Snacking State-by-State: North Carolina IV - Be Young! Have Fun! Eat Pepsi!

In 1893, Chinquapin, NC, native Caleb Branham developed the aptly named "Brad's Drink" in a small drug store in New Bern (also the birthplace of my cousin's wife, I might add).  Five years later, he re-christened his drink "Pepsi-Cola" after its key ingredients of pepsin and cola [PepsiStore.com, date unknown].  Over a hundred years later it has become one of the leading soft drinks in the world.  And just like that other cola soft drink, you can use Pepsi in various recipes.  They're just not as easy to find.

Official Name: State of North Carolina
State Nicknames: The Tar Heel State, The Old North State
Admission to the US: November 21, 1789 (#12)
Capital: Raleigh (2nd largest)
Other Important Cities: Charlotte (largest), Greensboro (3rd largest), Winston-Salem (4th largest)
Region: South, Southeast, Upper South; South Atlantic (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Crabcake; Chestnut
Bordered by: Virginia (north); Tennessee (west); Georgia (southwest); South Carolina (south); Atlantic Ocean (east)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: blueberry & strawberry (berries), milk (beverage), channel bass (fish), Southern Appalachian brook trout (freshwater trout), Scuppernong grape (fruit), honey bee (insect - again, for the honey), gray squirrel (mammal), sweet potato (vegetable)
Some Famous and Typical Foods: two - count 'em: two famous styles of BBQ (Eastern and Western or "Lexington-style"); other standard Southern foods, including (typically eaten with said BBQ's) cole slaw, hush puppies, sweet tea; pimiento cheese (the nation's leading producer); also the birthplace of Pepsi-Cola


North Carolina is a stronghold of Pepsi in a region of the country where Coca-Cola is Cing, er, King.  And while there are cookbooks and tons of recipes for using Coke as an ingredient, you can't say the same for Pepsi.  There is a handful of recipes that I could find online, tops.  Mind you, I am a Pepsi drinker - I grew up in a Pepsi household (though we still sometimes called it "Coke".  Ah well).  So I was surprised to have such difficulty finding Pepsi recipes.  Sure, I could take that Coca Cola cookbook that I used back in Georgia and just replace the Coke with Pepsi, but that's no fun.

I could only find a few recipes, most from the Sir Pepsi website, aka Andy's Pepsiholic Haven.  Most recipes were meat-related in some way, and I have had my fill of meat with pounds and pounds of Eastern and Western NC-style BBQ to go through (note: a Pepsi-based BBQ sauce recipe on Andy's website, which adds a can of Pepsi to vinegar and ketchup for a very unique Lexington-style BBQ sauce).  One more intriguing recipe was a Pepsi Cake - something like a Mississippi mud cake but with either a ganache-type frosting (see Andy's website) or a peanut butter frosting (note a recipe found by Jane & Michael Stern and posted on the Splendid Table website).

And then I found a recipe that particularly intrigued me on the website for Our State: Down Home in North Carolina Magazine.  In one series of recipes they make cake recipes using popular North Carolinian ingredients: a Krispy Kreme cake (yes, Krispy Kremes origniated in North Carolina as well), a Nabs cheese cracker cake (intriguing), a Pimento Cheese Cake (even more intriguing), and the following: a take on the lava cake flavored with Pepsi.

The Recipe: Pepsi and Peanut Cakes


These Pepsi and Peanut Cakes are individual cakes, not one big cake that you slice and serve.  And you will need a lot of ingredients, and a bit of time and coordination to mix them together.  It's not as difficult as it first appears: I got these done in an hour or two, while making pimento cheese no less.

