slkinsey
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If the Cordon Bleu regularly trains amateurs alongside aspiring professionals in the curriculum leading to the Grand Diplome, the question it to what degree the standards you mention are affected by the participation of the amateurs and what they might be if the school exercised different admissions criteria for the curriculum leading to the Grande Diplome.
I don't understand why the assumption is made that LCB "dumbs down" it's coursework - at any given time they may have a class of all aspiring pros or a class that has a few amateurs - the coursework is still the same, it has been for years.
That is not my assumption at all. My assumption is that, if a cooking school does not "dumb down" the professional curriculum, then it will have a hard time attracting/retaining amateurs for that curriculum. And I think my assumption is borne out by the relative numbers of amateurs and aspiring professionals in the various curricula.
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Ok, so we are definetly on the same page now. I think you are right, that the body will try to do the most energy efficient thing. But as you've said again and again, excess calories are excess calories. So if the body has excess dietary fat and excess dietary carbohydrates, its going to turn its excess carbs into fat no matter what once the relativlely small carb storage is full.
I don't really know what the bodies daily requirement is for protein. Its very dependent on many things. For example if you suffer a burn or a fever or anyother activity that raises your metabolism, then that will increase you need for protein, because you repairing/or creating new machinery to run your bodies cells. If you had a high protein diet, that was low in fat and carbs, then the body would need to use the proteins to make energy--which is of course ineffecient. If you had excess of the requirements then it would become fat.
Basically I think the idea is that the body will do the most effecient thing at the time. It doesn't know what you are going to eat in the future. I don't know if this answers your question.
OK... one more question for when you are back, and I may have this thing figured out.
What I think I understand is that sometimes the protein, fat and carbohydrates are used to build things our bodies need, sometimes they are converted to metabolic energy and sometimes they are converted to stored fat.
So... let me make a hypothetical example: I eat 50 calories of protein and 50 calories of fat. My body takes a look around and says, "OK... we really don't need any protein or fat to build anything right now, but I do need around 50 calories of metabolic energy to keep everything going." So, the body needs to decide what it is going to use immediately and what it is going to store as fat. My understanding is that the body will "selectively choose" to store the 50 calories worth of fat and will therefore use the 50 calories of protein for metabolic energy.
This is what I mean when I say that the form of the calories and the efficiency in converting calories in their various forms to stored fat doesn't seem to matter too much so long as there is enough dietary fat around. My understanding is that any time the body finds itself in an "excess calories situation" it will first convert dietary fat to stored fat and will only convert dietary protein and carbohydrates to stored fat when there is no longer any fat around to store. In other words, the body won't burn 25 calories each of the protein and fat, and store 25 calories each. This is relevant when applying your efficiency figures, as the 25/25 protein/fat mix would be converted to 36.25 calories of stored fat whereas straight fat would be converted to 47.5 calories of stored fat -- a 31% difference.
This page seems to support that idea:
...fatty acids are then absorbed from the blood into fat cells, muscle cells and liver cells. In these cells, under stimulation by insulin, fatty acids are made into fat molecules and stored as fat droplets.It is also possible for fat cells to take up glucose and amino acids, which have been absorbed into the bloodstream after a meal, and convert those into fat molecules. The conversion of carbohydrates or protein into fat is 10 times less efficient than simply storing fat in a fat cell, but the body can do it. If you have 100 extra calories in fat (about 11 grams) floating in your bloodstream, fat cells can store it using only 2.5 calories of energy. On the other hand, if you have 100 extra calories in glucose (about 25 grams) floating in your bloodstream, it takes 23 calories of energy to convert the glucose into fat and then store it. Given a choice, a fat cell will grab the fat and store it rather than the carbohydrates because fat is so much easier to store.
Given the relative efficiencies of storing fat, protein and carbohydrates you quantified earlier, the above would seem to indicate that an ultra-lowfat diet would be recommended for weight loss, because any time the dieter did eat any excess calories, the efficiency of converting those calories to stored fat would be much lower. Of course, as I think you pointed out, protein is almost always accompanied by plenty of fat in the real world.
Thought this was interesting:
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slkinsey: do you actually think the Cordon Bleu is going to give me my Grande Diplome if my abilities, grades and attendance are not up to expectation? Just because I gave them some money?? Sorry, this degree cannot be bought, trust me, some have tried...
