The Scarecrow

Since its release 3 days ago, Chipotle’s YouTube video, The Scarecrow, has generated scads of publicity and media attention, stirred controversy and angered folks in the food processing industry.

The restaurant chain is taking aim at Big-Food and courting Millennials who want to eat better, eat local—and brand lightly.

“In a dystopian fantasy world, all food production is controlled by fictional industrial giant Crow Foods. Scarecrows have been displaced from their traditional role of protecting food, and are now servants to the crows and their evil plans to dominate the food system. Dreaming of something better, a lone scarecrow sets out to provide an alternative to the unsustainable processed food from the factory.” ~form the Chipotle website

The film was created by Academy Award–winning Moonbot Studios and is set to a remake of the song “Pure Imagination” (performed by Grammy Award–winning artist Fiona Apple) from the 1971 film classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

The Scarecrow video is a promotion for Chipotle’s free iOS game of the same name and, coming early next year, four TV show–length Farmed and Dangerous short movies.

“We’re trying to educate people about where their food comes from,” Chipotle chief marketing officer Mark Crumpacker tells USA Today. And, not coincidentally, the company is also trying to win over millennials, the coveted twenty-something cohort that Crumpacker says is “skeptical of brands that perpetuate themselves.”

Last year, Chipotle served more than 10,000,000 pounds of local produce. Holthouse Farms is one of more than 40 producers selling to local Chipotle restaurants.

Niman Ranch Pork Company founder and pig farmer, Paul Willis, talks about reconstructing and restoring tall grass prairie lands and, below, shares his story of raising free-range, pasture raised pigs for Chipotle.

Below, Chipotle Founder, Chairman and Co-CEO, Steve Ells, reminisces about how he got the idea for the restaurant.

Protein Bars Made From Cricket Flour

Eco

When Greg Sewitz and Gabi Lewis created their protein bars from organic and all-natural ingredients—raw cacao, dates, almond butter and coconut honey, vanilla and sea salt—they wanted a high source of protein. So naturally they went with cricket flour which is slow roasted and milled from crickets. The result is a bar that is high in protein, low in sugar, incredibly nutritionally dense, and packed with omega 3 fatty acids, iron and calcium.

Crickets are exceptionally nutritious. They are high in protein (69% by dry weight), low in fat and contain all the essential amino acids. They are also high in micronutrients: crickets have more iron than beef and almost as much calcium as milk.

Sewitz and Lewis say their bars taste great and their chef has overseen three Michelin Star restaurants and was the Head Chef of R&D at The Fat Duck in England, one of the best restaurants in the world.

Sewitz says there’s some evidence that insects don’t feel pain–at least as we typically conceive of it—so if that’s your reason for being a vegetarian, then this makes sense too.

Codlo Sous-vide Cooking

Grace Lee and Xi-Yen Tan’s Codlo plugs into your existing slow cooker or rice cooker for Sous-vide cooking without the expense of a dedicated Sous-vide machine.

Domonique Ansel | Cronut Goes Viral

Dominique Ansel Bakery

Half croissant, half doughnut — the Cronut created by Chef Dominique Ansel is taking the world by storm since it’s launch on 10 May 2013.

Cronuts should be eaten right away as they have a very short shelf life. They should not be refrigerated or they will go stale and soggy.

Lines for Cronuts start as early as 2 hours prior to the opening of the bakery and the limit is 2 per person at $5 apiece.

Instagram photos of Cronuts.

Soylent | Replace Food With Fuel

Food can be a great sensual and social pleasure. But today many individuals feel that they are too busy earning the money to purchase food and other stuff to spend the time it takes to plan, shop, cook and clean up after a good meal. What if you could occasionally engage in a leisurely meal and the other times just drink a tasty food beverage that quickly and easily mixes with water and supplies all your nutritional requirements.

Rob Rhinehart is a 24 year-old electrical engineer and computer scientist from Atlanta whose work doesn’t afford him the luxury of dealing with food several times a day. So he used his engineering skills of problem solving to determine what a body requires to survive. He discovered that it’s not necessarily fruits, vegetables and meat that human bodies need but the vitamins, minerals, amino acids, carbohydrates and fats contained within those foods.

Rhinehart identified the exact nutrients the body loves and needs and put together a super-food compound that would give him 100 percent of his daily recommended intakes. The result is Soylent which is mixed with water, tastes good and costs less than $150 per month. No cooking, no dishes to clean up and a diet that supplies all your body needs to function optimally and maintain healthy weight. Here’s a list of what’s in Soylent.

Below from an interview with Rhinehart at vice.com.

Hacking the body is high risk, high reward. I read a textbook on physiological chemistry and took to the internet to see if I could find every known essential nutrient. I started to think that it’s probably all the same to our cells whether it gets nutrients from a powder or a carrot.

It [Soylent] tastes very good. I haven’t got tired of the taste in six weeks. I’s a very “complete” sensation, more sweet than anything. Eating to me is a leisure activity, like going to the movies, but I don’t want to go to the movies three times a day.

Not having to worry about food is fantastic. No groceries, dishes, deciding what to eat, no endless conversations weighing the relative merits of gluten-free, keto, paleo or vegan. Power and water bills are lower. I save hours a day and hundreds of dollars a month. I feel liberated from a crushing amount of repetitive drudgery. Soylent might also be good for people having trouble managing their weight. I find it very easy to lose and gain precise amounts of weight by varying the proportions in my drink.

In Defense of New Food by Rob Rhinehart.

Ento | Designing Insect-Based Foods

According to the folks at Ento, bugs are high in protein, low in terms of environmental impact and are a far more sustainable food source than beef or pork.

The Ento Box is an entry level product designed to make the bugs unrecognizable to get consumers past the perception problem of eating insects.

Vegan Black Metal Chef

Laughing Squid

Brian Manowitz is a chef who whips up vegan dishes dressed in full metal-style costume on his cooking show, “Vegan Black Metal Chef.” The show is described as “a vegan cooking show like no other,” is set in a dungeon-like kitchen, and features custom heavy metal tracks to “guide you through making high quality, delicious vegan meals.” All of his videos can be found at his YouTube channel.

At the start of his show, Manowitz puts on his vinyl Armor of Death, paints his Mask of Demons and goes into the kitchen. Using a Canon digital SLR with a swivel screen and a tripod, he starts shooting himself while chopping and cooking the foods. He has to do it all at night, so there’s no sunlight coming through the windows and the process goes on until about four or five in the morning. But filming is the easy part. He usually spends between ten days and two weeks adding the music and the voice-overs to his videos. He puts a microphone in front of the computer and sings along as the video plays. It’s a painstaking process, but the Vegan Black Metal Chef is proud to do it all himself.

The Vegan Black Metal Chef cooking show guides you through a variety of easy Asian, Indian, North American, South American, Italian, Middle Eastern, kosher and other global vegan meals.

Packed with humor, music, and visual effects… This is the most fun way to learn vegan vegetarian cooking ever.

Dabbawalla | Indian Food Delivery

The Perennial Plate

Each day in Mumbai 4000 men in white outfits and matching hats transport 175,000 lunches across the big city. They retrieve the lunch containers of food from mothers and wives, and bring them (by foot, train, bicycle and even carried on top of their heads) to the office buildings of waiting husbands and sons. The Dabba Wallas have been doing this since the late 1800s. Despite the unsophisticated mode of transport, the lunches always arrive on time (the error rate is 1 in every 16 million transactions).