You will need the following for these cakes, on the Our State website:

* Pepsi (duh.  Instead of the standard HFCS-y Pepsi, or even the Throwback Pepsi made with real sugar, I used Mexican Pepsi, also made with sugar and probably closer to what Americans were drinking way back when.  No peanuts in the bottles.  Like Mexican Coke, Mexican Pepsi costs about $1.50 for a 12 ounce bottle)
* flour (this recipe is gluten-free, so it suggests a combination of chestnut flour and gluten-free all-purpose flour.  You can exchange regular to gluten-free more or less at a 1 to 1 ratio, so I used plain old White Lily brand flour)
* brown sugar (had it)
* baking powder (same)
* Baker's chocolate (one 8 ounce box cost about $3)
* peanut butter (I didn't have any!  When I went grocery shopping I decided to get something, again, less HFCS-y, passing by the $2 jar for the $4 peanut-only in-store variety from Harris Teeter)
* cream of tartar (had it)
* peanuts (had them too)
* eggs
* white and powdered sugar
* vegetable oil
* milk (almost out)
* applesauce (I had none on hand, but no worries: the recipe tells you how to make some from fresh apples: just peel, core, de-seed and slice, and microwave for a few minutes with a little sugar and a little water or apple juice.  Mash with a potato masher, and voila: instant applesauce.  I've always hated applesauce but this stuff I cannot get enough of)
* salt (have it)
* vanilla (almost out of this too)
* whipping cream (to top with in the end)

You will also need 4" diameter ramekins, enough to make 8 cakes (so either eight ramekins or four that you will use twice).

Put peanut butter, brown sugar and applesauce into a bowl...

...and blend together with a hand held mixer.

Next add one egg at a time.

Next add the vanilla, and set aside.

Mix together your flour, baking powder, salt and cream of tartar.

You will add the dry ingredients to the batter, alternating with the milk.

Mixing away...

This is what your batter should look like.  Set aside your batter and prep the Pepsi.

You will next make a Pepsi reduction.  Pour the Pepsi into a saucepan...

...boil and reduce to about half the volume.

Take several tablespoons of the Pepsi reduction and  add it to roughly chopped (or hell, even unchopped) Baker's chocolate, nuking for 30 seconds at a time and then stirring, until...

...it looks like this.

Separately, heat up peanut butter, powdered sugar and more Pepsi reduction, and cream together.

I just used a spoon.

 Next you're ready to prep the ramekins (grease these down quickly with butter)

Start by filling each ramekin halfway with some batter.

Next, put a dollop of each the Pepsi-chocolate and the peanut butter-Pepsi combos in the center of the batter.

Then cover it with more batter, filling the ramekin almost to the top.

Put in a preheated 400°F oven for about 20 minutes.  They will crack like this.

Loosen around the edges with a knife and let sit for about five minutes.

Now for the whipped cream: whip it good, and add sugar and vanilla.

Mmmm.  Whipped cream.

Put a heaping dollop on your still-warm cake...

...sprinkle with peanuts...

...and drizzle with more of the Pepsi reduction.

This is one dense little cake, intensely peanut buttery - so much so, in fact, that I think it overpowers the Pepsi flavor a bit.  But it's there, in the chocolate and drizzled on top of the cake.  It is luscious but only when eaten warm.  Make sure you warm up any leftover cake very well and you will get your best results.

- - - - -

I am full of BBQ, pimento cheese and gut-busting Pepsi ad peanut butter cake.  Were I actually traveling for real from North Carolina to our next stop I think I'd have to jog part of the way to work some of this delicious food off.  But more awaits as we journey from the From the Mid-South to the Midwest, for Sioux, German and Eastern European recipes in North Dakota.  And yah, we won't be doin' Arby's.

Sources:


Barbecue Joint.  "Eastern North Carolina Barbecue".  Featured on the episode "Durham, NC" of the show $40 a Day (Rachael Ray, host).  Food Network, 2005.

Bowen, Dana.  "East Vs. West: North Carolina Pulled Pork".  Saveur.com, Issue #139: BBQ Nation.  Published June 16, 2011.  Copyright 2011 Saveur.com.  All rights reserved.


Goldwyn, Craig "Meathead". "East Carolina Kiss & Vinegar Barbecue Sauce & Mop". Amazing Ribs website. Last revised September 12, 2011.  All

Graff, Michael, Wendy Perry, and Teresa Williford.  "The Pepsi ‘N’ Peanuts Cake".  Our State: Down Home in North Carolina. Posted February 2012.  Copyright 2012 Our State.  All rights reserved.

North Carolina BBQ Society.  "Eastern Style Slaw".  Copyright The North Carolina Barbecue Society, Inc. 2009.

