The sneaky tricks professional cooks use

[FoodMan]

We ahd a very similar discussion about a similar article here. I guess writers are running out of stuff to write about.

Elie

[Gifted Gourmet]

We ahd a very similar discussion about a similar article here. I guess writers are running out of stuff to write about.

Elie

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Isn't this The Food Hysteria/Crisis Center of the Month Club??

[Tess]

I think this is probably the same article as in the other thread.

With regard to the sushi, a number of rolls you see offered ready made have a fair amount of mayonnaise in them. You can tell just by looking.

[Gifted Gourmet]

I think this is probably the same article as in the other thread.

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Similar but slightly different viewpoint by another individual it appears .. never mind, the advice is familiar...

[buttercup]

Concerned dieters can go to this restaurant

http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/food/r...estaurant/9670/

Please pass the duck fat and submit my foie gras order to the chef.

[Bux]

I think it's obscene to describe professional chefs as being sneaky to make their job eaiser, simply because they follow traditions of professional cooking rather than the latest diet fad. The implication that they're trying to fool you by making your food taste good is disrespectful. It's the idea that one should arrive at a restaurant with a built in level of antagonism that offends me the most. Perhaps that's because I really enjoy dining out. If I were a scientist my guess is that I'd be far more offended by the partial information on which the author suggests we make decisions and by the false assumptions. By assumning all far, sugar and starch is poison, the author throws out the baby with the bath water. It's the oil in a salad dressing that enables the body to make use of nutrients in the lettuce. People who read this kind of stuff deserve the food they eat as a result.

[Susan G]

Yeah! What Bux said!

[Jake]

Hear, hear, Bux! I, too, am heartily sick of it all. I love dining out, I love experiencing different chefs interpretations and I do not expect them to follow my, or anyone elses, ideas of how to prepare food.

[Suzanne F]

Oh, come on, you know that you like all GG's posts from her delving into the estorica of the food world writings. 

Without her digging up these things eG would be a lot less interesting, at least in my NSH opinion.

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Uh oh, misreading alert! I'm sure GG knows that I meant it in all good humor. You couldn't possibly believe I was being serious, could you? And you don't agree that scare articles like that are a bunch of rubbish?

Re: sushi: think about that lovely piece of tuna belly -- IT'S LOADED WITH FAT! That's why it's so unctuous and delicious. As for avocados and nuts, they are about the healthiest fats around. Look, if you bring up a baby on a fat-free diet, the kid's nervous system never properly develops. Something about the myalin sheaths??? Many vitamins are fat-soluble: if you do not eat fat with them, you get no benefit. And you develop deficiency diseases, and you go blind or die.

But at least you'll die thin.

[mighty quinn]

ok- now i REALLY want some potatoes cooked in duck fat smothered with mayo and CHEESE. and AVACADOES-the horror!! thanx for the humor, gg.

[Gifted Gourmet]

True to form, GG does often exhibit her off-beat and occasionally bizarre penchant for finding the "perfect" link on how we really ought to eat .. although I have been known to ignore such sage advice personally from time to time ... well, more than time to time really ...

For those of you who have gotten a kick from this link and subsequent thread, truly glad you enjoyed it! If you hated it? GG has left the building ...

[Rachel Perlow]

It's the oil in a salad dressing that enables the body to make use of nutrients in the lettuce. People who read this kind of stuff deserve the food they eat as a result.

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Really? The lettuce too? I know that's true for the lycopine in a tomato, which needs to be consumed with some fat for it to be useful.

[jgarner53]

I know that's true for the lycopine in a tomato, which needs to be consumed with some fat for it to be useful.

...hence the oil in that marinara sauce!

I think that the food police should just all be crammed into a little, windowless room and fed nothing but steamed, dry veggies, salad with just lemon juice for dressing, and dry, overcooked, unseasoned chicken.

I sure as hell don't want to eat it.

One of the reasons, though, that I think that these articles surface periodically is that Shape is no doubt expecting that they are continually getting new readers. You might have read a similar article 4 years ago, but if I'm just gettiing into fitness, I might just pick up my first issue this month, and this would be news to me.

