They’re still terrible.
They’re still pushing grains, low-fat dairy and protein, and seed oils. And they still think that counting calories isn’t junk science. There is no science whatsoever to justify this.
Category Archives: Culinary
Coffee
You need four cups a day for the health benefits? We’ve both quit for the past few months, but when I was drinking it, I could barely choke down two.
McDonald’s Fries
A history, and a recipe. I disagree with this, though:
His cholesterol was over 300, comfortably in the danger zone for heart attacks. Lack of self-control aside, it was fatty foods that nearly killed him. Thus, when he emerged from the hospital, he did so on a one-man mission to fight Big Fat.
It was not the fat that nearly killed him. We now have abundant evidence that the problem with McDonald’s fries was not the tallow, but the potatoes themselves. I’ve long advocated that, given that the company is the largest cattle rancher in the world, it should go back to tallow, and get rid of the unhealthy seed oils.
What I don’t understand about the recipe is why it uses Crisco, with just a little tallow added, presumably for flavor. It would probably be much better, and certainly healthier, to simply fry them in pure tallow.
Intermittent Fasting
I’ve been doing this for quite a while. I don’t just skip breakfast; I don’t eat anything until late afternoon. But I don’t see the relevance of this study to me, even if valid, because I don’t do it to lose weight.
If I’m losing muscle (I’m not; I never had that much to begin with), it’s because I don’t work out as I should. If I did, I’d have to increase my food uptake (and I’d gain weight, but it would be in muscle). What the eating schedule for that would have to be, I don’t know. I suspect it would just mean that I’d eat more in the evening.
The Restaurant Industry
The pandemic (and often stupid response to it) is on the verge of destroying it.
I have to confess that I wouldn’t miss it all that much, except when I travel. I can prepare my own food much healthier, and much lower cost. The fact that so many young people thought they could afford to pay other people to cook for them is one of the reasons that generation is having a tough time financially.
Coffee
I had started choking it down every morning because I thought that there were health benefits. But the evidence isn’t really that compelling. Patricia kicked her habit in April, so I wasn’t making it every morning any more, and I rarely wanted to go to the trouble of making a couple cups just for me. So I guess I’m off it for now.
[Late-afternoon update]
Note: I am not criticizing anyone whose body chemistry enables them to enjoy drinking the stuff; to each his own. I’m simply amused by people who think that I’m a terrible person because I never have, and continue to not do so, no matter how much I drink, or how it is prepared. I will say, though, that at a hotel in Vienna, I had (included in the price of the room) lattes that were less than terrible, but still not worth drinking absent any potential health benefits.
Cholesterol
It’s nice to see more published recognition of this, but it’s only news to people who haven’t been paying attention.
Restaurants
Who is ready to go back to them?
The notion of wearing a mask in a restaurant is absurd. You can’t eat with a mask on. This is another area in which the pandemic hasn’t affected me much, because I’ve never liked going out to eat at restaurants, other than for social reasons. It’s both expensive and unhealthy to pay someone else to cook for you, and I don’t like having people serve me.
Roasting Chicken
I didn’t realize it was such a rare phenomenon. I rarely buy boneless chicken, and we roast a whole one (or split and grill it) almost every week, and then make soup with the leftovers, and have been doing it for years.
I continue to wonder how much this will change peoples’ eating habits, now that so many have learned to cook. It may mean that the restaurant industry will never recover to pre-plague levels.
The Food-Supply Chain
This is not good news. The head of Tyson says that it is breaking.
[Update a couple minutes later]
More from Darleen Click.
[Update a while later]
A plan to prevent the coming food shortage. As usual, it involves deregulation.