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No problem in my book, have been postponing my spice game way too long anyway, so this should be the perfect opportunity.
 
Michi said:
I hear you on the uncertainty in the research. It's hard to isolate variables. I'm less worried about fat than about cholesterol. Combined with obesity and associated high blood pressure, that can lead to seriously bad health outcomes. This, plus the tendency to to eat meat with things such as potatoes, noodles, or rice (carbohydrates) means there is less opportunity to get enough fibre, which has its own list of negative health outcomes.

I'm not against eating meat, I eat a lot of it myself. It's just that the Australian 70 kg per capita per year figure is really high. Keep in mind that a lot of the "heads" in that "per capita" will be vegetarians or people who eat little meat, meaning that there are probably quite a lot of people who are pushing 100 kg per year. As far as I know, Down Under is the world record holder in per-capita meat consumption.

I agree on the processed meat issue. Too much is not good. It may well be as it is with alcohol, for which there is no such thing as a safe amount. Regardless, I still make my salamis and hams because I have to die of something sooner or later, and I'd rather have some enjoyment instead of living in a permanent state of anxiety.

I once (years ago) was told that, for meat, the preference order is
  1. Fish and seafood
  2. Chicken
  3. Lamb and Venison
  4. Beef
  5. Pork
I expect that to still be a reasonable order today.
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The science on cholesterol is also still quite muddy... You honestly can't blame the researchers for it though; generally the way they try to do statistics in the nutrition field is pretty good, it's just that it's very hard to get good results out of crappy data regarding long-term issues with a low incidence rate, especially when you basically cannot do experimental research.

In that sense I think we're a lot further when it comes to stuff like inflamation and how things impact blood sugar, largely because this happens in a far shorter time frame so it's much easier to get quick results / insights.

I think the main shift we're seeing now in more recent years is a realization is that it's not just about 'effect of macronutrient X' but the whole diet pattern, in what form you consume those nutrients (processed vs original matrix), is far more important.

Again though, you mention how people tend to combine meat with more low-fiber / carb-high products... and while this explains some of the data you sometimes see (like a correlation with diabetes which makes no sense for something like meat that's almost absent of carbs) it's not an inherent problem of meat itself, more with people's diet pattern that happens to correlate with meat consumption.
The science is really not that clear that eating 100 kg of meat would in itself be so problematic - and if it's problematic it might still depend on what meat you're eating.

I'm not telling you to stop eating processed meat... I think everyone is entitled to make their own choices, and it's perfectly to legit to have some small sin in your diet - or even a large one if you make a conscious fun to risk tradeoff there (although most smokers start regretting their old choices once they actually do get cancer). I completely agree that putting yourself in a selfenforced culinary gulag is just making your life unnecessarily miserable.

It's just really annoying that processed meats muck up a lot of the data, especially since they're usually not seperated out. It's also really disconcerting that any progress on reducing nitrite / nitrate (I always mix them up) keeps getting stalled by the meat industry, when for example parma ham has proved for decades that it's perfectly viable without. The only reason I haven't made the switch to full parma ham for cured meats is simply that it's unaffordable to me.

I'm honestly not sure how we should rank things... especially since those single entries are not monolithic. Farmed fish might be different from wild fish (sometimes in a positive sense; farmed salmon is fed a reinforced diet to increase omega 3 fats, but possibly also detrimental in others), beef has a different fat profile when you compare grassfed to grain fed but it's hard to say how much of a long-term difference that makes, poultry might work out differently when comparing organic slow-grown to industrial, and pork... where do you even start? Their diets can vary wildly since they're omnivores that are generally used as the recycling bins of the food industry, and for example is so wildly different from for example a lean cut like a fillet that it's almost impossible to put them in the same category.

Theoretically you could probably put any wild game / fish on the top, if it wasn't for the problem of contamination that's omnipresent in our environment. Healthier fat / nutrient contents might be entirely offset by mercury or microplastic contamination.

That's another issue.... food A might be great for health variable X but horrible for health variable Y. What's 'better' there? That largely depends on the individuals risk factors / problems. There's a similar problem with trading off environmental concerns versus health. They're not necessarily on friendly terms.

Then there's also the issue that different populations might have adapted differently over time resulting in different best-practises. In Europe populations have been eating / drinking milk products for 2000 years, whereas in other populations the majority is lactose intolerant.

I think in the future we'll see a shift towards more 'individualized recommendations' based on a better ability to understand how an individual metabolizes certain inputs and what effects that has. But that bright future is still a long way off.
 
MarcelNL said:
makes me wonder if Cheese was an imported thing that came after Columbus or that the indigenous people of southern America knew cheese...I just dunno?
Somehow I have a feeling it was not a staple food, so it was brough in later
Click to expand...
I don't think so... part of the problem is they didn't really have any suitable domesticated animals to provide the milk in significant scale.
Cows...horses...buffalos they all came after columbus. They never domesticated the bison. I think the best they had was the llama.
In general it also seems like cheese making was mostly a European thing, that only spread out later. So in other populations that had a fair amount of milk you don't always see them making cheese-like products either.
 
Jovidah said:
The science on cholesterol is also still quite muddy... You honestly can't blame the researchers for it though; generally the way they try to do statistics in the nutrition field is pretty good, it's just that it's very hard to get good results out of crappy data regarding long-term issues with a low incidence rate, especially when you basically cannot do experimental research.

In that sense I think we're a lot further when it comes to stuff like inflamation and how things impact blood sugar, largely because this happens in a far shorter time frame so it's much easier to get quick results / insights.

I think the main shift we're seeing now in more recent years is a realization is that it's not just about 'effect of macronutrient X' but the whole diet pattern, in what form you consume those nutrients (processed vs original matrix), is far more important.

