How Crisco Made Americans Believers in Industrial Food
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
For example, say "We'll save you tens of man-hours a week" vs "we run on docker containers [etc]"
Make comparisons with other technology, and use standardized terminology.
Though even then, the features would have to be things people actually expect to get better value from. E.g. "snooze emails for later" vs "our server runs on golang"...though if your audience is super core golang fanboys then maybe the latter would be useful as well :)
fruits and veggies get optimized for heavier weight per piece and longer shelf life, instead of taste. Same thing for every other grocery product.
But i like the idea
Regarding olive oil, it will store fairly well if kept in sealed in the dark, however it definitely loses its kick after the first 6 months
Long shelf life is not necessarily an issue; I've eaten home-made canned cherries & plums that were 10 years old. Wine can also have a long shelf life (though most don't).
But your point stands with the varietals optimized for appearance and tolerance to shipping as opposed to flavor. I've come to realize why many consider fruits and vegetables not very appealing is that almost all of what is available is tasteless.
Northern Europeans used the same techniques that many other cultures used across the globe: remove as much water content as possible, use herbs that have certain bacteria-inhibiting properties that also taste good, apply liberal salt. Everything is some evolution of this.
You may wish to provide an example as to what you mean, because I suspect whatever you are referring to is more modern (ie, in the past 300 or so years).
I still think there's no real problem with eating preserved meat, but the misguided worship of ye good old times needs to stop.
The problem in the modern industrial world is the use of artificial nitrates and nitrites present outside of plain sodium or potassium nitrite, which thankfully is starting to become more rare again.
Also, there is no scientific link between nitrate consumption and cancer, only really awfully designed papers that somehow, and very unreasonably so, got published in journals.
Btween 35% and 40% of people have high blood pressure. For them, the consumption of "liberally salted" products is something to be avoided.
Statistics from WHO:
https://www.who.int/gho/ncd/risk_factors/blood_pressure_prev...
It isn't that they were fully wrong, but it doesn't always have the ills one is warned about and the amounts of "healthy" salt might vary. Some of those folks with high blood pressure will be helped by a lower salt diet: Some will not and I'm not sure if there are consistent links saying it causes high blood pressure in healthy folks with normal blood pressure. The rest of the folks with high blood pressure aren't always helped - probably because there is more than one path to high blood pressure. Genetics, medicines, smoking, diet, lack of exercise, weight, and so on.
Even in this subset, these meats aren't universally bad. If your salted meat is a smallish portion of your diet and you use comparatively little salt in the rest of your food, you might be just fine. It isn't that one thing is salty, but that the overall diet isn't too high in salt.
Salt is one of the most effective ways to make healthy low carbohydrate foods (particularly fats and protein) palatable and compete with the sugar, corn and wheat that are so prevalent in unhealthy foods.
That sounds very vague- what is "years ago" and what are "modern standards"? If "modern standards" are better for salt studies- are they also better for, e.g. drugs research, or physics or chemistry, etc?
I think probably not. What I understand the big difference is between now and the past (let's say the 1950's), in terms of scientific standards has more to do with ethical requirements, rather than methodology. More modern studies are also more likely to use more recent statistical tools, or to rely more on automated tools and software packages, but that doesn't meant the newer studies are more accurate.
I also don't know why you say that salt affects different people with high blood pressure differently. My understanding is that there is variability between _studies_, so some studies have found that hypertensives that reduce their salt intake see a reduction in their blood pressure, some have not, but that doesn't mean that hypertensives react to salt differently- it means that different studies had different results and that's all. And variability among studies' results is clearly expected, given the different methodologies etc.
Generally, I'd say it's hasty to discard data and results collected over many years because some -but not most- modern studies have different results. In such cases the prudent thing is to wait and see before making up your mind. Currently, the bulk of the data supports the mainstream view that salt consumption over some amount is associated with raised blood pressure. The wise thing to do is to take that into account and manage your consumption accordingly.
Another thing: how many people (say, under 30) know what their blood pressure is and how it's affected by salt? I know, because I have a relative with kidney disease and I often measure my blood pressure with them, and take notes. Most people though - they have no idea.
So again- don't be hasty. It's difficult to know how salt consumption affects the general population, but if anyone wants to know how it affects them, personally, they don't need to rely on studies, new or old. All they have to do is use a blood pressure monitor once or twice a day for a few weeks.
