The Fallacy of Eating the Way Your Great-Grandmother Ate
November 12, 2021 7:01 AM Subscribe
Our great-grandparents, Pollan and others have argued, didn’t raise their kids on guar gum, soy lecithin, and many of the other ingredients common in today’s processed foods. They served milk fresh from the cow, turnips dug fresh from the garden, and cooked almost everything from scratch. If only we had stuck to this small-scale agrarian lifestyle, our kids would never spill Go-GURT in the backseat or bug us to refill their snack cups with ever more Goldfish crackers. The underlying claim is that if we ate this way, nobody would be fat.
Solid points there. I'm broadly in favor of eating "real" and nutritious food with as few intermediaries between the field and my table as possible, despite the evidence that basically any variety of human diet that meets basic caloric and nutrient needs seems to work fine. But it's difficult to support a position whose bedrock is "nostalgia for a time that women did an enormous amount of unpaid labour."
posted by mhoye at 7:19 AM on November 12, 2021 [88 favorites]
posted by mhoye at 7:19 AM on November 12, 2021 [88 favorites]
It's not the guar gum and soy lecithin; it's the added sugar.
posted by heatherlogan at 7:29 AM on November 12, 2021 [48 favorites]
posted by heatherlogan at 7:29 AM on November 12, 2021 [48 favorites]
But it's difficult to support a position whose bedrock is "nostalgia for a time that women did an enormous amount of unpaid labour."
I think the bedrock is obviously the quality of the food. That's the main point. The Grandmother thing is incidental, it doesn't matter who's cooking it.
posted by Liquidwolf at 7:30 AM on November 12, 2021 [19 favorites]
I think the bedrock is obviously the quality of the food. That's the main point. The Grandmother thing is incidental, it doesn't matter who's cooking it.
posted by Liquidwolf at 7:30 AM on November 12, 2021 [19 favorites]
It seems to be that "my grandmother grew up in post WWII Britain" is not a real refutation of what Pollan had in mind. This was a country with already established supply chains where things broke down.
I'd like to think that Pollan meant the places where the supply chain was never established. My grandmother grew up in Mexico for example in a small village. Yes, there was a family down the road that sold fresh milk from their cows. A baker who would send his son around door-to-door to sell baked goods. Everyone had their own chickens. Fruits and vegetables grew in abundance.
Nobody had servants. People lived in large family groups. A few women would do the cooking for everybody, sure, but it was a source of pride and craft.
She also had no indoor plumbing and had to cut the cleats off my grandfather’s football boots so he could wear them as school shoes because they couldn’t afford to buy new ones
i mean sure my grandparents had no running water and had guns all around the house because they were constantly frightened of being murdered by bandits but I'm not sure what this has to do with the topic of food.
posted by vacapinta at 7:34 AM on November 12, 2021 [42 favorites]
I'd like to think that Pollan meant the places where the supply chain was never established. My grandmother grew up in Mexico for example in a small village. Yes, there was a family down the road that sold fresh milk from their cows. A baker who would send his son around door-to-door to sell baked goods. Everyone had their own chickens. Fruits and vegetables grew in abundance.
Nobody had servants. People lived in large family groups. A few women would do the cooking for everybody, sure, but it was a source of pride and craft.
She also had no indoor plumbing and had to cut the cleats off my grandfather’s football boots so he could wear them as school shoes because they couldn’t afford to buy new ones
i mean sure my grandparents had no running water and had guns all around the house because they were constantly frightened of being murdered by bandits but I'm not sure what this has to do with the topic of food.
posted by vacapinta at 7:34 AM on November 12, 2021 [42 favorites]
But it's difficult to support a position whose bedrock is "nostalgia for a time that women did an enormous amount of unpaid labour."
Given the appalling working conditions at many, many levels of the food and agriculture world, it's not clear to me that the current food economy is a net reduction in oppression. It may well be, but I'd like to see the case be made.
posted by gauche at 7:34 AM on November 12, 2021 [76 favorites]
Given the appalling working conditions at many, many levels of the food and agriculture world, it's not clear to me that the current food economy is a net reduction in oppression. It may well be, but I'd like to see the case be made.
posted by gauche at 7:34 AM on November 12, 2021 [76 favorites]
But food from scratch does have to be cooked by someone, fairly close to the moment you eat it.
