A plea for culinary modernism (2001) [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

A plea for culinary modernism (2001) [pdf]

rachellaudan.com

37 pointskens64 comments

Like the author I'm certainly glad I don't have to churn my own butter, but this attitude could easily be taken too far. A recent study "found a significant association between unprocessed or minimally processed foods and lower risks of all reported diseases."

https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/new-evidence-links-ultr...

My thoughts as well.

You don't need to spend an entire day in the kitchen to prepare yourself a few meals with unprocessed or minimally processed foods: frozen or fresh veggies, dairy products, eggs, raw meat, or fish with about 20 mins of cooking, frying, or boiling and you have yourself a few meals.

Its actually cheaper than eating out and if you apply meal prep on a weekly basis, like I do, it doesn't even take too much of your time.

of course it's cheaper than eating out, it's like an order of magnitude difference usually

the weekly approach is especially efficient. one tip i've seen but never tried is to use a deep freeze to interleave different weeks, so within a given week you might cook three dishes but, by eating food you'd frozen over the previous 7 weeks, eat 21 different dishes

While processed foods consumption correlates with diseases, it's likely because food that's processed outside of your house typically includes ingredients (or preparation method) that either make it last longer or taste better at the expense of your health.

But that doesn't mean that processing is always harmful. Frozen fish is considered "processed", but freezing also kills parasites.

I'm guessing the study authors would include frozen fish in their "minimally processed" category.

There's no reason why a certain preservative can't have positive health effects. Pretty sure a lot of them do, we just don't talk about it.

Essentially this leads to a useless circular definition: "processed" food is bad for your health because we define "processed" as being bad for your health. A statement "unprocessed food is good for your health" contains zero information.

"Food that is bad for your health" is not the definition used in the studies I linked. They provide their actual definitions, and measure health outcomes from varying levels of reported consumption.

So if you want to access a non-zero amount of information, the bottom of that article has links to the full-text studies.

Pretty sure freezing in general is a form of processing that destroys some protein and nutrients. Hence why fresh vegetables taste better than frozen vegetables.

There are lots of reasons different types of processing could reduce healthiness of food.

Plant cells have rigid cell walls and are damaged more by freezing than animal cells

I’m in a number of autoimmune groups. While drugs often work. Sometimes very well, sometimes not. Diet often gets the best results.

Things like autoimmune protocol diet are amazing at reducing pain and fatigue.

the modern industrial diet seems to have caused an obesity epidemic everywhere it's been introduced in the last half century

this is one of the major reasons for the slowing of the growth in life expectancy laudan mentions here, and even its reversal in places

people who eat weird diets for some ideological reason that rule out eating food made in factories (raw-food vegans, carnivores, extreme-low-fat people) seem to be exempt

but even lab animals are getting obese, despite never picking up the phone to order pizza

it's not clear what's going on but it's probably not sugar, fat, saturated fat, unsaturated fat, protein, outgassing from household furnishings, advertising, lack of willpower, hormones in meat, pesticides, or transgenic grains. my guess is that it's one or more food additives generally regarded as safe that was almost unknown 50 years ago and is now almost universal

unfortunately there are hundreds of candidates

it's certainly true that 75 years ago the picture was very different, and this is not a defense of the kind of culinary romanticism laudan rightly scorns in this piece, but it's a different reason that today you might reasonably opt for old, slow, unprocessed food

Anecdotal but it was simple for me. The cause was seed oils and sweeteners and they are in most processed foods. I stopped eating them and then, a few months later, I stopped gaining weight. Instead my body now seems resistant to gaining weight, even when I eat poorly for a short interval.

It is interesting because I actually eat more macros (carbs, fats, etc) now than before but don't gain weight, which indicates to me there is a qualitative component that often isn't accounted for.