And I personally suggest everyone does, because what happened to my relative was downright scary. They had splitting headaches for a long time (years) and they only found out the reason when we visited a doctor for something unrelated. A nurse asked a question about general health and I replied that my relative has these splitting headaches (my relative would never bring up something so trivial themself!). It turned out those headaches were the result of 200/100 hypertensive episodes that were happening with regularity. Hypertension was likely either the root cause, or a contributing factor to the damage to my relative's kidneys (and also caused by that damage, in a real nasty feedback loop)- but we had no idea it was even there. And btw, my relative has definitely been able to control their blood pressure by cutting down drastically on their salt intake (they take drugs, of course, but salt still affects them very clearly).
Blood pressure is such a basic vital sign that's so easy to measure. It's so easy to know, studies or no studies, how salt affects you. And yet, most people never measure it and instead we end up having these arguments on the internets about what this study or that study says about salt, in the general population, in the abstract. I don't quite get it.
Anti salt advice from heath organizations has persisted despite a lot of evidence. Even the basic osmotic argument around blood pressure ignores lymph outside of blood vessels containing salt resulting in zero net forces. At most there is a minuscule change in viscosity.
If public health advice hasn't changed with "recent data" the reason for that -other than the experts being stupid and not knowing their shit- is that recent studies are recent. You can't overturn a few decades of evidence with a few studies- not even a few meta-analyses etc.
And one should always remember that a study is a study, and not the word of the God of Science. And studies are flawed.
Take for example the study quoted in your linked article:
In May European researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the less sodium that study subjects excreted in their urine—an excellent measure of prior consumption—the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease.
Such surprising results have also been found for wine, for example, and the methodological error that produces them is as insidious as it is now well understood. In particular, studies on the effect of this or that on cardiovascular health often don't control for people with _pre-existing_ heart disease. People who already have heart disease are very likely to have reduced their salt or alcohol etc consumption _before_ the study, as a result of medical advice - but of course, they will still suffer from heart disease. If they later die of their pre-existing condition, the study will show an association between low sodium or alcohol etc consumption and death from heart disease.
That's very likely what happened in the study quoted by the article you link to- but of course we can't know for sure because bloody "Scientific" American never cites the studies it quotes.
Anyway, from my perspective (I have a relative with kidney disease and I've been eating a low-sodium diet with them for years now) the first I heard about salt being OK for you after all was a few years ago when a heart doctor published a book that caused a hell of a controversy - between expets, no less. Here's an article about it:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/aug/08/a-danger-to-...
My hunch is - if there's a controversy about it between experts, better stick with the advice that is _not_ controversial among experts, until things clear up.
And don't be prepared to celebrate overturned scientific orthodoxies so easily. If you have 100 studies that say A and 10 studies that say B, you trust the 100 studies that say A. See the green jellie beans XKCD etc.
“Rigorous sodium deprivation can lower the blood pressure of some patients with essential hypertension (at best, 30% to 50% of patients). In the rest, sodium depletion is ineffective and, in some instances, can raise the blood pressure and cause adverse clinical effects. In normal persons, it is difficult to affect blood pressure even with drastic changes in salt intake; for the blood pressure to rise even slightly, it may be necessary to consume more than 800 meq/d. There is no evidence to indicate that a widely applied, moderate reduction of salt intake could prevent the development of hypertension. The evidence suggesting that such moderate salt intake would significantly lower blood pressure in the patients with sodium-sensitive essential hypertension is weak. Human hypertension comprises a heterogeneous spectrum of abnormal vasoconstriction-volume interactions. Sodium deprivation, like other forms of therapy, should be applied only to those patients in whom its effectiveness has been established.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3510595
Sodium and hypertension. A review.
Arch Intern Med. 1986 Jan;146(1):179-85.
Abstract
Abnormal sodium metabolism may be critical in the causation of certain forms of hypertension, particularly salt-sensitive hypertension. Long-term restriction of sodium intake in patients at high risk for the development of hypertension may reduce the chances of established hypertension occurring later. These high-risk patients in whom subsequent hypertension may be prevented include normotensive patients with family histories of hypertension, elderly patients, black patients, and those with low-renin hypertension. Treatment of hypertension with moderate sodium restriction to 70 mEq/day will significantly reduce blood pressure in a large percentage of patients, particularly known salt-sensitive hypertensive patients. This degree of restriction is also an effective adjunctive therapy for patients receiving antihypertensive medications. There is convincing experimental, epidemiologic, and clinical evidence that moderate sodium restriction helps prevent and assists in the treatment of hypertension in those patients who are genetically predisposed to develop primary hypertension or who already have hypertension. There is no evidence that this degree of sodium restriction is harmful.