My grandmother is a pierogi snob. I'll happily eat too thick dough or too big pierogi if only someone else makes the bloody things for me.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 7:35 AM on November 12, 2021 [22 favorites]
My grandmother is a pierogi snob. I'll happily eat too thick dough or too big pierogi if only someone else makes the bloody things for me.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 7:35 AM on November 12, 2021 [22 favorites]
Her kitchen cupboards were full of shortcut ingredients, like store-bought croutons, Jell-O, and Bouillon cubes. Her fridge contained every kind of bottled salad dressing.
This reminds me of my great-grandmother. She cut corners cheerfully every time they came along. Yet she absolutely could and did cook hard for most of her life -- sometimes it was a day-long process of making chitlins, which stank and took forever; sometimes it was just the daily grind of feeding big Southern meals to men who farmed and labored. (No hired help for her.)
And after all that, she didn't even get to sit down with them. There was a tradition that the men were served first, while the women sat down in another room. This even held on holidays. Then one day in the seventies, my great-aunt said: you know what? I'm not doing this. She sat down with the men; no one said a word, and that was that. Even so, my Mamaw was old by then.
Quality should be the watchword, but what was the quality of Sole-Smith's grandmother's toast and dripping and store-bought sponge cake? They were hungry, and there was no pleasure in eating beside the pleasure of not being hungry for a while. Today, we have spices and out-of-season foods and variety undreamed of. Whether we really should or not -- whether this can be done without human suffering -- there will be no mass movement towards eating better without including the potential of pleasure and satiety.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:37 AM on November 12, 2021 [42 favorites]
This reminds me of my great-grandmother. She cut corners cheerfully every time they came along. Yet she absolutely could and did cook hard for most of her life -- sometimes it was a day-long process of making chitlins, which stank and took forever; sometimes it was just the daily grind of feeding big Southern meals to men who farmed and labored. (No hired help for her.)
And after all that, she didn't even get to sit down with them. There was a tradition that the men were served first, while the women sat down in another room. This even held on holidays. Then one day in the seventies, my great-aunt said: you know what? I'm not doing this. She sat down with the men; no one said a word, and that was that. Even so, my Mamaw was old by then.
Quality should be the watchword, but what was the quality of Sole-Smith's grandmother's toast and dripping and store-bought sponge cake? They were hungry, and there was no pleasure in eating beside the pleasure of not being hungry for a while. Today, we have spices and out-of-season foods and variety undreamed of. Whether we really should or not -- whether this can be done without human suffering -- there will be no mass movement towards eating better without including the potential of pleasure and satiety.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:37 AM on November 12, 2021 [42 favorites]
Thanks, everyone.
From the article: A return to home-grown bounty and scratch cooking requires an investment of time and labor from someone.
This. The issue is complicated because it does intertwine with equity and privilege and capitalism's insupportable demands on time - and all of those are incredibly important to keep in mind when assessing where we need to push for change --- but this also is not an either-or issue. The assertion to "eat less processed foods" IS sound and while I may not be able to achieve a 100% return to that model, I've been able to come a lot closer.
For me, the surprising factor has been to realize I had to re-train my taste buds: it was not immediate, but now I authentically prefer fresh or gently steamed vegetables; plain rice; oatmeal with butter and honey; a 10-minute-prep lentil dish with an abundance of herbs. I signed up to a CSA and discovered that foods grown in healthy soils keep me full longer (I am assuming because of the increased nutritional density) which has off-set to increased costs of the CSA. I've learned that celery has honest-to-goodness "I crave this!" flavor and carrots similarly grown have a complexity of flavors that make me happy.
And while most of us don't have a Donna Haraway capacity to live within complexity, I feel frustration with think-pieces that fail to stay within those complexities and instead default to a unhelpful embrace/reject conclusions.
posted by Silvery Fish at 7:39 AM on November 12, 2021 [19 favorites]
From the article: A return to home-grown bounty and scratch cooking requires an investment of time and labor from someone.
