Steer your cart through any supermarket and they are everywhere – packaged foods of every imaginable kind. Universally, these can be considered “processed” and it’s a term you’ve likely heard bantered around for years. But recently, new terminology has emerged to define certain foods and beverages that are processed and then some – in other words, ultra-processed foods.

Experts estimate that falls under this ultra-processed category – and that’s concerning to health experts. According to the American Medical Association, consuming ultra-processed foods (UPFs) regularly increases a person’s risk of health complications, including cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, obesity, and type 2 diabetes.

Most endurance athletes tend to think of food as fuel, and as such try to steer clear of unhealthy picks. But when it comes to gels, chews, and electrolyte drinks, that’s a tough order. After all – most sports nutrition, by definition, is an ultra-processed food. So what does that mean for athletes? Should we go back to the days of eating bananas on bike rides?

What Are Ultra-Processed Foods?

While there is no universally-agreed definition, an ingredient list that reads like a chemistry quiz is a tip-off for something being ultra-processed. These foods go through multiple processing steps, from stripping away nutrients to mixing in sweeteners, fats, salt, artificial flavors, and emulsifiers to alter taste, texture and shelf life. This flavor and texture manipulation is the reason why ultra-processed foods are tasty – and why we keep coming back for more.

Items that often fall into the UPF category include frozen meals, baked goods, soft drinks, hot dogs, boxed cereals, ice cream, white bread, fast food pizza, and potato chips. This designation also applies to most performance-oriented foods like gels, chews, and bars. Even the most casual sports fan has seen athletes gulping down neon sports drinks on the sidelines and during post-game media interviews, and gels and chews are at every aid station during a race. They’re small, shelf-stable, portable, and formulated to fuel your workouts, which is why it’s easy to overlook their ultra-processed characteristics.

What the Science Says about Ultra-Processed Foods

Some degree of processing is nothing to fret about – after all, a bag of frozen blueberries can be considered a processed food but certainly not something that should be avoided. But eating too much food that has been powerfully manipulated by manufacturers .

A in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine associated the highest consumption amounts of UPFs with a 17% increase in the risk of cardiovascular disease-related mortality and a 16% increase in the risk for all-cause mortality. A in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition links UPFs to accelerated biological aging, noting that factors beyond the poor nutritional content such as the addition of non-nutrient components like emulsifiers and preservatives might largely contribute to the accelerated aging effect.

More data shows that UPFs can impact everything from brain to bone to microbiome health. Dyslipidemia, hypertension, weight gain, and insulin resistance are why going heavy on UPFs can be bad news for longevity. Truly concerning is that now Ìęthe daily calories in the typical American diet come from UPFs.

Is My Sports Nutrition an Ultra-Processed Food?

Let’s take a look at the makeup of a few types of popular sports nutrition products.

Vanilla gel

Ingredient list: Maltodextrin, water, fructose, L-leucine, potassium citrate, sodium citrate, citric acid, calcium carbonate, L-valine, sea salt, natural flavor, green tea (leaf) extract (contains caffeine), gellan gum, L-isoleucine, sunflower oil, sodium benzoate (preservative), potassium sorbate (preservative)

Is it ultra-processed? Yes.

Strawberry energy chew

Ingredient list: Organic tapioca syrup, organic cane sugar, water, pectin, potassium citrate, citric acid, natural flavors, Vit B3/B6/B12, fruit blends of apple, blueberry, pomegranate

Ultra-processed? You bet.Ìę

Lemon-lime sports drink mix

Triple source energy blend (maltodextrose, dextrose, fructose), citric acid, silicon dioxide, natural flavors

Are you drinking a UPF? You know the answer.

It’s almost impossible to argue that the above food, like the vast majority of packaged sports nutrition products on the market, are not ultra-processed based on the somewhat loose definition of this food group. So is this something to be concerned about if you frequently fuel your exercise sessions with these products? Or is it possible that ultra-processed gels and drinks are the right nutritional choice for triathletes and do no harm?

Let’s dig into what we know about the benefits and risks.

Yes, You Can Still Use Some Ultra-Processed Sports Nutrition

There is a reason why rely on the various guises of packaged ultra-processed sports nutrition products to get them to the finish line: because they work. We have that purposefully using a UPF around training and competing can be helpful for performance. Sports foods are specially manufactured for athletes to provide the nutrients they may need during training or racing. (Imagine running for many hours with a sack of bananas.)

Sports nutrition is processed to create fast-digesting carbohydrates in the form of gels, chews, and beverages to keep your muscles adequately fueled. As we increase the intensity of what we’re doing, we need more and more carbs (and calories!) as a fuel source. Ultra-processed sports foods use a mix of simple sugars to help with the digestibility and use of those carbs, while added citrusy or chocolatey flavors make them desirable to consume. That’s something most people don’t think about until they encounter an unflavored or unpleasant-tasting gel: If you don’t eat or drink something, then you can’t fuel the machine.

Athletes have special nutritional requirements to maximize their performance, and ultra-processed products can have a place in helping fulfill this. From a health perspective, we don’t yet have any convincing data that when UPFs are consumed in the context of long-duration or vigorous exercise they will have a deleterious impact on well-being. It’s easy to argue that getting a load of heavily-processed sugar from ultra-processed gels and drinks during a century ride is better than not getting fuel at all.

The vast majority of research linking UPFs with poor health has looked at the diet as a whole, and also involved a population of non-athletes. of basketball players found that a high intake of ultra-processed foods led to no noticeable detriment to performance or cardiovascular health. So there was no spillover effect in this aspect. However, a high intake of UPFs affected their microbiome negatively, the consequences of which are unknown. No other studies have specifically looked at ultra-processed foods in endurance athletes.

Consuming ultra-processed foods sporadically in a sports-nutrition context is likely not detrimental to overall health. It might only become problematic if you start leaning on bars and sugary sports drinks too heavily when you’re not working out. If using UPFs to boost your workouts helps you increase your overall cardiovascular and muscular fitness, perhaps this benefit can counteract any disadvantageous characteristics of these items.

But There Might Be a Limit

With all the bad news about them, it’s understandable why about UPFs. We should not dismiss the notion that there will be some degree of detrimental impact on health with heavy ultra-processed sports nutrition product use over the weeks, months, and years due to the nature of their production and formulation. These days, many pro triathletes are pumping in more than 100 grams of carbs for each hour of activity, and most, if not all, of those calories are hailing from ultra-processed products. But perhaps what you eat for performance is not necessarily the best for your health.

In showing that athletes can tolerate more than 100 grams of carbs hourly and that this amount increases carbohydrate oxidation, there is some concern that not all this sugar gets used up during exercise. It could then sit around in your system afterward, resulting in a downturn of metabolic and microbiome health. We just don’t know for sure, and we don’t have the answers to this dilemma. As more athletes increase the quantity of use of high-sugar UPFs, we desperately need research to address this.

using continuous glucose monitors found even athletes with high rates of energy expenditure can spend long periods with blood sugar levels that would be classified as pre-diabetic. Perhaps some of that can be attributed to high-sugar consumption from UPFs during workouts. Even in endurance sport, you’re not fully protected from the adverse effects of added sugar intake pumped into UPFs, no matter how many miles you are cranking out.

