, I am happy to share the latest in oatmeal technology, and my first original recipe.

For too long, humans have been plagued with the question: steel cut, or rolled oats? Though I cannot provide a definite answer, this recipe is sure to add a new dimension. Here it is, in a metafictionalized script.

(TL;DR: The recipe is recapitulated afterwards).

All the butter to eat you with (a skit)
Act One of One

Scene 1

(Wolf and Pig and in their apartment kitchen)

Wolf: (exhasperated)

Hurry up, pig! We're going to be late for class!

Pig: Now now, Wolf, I am reading a blog about instant granola.

Wolf: Now? We (look at the time) ... we're already late.

Pig: Right! -- so who cares if we miss the midterm -- we can take physics tests any day.

Wolf: You've got to be kidding me... (drops backpack)

Pig: Breakfast is an important meal! (throws 1/2 tbs butter into a heating pan while reading this blog) I can't do math if I'm hungry... (adds 1 cup of rolled oats, with dash of salt and sugar) Do you want some?

Wolf: Huh? Are you frying the oatmeal? It's not making that frying noise thing.

Pig: Yeah, that frying sound is actually from water evaporating from moist food. If you fry something dry, it doesn't make noise.

Wolf: Cool!

Pig: Yeah I learned that from this blog. Actually the entire recipe is given in play form.

Wolf: You would read that blog.

Pig: Stop complaining, I'm making you food. Put on some music, will you?

Wolf: How's this?

Pig: I like it. Who is it?

Wolf: It's this pretty cool band from Long Beach called Avi Buffalo. I saw them live in San Diego - at Sushi.

Pig: You don't like sushi.

Wolf: No - Sushi - its this venue that looks like a living room. It's pretty awesome.

Pig: (Dancing now, a little like Thome Yorke in his new song)

Wolf: Haha you look like Thome Yorke. I don't know how I feel about their new album.

Pig: Yeah me neither.

Wolf: So... what about that oatmeal?

Pig: oh SHIT I forgot it! (stirs the caramelized oatmeal) oh it got a little brown. Toasty. That's cool. Burnt butter is a carcinogen, no?

Wolf: I've personally looked into it, and I can't find any evidence or papers supporting that.

Pig: Thank goodness. (Pours oatmeal into a bowl) Smell this.

Wolf: That smells heavenly. And buttery.

Pig: (poors a little milk into the bowl. Loud hiss escapes the bowl as milk hits the hot oatmeal).

Instant Granola Recipe (serves one)

Ingredients
+ 1 cups rolled oats
+ dash of sugar (.5 tbs)
+ .5 tbs butter
+ dash of salt (less than 1 ts)
+ any kind of pot

Preperation
Preheat pan, add butter immediately (before it gets hot).Add the salt and granola,ix together to coat the granola with the butter. As the pan gets hot, reduce the heat, and stir the granola every minute for 5 minutes. It should start browning slightly.

Add the sugar. The sugar will start caramelizing, so begin mixing immediately. It might get a little sticky and darker. At this point, the mixture is really hot, even if it isn't making any noise. You're done!

Serving
Poor directly into a bowl, and add some milk (or yogurt?). Some milk will steam off instantly, and the steady state temperature will be slightly warm - perfect for these chilly days.

Broccoli Soup Love

My wooden spoon finds the walls of a Le Creuset dutch oven drum, as the Zipf's law white noise from the simmering chicken broth complement the blanched broccoli's intimate crunch in my mouth, and I am engulfed by the thousands of clapping hands emerging from butter-deep onion. This is my kitchen's Avant-garde concert tonight.

A similar open jam occurred last week, though the recipe was ad-lib. Neither the reception, nor the texture, was as smooth.

I am a firm believer in coincidences. As such, when I received a Cook's Illustrated magazine today with a feature on Broccoli Soup, I thanked the many Gods of Probability and immediately dove in and tried to make it again.

Cook's Illustrated, a cooking magazine known more for its television counterpart, "America's Test Kitchen", does an excellent job of finding classic and modern recipes, optimizing the hell out of them, and churning them back out 15 at a time, five times a year. Their methodology is nothing short of scientific (gastronomics?). Melissa was kind enough to gift me a subscription for the holidays.