This. The issue is complicated because it does intertwine with equity and privilege and capitalism's insupportable demands on time - and all of those are incredibly important to keep in mind when assessing where we need to push for change --- but this also is not an either-or issue. The assertion to "eat less processed foods" IS sound and while I may not be able to achieve a 100% return to that model, I've been able to come a lot closer.
For me, the surprising factor has been to realize I had to re-train my taste buds: it was not immediate, but now I authentically prefer fresh or gently steamed vegetables; plain rice; oatmeal with butter and honey; a 10-minute-prep lentil dish with an abundance of herbs. I signed up to a CSA and discovered that foods grown in healthy soils keep me full longer (I am assuming because of the increased nutritional density) which has off-set to increased costs of the CSA. I've learned that celery has honest-to-goodness "I crave this!" flavor and carrots similarly grown have a complexity of flavors that make me happy.
And while most of us don't have a Donna Haraway capacity to live within complexity, I feel frustration with think-pieces that fail to stay within those complexities and instead default to a unhelpful embrace/reject conclusions.
posted by Silvery Fish at 7:39 AM on November 12, 2021 [19 favorites]
I am old enough that I only need to look to how my grandmother fed my mother (born during the depression). Yes, they had a garden that supplied most of their vegetables (after back-breaking labor), they raised their own chickens for eggs and meat, and they bought fresh, unpasteurised milk from a neighbour's cow. And yes, from the photos they were all skinny.
But I also note that my mother spent most of her childhood with an undiagnosed case of tuberculosis (possibly from the unpasteurised milk?). Twice a year when Grandmother sanitised / sterilised the chicken coop, she would also lightly water down the sterilising liquid and force the kids to drink a glass, to get rid of the parasites that they inevitably had from living in a very warm climate on a farm. And my mother tells me that they fairly regularly had a bout of diarrhoea.
I'm thinking that there were aspects of how that all natural diet kept everyone thin that have been forgotten about in the 'eat the way your great-grandmother ate' recommendation.
posted by tumbling at 7:41 AM on November 12, 2021 [111 favorites]
But I also note that my mother spent most of her childhood with an undiagnosed case of tuberculosis (possibly from the unpasteurised milk?). Twice a year when Grandmother sanitised / sterilised the chicken coop, she would also lightly water down the sterilising liquid and force the kids to drink a glass, to get rid of the parasites that they inevitably had from living in a very warm climate on a farm. And my mother tells me that they fairly regularly had a bout of diarrhoea.
I'm thinking that there were aspects of how that all natural diet kept everyone thin that have been forgotten about in the 'eat the way your great-grandmother ate' recommendation.
posted by tumbling at 7:41 AM on November 12, 2021 [111 favorites]
I posted this because when I read it, it made me remember that some of my own food snobbery from a Southern US childhood was flawed. Sure, my grandmother made a lot of stuff from scratch BUT the cabinets were also filled with convenience food as well. (You could not take Little Debbie snack cakes away from my late grandpa. How dare!)
My working mom made me and my sister homemade flour tortillas for years, but our childhood dinners were also a combo of made from scratch and convenience (meatloaf and instant mashed potatoes, f'rex). Wal-mart carries a flour tortilla mix that my mother now uses exclusively simply because she doesn't have a need for a brick of lard in her cupboard. It's a convenience version of a food she grew up on and frankly, they taste pretty good. I couldn't tell the difference between them and what I remember from childhood.
posted by Kitteh at 7:42 AM on November 12, 2021 [11 favorites]
My working mom made me and my sister homemade flour tortillas for years, but our childhood dinners were also a combo of made from scratch and convenience (meatloaf and instant mashed potatoes, f'rex). Wal-mart carries a flour tortilla mix that my mother now uses exclusively simply because she doesn't have a need for a brick of lard in her cupboard. It's a convenience version of a food she grew up on and frankly, they taste pretty good. I couldn't tell the difference between them and what I remember from childhood.
posted by Kitteh at 7:42 AM on November 12, 2021 [11 favorites]
I think the bedrock is obviously the quality of the food. That's the main point. The Grandmother thing is incidental, it doesn't matter who's cooking it.