There is also the concern about the health risks of eating non-nutritive ingredients added to ultra-processed foods, such as emulsifiers and artificial flavor. While hard-charging athletes have more room for “discretionary calories,” has shown there are health risks from eating UPFs, regardless of whether a person has an otherwise healthy diet. That means that eating too many UPFs – which can include fueling products – may be risky even if you normally also eat lots of whole, fresh foods.

suggests that endurance athletes that use whey or beef protein powder long-term may have a detrimental impact on the gut microbiome, which might not necessarily be because of processed protein, but instead the emulsifiers that are in so many of these products.

The post Your Sports Nutrition Is Ultra-Processed. How Bad is That? appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Some of the most hardcore athletes in the world are elite race walkers. Moving faster than most people can run, their sport pushes the limits of endurance, pain tolerance, and fueling.ÌęCanadian race walker Evan Dunfee was looking for any edge he could get when he signed up for an experimental nutrition study in Australia. He immediately became one of the world’s best. But not for the reasons everyone thought.

The post How Fat Makes You Fast appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

We’re not saying we have a beef with regular old jerky. We’re just saying our relationship has gotten a little, well, dry. Plus, nitrates, which are added to many meat jerkies, are getting a worse and worse rap due to correlations withÌę and nowÌę for people with bipolar disorder. Sure, you can buy nitrate-free jerky, but you could also try something completely new: alternative beef jerky.

As the ever-shiftingÌędiet pendulum has swung from paleo to vegan,Ìęthe jerky market has followed.Ìę(Check out this fun mapping the two eating styles over the past five years.) Of course, you can still find “primal style” dried-meat strips and bars, but alternative beef jerkies made fromÌęmushrooms, bugs, seaweed, and even coconut are also in the mix.

Are these even really jerky? We say yes.

The term jerky comesÌęfrom , which originally referred to dried meat—most likely alpaca. The livestock industry may take issue with us expanding the definition to include other dehydrated options the way it reacted toÌęnut milks branding themselves as milk. But these products are shelf-stable, savory, nutritious, and give us something to chew methodically as we march down the trail. That ticks all the jerky boxes in our field guide.

We tried the new options and picked the best for every jerky enthusiast, from the veggie curious to the hardcore vegan. Here are our favorites.

Best For: Pescatarians

FishpeopleÌęLemon Zest andÌęHerb Salmon Jerky

It’s impossible to make a fish jerky that isn’t, well, fishy. SoÌęwe’re going to suggest you have something potent—gum, toothpaste, a few wild mint leaves—to wipe the fish flavor from your mouthÌęafter the fact. That being said, Fishpeople’sÌęlemon zest and herb flavor tastes less like French kissing a merman than other iterations we’ve tried. It has a nice toothsome textureÌębut is more tender than a traditional slab of dried beef flesh. Like all FishpeopleÌęproducts, you can trace exactly where your wild-caught salmon came from by typing in a code on your package, a nice feature that keeps sustainable seafood companies honest. $8 per bag, available .

Best For: Keto Hikers

CocoburgÌęCoconut Jerky

When you take your first bite, you will decry this being included in a jerky review, even if it is a beef jerky alternative roundup. TheÌętexture is too firm—it’s almost more like a firm cracker than a slice of dried meat. But stay with it. As you chew, the coconut flesh goes from hard to pliable. We promise you’ll see why this totally counts as jerky. Even though I think of coconut as leaning towardÌęthe sweet side of things, the three flavors offered by Cocoburg live in the savory realm. This was the only product I tried where I liked the original flavor the best, though the ginger-teriyaki and chili-lime ones are pretty darn good, too. I had to put the bag in another room to stop myself from devouring all of it while I typed this up. $17Ìęfor a three-pack sampler, available .

Best for: Spice-Lovers

Jack & Tom Jackfruit Jerky

Jackfruit is always a go-to for some plant-based eaters because it has a stringy, chewy texture similar to pork or beef. When unripe, jackfruit absorbs the flavor of whatever is put into it. Which is why Jack & Tom Jerky is extra spicy, because it holds the heat of poblano peppers, savory tomatoes and a spice blend. It’s a bit on the chewier, softer side, but the spicy kick might make you forget everything and anything about this jerky except for: “WOW. THIS IS HOT!” $44 for a five-pack, available, .

Best For: Sustainable Eaters

AkuaÌęKelp Jerky

In case you haven’t yet heard, kelp is the new kale:Ìęit’s high in vitamins andÌęminerals and has a negligible ecological footprint, requiring no feed, fertilizer, or fresh water. However, the downside is that kelp tastes remarkably like licking a barnacle. Fortunately, Akua has solved this problem by flavoring its kelp strips with seasonings that have enough backbone to stand up to that saltwater flavor. The maple andÌęBBQ offering was my favorite, and while it doesn’t completely mask the vegetal taste, it definitely helps. $20Ìęfor a three-bag sampler, available .

Best For: Plant-Based Eaters

It’s Jerky Y’all Prickly Pear Chipotle

Made from non-GMO soy, this had the best texture of the three soy jerkies I tried. Each serving has sevenÌęgrams of plant-based protein, and a portion of every sale supports , a refugeÌęfor cattle run by vegans in Texas. All three flavors—black pepper andÌęsea salt, prickly pear–teriyaki, and prickly pear–chipotle—are good, but my favorite was the sweet and smoky combo of prickly pear and chipotle. $21Ìęfor a three-pack sampler, available .

Best For: The Jerky șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűr

EntoLife Chirpy JerkyÌęOriginal Roasted Cricket Jerky

To be fair, even though this is billed as a jerky, it’sÌęmore of a crispy protein bark than anything else. Still, I’m including it because it’s delicious and, with crickets in it, unique. A pemmican-style jerky, the recipe follows the Native AmericanÌętradition of mixing protein and dried fruit together to make one nutrient-packed power food. It’s nutty and sweet, and if no one ever told you otherwise, you’d never guess there were bugs in it. $6, available .

Best For: The Apprehensive Yet Veggie Curious

Shrooms Splits Filet Mignon and Portabella Mushroom Jerky

Maybe you’re not ready to dive fist first into a bag full of mushroom jerky. That’s fine. (But if you are, ShroomsÌęmakes that, too.) This willÌęmeet you where you’re at. AÌęmix of soft beef sliversÌęand dried mushrooms, it delivers tons of umami flavor. If you grab a handful at a time without looking closely, it can be hard to tell what’s meat and what’s ’shroom. Pretty soonÌęyou may find yourself graduating to nothing but a bag of fungi—like the company’s teriyaki-mushroom-jerky offering. $7, available on .

Best For: The ‘I-Need-It-Easy’ Snacker

Beyond Meat Jerky

If you’re the kind of person who likes their snacks where they can see them – no extra scrounging around gas stations and supermarkets – Beyond Meat Jerky may be for you. You can find this beef jerky alternative in most popular grocery stores no problem. Made with pea and mung bean protein, this jerky has 2g of fat, 8g of carbs, and 10g of protein per serving. $5, available .

The post 6 Beef Jerky Alternatives That Are Actually Good appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

It’s no surprise that what people eat has an impact on their health, but trying to pinpoint exactly what diet out of the hundreds out there is most optimal for a long, healthy life can be overwhelming. A new study reports that there is no one optimal diet for longevity, but several general eating patterns that can shift life expectancy.

Published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, the found that one can reduce their risk of an early death by nearly 20 percent by eating foods from one of four healthy eating patterns: A , , the Alternative Healthy Eating Index and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (more on those below). All four eating patterns emphasize whole grains, fruits, vegetables and legumes.