My hunch is that for every study we could find in the bibliography reporting that there is no correlation between high salt consumption and high blood pressure, we would find another 10 that say the opposite. Personally, I don't have the time, or the background, to figure out how to evaluate the quality of an epidemiological study. So I base my assumptions on the current expert opinion that continues to be that too much salt is bad for you especially if you have high blood pressure (or are at risk for it, like the review above says).
Edit: also, remember the basic rule that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". But _presence_ of evidence _is_ evidence of presence. If 10 studies find "no evidence" that lowering salt intake reduces hypertension risk and one study finds that it does, then we have "evidence that lowering salt intake reduces hypertension" and we do not have "no evidence that lowering salt intake reduces hypertension". How we interpet the evidence we do have is another matter, of course.
I'm quoting the conclusions section but as usual the abstract has multiple sections including a Results section that's a bit large to post (but interesting to read):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23558162
BMJ. 2013 Apr 3;346:f1325. doi: 10.1136/bmj.f1325.
Effect of longer term modest salt reduction on blood pressure: Cochrane systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised trials.
CONCLUSIONS:
A modest reduction in salt intake for four or more weeks causes significant and, from a population viewpoint, important falls in blood pressure in both hypertensive and normotensive individuals, irrespective of sex and ethnic group. Salt reduction is associated with a small physiological increase in plasma renin activity, aldosterone, and noradrenaline and no significant change in lipid concentrations. These results support a reduction in population salt intake, which will lower population blood pressure and thereby reduce cardiovascular disease. The observed significant association between the reduction in 24 hour urinary sodium and the fall in systolic blood pressure, indicates that larger reductions in salt intake will lead to larger falls in systolic blood pressure. The current recommendations to reduce salt intake from 9-12 to 5-6 g/day will have a major effect on blood pressure, but a further reduction to 3 g/day will have a greater effect and should become the long term target for population salt intake.
Remember that this is a meta-analysis and quite recent (6 years ago). I think my hunch above that we'd find many more studies supporting the mainstream view is not off.
Canning is still kind of a miracle.
A similar thing I heard often is "don't eat anything your grandma wouldn't recognize as food", and it seems sensible, but the problem with this reasoning is the blurry definition of "traditional" and our general ignorance of food history.
For example, MSG is a fairly traditional ingredient in Japan, being used since 1909 (older than my grandma). Crisco would be considered the same in the US. But hydrogenated fats have known unhealthy effects, while MSG has been proven to be mostly innocuous.
At the same time, candied fruit is super traditional in the mediterranean, and something like cassata siciliana[0] is candied fruit, marzipan etc.. basically sugar coated with sugar. Definitely unhealthy, though delicious and traditional.
Or was it lard?
I don't know any grandmas from Japan, but I doubt they would consider MSG to be a traditional food. Rather, it is an additive that tastes like seaweed. To call it "traditional" in Japanese cuisine would be akin to calling maple flavoring "traditional" in Canadian cuisine.
There are a lot of exceptions though: dried lentils and pulses, pasta, ground spices (and to a less extent whole spices). Tinned fruit, vegetables, beans and pulses are often fine too. Some vegetables, like onions and potatoes, can be stored for many weeks in a cool environment (not in the refrigerator).
Also, UHT milk has a long shelf life and is not unhealthy, although it tastes awful.
Sure you're not getting it confused with evaporated milk? UHT milk doesn't taste much different at all, maybe the slightest caramel flavor.
I swapped to it when I got tired of running out of milk at random, now I can just stock the pantry and always grab a spare when I kick the one in the fridge.
UHT milk is not at all tasty compared to normal milk and has a different consistency. I like it as an alternative beverage or coffee creamer, especially for camping.
If you want to avoid overly-processed food (like TFA), then do you best to stick to things that have one ingredient.
Maybe that's the point. You mention chocolate, 100% chocolate exists but children aren't going to ever eat it when there's a Hershey bar available.
