Top 100 Food & Drink: American

Showing posts with label American. Show all posts

Monday, 30 September 2013

Biggest Chinese Takeover Of An American Company Is On

Sept 24 (Reuters) - Smithfield Foods Inc shareholders on Tuesday "overwhelmingly" approved the pork packer's $4.7 billion sale to Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd in what is shaping up to be the biggest acquisition yet of a U.S. company by a Chinese one.

More than 96 percent of the votes cast at a special shareholder meeting were voted in favor of the transaction. The votes cast represent approximately 76 percent of Smithfield's total outstanding common shares as of the record date of the meeting, Smithfield said in a statement.

The deal, valued at $7.1 billion including debt, is expected to close by Sept. 26.

Also on HuffPost:

Subscribe window._taboola = window._taboola || [];_taboola.push({mode:'autosized-1r-organic',container:'taboola-autosized-1r-organic'});_taboola.push({mode:'autosized-1r-sc',container:'taboola-autosized-1r-sc'});window._taboola = window._taboola || [];_taboola.push({flush:true});

View the original article here

The Main Change In American Eating Since 2000

06:36 by UnknownNo comments

The American diet, as a whole, changes at a glacial pace. Most individuals eat more or less the same thing, week in, week out, adding new staples and retiring old favorites only on very rare occasions. And zooming out to a scale of hundreds of millions, these individual shifts mostly cancel each other out. (One family might stop buying sour cream because they want to cut back on calories the same day that another family starts buying sour cream after tasting Paula Deen's recipe for spinach-artichoke dip.)

But of course, glaciers move -- their pace may be slow, but it's not stasis. Over the course of thousands of years, the movement of glaciers carved out the Great Lakes. And so it is with changes in the American diet. If you step back and look at progress over many years, you see real change.

That's the basic message of the latest installment of "The Changing American Diet," a series of reports by the Center for Science in the Public Interest which uses data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to grade the healthfulness of U.S. eaters. This latest report card doesn't look so different from the recent ones issued by the CSPI. It's equally dismal, with an (unweighted) GPA of just 2.42.

The report shows that we eat slightly less caloric sweetener, whole milk and beef than we did in 2000 -- but also a fair bit more cheese and way more yogurt. We eat less shortening and a lot more oil. We eat more or less the same amount of calories, fruits, vegetables, fruit and seafood. All in all, then, we're eating about as much, and about as healthily, as we were a decade ago.

If you take a broader view, though, things start to look different. There's been real change in the composition of the American diet since 1970, the data point at which the CSPI graphs start -- and much of it is bad. Using the USDA source data for the CSPI report, we put together this animated GIF illustrating the changes over the past four decades in the number of calories that Americans get from each of the seven major food groups tracked by the USDA:

As you can see, the average American ate almost 500 more calories per day in 2010 than he or she did in 1970 -- a 23 percent increase. Fruit, vegetables, lean dairy and the meat, egg and nut category have all been virtually flat in that time. So almost the entire increase is due to growth in the top three categories on that GIF: basically, sugars, fats and carbs.

Specifically, Bonnie Liebman, the author of the CSPI report, attributed the bulk of that increase to two things: cheese and flour.

"We see this steady rise in cheese since 1970 that shows no signs of slowing down," she told The Huffington Post. "It's no longer just the cheese sandwich -- it's cheese in soup, cheese in salads, cheese on pizza, cheese in pizza crusts..."

"The change that has gotten less attention is the increase in flour and grains," she continued. "Since the 1970s, we have upped our consumption of flour -- and I think many people aren't aware of that. We're not baking at home, but it's the bread, the pasta, the burritos, the paninis, the muffins -- all of those. We're getting more flour in all of those foods. The numbers are shocking."

Liebman admitted that the popularity of the Atkins and South Beach diets, plus lots of good press around whole grains, has curbed the rise of flour consumption in the new millennium, but it's still much higher than it was as recently as 1980. Liebman thinks that's mostly because restaurants have an economic incentive to serve large portions of cheap, carb-heavy foods. They always have, of course, but we dine out far more than we did in 1970 -- which both gives us more chances to eat big plates of pasta and makes us think we should serve ourselves larger portions of pasta at home.

"Most people have no idea how small the recommended levels of grains are," Liebman explained, "because what we see in restaurants is so gigantic."

