For years, Virginia Beach, like many beachfront resort communities, was better known for fun food like burgers, fries, and ice cream than it was for award-winning cuisine. But that’s changing thanks to a thriving culinary scene driven in large part by a serious commitment to locally sourced food.

Rockafeller’s is a Virginia Beach institution located on the marina. Although the menu covers its bases, the emphasis is on fresh, local seafood. Specialties include crab and shrimp hushpuppies and freshly caught fish reeled in that day. And because Virginia Beach is situated at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, the kitchen serves a rare treat: lump crab served simply, baked with drawn butter.

Rodney Einhorn, the chef at Terrapin, who did a stint at Le Cirque in New York and who has cooked at the James Beard House in New York, is focused on locally sourced everything to the point that the menu is entirely driven by what’s available on any given day. He relies on New Earth Farm, an organic space in the Pungo farming community just outside town. The farm grows a large variety of small crops from blackberries to sweet tomatoes. There are also free-range hens that lay fresh eggs and goats that produce fresh milk during calving season, which shows up on the menu.

Visitors can tour New Earth Farm or book a cooking class in the onsite classroom where the shelves groan with jars of preserved produce.

Even beachfront burger joints, like the new Lager Heads, are leaning local. Here, the bar features Virginia wine and 16 local brews on tap. Virginia Beach and the surrounding area has become a hotbed of breweries with a half-dozen in the area so far. For instance, Young Veterans Brewing Company was founded last year by two Iraqi War vets and offers beer with names that pay tribute to their military service like Jet Noise (a double IPA) and Pineapple Grenade (a Hefeweizen).

Leaping Lizard Café, which was featured on the Food Network’s “Dives, Diners and Drive-Ins” is a fun, casual space where chickens roam the yard. The kitchen sources eggs and herbs from its own backyard and taps local fruits and vegetables to create everything from the daily flatbread to seafood risotto.

Breakfast doesn’t get better than at Doc Taylor’s. Tucked on a side street in the heart of town, this restaurant, which is only open for breakfast and lunch, is housed within the former home of a 1930s doctor. Quaint rooms with fireplace mantels and creaky doors set the stage for solid home cooking. Massive platters of eggs, thick slabs of smoked Virginia ham and sautéed potatoes fuel the day.

Pleasure House Oysters is a new farm that’s dedicated to cultivating local oysters. After years of depletion, Chesapeake oysters are returning thanks to operations like this one. Visitors can bring a bottle of wine aboard an oyster boat for a tour of the hatchery and sample oysters. Virginia Beach Oysters — called Lynnhaven –are said to be among the sweetest thanks to their unique habitat at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay where it opens into the Atlantic Ocean. If you’d rather try these oysters on land, they appear on the menus of area restaurants like Terrapin and A.W. Shucks Raw Bar and Grill in nearby Norfolk.

Oliver Struempfel is the best man to invite to your Oktoberfest.

He is able to hold 27 liters of beers — a total weight of 147 pounds — all at once.

“Rudy” will serve frozen custard and baked goods, like doughnuts and peach cobbler, when it hits the road next spring.

Are you ready to make daily decisions that help support a more sustainable food system, but done with the really easy stuff? Have you already started eating more vegetarian meals and developed an addiction to the farmers market? Are you ready to take m…

Never again will you put in all that work just to sit down to a so-so meal.

By Lynn Andriani

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By Tom Jacobs

In recent decades, artificially sweetened beverages have become an increasingly popular alternative to sugary sodas. At the same time, America’s obesity rate has risen to epidemic levels.

Odd coincidence? Perhaps not: Considerable research has found consuming these “diet” drinks results in weight gain over the long run. At first glance, this seems preposterous, since you’re substituting a high-calorie product with a no-calorie one.

But in a newly published paper, a research team led by Texas Christian University psychologist Sarah Hill finds drinking these non-sugar beverages can “influence psychological processes in ways that—over time—may increase calorie intake.”

In a series of experiments, Hill and her colleagues discovered artificially sweetened beverages impacts our subsequent reactions to sweet food in ways that are distinctly different from either sugar-sweetened or non-sweetened drinks. Their research, published in the journal Appetite, suggests these products may activate a craving without satisfying it, thus increasing our vulnerability to the next high-calorie treat that crosses our path.

A body that believes it is getting an energy boost (as the sweet taste of the soda implies) and then does not may react by going into WTF mode (Where’s the Fructose?).

In one experiment, 115 undergraduates who had been fasting for at least eight hours drank one of three 12-ounce beverages (served in an unmarked cup): Sprite (sugar-sweetened); Sprite Zero (artificially sweetened); or lemon-lime flavored sparkling mineral water (unsweetened).

Afterwards, they took a test in which they were presented with 28 strings of letters, each of which flashed on a computer screen for 250 milliseconds. Participants were instructed to push one key if the string was an actual word, and another if it was not.

The researchers noted how long it took for them to notice the embedded words, which included seven high-calorie foods (including burger, cookie, and pizza), and seven low-calorie foods (such as celery and carrots).

“Participants who consumed the non-caloric sweetened beverage responded more quickly to the names of high-calorie food items compared to those who consumed either the sugar-sweetened or unsweetened drink,” Hill and her colleagues report. Interestingly, no differences were found between those who drank the sugary soda and the mineral water.

Another experiment featured 115 undergraduates who similarly drank one of the three beverages. Each then opened a box containing a bottle of natural spring water, a pack of Trident sugar-free gum, and a bag of M&Ms. After evaluating each product’s logo and packaging (to distract them from the actual intent of the study), they were told “they could choose one of the products to take with them when leaving.”

The results were striking: Those who drank the artificially sweetened drink were 2.93 times more likely to take the candy than those who had consumed either the sugary soda or the mineral water.

The researchers could not draw a definitive conclusion as to why drinking the diet soda had this effect, but they suspect it is based on “the decoupling of sweetness with energy availability.”

To put it simply: A body that believes it is getting an energy boost (as the sweet taste of the soda implies) and then does not may react by going into WTF mode (Where’s the Fructose?). This translates to cravings for the next high-calorie option that crosses our path.

While this study isn’t definitive, it does add to the evidence that artificial sweeteners may do more harm than good. Sure, they help us avoid calories in the short run. But in the end, we have to pay the Tab.