slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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Who needs fancy proof? Just eat the stuff and see what comes out. Clearly, the body utilizes white bread more efficiently than it does whole wheat.
Hmmm... Does that mean that my body utilizes spicy Indian food incredibly efficiently? Because it certainly seems to come out completely digested in about 1/10 the normal amount of time...
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As promised, relevant excerpts from On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee, pp 282 = 284.
...the popular view today is that whole grain bread, because it comtains the vitamin-rich germ and fiber-rich bran, is more nutritius and better for our general health than refined flour breads. This, in turn, is a relatively recent reaction against centuries, even millennia, of a rather unreflective preference for lighter breads....as for whole wheat in particular: it is true that whole grain flour contains more protein, minerals and vitamins than refined flour, including as it does the nutritionally valuable germ and aleurone layer, as well as the mostly indigestible bran. But it is also true that most of these nutrients pass through the digestive tract unabsorbed because the indigestible carbohydrates complex with them and speed their passage out of the system. The nutrients in white bread do not suffer such losses....the epidemic of rickets that struck the children of Dublin after three years of wartime rations of dairy products and whole wheat bread. The combination of marginal supplies of calcium and vitamin D and the calcium-complexing activity of phytic acid, which is concentrated in the aleurone layer, was enough to tip the balance from health to serious disease. Similar problems with iron and zinc have been studied among the poor in Egypt and Iran.The irony is that following the Dublin outbreak and other efvidence that mineral and vitamin deficiencies can cause disease, the nutritional fortification of bread became manditory in several countries, including the United States: but only white bread is affected, because whole grain breads are considered a specialty product.American consumers of brown bread are no longer the poor who cannot afford the price of refining, but rather a middle-class interested in pure "natural" products. -
Is it around p 282? I just read it a couple of minutes ago.
If you read the section on bread, I'm pretty sure you'll find it all there.
Ok, right, I forgot about daily goings about. I can never be bothered to figure out how many calories I should be eating. But, still, so many people are sedentary--it is easy to be active if you live in NYC and walk everywhere, but not if you drive to work, take the elevator up, and have a desk job, where you work for 8-9 hours a day, eating your lunch at your desk.Keep in mind, however, that the 12 calories/pound/day counts whether or not you do any activity whatsoever. You burn those calories every day, even if you spend the whole day in bed.
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A Double Whopper, which has, what, 2500 calories?, is unhealthy -- it has too much salt, and too much fat. It is unhealthy even if it is the only source of calories for the day. In fact, it is really unhealthy especially if it is the only source of calories for the day. It is not a question of quantity.
Yes I would consider this unhealthy but as long as you burned 2500 calories a day through activity . You would not gain weight. You would be malnurished but not fat.
Show me a day (besides hiking in the mountains on snowshoes or a marathon runner) when you burn 2500 calories.
The human body burns around 12 calories per pound per day at rest. Take myself, a 200 pound male. 200 pounds X 12 calories/day = 2400 calories burned per day just keeping my bodys metabolism going. Walking around every day burns at least an additional 100 calories. There we have 2500 calories.
The point is that no one has this degree of activity. Running for an hour burns an average of 500 calories.Maybe for you it does. I burn right around 500 calories in 1/2 an hour on the stairmaster. When you weigh more, you burn more calories doing the same task.
I have On Food and Cookiong around. What page?I don't have the book in front of me, as per the above post. Will provide page number in ~2 hours, if someone doesn't beat me to the punch
The thing about white bread is that it takes a lot to fill you up. And while the grain may be fortified, the unhulling or whatever process is that strips the grain, removes the bran which is necessary for healthy colon. I read a study on yahoo yesterday that bran may also reduces Type 2 diabetes.We're not talking about colon health or diabetes... we're talking about nutrition and weight gain. There may be many good reasons to eat whole wheat bread (it's delicious, for one) and some of them may be health-related in certain circumstances. However, it seems clear that white bread is more nutritional and if I were in a situation where I had to rely on bread as my main source of nutrition, I would definitely choose white bread. That said, and as I pointed out earlier, none of us are exactly in a position where we are in danger of not getting enough nutrition -- quite the opposite, in fact.
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Another example is wheat bread versus white bread. Everyone knows that wheat bread is more nutritious, right? Wrong. There are actual documented cases where cultures which subsisted mainly on bread developed widespread diseases of nutritional deficiency due to a switch from white to wheat bread.