If the Cordon Bleu regularly trains amateurs alongside aspiring professionals in the curriculum leading to the Grand Diplome, the question it to what degree the standards you mention are affected by the participation of the amateurs and what they might be if the school exercised different admissions criteria for the curriculum leading to the Grande Diplome.
I'd like to reiterate that I don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with a cooking school accepting amateurs if they elect to do so. A provate school may accept whatever students it chooses. I also don't think there is anything wrong with such a school insisting that all students, whether amateur or aspiring professional, exhibit performance and dedication up to the level they have determined is appropriate for aspiring professionals. I do have a hard time believing that any such school would be able to retain a significant number of amateurs in such a curriculum. But, if they can make the grade, keep up with and otherwise behave like the aspiring professionals in a rigorous curriculum geared 100% to professional cooking, I don't see a reason why any school would not allow such amateurs to attend.
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"A lot" is a relative term, anyway. In terms of a brewed cup, tea has far less caffeine than coffee.
There are "a lot" of variables, though, including portion size. Most people don't drink 20-ounce servings of coffee, whereas that's pretty standard for iced tea. And how long you steep it, the type of tea, etc., all affect caffeine levels as well.
Exactly. Looking at the numbers I just quoted, a 20 ounce iced tea could easily provide 400 mg of caffeine... perhaps more considering that tea for iced tea is often brewed longer and stronger than tea for hot tea.
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"A lot" is a relative term, anyway. In terms of a brewed cup, tea has far less caffeine than coffee.
This page says:
Double espresso (2oz) 45-100 mg
Brewed coffee (1 cup) 60-120 mg
Instant coffee (1 cup) 70 mg
Decaf coffee (1 cup) 1-5 mg
Tea (1 cup) 40 mg
Cola (12 oz can) 38-45 mg
Chocolate milk (1 cup) 4 mg
Dark chocolate (1 oz) 20 mg
Milk chocolate (1 oz) 6 mg
This other page says:
NoDoz - 2 doses - 200 mg
Coffee Drip - 5 oz - 110-150 mg
Excedrin - 2 doses - 130 mg
Jolt - 12 oz - 100.0 mg
Anacin - 2 doses - 64 mg
Coffee Perk - 5 oz - 60-125 mg
Mountain Dew - 12 oz - 55.0 mg
Tab - 12 oz - 46.8 mg
Coca-Cola - 12 oz - 45.6 mg
Coffee Instant - 5 oz - 40 - 105 mg
Tea, 5 min. steep - 5 oz - 40-100 mg
Dr. Pepper - 12 oz - 39.6 mg
Pepsi Cola - 12 oz - 37.2 mg
Espresso - 1 shot - 30-40 mg
Tea, 3 min. steep - 5 oz - 20-50 mg
Chocolate - 1 oz - 1-35 mg
Decaf Coffee - 5 oz - 2-5 mg
7 Up - 12 oz - 0 mg
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I was thinking specifically of all the different available Snapple choices. Tea of course contains caffeine. In some cases is contains a lot of caffeine. I assume most fruit extracts do not naturally contain caffeine. So is it safe to say that all the Snapple tea-based beverages are caffeinated and none of the others are?
Do all teas contain caffeine? I thought herbals didn't.
FG, I think I would agree that the non-tea-based Snapple drinks are probably caffeine free.
KNorthrup, I think the Fat One was referring to infusions made from the leaves of the tea plant, rather than infusions made from other plants.
Main Entry: teaPronunciation: 'tE
Function: noun
Etymology: Chinese (Xiamen) t'e
Date: circa 1655
1 a : a shrub (Camellia sinensis of the family Theaceae, the tea family) cultivated especially in China, Japan, and the East Indies b : the leaves, leaf buds, and internodes of the tea plant prepared and cured for the market, classed according to method of manufacture into one set of types (as green tea, black tea, or oolong), and graded according to leaf size into another (as orange pekoe, pekoe, or souchong)
2 : an aromatic beverage prepared from tea leaves by infusion with boiling water
3 : any of various plants somewhat resembling tea in properties; also : an infusion of their leaves used medicinally or as a beverage
4 a : refreshments usually including tea with sandwiches, crackers, or cookies served in late afternoon b : a reception at which tea is served
5 slang : marijuana
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It may be more rigorous and challenging at Yale, but that is completely determined by the composition of the student body.