Melissa is also to blame for my recent broccoli binge, for mentioning off hand that a poster at the Science/AAAS conference last Fall claimed that broccoli helped the brain heal. As this PhD webcomic clearly illustrates, we can safely conclude that eating a little more broccoli directly increases brain size. Despite listening to 4 years of Melissa's advice, only my heart seems to be growing. Happy Valentines Day - I love you Melissa!

What is the garden?

The garden groundbreaking was yesterday, and I'm still overwhelmed by the amount of work that we accomplished. After breakfast and some speeches, about 200 UC Irvine students, staff and community members put together 35 beds, moved 10 tons of gravel and 5 tons of dirt. It was amazing to participate in a project that optimized itself. Each task group, like bed construction or dirt hauling, set the first derivatives of their respective equations to zero, and - on their own, without explicit leadership - became more efficient as the day went on. Yesterday was one of the happiest and most exciting day of my life.

This post isn't about the groundbreaking though.This post I want to dedicate to answering some basic questions about the garden. Questions that I wish we had addressed during the speeches yesterday. If you have other questions, let me know, and I will add them to this post.

What is the goal of the garden?

The primary goal of the garden is to provide UCI students an opportunity to learn about the food system through garden volunteering, workshops, and curriculum integration. Food production is NOT a priority. The garden is an extension of the classroom; it is not a farm.

Who gets to use the garden plots?

UCI already has a few plot-based gardens - they're very popular (Anthill Village Community Garden has a year long waitlist of over 100 people). We're not trying to compete - in fact, no single student will be alloted a single plot. There's no way we can meet the interest through plot rental.

Our garden will operate more like an urban farm - where the garden volunteers and coordinators have a global jurisdiction over all the plots. (See the last question for more information.)

Why a garden?

There are many reasons. Here are a few good ones. (1) We're the last UC without a student-run urban garden. (2) There's a lot of gardening interest at UCI - we have over 1000 hours of pledged gardening from the student body! (3) A garden can provide educational opportunities in three way - through passive exposure to the student body, and active participation in gardening or in workshops.

Why in Arroyo Vista Housing, on an old Volleyball Court?

Finding land for the garden was one of the hardest steps in establishing this project. All the land at UCI has been alloted for something since the early 90s. The Anteater Garden Initiative had virtually no choice in space. After months of negotiations, the former volleyball court turned construction storage was the ONLY choice offered by the administration.

We know that the Arroyo Vista Student Council voted for the garden to cover the south end of the Arroyo Vista field, and NOT the volleyball court. We were really happy to have the support of the AVSC, and we were ready to begin construction on the field. Unfortunately, Student Affairs and the Arroyo Vista Housing Office (Director Harvey) ignored the AVSC's vote, and offered the volley ball court as the only option.

The garden wants to maintain a positive relationship with the AV Residents and the Greek community, despite this conflict of interest.

How will the garden volunteering work?

Sign up at our website! Garden scheduling will be bi-quarterly (twice-a-quarter). After assessing every volunteer's availability, and hosting a couple of orientation events, we will have regular gardening hours a few times a week, coordinated by a garden commission volunteer coordinator. Throughout the quarter, all volunteers and volunteer coordinators will meet on a biweekly or monthly basis to address garden agenda.

Who is allowed to garden?

All UC Irvine Community Members registered as trained volunteers (training will be offered at the beginning of every biquarterly volunteering cycle.

Who decides what food is grown, and where the food goes?

This garden is student run and student funded. It makes the most sense for the garden volunteers to decide what is grown, and how the harvest will be used at the end of the season.

How can I get involved?

Sign your email up at our ASUCI website - www.asuci.uci.edu/garden

You'll shortly be contacted by a volunteer coordinator to evaluate your availability, and let you know when the next volunteer orientation will be. There are also a lot of internship and leadership opportunities through the Garden Commission - the ASUCI entity that is in charge of running the background work, logistics, funding, budgeting, purchasing, coordinating, organizing, etc. If you're interested in getting more involved in the leadership, shoot us an email! garden@asuci.uci.edu

Have another question? Put it in the comments, and I'll add it to this post!

