Category Archives: Food

OK, you don’t. But how does one?

Background. 16 year old grandchild out for the summer. Recently declared as vegetarian. Part of the summer with us is that granny can teach her a bit of cooking. Grandpa is thinking the science bit. Forget recipes for a moment, think about basics. So, a soup is a stock, a flavour, a thickener. A galette is mash potato, some veggies, that’s it. Falafel is a galette but not with potatoes. Chickpeas (or garbanzo beans, and what the hell are they?) is the mush, add tahini, add veggies if you like. So, end up with something vaguely solid that can then be grilled, fried, deep fried, baked, whatever.

And you can do this with pretty much any flour or mix. Chickpea, maybe lentil, certainly potato, bean apparently, no doubt maize, millet, quinua and so on.

Need a stodge, turn it into a paste, add stuff, form into shapes then cook. See, that’s science.

OK. So, now. To make falafel, Do you start with chickpeas? Or is chickpea flour a thing? Beans or bean flour? If the pea/bean, with dried? Or with stuff in water that you drain? That is, blend dried chickpeas into flour? Or drain and mush those in water?

The basic idea – stodge mush with bits added, we’ve ot. It’s how to make the stodge. Oh, and are those potato flakes a good starting point? Or better to mash tatties?

Fast food outlets will get tax cuts for putting salads on their menu, under Government plans to combat obesity.

Ministers on Tuesday backed measures which will see restaurants and cafes receive discounts on their business rates, if they offer healthy options.

So, everyone now serves the one single green salad. Bought in a sealed box, made by the supplier just and solely to be the business rate lowering offering.

Because of course people will fiddle with such rules.

Larragoiti says that sugary diets are a real problem in Coca-Cola-loving Mexico, which has the world’s second-highest rate of obesity and has successfully taxed sugary drinks to try to combat a main source of the issue.

Paradoxically, another corn byproduct – fructose – is part of the problem, used to make corn syrup that has been linked to increasing obesity in the US.

“It’s kind of ironic,” Larragoiti says. “High fructose corn syrup is just a bomb of carbs and concentrated sugar that makes a high peak of insulin. It’s many times sweeter than regular glucose. Companies use and pay less and that’s the issue.”

Let’s take them at their word. HFCS is indeed part of the problem. Mexico and coke, obesity etc etc.

Mexican coke doesn’t use HFCS, US does……largely true here in Europe too, sugar, not HFCS. It’s one of those little signs of people not doing their homework, both insisting that HFCS is the problem and also that Europe uses it as the US does. To argue that it is is fine, but we need another explanation for places which don’t use it.

Or so the Belgians tell us:

Doctors in Belgium have called for parents who raise their children as vegans to face prosecution after a number of deaths in schools, nurseries and hospitals.

It is estimated that 3 percent of Belgian children are forced to follow the strict diet, which rules out any animal products, including dairy and eggs.

The Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium published a legal opinion on Thursday, which could influence future court judgments and is the first time a health authority has taken a position on veganism in the country.

The opinion said it was unethical to subject children to the diet because it didn’t include animal proteins and vital amino acids which can help growth and prevent health problems.

The vegan diet could only be made safe for growing children if complemented with medical supervision, regular blood tests and vitamin supplements, which most parents were not qualified to provide.

“We must explain to the parents before compelling them,” said Professor Georges Casimir, who led the commission that wrote the report, “but we can no longer tolerate this endangerment.”

Thin end of wedge stuff, isn’t it?

Yes, unless very well done, very carefully contrived, a purely vegan diet isn’t good for growing bodies and minds. So, a few marks in favour of the illegality. Yet giving the state legal power over diet? Many points against. Imagine what Public Health England would do with such a general power….

Britain’s farmers are almost 18 times more likely to be killed on the job than the average industrial worker, and the fatality rate is increasing. Look through the government’s summary of the 33 fatal farm, forestry and fishing accidents in 2017/18 and there were a number of types of fatalities such as falls, crushes, electrocutions and equipment malfunctions. Most people (but not farmers) might be surprised to learn that work with cows is particularly dangerous – “crushed by a bull” was the single most common cause of death.

So what can be done?

Buy our food from elsewhere thereby saving any English people from having to do such a dangerous job, obviously.

Muslim mum furious her Aldi lasagne sauce ‘tasted like bacon’

Authorities have warned people against eating raw marmot meat because it can carry Yersinia pestis, the plague germ. Some people ignore the warnings as they believe that consuming the innards of the large rodent is good for their health.

Each year in Mongolia at least one person dies of the plague, mostly due to consuming such meat, according to the US National Center for Zoonotic Disease.

Buy a few basics, and each of these recipes – for Singapore noodles, tagliatelle, paella and a vibrant arrabbiata – should come in under a pound a head

As The Guardian tells us, it’s hardly a thing, is it?

Cultural appropriation:

So, Asian food. Vindaloo is derived from the Portuguese vin d’alho so how about that for a bit of appropriation. Potatoes anything is of course part of the Colombian exchange. But we’re not talking about that kind of Asian, are we? So, Japanese:
…
So you can stick that cultural appropriation idea in your toque and fry it with your tempura – actually, a borrowing into Japanese cuisine from Portuguese.

A piccie project in London:

‘It’s like a family’: the restaurant staff who stay in the same job for decades

Couple of years back was in London, late night, went into “The Grill” just opposite Convent Garden Opera House. Used to work there when I was a student, back in ooooh, 1986? Chatted to the staff a bit and found out that, although he was off that particular night a bloke I’d been working with there was still going. At least 30 years as a waiter in a West End burger and ribs joint. That’s pretty good going….