YES, that is the case at a university where you would want to be with your intellectual equals or superiors, but cooking school is skill and labour, brains and intellect have nothing to do with it.
Huh? You sure you don't want to rethink that?
Also, it's not necessarily only a question of "brains and intellect." There are also the elements of dedication, motivation, talent, experience, hard work, etc. Wouldn't you also want to be in a class where your colleagues were as dedicated, motivated, talented and hard working as you... if not moreso?
Do you think it would be better to be in a class of cooking students who were all busting their asses 24/7, competing with and helping each other to attain higher and higher levels of proficiency and excellence... or in a class where 50% of the people weren't putting it all on the line? Which one do you think would be more condusive to acquiring the skills and expertise necessary for professional cooking?
Do you think it would be better to attend a cooking school that was extremely rigorous and where students had to earn their diplomas by passing difficult examinations relevant to professional cooking, and which not all students are able to pass... or to attend a school where most any student who ponys up the money and slogs through class can say they are a "graduate?" Which diploma do you think is likely to be taken more seriously by the profession?
I know which one I'd choose.
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Sometimes I'll run into a lefty who says, "Oh, I'm a lefty, I'll sit on this side of you." I never understand that: assuming we both eat the same way with a knife and fork, why does it matter which side you sit on?
A lot of lefties put the knife in their left hand and the fork in their right. When eating with a knife and fork the elbow of the knife hand will naturally stick out somewhat when cutting, whereas the elbow of the fork hand tends to stay closer to the side. If you get a righty sitting to the left of a lefty, the inevitable result is a collision of elbows whenever they use their knives to cut at the same time. This can be mitigated, of course, by having both diners keep their elbows at their sides while cutting (which may be better table manners anyway), but in actual practice this rarely happens and some diners may find it unnecessarily restricting.
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Now are you telling me that if you filled the High School of Performing Arts with a bunch of kids who can sing but don't have any real desire to become singers, that won't change things?
Steve, why?
Why and how would that change a school for performing arts? Or the culinary school for that matter?
It wouldn't change a public high school for the performing arts much, because they are not necessarily designed for students who are going to pursue a career in the performing arts so much as they are there to help the students develop their performing abilities as much as possible no matter to what end.
Think of it this way... what if Julliard filled up with a bunch of amateur violinists who could play OK but didn't want to become professional musicians? What if one of those elite tennis programs filled up with players who were good but didn't plan on turning pro? You can't tell me that those schools wouldn't fundamentally change. I can't believe that an adult who does not aspire to be a professional violinist is going to spend 5 hours a day in a practice room hammering out his chops. No serious amateur tennis player is going to spend 5 hours a day on the courtsand sacrifice social and home life to train. Likewise, I can't see a non-career-track culinary student spending hour after blistering hour turning potatoes until it is just right.
The point is that there are sacrifices an aspiring professional is willing to make, and there are lengths to which an aspiring professional is willing to go that 99% of "civilians" won't. To make a hypothetical example, I could see an aspiring professional cook at cooking school staying up at school until the wee hours of the morning turning potatoes and practicing because he has been told that he won't pass on to the next level unless he makes a certain grade turning potatoes. I could also see an amateur chef in the same class saying, "fuck this, I don't care if they give me the diploma or not... what use is turning potatoes to me?" Putting these two students together in a classsoom is going to make a difference.
One thing my father, a life-long academic, told me once about college admissions standards is this: the reason Harvard and MIT (et al.) set their admissions standards so high is that a big part of the reason an elite student would want to go to these schools is to have the privilege of working alongside other students at a high level. It is not the case that an intro level English class at Yale is somehow "better" at teaching English than an intro level English class at Brooklyn College. It may be more rigorous and challenging at Yale, but that is completely determined by the composition of the student body.
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Some packages just don't say one way or the other. Is there a way to figure it out?
I have always understood that, unless a soft drink lists "caffeine" on the ingredient list, it doesn't have added caffeine. Whether or not there may be some natural caffeine may be an issue, but I don't think it is a huge one. I'd stay away from coffee or tea-based drinks. Something like Fresca, for instance... I don't think they make a big deal out of the fact that it doesn't contain caffeine, but it doesn't. Similarly, I think that regular Barq's root beer contains caffeine while the diet version does not. As I recall, I only discovered this by comparing the ingredient lists.