I noticed this years ago when I was getting married. Wedding mags aren't exactly something one subscribes to for years on end, so they tend to repeat information.

[lesanglierrouge]

As a server I dealt with every bogus fad diet that these trash grocery store mags ever printed and I am obviously a little embittered.

"Ask a lot of questions and make a lot of requests." -CRINGE-

The fact of the matter is that the average diner is not in a position to dictate to a professional chef how to cook. This is sheer arrogance. I have seen countless diners make numerous special instructions on their orders until they completely ruin their own food, and then they blame the restaurant.

It is irresponsible and unethical for this magazine to print disproven and outdated nutritional advice for their vulnerable readers. Aside from sucking the last few drops of joy from their lives this advice is unhealthy and annoying.

Thank you gifted gourmet for pointing me toward my nemesis. I will watch it more closely now.

[SiseFromm]

This article is one of the many reasons I feel I slip further and further each passing day into full-blown misanthropedom. Is that a word? It should be. Sushi isn't as lean as it looks? You mean those beautiful streaks of white fat in the salmon is fat? Damnit!

[Dukeofyork]

Is it just me, or does the sheer paranoia and hostility of the article slip into the realm of 'eating disorder'? It all sounds like something that would be posted FYI on an anorexia forum.

[TPO]

Take this scenario... You go to a restaurant and you want the three-cheese omelet stuffed with sausage, but you think you should be good and order an egg-white omelet. What this article says to me is... don't bother! Just order what you feel like eating, because it all has fat in it.

Besides, it's a meal out -- something that should be enjoyed, not something to serve as punishment for having put on a few pounds.

[Irishgirl]

The fact is that restaurant food simply isn't all that healthy in the context of a "first world" diet.  And it's not their job to make it healthy anyway.  It's their job to make it taste good.  What tastes good?  Fat and sugar and and calories and salt.  People just need to accept the fact that eating in a restaurant is not a "healthy eating experience" and understand that there is a place to eat when you are counting calories and obsessing over fat grams.  That place is called your own home.

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Here Here!!!

Wow, and i thought that I was being insensitive by thinking it!

What a concept. Rather than lay "blame" on chef's for screwing up YOUR diet....wow.

Eating out is supposed to be fun, not about counting calories or fat grams or starch allowances.

[Gifted Gourmet]

It is irresponsible and unethical for this magazine to print disproven and outdated nutritional advice for their vulnerable readers. Aside from sucking the last few drops of joy from their lives this advice is unhealthy and annoying.

Thank you gifted gourmet for pointing me toward my nemesis. I will watch it more closely now.

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Thanks actually go to you, lesanglierrouge, for reviving this thread! I had forgotten about it but it is quite an interesting topic, as you indicate ... and I am interested to hear what others thought about the article a year later.

more of Devin Alexander's articles on her website

[sockii]

Just to play a bit of devil's advocate in this thread...

I agree that all of this "OMG restaurant food is EVIL!" hysteria goes way overboard sometimes. Remember when every couple months they were coming out with a new scandalous news report of on how bad-for-you Italian/Mexican/Chinese/etc food is? (And I'd always sit there like, uh, people actually thought Pasta in Alfredo Sauce was a light meal?!)

That said, for those of us who ARE trying to lose weight or have difficulty maintaining our weight without consistent effort, dining out can really be an often-frustrating challenge. I love food, I love cooking, I love eating out. I know perfectly well how to prepare lots of healthy AND tasty dishes with limited (not unexistant) use of fats, sugar, etc--not all "light" food is dry wheat toast and plain boiled skinless chicken breast. What's frustrating is restaurants often offer NO truly light choices for diners. Often the things you chose that you think are safe--say a grilled chicken breast--comes out sitting in a gooey oily sauce (and yeah, sometimes that sauce is yummy, but sometimes? Ugh. Not ALL overly rich sauces necessarily taste better than something served plain. There are plenty of places that operate with an overly heavy hand--especially chain restaurants that are all about "the bigger and the greasier, the better!" Using a cup of oil in a sauce does not necessarily make it taste better than using a few tablespoons.)

