A Japanese hamburger chain, Freshness Burger, found that while men loved their flagship large Classic Burger, women rarely ordered it. It turns out the women did not want to open their mouths wide in front of men, because a small mouth, or ochobo, is more attractive. That's not problem with noodles or food that can be cut into small pieces, but it's hard to eat a large sandwich without opening your mouth.  

The restaurant responded with a new burger wrapper called the Liberation Wrapper, which is folded in a way that covers the lower half of a woman's face as she bites into the burger. It is also decorated with the lower half of a model's face, in order to maintain the illusion of a dainty face with a closed mouth. The result? Sales of the Classic Burger to women are up 213%! -via Buzzfeed

(YouTube link)

When calorie counts are posted for various foods, be aware that your mileage may vary. Sometimes it's due to a generous server and just a dollop more than the standard size. And the fact that a Subway sandwich comes in as fewer than the stated calories can be attributed to the fact that Subway footlongs are eleven inches. But some foods have calorie counts that don't seem to be related to reality at all.

If foods are going to have mandated calorie labels, why aren't they mandated to be accurate? Because testing and enforcement is time-consuming and expensive, as you'll see in this video by Casey Neistat. -via Nag on the Lake

We love croissants, especially when they're mixed with even more delicious treats. If you're looking for something a little holiday-inspired with your croissant, then you might want to head to New York to try Momofuku Milk Bar's new Thanksgiving Croissant. It not only has celery salt to give it that savory stuffing flavor, but also gravy, cranberry sauce and turkey to ensure you get all the best of a holiday dinner for only $4.50. Of course, if you want to feel as stuffed as you do after a major Thanksgiving dinner, you'll need to eat at least eight of them.

Via Food Beast

A flavor combination you never craved before will soon be a reality. Coming any day to a Target store near you: Lay's Wavy Potato Chips Dipped in Milk Chocolate. I am not making this up. The salty-sweet snack is a limited edition holiday offering, scheduled only through the new year, but if it were to sell well, Lay's would consider adding it to their regular lineup. The company cites the rising popularity of salty-sweet snacks as its inspiration, such as pretzels dipped in chocolate. The combination of sweet and salty is understandable -after all, that's the magic behind Reece's Cups. But in this case, the combination is not just sugar and salt. It's chocolate and potato! -via Uproxx

(Image credit: Frito-Lay)

If you actually cook up your pumpkins after Halloween rather than just carving them and then throwing in them in the trash, it's time to get baking. If you're tired of the same old pumpkin pie recipe, why not try your hand at something a little different...like, say, cheesecake. And this isn't just any cheesecake, it's maple pumpkin brulee cheesecake, which means it's pretty much heaven. 

The base of the recipe comes from this Better Homes and Gardens maple pumpkin cheesecake recipe, but the brulee topping instructions (arguably the most important) is a special addition to the basic recipe and the directions for that step can be found here.

Via Bakers Royale

Is there anything more fashionable than delicious spicy food? Well, maybe there usually is, but when it comes to this cool handmade embroidered Sriracha pendant by Captain Nook. Sure, it might not make your food taste spicy good, but it will at least remind those around you to add in a little extra shot of spice into their food whenever you go to eat out together and let the world know you love the heavenly rooster sauce.

You know what they say, "some like it hot" and this necklace is a great way to show that you are among those that do.

Now that you've gotten all your Halloween candy, whether from your kid's trick or treat stash or your own leftover candy, it's time to enjoy eating all those sweets and if you want to do it right, you'll want to maximize consumption over the next day or two. 

If so, you should check out this great Food Beast guide on how to eat as much candy as humanly possible. Since you won't start weeks in advance like a real competitive eater, you won't be able to fully stretch out your stomach, but you will need to be sure to eat prior to snacking or your stomach will shrink, but don't eat too much or you'll be full, so eat lightly. 

Dan Whalen of The Food in My Beard made this appetizer with Halloween in mind, but it’s really appropriate for any get-together. In the absence of sufficient quantities of earwax, he used a pesto sauce. The Q-Tips are balls of mozzarella cheese and lollipop sticks. Mr. Whalen made the ear-shaped bowl himself.

-via Make

Americans love their corn, but while we think of it as a staple of a basic diet, the Japanese think of it as a tasty novelty treat. In fact, InventorSpot has a great list of 8 crazy corn-based snacks you won't believe exist -like corn Kit Kats and corn sushi. Some of it has to be converted into soup before it's made into a snack first though. For example, KFC makes fried corn soup and a frozen treats company makes porridge popsicles.

If you really want to go weird though, try the corn porridge Ramune soda because nothing says refreshing like corn soup.

(Photo: Reena Rose Sibayan/The Jersey Journal)

We live in age of wonders. Although this enormous nugget is a novelty, one day, it will be a part of the everyday lives of our children.

To celebrate its seventy-fifth anniversary, Empire Kosher Poultry, a chicken company in Pennsylvania, assembled (grew?) what Guinness World Records has confirmed as the largest chicken nugget in the world. It’s 3.25 feet long and 2 feet wide—that’s roughly the equivalent of 720 so-called “normal” chicken nuggets.

It took 6 employees 3 hours to make the nugget, but presumably they’ll speed up the process with automation. And please deliver mine with honey mustard sauce.

