What do hunger pains and your workload have in common? Lots, according to a recent online poll.

Slightly less than half of employees queried in an August poll by Right Management and LinkedIn said they take a break for lunch – and 20 percent say they usually remain at their desk for the midday repast.

“Has the true lunch break become the exception rather than the rule?” wondered Stephanie Krizay, a vice president with Right Management, a career and workforce research and consulting company based in Philadelphia.

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Gino’s, the classic local fried chicken and burger joint named after a Colt legend, is making a comeback as Gino’s Burgers & Chicken.

The home of the Gino Giant — a large burger that some say was the precursor to the Big Mac at McDonald’s and the Whopper at the BK Lounge — will soon open its doors in King of Prussia, Pa. and later on in Baltimore. Locations are presently being scouted in and around the Beltway, foodie sources say.

The old red-roof restaurants, still dear to the hearts of many in Baltimore and immortalized in film by Barry Levinson, was founded here in 1957 by Colt greats Alan Ameche and team captain and NFL Hall of Famer Gino Marchetti and their partner, Louis C. Fischer.

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Last week I wrote a blog post wondering if the proposed menu labeling bill in Maryland is going too far in that it takes away consumers’ accountability for their own health.

Today I got an e-mail in response to the blog from a PR rep for Starbucks Coffee. She included the results of a recent study Starbucks had commissioned on menu labeling, which requires restaurants and chains to post nutritional information next to each menu item.

Much to my surprise, the study conducted by Stanford University found that calorie-posting at Starbucks led to a 6 percent reduction in calories (from 247 to 232) per transaction. AND (this is what really surprised me) the amount spent per transaction was not significantly affected, and in some cases proved to be effective marketing.

“There is no impact on Starbucks profit on average, and for the subset of stores located close to their competitor Dunkin’ Donuts, the effect of calorie posting is actually to increase Starbucks revenue,” the study said.

The study’s authors analyzed transactions at Starbucks company stores in New York City from Jan. 1, 2008, to Feb. 28, 2009, with mandatory calorie posting in that city taking effect on April 1. For controls, they authors also looked at every transaction at Starbucks company stores in Boston and Philadelphia, where there is no menu labeling.

The study also looked at individual behaviors by analyzing Starbucks card holders’ purchases in New York and conducted surveys after calorie posting became mandatory in Seattle last January.

The results are interesting in that it seems to show if lower-calorie food or snack alternatives are offered (such as Starbucks’ 120-calorie mini-donut), customers will likely substitute their usual order and not necessarily spend less. But where menu labeling CAN hurt is if you don’t have that option, like at Dunkin’ Donuts. Sorry, but a bagel (even though it has more calories — but also less fat) is nowhere near close to being a substitute for a donut.

Does this change anyone’s opinion about menu labeling? Or does it reinforce it?

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Here’s something to chew on as we enter the holiday-food binge: Maryland is among six states where more than half of all residents will be obese by 2018. That’s according to a new report based on findings from Emory University health care economist Ken Thorpe, who heads up the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease.

No pun intended, but that’s huge.

Thorpe finds that if trends continue, then 43 percent of American adults, or 103 million people, will be obese, and the costs associated with obesity would quadruple to $344 billion in 2018. But he says that the U.S. can save $200 billion if obesity levels hold steady at 31.3 percent.

With all the talk in Washington about cutting health care costs, it sounds like obesity should be a big target for Congress.

If Thorpe’s predictions are correct, 52.1 percent of Maryland adults will be obese in 2018, with related health care costs of $7.9 billion. In 2008, 31.2 percent of the state’s adults were obese and $1.4 billion in related costs were spent.

People that have body mass indexes above 30 are considered obese. (Go here to calculate your BMI).

Oklahoma is projected to be the worst off in 2018, with 56.1 percent of adults falling into the obese category. Ohio would have the highest related costs at $16.2 billion. (Oklahoma has 3.6 million residents compared to Ohio’s 11.5 million).

Which state would fare the best? Colorado, known as the leanest state in the nation, would have the fewest adults who are obese at 29.8 percent, but Connecticut would have the lowest associated costs at $2.9 billion. (Colorado has 4.9 million residents compared to Connecticut’s 3.5 million).

Thorpe doesn’t offer much in the way of advice on how to stop obesity levels from increasing in his report — he briefly mentions that including calorie and fat count on restaurant menus has the potential to cut obesity growth in half and that taxing high-calorie sodas can help.

But in a piece on the Huffington Post, he identifies four ways to attack the issue:

1. Convince Americans that obesity is a serious medical condition that increases other health risks (diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease), not a lifestyle choice.
2. Make sure the stigma attached to obesity doesn’t overshadow the need to combat it.
3. Get employers invested in wellness.
4. Reconfigure health care system to allow docs to treat obesity as a preventable health condition.

If none of those options work out, looks like The Biggest Loser might have to start accepting more contestants.