Professor and chair of Harvard’s Department of Nutrition, Dr. Frank Hu, said in a statement, “It is critical to examine the associations between DGAs– recommended dietary patterns and long-term health outcomes, especially mortality.”

Hu says there is a lot of flexibility when it comes to eating healthy and dietary choices can be tailored to individual preferences as long as they adhere to the basics of any of the four healthy eating styles. This means that even if you get tired of eating one way, you can switch over to another dietary plan.Ìę

The study followed the eating habits of 75,000 women and 44,000 men over 36 years. Every four years, the participants would fill out questionnaires about what food they ate, and each person was scored based on how much they adhered to one or more of the eating patterns.Ìę

Participants who remained consistent with their healthy eating patterns could reduce their risk of dying from respiratory disease by 35 to 46 percent, cardiovascular disease by 6 to 13 percent and dying from cancer by 7 to 18 percent.Ìę

Most people are familiar with the Mediterranean diet and a plant-based diet, but what about the other half of the recommended four healthy eating patterns?

Alternative Healthy Eating Index

Developed by Harvard researchers, the (AHEI) assigns ratings to foods for how well they prevent chronic diseases and illnesses including cancer, diabetes, heart attacks and strokes.Ìę

Some AHEI food choices include a variety of vegetables with a focus on leafy greens, four servings of fruit a day, whole grains, nuts, and vegetable proteins like tofu, fish and healthy fats like olive oil. In following this eating pattern, it’s suggested one avoids potatoes, refined grains, fruit juices and saturated fats.Ìę

Participants of the study who followed the AHEI eating pattern reduced risk of death by 20 percent.Ìę

Recipes that adhere to AHEI:ÌęÌę

Dietary Guidelines for AmericansÌę

is a metric designed to measure diet quality by how closely one follows its recommendations: Focus on variety, nutrient density and portions, limit added sugars, saturated fats and sodium and avoid sugary beverages. The guidelines are less specific on what foods to eat, rather an outline on how to customize nutrient-dense meals, meeting dietary needs and staying within calorie limits.

Within this study, participants who followed this eating pattern had a 19 percent lower risk of dying.Ìę

Recipes that adhere to DGA:

The post Want to Live Longer? One Study Says to Eat Like This. appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

When I say “bratwurst,” what do you think of? Do you envision a long, skinny Thuringian sausage? A stout Wisconsin-style oozing with cheese? A beige, flaccid supermarket thing flecked with too few herbs? Or maybe, because you’re vegetarian, you don’t think of them at all. With Oktoberfest just behind us, I admit that I, a vegan, have been thinking about bratwurst a lot. And not just any bratwurst. For me, it’s Bavarian or bust.

My mom is from Bavaria—specifically from just outside of Nuremberg.ÌęLucky child that I was, I spent a few weeks in Bavaria every couple of years, and during each visit, I absolutely housed a cool thirty to forty of these perfect, porky delicacies. The thing about Nuremberger bratwursts, you see, is they’re very small—usually three to four inches long, less than an inch across. As street food, they’re typically served three to a bun, adorned with a generous pump of mustard. Ordered in a restaurant, they’ll be served on a metal plate splayed atop a bed of sauerkraut braised with apples and juniper berries, mustard and maybe potato salad, a soft pretzel, or dense rye bread served alongside. There are also Franconian bratwursts—longer, thicker sausages with similar seasonings to Nurembergers. While I scarfed the mini ones on trips to downtown Nuremberg, romping among medieval churches and castles, drunk on pork, the latter were what my uncle most often grilled to perfection in his backyard.

I visited Germany in 2005 knowing it would be the last time I would eat either of those brats. I had already known for some time that my eating habits no longer squared with my ethics, and I was trying to learn to cook better veggie food. In 2004, I fell in love with a vegan, which not only underscored my actual beliefs but caused me to up my vegan cooking game as I strove to impress. But though I ate less meat that trip to Germany than I ever had before, the last night of my visit I hoovered bratwursts the way in that bizarre old cartoon—I wanted to overdo it, get sick of them for good. I probably ate ten brats in one sitting, some finger-sized, some large. But rather than turn me off of bratwurst for good, that final herculean feat of pig consumption, for better or worse, imprinted the tastes and textures into my memory for life.

My Journey to a Vegan Bratwurst

There were, in fact, commercially-made vegan Nuremberger bratwursts available in Germany in 2005, and I even smuggled a few home in my suitcase for my boyfriend to try. But they were weird and bready and frankly left me cold. While I didn’t know much about making seitan at that time, I knew wheat gluten magic was possible due to frequenting Bo De Duyen (RIP), a Chinese Buddhist vegetarian restaurant in Toronto’s Chinatown. My boyfriend had eaten at Bo De for years, and when he introduced me to it, I tried as much of the vast menu as I could, marveling at the tastes and textures the chefs achieved with soy, mushrooms, and wheat.

As things got serious with my boyfriend, so too did my studying of vegan cookbooks. I first learned to make seitan the old-school way—washing the starch out of a flour-and-water dough by hand until only the stretchy protein, the gluten, remained—from Peter Berley’s The Modern Vegetarian. I did this with glee a couple of times a year, ending up with rather spongey, vaguely beefy chunks that nonetheless pleased me greatly, until I at long last learned of the existence of vital wheat gluten flour—flour that’s already been mechanically washed, leaving only the protein behind—from Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s website. It was there, too, that I found my first recipe for a steamed seitan sausage and it absolutely blew my mind. The now-iconic process of mixing some sort of legume ingredient with gluten flour, wrapping it into a sausage shape, and steaming was actually developed by Vegan Diner author Julie Hasson, and cited in Moskowitz’s Vegan Brunch. Over email, Hasson told me that her inspiration came from veggie legend Bryanna Clark Grogan who “had steamed a seitan burger or something, which made me wonder if I could create a sausage and steam it. I added chickpea flour to soften the texture, so it wasn’t rubbery. It took a lot of experimenting to get that recipe.”

Thanks to Hasson et al’s innovations, I steamed many a solid sausage throughout the 2010s. Still, though I consulted with my mom and struggled through countless YouTubes made by Bavarian butchers to get my seasonings right, the right texture and, uh, porkiness remained missing from my brats. Then, in 2017, I joined the a Facebook group full of seitan masters hailing from Albuquerque to Zimbabwe that’s easily my favorite place on the internet. The experiments of these thousands of intrepid home cooks, business owners, and YouTubers took my sausages to the next level. I began to play with new flavoring ingredients and thought through texture in a whole new way. I even learned about making vegan casings, which has forever changed my sausage game.

Thanks in large part to YouTuber and author of Making Vegan Meat, Mark Thompson, many home cooks are now attempting Beyond Meat-style sausage with pea protein, methylcellulose, and a casing made from a, uh, chemical goo? I’m all for it, and if that kind of thing floats your boat, head over to . But for these brats, my vision was to go less for full-on verisimilitude, and instead celebrate the satisfying textures produced by humble ingredients like buckwheat, lentils, and wheat protein, as well as the meaty flavors made possible by umami-rich ferments.