Correlation is not causation. I'm curious which seed oils you are referring to here, am not familiar with common seed oils in processed foods. It doesn't make sense to take in more "macros" but not gain weight, while keeping caloric output the same. There's certainly a component not accounted for but would assume it's behavioral (something like less processed foods means more physical activity or something)

Calories as a concept is bunk science. It was since the beginning. A better generalization is "garbage in, garbage out" (qualitative).

That's a bold claim. Calories as a concept can be derived from the principals of Thermodynamics, to which the human body adheres. The conception of calories does however ignore the body's natural response to calorie restriction, and is therefore incomplete.

Calories can't explain why I can't live off of drinking gasoline, despite the bomb calorimeter showing it to be highly caloric

Calories are an simplified approximation, where your body handles things in the same way as a fire does.

Calories are bunk in that there's a random function between the thermodynamics your body adheres to, and the thermodynamics the food adheres to. One with properties like the total calories your body has access to must be less than the total in, but for a specific food, or a specific meal, the total calories could be larger than the food in the meal, if it makes other calories easier to process, or even a negative, if it makes you puke.

I know this is a bit hyperbolic to prove a point but it brings to the surface a point which so far goes unaddressed: the modulation and variation of metabolic efficiency.

Between the consumption of glucose and gasoline, there exists a spectrum of efficiency in the conversion of thermodynamic calories to useful bodily energy.

Take glucose for example. It's thermodynamic and metabolic calorie values are nearly equal (15.5MJ/kg or 3.7kcal/g). On the opposite end is gasoline, thermodynamically it's 46 MJ/kg but it's 0kcal/g if one were to ingest it. There simply isn't a metabolic pathway to extract energy from gasoline in human physiology.

I have no reason to doubt that the ratio of thermodynamic to metabolic efficiency varies amongst individuals, over time, and in the presence or absence of other compounds. When 9-14kcal/day supports the maintenance of 1kg of body mass in equilibrium, it's clear that, ceteris paribus[1], minute changes in metabolic efficiency can explain rather large differences in human mass.

1. Truly. Even/especially in the absence of differences in consumption.

Food calories / caloric consumption, as an idea, are a gross, erroneous oversimplification of bodily processes to the point of being bunk science.

This is correct.

Any weight loss / weight gain regime that doesn't consider, at the very least, thyroid hormones is bollox.

Steroidal sex hormones can play a role, particularly female sex hormones.

Allergies too.

typically the mechanism by which thyroid hormones are understood to affect weight gain is through appetite (calories in) and metabolic level (calories out) so they probably aren't really an exception to the calories-in-calories-out model

i mean as far as we know they don't enable you to digest carboxymethylcellulose or anything like that (one of the many common additives on my suspect list)

it's not totally inconceivable; some commensal enteric bacteria can digest carboxymethylcellulose, and they generate heat when they do so, and at least when it's cold outside that's heat you don't have to generate by shivering or physical activity, and we have such a poor understanding of what affects the intestinal microbiome that it's actually possible that thyroid hormone levels are important, but there's no evidence suggesting that this is the case as far as i know

but even on industrially produced diets most people probably don't eat enough carboxymethylcellulose and xanthan gum and shit like that for their digestibility to make a significant difference in their caloric intake; as i understand it the reason industrial food engineers use gums like these is that very small amounts of them can greatly increase the viscosity or gelling ability of foods, so you don't have to spend as much money as you would with more traditional thickeners like gelatinized starch

like, three grams of this carboxymethylcellulose i have here can turn 100 grams of water into a thick slime, but i would need about 30 grams of cornstarch to do this (which i would then have to cook)

(i think this is typical but your results may vary depending on the degree of functionalization of your cmc)

so if newly popular gums like this do cause obesity, it's probably through some kind of inflammatory mechanism or something, not by directly supplying calories

"Seed oils and sweeteners" are two radically different things. Do you think there's some common underlying mechanism, or that both just happen to be bad in completely unrelated ways which somehow both have the same result of encouraging weight gain?