North Carolina BBQ Society.  "Piedmont Lexington-Style Dip".  Copyright The North Carolina Barbecue Society, Inc. 2009.

North Carolina Travels (NorthCarolinaTravels.com).  "North Carolina Barbecue".  Date unknown.  Matt Barrett's Travel Guides: North Carolina.  All rights reserved.

O'Dea, Stephanie.  "You Can Use Your CrockPot as a Smoker".  A Year of Slow Cooking.  Posted August 7, 2008.

Pepsi Store (PepsiStore.com).  "History of the Birthplace".  Date unknown.  Copyright PepsiStore.com and Pepsi-Cola.  All rights reserved.

Saveur.com.  "Lexington Pulled Pork".  Saveur.com, Issue #139: BBQ Nation.  Published June/July 2011.  Copyright 2011 Saveur.com.  All rights reserved.

Saveur.com.  "Lexington-Style Red Slaw".  Saveur.com, Issue #139: BBQ Nation.  Published June/July 2011.  Copyright 2011 Saveur.com.  All rights reserved.

Southern Foodways Alliance (Sara Roahen and John T. Edge, editors).  The Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook.  University of Georgia Press: Athens, GA, 2010.

Wallace, Emily.  "A brief history of pimento cheese".  Independent Weekly (IndyWeek.com).  Posted June 22, 2011.  Copyright 2012 Independent Weekly.  All rights reserved.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "North Carolina" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "North Carolina".

Tidbits: Early July Edition

A few things I've been eating lately:

* I have been playing a lot of soccer lately - both pickup and league, and my shins hurt like hell (note to self: find something to make these shinguards more, er, comfortable to wear while running around for one or two hours). Last night after one such pickup game down in DC (where I did pretty well, considering my lack of experience), I headed to Adams Morgan for a quick beer and bite before making the long slog home. I ended up at the cozy L'Enfant Cafe & Bar where I ordered a delicious savory crepe of salmon & boursin cheese ($13). It was a bargain, though the refreshing cherry beer I ordered, normally served with ice, clocked in at $10! That kind of took me by surprise (note to self: ask how much the damn beer costs).

* Whenever I eat Indian, I often gravitate to one or two recipes that are tried and true favorites: chicken tikka masala, saag gosht (lamb with spinach), murgh makhani (butter chicken), etc. At Mughal Garden the other night I settled on something somewhat different: their lamb methi ($14), which is lamb in a fenugreek sauce (hence the methi, which is fenugreek). It's not a taste I can easily describe, because I don't have a reference point. It's a very mellow dish, a lovely one with a lot of sauce you can soak up with much of your garlic naan. I recommend it.

* I haven't been to Rocket 2 Venus lately. I did go last week, and could not get over how quickly I was seated... and how my waiter just completely forgot about me (very irritated about that). Fortunately after about ten minutes of tapping my fingers and checking my email, a waiter did come by to find out if I was being helped (nope), and my service was quite fast after that. R2V is a place with such an eclectic menu that you can spend a good long while trying to figure out what to order - maybe that was a plus for waiting while people seated after me ended up ordering first. After all the classic American, Southern, Western, Chesapeake, Cajun and Korean offerings, I ordered the bulgogi plate with fried rice ball, mashed potatoes & kimchi ($13). It was a very satisfying experience, with the soft bulgogi, kimchi and potatoes providing a flavorful contrast against each other. Plus, my food came out much faster than I had anticipated.

* Alas, all the area Super Fresh stores are now history, excepting for the one downtown on N. Charles Street. Some of them are already slated to become something else (like the one in Hampden, for example). The rest are just sitting around, twiddling their thumbs. I hope a Harris Teeter or something moves into the one on Putty Hill.

* I realized the other day: sometimes you want a nice, hearty breakfast of pancakes, sausage, bacon, etc., just like Mom used to make. And other times, all you want is a bowl of kimchi flavored noodles (second kimchi reference in this post, by the way).

