Happy New Year and away with trans fat sprinkles
Eat up on those sprinkles for the next two days, they’re going the way of other trans fats:
…[T]he federal ubernannies have decreed that sprinkles should no longer adorn kids’ ice cream because they contain the trans fat that liberal groups once pushed for.
Come the New Year, the Food and Drug Administration, ignoring the principle that in most cases it’s the dose that defines the poison, will issue new regulations designed to remove even trace amounts of hydrogenate oils, commonly known as trans fats, from our diets.
I wonder how many people eat enough sprinkles to matter. I’m certainly not one of them. Sprinkles used to taste better when I was a kid; maybe because back then they weren’t made of trans fats? When trans fats came into play the health pushers said they were better for you than the other sort of fat. Woe, the irony!:
…[T]rans fats were once pushed by liberal groups such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest. This poster child for the food police in 1988 published a book titled “Saturate Fat Attack” that condemned the use of saturated and polyunsaturated fats then in vogue. Food companies soon switched to trans fats, a move for which CSPI proudly took credit.
The worm turns, what goes up must come down.
But when I read the news about sprinkles I couldn’t quite imagine that food manufacturers would give up on them so easily. Won’t the trans fat sprinkle be replaced by some other type of fat sprinkle? Inquiring minds wish to know, and since my mind is certainly inquiring I discovered to my relief that the sprinkle will go on:
In fact, the Paulaur Corporation has already removed trans fats from its line of sprinkles by using a non hydrogenated palm oil…
“Food police” opponent Jayson Lusk argued that there was no need to ban trans fats because food companies had already reduced the amount that was used because of new labeling laws.
So don’t worry, be happy.
And in New England, it’s all about the jimmies. When I first emigrated there, I was stunned to discover that the little thingees New Yorkers and the rest of America call “sprinkles” are called “jimmies” there. No reason for it; they just are, and that’s that, and no, it’s not a racist thing.
Two possible origins of “jimmies” not discussed in the article you linked to are “jim-dandy” and “gimcrack” (pronounced “jimcrack”). Oxford says jim-dandy means an excellent person or thing, remarkably fine, outstanding; and gimcrack a showy, unsubstantial thing, especially a useless ornament, a trumpery article, a knick-knack.
Gimcrack dates back to 13th century Old French; jim-dandy to around 1886, and only as an American colloquialism.
In Connecticut, we called them “shots”. Went to Cape May NJ and ordered a cone with “shots” and he knew where we were from!!!
Turned out, when I went off to college in New England, I discovered to my mild amusement that what most American people called “soda” or “pop”, or perhaps “soda pop”, is called in New England (the Boston area, at least) — “tonic”.
[ pronounced “taww-nik” ]
Whew! (neo, half a century later, is “tonic” still the default regional term for the fizzy stuff?)
I grew up calling them “sprills.” I’m not sure where I picked that up; today’s Internet seems to think it’s a New Jersey thing, but I never lived there. Maybe it spread from NJ into Maryland, where we lived when I was a child, or maybe it came from my family’s upstate NY roots.
In any event, we moved back to NY when I was in high school, and I quickly learned that nobody had ever heard of “sprills” and I had to say “sprinkles” instead. Only a few years later, I went to college in New England and had to adapt to “jimmies” — not to mention “frappes.”
By that time, it seemed simpler to say, “Just put some of those tasty little chocolate things on top, would you please?”
Ha! Further research provides historical vindication for “sprills.” Who, after all, could be more authoritative about ice cream-related topics than Schrafft’s?
https://www.storeslider.com/antique-schraffts-chocolate-sprills-candy-ice-cream-dessert-191409902553e.html
@MJR “tonic’ has fallen off in usage in Mass & NH
although it is the word I grew up with.
Now we mostly use “soda” before soda became just a drink, it was considered something medicinal, you bought it at a pharmacy. So most of the various types were considered *cures* for something, you know the travelling medicine show guy he sold *tonics*. I believe Coke was a digestive aid & NE had it’s particular favorite Moxie !
As far as the topic of man made transfats they really are dangerous to your health. They are one of the causes of chronic low level inflammation in the body. Chronic inflammation is implicated in stroke, heart attack, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, fibromyalgia. The food industry really has gone *crazy* with partially hydrogenated oils, also known as shortening, & margarine, these are all trans fats. Even *Cool Whip* is transfat. They add it to EVERYTHING
all commercially baked items, store bakeries can still use it, nearly everybody still uses Crisco for pie crusts, commercial frostings are loaded with transfats. A substitute would be butter but you know no pie you buy has a butter crust.
They fry in transfat, they say its 100% vegetable oil and it is vegetable oil but hydrogenation turns it into transfat. Peanut oil or lard would actually be a better choice. There are some natural transfat but the body can change these to a digestable fat , the body cannot do this with manmade trans fat, so it travels around your body getting incorporated into cell membranes & organs where nature never intended this manmade fat to be. So there is more to it than just a bit of jimmies.
