flavor – Techdirt (original) (raw)

DailyDirt: Colorful Burgers Because Why Not?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Summer is here, and maybe you’ve already fired up the grill and cooked some burgers in the backyard. But why settle for plain old regular burgers when you could cook your own kinda disgusting-looking ones that are novelties in Asia? (You might need a little squid ink and bamboo charcoal.) Or you could visit Japan and just buy a strangely colored burger from Burger King or McDonald’s. Too bad Heinz doesn’t make goofy-colored ketchup anymore.

• Burger King Japan is going to sell bright red burgers in two varieties: Aka (“red”) Samurai Chicken burgers and Aka Samurai Beef burgers. The red buns and red cheese will come from added tomato powder, and the ketchup will just be ketchup — or red hot sauce made from miso and hot pepper. [url]
• Burger King also has an all black burger in Japan. It comes with black buns, black cheese and a black sauce — not just black buns like the Darth Vader (“Dark Vador”) burger offered by French fast food chain Quick a few years ago. The Kuro (“black”) Pearl burger and Kuro Diamond burgers were first introduced in 2012 and have been offered in limited quantities ever since. [url]
• McDonald’s Japan also sold a black burger it called the ‘Squid Ink Burger’ for a limited time around Halloween. It wasn’t actually that black, though, and the cheese was just normal. McD’s sold ‘black and white‘ burgers in China in 2012, but unsurprisingly these burgers aren’t permanent menu items. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: black burger, burgers, colors, darth vader, flavor, food, ketchup, natural coloring, squid ink, taste
Companies: burger king, mcdonald's, quick

DailyDirt: No More Pure Chocolate

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Most folks like chocolate, but there are a few weirdos out there who don’t. Sometimes, chocolate is used to mask the flavor of stuff that’s good for you (like vitamins or minerals), but for the most part, chocolate lovers want to keep their chocolate free of adulterants. The supply of chocolate might have a hard time keeping up with the growing demand for it, so it could be difficult to preserve the exact same recipes for chocolate that we have now — and there could be “vintage chocolates” on the market, sold like fine wines, someday. Here are just a few chocolate tidbits for the choco-philes/chocoholics out there.

• The cacao tree is susceptible to a variety of diseases and environmental threats, but there are different varieties of cacao that are more disease resistant, drought tolerant and productive. However, the flavor of the resulting chocolates could suffer, but consumers might not notice the gradual change in the taste of their favorite chocolates. [url]
• Would you eat chocolate with an anti-aging antioxidant ingredient that claimed to make your skin younger? A $54 box of Esthechoc chocolate contains polyphenols and astaxanthin — ingredients that the chocolatier states have “clinically proven” benefits for your skin. Sounds like a great excuse to eat more chocolate, but it’s probably not as effective as the marketing material implies. Who wants “just the skin” of a 30yo, anyway? [url]
• Chocolates from the UK are a bit different than some chocolates made in the US — the first ingredient for many American chocolates is sugar, but it’s milk across the pond. Also, due to a settlement between Hersey’s and Let’s Buy British Imports, certain UK chocolate brands won’t make it to the US — and vice versa. (And someday, we’ll have more videos like this of people reacting to trying foreign foods.) [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: aging, antioxidants, astaxanthin, cacao, chocolate, esthechoc, flavor, food, gmo, taste
Companies: hershey

DailyDirt: Sriracha In Everything

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The hot sauce that has gotten insanely popular over the past few years is getting into everything. Several fast food chains — Pizza Hut, Dominoes, Taco Bell, Subway, Jack In The Box, Panda Express, Wendy’s — have added Sriracha to their menu in some way. There’s no trademark on Sriracha, so there’s no legal friction to using the name/product. Maybe some products aren’t using the real sauce, but it’s still free advertising for the authentic Sriracha. (And do you really want to risk alienating the rabid fans of Sriracha just to save a few bucks using a knock-off hot sauce?)

• Rogue Sriracha Hot Stout Beer has a little bit of rooster sauce in it. Spicy beer isn’t the only way to get drunk on Sriracha — there’s also Sriracha vodka (but that vodka doesn’t actually use real Sriracha sauce). [url]
• Sriracha-flavored popcorn made with authentic rooster sauce is available. “Every kernel is infused with the most amazing condiment on the planet.” [url]
• Sriracha has been in space — consumed by astronauts on the International Space Station. Sure, Tabasco is also available in space, but a liquid sphere of Tabasco is probably a bit messier than Sriracha in microgravity. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: astronaut, beer, fad, flavor, food, popcorn, rooster sauce, spicy, sriracha, tabasco, trademark, vodka

Pizzeria Attempts To Trademark The Flavor Of Pizza. Yes, Seriously.

from the savor-the-flavor dept

Trademark, while generally one of the better forms of intellectual property as used in practice and in purpose, can certainly still be abused. It can also fall victim to an ever-growing ownership culture that seems to have invaded the American mind like some kind of brain-eating amoeba. And that’s how we’ve arrived here today, a day in which I get to tell you about how there is currently a trademark dispute over the flavor of pizza. And no, I’m not joking.

New York Pizzeria, Inc. is the plaintiff in this case that was brought after its former president allegedly conspired to create a knockoff restaurant chain called Gina’s Italian Kitchen using NYPI’s recipes, suppliers and internal documents. The lawsuit includes an allegation of a computer hack, but we’ll focus on the judge’s analysis of the trademark claims.

“Intellectual property plays a prominent and growing role in our Information Age economy,” opens Texas judge Gregg Costa’s opinion this week. “In this case, though, the plaintiff seeks intellectual property protection for something quite traditional: the meal one might order at a neighborhood pizzeria.”