* Find out in a few weeks what happened to this little guy that I got at the Maine Avenue Fish Market in Washington, DC, for all of $7 a pound:


* Soda update: I have been sticking to about 2 cans a day. With Dad in the hospital and the occasional late long drive back from DC I have allowed myself a little more of the stuff. But on the contrary, I have also found myself just normally drinking less. It's been a long time since I have ordered it in the restaurant, preferring beer, tea or water (I did order a soda at Lou's City Bar after a game the other day, to give me a shot of caffeine - which worked). But overall I have been going through a good bit less of it lately.

* And finally: I know he is moving out soon (er, being forced out by our landlord), but could my idiot neighbor please stop putting all his crap out by the side of the road for the trash and recycling people to just leave there!?!? It's bad enough he used to go through my recycling bin for cans, and the only reason he doesn't seem to do this anymore is because I have started putting it in a place where he is too lazy to look.

Ouch, did I just let all that pour out? Maybe I should smack him with one of my shinguards?

Random Bites: Tax Day Edition

Tax season bites. Looks like I withheld too little last year because I owed for the first time ever. Wow. I also made more in all of my part time work than I realized, which is great - though it did push me into a higher tax bracket. I'm not complaining about being taxed per se. I'm just kicking myself for not having changed my W4's sooner. Now I'm withholding nothing. Hopefully I'll get something back next year?

Just a few more bites as I recover from tax season.

1. The drive to cut back on my soda consumption has taken a slightly bumpy road, but I'm still on it. I now drink, on average, about two cans of soda a day. That said, I have gotten much more used to using that press-n-seal wrap on the half-empty can and putting it back in the fridge. I've also been a little generous in my definition of what counts as "soda". I haven't been counting it if it's normally caffeine-free, like ginger ale, or "all-natural", like one of those sugary sodas you might find in some of the more upscale natural food stores. The iced tea I keep brewing (thank you, Luzianne) has definitely cut down my soda consumption, that much is certain.

2. About those "upscale natural food stores": I don't have the cash to do all, or even much, of my shopping at places like the Good Life Organic Market in Severna Park or David's Natural Market in Columbia. I do love roaming around them to see the merchandise and hopefully pick up one or two things without breaking the bank. Good Life has hot soups (a small Senegalese Peanut Soup will cost $4), chocolates that I cannot avoid (a quarter pound for about $4.50) and more of those natural sodas. They also sell eggs individually - 35¢ per egg. David's is also a lovely store, and I have become addicted to the individually wrapped Dan's Chocolates that are conveniently located right by the checkout (50¢ each).

3. The Haute Dog Carte has a second location! It's at the Colonnade at Hopkins.

4. Speaking of businesses in Mt. Warshnin', Bansky's is just awesome, a beautiful group of people with awesome food.

5. I'm trying to find some huckleberries in the area! This is for an upcoming Snacking State-by-State post about food from Idaho. Rachel (Coconut & Lime) gave me the head's up that Atwater's at Belvedere Square sometimes sells huckleberry jam, but they have none at the moment. Will probably need to break down and mail order it online, like I almost did with poi for my upcoming Hawaii post.

6. If you didn't know this already: RuPaul's Drag Race (one of my guilty gay pleasures) is on every Monday night at The Hippo. Now I don't have to wait until it's posted online the next day!

Snacking State-by-State: Georgia III - The Many Uses of Coca-Cola

Peaches and peanuts aside, by far Georgia's biggest export is Coca-Cola. First made in Atlanta in 1886, Coke is now bottled all over the world. Is it really any surprise that the Coca-Cola corporation has not just a handful but an entire collection of recipes from enterprising Southern and other'n cooks (not to mention all those chefs in the Coca-Cola test kitchens) using Coke products as ingredients in cooking.

Official Name: State of Georgia
State Nicknames: The Peach State, Empire State of the South
Admission to the US: January 2, 1788 (#4)
Capital: Atlanta (largest city)
Other Important Cities: Augusta (2nd largest), Savannah (4th largest), Columbus (3rd largest)
Region: South, Deep South, Lowcountry (specifically along the coast); South Atlantic (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Cornbread & BBQ, Crabcake, Gumbo
Bordered by: Alabama (west), Tennessee & North Carolina (north), South Carolina (northeast), Atlantic Ocean (east), Florida (south)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: grits (official state prepared food), peach (fruit), Vidalia onion (vegetable)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: again, grits, peaches and Vidalia onions, among many other things, among them: Coca-Cola, boiled peanuts, pecans, pralines, okra, and other typical foods of the Deep South

Elizabeth Candler Graham, direct descendant of Coke founder Asa Candler co-authored the Classic Cooking with Coca-Cola cookbook with Ralph Roberts in a quest to find some recipes, hoping to find 20 or 30.

