Month: August 2004

Beware of the Sugar Alcohol Maltitol

Ashley Bischoff183 Comments

As food companies try to lower the sugar content of their foods, they’ll try just about anything. In addition to the usual white-flour-to-soy-flour conversion, sugar is often taken out and replaced with a sugar alcohol. The name is a bit misleading as it’s neither a sugar nor an alcohol; rather, its chemical structure is merely similar to sugars and alcohols.

And, food companies generally subtract food alcohols from the “carb count” on the back of the package as they reason that sugar alcohols have a negligible effect on blood sugar levels. But, is that really the case? To find out, I searched for the glycemic values for various sugar alcohols. For those not aware, the Glycemic Index is a measure of a food’s effect on blood sugar levels. The scale is set up so that sugar has a value of 100. But, that’s not to say that foods can’t exceed 100 — potatoes can reach into the 150s, for example.

While a glycemic value of zero would truly represent a food which has “no effect” on blood sugar levels, that’s not to say that any effect is bad. Really, it’s the spikes in blood sugar levels brought on by foods with high glycemic values which cause mischief. Getting back to the sugar alcohols, I discovered that many of them aren’t that low:

  • Maltitol syrup, intermediate: 53
  • Maltitol syrup, regular: 52
  • Maltitol syrup, high: 48
  • Polyglycitol / hydrogenated starch hydrolysate: 39
  • Maltitol syrup, high-polymer: 36
  • Maltitol: 36
  • Xylitol: 13
  • Isomalt: 9
  • Sorbitol: 9
  • Lactitol: 6
  • Erythritol: 0
  • Mannitol: 0
Obviously, maltitol and its variants stick out. But, how bad is it? For comparison, corn syrup (a sugar derived from corn) is around 85-92. Sure, maltitol is lower than that, but it’s not that far off. As a rule of thumb, a glycemic value in the 40s (or below) is considered low. But maltitol syrup (53) is almost at the level of new potatoes (57).

So, which sugar alcohols are used commonly? Speakingly only anecdotally — from my recollections of food labels at my local Target — maltitol seems to be the sugar alcohol of choice for many manufacturers. I think we’d all like to find some double chocolate chip cookies make with erythritol (with its zero glycemic value), but I’ve never actually seen erythritol on any ingredient label :-/.

It may initially seem confusing to have all these sugar alcohols and glycemic values to remember — especially since so many food manufacturers liken all of them to having a minimal effect. But, just keep in mind these two: maltitol (36-53, depending on variant) and polyglycitol (also called “hydrogenated starch hydrolysate”, at 39). If you steer clear of those, the rest shouldn’t be an issue — the next-highest sugar alcohol is xylitol and that only has a glycemic value of 13.

Schlotsky’s Grilled Chicken Romano Panini

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

I was working late the other day and, by the time I got back to my apartment, it was a bit late to go about making dinner. So, I surveyed my fridge door for coupons. There were the usual items — pizza, wings and so on — but I wasn’t much in the mood for those. I briefly considered a burrito from Chipotle or Freebirds (both of which are nearby), but that seemed like too much food at the time.

A sandwich seemed like a good idea and I was about to go for Quiznos — if it weren’t for the fact that I had opened by credit card bill only moments earlier and noticed that I had been to Quiznos four times in as many weeks. In lieu of Quiznos, Schlotsky’s seemed like a good alternative. And, because I didn’t want to get there only to end up standing in front of the counter staring at the menu while I made my decision, I decided to check out their menu online ahead of time.

What I noticed on their front page right away was a new item, their “Grilled Chicken Romano Panini”. As it’s described on their home page, the panini has “grilled chicken breast and melted Gruyère cheese with sweet red peppers and fresh baby spinach on freshly toasted slices of Artisan bread”. That sounded pretty good to me, especially since I couldn’t even recall when last I had Gruyère on a sandwich.

The Schlotsky’s near me is only about a quarter mile away and it didn’t take long to get there. There was hardly anyone there, so I walked right up to the counter and ordered the panini. As I handed over my credit card to pay for it, the lady behind the counter verbally dispatched my order to the sandwich maker in the back (which wasn’t really “in the back” as the sandwich-making area was more to the side of the cashiers).

I could see him building the sandwich and I watched as he started with two slices of bread and added the chicken, red peppers and Gruyère. Then, to my horror, he omitted the most important part of the panini-making process: the panini press. In traditional panini-making, the sandwich is assembled and then placed between two hot metal plates which are pressed together. However, that technique was not employed this time; rather, my panini to-be was sent through the toasting-conveyor-belt just like any other Schlotsky’s sandwich.