The point being made, if I am understanding it correctly, is that you can't disentangle the food from the social production of that food. In other words, in a lot of settings, high quality food was possible because of unpaid women's labor, and/or low- or un-paid work by other women like housekeepers, slaves, servants, poor cousins from the country who are expected to do housework in exchange for their room and board, etc. Those social relations are what made the food possible.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:50 AM on November 12, 2021 [71 favorites]
The point being made, if I am understanding it correctly, is that you can't disentangle the food from the social production of that food. In other words, in a lot of settings, high quality food was possible because of unpaid women's labor, and/or low- or un-paid work by other women like housekeepers, slaves, servants, poor cousins from the country who are expected to do housework in exchange for their room and board, etc. Those social relations are what made the food possible.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:50 AM on November 12, 2021 [71 favorites]
Hey all I eat a nearly perfect diet (yesterday I splurged on a slice of homemade whole wheat bread with a little butter, wow) and exercise an hour a day and I’m still fat.
posted by bq at 7:51 AM on November 12, 2021 [66 favorites]
posted by bq at 7:51 AM on November 12, 2021 [66 favorites]
For me the article is helpful in the way it reminds us that reductive approaches to diet are ripe for skewering, and least helpful in the way it also tends to be reductive ("kind of hits a tone of Pollan-and-the-rest-of-the-white-man-diet-industry is wrong" and who would argue with that?).
I appreciate reading, and re-reading slight variations, of material that examines what we eat, how we prepare it, etc. Glad to see this post. In general, for me when I can reduce the crappy food intake and increase my activity I'm feeling pretty good about the whole thing. Any good beans recipes?
posted by elkevelvet at 7:54 AM on November 12, 2021 [9 favorites]
I appreciate reading, and re-reading slight variations, of material that examines what we eat, how we prepare it, etc. Glad to see this post. In general, for me when I can reduce the crappy food intake and increase my activity I'm feeling pretty good about the whole thing. Any good beans recipes?
posted by elkevelvet at 7:54 AM on November 12, 2021 [9 favorites]
Incidentally, I have to run and I can't find a cite, but I recall reading that when Britain began conscripting men to fight in the Great War, it was found that many, many men were too small and undernourished to meet the lowest standards of the army. These problems were not invented in the 1950s.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:56 AM on November 12, 2021 [21 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 7:56 AM on November 12, 2021 [21 favorites]
I've been reading The Way We Eat Now, which so far is a pretty balanced look at how food has changed for populations all over the world, and which also briefly addresses the great-grandma issue.
What I remember about my grandma, who, having been born in 1893 would be analogous to a great-grandmother for many/most of you, is that she made ice tea that was LOADED with sugar. So did my mother and my aunt. One pitcher would have 2-3 cups. I grew up drinking it that way and miss it, but that much sugar seems so unhealthy these days that now I'm all about the unsweetened green tea.
posted by JanetLand at 7:57 AM on November 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
What I remember about my grandma, who, having been born in 1893 would be analogous to a great-grandmother for many/most of you, is that she made ice tea that was LOADED with sugar. So did my mother and my aunt. One pitcher would have 2-3 cups. I grew up drinking it that way and miss it, but that much sugar seems so unhealthy these days that now I'm all about the unsweetened green tea.
posted by JanetLand at 7:57 AM on November 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
I have my own issues with Pollan, and I think there are some huge problems with that book. But he's not wrong that westerners need to eat more plants. We don't eat enough plants, and even some of the most ardent vegans and vegetarians (who are lovely and this is not a judgement because I do the same thing; eating well in capitalism is hard) I know often backfill "eating plants" with "highly processes food" that happens to be plant based. Highly processing foods are just a way to shift labor elsewhere. The reason that Pollan's idea works despite his errors, as a couple others have pointed out, is that it takes a shit ton of labor to make the 'real' foods he suggests eating.