I’ve been working on this particular iteration for a couple of years now, and when I recently grilled my latest batch up for two friends—one vegetarian, one not—I knew I’d finally nailed it. The former called these brats “Your best fake meat yet!” while the omnivore, not always a seitan fan, said, “It’s a bit crumbly and not all one texture, just the way a sausage should be. Very flavorful. It’s great.” Mission accomplished.

To all the sausage makers who came before me, from medieval Bavarians and Chinese Buddhist monks, to the innovators of the nineties, and the food scientists of Facebook, I raise a glass to you and say “Prost!”

The Vegan Bratwurst Recipe

I admit this recipe looks a bit long and involved, but it’s really just a matter of gathering your ingredients and mixing them together, no special techniques required. You can divide up the work if you like: whip up the dough on day one, wrap and steam on day two, then fry or grill when you’re ready. These also freeze well, so feel free to make a double batch to ensure you’re ready for the next Oktoberfest. You can also quadruple the spice mix (minus the breadcrumbs), keep it in a jar, and add five teaspoons of the mix per batch of sausages.

On casings:ÌęThe casing is notoriously the hardest part when it comes to vegan sausage. I have tested many, and have been happiest with but it is sometimes hard to find. Frozen beancurd skin works well too, just be sure to soak it for a few minutes before wrapping. Japanese soy paper used for sushi comes in third—it doesn’t seem to fry or grill up as crispy as the others, but it’s still a good edible option if you prefer not to use foil.

That being said, these brats are delicious when fried or grilled without a casing, so don’t let lack of access to soy papers or skins hold you back! The seitan and lentils and buckwheat on the outside get toasty and browned, and the casing won’t be missed. Plus it’s way easier to make shapely, round sausages with foil.

As noted above, you can also dip your foil-steamed sausage into a Beyond Meat-style casing per YouTuber and cookbook author Mark Thompson’s instructions .

On shio koji:ÌęIf you’re not familiar, shio koji is a popular seasoning in Japan made from fermented rice and salt. You can learn more about it . You can buy it ready-made at many Japanese supermarkets and online; either the liquid or creamy version work well in this recipe. Once you have shio koji, you can marinate tofu, tempeh, and mushrooms in it to great effect, add it to soups and stews for added umami. If you can’t find shio koji, miso mixed with water makes a perfectly fine substitute, your sausages will still be great.

Equipment:ÌęFor this recipe, you’ll need some kind of steaming apparatus. If you’re not using a casing, you’ll also need cheesecloth or tin foil.

Vegan Bratwurst

Makes four Franconian (large) or six Nuremberger (small) bratwursts.

Ingredients

For Seasoning Liquid

• ÂŒ of a medium onion (tennis ball-sized), grated on the large holes of a box grater
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely grated
• 1 tbsp brine from a jar of sauerkraut or white wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp shio koji or 1/2 tbsp miso and Âœ tbsp water
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tsp marmite
• Âœ tsp liquid smoke
• ÂŒ cup + 1 tbsp water
• Âœ tsp vegetable bouillon powder or ÂŒ teaspoon salt

For Sausage

• Ÿ cups vital wheat gluten (120 grams)
• 1 tsp white pepper
• Âœ tsp ground ginger
• ÂŒ tsp nutmeg
• ÂŒ tsp allspice
• 2 tsp marjoram
• ÂœÌę tsp garlic powder
• Âœ tsp onion powder
• Several grinds of black pepper
• 1 tbsp panko or breadcrumbs
• 2 tbsp buckwheat groats
• ÂŒ cup cooked green, brown, or French lentils, either canned or cooked from dried
• 2 tbsp olive oil

For Casing (Optional, See Notes Above)

• 4-6 sheets of soy paper or beancurd skin (see notes), cut into rectangles about 8 inches square, give or take, and depending on how large you want your sausages to be
• 1 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 2 tbsp water

Instructions

1. In a dry pan or pot (I use the pot I’ll steam my sausages in) toast the buckwheat groats over medium heat, shaking the pan occasionally, until they are fragrant, crunchy and tasty when you eat one, about five minutes. Watch carefully in the last couple of minutes so they don’t burn. Set aside.
2. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix together all liquid seasoning ingredients. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, mix vital wheat gluten together with all dry seasoning ingredients.
4. Add lentils and toasted buckwheat to the gluten mixture and stir with a fork until the lentils and buckwheat are coated. Now add the olive oil and stir until it’s absorbed (adding the oil before the other liquid helps prevent it leaking out later).
5. Add the seasoning liquid to the gluten mixture and mix until no dry spots remain and a dough has formed. Knead lightly with your hands a few times until the mixture is cohesive. If some of the buckwheat is falling out, don’t worry. It happens. Set the dough aside to rest while you set up your steamer and casing station.
6. Set up your steaming apparatus. (I fill the pot I toasted my buckwheat in a third of the way with water and put my steamer in.) Bring to a boil over high heat. Once it’s boiling, turn down to medium low to hold the water at a simmer.
7. If using either edible casing, prepare the glue by mixing the all purpose flour with the water in a small bowl with a fork until it’s a smooth paste. If using beancurd skin, fill a medium bowl with warm tap water and soak your squares for about five minutes. If you’re using foil, tear off 4-6 squares of foil, depending on the size of sausages you’d like to make.
8. Break off a chunk of dough and form into a log-like shape of your preferred size on top of your casing of choice or square of foil. It may take a few tries to see what size your casing can hold and what you prefer. Be patient and practice a little. It gets easier as you go. Roll the dough up in the casing, creating a sausage shape as best you can. Tuck the ends in as if wrapping a gift or making a burrito, sealing the seams with the flour and water glue. If using foil, simply roll up in the foil, quite tightly but with a bit of wiggle room, and twist the ends to seal them up. The buckwheat sometimes likes to fall out of the dough during shaping. You can press some of it into each sausage before wrapping, but if some of it remains in the bottom of the bowl, that’s okay.
9. Place your wrapped sausages in the steamer, cover, and steam for 45 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool for a few minutes. Transfer to a plate and allow to cool 15-20 minutes, flipping to allow the casing to dry a bit if you used one, or unwrapping from the foil and allowing the outsides to dry a bit.
10. Fry or grill immediately or refrigerate up to three days before frying or grilling. To fry: heat 2 tbps of olive oil in a skillet and fry until well browned, turning frequently, 5-10 minutes. To grill, rub each sausage in olive oil and grill on medium heat until well browned. Serve in a bun or alongside side dishes with mustard!

The post How to Make the Best Bavarian-Style Vegan Bratwurst appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Gone are the days when the best bet for an ‘egg replacement’ was a sad tofu scramble served by a patchouli-scented hippie. Now, chefs and food scientists have created so many new vegan eggs that it can be confusing to decide which ones to buy, and for what uses.

I decided to test out a variety of vegan eggs available at my local supermarket and share which I think is the best for four popular breakfast dishes.

Best for an Omelette: Follow Your Heart VeganEgg

This might have been the first vegan egg I saw for sale. They come in an egg carton-style package, and each one is a powdered replacement. I was blown away the first time I tried it out.

When testing it out for this story, I considered scrambling it, but found it worked even better for an omelette. The texture came out smooth and I was able to flip it with ease, allowing both sides to cook well. Note that these come perfectly seasoned already, so you’ll want to hold back on adding extra salt.

Best for a Breakfast Sandwich: Just Egg Folded Plant Eggs

Just Egg seems to be the most-adopted egg alternative in the vegan community—I’ve noticed that most cafes with vegan egg options use this brand. As I was searching for the liquid Just Egg bottle in my market, an employee who was also a fellow vegan pointed me in the direction of these pre-made patties. I bought both to compare.