So, we have two pizza shops in a fight over ingredients and flavor. What NYPI is claiming is specifically centered around the resulting flavor of the two pizzas as a matter of trademark infringement. The claim is that their flavor is distinct. So distinct, in fact, that consumers would recognize it as solely NYPI’s, even if coming from Gina’s Italian Kitchen. The judge, as it turns out, was exceptionally good on this claim.

“As with colors, it is unlikely that flavors can ever be inherently distinctive, because they do not ‘automatically’ suggest a product’s source,” he writes. But even if pizza fans can close their eyes, bite into one, and recognize a slice of New York Pizzeria when they taste it, Judge Costa gives a second reason why trademark protection can’t extend to taste: “Functional product features are not protectable,” he writes.

The judge points to a prior decision at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board as precedent. a pharmaceutical company attempted to gain a trademark on the orange flavor of its medicine, but that was ruled out-of-bounds when the TTAB decided that by flavoring a disagreeable taste, the company merely “performs a utilitarian function that cannot be monopolized without hindering competition in the pharmaceutical trade.”

Judge Costa goes on to note that the scrutiny of trademark law applying to the flavor of pizza logically should be much greater than even the flavor of medicine. It’s a very nice way of calling this whole thing silly and telling everyone to go home. The case has been summarily dismissed, thankfully. Were this sort of dispute allowed to find any kind of foothold, a well-functioning foods industry could be tossed completely for a loop. The trademark-able flavor angle would essentially be an end-around the fact that copyright doesn’t apply to recipes. After all, if you can simply protect the end result of the recipe, what would be the difference?

Filed Under: flavor, pizza, recipes, trademark

DailyDirt: The Science Behind Flavors

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Part of the enjoyment of eating is indulging in the sensory experience of food. Whether we like a food depends on the texture, consistency, temperature (both physical and perceived, as in cool mints or hot peppers), smell, taste, and even its appearance. Flavor is primarily determined by our sense of taste and smell, and is often a main deciding factor in whether we like a food. Here are just a few links related to the chemistry of flavors.

• People may be shocked to learn that MSG, the infamous food additive that’s supposedly responsible for “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome,” is the essence of umami, the now trendy “savory” taste. The flavor-enhancing additive MSG, or monosodium glutamate, resulted from an attempt to mass produce the key chemical compound responsible for that delicious meaty flavor in foods. In case you’re wondering how much glutamate might be found in an original Umami Burger from Adam Fleischman’s chain of umami restaurants, the answer is almost 2.2 grams. [url]
• Why do people torture themselves by eating tongue-scorching chili peppers? Probably because the capsaicin in the peppers triggers the release of endorphins, which not only help to relieve the burning pain, but also give people a natural high. Check out this video about the chemistry of Sriracha sauce, which also includes an interesting bit on how the Scoville scale was established to measure how spicy a pepper is. [url]
• Here’s a blast from the past: an article about the chemistry of flavor as it was understood in the 1960s. This was a time when the now widely used Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) technique was heralded as a “major breakthrough in instrumental analysis in aroma chemistry.” The article also includes photos of old school chemical analysis equipment, as well as ads from that era for chemicals and equipment, from Morton Purex Salt to stainless steel tanks. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: capsaicin, chemistry, chinese restaurant syndrome, flavor, food, gc-ms, monosodium glutamate, msg, senses, smell, sriracha, taste

DailyDirt: Keeping Food Around Longer… And Longer

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Civilization has greatly depended on the our ability to store food for long periods of time. Without various food preservation techniques, our daily lives would be much different. Perhaps we’ve strayed a bit too far away from fresh foods, but the benefits of refrigeration, preservatives and food packaging probably outweigh the costs. Here are just a few articles on the topic of food preservation to ponder while you enjoy your next processed meal.

• Twinkies are back on stores shelves with a new and improved… shelf life of 45 days. Previously, Twinkies had a shelf life of just 26 days — and not an indefinite lifespan that most people assume. [url]
• Canned foods can last a really long time, and some folks actually prefer the taste of canned items that have been aged. The definition of a shelf life is not about when a packaged food is inedible, but when the food acquires a noticeably different flavor compared to a newly-manufactured item. [url]
• About 70% of the food we eat is stored or transported at chilled temperatures. And if you think that’s a high percentage: “An astonishing 80% of the nation’s potato output is cut, processed, frozen, bagged, and distributed as French fries.” [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: aged, canning, flavor, food, frozen, inedible, packaging, preservation, refrigeration, shelf life, twinkies

DailyDirt: Preserving Food For Posterity

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Modern civilization wouldn’t be where it is today without the means to store food for long periods of time. Before refrigerators, food spoilage was a daily concern for just about everyone. Now, we can keep leftovers in a fridge for far too long — and forget about it until some really furry mold is obviously thriving. Here are just a few links on keeping food from going bad.

• Food dehydration is an ancient technique that isn’t just for Ronco infomercials. It’s not all about beef jerky, but there is a lot of waiting around and chewy goodness. [url]
• Preserving foods can alter taste dramatically, especially when intense heat is used to sterilize delicate (and volatile) flavors. Adding artificial flavorings as masking agents doesn’t sound very appetizing, but there are some alternative preservation methods that involve zapping foods with electrical current that might help retain fresher flavors. [url]
• A deep-sea submersible vessel accidentally sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic off the coast of Massachusetts, and the crew escaped… but their lunches didn’t. When the ship was re-surfaced months later, the crew’s lunches were almost perfectly preserved by the hyperbaric storage.[url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: dehydration, flavor, food, hyperbaric storage, pasteurization, preservation
Companies: ronco