Beef Jerky, dried chiles beans and legumes, as well as canned vegetables would beg to differ. steel cut Oats, carefully stored, will easily survive close to a decade. naturally fermented pickles can last months on end as well.
In the US, canned beans and frozen vegetables are among the most opulent excesses of the boomer era that ushered in among other things, the tv dinner and immortal confection we know to be a twinkie. Most of a grocery store is structured to completely disregard seasonal produce and function on an almost comical dependence on low diesel prices in order to truck fruits, vegetables, and meats thousands of miles cross country.
There is a severe shortage of over the road drivers and I believe this is the major reason. It's a tough and unhealthy life and the money incentive is gone.
The story of the Washington Delicious apple is a cautionary tale, bred for appearance to the detriment of all else.
(1) this thread (2) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21861986 (3) https://www.nation.co.ke/counties/nairobi/Apostle-Harry-Das-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4IH8-io6Dw
As far as I can tell Crisco, while popular in the US, doesn't appear to be widespread or common outside the US.
Yeah, after looking up many Spanish Christmas cookie recipes, I was surprised that almost all of them use lard. I have too many vegetarian friends for lard to be an option for me. I generally sub butter for lard, but maybe I'll make a private batch of polvorones with lard for myself some time to see if there's a difference in taste.
These don't make sense anymore when we don't really stick to regional, seasonal, supply-dependent cooking and can decide to make any damn thing we like at any time, thanks to grocery stores, and simply toss most of the extra bits ("useless" parts of vegetables, bacon fat, et c.) if we don't feel like using it, because the time, space, and technique it takes to use them correctly's not worth it when we can buy a substitute from the store for very little money. Quite likely a well-proportioned substitute of butter for lard doesn't make much difference in the outcome of that recipe, but there was originally a supply-related or place-it-fits-in-a-cuisine-system reason that lard was preferred.
[EDIT] to be clear, the old way of cooking is probably still cheaper in general and certainly less wasteful, but the savings are so marginal relative to the skills, time, and space required that it's totally reasonable that even poorer folks largely don't bother. This kind of thing went beyond just cooking patterns and cuisines, too—animals commonly kept by anyone living even sort-of in the country had a role. Chickens? They'll eat waste, control pest insects, give you eggs, and if you're also breeding them you can slaughter one for food every now and then—the eggs and meat are damn near free, as far as dollars put in past an initial capital investment and some trivial upkeep are concerned, though they do take time & care. Pigs? Even better waste disposals than the chickens, turn garbage into meat and cooking fat. These got much cheaper and more common, but also were removed from their role in the broader food & home-economics ecosystem, when we started farming them on a mass scale and mostly feeding them stuff we grew specifically to feed them.
We have other shortenings outside the US, such as Copha (coconut based) in Australia though it's rarely used these days. Crisco is available but not widely, and from what I can tell mostly used by people following American recipes and purchased from specialty importers.
When I go to rural areas of the country, the supermarkets have very good selection of fresh foods and cooking ingredients, which indicates to me that there is a demand for them.
We render lard from bacon and save it for cooking. Works like a charm.
As a general statement about vegetable oils, that is super false. You can tell because the oils are liquid at room temperature and hydrogenated oils aren't. Maybe you meant vegetable shortenings?
Just because people can't agree about where the grey areas are versus where the defined areas are does not mean that there are no areas worth defining or that we should avoid defining those areas for ourselves because other people disagree. It's sort of like driving speed. Some people believe that average faster speeds are safe, but people who drive faster than they drive are unsafe. Other people will think slower speeds are safe and anyone who drives faster than they drive are unsafe. This doesn't mean that there aren't "real" safe speeds or that the idea of a safe driving speed is meaningless. We can still get closer to real food or real safe driving speeds even if our targets vary.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/palm-oil-health-imp...
I have actually gone to using lard/ghee now for myself instead of shortening. It also seemed to be cheaper as well, to my surprise.
I'm curious what other's think?
EDIT: I meant lard is cheaper, not Ghee. Upon a brief search, there are brands of vegetable shoterning that claim to be environmentally sustainable.
But you are correct, I would prefer to use butter when I can!
EDIT: My parents are also vegan, and I like to cook with them. So I also use it then.
I've also used Crisco, on that note. Works not-quite-as-well, but still better than expected.