Seriously? What nutrients are in white bread and not in whole wheat bread? And could you please elaborate on the instances of malnutrition due to a changeover from white bread to whole wheat bread? Times and places would be most welcome.
Not every nutrient that is present in a given food is capable of being utilized by the human body. For instance, the oxalic acid in raw spinach binds up the iron so that we are not able to absorb it. As it so happens, some of the nutrients in whole wheat flour complex with the indigestible carbohydrates from the bran and pass through the system without being absorbed.
There have been epidemics in Dublin, Egypt, and Iran which have been tied to nutritional deficiencies brought about by a switch from white bread to brown bread.
My source for the above was McGee's "On Food and Cooking." I don't have my copy with me at work, but I can give you the page numbers later on if you like.
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But if you intake 500 "calories" of bacon, compared with 500 "calories" of steamed broccoli, your body will process and store it differently. The bacon will have more of an "adverse" effect in terms of putting on weight.
No. This is a common mistake, but you are absolutely and completely wrong on this.
I know some people with letters after their name that disagree with you.
I know some people with letters after their name who agree with me. So?
bioavialability of the calories in those two different foodsWhat does "bioavailability" mean?
Bioavailability refers to the extent to which the calories or other nutrients in the food are available for digestion.
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But if you intake 500 "calories" of bacon, compared with 500 "calories" of steamed broccoli, your body will process and store it differently. The bacon will have more of an "adverse" effect in terms of putting on weight.
Do you also think a pound of lead weighs more than a pound of feathers?
Let me paraphrase myself: If you eat a spoon of lard that contains 500 calories and a bowl of kale containing 500 calories, how many of those calories will actually be digested? Some of this is dependent on idiosyncratic physiological differences between individuals, the extent that the food is chewed, and other factors. I know that if I swallow 500 calories of corn without chewing, tomorrow's potty will serve as evidence that I didn't digest/absorb many of those.
Any meaningful comparison of the relative caloric composition of kale and lard would have to take into account the bioavialability of the calories in those two different foods. Thus, your point is moot. For the purposes of this fork of the discussion, 500 calories digested is 500 calories digested. I think we all understand that you have to eat a lot more kale to get 500 calories than you do lard.
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Actually, I think that the word Calorie -- a unit of heat to raise water one degree (or whatever), has little meaning in this debate.
Certainly it does have meaning. It is a fact that you will gain one pound of fat if, over a certain period of time, you consume 3,500 more calories than you burn. What else could possibly have more meaning than that. Anyone who tells you that you can consume excess calories of certain "special" foods without gaining weight is lying and probably trying to sell you something.
Take a look at this page and this page for a good explanation of how these things work.
But if you intake 500 "calories" of bacon, compared with 500 "calories" of steamed broccoli, your body will process and store it differently. The bacon will have more of an "adverse" effect in terms of putting on weight.No. This is a common mistake, but you are absolutely and completely wrong on this.
If you burn 2,000 calories a day and cosume 2,500 calories of broccoli a day, you will gain one pound of fat for every week you continue this behavior. If you burn 2,000 calories a day and consume 2,500 calories of bacon a day, you will also gain one pound of fat for every week you continue that behavior.
Of course, eating the bacon calories may have other adverse health effects if you eat enough of it, but it will not behave any differently than the broccoli calories in terms of weight gain. What makes broccoli supposedly more "good for you" than bacon in terms of weight gain is that you have to eat a shitload more broccoli to reach 2,500 calories than you do bacon -- bacon has a much higher density of calories. Since less calorie-dense foods take up much more room in your stomach on a per-calorie basis, it makes it much more difficult to consume excess calories from eating these foods.
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Of course it will. People who get a "healthy" intake of 2,000 calories will burn them faster than people who get an unhealthy intake of 2,000 calories.
So, what you're saying is that the body will burn 2,000 calories from kale faster than 2,000 calories from refined white sugar? Totally untrue.
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...the body deals with calories from fat different than with calories from proteins. Small meaningless point.
And in absolute terms vis-a-vis weight loss/gain, completely untrue.
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I agree that a calorie is a calorie and that overconsumption of anything leads to obesity. However, I think that it is a step in the right direction to get people to eat more nutritious foods. From there maybe weight loss can follow. As I originally noted, more nutritious foods tend to lend a greater sense of satiety, which may cause people to eat less.