Bread is a great example. Anyone who watches the great british baking show knows that bread is really fucking hard to make (and apparently makes for good drama!). If you had to make all the bread you ate, you wouldn't neat that much bread. Same with deserts. Same with like, a duck confit. Or a thanksgiving dinner made from scratch. Or even noodles or pasta made from scratch. All this takes an inordinate amount of labor, even if you have a few key specialty tools. If your goal is to 'eat more (whole) plants' you end up cooking in a way that is probably pretty damn good for you because the labor to to otherwise is righteously hard to produce while otherwise living in the western world.
But that is not to say there isn't a place for modern ingredients either. MSG is a prime example; it makes vegetables that are maybe not prepared 100% the best, really fucking good. I don't use MSG much on meat-based foods, but I use it a lot on plants because it makes them taste better, and more importantly; more satisfying. Just because it's a salt extracted from tasty food, doesn't mean it's inherently bad. I'm sure it could be in certain contexts, but in terms of elevating vegetables into fucking NOM NOM CRAVE foods, it's worth it (it's also really harmless and it's in a ton of 'whole' and 'natural' foods everyone eats).
Pollan has a weird way of applying nostalgia to things that never existed, and this is kind of one of them. However, I really doubt he is wrong that we need to eat more vegetables, not just 'plant-based' foods.
posted by furnace.heart at 7:58 AM on November 12, 2021 [29 favorites]
Bread is a great example. Anyone who watches the great british baking show knows that bread is really fucking hard to make (and apparently makes for good drama!). If you had to make all the bread you ate, you wouldn't neat that much bread. Same with deserts. Same with like, a duck confit. Or a thanksgiving dinner made from scratch. Or even noodles or pasta made from scratch. All this takes an inordinate amount of labor, even if you have a few key specialty tools. If your goal is to 'eat more (whole) plants' you end up cooking in a way that is probably pretty damn good for you because the labor to to otherwise is righteously hard to produce while otherwise living in the western world.
But that is not to say there isn't a place for modern ingredients either. MSG is a prime example; it makes vegetables that are maybe not prepared 100% the best, really fucking good. I don't use MSG much on meat-based foods, but I use it a lot on plants because it makes them taste better, and more importantly; more satisfying. Just because it's a salt extracted from tasty food, doesn't mean it's inherently bad. I'm sure it could be in certain contexts, but in terms of elevating vegetables into fucking NOM NOM CRAVE foods, it's worth it (it's also really harmless and it's in a ton of 'whole' and 'natural' foods everyone eats).
Pollan has a weird way of applying nostalgia to things that never existed, and this is kind of one of them. However, I really doubt he is wrong that we need to eat more vegetables, not just 'plant-based' foods.
posted by furnace.heart at 7:58 AM on November 12, 2021 [29 favorites]
Processed Foods and Health
We can draw general rules from this framework, as Pollan did, but his answer isn't the only possible takeaway. The occasional ultraprocessed foods are tolerable, as long as you're aware of what that means and make other choices to adjust.
posted by bonehead at 8:00 AM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
Food processing is a spectrum that ranges from basic technologies like freezing or milling, to the incorporation of additives that promote shelf stability or increase palatability. As a general rule, emphasizing unprocessed or minimally processed foods in the daily diet is optimal. That said, the use of processed foods is the choice of the consumer, and there are pros and cons that come with each type. The Nutrition Facts Label and ingredients list can be useful tools in deciding when to include a processed food in the diet. There is evidence showing an association with certain types of food processing and poor health outcomes (especially highly- or ultra-processed foods). This association applies mainly to ultra-processed foods that contain added sugars, excess sodium, and unhealthful fats.From a resource that I've found really helpful in understanding these sorts of issues. It's not a straight good/bad binary, there's a real range of choice we can make, and ones that adjust to individuals and their circumstances. We don't have to pretend that food preferences don't matter and revert to a one-size-fits-all, finish your plate if you know what's good for you, diet.