No, I have no reason to believe they are connected directly, just both are bad in the quantities consumed when eating processed foods.

i might be wrong about this but since sesame has been cultivated for seven thousand years throughout the middle east and india i am guessing that seed oils generically are not a significant part of the cause, though i'm not aware of a traditional diet that gets the majority of its calories from sesame oil (like the hadza with honey or some inuit diets with meat)

but there are lots of other seed oils that have become much more popular in the last half-century that are more plausible suspects, like cottonseed oil, sunflower seed oil, and safflower oil

i think rapeseed oil is probably not it because its popularity is more recent

It is the fat profile of seed oils that is the problem, at least in my investigations. We are consuming certain fats in very high quantities now that we never did historically.

it's possible, but it seems a bit far-fetched, given the enormous variety of fats used in different traditional diets that didn't cause obesity epidemics

there was a lot of excitement about ten years ago that the ratio of n-6 unsaturated fats to n-3 unsaturated fats might be the key, but that doesn't seem to have panned out

It should be noted that sesame is a top ten allergen in the US and top three in Israel (where it is very common) and so don’t rush out to replace all your oils with sesame

it also has a strong flavor and a low smoke point, so hopefully nobody would; it would make a terrible replacement for olive oil, butter, grapeseed oil, lard, aceite de dende, sunflower oil, etc.

the fact that somebody else might be allergic to it doesn't seem like a major consideration for whether i should cook with it though

unless they're coming over that day

Probably a very large difference between a sesame seed, and sesame seed oil that's been extracted (which I believe involves a chemical process)

it involves squishing the seeds and has probably been the principal use of sesame for seven thousand years

Triggering excessive inflammation (either systemically or locally in the gut) seems like a plausible common mechanism, even if the mechanisms by which that happens are completely different.

Or alternately you simply started being aware of what you were eating, and consequently consumed less calories.

No, I've experimented with diet for over two decades, this isn't some new realization.

Also, as I mentioned, I'm eating more calories now, not less. Calories are bunk as an idea anyway, so that point is moot.

Calories (a unit of measure) are not bunk as an "idea" but the relationship of food Calories and weight gain/loss are highly complicated.

An appeal to complexity isn't really helpful. The human body is complex but the causes of widespread obesity aren't, IMO.

Please show me the person who can defy the laws of thermodynamics

Specifically for the calorie model?

Eat a plastic shoe. There's more than enough calories in a shoe to keep you going for a day.

This misses the point that the calorie model is bad for weight related things. The point where the calorie model could apply is for an irrelevant amount of calorie restriction

For me it was carbs and sugar, while especially sweeteners have not been a problem at all.

Yea, whatever ends up working for you. I've done low carb diets, and they worked for me up until they didn't. I haven't been able to sustain them for over a couple of years at a time.

This year will be my 10 year anniversary on keto ;)

Congrats! That's an impressive number of years to stay on keto.

i recently started dating someone who's been on keto for 20+ years

I didn't even remember it was that old (researched it a lot before I started, but mainly focused on studies about the effects and issues, not history, plus, well, 10 years ago). Must have been hard on the early days without easily available nut flours and tons of recipes online.

she likes doing difficult things. she's pretty amazing actually

it turns out it's more than a century old; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet#Diet

what were the most important practices for you getting started on keto

Not living in the US where there's a ton of added sugar in things that don't need added sugar.

Though now the disadvantage is that things like low carb wraps are not a normal store item, and neither monkfruit not alluose are allowed as food in the EU.

But I guess by far the biggest part was actually that I've been working from home since 2008 and love cooking ;)

Have you read anything from SMTM? Their work has been on HN a few times and they dive deep into the rabbit hole of what causes obesity. Fascinating stuff. https://slimemoldtimemold.com/

i hadn't actually; which posts do you recommend

You want this one:

https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p...