I just wanted to step in here and flog for one of my pet peeves. Most people totally misuse the word "nutritious." Something that is nutritious is full of nutrients, it is something that furnishes or sustains with nutriment. Calories would qualify as a nutrient. In other words, fat is very nutritious since it is full of calories and other good things our bodies need to run.
Most foods that people say are "nutritious" are actually not particularly nutritious. A perfect example is raw vegetables. They do not provide many calories and many of the vitamins and minerals are made unavailable to us by the plants' natural defenses. Another example is wheat bread versus white bread. Everyone knows that wheat bread is more nutritious, right? Wrong. There are actual documented cases where cultures which subsisted mainly on bread developed widespread diseases of nutritional deficiency due to a switch from white to wheat bread.
In most "first world" countries, getting enough nutrition really isn't the issue. Our problem is that we get too much nutrition. And the body has this neat thing that it does when it finds itself with an excess of nutrition... it stores the extra nutrition against a rainy day in an efficient biological battery called fat.
Really what most people are saying is "healthy" foods, not necessarily "nutritious" foods. For most of us, healthy foods are precisely those which are not particularly nutritious, since this helps us avoid the health problems that come along with the chronic overconsumption of nutrients.
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I get the impression from the discussion above that the distinction between a 'ristretto' and a 'short shot' is not one that exists in the average italian bar. Is this distinction something that is widely recognised or is it an American coffee geek term?
You're right. The reason that there is no difference between "ristretto" and "a short shot" in Italy is that they are the same thing!
Ristretto is the past participle of restringere, which means "to reduce; to make smaller." Therefore, un caffè ristretto is nothing more than "a (regular) coffee that has been made smaller." Functionally, this is saying the same thing as "give me a little less than the usual amount" or, if you like, "run me a short shot."
With all due respect to the CoffeeGeekers, the idea that a ristretto shot requires an adjustment of the grinder and is somehow fundamentally different from simply stopping the machine at 3/4 ounce instead of 1 ounce is patently ridiculous. Hello? We're talking about something they do in Italy. What they do not do in Italy, in my experience, is grind their coffee on a per-shot basis or make grinder adjustments when someone requests caffè ristretto. That said, I do tend to agree that people in America who specify "ristretto" most often do so to avoid getting the typical caffè lungissimo that most places seem to serve over here. That said, I have found that the places likely to serve you something like this will only get confused if you say "ristretto " to them, not having any idea what that word means. In those cases, one is more likely to get something approaching the desired effect by saying "only fill my espresso cup 1/3 of the way when you run my shot."
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Sounds like fun... and of course you get to eat the results! What's not to like?
If you can get me some measurements, I could probably get some of my science geek friends to figure out the thermal capacity of the two pans for comparison and also offer some advice on how one might do a fair comparison of the two in use. For example, you would have to decide whether or not to leave the two empty pans on the heat for the same amount of time (which might favor the copper pan) or until they came up to the same temperature (which would make the experiment a lot harder to conduct).
Question... do you know how thick your Mauviel is? There are three different copper lines at something like 2.5 mm, 2.0 mm and 1.6 mm in thickness.
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Hormones in beef and milk. I have read a couple of articles about the earlier puberty among girls. Some people theorize that the new norm of puberty at 7-9 years of age for girls is a result of consuming large amounts of hormones.
It is a common misunderstanding that meat products are full of extra hormones.
First of all, hormones are only allowed to be used on beef and lamb. This is why the USDA does not allow the use of the term “no hormones added” on labels of pork or poultry products.
Second, AFAIK, all farmed animals must be taken off any antibiotics or hormones prior to slaughter for a period sufficiently long to cause any residues to fall below federally-mandated levels.
As to milk... I really don't know much about that. I do know, however, that there are a lot of screwy things having to do with milk in this country (like the federal milk pricing system that sets federal price subsidies based on distance from Eau Claire, Wisconsin).
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Do you ever let it sit empty on a full flame for a few minutes to get really hot before you throw something in?
I put my pans on the stove full blast before I even start my mise en place!
No, seriously, I just don't use Calphalon for that application. That's what super-heavy vintage Griswold cast-iron is for.
Yea... See, I probably warped most of my Calphalon stuff back when I didn't have a lot of other options. That said, I have issues with cookware I can't crank up all the way unless it is an occasional-use pan with special properties (e.g., nonstick) or would never really be used that way (e.g., enameled cast iron French oven). For me, something like a fry pan or a skillet needs to be able to go all the way up. Why would you want a saute pan you couldn't preheat this way?