We can draw general rules from this framework, as Pollan did, but his answer isn't the only possible takeaway. The occasional ultraprocessed foods are tolerable, as long as you're aware of what that means and make other choices to adjust.
posted by bonehead at 8:00 AM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
I'm vegan going on over a decade now, and I make no bones that I know while how I choose to eat may save some animals, it does fuck all about the exploitation of workers who pick my vegetables and fruit. Like, we are sharing a CSA basket with another couple, and while yes it's nice to support that idea, it's also really freaking expensive. To the point where Shepherd and I would like to continue to do it, but that's a lot of money just for "ethical" veggies.
We've made it impossible to disentangle our food from the exploitation of others.
posted by Kitteh at 8:02 AM on November 12, 2021 [20 favorites]
We've made it impossible to disentangle our food from the exploitation of others.
posted by Kitteh at 8:02 AM on November 12, 2021 [20 favorites]
Mod note: Fixed the formatting of the post, hopefully this should work better. Carry on.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:03 AM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:03 AM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
The underlying claim is that if we ate this way, nobody would be fat.
I don't think this is a fair statement. Pollan's arguments that eating more plants and other unprocessed foods would benefit both individuals and society are not really the same as claiming nobody would be ever fat.
posted by Press Butt.on to Check at 8:07 AM on November 12, 2021 [26 favorites]
I don't think this is a fair statement. Pollan's arguments that eating more plants and other unprocessed foods would benefit both individuals and society are not really the same as claiming nobody would be ever fat.
posted by Press Butt.on to Check at 8:07 AM on November 12, 2021 [26 favorites]
METAFILTER: my grandparents had no running water and had guns all around the house because they were constantly frightened of being murdered by bandits but I'm not sure what this has to do with the topic of food
posted by philip-random at 8:15 AM on November 12, 2021 [39 favorites]
posted by philip-random at 8:15 AM on November 12, 2021 [39 favorites]
My Jewish grandmother could make pretty good gnocchi.
That's it, everything else was bought ready to eat and/or heat up.
I loved her for that.
posted by signal at 8:17 AM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
That's it, everything else was bought ready to eat and/or heat up.
I loved her for that.
posted by signal at 8:17 AM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
For me, the surprising factor has been to realize I had to re-train my taste buds: it was not immediate, but now I authentically prefer fresh or gently steamed vegetables; plain rice; oatmeal with butter and honey; a 10-minute-prep lentil dish with an abundance of herbs. I signed up to a CSA and discovered that foods grown in healthy soils keep me full longer (I am assuming because of the increased nutritional density) which has off-set to increased costs of the CSA. I've learned that celery has honest-to-goodness "I crave this!" flavor and carrots similarly grown have a complexity of flavors that make me happy.
I would wager, however, that a) you are the one doing the gentle steaming and 10-minute-prep of those lentils, b) you are comfortable enough in a kitchen to do this, and c) you have the income that would permit you to spend your money this way. These are three conditions that not everyone is guaranteed to meet.
In the past I also agreed that "home-cooked and low-processed stuff is better", and I still do; but I am more aware of how What Is True For Me Foodwise May Not Be True For Others. I can also afford to belong to a CSA, I also can afford to belong to a dried heirloom bean subscription service. But that is actually second to the fact that I grew up being comfortable in a kitchen, and that I find food and cooking enjoyable and fun. I enjoy trying to figure out how to turn a roast chicken carcass into soup stock. I like figuring out how to turn random foodstuffs into a meal. I like undergoing that process. But - that is not true of everyone. Someone else is probably sitting there thinking about how they actually like tinkering with electronics or figuring out how to do the woodworking that would let them customize their closets or whatever, whereas for me, anything above and beyond putting together an Ikea thing or unclogging a sink requires hiring a handyman or calling my super.
I was a little more vocal in the past about trying to encourage people to "just try" cooking - but that was mostly coming from a place of "but cooking is fun! I want people to have more fun! This is a fun thing! Yay fun!" And - actually, thanks to some conversations in here - I've realized that yeah, not everyone thinks the same things are fun and that's just that. But even then, I never thought anyone was "lazy" or anything for not wanting to nor not trying to cook - they'd just never had the chance to learn, was all, or they had been taken advantage of by the real villains in my eyes - the corporate food industry, who snuck high fructose corn syrup into everything and who had a massive ad budget devoted to trying to convince people that cooking was harder than it actually was.