As the research progressed, we found to our pleasant surprise that in the over one hundred years of its existence, Coca-Cola has inspired a lot of recipes. So instead of just a few, we found literally hundreds of recipes using Coca-Cola or other products of The Coca-Cola Company. In fact, we found ourselves with too many recipes and were forced to leave out some of the lesser ones. [Candler Graham and Roberts 1998, p. 4]

I almost considered making an entire meal using Coke as an ingredient, but stuck with an entrée and a side instead. These may have been two of the rejects from the book, though I had great success with one of them.

The recipes: Fruited Coca-Cola Pork Chops with Caramelized Sweet Onions

To make both recipes, you need the following.


The entrée: Fruited Pork Chops

* shoulder or loin pork chops (4 about 1/2" thick - I got a package of 5 leaner, skinnier ones, which I now somewhat regret as I will explain below)
* salt, pepper and ground ginger (got them all)
* one apple and one lemon or orange (each less than a dollar - for the citrus I went ahead and used a tangelo instead, with little change)
* 1/2 cup Classic Coca-Cola (you can get the corn syrupy stuff, or splurge and get a bottle of the Mexican stuff with real sugar for about $1.50. Not too easy to find, but you can get it at Wegman's or Eddie's of Roland Park. Drink whatever you don't use)
* brown sugar and corn starch (got 'em)


Quickly brown the pork chops in a greaseless pan, then sprinkle them the salt, pepper and ginger, set them in your baking dish, and add the following: an apple slice on top of each pork chop, a citrus fruit slice on top of each apple slice, brown sugar over each pork chop, and Coca-Cola around the pork chops.

Like so.

Bake for about 45 minutes at 350° (the thinness of my pork chops probably necessitated a shorter baking time, which I did not consider at the time). Next stir in the corn starch and put in for about 15 minutes more.

The side dish: Southern Caramalized Vidalias, er, Mayans


For this recipe, you need a liter of Coke, a little A1 and two nice big sweet onions. The recipe, of course, calls for the very Georgian Vidalia onion. I could not find these anywhere at this time of year, so I begrudgingly settled for the not-as-special Sweet Mayan variety from Mexico. It wasn't the same, but it was doable.


Chop the onions into pieces, and pour in enough Coke to cover - the recipe says you will "float" the onion pieces in the Coke.
Next, add A1 Steak Sauce or a reasonable facsimile, cover and microwave on high for 20 minutes. When done you will have a mess of sweet, caramelized onions that you can serve on steak, mashed potatoes or anything else you like. I mixed some with some homemade tomato sauce and ate it on linguine. It wasn't as disturbing as it sounds.


I have to be frank: the onions clearly turned out better here. I could almost see myself just eating them straight out of the bowl. They certainly made the pork chops more interesting. I am largely to blame for how they turned out, since I did not adjust the time for the thinness of the chops, resulting in a drier, less juicy pork chop. Yes, even with all Coke and those fruit juices, the pork chops ended up pretty flat. Not so the onions, which I have eaten with potatoes, taro root and that linguine I mentioned above. I'll be making the onion dish again

Served with a Coca-Cola-free potato salad

Now heading out of Atlanta Hartsfield, the world's busiest airport, for the only state in the union that is not landlocked at all. In fact, it's our only Polynesian state, and the absolute southernmost state in the Union (sorry, Florida and Georgia). It's Hawai'i, the land of mahi mahi, poi and Spam.

Sources:

Candler Graham, Elizabeth, and Ralph Roberts. Classic Cooking with Coca-Cola. Hambleton Hill Publishing: Nashville, 1998

Coca-Cola Company. "Recipe: Fruited Pork Chops". Copyright The Coca-Cola Company, 2006.

