Years ago, I did work for a large fountain beverage company that you have definitely heard of. We were doing focus groups on people who drank a lot of diet cola. Diet cola, you may recall, touts the fact that it has zero calories. The people in the focus group, about 30 in all, were all diet soda drinkers and avoided ‘regular’ soda like the plague, all citing the reasoning that diet was helping them maintain their weight. Of the 30 people, a majority were extremely obese. I remember thinking at the time that there had to be something else going on. We had full food lifestyle info on all these folks and none seemed to have any egregious eating habits with the exception being that they all drank A LOT of diet soda.  Reading the label on diet soda, one might assume that it is pretty much the same as bottled water, but clearly that was not the case.  People swear up and down that the artificial sweeteners are harmless but I could never buy that argument. I recently tripped over an article that sheds some light on the question “Are fake sugars making us fat?”. Researchers fed a one group of mice a diet high in real sugar and another group a diet high in fake sugar. The mice consuming fake sugar got fatter AND wanted to eat more than the others. In a subsequent study, it was reported that the fake sugar group had persistent weight gain even AFTER they stopped eating fake sugars. Now, I know this is not a human study, but I believe the science is pretty solid. Eating anything sweet causes an insulin response, regardless of whether there are calories there to burn or not. It makes sense to me that fake sugars can mess with this insulin mechanism and that can adversily affect people metabolic function. Our bodies evolved to process foods a certain way, and when you introduce anything that ‘tricks’ any part of that system, unintended consequences can result. I have also recently been reading a book called “Why We Get Fat” that talks a lot about insulin response and the interplay between insulin response and obesity. All interesting stuff and the arguments make a good deal of sense. My guess is that we will be seeing more research in these areas and that in 10 years “diet” sodas will have a much different reputation than they do right now.

If there was ever a person who shared Modmarket’s views on food and nutrition, it is Michael Pollan. His ideas directly informed many of the things we do at Modmarket and we have read all of his books more than once. He will be speaking at the Paramont Theatre in Denver on February 29th at 7:00pm and we are giving away 3 sets of tickets to the talk (they are normally $35 each!) He is incredibly dynamic in person and we can guarantee it will be an incredible evening! Click here to register to win free tickets!]]> http://www.modmarket.com/random-bits/free-tickets-to-michael-pollan-in-denver/feed 0 http://www.modmarket.com/our-food/super-bowl-catering-by-modmarket http://www.modmarket.com/our-food/super-bowl-catering-by-modmarket#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:17:27 +0000 Modmarket Catering in Denver and Boulder http://www.modmarket.com/?p=2458

We are running a 10% special on catering for the Super Bowl this year. Our sandwich trays and small bites are an affordable and healthy alternative to wings and pizza. Contact our catering team for more information!

Great review of Modmarket by Holly at Eat, Drink, Boulder

Our catering team has been doing a great job with box lunches lately. Check the ones out in the picture – salads with freshly grilled, all natural, never/ever, meats, a bag of POP chips and a piece of fruit. When is the last time you had food like that at an office meeting?

Despite all media believing Facebook is some magical tool that helps small businesses market themselves, my experience with using it for Modmarket has been filled with disappointment.

Some big issues:


You cannot run contests without using third party apps. This is ridiculous. If I want to give away a free meal to someone who comments on our page I should be able to do so without having to pay a third party service that has a crappy product (I am talking about you WildFire)

You cannot have a master page for a business with multiple locations. Did Facebook not realize that companies like restaurants might want a master page and sub pages so they can easily manage social media across all their locations?

The whole checkin program they implemented was a complete fail and has resulted in a bunch of random pages for Modmarket existing that we have no control over.

Their advertising costs about the same per click as google adwords and in our experience is much less effective.

This is all such a shame because with some small tweaks, it could be an amazingly useful platform for a company like Modmarket. Maybe once they go public this year they will get their act together.

Great review of Modmarket by a denver chiropractor, Dr Gebhardt.

So this is interesting, the Daily Camera is reporting that Trader Joe’s is coming to Boulder. And the rumor mill claims they are coming to the 29th Street Mall, home of Modmarket. We would love having our favorite grocery chain as a neighbor, though, we hope they are far enough away that the billion or so people flocking there every weekend leave enough parking for the rest of us!

Did you know Modmarket caters hors d’oeuvres in Denver and Boulder? Well, you do now.