Again though, you mention how people tend to combine meat with more low-fiber / carb-high products... and while this explains some of the data you sometimes see (like a correlation with diabetes which makes no sense for something like meat that's almost absent of carbs) it's not an inherent problem of meat itself, more with people's diet pattern that happens to correlate with meat consumption.
The science is really not that clear that eating 100 kg of meat would in itself be so problematic - and if it's problematic it might still depend on what meat you're eating.

I'm not telling you to stop eating processed meat... I think everyone is entitled to make their own choices, and it's perfectly to legit to have some small sin in your diet - or even a large one if you make a conscious fun to risk tradeoff there (although most smokers start regretting their old choices once they actually do get cancer). I completely agree that putting yourself in a selfenforced culinary gulag is just making your life unnecessarily miserable.

It's just really annoying that processed meats muck up a lot of the data, especially since they're usually not seperated out. It's also really disconcerting that any progress on reducing nitrite / nitrate (I always mix them up) keeps getting stalled by the meat industry, when for example parma ham has proved for decades that it's perfectly viable without. The only reason I haven't made the switch to full parma ham for cured meats is simply that it's unaffordable to me.

I'm honestly not sure how we should rank things... especially since those single entries are not monolithic. Farmed fish might be different from wild fish (sometimes in a positive sense; farmed salmon is fed a reinforced diet to increase omega 3 fats, but possibly also detrimental in others), beef has a different fat profile when you compare grassfed to grain fed but it's hard to say how much of a long-term difference that makes, poultry might work out differently when comparing organic slow-grown to industrial, and pork... where do you even start? Their diets can vary wildly since they're omnivores that are generally used as the recycling bins of the food industry, and for example is so wildly different from for example a lean cut like a fillet that it's almost impossible to put them in the same category.

Theoretically you could probably put any wild game / fish on the top, if it wasn't for the problem of contamination that's omnipresent in our environment. Healthier fat / nutrient contents might be entirely offset by mercury or microplastic contamination.

That's another issue.... food A might be great for health variable X but horrible for health variable Y. What's 'better' there? That largely depends on the individuals risk factors / problems. There's a similar problem with trading off environmental concerns versus health. They're not necessarily on friendly terms.

Then there's also the issue that different populations might have adapted differently over time resulting in different best-practises. In Europe populations have been eating / drinking milk products for 2000 years, whereas in other populations the majority is lactose intolerant.

I think in the future we'll see a shift towards more 'individualized recommendations' based on a better ability to understand how an individual metabolizes certain inputs and what effects that has. But that bright future is still a long way off.
Click to expand...
the more I read the more I tend to think that how much and often we eat has as much to do with how our health/disease state 'evolves' as what we eat (highly processed food).

Currently reading up on oncology research 'for cause', (intermittent) fasting appears to get a role in future but the issue I'm running into is that the few studies that are relevant are institute sponsored and not always published and the trial registries are not updated with results (both things are enforced in the industry)
 
MarcelNL said:
the more I read the more I tend to think that how much and often we eat has as much to do with how our health/disease state 'evolves' as what we eat (highly processed food).

Currently reading up on oncology research 'for cause', (intermittent) fasting appears to get a role in future but the issue I'm running into is that the few studies that are relevant are institute sponsored and not always published and the trial registries are not updated with results (both things are enforced in the industry)
Click to expand...
Intermittent fasting is at least a very interesting and potentially promising research avenue. When you see the effects it has on longevity in rats it's definitly worth looking into. It's also one of those things that 'muddies the water' a lot, because how, when and in which proportion you eat things can make the exact same input have different effects. This was also one of the most infurating things to come to terms with when my own bowels decided to go nuts, because it makes things incredibly difficult to figure out. Straight monocausal effects are easy, interaction effects are not.

However I don't think it's a golden bullet that solves everything. It's potentially great for dealing with metabolical issues... but I'm afraid people will just try to grasp at it as a license to change none of their other bad habbits and just keep eating junk, or stick to a sedentary lifestyle.
A big issue with stuff like intermittent fasting is that there's no money in it, so all the research money has to come from the government. Cheap to implement though!

I think 'processed food is bad' is largely the common factor that explains why basically all extreme and rather exclusive diets tend to have a positive effect at least on the short to mid term. Whether people go full vegan, full carnivore, paleo or gluttifrutti, it almost by default has you excluding most of the processed foods.
 
Last edited:
yeah overdoing anything is not likely going to help, in the realm of oncology it seems to help tumor cells die from chemo both in cells, mice, rats and humans but there are few studies or they are scheduled to complete years from now.
 
Barmoley said:
Reading comprehension and ability to concentrate for longer than a sentence are skills that are lacking. Difficult to develop with all the one line social media crap. Hard to have any meaningful discussion, but at least we can throw one liners around to never get anywhere.
Click to expand...

If it won't fit on a bumper sticker it belongs in a book...
 
Barmoley said:
What's a book?
Click to expand...
It’s like reading something normal, but if you swipe up and down, nothing happens. And when you use thumb and finger to expand a pic it’s all frozen.

Man life was tough before, like, things.
 
Sushi bakes ARE sushi.



Whether it's fit for human consumption is a different discussion.
 
My unpopular opinion is any knife with a textured edge is just objectively worse for bulk work. Scrapes the hell off of my fingers when I use them as a guide. Maybe i just haven't found the right one for me, but with where the price tags are i'm not really willing to take another chance. I have this Kurouchi Gyuto that's been a massive PITA to use, so it just sits in my knife roll gathering dust
 
SwampDonkey said:
I'm too poor for that model so I just have to clamp an ice cube in front of the nozzle
Click to expand...
Locally there is a taquería that makes this red sauce. Salsa de la muerte. It has this subtle delicate alluring sultry flavor — moments before it rips your throat out.

It also is spicy … twicy.

 
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