The Crusade Against Sweetness

[Yuki]

I would be interested in learning in what instances Asian food uses sugar in large quantities.  It doesn't fit with what I know about Asian eating habits.

←

An interesting point to note: Many people in Asian cultures like to eat jelly with a spoon, as if it were a dessert, and not a condiment. I had a couple of boyfriends from China and Vietnam who would actually grab the jelly jar out of the fridge and just eat it. And if you visit Asian groceries frequently, you'll see many jelly desserts in individual serving packages, which are meant to be spooned up and eaten straight. And these aren't thick, chunky fruit preserves either.

Now, I don't find anything wrong with that, though I don't eat jelly that way. I really enjoy meeting people from different cultures and noticing the differences in eating habits. But this one seems sort of interesting, as it could make a trip to IHOP very advantageous, since there's a dispenser with a bounty of free dessert packets on every table.

And I'd say this is one of many examples where Asians certainly get their recommended daily allowance of sugar.

←

Are you talking about jelly as in like grape jelly for spreading on bread? The only individual portion thing I know that resembles jelly is jello........ There are grape jelly in individual package but I have never seen anyone eating it straight.

Anyways, I know that many Asian do like to add small amount of sugar in their cooking since it balances the flavour. I like to braise pork and mushroom with some brown sugar. But when it comes to dessert time, they find American dessert to be too sweet.

[Bux]

I would be interested in learning in what instances Asian food uses sugar in large quantities.  It doesn't fit with what I know about Asian eating habits.

That said, it could be in those situations where the Asian-produced food is meant solely for the non-Asians.

←

I don't have a lot of experience preparing Asian foods, but I've seen sugar called for in a large number of both Chinese and Japanese recipes. Those two cuisines don't have a whole lot in common unless you're looking at them from a European perspective. I'd also say that neither of those cuisines are very big on sweets or dessert as we know them in western cooking, but they seem to add sugar far more often than do traditional French, Italian or Spanish recipes. The Chinese food I've prepared, tastes more authentic when I've added the amount of sugar called for in the recipe, than when I omit most of the sugar.

As John pointed out a ways back in the thread, there seems to be a growing trend towards using sugar and caramel in avant garde restaurants in the UK, France and Spain. I'm not a fan of the move towards sweet in savory food, although I find much to admire in the same chefs who are moving in this direction. Some great chefs can use sugar even in savory main courses. There have been some agri-douce preparations that have been outstanding. There must be enough acid to create a tension and it takes some effort to ensure the balance.

There is no sugar in vinaigrette. I trust we all agree on that. Years ago in another forum, the best I was ever able to do was come to a stalemate on that with my opponent insisting there was sugar in an American vinaigrette, if not in a French one. He cited some standard text. It may have been Fanny Farmer, but I just checked two editions of the Joy of Cooking, and neither call for sugar in a standard vinaigrette. There was a recipe in one volume that called for sugar in a "Thai Vinagrette" recipe. I don't know how authentic that was, but it reinforces my feeling that there's more sugar in Asian food and Fusion food.

On commercial food, all I have to say is that it's the sweetness in Hellman's mayonnaise more than anything else that keeps me from using it. Anyone who drinks a cola with its something like 13 teaspoons of sugar, with his meal, is hardly going to notice an extra spoonful of sugar in the food however. I suspect that even sweetened lemonade or iced tea is going to skew someone's tastebuds far away from those of someone who normally drinks water, wine, beer or unsweetened tea with meals.

[EdS]

I think the most effective way to make food appeal to the unwashed masses is to add lots of sugar.

[TheFoodTutor]

Are you talking about jelly as in like grape jelly for spreading on bread? The only individual portion thing I know that resembles jelly is jello........ There are grape jelly in individual package but I have never seen anyone eating it straight.

Yes. But sometimes they are lychee flavored and there are a number of other flavors as well. The observation, on my part, was first seeing some Asian men eat jelly out of a jar, and then later seeing dozens upon dozens of different brands of jellies in little packets available at my Asian grocery. I hadn't paid that much attention before to which Asian countries sell these, but I will go back and take pictures of them, so that you can see what I'm talking about. They come in little bubble packets, and the packets are usually in a large plastic jar, and I'm pretty sure I've seen ones with Korean writing on them. I don't think I've seen any Japanese ones, but I will have to go back and check.