I know a number of serious Mormons (serious enough to have "temple recommends") who, as you may well imagine, do not take any caffeine. AFAIK, they don't worry about drinking sodas that do not list caffeine as an ingredient.
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My point is that I think it generally silly to say "it costs this much, and it pays this much afterwards...fools!" because this paradigm utterly dismisses other things besides money in the equation. Happiness and job fulfillment, as I said, for one.
Oh, I don't disagree; nor with your premise. It just surprised me that the median was so low.
And, believe me, I know that 99% of law firm lawyers completely hate their jobs.
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...I still think the hobbyists have the right to attend if they are paying the dies and doing the required work.
Of course they do... unless the school decides they do not want to admit them. Then they don't. No one has the "right" to attend a private educational institution.
But I think here we are discussing institutions that ARE allowing them. Obviously it would exclude the ones that don't admit them.
However, I do NOT believe, for one second, that it is up to the institution--be it the Cordon Bleu or any other--to weed these jackasses out.Both of these things are up to the institution. Ultimately, that is how schools make their reputations... how selective is admission? how rigorous is the course of study/instruction? how hard is it to make the grade and stay in? what quality are they producing?
If a cooking school is really interested in turning out top-level graduates who will be taken seriously, if they want their diploma to be accorded weight and significance, then they are well-advised to attend to the above described matters. If not... well, then that will be reflected in their reputation. If a cooking school is able to train prospective professional cooks to an exceptionally high level and also attract/retain paying amateurs to the same classes without compromising the focus of the curriculum and its rigor, then all the more power to them. This does not seem to be the case, and I gather that cooking school diplomas are not highly valued and respected in the business. That said, a professional cooking school ought to be able to administer some kind of test or evaluation that will determine whether those who have participated in its course of study are entitled to the diploma or to advance to the next higher course of study. Then the diploma might really mean something. Of course, such a practice would tend to turn off paying amateurs, so...
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Median annual salary, graduating attorneys: $52,000
Is it really that low? I have an occasional day job (the arts market being what it is) at a mid-sized but certainly not top-shelf NYC law firm... and I happen to know that the first-years make over $100k/year. And I also know that this is not considered an extravagant salary in the biz.
Of course, your figure may reflect the fact that there are way too many law schools turning out way too many lawyers and the business is so glutted that the median is being pulled down by the people who end up working for podunk practices in little midwestern towns.
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...I still think the hobbyists have the right to attend if they are paying the dies and doing the required work.
Of course they do... unless the school decides they do not want to admit them. Then they don't. No one has the "right" to attend a private educational institution.
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Schools like MIT and Stanford don't go around touting the placement percentage of the graduates from their chemistry graduate programs.
Oh, yes they do. See an example here from MIT's graduate program of economics. It's the same competitive environment for same basic end result.
Um... that's why I said chemistry and not economics. The Econ Department at MIT specially offers a placement service. Not exactly quite the same thing I was talking about. The Law School at Harvard also may talk about the placement percentage and starting salaries for their graduates, but I very much doubt that the History Department there is doing so.
Not that this in any affects my comparison of a pure academic setting and a vocational training program.
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I do not see any reason why a vocational school devoted to a particular occupation -- cooking, in this case -- should not limit the student body to people who are interested in pursuing that occupation.
But how would such a school make this determination? And when would this happen? Wouldn't the applicants lie? At what point does it become painfully obvious that the student/applicant has no desire whatsoever to pursue a career in that trade?
I knew after 2 years of graduate school that I didn't want to spend my live developing a humpback over a lab bench, but they let me stay in the program anyhow, and finally let me get my Ph.D. And they were even paying me to attend and get credits. I'm glad they didn't kick me out.
I just wonder how this determination of students' ultimate goals would be made.
Obviously part of that determination has to be done by admission standards of some kind. Second, in a cooking school one would, I suppose, have to rely on the students' stated career goals and reasons for attending the school. The third part is to set the bar high and weed out students who do not meet the standard which has been set for them. This third bit is exactly what I would expect a hypothetical "American College of Bricklaying" to do.
