Freedom from Fries | Hacker News Reader

Freedom from Fries

newyorker.com

35 pointsatomical13 comments

One of the most interesting aspects of this article is the brief discussion of commodities, subsidies, and supply chains. In the tech space you can ignore a lot of this but when you're buying 500 million pounds of butter that's going to be a logistical adventure and it's going to have an interesting effect on the dairy industry. And despite all these financial instruments that are trade of risk or feelings, there is still big business in commodities.

The article talks about the necessity of developing regional markets if we want local vegetables, meat, and eggs. Is anyone on the tech side doing anything meaningful in this space? I know plenty of non-profits and community development groups working on it, but they are concentrating on the footwork and relationship building in more rural areas that has to be done to create the networks.

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I haven't read the article and I am curious too. I think tripe is weird but that's because I don't really eat it frequently, but it's animal flesh and it has a good amount of macronutrients.

> But we need to attract the people who have always assumed that healthy food has to taste like straw.

Do people actually think that? They must have never tried good Vietnamese cuisine. You find plenty of tasty, healthy dishes in Thai food as well. Not to mention a simple salad... Where does this myth come from?

A lot of people do think that, in my experience. I agree that this is a myth and you don't even need to try a different cuisine, simply season your food with spices which are now being shown not only to be delicious but actually good for your overall health. Things like pepper, cinnamon, turmeric, sumac and a pinch of salt and pepper can greatly enhance the taste of a bland dish.

A salad, to a lot of people, might not taste very good. But adding a pinch of olive oil and some lemon juice might make a world of difference.

I guess people see those "organic" material in the store with minimal branding and then compare it to a McMeal that looks amazing.

Whenever I cook, I try to make the dish taste great, smell great and look good. All of those are important in a meal. Obviously I fail a lot, but those are my targets in creating healthy-delicious meals that don't cost a fortune.

Someone I know recently tried to make a "healthy" meal by combining lentils with oats and just cooking them in water and throwing a small pinch of cumin in it. Now that might be a "healthy" meal but it tastes like sawdust...

It comes from the belief that suffering is virtuous. (Yes, the logic here is backwards, but that's where it's coming from.)

Same reason bad-tasting placebos are more effective than sweet placebos.

Potatoes are very nutritious. Maybe there's a less greasy way to make fries so that they'll taste good? Maybe make them in coconut oil and a lot less salt?

All the meat served in restaurants is far worse for you than fries.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-30/friday-food...

This makes an interested accompanying read. We are still eating 'em taters because root vegetable was the only thing our grandparents and parents had reliable access to all year round. And old habits takes several decades to kill.

“The same people who chuckle at the things done with cocktail franks and canned tuna will happily eat something like the tripe dishes common in many ethnic cuisines. Yet tripe has absolutely nothing to recommend it as a food product, except that it is practically free; almost anything you cooked with tripe would be just as good, if not better, without the tripe in it. If you understand why folks ate Trippa alla Romana, you should not be confused about the tuna casserole or the creamed chipped beef on toast. ”

Why the hate for tripe? Trippa alla Romana, menudo, phở, various Mediterranean tripe stews, fried tripe with hot sauce, etc. are delicious. Maybe the author had a traumatic experience in childhood?

Tripe has a texture unlike muscle, which makes for an interesting contrast to meat. If you took the tripe out of “anything you cooked with tripe”, you’d be left with something completely different, defeating the point of those dishes.

At least in English, the word tripe itself means "worthless", because traditionally in English-speaking countries, where meat was cheap and plentiful, people threw tripe out or fed it to their dogs. Countries like Italy and various Asian countries didn't have the luxury of cheap meat historically -- so they incorporated tripe into their cuisine. That doesn't mean that good things can't be done with it, just that the original reason for using it was that it was cheap.

Damn, now I have a craving for tripe soup: https://www.google.com/search?q=%EC%96%91%EA%B3%B0%ED%83%95&...

(Remove tripe, and you end up with boiling water with green onions.)

To be sure, if it's the most prevalent vegetable across generations, there's going to be a lot more recipes and pairings than with other vegetables.

I don't know if I would say "very nutritious". They're fairly low in vitamins/minerals/phytonutrient/fiber/protein. They're an okay source of extra calories if you're very active, but I wouldn't have someone sedentary and trying to lose weight eat them.

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