Of course, this would be easier if I'd just bought them at some point or another, but they don't look that appealing to me. I should be able to make a trip to the market with my camera sometime next week.

Of course, I could be mistaken and they might be jello. Now you've got me doubting myself.

I also remember a Vietnamese gentleman I dated who raided my refrigerator, and when he noticed the cans of grape Crush that I kept in there for a friend who regularly stopped over, he asked if he could have one, and if he could have an egg. Ummm, OK. He then cracked the raw egg into a glass of the grape Crush, stirred it up, and then drank it in short order. And then he asked if he could have another.

And of course, Vietnamese people like to sweeten things with sweetened condensed milk a lot, I've noticed. That's not always a bad thing, especially if we're talking about Vietnamese coffee, which is quite delicious.

[beccaboo]

I also remember a Vietnamese gentleman I dated who raided my refrigerator, and when he noticed the cans of grape Crush that I kept in there for a friend who regularly stopped over, he asked if he could have one, and if he could have an egg. Ummm, OK. He then cracked the raw egg into a glass of the grape Crush, stirred it up, and then drank it in short order. And then he asked if he could have another.

And of course, Vietnamese people like to sweeten things with sweetened condensed milk a lot, I've noticed. That's not always a bad thing, especially if we're talking about Vietnamese coffee, which is quite delicious.

←

There's a yummy Vietnamese drink I used to order in restaurants that's just soda water, condensed milk, and beaten raw egg. They don't mix it for you, so it cames in cloudy layers. I've switched now to the salty preserved lime drink, so as not to worry about salmonella.

Edited December 24, 2004 by beccaboo (log)

[NulloModo]

On commercial food, all I have to say is that it's the sweetness in Hellman's mayonnaise more than anything else that keeps me from using it. Anyone who drinks a cola with its something like 13 teaspoons of sugar, with his meal, is hardly going to notice an extra spoonful of sugar in the food however. I suspect that even sweetened lemonade or iced tea is going to skew someone's tastebuds far away from those of someone who normally drinks water, wine, beer or unsweetened tea with meals.

←

Hmmm, interesting, I haven't noticed that in Hellman's, but I have noticed it in Acme brand mayo (last time I buy that stuff).

What really gets me is when someone tells me something is mayo, and then it turns out to be Miracle Whip. Blech. (or, as Jinmyo might say, Gah, gag me with the Devil's cock).

[cdh]

On commercial food, all I have to say is that it's the sweetness in Hellman's mayonnaise more than anything else that keeps me from using it. Anyone who drinks a cola with its something like 13 teaspoons of sugar, with his meal, is hardly going to notice an extra spoonful of sugar in the food however. I suspect that even sweetened lemonade or iced tea is going to skew someone's tastebuds far away from those of someone who normally drinks water, wine, beer or unsweetened tea with meals.

←

Hmmm, interesting, I haven't noticed that in Hellman's, but I have noticed it in Acme brand mayo (last time I buy that stuff).

What really gets me is when someone tells me something is mayo, and then it turns out to be Miracle Whip. Blech. (or, as Jinmyo might say, Gah, gag me with the Devil's cock).

←

Agreed that Hellman's (at least in the Philadelphia area market) is not sweet at all. Looking at the jar, sugar comes after salt on the ingredients list, which indicates just how little is in there. There are lots of sweet mayo abominations out there... but Hellman's isn't one of them.

[MaxH]

It's time someone said something.  ...  The infusion of sugar into everything from barbeque sauce to curry to coleslaw must end!

←

If anyone here is serious about this subject then I hope they have read, or will read, the Hesses' iconoclastic book The Taste of America. The insidious infusion of sweetness is one theme in this strongly spiced, unsweet book, a minor classic among food lovers in the US since first published (to some fuss, and critical respect) in the late 1970s. In 2000 it was reprinted in paperback with addenda. One or two popular food icons get skewered, or flamed, in the book, albeit with documented data; some people cannot get past that, as is usual when people's icons are skewered, and others dislike the tone, regardless of the data; but even without those elements the book would be vital, I feel, for its data and frequent source quotations and references. The bibliography is sort of a mini-Bitting. (Bitting is the classic US gastronomic bibliography and was based on the Bitting Collection of San Francisco which became in 1946, if I remember, the nucleus of the US Library of Congress cookbook section.)