The big difference between your academic experience and a cooking school is that traditional pure academia is not a vocational school. They were not training you to get a job as a scientist -- that is not the aim of academia. The aim of academia is the pursuit of knowledge. They were helping you to be a scientist. Schools like MIT and Stanford don't go around touting the placement percentage of the graduates from their chemistry graduate programs. That's not the point. Doing the work and getting the degree is the point. Not everyone can go on to be a professional pure scientist.
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Once a school accepts a student into a program, it has a vested interest in seeing that student graduate. The time to be selective is pre-admission.
Hmm... I'm coming late to this discussion, but I would not say that is strictly true.
Not strictly true, but it is both a trend in education and, I believe, specifically true of culinary schools. I'm sure we could make a simple factual determination, though, by looking at some educational sites and seeing how many people matriculate and graduate at the culinary schools. I'll check the CIA site. You look somewhere else.
Oh, I don't disagree with the basic tenor of your remark. I do think that it is generally true of academic institutions, and probably none the less true of cooking schools. That said, an institution with a reputation and high standard to maintain will aggressively weed out students who are not capable of meeting that standard. As you rightly state, this process starts with admissions. I don't see why this should not be the case for cooking schools. More to the point, I do not see any reason why a vocational school devoted to a particular occupation -- cooking, in this case -- should not limit the student body to people who are interested in pursuing that occupation.
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Once a school accepts a student into a program, it has a vested interest in seeing that student graduate. The time to be selective is pre-admission.
Hmm... I'm coming late to this discussion, but I would not say that is strictly true. Some schools (I am thinking of top music schools in particular) are structured so that people without the proper motivation and/or talent are encouraged to drop the program or switch to a related course of study. Of course, many conservatories are affiliated with colleges or universities and they would often like for such students to pursue their interests there, but that does not change the fact that some conservatories have a fairly low graduation rate.
To make an example from my own experience, I went to my undergrduate school specifically so I could do a double degree program (went 5 years, graduated with a BM in voice performance and a BA in psychology). When I was a freshman, there were around 30 of us in the double degree program. When I graduated, there were 4 of us left who went double degree all the way to completion. I would estimate that the rate of graduation in the conservatory was around 30% to 40%, and the percentage of freshman performance majors who graduated with performance degrees was even less. I was given to understand that these percentages were not all that unusual.
Since a music school is essentially a vocational school (as distinct from a liberal arts school) it seems fairly directly comparable to a professional cooking school. This is to say that the main thrust of these schools is to prepare students to make a living as professional musicians (insofar as this is possible in today's arts economy) or professional cooks. Music schools do not typically accept amateurs or people who are not interested in pursuing a professional life in music into their regular curriculum, and I don't see why cooking schools would either. Most music schools have a "continuing education" division for that kind of thing, and I don't see any reason why a cooking school wouldn't as well.
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I love West Side Market. It's a very mini Pike Place market.
I picked up Ranier cherries, Mission figs and the list of usuals: garlic, onions, lemons, oranges, strawberries, apples and tomatoes. There are outdoor and indoor stands. I was on a mission, so I also got Maytag blue, French feta and Italian fresh mozzarella.
The resulting pizzas I made were luverleee!
The cherries are divine, as usual.
Looking at your list, you could almost make the one kind of "alternative" pizza I can stand: fig, gorgonzola and ruccola.
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I have enjoyed iced tea brewed from rooibos, a South African herb.
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Are you really set on doing it in a pit? Spit roasting is much easier IMHO.
(Reads detailed instructions.) This is easier than burying a pig in a firepit, forgetting about it and digging it up 12 hours later?
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...by comparing the GI of two foods, you can see that you're bettter off eating an apple than apple jacks.
You are?! DAMN IT! There goes my weight loss strategy!
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Just to be sure that we're on the same page, it would seem that the efficiency of turning these things into fat is only relevant to losing/gaining weight if the person consumes practically no fat. Otherwise, the body will simply store excess calories by converting dietary fat to fat storage, which is extremely efficient -- yes/no?
I'm not sure we are exactly on the same page, because I don't exactly understand what you mean. As i understand it the efficiency of turning these things into fat is always relevant, no matter if you take fat in or not. The amount of fat the body can store seems to be endless. So if you take in excess fat it will be turned into fat, and if you take in carbs and protein in excess of what your body can store/use in those forms then it should be converted to fat by this ineffecient process.
OK... let me see if I can explain myself better here...