Earlier on HuffPost:

View the original article here

Neil Smith, Ukraine Vodka Manufacturer, Explains American Liquor Trends

22:43 by UnknownNo comments

PHILADELPHIA, PA, July 30, 2013 /24-7PressRelease/ -- According to Neil Smith Ukraine vodka manufacturer, there is more to America's liquor trends than first meets the eye. To illustrate his point, Smith highlights a recent article from Advertising Age, which unpacks some surprising new findings about alcohol consumption in the U.S. Smith has issued a statement to the press, commenting on the article and its findings.

"The temptation, when analyzing market trends, is always to find a simple narrative, boiling everything down to basic cause-and-effect," notes Neil Smith. "In the years following the global financial crisis, analysts have always assumed that American market trends effectively boil down to simple economics, but as this article reveals, that is not entirely true."

Advertising Age confirms this. "Last year's rise in liquor sales was largely heralded as an indicator of a recovering economy, as more consumers shelled out for premium alcohol," the article notes. "But upon closer inspection, the story is a bit more convoluted."

As it turns out, the growth in liquor sales boiled down to sales spikes for two particular kinds of beverage--including both artificially flavored drinks (including vodkas) and also small batch, authentic browns--including Irish whiskey and single malt scotch, among other products.

The big-picture trend in all American food consumption--not just liquors--is toward all-natural, organic products, the article notes, which might initially seem to contradict this move toward artificially flavored vodkas. With that said, Advertising Age reveals that more than 40 percent of all U.S. products have flavored variants, beyond the traditional incarnations. "In vodka, which accounts for a third of all liquor sold in the U.S., 177 products launched in 2012 and 122 of those were flavored, accounting for nearly 1 million cases," the article continues. "According to Technomic's recently released Special Trends in Adult Beverages Report, nearly a quarter of all vodka consumed in 2011 was flavored."

As for specific drivers of the flavored vodka craze, Advertising Age suggests that many Americans are seeking to cut sweets from their diets, eliminating desserts and sodas--but perhaps finding some room for the sugary stuff in their cocktails.

The article also suggests that many Americans find appeal in the "scientific advancement" and wondrous new horizons symbolized by new vodka flavors. "Sure, it's a chemical compound likely more complex than most insect repellents, but is a liquid that tastes like cookies or candy or watermelon ... and that's magic."

"It is certainly a mostly-American phenomenon, with flavored vodkas not having nearly this kind of traction in other parts of the world, least of all Russia," notes Neil Smith Ukraine vodka producer. "While my management teams in Russia and Ukraine monitor this growing trend, my business sticks to its cultural routes, opting to produce subtle, non-sickly-sweet, flavor-infused vodkas. For our customers, the main priority is subtle well-integrated flavor. A great example is our Birch Bud vodka, Brunki."

Neil Smith, Ukraine vodka manufacturer, is currently the owner of the mighty Eastern Beverage Company.

ABOUT:

Neil Smith Ukraine vodka manufacturer, owns Eastern Beverage Company. Made up of both CVC in Ukraine and Russian Vodka Holding in Russia, the organization produces over 100 million liters of vodka per year. The Medoff brand is one of the most notable of the company's products, and it has won numerous awards for its unique, smooth flavor due to the filtering process, which takes place over honey. In addition to Medoff, Eastern Beverage Company produces Mernaya and Brunki brands, which are filtered over milk and aromatized birch bud respectively. Neil Smith, who graduated from Cambridge University, is also a chartered accountant.

View the original article here

A Road Trip into the Heart of American Terroir

16:45 by UnknownNo comments

Propelled by a startlingly good Virginia Pinot Noir, a star sommelier zips through the hilly wine country between Atlanta and Washington, DC, discovering native American grape varietals along the way.

Sommelier Steven Grubbs takes a tour through Southern wine country.

Late last summer, in midtown Atlanta, my restaurant hosted a tasting of grower Champagnes. Toward the end of the event, among the empty bottles and their cast-off, mushroomed corks, my friend Tamara pulled me aside.

“Do you want to taste my mom's wine?” she asked. This question is like the question, “Do you want to hear my band?” or “Do you want to read this poem I wrote?” It sparks dread.

I didn't know her mother had a winery. I asked her where it was. “Virginia,” she said. The dread reasserted itself.

“The wine's Pinot Noir,” she added. The new detail didn't help. The grape has many genetic gifts, but it is notoriously difficult to grow. Outside of California and Oregon, most places in North America have all but given up. I said of course I'd try the Pinot and gave myself over to the novelty.

I mostly resist any push for Southern wines, as I've generally found them pretty awkward in the glass. I have imagined this to be a matter of making wine where one probably should not. So I was taken aback when Tamara's mother's wine, the 2010 Ankida Ridge, was as good as any other Pinot Noir I commonly run into. Better, maybe. Tastes like Pinot Noir, I thought, adding a mental exclamation point.