Surprisingly, there was quite a bit of a difference between the two. I made a sort of mini omelette with the bottled version and folded it, similar to the egg patty. The patty was simply seared in a pan, flipping halfway through the cooking time. The patty came out much airier and fluffier compared to what I made from the liquid. And, because it was pre-cooked, it was able to brown a bit on the pan, which I really liked. Overall, I thought the patties had a better taste, too.

All this makes them the perfect choice for a breakfast sandwich. The patty stays intact with every bite—there is nothing worse than taking the first bite of a sandwich and stuff falls out from the sides.

Best for Avocado Toast: Vegg Vegan Egg Yolk

When I went vegan in 2011, I would never have imagined that we would be here talking about a vegan egg yolk. The first time I saw such a thing was at a restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, where it was considered super novel–and for years that was the only place I knew of that you could try an egg-free yolk. Now, you can purchase a packaged one and make it at home.

Look, I’m not someone who thinks the runny yolk of a fried egg makes everything better. But one food that really benefits: a thick slice of toast, piled with avocado. If done right, avocado toast can be pretty satisfying on its own. But adding a nice fatty egg on top of it will only make it better.

Best for a Classic Scramble (and Breakfast Burritos): Tofu

I know I started by telling you how far we’ve come from our tofu scramble days, but the original vegan breakfast still has skin in the game. In fact, I find that a scramble with tofu and black salt has the most “eggy” taste out of anything I tried out.

Black salt has a strong sulfur taste to it, which recreates a flavor similar to an actual egg. Depending on the tofu brand, I go for a soft or medium firmness. We’re looking for something that has a light crumble but doesn’t fall apart too much, like a soft scrambled egg texture.

Once you’ve made your tofu scramble, I recommend wrapping it up in a breakfast burrito. It’s exactly the thing to scarf down when you’re starving or hungover.

The post The Best Vegan Eggs—and How to Cook Them appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Whether you’ve just finished a strenuous hike or have been working in the heat all day, you’re probably reaching for a sports drink to rehydrate. There are two prominent varieties of the drink: electrolyte sports drinks and sugar-free sports drinks. Here’s what electrolyte sports drinks and sugar-free sports drinks are made of, their differences, and which is best in a given situation.

What’s the Difference?

“When strictly comparing, you may just notice a difference in overall calories, carbohydrates, and sugar amounts,” says , MS, RD, CSSD, LDN, Board Certified Sports Dietitian. Electrolyte sports drinks contain electrolytes as well as simple carbohydrates that provide energy to the user.Ìę“These options are much higher in carbohydrates and calories than the zero sugar sports drinks,” Ehsani says.

Sugar-free sports drinks are made with artificial sweeteners, such as sucralose, and are generally lower in calories and carbohydrates than regular sports drinks. However, this doesn’t mean they’re completely void of electrolytes. “Zero-sugar sports drinks are often intended for individuals who need added sodium, such as in humid weather where sweating is increased, but may not need additional calories,” says , BCDC. These drinks also have added potassium.

When to Choose Electrolyte Sports Drinks

Reach for electrolyte sports drinks in situations where you need to replenish nutrients, like after intense exercise.“I would never want a marathon runner to choose a sugar-free sports drink when they are in the middle of a marathon because they need those simple carbohydrates contained in the regular sport drink to give them energy and fuel for their race,” Ehsani says.

However, strenuous exercise isn’t the only way your body loses electrolytes. If you’re sick and throwing up a lot, for example, it’s best to rehydrate with a drink that will replenish what you’ve lost. The same goes for illnesses that cause dehydration. In addition to rehydrating, electrolyte drinks will also help restore any depleted fluids.

When to Choose Zero-Sugar Sports Drinks

If you simply need to quench your thirst or cool down, a sugar-free sports drink may be the better option. “If an athlete is in their off season and just doing very light workouts a few times a week, they likely don’t need additional calories and can use a zero sugar option, which will give them the electrolyte they need to replace from sweating,” Ehsani says.

Artificial sugars in these drinks aren’t harmful, as long as they aren’t consumed in large doses, which can cause gastrointestinal issues such as bloating, diarrhea, nausea, and an upset stomach.

What’s the Best Way to Recover After Exercising?

Sports drinks are an easy solution to post-workout energy and fluid loss, but even they aren’t the most optimal option. First, rehydrate with water. Ehsani also recommends with a 3:1 ratio of carbs to protein within 60 minutes of finishing your workout: a smoothie made with a variety of fruits and soy milk, topped with fruit and granola, or pretzels and peanut butter. To replace lost electrolytes, eat foods rich in sodium, chloride, potassium, magnesium, and calcium, which are all lost through sweat, she adds.

The post The Difference Between Zero-Sugar and Electrolyte Sports Drinks appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

I love making an elaborate meal from scratch, but that’s not in the cards every night of the week. Sometimes you’re in more of a quick stir-fry or one-pot-meal type of mood–but just because you want to make something speedy doesn’t mean you should settle for bland or basic.

A wave ofÌę great sauces and meal-starters have hit the market lately, made by brands with a commitment to using natural ingredients to create flavorful, sophisticated products. Several of them come in portable little pouches and packets—great for making a nice meal in an Airbnb kitchenette or on a camping stove—and all will help minimize the dreaded food waste of buying a whole basket of ingredients just to use a pinch to make one sauce. Most of the brands we included on this list are entirely vegan across their product range; where that’s not the case, I’ve specified which specific sauces are vegan-friendly.

Haven’s Kitchen

 

View this post on Instagram

 

You’ve probably spotted these pouches in your supermarket’s refrigerator case (my store conveniently stocks them right above the tofu), and this is your sign to grab one the next time you’re there. Everything Haven’s Kitchen sells is vegan, gluten-free, and certified kosher. Instead of using any preservatives, these sauces are “cold processed” for shipment. That means you’ll have to keep them in the fridge – but they’re good in there for about a month if left sealed, so you don’t need to cook immediately. The flavors are all dynamite and can be used in a variety of ways; I’m especially partial to the Golden Turmeric Tahini (potatoes! warm salads!) and the Red Pepper Romesco (roasted cauliflower! tofu scrambles!). If you need some inspiration, the brand’s website is loaded with recipe ideas.Ìę

Our Pantry

 

View this post on Instagram

 

After becoming a mom, Carolyna De Laurentiis found herself relying on jarred sauces and condiments a lot more than she had in her pre-baby life – but she wasn’t happy with the quality of what she was buying. Her solution? To found Our Pantry, a new brand that turns to acclaimed chefs to create the recipes, and then produces those recipes using transparently-sourced, worker- and planet-friendly ingredients and processes. The brand launched in August, 2022 with a range of four sauces: sunshine yellow Cherry Tomato Arrabbiata and Cherry Tomato Sauce byÌęChefÌęSilvia Barban (LaRina Pastificio, Top Chef); Sweet Ginger BBQ by ChefÌęAdrienne Cheatham (Le Bernardin, Red Rooster, Top Chef); and a Columbian hogao-inspired Roasted Tomato Onion Salsa by award-winning cookbook author and Chef Mariana Velasquez (Prune,ÌęMichelle Obama’s “American Grown Project”).