So they started finding out how to make it food-ready and introduced additional processing so the oil wouldn't go rancid as fast and closer to fats that people were accustomed to (lard, butter).
They were cheaper than the traditional fats, which opened a market.
Then, traditional fats were pushed out due to health concerns.
Nina teichholz has written about the history and offers a dissenting opinion to the recommendations of unsaturated oils if you are interested https://thebigfatsurprise.com/
It seems the
You can read the ingredients on their website[1]. While it's not the healthiest fat for a typical Western diet, it contains zero trans fat(partially hydrogenated), which is the only truly harmful fat. Trans fat is pretty much dangerous in any quantity and directly correlates to an increase in cardiovascular events.
Artificially added Trans fat was banned in the US in 2018.
1. https://www.crisco.com/products/vegetable-shortening/all-veg...
Crisco ~removed (FDA lets you state 0 trans fat if it's less than .5g per serving) trans fats, and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil is no longer an ingredient.
Hydrogenating oils saturates them. According to Wikipedia,
> Partial hydrogenation of the unsaturated fat converts some of the cis double bonds into trans double bonds by an isomerization reaction with the catalyst used for the hydrogenation, which yields a trans fat.
So apparently fully hydrogenating an oil won't produce trans fat.
Out of curiosity, how much Ghee can you make out of butter (I.e. start with 16 oz of butter, get approx 8 oz? Or how much?)
0. Be from a family line that consumes gallons up gallons of curd/yogurt weekly.
1. Curd Process - Boil whole milk, let it cool down a bit, and add some older curd, let it sit overnight in your oven with the light on.
2. The next morning, put the container in the refrigerator.
3. At night, you'll notice a think layer of creamy butter on top of the curd. Scrape that layer off the curd and transfer it into a container that you will store in your freezer. Enjoy the curd.
4. Repeat steps 0-3 over a few days, which will cause you to have a container full of creamy butter.
5. When you need ghee, melt the contents at medium heat while continuing to stir to maximize the ghee you'll make out of it. You will start seeing some particulate forming at the bottom
6. Filter and transfer the melted contents into your ghee container.
7. Turn off the stove but continue stirring the particulate matter with some added sugar for a tasty sweet.
8. Rinse Repeat.
If you just want "butter that doesn't burn", here's what I do.
1. Melt butter in a pot. This separates butter into its three fundamental parts: solids (floating at the top), oil (in the middle), and water.
2. Heat until all the water at the bottom vaporizes.
3. Pour remaining mixture through a coffee filter. This removes the solids (which easily burn).
Milk Solids burn at 350F, making raw butter unsuitable for frying. The goal of clarified butter (and Ghee is a type of clarified butter), is to raise the smoke-point to roughly 450F (roughly equivalent to canola oil).
Normal butter will burn before the mallard reaction (Mallard is roughly 400F). But clarified butter burns AFTER the mallard reaction. The mallard reaction is what makes the slightly-sweet nicely cooked meat taste.
Similar reactions occur in vegetables, meats, breads, etc. etc. So its very important to use oils which burn at higher temperatures (450F+: Clarified Butter, Canola Oil, Soy Oil, Peanut Oil).
Some fats, such as normal-butter, bacon fat, or olive oil burn at 350F. So you end up with a "burnt" taste from the burning fat before the mallard reaction even takes place.
--------
Ghee is a particular "cooked butter" taste. Its a bit more difficult to make (and more expensive than) simple clarified butter.
If you're sauteing, frying, or whatever with butter, its important to know how to clarify it. Or I guess use Ghee (but that's more expensive / time consuming).
I was more looking for a substitute for shortening, which I think clarified butter can do? Or just ghee?
Ex, bacon grease works in more recipes than you'd expect.
Just memorize their smoke points, the point where a fat begins to burn. Shortening has a very high smoke point, but that is only relevant if you expect the temperature to go above 400F, such as the mallard reaction (aka the taste of fried / saute food).
You'll learn pretty quick when a fat burns quickly. Olive oil and bacon grease burn at really low temperatures and will create a thick cloud of smoke as it burns.
Look up the smoke points of fats if you are worried.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Smoke_point_of_cookin...
If I choose a 450F smoke point fat, like canola oil, I know that the pan is 450F when it starts to smoke.