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No movies tonight
The drama is in the streets
See yinz on Monday
–Manny Thiener, Pittsburgh, PA

Today, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page soft feature article about a Haiku contest held by the organizers of the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh, which starts next weekend in my hometown. Entrants submitted predictable banal lines of verse, in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables each. Stuff like this, from presumed Pittsburgher Kelly Lynskey:

Neighbors of the world
Welcome to our three waters
Share with us your peace

As a fan of the World-Champion Pittsburgh Steelers, I am, like one or two other members of this newsroom, acutely aware of how high emotions run between these two cities, so I sent out a mass email to the newsroom asking for Haikus from our staff about Pittsburgh, or about the G-20, or about anything they felt moved to write after reading the WSJ story. Predictably, even though I didn’t mention football, most of the poems I got were Steelers/Ravens-related. here is a sampling.

From copy editor Wayne Countryman:

Roethlisberger won’t
End inequality or
Win the Super Bowl

From sports business reporter Liz Farmer:

Pittsburgh’s on a roll
G-20 and the Super Bowl
Luck always runs out.

Hm. Does this mean Liz is rooting for Pittsburgh’s misfortune in areas other than football? Economic development and international recognition, for example?

Associate Editor Paul Samuel was more of a civic-minded Balti-booster:

Why go to Pittsburgh
For G-20 summit?
Baltimore has much more charm

That one, however, I’m going to have to disqualify, because its syllabic scheme is 5-6-7, or so unorthodox that I’m not even sure it qualifies as a Haiku, if any poem not written in Japanese, can indeed qualify as a Haiku (energy and finance reporter Danielle Ulman, who did not submit a poem, insists that in order to qualify, a Haiku must have a reference to the seasons in it).

Richard Simon, our multimedia supporter, wins the prize for Haiku most heavily reliant on a patently false version of revisionist history, but his second line shows impressive lyrical promise, in my opinion:

Santonio Holmes
Big catch on the biggest stage
One foot in, one out

Business Editor Ed Waldman sent this in, and if anyone out there can figure out what it means (beyond the fact that Steelers rookie cornerback Keenan Lewis wears #20), they get a prize:

Steelers fans thinking
that ‘G-20′ is number
of Keenan Lewis

The last three Haikus that I’ll share are the ones that had the least to do with football. Because ultimately, the G-20 isn’t really about football. It’s about macroeconomic cooperation and public relations. Legal reporter Caryn Tamber took the high road:

I wish I could write
Pithy words about football
Sorry, no can do

Government reporter Andy Rosen, true to form, did his homework. His Haiku references the Allegheny County Department of Sanitation, Pittsburgh’s waste-disposal authority. He gets points for being both wonkish and disparaging in only 17 syllables:

Three Rivers are joined
But do not swim or sip them
It smells. ALCOSAN.

And finally, the winner of the Daily Record G-20 Haiku prize, comes from legal reporter Brendan Kearney, who got my email requesting submissions right before lunch, apparently, and we were planning on hitting up the Kooper’s Chowhound Burger Wagon for some burgers (they were delicious). He read the article, then called on all his powers of rhyme and composition to compose the following mellifluous lyrics:

Yes I am hungry
For a juicy slab of meat
And maybe bacon.

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Lexington Market outranks San Francisco’s Ferry Building Marketplace in one food writer’s book. And she even likes the fact you can buy squirrel there.

That scribe of discernment is Jane Stern, half of Gourmet magazine’s “Roadfood” duo. With her husband Michael Stern, she’s a regular guest on The Splendid Table, a national program broadcast locally on WYPR.

Last Saturday, Michael and host Lynne Rossetto Kasper were waxing rhapsodic about the Ferry Building, where, as Lynne noted, “all the best artisans, it seems, have shops or stands.”

Finally, Jane could keep quiet no longer.

Sure, she acknowledged, the Ferry is a “beautiful, beautiful piece of architecture” and an “endless cornucopia of the best of the West Coast.”

(Even through the scratchy reception, you could just hear the “but” coming.)

“However.” Jane said. “With that said, I’m putting a vote in here for the Lexington Market, in Baltimore, Maryland.”

While the Ferry is a “yuppie dream,” she said, “the Lexington Market has the greatest soul food and the greatest crab cakes and the greatest old-fashioned chocolate layer cakes… It’s funky and a little more my style.”

Michael Stern quickly jumped in, praising the chocolate and coconut cakes and proclaiming the jumbo lump crab cakes at Faidleys as “truly the best crab cakes anywhere.”

Jane, perhaps worrying that we missed the “funky” bit earlier, underscored the point:

JANE: I couldn’t help notice that the stand to the left was having a run on squirrel …

LYNNE: I beg your pardon?

JANE: …yup. Muskrat and squirrel. … It’s a people’s market. It’s definitely a people’s market.

MICHAEL: The term ‘artisan’ would never be applied to anything made or served in this market, OK?

