Category Archives: Culinary

Death By Food Pyramid

A favorable review by Michael Eades of what looks to be an interesting new book on the history of nutrition pseudoscience.

I hadn’t realized the degree to which George McGovern was responsible, and how much he was influenced by Pritikin. They and their junk science are responsible for millions of premature deaths, from the seventies on, likely including my father’s almost thirty-five years ago.

Sous Vide

The equipment for the home cook is getting better and cheaper.

Mine was very cheap. I just bought a controller for less than twenty bucks, and plugged an old slow cooker into it. It even included the temperature sensor for that price. The only problem with it is that it only reads out in Celsius, but that’s not a big deal (you can fix it by spending $35 instead). For bigger pieces (like the small rib roast I made last night), add an immersion heater for eight bucks (in my case, from Bed, Bath and Beyond) and use an insulated cooler. The only issue with that is that there’s no circulation, so I had to stir it occasionally to get it evenly up to temp. But it still beats hundreds of bucks for a fancy kitchen machine. And there are DIY guides for building circulators out of an aquarium pump.

Whole Milk

Helps you lose weight.

The notion that you should drink reduced-fat milk is based on two theories that have zero scientific basis — that calories per se make you fat, and that saturated fat is bad for your heart. They’re both nonsense.

[Update a couple minutes later]

The author still gets that part wrong:

Whole-milk dairy products are relatively high in saturated fat. And eating too much saturated fat can increase the risk of heart disease. So many experts would agree that adults with high cholesterol should continue to limit dairy fat.

I repeat, there is zero empirical evidence that saturated fat increases the risk of coronary disease. It is based on the flawed theory that high cholesterol causes heart disease and that eating cholesterol increases your cholesterol. Again, neither is true.

The Calorie-Labeling Mess

Another ObamaCare disaster:

The calorie label clause, buried deep within the ACA’s 10,000 pages, seems harmless enough at first glance. Each restaurant chain with over 20 locations is required to display the calorie content of each food and drink item it serves on signs and printed menus–with vending machine distributors subjected to the same rules. But the regulation also covers “similar retail food establishments,” a clause vague enough to give FDA regulators sweeping power to determine who does and doesn’t have to comply.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg admitted that she “actually thought [calorie labeling] would be one of the more straightforward tasks…but little did I know how complicated it would be.” Hamburg’s concerns are hardly unfounded, but it’s small business owners and franchisees—not FDA bureaucrats—that will feel the most pain under the new law.

What’s particularly stupid is that even if they could make it work without impacting businesses so much, it won’t even do any good, because calories are not what make people obese. All part of the Democrats’ war on science.

Low-Carb Diets

…give better cardiovascular outcomes:

Recent randomized controlled trials document that low-carbohydrate diets not only decrease body weight but also improve cardiovascular risk factors. In light of this evidence from randomized controlled trials, dietary guidelines should be re-visited advocating a healthy low carbohydrate dietary pattern as an alternative dietary strategy for the prevention of obesity and cardiovascular disease risk factors.

I’m convinced that the medieval unscientific low-fat nutrition advice killed my father in the seventies.

The Latest California Idiocy

Condoms for cooks’ hands:

So this law is in fact encouraging the very problem it strives to prevent. God, I’m glad I’m not governed by California—what a bunch of knuckleheads when it comes to food! Why don’t you people actually try to know what the f**k you’re talking about before legislating? Jesus.

I am continually washing my hands in the kitchen when I cook. This is moronic.

V8

So, it wasn’t just me:

I found the stuff revolting, because it was like drinking cold tomato soup.

…It had great brand awareness when I was growing up, thanks to the constant barrage of ads featuring people who had, for some reason, forgotten to avail themselves of a V8, and remonstrated themselves by slamming their palms into their foreheads.

Not even this made me want some.

Me, neither.

Olives

I share Lileks’ attitude:

Wife wanted Olives for the Christmas snack tray. There is an Olive Bar. I hate olives, so the olive bar is interesting: so many things to dislike and ignore. Just like the DirecTV options. The amount of choices you can passively reject is just astonishing; it’s a defining feature of modern life.

I suppose I should try a couple different ones, just to see if maybe there’s one I like, but I’ve never gotten into them.