Omsom

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Sisters Vanessa and Kim Pham founded Omsom “to bring loud, proud Asian flavors to your fingertips any day of the week.” Inside their colorful packets are sauces that draw from cultural traditions of Southeast and East Asia, presented with pride and joy. Not everything Omsom makes is vegetarian, but several are – and they even sell a curated all-vegan kit if you want to sample all the options. Plant-based eaters will find themselves reaching for Filipino Sisig, Japanese Yuzu Miso Glaze, Korean Spicy Bulgogi, or Chinese Spicy Mala Sauce. If you have one of these, some tofu and/or vegetables, and a bit of rice, you’re only a few minutes from a meal that will taste shockingly good for how fast and effortless it was to cook. These sauces are great building blocks for getting creative, too. Check their website for recipe ideas including air-fried bulgogi mushrooms, crispy rice pancakes, and rice paper flowers. Extra bonus: While most food costs seem to be going up with inflation, Omsom recently added 33 percent more product to their packages at the same price. Incredible.Ìę

Brooklyn Delhi

 

View this post on Instagram

 

For at-home Indian cooking, Brooklyn Delhi is my go-to brand. The Vegan Tikka Masala Simmer Sauce and (also vegan) Cashew Butter Masala Simmer Sauce are staples, great for, as the name implies, simmering with some vegetables on the stovetop – but recently I’ve been taking inspiration from trendy L.A. restaurant Pijja Palace and trying them out on pasta and pizzas, too. There’s also a rich and cozy plant-based Coconut Cashew Korma simmer sauce that is so good with some of their multiple-award-winning Tomato Achaar or a dash of their Guntur Sannam hot sauce made with peppers sourced by Diaspora Co. Brooklyn Delhi’s products are all developed by chef and cookbook author Chitra Agrawal, who started making batches of her own achaar after returning from India and realizing the spicy, pickled condiment was in short supply in New York City. In 2014, she founded the company to produce them at a larger scale and has since rolled out the rest of the fully-vegan product line.

The post These Sauces Are My Shortcut to Weeknight Dinner Joy appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Each year, șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű’s sister publication, Vegetarian Times, celebrates the best new restaurants in the U.S. serving the plant-based dining community. This year, the list contains 11 fantastic examples of culinary craft, innovation, and resilience.

But, for those of us who have put up with countless restaurant meals where we find ourselves with no plant-based options, ordering an uninspired salad (“hold the cheese”) or plate of fries as a main course, opening the menu at a restaurant that’s fully meat-free can feel like stumbling on a treasure chest. “So you mean I can have anything?,” we ask our server, amazed. It feels like we’re being welcomed to the table—the very essence of hospitality.

The 11 restaurants on this year’s Best New Restaurants list all embody this sense to the core. Places on our list come in all different shapes and kinds, from cozy neighborhood cafes to ambitious fine dining. There are elite, big-name chefs and first-timers still working day jobs on the side. But every one of them invites diners of all kinds to enjoy meals that are beautiful, delicious, and carefully crafted. And each takes a stand in their own way for a way of eating that leaves the planet a little bit better.

–ÌęBrittany Martin, Editor,ÌęVegetarianÌęTimes

Vegetarian Times’ 2022 Best New Restaurants

Restaurants are listed in alphabetical order. For consideration on this year’s list, we looked at vegan and vegetarian restaurants that opened to the public between August 1, 2021 and August 1, 2022.Ìę

Before dining at , I probably would have thought fish was an essential component to a great bake and saltfish sandwich, but eating here proved that wrong. Their take on the classic Caribbean dish is created with hearts of palm sautĂ©ed in tomato and spicy peppers, and made me feel like I was oceanside, not in Flatbush, Brooklyn. The all-day cafe, bar, and store was opened in fall 2020 by Nicole and Michael Nicholas, and the space is outfitted in pleasant millennial pastels and wood paneling. But it’s the bursting flavors on the menu—from cauliflower with spicy peanut sauce, to a medley of green vegetables with pesto, and a tequila-pineapple craft cocktail—that create an experience that feels brand new.—Marisa Kabas

Sunny Santa Monica has no shortage of all-day cafĂ©s—but few of them come close to . The all-vegan menu blends Ethiopian flavors and techniques with California staples in ways that are at once creative and deeply comforting. The house breakfast burrito nestles tofu scramble, teff injera firfir, greens, tangfaye sauce, and roasted potatoes with Berbere spices inside a whole wheat tortilla and easily stacks up as one of the best takes on the dish anywhere. Start your day with one, along with a fresh-pressed juice or rich Ethiopian coffee. If you’re the type to say camera eats first, and mean it, you’ll be ordering Eat the Rainbow, a bountiful platter of red lentils, purple cabbage, bright sautĂ©ed greens, golden turmeric garbanzo beans, and perfectly-rolled tubes of springy injera to scoop it all up. The airy dining room and sidewalk dining area have a welcoming, family-like feel, which makes sense: Berbere is the project of married co-owners (and the T&T of the name) Tezeta “Tete” Alemayehu, who serves as executive chef, and Tsega-Ab “Bicko” Fenta, who manages operations.—Brittany Martin

There was a time where bar with vegan food implied a space with tattered booths and a local punk band on stage. at D.C. Vegan elevates the all-vegan nightlife concept to something else entirely. Stepping inside Botanical Bar, you’re transported to a whimsical, all-night garden party. The decor has an Alice in Wonderland feel, from the checkerboard floor to the floral-patterned walls, with lush green plants dangling from the ceiling beams and everyone sipping colorful cocktails that emphasize seasonal fruits, vegetables, and herbs. The food menu focuses on comforting Italian-American fare with Mid-Atlantic notes; the hearts of palm-based Chesapeake Fritters are a local fave, but you’d be remiss to skip the focaccia topped with house-made almond ricotta and sauced with marinara made according to co-owner Leah Curran-Moon’s grandmother’s recipe. Curran-Moon and her spouse and co-owner Michael Jantz-Moon started with a vegan catering business that became so popular they decided the time was right to make the jump to add a restaurant—and based on the response, it seems they were right.—Whit Bailey

Guy Vaknin, the face behind New York’s vegan sushi conglomerate Beyond Sushi, launched the Italian-inspired in February 2022. In addition to being vegan, the restaurant is also kosher, a nod to Vaknin’s Israeli roots. Indulge in the “cheesy” pizzas from their custom brick oven or the decadent pasta dishes. Can’t miss meals include the rich mushroom truffle pizza or the eggplant lasagna. In addition to the extensive cocktail menu, the restaurant offers housemade sodas in strawberry lemon mint and raspberry grapefruit basil. Plus, the plush stools and cool tones, accompanied by custom murals done by New York artist Lia Ali, offer a calming respite from the city. Celeb-spotters take note, Coletta’s become known as a place where you might spy a plant-based star at the next table over.—Ellen O’Brien

The original Crossroads Kitchen in Los Angeles has been a pioneer in vegan fine dining since opening nearly a decade ago. Now Chef Tal Ronnen has taken his luxurious approach to plant-based cooking to the epicenter of luxury, Las Vegas. Tucked inside Resorts World, the first new complex to be constructed on the Strip in over a decade, this new edition of feels glitzy and celebratory from the moment you walk through the restaurant’s private entry corridor. That feeling extends to the menu, which mixes items beloved from the L.A. location—like the signature handmade rigatoni in spicy vodka sauce—with new dishes that befit a Vegas level of decadence. Chestnut ‘foie gras’ with Cabernet demi-glace or a service of potato chips and kelp caviar go well with a glass of Champagne (or one of several thoughtful non-alcoholic cocktail options, should you prefer). High-rollers can skip the a la carte menu entirely and go for “The Crossroads Experience,” a seven-course tasting dinner that changes with the seasons.—Brittany Martin