I get your point about the cast iron, although as discussed in other threads I have found that heavy copper seems to be able to soak up more heat than the cast iron that I have experienced. Of course, YMMV if your cast iron is thicker than mine. I have all my grandmother's and great-grandmothers' cast iron, which must be around 75-100 years old at this point. It's all Griswold and Wagner. Maybe Griswold made other designs, but mine don't seem all that heavy to me and experience has shown that they don't have the same thermal capacity as my copper pieces. I am also a little reluctant to subject these pans to too terribly much high heat when empty, as that would tend to burn off or otherwise damage 4 generations of seasoning. If someone made a cast iron skillet that was 5 mm or 7 mm thick... I'd totally get it. That would be a piece to leave on the stove for ten minutes at full blast.
Anyway, and more related to our discussion on a different thread... I'd be interested to hear what your experiences would be if the next time you wanted to sear a steak or something you massively preheated your copper skillet instead of doing the same with your cast iron.
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Most of the non-foodie people I know are amazed that I even make spaghetti sauce and cookies from scratch, for goodness sake, never mind condiments.
Interesting... I guess my main obsession is that I must make everything from scratch. I really don't like using any premade food products at all, with the exception of condiments and specialty items like kimchi. This doesn't mean that I won't go to a bakery and buy bread or cookies... just that I won't buy premade frozen bread dough or a tube of cookie dough. I don't look down on these things or people who use them, I just can't use them myself.
It's interesting that you bring up spaghetti sauce. I'd guess that I haven't eaten a jarred tomato sauce in almost 20 years -- except once, at the home of some friends who were living in Indiana at the time. It was one of the most horrible things I can remember eating in years, and they were using one of the "high class" mass-produced brands.
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What the heck are you guys doing to your Calphalon? I'm merciless with the stuff: I have as powerful a DCS gas range as one can get, legally, for home use and I use it on full throttle often. I put Calphalon skillets under the 1800-degree infrared broiler. I've never had a problem.
Do you ever let it sit empty on a full flame for a few minutes to get really hot before you throw something in?
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I had heard recently (perhaps it should go into the category of urban myth) that Monsanto recently won a court case in which they sued a neighboring organic farmer becase the pollen (not sure if that's the right word...not much of a farmer) from the GM corn found its way to the organic corn. Monsanto sued for infringement of copyright and won. Now the organic farmer went out of business and GUESS WHO bought up his property...Monsanto. I'll see if I can dig up a link to that story.
I would guess that you're talking about the Percy Schmeiser case. His canola fields were contaminated with Monsanto's Round-Up Ready canola and he was forced to pay a licensing fee to Monsanto when he reused seed the next year and began growing what was pretty close to 100% Round-Up Ready canola. Schmeiser's claim is that he is being forced to pay for something that he didn't do on purpose, because he didn't try to get his crops contaminated. This does indeed seem a reasonable assertion on its face, but it gets more complicated once you do some digging. It is worthy of note, for instance, that the Canadian court found that Schmeiser had deliberately selected for and multiplied Monsanto's GM seed (see paragraphs 39, 40, 102, 103, 104, 119, and 125 of the decision). This is a different story. As far as I can tell, he did indeed try to rip off Monsanto and is now trying to make it political.
The other thing that I'm concerned with is the whole issue of hormones in milk. I'm not sure I understand why hormones are added to milk (again, city boy). Maybe they just find themselves in milk after having been fed to dairy cows in order to increase milk production.rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone) is given to milk cows to make them produce more milk. According to the FDA, neither BGH nor rBGH has any biological effect in humans. It is not clear to me whether any rBGH finds its way into the milk, although there have been some findings that milk from rBGH-treated cows is higher in certain hormones that are created as a result of the rBGH. Cows that are given rBGH develp udder infections and other such things at a higher rate and that this means that these cows must be given more antibiotics and the like. Again, whether or not these antibiotics are present in the milk is not clear to me, but the negative effect of (over) using antibiotics in food animals seems very clear (i.e., drug-resistant bacteria, etc.).
