A Different Analysis of an FDA Warning and the Food & Wine Festival

In The Last Jedi, Luke Skywalker says to Kylo Ren: “Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong.” Though I wouldn’t got that far when evaluating this article from Blog Mickey, the seriousness of the headline and subject matter deserve some analysis.

In the article, there is a citation to an FDA alert related to the use of liquid nitrogen. Specifically, the alert states:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration alerts consumers and retailers of the potential for serious injury from eating, drinking, or handling food products prepared by adding liquid nitrogen at the point of sale, immediately before consumption.

These products are often marketed under the names “Dragon’s Breath,” “Heaven’s Breath,” “nitro puff” and other similar names.

It further states that:

Foods and drinks prepared by adding liquid nitrogen immediately before consumption may be sold in malls, food courts, kiosks, state or local fairs, and other food retail locations. These products may include liquid nitrogen-infused colorful cereal or cheese puffs that emit a misty or smoke-like vapor. Similarly, alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks prepared with liquid nitrogen emit a fog.

The Blog Mickey article ignores this second part of the warning and instead lists the issues the FDA has encountered from the above described use of liquid nitrogen in point-of-sale items drinks, etc… It also ignores this part of the FDA warning, that seems to encompass the nitro truffles that have been served at the Food & Wine Festival the past few years:

In general, other foods treated with liquid nitrogen prior to the point of sale and before consumption, for example some frozen confections, are treated in such a way that results in the complete evaporation of liquid nitrogen before reaching the consumer and are no longer at an extremely low temperature, and therefore do not pose a significant risk of injury.

This type of “frozen confection” is what the nitro chocolate truffles are. Further, there are no “misty or smoke-like vapors” or “fogs” emitted from the truffles.

If Blog Mickey is right about the FDA warning actually relating to the truffles (a point of view I disagree with), then I’m sure we’ll see a response from Disney before too long. Unfortunately, misinformation about the actual real subject matter of the warning could mean Disney just pulls the truffles to avoid the hassle. Personally, that would be a huge bummer (and I know Elyssa would be devastated.)

Here’s hoping that I’m on the right side of this one.

Liquid Nitro Chocolate Almond Truffle with Warm Whiskey Caramel Liquid Nitro Chocolate Almond Truffle with Warm Whiskey Caramel

News Nuggets from Around Disney World

It’s time for another edition of the News Nuggets, and the biggest news of the past few days might be that the complete menus of the Epcot Food & Wine festival have been released. Thankfully, it looks like the chocolate truffle from last year is coming back.

Of course, there was a whole bunch of other Disney World news stories to cover, so let’s get right to the News Nuggets!

As you might imagine, there have been a bunch of ride-through / experience videos of the new attractions. I don’t think I’m going to watch any of them, but if you’re interested, here are a few:

I’ll end things, however, with a link to this timelapse video of “Magic Moments” at Disney World. Enjoy!!

easyWDW has Released its 2015 Epcot International Food & Wine Festival PDF

Earlier today, Josh from easyWDW (with a major credit given to Steve Milz) published the 2015 Version of the easyWDW Epcot Food & Wine Festival Review PDF. As I’ve said before, I always start my Food & Wine planning with easyWDW‘s food reviews. Therefore, it seems like a no-brainer to download this PDF to your phone, so you can reference it at the festival. (Though, I would love to see people walking around the festival with any of these guides in printed and bound form. Full color, of course.)

Early Coverage of the 2015 Epcot International Food & Wine Festival

Sunset at Epcot
Sunset at Epcot

The 2015 Epcot International Food and Wine Festival officially opened on Friday and (as you might expect) there has been a ton of early coverage.

My go-to source for reviews of food items at Disney World is easyWDW and Josh has already reviewed all of the new items at the festival in these two posts: Part 1 and Part 2. He’s already sold me on the $5 Chilaquiles de pollo from Mexico:

This is not exactly what I was expecting – I thought it would be more of a nachos situation, but this is more of a baked enchilada kind of thing with some corn chips that are no longer particularly crunchy. But it’s piled high with seasoned shredded chicken, melted cheese, and the other ingredients to make a flavorful dish that probably doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but tastes better than anything currently served at the Mexico quick service. It’s an above average value that’s easily shared.

Sounds great. If you’re interested in items returning from previous years, Josh also put together a post on those items a couple of months ago. Of course, though I enjoy the food-based posts, I’m still eagerly anticipating his reviews of the various new craft beer options available at this year’s festival. (Yes, I know there is a site dedicated to reviewing beer at Walt Disney World, but since at least one of their reviewers has said she is not a huge IPA fan I discount the site’s opinions pretty heavily.)

UPDATE: September 30, 2015 – I was contacted by Scott of Beers & Ears via Twitter, and he explained that though Jenn isn’t an IPA fan, he actually is. He also pointed me to his recent review of BrewDog’s Punk IPA as an example of an IPA he’s enjoyed. Given this new information, I might have to re-evaluate how I interpret the opinions of the writers on Beers & Ears.

TouringPlans has a series of posts looking at this year’s festival, including one taking a look at this year’s Food & Wine Festival branded merchandise, one reviewing some of the new food items, and one giving some general updates about things like the Chase Lounge and the “Remy’s Ratatouille Hide and Squeak scavenger hunt”. I especially like Julie Mascardo’s description of the new Chocolate-Almond Truffle from The Chew’s “Next Eats” booth:

Essentially the chocolate truffle is a chocolate mousse made into a ball and then dipped into liquid nitrogen, which instantly freezes it. The frozen ball is then tapped with a small hammer to crack it open, and almond powder is sprinkled over the top and then it is coated with a whiskey-caramel sauce.

Yes, please.

Both WDW Magic and Disney Food Blog also have reviews and recommendations of items at this year’s festival, but I found the WDW Magic reviews lacked detailed descriptions of the food items, and I think my sense of taste differs slightly from those who write for DFB. That said, I’m including the links should your preferences differ from mine.

One new wrinkle I plan on trying this year is the Food and Wine Tracker app by Dave Kennedy of disneypodcast.net. I first heard about this app via EatingWDW and, though it seems fairly basic, I think I am going to give it a shot. (Of course, if easyWDW puts together a PDF version of its 2015 Food & Wine coverage, I’ll probably end up downloading that as well.)

Finally, if you want to get a flavor (pun kind of intended) of what this year’s Food & Wine festival looks like, there are a ton of photos over on DISboards.com. The gang from the DIS also put together this video walk through: (which seems like a great way to end this post)