Coca-Cola Company. "Recipe: Southern Caramelized Vidalias". Copyright The Coca-Cola Company, 2006. Originally submitted by Rod Rives of Birmingham, AL.

Deen, Paula. "Boiled Peanuts". Featured on the Paula's Home Cooking episode "Boat Day". Copyright The Food Network, 2010

Fairweather, John. "How to Make Boiled Peanuts in a Slow Cooker". From eHow Food, date unknown.

Georgia Peach Council. "Rich History of GA Peach". Copyright Georgia Peach Council, date unknown.

Hanley, Lucy (editor), and Alice Moffatt (food editor). The Best Basic & Easy Recipes of Savannah. John Hinde Curteich: Savannah, 2000. Distributed by Dixie Postcards & Souvenir Sales.

Yearwood, Trisha, with Gwen Yearwood and Beth Yearwood Bernard. Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen: Recipes from My Family to Yours. Clarkson Potter: New York, 2008.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Georgia" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "Georgia".

Soda Update #2 (and a Lenten Fast?)

I don't really do the "give up something for Lent" thing anymore, but I did consider giving up soda for Lent. Eventually I decided against it. I've been pretty good about not drinking too much soda. Though on average I'm still about 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 cans a day, I have gone up to about 2 cans on some days. Instead I've given up something far more (readily) dangerous to my teeth: chewing ice. I have that very bad habit and it would be nice to break myself of it. A Lenten fast should be something that betters you and gives you practice in temperance and self-control.

Along those lines, I have also decided to try, as much as possible, to go meatless on Lenten Fridays. Again, this is more an exercise in self-control. However, while there is nothing with eating meat (in my opinion), one does not need to eat it all the time. I may not succeed in this task, but I sure plan to try.

A few random bites: February Edition

Just a few things I've missed saying...

1) In doing research for my next "Back to the Beltway" post (coming up at some point in the next few weeks, just with the gas prices and expense and all), I was surprised, shocked and dismayed at all the eateries in Linthicum that have seemingly shut down. One hot dog place, Duncan's Famous, hasn't been there for a while. Granted, they once gave me the creamiest hot dog that I have had in ages, not since the Soda Pop Shop near Baltimore Highlands, late 80's.

2) Lunch on Friday was at the House of India in Columbia. I had to get in and out, which I did with ease. It was quite good: some of the least bony chunks of goat I have eaten in a while. plus tasty and toothsome ras malai and various chicken, chickpea and rice dishes. One dish I was not so hot on was the dhabha chicken, which tasted and had a texture like warmed over day-old Chinese takeout, and I don't mean from a good place. And yet there it is smack dab in the middle, piled up as if to say "Taaaaaake meeeeeee. You KNOW you waaaaaant meeeeee." Next time I go back I'll just get everything else. Though at $12 for the weekday buffet, it is a wee pricier than some other buffets that are just as good. I guess you're paying for the "Columbia" experience.

3) The latest beer tasting I did at the Wine Source was of R.J. Rockers out of Spartanburg, South Carolina. Most of their beers were lovely though I was particularly captivated by their winter seasonal, The First Snow Ale. Billed as a "malt beverage brewed with honey and spices", the beer's nicest quality is its gingery punch. I rarely leave with a whole six pack ($9) but I did this time.

4) A gas station in Glen Burnie sells Pepsi from Mexico, made with actual cane sugar. Not as sweet as the HFCS stuff.

5) Along those lines, I have been quite good at drinking less soda. I've been averaging 1.5 cans a day - down from about 3. Let's see how much more I can cut back.

6) Try and figure out why I spent the past week making doro wot (Ethiopian chicken stew), GamJa salad (Korean potato salad) and curtido (Salvadoran cole slaw) - and ate it all at once. Go on.

Cutting Back on Soda: Update #1

Just a brief update on my quest to not drink so much soda/pop/coke/whatever. This time last week, I was drinking about 3 cans (roughly 36 oz) soda a day. Mind you, I was trying to drink as much in water, but still. Since Tuesday, I've managed to cut myself back to 1 1/2 cans (18 oz) a day, with a little more in case I am driving around very late (like on my super long 8AM to 10PM Wednesdays). The secret? Actually, a few secrets:

1) I've been drinking half a can at a time, and sealing the can back up with that "seal wrap" that works so much better than plastic wrap (for most things at least)

2) I've also been drinking a lot more water and homemade iced tea. I don't touch the pre-made store bought bottled stuff. That has enough crap in it that I might as well stick with the soda.