This is what I want to know: how can one tell if there is milk made from cows that have been fed hormones in the gallon they're about to buy? And is Organic a 100% guarantee? There has to be some mass-marketed, available-to-everyone milk that doesn't have hormones. right?Yes, I'd say you are OK with organic milk. The companies that sell organic products would lose their markets if they used rBGH. As for a "mass-marketed, available-to-everyone milk" -- that's harder to say. Can one even get organic milk in the middle of North Dakota? Anyway, forgetting the health issues and looking just at the taste, it is quite clear to me that there is a huge difference between rBGH industrial milk and the real thing. Ronnybrook Farms' milk and supermarket milk are so different from one another that one can hardly call them the same kind of food.
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No it is not one that I have had with Korean food we have eaten outside... it is an unpleasant taste. I bet you it is using too much of the sesame oil.
Yea. You're probably right. A little too much sesame oil can sometimes impart a kind of off-flavor. Also, maybe the sesame oil had turned a little?
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I enjoyed the article. As chance would have it yuk gae jang is my favorite Korean soup (along with kalbi tang, which is probably its polar opposite). It sure is spicy, though.
Most times I have had kimchi chigae, it has come to the table at a rolling boil with an alcohol burner underneath it, which makes it a little difficult to eat. One thing I've noticed about most Korean places around NYC is that they seem to take "piping hot" very seriously -- we used to joke that they ran everything through a blast furnace before taking it to the table. Here is another interesting page on kimchi chigae.
Also... although I know the names of the dishes I like, I am sometimes confused as to what some of the terms actually mean. I searched for a glossary of Korean food words, and found this and this,which may be of some usefulness to others.
Monica, how would you describe the aftertaste? And what about it was "uncharacteristic?? Are you saying that it is not an aftertaste that you have sensed other times you have had Korean food?
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Quality-wise, everybody seems to think All-Clad is better but I can't quite see why. Certainly, if there is a quality difference, it is a minor one, and Calphalon tends to be substantially cheaper.
I guess I tend to think this way, with some limitations, and this is why:
1. Anodized aluminum is, IMO, a crappy cooking surface. I don't like the dark color and, unless one keeps it scrupulously clean, it quickly becomes sticky.
2. Every single Calphalon piece I have used that has a large cooking surface (i.e., fry pans, saute pans, roasting pans) has eventually warped from high heat cooking.
Due to the above, I will never buy another piece of Calphalon. All-Clad has neither of these problems.
Now... this is comparing "regular" Calphalon to "regular" All-Clad. When you start getting into some of the other Calphalon designs -- specifically those with an interior lining of stainless steel -- the cookware starts to become more or less equal. Of course, the prices start to become equal as well.
My one exception has to do with the nonstick lines. Calphalon Commercial nonstick reportedly has a great surface (certainly equal or similar to All-Clad's) and nonstick cookware is not used at temperatures that would cause the pans to warp.
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Barbeque spaghetti doesn't sound all that weird to me. If it was pulled pork, it would be fairly close to what I might call a smoked pork ragu. What does seem weird to me would be using barbeque sauce as lubrication for the sauce. None of the sweet, spicy, vinegarey or mustardey sauces strike me as anything I'd want to have with pasta. On the other hand, pulled smoked pork, herbs, garlic, tomato, chili flakes and evoo tossed with some penne sounds pretty good to me. Pulled smoked pork with garlic, chili pepper, mustard greens and orecchiette would be way tasty too...
The pasta attached to the picture is criminally oversauced (and is apparently criminally overcooked as well) but that's another topic entirely...
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"The Man" is always trying to keep us down.
The Mushroom Man!
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It appears that the Mushroom Counil has adapted the two "a" spelling as official.
Then I definitely support the double-o spelling! I can't stand that mushroom council with all its mushroom politics!
Isn't that just like them! Well I, for one, am sick and tired being hassled by the Establishment about what I call my mushrooms!
The European way with a knife and fork
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
Just for another point of reference... I grew up in Boston, have lived or spent significant time in Texas, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Arizona, and now live in NYC. I have never switched my fork from my left to my right hand and furthermore can't think of anyone I know who does. No one ever gave me any crap about it when I was a kid and no one has ever commented on it now that I am an adult.
Camp is, of course, supposed to be a character-building experience. So, if you want to guarantee that your kids will be teased in summer camp, you can't really count on the knife and fork thing to do the trick. I suggest getting a permanent marker and writing your children's names on the waistbands of their underwear (it helps if the underwear is from Sears). That really did the trick for me back in the 70s anyway.