Let's say that an adult male burns 2,000 calories/day but eats 2,400 calories a day. We both agree that he will gain weight. Now, let us further say that this guy's diet is such that he takes his calories from the following sources: 800 from fat, 800 from carbohydrates and 800 from protein. So, there are two different ways of looking at the "extra" 400 calories... We can think of it as 133 calories each from carbs, fat and protein, in which case the extra calories would be converted into around 297 calories (129 from fat at 95% efficiency, 102 from carbs at 77% efficiency, 66 from protein at 50% efficiency) of stored fat. But, is there reason to suppose that the body would go that route? If there is plentiful dietary fat around (which there almost always is), why wouldn't the body simply do the most efficient thing and convert 400 calories of dietary fat into 380 calories of stored fat?
My reading of what you are saying is that the body has a separate requirement for fat, carbohydrates and protein respectively and that any calories beyond those requirement are converted into fat according to the efficiencies you quantified. Except, obviously we know that this doesn't happen in the case of a hypocaloric diet where the individual eats more than the required amount of protein, for example, so the "extra" protein calories would have to be turned into something else and used, right? That's where I get confused. Given that the body seems to be able to use excess protein (or carbs or whatever) for something other than fat storage, why wouldn't the body choose the most efficient thing in and use dietary fat as the main source of calories for stored fat? Thanks for offering your expertise on these things, by the way. Is this kind of thing part of your profession or field of academics?
Something I didn't mention before: As you have said a pound of fat contains 3500 calories. To lose a lb of fat you must have a caloric deficit of 3500 calories. Because of the fact that the storage of fat is inefficient, if you eat a "normal diet", meaning one constisting of a mixtures of fats, proteins, and carbs, you have to take in about 4000 calories to lay down 1 lb of fat.So this assumes approximately 87.5% efficiency in converting extra calories from a mixed diet into stored fat. It strikes me, however, that the amount of dietary fat would not have to be all that high for this efficiency to come up a few percentage points. In the real world, of course, there is not much difference between 4000 calories turning into 1 pound of fat and 3500 calories turning into one pound of fat. If one's diet is consistently 250 calories over equilibrium (not a hard thing to do) it will take only two days more to salt away a pound of fat.
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Assuming that you haven't changed your eating habits, or your activity levels, why hasn't your weight continued to increase ? As far as I can see, the only reason your weight has stabilized is that third factor --- metabolism. It seems to me that as people gain weight, their metabolism compensates by operating internally to increase calorie burn. There comes a point when the process levels out, weight becomes stable, and the body has adjusted to deal with that weight. I would suppose that this is a natural process, and I have always believed that different people are genetically "designed" by nature to adopt different body weights.
The first part of this is easy to explain when you understand that each pound of body mass burns off about 12 calories per day. So, for any given caloric intake there is an "equilibrium" weight where the calories consumed will equal the calories burned. I'll make an extremely simple example: Say you have a 200 pound male who burns off 2,400 calories a day (for the sake of simplicity we are going to assume that this person lies in bed all day long and does not burn off any calories from exercise). Further, suppose that this person normally consumes 2,520 calories a day -- 120 more than he burns. As we know, this person will gain weight. But once the person gets up to 210 pounds, he will stop gaining weight because he is consuming the same number of calories he burns. This is because the extra ten pounds of body weight burns 120 calories/day. The reason people tend to stabilise at a certain weight is because they tend to consume/burn right around the same number of calories on a daily basis.
Whether or not people are genetically predisposed to put on "excess" weight... it seems fairly clear that some are. The mechanism by which this happens is not entirely clear, however, to me at least.
Duck Confit
in Cooking
Posted
I remain unconvinced as to whether making confit in cryo or plastic offers any tangible benefits over doing it the traditional way. That said, I do think that two of the techniques discussed in this thread are very much worthwhile.
Cooking below the simmer is sometimes a little bit of pain in the butt, but it can produce very good and interesting results, and does allow one to hit the perfect temperature with much more accuracy. I suggest you check out the McGee book I referenced earlier in this thread if you are interested.
Cooking in cryo (or in FoodSaver) can also produce great results. The main thing that is great about this, IMO, is that it makes it practically impossible for any of the juices to run out as the food is cooked because there is nowhere for it to go. Can work great with certain fish, for example.