I got the reaction wrong earlier, mallard is 300F or so. Caramelization is 400F
But in that case, like I say in my longer comment, it doesn't make sense for olive oil to catch fire "easily", like you say in your previous comment.
What olive oil are you using, if I'm not being too nosey?
Sorry if I sound defensive- I'm just really surprised. olive oil is very common where I come from :)
I don't cook with olive oil too often, so I can't say I remember the brand. I looked a few things up, and it seems like different olive-oils have different smoke points.
https://www.jonbarron.org/diet-and-nutrition/healthiest-cook...
According to this, some olive oil has a smoke point of 320F / 160C, but other olive-oils can have a smoke point as high as 468F. I don't know why olive oil has such a different range.
I guess I'll experiment with olive oil more. It is quite possible that olive oil here in the USA is of lower-quality perhaps?
Olive oil quality can depend on many things: where it comes from, how it is made, who makes it, etc.
The one that's considered best is olive oil produced only from olives (i.e. no kernels) and only by mechanical means (specifically: no heat and no chemical treatments; so it's called "cold-extracted"). That's the quality that's sold as "extra virgin olive oil" though from what I understand there is no strict standard for what that means exactly.
Then there's provenance. Generally, Spanish olive oil is considered best with Greek second (unless you ask a Greek of course) and Italian a distant third. Other countries in the Med also make it, e.g. Morocco etc. Italian olive oil has often been found to be adulterated, substituted for lower quality olive oils or just to be a mix of non-Italian olive oils (primarily Greek, apparently) so it's a case of not knowing what you eat.
Anyway, I live in the UK where olive oil is imported and the good stuff tends to be expensive (£30ish for 25lt of Greek extra virgin but of course most people will buy smaller bottles that are more expensive). So my guess is that most olive oil consumed outside the Med tends to be of inferior quality, just because people don't know it well enough to justify spending the price.
So if you experiment with it- get the good stuff. To be honest, I just get the stuff I always do and I have never had to think about quality or smoke points, so my advice is probably a little vague.
Er. You won't set your house on fire just because some crazy Greek person on the internets said it's safe to cook with olive oil, eh? :)
I was wondering about that because it's mentioned in the article also: I don't understand why people say that olive oil burns easily.
Look at the table you posted: the smoking point of two qualities of olive oil ("virgin" and "extra virgin, low acidity, high quality") is above 400°F (204°C) at 410°F and 405°F respectively. This is close to the 400°F you cite as the temperature necessary for the Maillard reaction, but the wikipedia article on the Maillard reaction states that: "The reaction is a form of non-enzymatic browning which typically proceeds rapidly from around 140 to 165 °C (280 to 330 °F)." In which case, even "extra virgin" olive oil, the olive oil quality listed as having the lowest smoking point of 160°C, can withstand the heat necessary for food to undergo the Maillard reaction.
It makes even less sense that the Maillard reaction needs 400°F to get going. If you look at the wikipedia article for "Smoking point", where the table you link to comes from, it lists the average temperatures of frying and baking:
Pan frying (sauté) on stove top heat: 120 °C (248 °F)
Deep frying: 160 - 180 °C (320 °F - 356 °F)
Oven baking: Average of 180 °C (356 °F)
Finally, I'm the third generation of women in my family to cook with olive oil, to always cook with olive oil and to cook everything with olive oil. I fry, deep fry, boil, stir-fry, bake, sear, and so on everything with olive oil. I have never seen olive oil burning (emitting a blue flame and smoke) and I've never heard of anyone in my family, or in my broad circle of friends and acquaintances who has seen that. I have never heard it in the news either and if it was something that happens to olive oil when the food you're cooking with it is about to get tasty- it should be happening all the time [Edit: note that I've burned plenty of food in olive oil- but still not the olive oil].
Small point to note: I'm Greek and we do have good quality olive oil (and wine; and feta; and yoghurt; and nothing else).
So my conclusion is: it's only cheap, low quality and most likely adulterated olive oil that catches fire in low temperatures.
(See the wikipedia article on olive oil about adulteration. It's a big thing in some other oil-producing countries, and I don't mean Saudi Arabia).
I learned recently that curdling milk can be achieved in many different ways: the easiest way is to leave it out of the fridge overnight (unless it's long-life). Especially in a warm environment the lactobacili in the milk itself and in the air will do their job and you'll have curdled milk in the morning. I'm guessing that's probably how the first dairy products were made, though I wouldn't want to speculate about the tastes of the first person to try curdled milk.