Sure, the bread became toasted and crunchy, but it wasn’t really a true panini anymore. The distinction may seem subtle, but the benefit of the pressing process is that all of the ingredients meld together. In particular, the cheese oozes into the cracks and crevices within the bread to form a type of delicious hybrid cheese-bread. As it was, my Gruyère did melt, but only onto the surrounding chicken and peppers. I was denied any cheese-to-bread integration.

In fairness to Schlotsky’s, the sandwich was still decent (by normal sandwich standards).There were plenty of morsels of lean chicken and the red pepper was tender and sweet. As a Chicken + Something sandwich, I might have even been inclined to recommend it to friends. But why would they assume the panini persona if they were only panini poseurs at heart? I can’t say that this has soured me on Schlotsky’s, but I could really go for a good panini after having almost attained one.

Lorem Ipsum for the Video Age

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Peter-Paul Koch is a front-end developer based out of Amesterdam; he runs QuirksMode.org and he’s perhaps most well known for his work with JavaScript. (In particular, I’ve been thinking about giving his JavaScript-based image-replacement script a try.)

He also has a mailing list where he sends out short announcements on new scripts and articles that he’s written. And, in his most recent message, he wrote about his completion of a Ubachs Wisbrun site is all in Dutch and, as far as I can tell, they’re an advertising agency. Interestingly enough, they also have some of their commercials posted in their portfolio.

I stumbled into their section for Rabobank and I actually quite liked many of the commercials there. Sure, I didn't understand a word of what they were saying — for the most part — but that allowed me to enjoy them for their composition, diction and tempo.

And, after viewing a few of them, I realized that it reminded me a bit of “Lorem Ipsum”. Lorem Ipsum is a standard set of placeholder text that web & print designers often use in their mockups. By using what's essentially gibberish, designers can can create a design for client review without concerns that the client will nitpick the text itself (and, in the case of a design mockup, the text is only a component within the deisign and not intended for critique).

Obviously, these commercials for Rabobank are not gibberish, but I don’t speak Dutch so I can’t understand a word of it. And, with the narration out of the way, I can concentrate on the on my impressions of the commercial as a whole. All the same, I’m still curious what the heck they’re saying in that one commercial where everyone keeps banging his/her head as he/she is waking up.

MTV2’s Best Metal Videos of the New Millennium

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

Now that it’s back on the air, I often try to catch Headbanger’s Ball on MTV2 (which airs each Saturday at 10/9c). Though I’ve never seen the original (circa ten years ago), my understanding is that it used to have a good amount of hair-metal & pop-metal (neither of which are really metal at all). But, the show these days — while not perfect — is far from posturing about metal.

The current iteration is hosted by Jamey Jasta, frontman for Hatebreed. And, while I don’t particularly care for Hatebreed, I can’t deny that it’s not metal (I generally prefer more melodic metal). And, to MTV2’s credit, they feature plenty of legitimate metal bands on the show: In Flames, Children of Bodom, Meshuggah, Lacuna Coil and others.

In any case, on next week’s show, they’re airing Headbanger’s Ball and Revolver Magazine’s Best Metal Videos of the New Millennium. Granted, it’s a a bit premature to start declaring a best-anything of the new millennium, but I think it’s partly tongue-in-check (even their website includes the sheepish postfix “so far”).

Looking over the apparent candidates (from a concurrent online poll), I was discouraged at first since I didn’t recognize many of the band names. But, as I read further, I gained faith in the list — sure, some blowhards like Korn are on there, but so are Arch Enemy and In Flames (two of the more talented metal bands out there, in my opinion).

However, until Headbanger’s Ball’s teaser for this Best Metal Videos list, I hadn’t even heard of Revolver magazine. So, I’m curious how the list will end up. Not that I’ll take it personally if some of my favorite bands don’t make the list, but it would renew my faith in the American Music Scene to see some of Scandinavia’s top metal acts make the cut. (And, yes, all the best metal seems to come from Scandinavia, for reasons which elude me.)

Programming Stereotypes

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I was reading the comments to a Slashdot article about Python programmers and I was amused by a comment by a fellow who goes by “DasMegaByte” on his impressions of programming languages and people who use them:

[…] I wonder how else we can pad programmer’s egos based on completely subjective hypothesis on language choice?

  • Perl users have more dense social lives.
  • Ruby users have big, full beards chicks love to run their hands through.
  • VB users have sensible shoes and drive Toyotas.
  • C++ users enjoy a good mystery now and then.
  • PHP users probably own one or more Dremel multitools.
  • Javascripters are full of little trivia snippets and are great fun at parties.
  • Cold Fusion users are kind of quiet but have very deep thoughts.
  • SQL programmers have annoying laughs but are otherwise okay guys

[…]

My favorite may be his comments on SQL programmers (though the comments on JavaScripters are jovial as well). Still, I’m left wondering if Bryan has a Dremel multitool ;).