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| Britain |
| Scots eat their pizzas deep fried |
| 2004-12-17 |
| THE deep-fried Mars bar ( US Milky Way), a nutritionist's nightmare that surfaced in Scotland about a decade ago, is now an established part of the Scottish culinary scene, according to a letter published in The Lancet. Dipped in batter and then cooked in hot oil, the Mars bar is now on sale in more than a fifth of Scotland's 627 fish-and-chip shops, it says. The average sale is 23 bars per shop per week, but some shops say they sell up to 200 a week, it records. The deep-fried Mars bar first surfaced in news reports in 1995, reputedly originating in the eastern city of Aberdeen. Promoters of Scottish tourism - aghast at this damage to their efforts to highlight Scotland's history, culture and landscape - joined with middle-class foodies in deriding the DFMB as media hype. But this is untrue, say authors David Morrison and Mark Pettigrew of the Greater Glasgow NHS Board, who contend the snack is "deep and crisp and eaten." "Scotland's deep-fried Mars bar is not just an urban myth," they say. Health experts have condemned the deep-fried Mars bar as an artery-clogging catastrophe. Scotland is already ranked as the country with the highest rate of chronic heart disease in Western Europe, a position that owes itself to cigarettes and alcohol as well as a poor diet and a love of sugary foods. Critics should take heart, though. The Mediterranean diet is penetrating into Scotland, "albeit in the form of deep-fried pizza," say Morrison and Pettigrew. Pizza is one of several items that customers have asked shops to deep-fry, along with bananas, pineapple rings and creme eggs, a highly sweet confectionery. The letter is published next Saturday's issue of the British medical weekly. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #6 If it's properly deep-fried at the proper temperature, the food doesn't absorb the oil. I think the Food Police are just whining again. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2004-12-17 8:04:11 PM |
| #5 Cold climate food. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2004-12-17 3:59:16 PM |
| #4 If you can't boil it, deep fry it! |
| Posted by: mojo 2004-12-17 1:11:50 PM |
| #3 The Scots (and Scots Irish) deep fry everything. See Albion's Seed. Yes, everything you need to know is in that book. I would bet the coefficient of correlation for turkey deep frier sales and Scots Irish population density in America is .95. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2004-12-17 12:46:49 PM |
| #2 I remember hearing last year, a feature on one of the NPR news and commentary shows about deep fried cheesecake. For your artery-clogging pleasure, pieces of cheesecake were frozen, and wrapped in a couple of layers of phyllo dough, and deep-friend. A chef who had come up with the idea did a demo for the reporter, who taste-tested it, and insisted that it was actually very, very good. |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2004-12-17 12:41:36 PM |
| #1 I've always said that there's no food so delicious that it can't be made better by deep-frying. Leave it to the Scots to prove it! I see these things at the state fair every year, but so far I haven't had the stones to try one. The pizza has to be about trying to p*ss people off, though. |
| Posted by: BH 2004-12-17 11:35:05 AM |