I put some comments on amazon, a few years ago after the reprint appeared, on the product information page for this book, which you can call up with the amazon link here.

(Edited for one typo and one really lame sentence structure.)

Edited December 24, 2004 by MaxH (log)

[MaxH]

An interesting point to note: Many people in Asian cultures like to eat jelly with a spoon, as if it were a dessert, and not a condiment.

←

By the way this appears in various food cultures and eras, including the US if you go back a ways, I think. (Sometimes also, jellies and preserves appear as straight accompaniments to tea.) In "classic" long dinner menus from Europe and the US that I've seen reproduced, from 100 or 200 or 300 years ago, jellied fruit sweets of various kinds had a particular place as a late dessert course. Including candies in a jellied form. This shows up today also in some fancy restaurants where traditionalistic little post desserts of nuts or jellies appear on the table.

-- Max

[madziast]

We have the best mangoes, lychee, rambutan, papaya, and pineapple.

The big island is kicking butt on it's rambutan production. I am sure that they will be looking to the mainland to sell some of it.

←

i can't wait! was in hawaii in august, sadly, not season for rambutans

[madziast]

On commercial food, all I have to say is that it's the sweetness in Hellman's mayonnaise more than anything else that keeps me from using it. Anyone who drinks a cola with its something like 13 teaspoons of sugar, with his meal, is hardly going to notice an extra spoonful of sugar in the food however. I suspect that even sweetened lemonade or iced tea is going to skew someone's tastebuds far away from those of someone who normally drinks water, wine, beer or unsweetened tea with meals.

←

the sweetness in Hellman's makes it pretty inedible for me, too. I grew up on savory mayo, unsweetened tea, very little soda, ice cream, etc. and i definitely like less sweetness in my food (including desserts) than my american friends. i think that american diet encourages high tolerance for sugar, if not addiction. it starts early with frosted cereals, juices from concentrate, snacks and sodas, then on to processed foods. about time to declare war on high fructose corn syrup et al. even non-edibles take clue from all this sugar but i'd rather eat chocolate than bathe in it

[Pan]

[...]Duck breast with cherries: fine. But the one chicken dish is topped with mangoes. They put dates on a pork cutlet with Gorgonzola.  If you don't want to get fruit, you're pretty much stuck with fish.

I would say I don't understand it, but they've done very well for a long time, so someone must like it.

←

There used to be a Thai restaurant in my neighborhood that was pretty mediocre except for one great dish, which I miss: Whole red snapper with mango, fish sauce, lime juice, cashews, and hot pepper. Of course, that's probably a whole lot more complicated than the chicken dish you're describing, which sounds like it just has mango puree slathered on it. You'll note that that great sauce on the fish was a combination of sweet, sour, peppery, and salty/fishy, plus nutty.

Dates on meat can be terrific and if it were something halal, Moroccans would call it a tagine. Tagines even have some brown or powdered sugar added sometimes. (I don't like them to be too sweet, though, and was just a bit put off when a Moroccan restaurant on Atlantic Av. in Brooklyn added lots of powdered sugar.) The thing that seems weird to me about that dish is dates and gorgonzola, not dates and pork.

But really, if you think about it, meat plus fruit is a very long tradition. Canard a l'orange. Roast chicken stuffed with apples (though you probably don't eat the apples in that case). Boeuf a la flamande (beef stew with quinces). Prosciutto e melone. Etc., etc. I think that adding sucrose, let alone corn syrup, is different from cooking meat with fruit, because fruit has a taste other than pure sugar.

As for tomato sauce, I've never added sugar to it, but sometimes, the tomatoes themselves are quite sweet, or/and the wine I sometimes add gives the sauce some sweetness.

