Good morning, it’s Wednesday.
Today, we move from the sublime – preserving democracy by encouraging people to vote and celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month – to, well, not the ridiculous necessarily, but one of the most basic elements of our lives: Eating.
I try not to get too hung up on the headlines about food – what’s good for you, what’s killing you slowly, what causes terrible diseases, and what “superfood” du jour might save your life. I try to eat healthy. I have a few guilty pleasures that I prefer not to advertise. (I mean, if you’ve been here a while you know that carbs are my downfall; let’s leave it at that).
But it has been hard to ignore all the stories about how “processed” food – especially processed meat such as bacon, sausage, hot dogs, canned meat, or lunch/deli meat- is bad for your health. Let’s start here:
What do the so-called experts mean when they say “processed”? Because technically speaking, unless you’re pulling something straight from the earth or off a tree or pulling it from a brook or field and eating it as is, which is to say, well, raw, then you’re eating processed food.
Technically speaking, the definition of processed food is Processed food is anything you consume that is no longer in its pure and original state. So, the contrarians out there say, well, washing, cutting, preserving and/or cooking food is processing it. Juicing is processing, so is steaming, baking, air frying, and any other type of supposedly healthier manner of preparing what we eat.
So, not all processed food is equal. What we’re really talking about when we’re talking about the sort of food that isn’t good for you is not “minimally processed”, but rather “ultra-processed,” which means it contains preservatives, flavorings and/or additives like salt, sugars, fat, and chemicals approved for human consumption that are used to enhance flavor and increase shelf life.
Leaving aside the question of whether and how much red meat is good for you to consume – apparently, there are some people out there these days who are following the carnivore diet, which means they’re consuming nothing BUT red meat and other animal products – let’s agree that the humble hamburger falls somewhere in the middle of the processed food scale, especially if you make it at home or consume it at a restaurant that hasn’t mucked around with the meat much.
Also, let’s agree that cheese on your burger is not gilding the lily in the slightest, but rather a delicious addition that elevates the experience to a new level. I am not picky here: Cheddar in all its many forms is delightful, as is Swiss, blue cheese, Gouda, and Monterey Jack, Provolone, or even good old American.
The interwebs cannot agree on who, exactly, invented the cheeseburger. Some insist it was a 16-year-old named Lionel Sternberger, who chanced upon this delicious combination while working in his father’s sandwich shop, The Rite Spot, in Pasadena, California, in 1924. But, then again, maybe not.
Whoever it was left quite the legacy. Approximately 50 billion burgers are consumed annually in the U.S., translating to around 4.2 billion burgers every month, about 2.4 billion of which are sold by McDonald’s alone. I have been unable to determine the cheeseburger breakout of that, but I feel confident in saying that it’s a very big number.
According to YouGov’s ranking of The Most Popular American Dishes, the hamburger ranks No. 1 with 85% popularity, with the cheeseburger coming in third at 83% – just behind french fries and grilled cheese both 84% – and tied with fried chicken.
Today, in case you hadn’t already guessed, is National Cheeseburger Day. There are deals to be had at various different establishments across the state and nation.
A mostly cloudy day is on tap, with the potential for some sun peaking out. Highs will be near 80 degrees.
In the headlines…
Israel carried out its operation against Hezbollah yesterday by hiding explosive material within a new batch of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon, according to American and other officials briefed on the operation.
The pagers, which Hezbollah had ordered from Gold Apollo in Taiwan, had been tampered with before they reached Lebanon. Most were the company’s AP924 model, though three other Gold Apollo models were also included in the shipment.
Militant group Hezbollah promised to retaliate against Israel after accusing it of detonating pagers across Lebanon, killing nine people – including an 8-year-old girl – and wounding nearly 3,000 others who included fighters and Iran’s envoy to Beirut.
The pager explosions come after Israel’s security cabinet voted this week to add another war objective to its ongoing conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah: ensuring the safe return of residents from communities along its border with Lebanon to its homes.
There is now widespread concern across the globe that the November election will not end well and that American democracy, once a beacon to the world, has frayed to the breaking point.
The man accused of trying to kill Donald Trump on a golf course in Florida had more than 100 interactions with police near his old home in North Carolina, according to a former officer.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said a task force assembled to review the assassination attempt against Trump will be expanded to include a second incident from over the weekend.
“We have a responsibility here in Congress to get down to the bottom of this, to figure out why these things are happening and what we can do about it,” Johnson told reporters.
President Joe Biden says that Trump already has heightened security as a former president and the Republican nominee for president.
Trump gave his Secret Service detail short notice that he would be golfing at his course in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Sunday, causing agents to forgo a scan of the perimeter, according to two people familiar with the events.
Trump said that both Biden and Vice President Harris were “so nice” in their calls following an apparent assassination attempt on Trump, hinting that it made it more difficult to attack them.
Trump yesterday sat down with his former press secretary and the governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for a town hall event in Michigan, marking his first campaign event since an apparent assassination attempt over the weekend.
Many Trump supporters attribute his survival of what authorities say appeared to be a second assassination attempt to the divine marks a new fervor taking hold in the final weeks of the election.
Call it hubris or political cunning or an old-fashioned fantasy by a son of Queens, but Trump’s decision to expend one of the race’s 49 remaining days rallying at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island today has left political strategists in both parties confused.
Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, decided to move classes online and cancel on-campus activities from Sept. 16-22 following threats received by the school as recently as Monday, according to a campus alert.
The Des Moines Register poll found that in Iowa, a state Trump won comfortably in both 2016 and 2020, 80% of Harris’ supporters say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about her as their choice for president.