A series of mysteries as to different features of the obesity epidemic, that could possibly narrow down the causative factors. For example, people in higher elevations tend to be thinner than those in lower elevations, so perhaps the bad chemical is flowing downriver and accumulating at lower elevations.

thank you very much

> but even lab animals are getting obese, despite never picking up the phone to order pizza

This is surprising to me. Do you have a link to a definitive study? Seems it would be easy to pinpoint what is going for lab animals since they have a controlled diet and environment

It's mentioned in the A Chemical Hunger series of blog posts, which were on Slate Star Codex at some point:

https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/13/a-chemical-hunger-p...

The paper is linked to and discussed a bit here:

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/52923/have-lab-...

I had a quick look, and couldn't find any other papers or commentary confirming or refuting this.

this is great, thank you very much

i don't; i got the assertion from some slatestarcodex post iirc

please let me know if you find it or if i'm mistaken

Robots should cook us human-tier healthy meals. Instead what we get is garbage.

My dishwasher gives me very equivalent results to washing by hand, but it saves me so much time and water.

Tech should save us time but maintain the same tenor of living. We need a dishwasher or washingmachine equivalent for automatic food preparation, not this industrialized garbage

This is the aspirational vision of the future. Tech to facilitate a more luxurious, healthier life. As opposed to us adapting our aspirations to the parameters of the technology.

Right now, we act like battered housewives, apologizing for the shortcomings of our mass produced crap, I know it gave me cancer, but if only you saw the whole picture!

No more of that please. The future _must_ be high grade; anything less is failure.

Actual kitchen robots that cook! Actual cars that don't crush children! Actual cheap bespoke cabinets! Actual oceans of leisure time! Actual roombas that can navigate steps and nooks and crannies!

There already is some of this sort of tech. Electric rice cookers, instant pots, stand mixers, breadmakers and even microwaves all take a lot of the work out of cooking. They don't help with prep, but it's hard to argue with the effectiveness of a sharp knife in accomplishing most tasks.

My fave existing tool of this sort is sous vide. It's not a complete robot chef, but it's done the most overall to reduce manual work in cooking/cleaning.

(I used to use a microwave heavily, but mostly for TV dinners, not proper cooking.)

The instant pot is the closest thing to a dishwasher that I’ve seen in the cooking appliance space. You can literally throw a bunch of meat and vegetables in there with some salt and seasoning, add a bit of water, close the lid and turn it on. In 30 mins or less you’ll have delicious food with concentrated flavours. It’s really quite nice.

I use mine for cooking pasta. I can throw a bunch of dry noodles, salt, water, spinach, and frozen pasta sauce in there and set it for 5 minutes. It cooks up perfectly al dente with no water to drain, sauce emulsified with a quick stir, and only one pot to clean.

I get a great meal in 2 minutes of prep time. Now it seems downright quaint to imagine boiling a big pot of water and stirring pasta while it slowly cooks, only to dump all the water down the drain!

This was seemingly written with a conclusion already in mind and takes a very muddy approach to reaching it. The author makes no apparent distinction between "prepared whole foods" and "industrially processed and modified foods" and "McDonald's."

They paint the baguette as a modern mirage, even though is just ancient lean dough prepared with some skill. They ignore that farms experience seasons and so the workers on the farms experience them as well. Or that the five hour process of preparing tortillas would probably overlap with much other labor in the household, they truly imagine a women solely occupied with making tortillas for five hours a day?

This article ignores much to make an over broad point all to arrive at the pithy conclusion that I'm actually an ancient aristocrat because I think McDonald's food is sub standard.

Here's a better copy: https://jacobin.com/2015/05/slow-food-artisanal-natural-pres...

This needs to have (2001) added to the title.

Related (by same author, not sure if same article):

A Plea for Culinary Modernism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9592673 - May 2015 (74 comments)

I checked: it's the same article.

Thanks!

This is why Chipotle and Chick fil A are dominating. People go there because it’s the only fast food that’s perceived to be relatively healthy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com