Edited December 24, 2004 by Pan (log)

[docsconz]

It is not the addition of fruit or even sugar that bothers may. It is the level of imbalance that has become typical that is the problem. All of the preparations mentioned above achieve a balance of acid, salt, spice, fat and sweet. I'll take a well prepared foie gras with sweet accompaniment any time. The same is true for a good dessert wine. Sure it is sweet, but a good one is not cloying. It is balanced by adequate acidity.

[Pan]

Doc, it sounds like you're blessed with not having a sweet tooth. Do you like pecan pie, cheesecake, cannoli, gelato, dulce de leche, or other desserts that don't have a sour, spicy, or salty element, or much of one? Or are you strictly a key-lime pie, gelato di limone, salty pralines kind of guy? I hate excessive salt in desserts and don't really need any. An even bigger pet peeve is salted nuts. So maybe I'd crusade against saltiness.

[docsconz]

The ironic thing, Michael, is that I have too much of a sweet tooth! I love all of those things that you mention, although they can be too sweet. I love cannoli, but most Sicilian Cassata cakes are simply too sweet for my taste. I love Drake's cakes, but I can't stand Hostess because they are too sweet. I like sweet desserts so long as the sweetness doesn't overshadow the essential flavor components of the dessert. The thing is I prefer to save my desserts for dessert.

[Jinmyo]

An even bigger pet peeve is salted nuts. So maybe I'd crusade against saltiness.

Pan is The Devil's stooge.

Who knew?

Salt, used judiciously, sharpens and lifts and heightens other flavours just as sugar dulls and flattens them.

[docsconz]

Salt, used judiciously, sharpens and lifts and heightens other flavours just as sugar dulls and flattens them.

←

The key word here is "judicious". This is true for almost any ingredient, except perhaps truffles.

[Pan]

Agreed. Salt has its place, and if I didn't think so, how would I be able to eat so much of the Korean, Chinese, and Malaysian food that I like? Salted nuts to me are not a judicious use of salt, and obscure and overwhelm the taste of the nut.

[Jinmyo]

Pan, you're right about most commercial brands of salted nuts. Often this has to do with covering over rancidity.

There used to be a shop here that roasted and salted its own nuts but they closed about a decade ago. Since then, I've found that the best place to buy nuts is from Middle Eastern shops.

[Pan]

In a similar vein, I like to buy nuts at my local Bangladeshi store. I like their cashews and almonds, but I wish they got Iranian pistachios nowadays. Bad relations between countries can be very annoying for food-lovers.

[Bux]

Agreed that Hellman's (at least in the Philadelphia area market) is not sweet at all.  Looking at the jar, sugar comes after salt on the ingredients list, which indicates just how little is in there.  There are lots of sweet mayo abominations out there... but Hellman's isn't one of them.

←

Perhaps that's the perfect example of how our national tastes have gone. Here's a substance that should have zero sugar content, but is decsribed as not sweet at all although it has added sugar. Hellman's is sweet for something that calls itself mayonnaise. It's sweetness just registers as neutral because there's plenty of salt and lemon juice and possibly also because of the other products consumed in proximity to the mayonnaise. If one makes a sandwich on commercial sliced bread using commerical deli ham and washes it down with a Coke, that "mayo" is not going to register as sweet on one's palate. By the way, I was going to say "sliced white bread," but it's the whole wheat and "health" breads in the packaged sliced bread market that are really sweet much of the time.

[cdh]

Agreed that Hellman's (at least in the Philadelphia area market) is not sweet at all.  Looking at the jar, sugar comes after salt on the ingredients list, which indicates just how little is in there.  There are lots of sweet mayo abominations out there... but Hellman's isn't one of them.

←

Perhaps that's the perfect example of how our national tastes have gone. Here's a substance that should have zero sugar content, but is decsribed as not sweet at all although it has added sugar. Hellman's is sweet for something that calls itself mayonnaise. It's sweetness just registers as neutral because there's plenty of salt and lemon juice and possibly also because of the other products consumed in proximity to the mayonnaise. If one makes a sandwich on commercial sliced bread using commerical deli ham and washes it down with a Coke, that "mayo" is not going to register as sweet on one's palate. By the way, I was going to say "sliced white bread," but it's the whole wheat and "health" breads in the packaged sliced bread market that are really sweet much of the time.