I set the experience aside. But some piece of my skepticism had rattled loose. So, some months later, my friend Jordan Noel and I packed into my silver Miata and bent northwest from Athens into the piedmont hills that encircle the old gold-rush town of Dahlonega, Georgia. We were embarking on a three-day tour of Southern wineries, a journey that would take us north and east, following the curl of the Blue Ridge Mountains up through North Carolina and into Virginia. If Tamara's mother could make authentic Pinot Noir, then there were likely to be other discoveries in the hilly reaches between Atlanta and DC. I hoped to find new story lines developing there.

But first, we would need to confront Eastern wine's complicated past. When European colonists arrived here on the Atlantic coast, they were thrilled to find the forests rife with wild grapevines. But those native vines produced wines with a strange flavor. The colonists called it “foxiness,” a wild, musky note. (One culprit is a pheromone called o-Aminoacetophenone that repels honeybees.) The wines were also low in alcohol and high in acid.

Descendants of those colonists later decided to import vines from Europe—vitis vinifera, the species to which the most significant varieties of wine-grape vines belong. But almost all these vines withered and died, victims of disease or pests. Some plants did live long enough to produce spontaneous hybrid offspring with native vines, and some of these—like Catawba and, later, Norton—proved useful in viticulture. Prohibition soon stunted whatever progress had been made, however, and the East still struggles to bounce back.

Some vineyards in the East do use vinifera vines today, but they require great care. In Georgia, for instance, humidity and pests are especially hard on the grapes, so producers tend to use pesticides and fungicides. I remember once asking a Georgia proprietor how he deals with humidity. “Spray like hell,” he said, without irony. Native vines and hybrids are simpler to grow, but coaxing something out of them that tastes like wine takes craft. Some people don't think native grapes are suited for wine at all; others have suggested that appreciating native wines requires a change in our palates.

Our first stop was Three Sisters Vineyards, in Dahlonega. Cofounder and winemaker Doug Paul is ruddy and large. He works in denim overalls. His vineyards are rimmed with hardwoods and Eastern hemlocks; the winery name comes from the three-peaked mountain that forms a backdrop.

The morning we arrived, he poured us tastes of his wines, among them two Chardonnays, a Cabernet Franc blend and a Cynthiana. Cynthiana, also called Norton, grows wild in the woods nearby. A few of the wines did bear a foxy earmark—a prickly, sylvan tone that is like the woody musk of wild honey. His Vidal Blanc, a hybrid, has enough acid to push past its wild edges without losing focus. A harmony emerges in the finish.

He took us on a tour of the cellar and the vineyards. When we returned, we found the tasting room thronged.

We left Doug to his guests and set out for the mountain's other side to visit Karl Boegner at Wolf Mountain Vineyards. Wolf Mountain is as much a luxury getaway as it is a winery, with a cottage for overnight stays. That Sunday, its tasting bar was mobbed with Atlantans watching sports on a loud TV.

We met Karl in the gift shop. Karl is a smart businessman who used to manage private clubs and resorts, and Wolf Mountain seems to express all the industry wisdom he's accumulated over the years. I'd tasted some of his wines before; in fact, of the 400 or so wines divided between the two wine lists I manage, a Wolf Mountain sparkling wine is the only one from my home state. The first time I'd tried it, I'd written “Tastes like wine” in my notebook. As with Ankida Ridge's Pinot Noir, I added an exclamation point.

Karl told us he sells most of his production either at the winery or to wine-club members; he doesn't need sommeliers like me sniffing around. Nor is he trying to work out the historical demons of East Coast wine: He doesn't make wine out of hybrid or native grapes. I asked why not, and he said, “They don't provide perceived value to the consumer.” He then added, “I'm not foolish enough to think I can make Seyval, Vidal or Chambourcin a household name.”

His wines—mostly blends made with the vinifera grapes Cabernet Sauvignon, Mourvèdre and Syrah—are slicker than those at Three Sisters. The sparkling wines are precise and pleasing. I was disappointed, however, by the news that Karl sometimes supplements his own grapes with California fruit. It is a practice that Doug Paul of Three Sisters claims is common in the region, and one in which he refuses to take part.

We left Wolf Mountain and backtracked around the mountain, then crossed into North Carolina. In Asheville, we had a drink at The Double Crown, a juke joint with an old church organ as a back bar. We had dinner at The Admiral, a very good restaurant that's been installed into an old mountain beer bar. We sat at the bar and ate braised short ribs and sweetbreads. In the dining room's corner, a glowing Budweiser sign had been modified so it said dive in white neon.