Another way is to add some acid like vinegar or lemon. Lactobacili that curdle the milk naturally actually release lactic acid: fermentation is the same kind of anaerobic respiration that happens in our muscles when they're not getting enough energy from oxygen alone. In our case, it's our body burning the sugars in our fat to create lactic acid. The lactobacili in the milk eat lactose and turn it into lactic acid. It seems that this acid production is at least partly responsible for the curdling of milk.
Another common way is to use, er, whey- the byproduct of milk fermentation. Some traditional cheeses (e.g. Greek mizithra and anthotyros) are made by keeping some of the whey in previous batches to ferment new batches.
Yet another way is to use a bacterial culture especially meant to ferment milk, like kefir (please: it's pronounced keh-FEER; not like Donald Sutherland's son). In fact, I learned all this because I started making kefir at home and I got to the point I'm making cheese. It turns out- you can use kefir to make butter also, although I haen't tried it and I don't know the process well enough to describe it.
Finally, there is of course the use of rennet, which is an enzyme found in the er, I think fourth stomach of ruminants, and that's used mainly in cheese making (especially for hard cheeses, it's the stuff that gives yellow cheese curds their texture).
Anyway, fermentation -as in milk curdling, wine brewing, sourdough making etc- is cool.
Took me a few goes to get it right. I find it has a better taste, used appropriately.
I know I can start with a pound and fit it in a pint jar, just below the line.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmitic_acid#Health_effects
For decades, Original Crisco had four grams of trans fat per tablespoon.
History just keeps on repeating itself. The same kind of anti-animal product fashion trend right now is making industrially processed vegetarian and vegan 'meat'-like products viable.
The OJ industry funded PR tricked americans into thinking sugar laden orange juice was healthy and to be included in every breakfast. The same with cereal by Kellog. And PR somehow convinced us that the processed swill called microwavable dinners was actually food.
The rise of PR in the 1900s and its use by the food industry fundamentally altered americans' diet for the worse. Now the same PR machine is being slowly used by processed alt-meat/vegan industry. Profit rather than health is driving american's diet and it hasn't been good for the well being of the average american.
In general the food industry likes to take single factors and promote the hell out of them as being beneficial while often making things worse (see low fat for example).
Pretty much all of these highly processed foods are highly processed in order to reduce cost in some way (e.g. increasing shelf life, decrease storage requirements, use a substitute ingredient, remove the need for some other product, etc). All the finicky bits of producing food (e.g handling ingredients that are much less shelf stable than the final product) and abstracts that away to some factory somewhere. All of this seems like you're getting something for nothing if you don't know it's unhealthy.
The technology and processes used to create stuff that is recognizable as "modern industrial food" were mostly developed and matured over the late 1800s and early 1900s. For reasons that should be immediately obvious cheap and shelf stable became highly sought after traits for ingredients in the 1930s and 1940s. Likewise a generation of people grew up seeing their parents shoe-horn products like Crisco into use cases formerly reserved for other more natural ingredients. Considering that they grew up on it it's no surprise they stocked their 1950s and 60s cupboards and pantries with the sorts of products that they were familiar with from their youth.
Of course marketing is icing on the cake but things, like cooking habits, that you generally learn from your parents are generally resistant to fast change without some sort of strong outside motivation.
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/hidden-costs-industrial-agr...
Edit: I see that you're a former lawyer. I'm going to assume it's a semantic word-play thing
But if you want to talk about curing meats, that's a fun topic. The ones my fam makes are way tastier than Jimmy Dean's
What if I make them at my house and take them to someone else's home?
You can only be sure that sausages are "real food", if you make it yourself at home using the raw ingredients. Otherwise, no idea.
That said, I think I value food that has fewer steps in preparation as being "more real" so I'd prefer something like a meat and onion skillet to beef wellington or a clumped cream chicken pot pie.
I think the title is terrible for choosing that specific word - I'd much prefer a title like "How Crisco Made Americans Believers in Artificial Food". And in actuality it's more of an issue of the government not preventing wholly unhealthy food from finding the wide markets they have.
IMO any processed food that hasn't been around for a couple of generations should be treated with some suspicion.