ASUCI Garden

I have a confession. For the last eighteen months, I have been working my butt off with five other undergraduates to establish the first ever, completely student run, education based, on campus food garden at UC Irvine.

Eighteen months ago, I halfheartedly proposed a new campaign to the Real Food Challenge at UCI - a student organization dedicated to increasing the procurement of environmentally friendly, socially responsible and economically viable food on campus through advocacy and education projects. The idea was simple: lets start a student run food garden that operates more like an extended classroom than a farm. The garden space would provide food education through volunteering opportunities, workshops and extension of university curriculum.

Alexandra Nagy - a good friend and fellow co-president of RFC@UCI, had suggested the same idea a few months before. So, we decided one day to walk into the office of the Director of Environmental and Campus Planning at UCI, and asked for a garden. He asked the most obvious question imaginable: how big do you want it to be? uh...well...we were really unprepared, and it was about at this point when I realized that this was going to be a longer project than I anticipated.

A group of five undergraduates began meeting weekly, and in no time, we had the support of hundreds of students, and several key faculty and administrators. In the Fall of last year, the Scholarship Opportunities Office helped me identify appropriate fellowships for which to apply, and then continued to provide essential feedback throughout the application process. In the end, I was selected as an alternate to the Strauss Fellowship Foundation.

Concurrent to the Strauss application process, we also applied for a grant from UCI's very own TGIF - the Green Initiative Fund, from whom we were granted over $30,000! I'm glad that I was able to use some funds from TGIF - which is student funded - to provide students with a new resource.

Finding land for the garden was also a lengthy bureaucratic nightmare worth noting - nearly all of the land at UCI has been planned for development, through the Long Term Development Plan established decades ago. In the beginning of September, we finally were able to settled on a quarter-acre plot of land in Arroyo Vista. This would not have been possible without the support from key administrators, including Vice Chancellor Dan Dooros and Director of the Student Center, and our advisor: Stacey Murren.

This weekend we are celebrating the groundbreaking of the garden. We plan to build nearly 50 raised beds in a day. We'll have free food, free tshirts, and plenty of work to do - all day! There will be painting, eating, planting, building and sweat. We expect upwards of 500 students to attend the event. I hope you can make it - more information is at this link.

I am graduating in the Spring, with a BS in Physics. It is heartwarming to see the campaign that I have worked diligently on for 18 months come to fruition, and I am overjoyed that I can leave behind a legacy at UCI and provide new opportunities to fellow students. Before June, I will help strengthen the foundation of the garden and do my best to guarantee its future success.

I must confess that this project is my love child - a bastard campaign that quickly grew beyond my expectations and took a lot of time from my academics and other interests. I've come to peace with this imbalance. Undertaking this project has only been rewarding an experience, and one from which I've learned more than I would have from any classroom. I encourage anyone with ambitious ideas to pursue them, for the sake of the experience. I am fully convinced that UC Irvine has more opportunities for undergraduates to pursue more cocurricular and extracurricular activities than even the most prestigious universities.

The garden would not have been possible without the encouragement and invaluable help of the following entities and people: The Scholarship Opportunities Office Counselors; ASUCI; TGIF; The Strauss Fellowship; Kevin Schlunegger; Megan Braun, Dan Dooros, Richard Demerjian; Sitara Nayudu; Logan Frick. Thanks to Linda Huang for designing our awesome UCI logo. The garden would have been downright impossible without the Anteater Garden Initiative: Alexandra Nagy, Alexandre Colavin, Lauren Hopfenbeck, Steve Han, David Lee, Sandy Chirico, Alexis Kim and the Real Food Challenge at UCI.

You can find more information about our garden at the ASUCI website. I also invite you to check out our original, 18 page proposal to student affairs.

I'll update this post soon with photos, timelapses, etc. from the groundbreaking ... in 48 hours!