We'd booked a log cabin for the night a short drive away, in the hills of Fleetwood, North Carolina, outside of Boone. I woke up early the next morning and had to yell up the stairs to Jordan, who was still asleep in the lofted bedroom. Outside, a drapery of fog hung in the trees, but the air on the front porch was clear and clean. I went out to pack up the car for our drive across the North Carolina border into Virginia.

We tore away from the lot and pushed hard on mountain back roads, shooting through northwestern North Carolina's Yadkin Valley. Along the way, we checked out a fledgling producer called Carolina Heritage Vineyard and Winery; owners Clyde and Pat Colwell grow all of their fruit organically and work only with hybrid and native grapes. Across the border in Virginia, in the high country close to Dugspur, we stopped by a well-known cider works called Foggy Ridge. Owner Diane Flynt studied cidermaking in England and has visited Normandy's top cider producers, but her style is her own. She works with an assortment of apple varieties, a mix of old American heirlooms as well as French and English types, and makes ciders with backbone and all the marks of her restrained, intelligent hand.

A late lunch was awaiting us at Virginia's Veritas Vineyard & Winery, near Afton, a few hours away. We sat at a rectangular table draped in white linen and furnished with ornate flatware, and the winery chef, Jonathan Boroughs, presented six courses, each paired with a Veritas bottling. The flowery Viogniers and hearty reds made from Petit Verdot and Tannat—grapes from vines originally brought in from southwest France—were very good. They were not the loud cowboy wines of California or the earthy, eco-intelligent wines of Oregon's Willamette Valley. They were easy to understand, but also well-bred and composed; attractive, yet temperate.

Across the table was Lucie Morton, a roving vineyard consultant and viticulturalist who works with Veritas and other wineries both locally and overseas. Virginia winemaking has developed significantly in the last decade, and Lucie has been one of the catalysts. She described the advances as a matter of sorting out “first the right place, then the right grape, and then the proper viticultural practices.” This sequence of solutions appears obvious, but in Europe it took thousands of years to accomplish that work.

Leaving Veritas, we headed upstate and made our way to Early Mountain Vineyards, a Virginia producer that also serves as a rallying point for the local scene, selling bottles from a selection of the area's winemakers alongside its own wines. The tasting we had that day was humbling. We tried wine after wine, every one of them legit.

Our last stop was Ankida Ridge, outside Amherst, Virginia, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We met up with Tamara's mother, Christine Vrooman, and learned that it was Lucie Morton who'd suggested growing Pinot Noir on the steep, mountainous site. The site, which had never been farmed, is rich in ancient decomposing granite. Sheep and chickens roam the vineyard, eliminating weeds and pests.

It was getting late, so Christine showed us to the guest room over the new tasting facility at Ankida Ridge. When I woke up the next morning, I could still smell the drywall and spackling from the just-finished building. Jordan had slept on a grand leather sofa and was on the porch, looking out onto the valley. Christine was driving down from her ridge-line house to bring us up for breakfast.

Christine poached eggs pulled from her chicken house, and we ate sausage from the neighbor's hogs with honeycomb from the mountain. She opened a bottle of Chateau Z's Vixen Blanc, a white wine made by a local geologist from wild Virginia grapes. We imagined what kind of food would go with its raw, distinctly American forest flavors. We settled on some kind of wild river fish.

Soon we were driving back down the Blue Ridge slope, catching the interstate south. Jordan spent part of the trip home trying to locate the best chopped pork in western North Carolina. I spent the time attempting to make sense of what I'd tasted over the last few days. I'd expected Ankida Ridge Pinot to be an Eastern anomaly. But it turned out that Virginia was full of wines that were equally good, and even my own home state was performing better than I had thought. The East is still a work in progress, but hope certainly abounds for those who produce its wines—and I, too, have become surprisingly optimistic.

Three Sisters Vineyards
Grows Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc and Vidal Blanc (a hybrid) and makes wine from Cynthiana grapes. threesistersvineyards.com

Wolf Mountain Vineyards & Winery
A boutique producer making Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Mourvèdre blends. wolfmountainvineyards.com

Foggy Ridge Cider
Exceptional ciders from heirloom apple varieties. foggyridgecider.com

Veritas Vineyard & Winery
Works with French varietals like Viognier, Petit Verdot and Tannat. veritaswines.com

Early Mountain
Built on land once owned by a Revolutionary War lieutenant, this winery makes Viognier and Muscat Dolce. earlymountain.com

Ankida Ridge Vineyards
A small Amherst winery creating impressive Pinot Noir. ankidaridge.com

View the original article here

Great American Brew Gift Basket

12:33 by UnknownNo comments

Great American Brew Gift Basket from Simply Classic Gift Baskets at SHOP.COM Help & Support

We want you to have a pleasant and successful visit with us. Below are some links to help answer questions you may have about using our site.