-via Dave Barry

"Sorry, someone had to do it," wrote Tommy Up of PYT on the burger joint's Facebook page, when the restaurant released, nay, unleashed, the Deep-Fried Twinkie Burger.

Well, no need to be sorry at all, guys. After all, tofu and kale ain't what got Americans (USA! USA!) to be number one in the world in heft and girth.

The Deep-Fried Twinkie Burger features a custom-blended pork belly patty, layered with melted American cheese and extra bacon, gently cushioned between two crispy creme-filled buns made from, like the name says, deep-fried Twinkies.

The gut-busting burger is the latest in a long string of bold burger creations by the Philadelphia eatery. PYT has previously featured culinary marvels such as the Korean Fried Chicken Burger, the Buffalo Shrimp Burger, Kielbasa Pretzel Burger, the Buff Mac 'N Cheese Burger, the Spaghetti Burger and plenty more.

BRB - gotta book a trip to Philly!

In the meanwhile, take a look at PYT's previous creations and weep:

Huy Fong Foods began production of their Sriracha sauce last year in a new 655,000-square-foot factory in Irwindale, California. The company had previously made Sriracha in smaller facilities in Rosemead. The company processes a year's worth of chili between September and December. But the chili-processing season is proving to be too much for some residents of Irwindale.

…residents are complaining of burning eyes, irritated throats and headaches caused by a powerful, painful odor that the city says appears to be emanating from the factory during production. The smell is so aggressive that one family was forced to move a birthday party indoors after the spicy odor descended on the festivities, said Irwindale City Atty. Fred Galante.

The city of Irwindale filed suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Monday, claiming that the odor was a public nuisance and asking a judge to stop production until the smell can be reduced.

Galante said the court action is necessary because Huy Fong representatives, after cooperating in the beginning, now deny there is a problem. After all, their employees worked closely with the chili and reported no problems. But about 30 Irwindale residents have filed complaints with the city, which wants the factory to come up with a plan to mitigate the odors. A judge is expected to rule on the matter Thursday.  -via Daily of the Day 

(Image credit: Flickr user Memphis CVB)

The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.

(Image credit: Flickr user avlxyz)

by Lucas B. Carey, Michael Dinitz, and Desiree Tillo
Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.

Approximately 20 percent of Israelis and more than 30 percent of Americans are obese [1,2]. Deep-fried foods contribute a significant fraction of their daily fat intake[3]. Fried chicken is a popular high-fat food in both Israel and the U.S. and contributes to a significant fraction of daily fat consumption [3]. Indeed, an increase in fried chicken consumption has been blamed for contributing to the increase in obesity in both China [4] and the Arabian Peninsula[5].

Most current research on reducing the fat in fried chicken has focused on reducing fat uptake during the frying process. [6] However, these methods have not been adopted by restaurants or consumers. Here we present centrifugation of the already cooked fried chicken as an alternative method for fat reduction. We show that centrifugation of fried chicken reduces the fat content. This method, in contrast to all existing methods that target food preparation and cooking, can be applied to already fried chicken, thus providing the first method that can be used directly by consumers with access to a centrifuge.

Results and Discussion

In order to determine if centrifugation is an effective post-purchase method for removing fat from fried chicken we placed equally sized pieces of chicken schnitzel on paper towels and spun them in a centrifuge. We find that spinning at 3000g (4000 rpm) results in an edible, yet visually unappealing piece of fried chicken (Figure 1). In contrast, spinning at 200g (1000 rpm) resulted in a piece of fried chicken that is visually indistinguishable from the un-spun negative control (Figure 2).

Wired teamed up with The Food Network to turn data from their recipes into numbers -ratings numbers, that is- in order to compare different ingredients to answer various questions about what appeals to us the most. One of those  questions concerned the current fad of adding bacon to everything. How did bacon perform as an ingedient? Does it really make everything better?

We calculated the answer, following a simple methodology that made the most of the 906,539 ratings on foodnetwork.com. First, we searched out all the recipes that fit a certain description — sandwiches, for example. Then, we calculated the average rating for those foods if they did not include the word 'bacon.' We ran the numbers again using only recipes that did include bacon. The results were pretty great. Of all the foods we analyzed, bacon lends the most improvement to sandwiches. Many other foods also benefited. In fact, we found that when you crunch the data for all recipes, those with bacon do in fact rate higher.

The effect was more pronounced in some food categories than others. As you can see from the chart, including bacon does not raise the overall ratings of pasta or dessert recipes.

NPR checked the math, and found it to be true. However, the effect is not huge, and there are some other ingredients that, when included, consistently raised recipe ratings: feta cheese, cream cheese, cranberries, strawberries, avocado, and whipped topping. -via Digg

If you were an American living on the other side of the pond, these are the foods you might start to miss. Redditor AxleTheDog posted a picture of the American section in the ethnic food aisle at the Tesco store in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, England. I see an overabundance of peanut butter and chocolate. There are two flavors of Goober, marshmallow creme, Pop Tarts, mac and cheese, and of course plenty opt candy. Canned pumpkin? A commenter explained that they do have pumpkin pie in Europe, but to make it you have to cook a pumpkin yourself, so the canned version makes things easier -the American way. See the full-side picture at imgur.