JANE: On the other hand, the best crab cakes ever. Ever.

So, there you have it: Baltimore beats San Francisco. If you want to hear it for yourself, click here.

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If you shop at Giant Food, you may be in store for a pleasant surprise this weekend — more little red-and-yellow discount tags.

The grocer launched a new initiative Friday that it says will double the number of sale items available to shoppers who are members of the company’s loyalty program. Along with new shelf tags and in-store signage, Giant is launching a redesigned loyalty card. Customers can register their card online and create a personalized profile, view store services and track their savings and reward programs.

The additional savings come at a time when family budgets are strained from back-to-school spending. (Click here to read more about how Maryland stores are doing on back-to-school sales.)

Shoppers can also do their part for the schools through Giant’s A+ Bonus Bucks every time they use their card. Since 1989, A+ Bonus Bucks has raised more than $79 million to help local schools purchase equipment and materials.

So, in the last year, Giant has redesigned its logo, introduced self-scan shopping and is rolling out more discounts. While I’ve heard from some Safeway shoppers they prefer the quality of the Safeway product (especially in produce) over Giant, in this economy, price and convenience are taking top priority with more and more people.

At what point should Safeway be concerned that Giant is wooing away its shoppers for good? And who’s next? Wegmans? Trader Joe’s?

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Aldo’s Ristorante Italiano has a nice promotion out this summer that’s refreshing for its straightforwardness: $39 for three courses from the Little Italy restaurant’s “Summer Stimulus” menu all summer long. And that’s every day — including Saturdays.

At normal prices, the three courses would total $50 or more per person, according to Aldo’s.

The deal runs through the end of August and the only time it’s not available is during Restaurant Week, when three course dinners for $30.09 will be offered. Can’t complain about that price change either.

Two things:

1. I thought that wave of naming every new promotion after this spring’s federal stimulus package was over. Apparently I was wrong.

2. While this is a pretty steep discount for Aldo’s, it comes during a time that is typically the slowest of the year for the restaurant industry. So they’re trying to keep an already slow time from being even slower.

As Klaus Fritsch, co-founder of Morton’s The Steakhouse, put it to me last week: “We’re still hitting our peaks. It’s just the valleys go a little deeper now.”

What’s interesting is that Aldo’s is choosing to extend its promotion to Saturdays, a night when established restaurants typically don’t have to work very hard to draw customers. However, being a pricier place, the move is a sign that every customer must be fought for this summer. And, if that’s the case, I’d start looking for other white-table restaurants to start doing the same.

Advantage: consumer.

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Klaus Fritsch, co-founder of Morton’s The Steakhouse, was in Baltimore and Annapolis this week promoting the restaurant’s new cookbook, and I had a chance to speak with him Thursday.

Although this is the second Morton’s cookbook in three years, Fritsch, who is the author, said it will likely be the last. Or at least as long as he’s still around, it will be.

“We had a great reception from the first one, so we did a second,” he said.

“But I just don’t think there’s room for a third,” he added, pointing out the recipes in the books are also used in Morton’s restaurants.

After all, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

All right, it’s not quite like that — after all these ingredients don’t come cheap, and sometimes the hassle of making the meal doesn’t outweigh the cost of going out. But what is interesting to note is the release of the cookbook also comes at a time when some Morton’s diners are turning to eating more meals in, according to Fritsch.

While that may be nice for cookbook sales, it doesn’t change the fact that dining room sales have decreased. But Morton’s isn’t alone, said Fritsch.

“Of course we’re affected by [the economy], but everybody has been,” he said. “Everyone’s having deals now to counteract that and so are we… But we’re an expensive place, let’s face it. On the other hand, if you really want a good steak, you’ll still go out for it.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Last night at Little Havana on Key Highway, local business people gathered to network, catch up with colleagues and enjoy a few drinks on the breezy outdoor deck overlooking the harbor. But they didn’t come out just for great Cuban food and conversation — they were there for Green Drinks, a monthly gathering of Baltimore’s environmentally conscious entrepreneurs.

This month the event was sponsored by NAI Michael and Seven Seas Energy, two companies that are committed to exploring green business practices. Spokesmen from each group made short presentations on solar energy and other green initiatives.

Teris Pantazes of Seven Seas was excited to see such a large turn-out for the green happy hour. “It’s a great networking opportunity for green businesses,” Pantazes said, “I mean, we’ve got 80 or so people and this is only our sixth event.”

Local Heather Giustiniani said she is always looking for little ways like Green Drinks to support environmental practices. “I just recently bought wind power for my house,” she said.
It wasn’t all business though. I had a lot of fun kicking back, enjoying the great view of the harbor and chatting with like-minded people.

The event will be held at Little Havana for July and August, so if you’re interested in a good business networking opportunity — or just in going green — Green Drinks is the cocktail hour for you. You can find more information about upcoming events here.

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