"In our experiment, each category was represented by four different food stimuli that were adapted to the general taste of the Dutch population and that represented snack foods in eatable portion sizes."
For the category high-calorie sweet, they used:
- Chocolate
- Wedge of apple pie
- Treacle waffle
- Bonbon bloc
I tell you, is there anything in the world that triggers an uncontrollable food craving like the idea of a treacle waffle? A treacle anything, really, just gets the saliva flowing. I might be slightly even more excited at the idea of a treacle digestive biscuit, but the treacle waffle is a damn fine choice. I especially like the kind of treacle that is drawn from a
treacle-well.
As for the bonbon issue, I prefer my bonbons from the eastern bloc but I'm just picky that way.
[Source: Ouwehand & Papies (2010). Eat it or beat it. The differential effects of food temptations on overweight and normal-weight restrained eaters.
Appetite, 55, 56-60.]
3 comments:
I like to translate when I read, and for this, I read "treacle" as "bacon," assuming it was one of those disgusting meats because, after all, where is the savory snack?
But looking it up, I see that it actually means "syrup," and that makes me think of what my sister called Liege waffles, which are Belgian street food served warm in french fry bags and very delicious. And you can smell them a long way off like donuts, only they aren't sickly sweet like donuts.
(I have a recipe for Liege waffles, but it involves making both a quick bread batter and a yeast batter, mixing them together and then throwing them into the waffle iron, hoping it won't stick. Yeah, right, like I'm ever going to make that.)
I also saw that another meaning of "treacle" was "antidote to poison," and when you think about it, you just never know when that is going to come in handy. It makes any uncontrollable saliva-inducing food craving just a little bit safer, don't you think?
My search for a recipe settled on the same product Debbie mentions. I think treacle and bacon are associated in the same way honey and ham are - bacon is cured with the sugary syrup treacle. As best I can find, treacle is sort of like maple syrup, only made with sugar cane rather than maple sap - similar to molasses, but lighter. And I think Debbie's Liege waffles are probably what the study is using. The recipe I saw was to make two 'flat' (not Belgian) waffle-like cookies and use the treacle syrup and some other stuff to 'glue' them together. My guess is that this is the original product that those waffle-like sugar cookies you can buy at the grocery store, the ones have the sugar 'frosting' in the middle, are based on.
At a guess, it is near to what the organic food people call 'dehydrated cane juice' on their ingredients list.
Savory snacks were salted crisps, french fries, cheese cubes, and mini pizza.
Per Martin Gardner (Annotated Alice), a treacle well existed in Carroll's time near Oxford; wells that contained water that had medicinal properties were known by that name (taken from the original meaning of treacle as an antidote for snakebite, etc., as Debbie mentions).
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