See all Help Need Help Now? Contact Us Customer Service

For immediate assistance, SHOP.COM customers can contact us the following ways:

Email:

customerservice@shop.com

Phone: 1-866-420-1709

We are dedicated to customer service and look forward to assisting you with your needs!

More Help Options Customer Service Safe Shopping Guarantee Managing My Account Delivery Site Experience Privacy Policy Terms of Use FAQs Why Customers Love Us See all Help Options Choose your Country

United States

Canada

Mexico

United Kingdom

Australia

Hong Kong

Taiwan

Sign In / Create an Account My Account MyLists eGifts Trends Help Share: $('.googleplus').click(function(event) { var width = 575, height = 400, left = ($(window).width() - width) / 2, top = ($(window).height() - height) / 2, url = this.href, opts = 'status=1' + ',width=' + width + ',height=' + height + ',top=' + top + ',left=' + left; window.open(url, 'googleplus', opts); return false; });function fbs_click() {u='http://www.shop.com/Great+American+Brew+Gift+Basket-49547816-p+.xhtml?credituser=C9165543USA';t=document.title;window.open('http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u='+encodeURIComponent(u)+'&t='+encodeURIComponent(t),'sharer','toolbar=0,status=0,width=626,height=436');return false;} $('.pinterest.popup').click(function(event) { var width = 575, height = 400, left = ($(window).width() - width) / 2, top = ($(window).height() - height) / 2, url = this.href, opts = 'status=1' + ',width=' + width + ',height=' + height + ',top=' + top + ',left=' + left; window.open(url, 'pinterest', opts); return false; }); $('.twitter.popup').click(function(event) { var width = 575, height = 400, left = ($(window).width() - width) / 2, top = ($(window).height() - height) / 2, url = this.href, opts = 'status=1' + ',width=' + width + ',height=' + height + ',top=' + top + ',left=' + left; window.open(url, 'twitter', opts); return false; }); Ship Free

SHIPFREE or $5 Flat Rate Terms & ConditionsSHIPFREE eligibility only applies to Market America products and brands. All non-eligible item will be charged normal shipping rates.To qualify, orders must be at least $99 or more in qualifying products excluding taxes or other fees. All orders under $99 of qualifying products are eligible for $5 flat rate shipping.Items that qualify for SHIPFREE or $5 flat rate shipping will have a tag indicating it's eligibilitySHIPFREE and $5 Flat Rate are only available for shipping to U.S. delivery addresses in the 50 U.S. States and the U.S. Territories of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands as well as the BahamasApplies to APO/FPO addresses when using a United States Zip Code onlyWeekend delivery is unavailableAll returned deliveries due to undeliverability or refusal will be charged a normal shipping and handling fee if reshipment is requested. This fee is $7.50 or 7.5% of item cost, whichever is greater.We reserve the right to change or discontinue SHIPFREE at any time.Simply Class...ift BasketsAll DepartmentsSaleMarket AmericaTrend ShopStoresAutoBabyBeautyBooksBusinessCamerasClothesCollectiblesComputersCraftsElectronicsFood and DrinkGardenHealth & NutritionHome StoreJewelryMoviesMusicParty SuppliesPet SuppliesPostersShoesSoftwareSports and FitnessToolsToysTravelVideo Games

Add $99 in Market America Products to qualify for Free Shipping! Learn More about ShipFreeThere are currently no items in your cart.Edit Cart ContentsCheckoutYour order is safe and secure

CART:0 item $0.00Search Suggestions: Clothes Beauty Home Electronics Health & Nutrition Shop all Stores Travel Auctions All Departments Deals Your Shop Consultant is SHOP.COM Earn up to 50% Cashback on eligible purchases. Learn More Daily deals

SHOP.COM > Food and Drink > Food Gifts & Baskets

Great American Brew Gift BasketItem BG021Price $59.95Price $59.95$4.80

CashbackPacked with a mix of 6 great American microbrews this brew basket has the snacks to go with, Tortilla chips, tasty salsa and spicy nuts.See detailsEnter Quantity Calculate Shippingby zip code