Can’t see that the place is still there tho’….

For most people across the world, life is getting better but diets are getting worse.

How can anyone actually be so damn stupid? The current generation is the best fed one there’s been since the invention of agriculture. At least.

Yet there are people who believe this drivel.

In response, a backlash against palm oil has developed: last April, the supermarket Iceland pledged that it would cut palm oil from all its own-brand foods by the end of 2018. In December, Norway banned imports for biofuel production.

But by the time awareness of palm oil’s impact had spread, it was so deeply embedded in the consumer economy that it now may be too late to remove it. (Tellingly, Iceland found it impossible to fulfill its 2018 pledge. Instead, the company ended up removing its branding from foods containing palm oil rather than removing palm oil from all of its branded foods.)

What lovely virtue signalling.

NatWest worker told mother all vegans should ‘be punched in the face’

And if you cant reveal your intimate concerns to your own mother than who can you?

NatWest has apologised after a mother was denied a loan during a phone call and after revealing she was a vegan told that they should all “be punched in the face”.

The bank said it had suspended a male call handler, who has worked at one of its southern call centres for between five and six years.

It has admitted the outburst took place and was “wholly inappropriate”.

The mother, who was applying for a loan of £400 for a nutrition course, said she was left shocked and upset when the man went on a rant about vegans during her loan application on January 23.

Ah, That is different. Assume it’s because his bird has stopped giving him steak…..

Tyson recalls chicken nuggets over rubber contamination

A question. I’m looking for a food that it is entirely legal to sell but which isn’t sold because no one wants to eat the stuff.

Rats?

Could use different example, sheep’s lungs for example. They are eaten, in haggis, but it’s extremely rare to see them alone – I have done, but 45 years ago. Used to be a specialist offal butcher in Green St in Bath.

But would like an example that would truly make the point. Rats would be good – is it legal to sell them, as long as properly labelled?

The argument, of course – chlorine washed chicken. If people want it then it will be on the shelves, it will sell. If they don’t then it won’t sell and it won’t be offered. So, the only reason to try to ban it – as part of the reason to not have a US trade treaty – is because you know people will want it.

Substitute rats and it makes the point nicely.

Skinny people should not act as if they are “morally superior” to those struggling with their weight because the likelihood is they simply have lucky genes, new research has found.

A groundbreaking study by Cambridge University, which focused on healthy adults with a low body mass index (BMI), reveals the impact of genetics on body size is greater than previously thought.

The results help explain the considerable variation in weight within a population that shares the same high-calorie environment and sedentary lifestyle, the scientists said.

Namely, that PHE can go boil its head. If it’s all in the genes then control of what the population eats isn’t they way to deal with anything.

Sadly, I don’t quite believe the finding here – the thermodynamics of energy in and out still do rather seem to matter. PHE is still wrong of course, free people and all that, but its for a different reason.

The reputation of the meat industry will sink to that of big tobacco unless it removes cancer-causing chemicals from processed products such as bacon and ham, a coalition of experts and politicians warn today.

Led by Professor Chris Elliott, the food scientist who ran the UK government’s investigation into the horse-meat scandal, and Dr Aseem Malhotra,

If Malhotra’s involved it’s bollocks, that’s all we need to know here.

The ASI Youths are right again. This time its meat..

“Lots of older people used to cook tinned tuna and mushroom soup in a pasta bake.”

Not much wrong with it either. Great way to stuff hungry kids.

She argued: “There’s a lot of myths in tinned food – it’s quite surprising, tinned potatoes are a really good source of vitamin C, and tinned sardines give you your full daily allowance of vitamin B12, tinned fruit and veg is just as nutritious for you as fresh. Tinned tomatoes contain more lycopene. Because of the canning mechanism it retains nutrients.

This is Jack Monroe of course. Lycopene, well, it’s processed tomatoes. Ketchup is the same, more of it.

But an interesting point behind this. Some things are going to be better – in that mixture of cost and flavour/quality – when tinned than “fresh.” Much more used to be, that’s why canning arose in the first place. Because tinned sweetcorn was better than no sweetcorn out of season. But now we’ve frozen, world transport systems etc. So, there are things we used to can but which aren’t as good on that cost/quality axis as the alternatives.

Note that the same can be said about any food preservation method. Are strawberries better than strawberry jam?

But this does lead to a question. What things are still available canned which really aren’t as good as the newer methods? Either fresh or frozen etc. Alternatively, perhaps because the list is possible shorter, which things are in fact better using the older preservation technique of canning?

Baked beans – sure, make your own, but it’s a hell of a bore. Sardines? Fresh are lovely but even today getting today’s fresh across the country is not possible. Tuna? Again. fresh is possible but…..peas, no canned peas aren’t as good as frozen. Except for mushy peas but then that’s a style almost caused by canning itself.

You see what I mean? Where does the older technology of canning still hold sway? Soups?

Pizzas must shrink or lose their toppings under Government plans to cap the calories in thousands of meals sold in restaurants and supermarkets.

Pies, ready meals and sandwiches will also be subject to the new proposed calorie limits, in a desperate bid to tackle Britain’s obesity crisis.

Under the draft proposals, a standard pizza for one should contain no more than 928 calories – far less than many sold by takeaways, restaurants and shops. And the recommendations suggest that a savoury pie should contain no more than 695 calories.

Why not 925 calories? And who is going to check and how?