Like their first restaurant Somebody People (which appeared on VT’s 2021 list), Sam and Tricia Maher’s pizza-, pasta-, and “disco bites”-focused second spot has been a massive hit since opening its Denver doors. The vibe is loud and busy with a riot of pink and orange, emerald green, black and white, and tables cheekily set with red-and-white checked napkins. It’s a perfectly modern take on a pizzeria, and with the wild plant-based offerings, the spot feels thoroughly of the moment. Order the Que Sera cocktail, a bitter, appetite-inducing sip of citrus vermouth, gin, and Avùze, followed by the mole-spiced tripoline studded with corn and zucchini, and the falafel pizza with almond tzatziki, fried beans, tomato, cucs, and pickled onions. Bonus, in addition to being 100 percent vegan, most items can also be made gluten-free.—Amanda Faison

If you find yourself in Bristol, Rhode Island—a quaint, waterside New England town about 20 minutes from Providence—dinner at is a must. Chef and owner Peter Carvelli oversees this classy Italian restaurant that would appear pretty traditional to anyone unaware that it’s entirely vegan. (If you’ve ever hesitated to take your meat-eating parents to a vegan restaurant, trust that they’ll feel entirely comfortable here.) Carvelli honed his techniques over years of pop-up dinners around the region before committing to his own permanent place, opening in July of 2022. Menus rotate weekly but there are always luscious housemade pastas, recently including cashew cacio e pepe spaghettini and a ruby-hued beet ravioli, plumped with cashew ricotta filling and topped with pickled fennel. The move is to put yourself in Chef Pete’s hands and opt for a five- or seven-course tasting menu. Every colorful, artfully-plated dish is a treat and there’s always something surprising.—Brittany Martin

Kyle and Katina Connaughton are husband-and-wife, chef-and-farmer, and partners in two restaurants in Healdsburg, in the heart of Sonoma wine country. The duo are well-known for their three-Michelin-star restaurant SingleThread, so when they came on to operate , just a few blocks away, fine dining lovers globally took notice. The complex—containing restaurant, cafe, bar, music venue, and farm shop—is a collaboration between the Connaughtons, vegan activist owners Laurie and Jeff Ubben, and Ken Fulk, an award-winning designer who heads the Saint Joseph’s Arts Foundation, an organization dedicated to revitalizing historic buildings into art spaces. Little Saint’s entirely plant-based menus prominently feature produce grown using regenerative and sustainable practices on the Little Saint farm and the SingleThread farm, overseen by Katina Connaughton. Then the kitchen, directed by Kyle Connaughton and helmed by chef de cuisine Bryan Oliver, takes that produce and serves everything with an unexpected twist. Think: cauliflower biryani littered with rose petals and crispy shallots, or Nantes carrots, charred until black, dressed with vegan XO sauce and contrasted with crunchy red cabbage and puffed rice. The complex hosts live music performances too; you might catch Phoebe Bridgers or Lucy Dacus playing an intimate set while you sip a glass from wine director Alexandria Sarovich’s thoughtfully-curated list.—Amber Gibson

Eating in Los Angeles is exciting because you get flavors from everywhere in the world. , the colorful Koreatown stripmall spot from restaurateur Danny Oh and chef and co-owner Mario Alberto, incorporates aspects of Korean, Filipino, Mexican, Peruvian, and Cal-Italian cuisines into a veggie melange they’ve termed “Angeleno food.” Alberto has worked in a litany of notable L.A. restaurants, cooked with many of the city’s top chefs, and recently served as executive chef of vegan Mexican restaurant Gracias Madre. In the tumultuous summer of 2020, he linked up with his friend Oh to organize efforts to cook and deliver food to people in need—and the pair found they liked working together. Their commitment to community and culture imbues every aspect of Olivia, from the genuinely warm service to the creative, delicious food. You might be eating a mushroom steak with smoked yams, a burrito with coconut rice, jackfruit, and salsa verde, or a pizza topped with roasted eggplant, macadamia feta, and kimchi. Somehow, it all goes together harmoniously.—Brittany Martin

Nestled within NoMad’s Plantbar NYC, offers an interactive dining experience that puts a plant-friendly spin on Japanese omakase. SimpleVenue—the same restaurant group behind the fish-based Sushi by Bou—launched the vegan concept in May 2022. If you find yourself stricken with indecision when it comes to menus, you’ll be happy to know the spot has only one offering: a 15-course omakase experience. The innovative Truffle Avocado Oshizushi and Watermelon Tartare Nigiri are among my favorite courses. Pro tip: You’ll want to make a reservation in advance, as the restaurant is only open Wednesday to Saturday and offers just a few slots for the omakase experience per night.—Ellen O’Brien

No stranger to the Philly restaurant scene, Mark McKinney pivoted from head chef at several iconic spots to opening up his own restaurant in 2021. A vegan since the 1980s, he created to, as he puts it, “do no harm to any living thing”—which for him means an entirely animal-product-free kitchen and one where nothing is fried and everything he serves is market-fresh and locally-sourced. Set in the hip Fishtown neighborhood, the restaurant has a laid-back vibe and serves up eclectic comfort food, from mushroom-and-eggplant burgers to masa ball soup, a combination of matzo ball soup and pozole. One of the most-popular orders is a crispy kimchi pancake that comes topped with roasted celery root sashimi, chia seed caviar, and a brush of spicy gochujang mayo.—Ashley Graef

Get more of what you love from VT. Follow usÌęon , , and and sign up for our .Ìę

The post The Best New Plant-Based Restaurants of 2022 appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

I’m All for Trying New Things, but the Original Mountain Dew Flavor—Citrus—Is the One True Path

By Jonathan Dorn

Of course, being righteous and different can get you in trouble. By publicly announcing he’s a Mountain Dew fan, Adam is exposing himself to by corn syrup-loathing coastal elites for whom this drink is the archetypal symbol of Middle America’s arrested development. Search the Twittersphere and you’ll quickly see why my friend will soon suffer the vicious slings and arrows usually reserved for political pariahs. Despite his otherwise ultra-woke diet and politics, Adam’s public embrace of Mountain Dew will forever taint him—in smart circles from Boulder to Boston—as a backward, junk food-loving deplorable.

As a fellow Midwesterner whose small-town dentist never pulled his sweet tooth, I applaud Adam’s courage. In standing up for a beverage with fewer calories than a caramel frappuccino—ponder that during your next macrobiotic liver cleanse, you sanctimonious, hemp-smoking snowflakes!—he is not afraid to endorse a guilty pleasure that many parched, palate-deprived backpackers have happily quaffed after a long, hot walk in the wilderness.

And yet 
 as much as I stand in solidarity with Mr. Roy’s choice of brands, I cannot abide his apostasy in promoting alternatives to the citrus flavor. My young friend has always possessed an admirable iconoclastic streak, but in this case he’s gone too far. ? That’s not a proper beverage; it’s what happens when I eat too many grapes. ? Sounds like a character in Transformers: Part 16. ? Cheech called and he wants his weed back. ? Is no one else appalled by the glaring cultural appropriation?