←

I'll take a break from chewing on my lumps of rock sugar to respond to this insulting turn the conversation has taken. You're being a dogmatic ass to declare authoritatively that the substance "should have zero sugar content" and publically excoriate my taste buds for not taking similar offense.

If you think about my observation, namely that there is more salt than sugar in there, it has certain implications, no? 1) Salt is a wee mite more potent by volume than sugar, so that sets an upper limit on the amount of sugar that could be in there if there is more salt than sugar. 2) Salt is used as a seasoning in limited amounts, and, in this case the amount of sugar is, similarly, an amount no greater than a seasoning with salt. 3) Check on the sugar content of lemons http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts-001-02s01hu.html before you pontificate that there is no sugar inherent to a mayonaise... given that Hellman's is an industrial product and uses processed lemon juice, the addition of sugar may be nothing more than a correction for (naturally occurring) sugar removed from the lemon juice elsewhere to aid its shelf stability or otherwise.

Now, I must reiterate, I do agree with the general gist of this thread that there is a lot of oversweetening going on in the food industry and that a lot of sweetened foods are really not that pleasant to eat. I'm not, however, on a crusade to plow under the cane fields.

And, Bux, you'll attract a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar.

[Jinmyo]

Sugar canes are The Devil's Back Hairs.

[herbacidal]

I've never known Asian men to eat jelly straight out of jars or with spoons.

I do recall eating marmalade on toast as a kid.

Many Asian adults don't drink sodas, or drink them rarely.

Chinese cooking does often use sugar as an ingredient in stir fries or whatnot, but usually to balance a flavor, not create a particular sweetness as the end resulting taste of a dish.

I can't really say how this compares to European or other cuisines and cooking styles.

The Koon Chun hoisin sauce mention intrigues me.

I'm wondering how many Chinese people buy it.

The only Chinese condiment brand I would actually recognize is Lee Kum Kee.

We usually get our hoisin sauce either from a restaurant (since we've always had restaurants in the family) or from the butcher when we buy roast pig.

Offhand, I can't say I know a Chinese family that buys hoisin sauce.

But I only know 2 households whose refrigerators and pantries I know well enough to consider within that sample size, my cousin's and my own.

[Busboy]

I've never known Asian men to eat jelly straight out of jars or with spoons.

I do recall eating marmalade on toast as a kid.

Many Asian adults don't drink sodas, or drink them rarely. 

Chinese cooking does often use sugar as an ingredient in stir fries or whatnot, but usually to balance a flavor, not create a particular sweetness as the end resulting taste of a dish.

I can't really say how this compares to European or other cuisines and cooking styles.

The Koon Chun hoisin sauce mention intrigues me.

I'm wondering how many Chinese people buy it. 

The only Chinese condiment brand I would actually recognize is Lee Kum Kee.

We usually get our hoisin sauce either from a restaurant (since we've always had restaurants in the family) or from the butcher when we buy roast pig. 

Offhand, I can't say I know a Chinese family that buys hoisin sauce. 

But I only know 2 households whose refrigerators and pantries I know well enough to consider within that sample size, my cousin's and my own.

←

When my wife and I wander down to the Vietnamese markets in thich we have never seen another Anglo shopper, the shelves are packed with hoisin and plum sauce with plenty of sugar in them.

But, who cares?

Arguments like "Chinese cooking does often use sugar as an ingredient in stir fries or whatnot, but usually to balance a flavor, not create a particular sweetness as the end resulting taste of a dish," are accepting of the notion that sugar is somehow bad. It is not. It is -- like beer -- proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy and, sometimes, of the wisdom of the East.

I recognized that, in a nation in which dieting is the national sport and Puratinism the national religion, some people feel the need to rail about sugar. But the rest of us, the enlightened, can accept the evidence of our senses and delight in sugar used, as Aristotle teaches, in moderation.

Arguments about the proper amount of sugar in Hellman's are aburd, like discussing the brix level of Twinkie filling or the potassium content of a chaterelle. If we want Hellman's on our BLT, we will spread it with joy. If not, with egg yolk and oil in hand, we will make our own.

And if we have a few bucks in our pocket, there's always foir gras wrapped in cotton candy.

mmmmmmmm, sugar.