Harris largely stuck to her script during an interview yesterday with a panel of National Association of Black Journalists members, carefully parrying questions about hot-button issues like the war in Gaza, reparations and other critical election topics.
Harris called for an end to the Israel-Gaza war and said that Israel must not reoccupy the Palestinian enclave once the nearly year-old conflict comes to an end.
The vice president said that Trump’s repeated unfounded claims about Black migrants in an Ohio city were “hateful rhetoric” and “tropes” that had been “designed to divide us as a country.”
Trump Media breached an agreement with one of the investors that helped the company go public, and must grant the investor a larger share of its stock, a judge ruled.
Senate Republicans blocked an election-season bid by Democrats to advance legislation to guarantee federal protections and insurance coverage for IVF treatments – the second time in three months that the GOP has thwarted the broadly popular measure.
Senators voted against advancing the bill, 51-44, marking the second time Democrats have sought to put Republicans on the record on the contentious issue. Sixty votes were needed to open debate on the measure.
Attorney General Letitia James and Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday issued a joint statement in response to the announcement that Instagram would be making changes for underage account holders, including privacy settings and overnight notifications.
Beginning this week, all teen accounts on Instagram in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia will be notified that Instagram plans to automatically place their accounts under new, protective settings that limit who can contact them and what content they can see.
A Chinese diplomat who has repeatedly praised the Chinese Communist Party is still fulfilling his role as the consul general of China’s New York Consulate despite conflicting narratives from the Biden State Department and Hochul.
Hochul hosted the Post’s Cindy Adams at the executive mansion and dished on former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whom the current governor firmly believes will run for mayor of New York City. She also said she has no intention of returning to live in Buffalo.
Cuomo supporters “are spreading the word” that he is running for mayor, sources say — as the Adams administration faces mounting investigations.
Former Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa told Forbes her phone is ringing “off the hook” with people insisting her ex-boss needs to run for mayor.
As New York faces shortfalls in many sectors of its vast workforce, leaders of the departments of Labor and Civil Service are working together to remove the barriers both real and perceived.
Mayor Eric Adams offered a somewhat different response yesterday to questions about the swirl of federal investigations touching his administration, letting the press know he’s growing weary of continuous updates.
“I’m not going to keep having daily updates over and over and over again,” Adams said. “You know how many times we’ve been asked that question?”
Adams, asked at his weekly news conference if he understood New Yorkers’ concerns about the issues, said city dwellers never expressed those worries to his face and blamed the media for making them a bigger issue than they are with the public.
Adams urged against painting city employees with a broad brush and pointed to his predecessor, former Mayor Bill de Blasio, when asked about corruption in city government.
If he were to leave office under any terms – voluntarily or against his wishes – Adams would be succeeded by the city’s public advocate, Jumaane Williams, and a special election would be held to elect a new mayor.
Pressure is building on Adams to fire one of his key aides and longtime friends, Timothy Pearson, who is ensnared in a mushrooming corruption scandal.
Adams has been loyal to longtime aides despite growing calls for them to resign. It is a trait he has shown through his career and one that came into sharp relief after he was elected mayor in November 2021.
Adams praised the NYPD officers who shot at an alleged fare evader on a crowded subway platform in Brooklyn on Sunday, striking and injuring four people.
The infamously rodent-hating mayor plans to host an inaugural National Urban Rat Summit.
The New York Fire Department’s new chief’s ties to China are coming to light against the backdrop of a federal investigation into foreign influence on the city’s officials.
New Yorkers flooded the Sutter Avenue L train station in Brownsville, Brooklyn yesterday, just two days after officers said they had opened fire at an alleged fare evader there.
Chancellor David Banks shared his vision for artificial intelligence in New York City public schools, including being used to measure student progress and personalize instruction in response.
Banks, whose phone was seized during an investigation related to his brother, largely avoided discussing his current circumstances in his annual State of Our Schools speech.
A half-dozen New York City school system employees took their children or grandchildren to Disney World, New Orleans and other destinations by exploiting a program intended for homeless students, investigators said in a report released this month.
A former state union prison official fired by the city Department of Correction earlier this year has been hired by the city Sheriff’s office to oversee agency investigations, the Daily News has learned.
The city’s free Condom Availability Program is running low on prophylactics — and New Yorkers may not get any action on a rubber resupply until fall, health officials said.
Rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs was hit with sex trafficking and racketeering charges and held without bail as federal prosecutors filed a criminal indictment accusing him of forcing women to participate in wild and violent sexual performances he videotaped.
In the 14-page indictment, Combs, 54, is accused of transporting male sex workers and women across state lines to participate in the hedonistic parties he and his colleagues dubbed “Freak Offs.”
Rensselaer County’s former commissioner for the Department of the Aging testified this week that she never hired anyone without approval from the county’s director of operations, Richard W. Crist.
A former worker at The State Room, a wedding and event space on State Street, is suing the venue’s owner for sexual harassment during the years she worked there, which allegedly culminated in texts containing graphic sexual demands last June.
Two teens suffered cuts to their wrist and hands when one of them pulled a knife during a fight at Schenectady High School early yesterday afternoon, according to Lt. Ryan Macherone, a city police spokesman.
Hochul announced the completion of construction of Station 25, a two-building affordable housing development in the City of Albany featuring 51 apartments on a historic property in the Park South neighborhood.
The Historic Albany Foundation revealed the winners of its 2024 Preservation Merit Awards. The awards will be presented during the nonprofit organization’s annual meeting at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 25, at the Cathedral of All Saints on South Swan Street.
Former Siena women’s lacrosse coach Abby Rehfuss, who left a successful six-year stint with the Saints to become a Syracuse assistant, is gone from the Orange program after one season.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