Of course, the solution if you want complete control of what you eat is to not eat out. And I don't, all that often--maybe once or twice a week, and I enjoy it when I do go out, the hell with the calories and the fats (at least now that I'm simply maintaining my weight and not trying to lose.) But I often have to work on the road, away from a kitchen or fridge for a week at a time...and I can tell you that I usually feel like crap after living solely off of restaurant food for a week, and I just can't wait to get home and have some lighter food for a change. And then there's the fact that so much socializing with friends and family often involve "going out to eat"...it's frustrating to not want to give up that socializing, yet having to scour menus and try to guess what you can eat that won't require an extra couple hours on the treadmill to work off.

Anyway, I'm not saying chefs are in some evil conspiracy to feed us lots of hidden fats. But I do think that awareness is important if you're trying to limit your fats/sugar/carbs/whatever consumption, and there IS often a lack of choices in dining establishments that really offer a good alternative when you don't want a meal bathed in butter or oil--whatever your reasons for wanting to limit that consumption. Being concerned about these things does not equal having an eating disorder.

Edited September 16, 2005 by sockii (log)

[Carlovski]

This all relates to those stupid 'eat nothing with more than 5% fat' diets. Eat old school french restaurant food every day and yes, you will get fat (And probbaly feel a lot worse than Morgan Spurlock did after eating McDs in Super Size Me). Eat that sort of food occasionally as part of an enjoyable and balanced diet then you'll be fine. You need to balance your nutrition across the day, the week, the month, not one meal.

Edited September 16, 2005 by Carlovski (log)

[ghostrider]

There are plenty of places that operate with an overly heavy hand--especially chain restaurants that are all about "the bigger and the greasier, the better!" Using a cup of oil in a sauce does not necessarily make it taste better than using a few tablespoons.

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Hear, hear. Use of oil can speak volumes about the talent of any given chef. It's not about quantity.

[slkinsey]

Look, here's the fact about serious dieting and going out to restaurants: You have to think of the restaurant experience as a big splurge -- as "breaking your diet -- and adjust your consumption for the next few days. As I posted some time ago, it is not the restaurant's responsibility to make food that is low in calories, fat, salt, carbohydrates, whatever. . . except for the few rare cases where that's part of the restaurant's schtick. It's the restaurant's job to make food that tastes good.

So if someone is trying to lose a lot of weight but loves dining out. . . well, them's the breaks. When you're dieting, you have to give some things up. And going out to dinner with much frequency is one of those things. I really like cocktails, and yet I cut way back when I'm trying to lose weight. Someone else may really like pound cake, etc. I guess the point is that it's both naive to think that restaurants aren't making food that's full of fat and calories, and it's unrealistic to expect them to make big adjustments to accommodate dieters.

I don't offer the foregoing as a gloating thin person, by the way. I have been watching my weight and wanting to lose weight for many years now. And I've been in situations where I've been on an out-of-town gig for an extended period of time where the only eating options available to me were restaurants. So I know what it's like. Not for nothing do most opera singers begin to struggle with weight gain issues when their careers begin to take off and they find themselves away from home for an increasing percentage of the year. The solution in these situations, by the way, seems to be twofold: portion control (i.e., not finishing your plate) and making sure that daily exercise is a priority (i.e., make sure that wherever you are staying has access to a nearby gym or bring along "travel weights," etc.).

[Daniel Rogov]

Let's put it this way - Anyone who can come up with a dish called "zip-a-dee-doo-dah zucchini" can't be all good. In fact, I'm wondering if anyone with an imagination like that can be at all good.

Inspired by this thread I'm going to start a new one right now in which I propose the perfect diet for all human beings who wish to maintain or lose some weight while at the same time doing only good for their health. I will, however, post an advance warning - that being that anyone who dares name this diet after me will be condemned to drinking only Diet Sprite for the rest of their lives!!!

[culinary bear]

"At Italian restaurants, order fish grilled dry, a side of plain steamed veggies and a lemon for seasoning."

Bite my shiny metal ass.

Stay at home, take a nutrient pill, and keep the hell away from any restaurant I'm working in.