So, that's how it's working so far. Another update is coming next week.

Cutting Back on Soda?

It's time.

I've been drinking soda - mostly of the Pepsi variety - for many years. As recently as eight years ago, I was up to over a liter a day! And I wasn't drinking the diet stuff - or the name-brand stuff - either. It was all Shasta and "Ralph's" generic brand (I was in California at the time). Then I started dating someone, a nice guy who lost a lot of weight due to aerobic kickboxing. I tried it, lost about 15 pounds, and started eating healthier. One of the things I started doing was kicking the sugary soda habit. I switched to diet, and it helped me lose the pounds. While that relationship went nowhere, at least I lost some weight as a result (thanks, Eric, wherever in San Francisco you are today).

I further cut down my soda consumption a few years later, after moving back to Maryland. I forced myself to drink more tea, and only drink - get this - three cans of soda a day. That's still a lot. A whole lot.

Now the time has come to try and cut the stuff out of my diet as much as possible - I'm hoping a few cans a week. What's spurring this on? A few things. For one, soda in any format really isn't healthy anyway. But what really did it was a recent report that suggests a link - not necessarily a cause and effect, but a link nevertheless - between diet soda and strokes and other vascular diseases. Mind you, there are flaws in the study, as Dr. Sanjay Gupta points out:

But all of the information about how much soda and sodium consumed came from the participants' own reports, not from a controlled setting. It's possible that they remembered or stated their habits incorrectly, or did not maintain those habits consistently over time. Researchers also do not know about the specific brands and flavors of diet and regular sodas consumed.

. . .

A 2007 study in the American Heart Association journal Circulation found that people who drink one or more soft drinks a day are more likely to develop metabolic syndrome, a heart disease precursor, than people who drink less than one soda a day.

Still, that study also only showed an association, and did not prove that sodas cause metabolic syndrome. There could be something else about people who drink soda regularly that directly leads to risk factors for heart disease. [Gupta & Cohen 2011]

While I could be healthier than I am, I do have some things going for me: I don't just eat crap. And I'm getting a lot more exercise these days than I used to - gym, soccer, yoga. One has to keep one's figure, right?

That said, no doctor - who isn't employed by Coca-Cola - will tell you that drinking so much soda is good for you. There can really only be benefits to cutting back. And while I don't intend to stop drinking diet soda altogether, I would like to cut back a good bit. And so, for a while at least, I'll be reporting on just how successful my quest to cut back on the fizzy drinks really is, what I replace it with, where will I get my caffeine!? (Not coffee, a drink I cannot stand) Oh, and maybe I should cut back on caffeine?

Why you should always take scary food news with a grain of salt

The new report about soda increasing the risk of pancreatic cancer is getting some good play right now. Perhaps it's true. It suggests that soft drink drinkers have double the risk of developing pancreatic cancer as those who do not drink it. But they need a more rigorous study than this one. Many factors were not considered, in a fourteen year study - including high fat diet, consumption of diet soft drinks or fruit juices, family histories of pancreatic diseases, etc. But the sheer numbers of those who developed pancreatic cancer jumped out at me in particular (H/T Village Voice):

The study, as the Washington Post reports, is not without its weaknesses: The total number of pancreatic cancer diagnoses was only 140 (pancreatic cancer is a very rare type of cancer, but it also has a very low survival rate), and 18 of those diagnoses were made among people who drank two or more sodas per week. Twelve cases were diagnosed among people who drank less than two, while the vast majority -- 110 -- were among people who didn't drink any soda at all.

Do also read the Washington Post article as well. It elaborates further.

Not to mention the fact that I know soda isn't the healthiest thing to drink, and I know that pancreatic cancer is a very sad and tragic disease. But these mitigating factors at least should have been considered. As it stands, I probably won't be scared by this study. But it's still a good thing to cut back anyway.