These wackjob flavors don’t bother me as concepts—for an entirely different brand. It’s the principle. I’m okay with adaptation. For instance, I believe laws should change, gradually and thoughtfully, to keep pace with human evolution. But with Mountain Dew, my head is buried deeply and passionately in the sand, like Clarence Thomas’s is on, well, just about any issue involving civic progress.

I mean, what backpacker has ever come down from the summit of Mount Rainier thinking, “I could really chug a DEWgarita right now”? Perhaps young Mr. Roy fantasizes about portobello burgers at the end of a 50-miler. Maybe, after days of rehydrated hummus, oat bars, and instant bloatmeal, his stomach is screaming for kale chips. I can picture him, celebrating a punishing R2R2R by guzzling a Fruit Quake with his tofu scramble. Almost makes me want to drive to the Grand Canyon right now.

No, over-the-top flavors and focus-grouped products are not for me. The last time I climbed Rainier, my friends and I devoured the obligatory huckleberry pie at Copper Creek Inn before beelining to Eatonville’s old-school Plaza Market for the first course of our traditional post-hike feast. The main event varies depending on locale—burgers, pizza, sometimes BBQ—but our appetizers are always the same. We wolf down beer, chips, and soda, a nostalgically consistent trio of indulgences rich in the nutrients deprived to us by an ultralight diet, namely: salt, sugar, and fat.

Speaking of fat, a quick digression: There’s a conspiracy theory floating around the dark web that Mountain Dew glows underwater, thanks to an alien bioluminescence that PepsiCo is creating in cahoots with NASA. I tested this by taking a plastic bottle of Mountain Dew on a recent SCUBA trip, and can confirm that it’s almost as legit as the one about Hugo Chavez stealing your vote. At least down to 60 feet. For all I know, the unearthly luminescence only activates in the depths where Nancy Pelosi is keeping the . (None of this is true, but here’s the thing: In our current society, it could be true. Meanwhile, this is true: PepsiCo used to put a substance called in Mountain Dew. Perhaps it softened the mouth feel. Or helped when . Don’t know, don’t care. The shit still tasted good.)

But back to our feast. Over bags of Tim’s Cascade Style jalapeño kettle chips and Mountain Dews—chased with a few PBRs—we recount the rigors and wonders of the trip, reveling in type 2 windbaggery and cementing the memories that will sustain us until the next adventure.

Old-fart backpackers like me know that the interstitial moments between escape and reentry can be as important as the hike itself in nurturing friendships and future epics. I treasure them, those fleeting and bittersweet minutes before we turn our phones back on. And, for better or worse, I’ve grown as doctrinal about the traditions surrounding them as my father was about the proper method for carving a Thanksgiving turkey.

What the otherwise-astute Mr. Roy may be too green to realize right now is that these moments can only happen while sitting on a curb in the parking lot of a Plaza Market, all smelly and salt-streaked, with the sun on your face and the citrusy goodness of an original Mountain Dew in your hand.

With time and a few more adventures under his belt, I’m confident Adam will come around.

Purple Thunder? Major Melon? Yes. Open Your Heart (and Mouth) to the Rainbow Selection of 21st-Century Dew

By Adam Roy

It was 10 p.m. in Boulder’s Skunk Canyon, and my friend Kevin and I were roughly eight hours into the mini-epic that had slowly consumed our entire Sunday evening. We had set out earlier that day to climb an easy trad route in the before a series of wrong turns, an , and an improvised descent by headlamp had landed us one gully over from where we had stashed our packs. Now, we were picking our way down to the creekbed below, our climbing shoes scrabbling for purchase on the pine duff-covered slope. And all I could think about was Mountain Dew.

At first, it was a joke—“I can’t wait to get out of here and order a refreshing Mountain Dew Baja Blast at Taco Bell!”—but as my water bottle slowly emptied, I became increasingly serious. By the time I drained the last drops, my desire for Dew had turned into the kind of desperate, full-body lust that people normally reserve for breathable oxygen. I wanted—needed—a cup, could almost taste that electric, fizzy burst of sugar and artificial tropical fruit flavoring on my parched tongue.

In the world of Mountain Dew, I am a proud explorer. Ask me to buy some and I’ll come back with one of to offer, a rainbow of pop with comically aggressive names like Live Wire, Berry Monsoon, and . Each has its own merits, from the tart citrusy nip of Spark to the slightly complex, grape-berry notes of Pitch Black. You can pair them with your meals, your mood, or just have a different one for every day of the week. And I’m not the only one imbibing: Each flavor has its own following in the outdoors, thanks in part to Mountain Dew’s Red Bull-like action sports sponsorships. (If you turn your nose up at soft drinks or fret about the 70-plus grams of added sugar per bottle, I can’t help you. As one of my personal heroes once said: Dew or Dew not, there is no try.)

There are people, like my colleague Jon Dorn, for whom the original flavor is the only kind of Mountain Dew that matters. I understand that, even if I don’t agree with it: Cracking open a can and sipping something so familiar that your tongue anticipates the taste is its own kind of nostalgic comfort, like slipping on a pair of well-worn jeans in the car after a long hike. But comfort and nostalgia aren’t what make Mountain Dew great. More than any other pop, it’s about joyful sensory overload, pushing hard on the full spectrum of pleasure buttons built into our primate brains. That’s why there are more than two dozen flavors of it for sale in the United States today, most packing 54 milligrams of caffeine per 12-ounce can—nearly 60 percent more than Coca-Cola.

No, the New Dews may not be as balanced and tweaked and perfected as the original flavor. At first sip, Code Red— staffers’ favorite by a wide margin, per an informal poll—bursts with sweet cherry flavor. By the bottom of the can, it becomes cloying, like they left out the water and just carbonated the syrup instead. I rarely finish one in a single sitting.

But listen: One time, and it rained every day. We were soaked from head to toe; it was so wet that eventually we stopped trying to skirt the puddles and just walked through them, muddy water topping the cuffs of our boots and squishing out the mesh with every step. At night, we’d huddle under the floorless group tipi, wring the moisture out of our socks, and try to massage the life back into our pallid, pruney feet.

Then, the morning would come, and we’d emerge to a world blanketed in that soft, pillowy quiet that follows a storm. Droplets dripped off frailejones’ fuzzy leaves and ran through the meadows in rivulets, filling ponds that chirped with frogsong. As we hiked, the ridges around us emerged from the clouds, mist spooling and unspooling around the rocky peaks. That’s how it is, sometimes: A thing’s flaws don’t just balance its strengths, they contain them. The drizzle that soaks your clothing sparkles in the light; the cherry soda that overwhelms your taste buds electrifies them, too; the clifftop sunset is the beginning of the long, steep hike down in the dark.

Should we avoid those experiences just because they sometimes make us uncomfortable? I say no. Because for an adventurer, the lows are just the price of admission to experience the spectacular highs of the world. For now, I want to immerse myself—to swim in its sticky, carbonated, occasionally too-sweet goodness. Maybe someday I’ll prefer lying in a lounger, a cooler of classic Mountain Dew at my side, to climbing mountains. And on that day, I’ll be so far gone that not even a bracing draft of Baja Blast will be able to bring me back.

The post It’s Time for a Mountain Dew Smackdown appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.