If anybody wants to buy Crisco I am ok with their choice but there is no need to the food industry serving it up so heavily to the rest of us.
Au contraire neo! Whether ‘jimmies’ is a racist term is not for you or I to decide. It may or may not be… today, being a situationally dependent term (as are all terms). Whether it is declared a racist micro-aggression in the future has yet to be determined by its perceived usefulness to the narrative… from moment to moment.
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.'”
In our family (southwestern PA) they were called jimmies (chocolate and multi-colored alike).
My dad is from Boston, so that might account for it, but as I recall it was a common term for every kid’s favorite ice cream topping.
We called soft drinks “pop” but my dad insisted it was “tonic” 🙂
Molly NH:
For several years now Crisco has supposedly been trans fat free.
Neo I think that is “100% hydrogenated oil versus partially hydrogenated” Supposedly 100% hydrogenation fills up all the bonds in the chemical & causes it to no longer be transfat.
I just have to admit that I don’t trust that.
They are *still* heating the oil & in fact may be heating it even more to get to 100%. I am not a chemist so I don t know the particulars but I have read that *nickel* is somehow introduced to the hot oil causing it to coalesce into the end product Crisco. It sounds a bit like making butter where eventually the clumps of butter separate from the milk & stick on the paddle.
I once read the history of Crisco & as I recall it was intended to be a non edible product of some kind, candles maybe, then they thought of the *brilliant* ?? Idea to use it as a lard substitute.
Anyway it s a food porn story, & has put me off the stuff for years now. Everyone is welcome to
continue to use it though, heck my mother in law bought 3 lb cans of it! (She did come down with dementia though…)
Molly NH:
I don’t ever cook with it, but I suppose it might be in some pie dough or other I sometimes eat at someone’s house or restaurant. It’s not a big part of my diet.
M J R: “Tonic” for soda/pop is from my experience an eastern Massachusetts expression, not a universal New England expression. I was born and raised 75 miles from Fenway Park, and never heard my neighbors use the term. Apparently the term is dying out even within I-495, or as would be said in California, the 495.
Speaking of regionalisms, the NYT origins test from last year located my area of origin very accurately by my use of the word “grinder” for what other areas call sub sandwiches, hoagies, or po-boys.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/03/24/boston-word-tonic-gives-way-soda/QpbSyMXlJvvESSVERxb6iP/story.html
@neo, good then you are in the *seldom eaten* range.
@ gringo, NH used *tonic* too, it was in supermarket newspaper adds & on the signs plastered in their windows. “Tonic 32 oz 29 cents sticks in my memory for some reason LOL.
2015
The year that congress starts cutting the FAT out of the government.
BooYaw!
TRANSFATS?——NO
TRANS—-formative…
Molly NH: I will accordingly correct “eastern Massachusetts” to “eastern New England.” It is interesting to note that even with 60 years of television and 90 years of radio, how there are still regional idiosyncrasies.
Fascists making money off the capitalists, while funded by socialists.
wendy,
Yes, I grew up in Hartford and we called them “chocolate shots”. “Sprkinkles” and “jimmies” were both foreign to us.
We eat a healthy diet. That said, I wish to announce my support for the trans fat liberation front. DTMWTEYFP. Don’t tell me what to eat you fascist pigs!
In England they’re called Hundreds and Thousands, at least that’s what I know them as.
}}} Who, after all, could be more authoritative about ice cream-related topics than Schrafft’s?
Howard Johnson, that’s who (“Only 1 flavor”).
…. well, you asked….
Re: the jimmies: When I was in college a professor asked the class (most of us from various parts of Ohio) what we called that strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street. It turns out that there were several regional terms for it – tree lawn, city strip, no man’s land and Devil’s strip stick in my mind. How about the rest of the country?
And in regard to the soda vs. pop issue, there’s a map of the US charting the preferences somewhere on the internet. It seems that the coasts and St. Louis say soda, the rest of the Midwest says pop and there is substantial support for referring to all pop as Coke in the South.
Surellin, et al:
Here’s a previous post of mine on regional variations in pronunciation.
Surellin,
Then there’s the “soda pop” usage, I think mostly in parts of some Western states. A compromise, maybe?
Surellin,
My mom saw that question in a newspaper when I was a kid (late 1960s, let’s say). She said, “I don’t know. I’ve always called it “the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street.”
She’s from rural Kansas and moved to the Kansas City area when she was about 10.
She asked my dad (grew up in Ohio) and he called it a parking strip.
To this day, I can’t really think of a time when that piece of ground has ever come up in conversation. I’ve only ever seen it in articles about regionalisms.