If you want to define "processing" a loosey-goosey definition might be "anything that can't be done in the average kitchen using ingredients commonly found at a grocery store". By this definition, maybe breakfast cereals aren't processed - you could make Grape Nuts in your kitchen if you were sufficiently determined and masochistic. But it's a decent heuristic otherwise.
I've started realizing that there is very little space for nuance and subjectivity in discussing things on HN
Why is it any faker than regular cheese? Perhaps I am not as intelligent as I'd like to think.
I have no objection to nuance and subjectivity. There's nothing wrong with someone saying "I like fresh salads and fish and tofu, but string cheese and Big Macs aren't for me". Certainly I wouldn't say that you must eat string cheese unless you have an ironclad reason to avoid it. What I object to (and what I think HN is particularly sensitive to) is trying to sneak personal preferences under the guise of loaded terms like "real food".
https://www.frigocheeseheads.com/en/products/everyday-snacki...
> INGREDIENTS: Low moisture part skim mozzarella cheese (pasteurized part skim milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes)
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Mozzarella-String-Che...
> Ingredients: Pasteurized milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes
https://www.sargento.com/our-cheese/string-stick/string-chee...
> Pasteurized Reduced Fat Milk, Cheese Culture, Salt, Enzymes, Vitamin A Palmitate.
Nope, not checking out
This is a string cheese sold on the UK. It looks like the product varies significantly between and within countries.
I've seen premade refrigerated pizza fly off the shelf. I've seen drinks with all kinds of highly processed ingredients sell like hotcakes. I've seen condiments with a list of ingredients as long as a phone book purchase by plenty of people that eat only "real food".
Protein powders and supplements intrigue me to no end. These are some of the most processed and unregulated things sold on shelves. But "real food" advocates literally eat them up.
One of my friends is making millions catering to this group. I've been trying to figure out how these shoppers think. To me, it doesn't seem like there's much in common. It seems to be mostly branding.
> I've seen premade refrigerated pizza fly off the shelf.
To be fair most frozen pizza is terrible - pre-baked bread that you're reheating, little better than frozen cheese toast. Whereas premade pizzas tend to be freshly made and you're baking the dough. So they taste a lot better.
this is largely the same with other quasi-positive labels (esp. political ones). lots of $$ to be made here, as people generally want to reinforce both their own and others' perceptions of them.
This sort of thing always seems super american centric to me personally. It's common in chinese households to have a stash of frozen dumplings prepared in-kitchen, or frozen steamed buns, or various other frozen prepared foods that are kitchen staples. I get that if it's from a restaurant or big processing plant you might find things questionable, but if you prepare your own pizza and decide to freeze it for later I don't think anyone should besmirch you as suddenly less healthy compared to eating the pizza as soon as you made it.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu#History
Also, even though the link between smoked meats and cancer is now as incontrovertible as the link between say tobacco and cancer, the risk is far lower. So it's not like they're wildly unsafe, just kinda sorta of unsafe.
If you were a peasant in the 1800s expecting to live till 50, sausages and smoked meat would probably _increase_ your life expectancy due to the additional protein. You would also not live long enough, or eat so much of it as to have a significantly higher likelihood of getting cancer.
The context in which those foods are consumed is different today than it used to be. People live longer and consume way more meat (of every kind) than they used to. If you eat smoked meats and fish (and really any other meats) at the same rates as peasants of 200 years ago, I doubt they'll increase your cancer risk by all that much.
It doesn't tell us if it is optimal health wise to do such a thing.
Just about anyone can make beer, grind flour, churn butter, or bake bread. Even make tofu.
The /actual/ ancient past was way more concerned about quantity and physiological performance in a 'can you get big on it' as a positive and 'how likely is it to kill you' as opposed to any high minded ideals.
Despite trying to sound like it 'real food' isn't a real goal or metric in the same way that dog breeds which don't have a purpose other than aesthetics defined by vapid breed standards rapidly become the canine counterpart to the Hapsburgs. Compare to a working dog breed's actual defacto requirements. "Smart enough to keep up with and herd livestock, mean enough to chase away predators but not so vicious it kills the livestock itself." is a real set of goals that constrains it into a functional space to optimize for and can even tolerate some wasteful vanity in appearance selection. Hell even something overspecialized like "Try to be the fastest on the race track without being so badly behaved that they are disqualified." is better.
I am convinced that the underlying issues be they dog breeds or food aren't the real problems but ways of thinking.