I'm a lot less fussed about that these days, though. I still think that the big food corporations cheat a bit - but if someone doesn't really want to try learning how to cook, I am less evangelical. My roommate said something in passing a couple years back about maybe wanting to cook for himself more, but last month he said that "you know, I've realized that I am actually okay with not cooking. I'm fine just keeping going with canned soup, frozen burritos and the occasional really good restaurant meal." He said this like it was a massive revelation he had to come to; and it maybe was. And it also looked a little like he was expecting to be judged for this choice - so I made a point of just saying "that's cool, you do you." Because it is perfectly valid.
Being able to cook for yourself assumes certain advantages and privileges are in place, and not everyone has those.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:26 AM on November 12, 2021 [32 favorites]
I would wager, however, that a) you are the one doing the gentle steaming and 10-minute-prep of those lentils, b) you are comfortable enough in a kitchen to do this, and c) you have the income that would permit you to spend your money this way. These are three conditions that not everyone is guaranteed to meet.
In the past I also agreed that "home-cooked and low-processed stuff is better", and I still do; but I am more aware of how What Is True For Me Foodwise May Not Be True For Others. I can also afford to belong to a CSA, I also can afford to belong to a dried heirloom bean subscription service. But that is actually second to the fact that I grew up being comfortable in a kitchen, and that I find food and cooking enjoyable and fun. I enjoy trying to figure out how to turn a roast chicken carcass into soup stock. I like figuring out how to turn random foodstuffs into a meal. I like undergoing that process. But - that is not true of everyone. Someone else is probably sitting there thinking about how they actually like tinkering with electronics or figuring out how to do the woodworking that would let them customize their closets or whatever, whereas for me, anything above and beyond putting together an Ikea thing or unclogging a sink requires hiring a handyman or calling my super.
I was a little more vocal in the past about trying to encourage people to "just try" cooking - but that was mostly coming from a place of "but cooking is fun! I want people to have more fun! This is a fun thing! Yay fun!" And - actually, thanks to some conversations in here - I've realized that yeah, not everyone thinks the same things are fun and that's just that. But even then, I never thought anyone was "lazy" or anything for not wanting to nor not trying to cook - they'd just never had the chance to learn, was all, or they had been taken advantage of by the real villains in my eyes - the corporate food industry, who snuck high fructose corn syrup into everything and who had a massive ad budget devoted to trying to convince people that cooking was harder than it actually was.
I'm a lot less fussed about that these days, though. I still think that the big food corporations cheat a bit - but if someone doesn't really want to try learning how to cook, I am less evangelical. My roommate said something in passing a couple years back about maybe wanting to cook for himself more, but last month he said that "you know, I've realized that I am actually okay with not cooking. I'm fine just keeping going with canned soup, frozen burritos and the occasional really good restaurant meal." He said this like it was a massive revelation he had to come to; and it maybe was. And it also looked a little like he was expecting to be judged for this choice - so I made a point of just saying "that's cool, you do you." Because it is perfectly valid.
Being able to cook for yourself assumes certain advantages and privileges are in place, and not everyone has those.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:26 AM on November 12, 2021 [32 favorites]
My main concern is that it doesn’t sound like nearly enough food to keep any adult full
Cigarettes and alcohol possibly assisted with appetite suppression. (Although, back when I smoked - it was only "immediately" after a cigarette that I couldn't stomach the thought of food - after about 45m, that went away - so, I guess it someone smoked more frequently... (I was a pack every 10-days))
posted by rozcakj at 8:28 AM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
Cigarettes and alcohol possibly assisted with appetite suppression. (Although, back when I smoked - it was only "immediately" after a cigarette that I couldn't stomach the thought of food - after about 45m, that went away - so, I guess it someone smoked more frequently... (I was a pack every 10-days))
posted by rozcakj at 8:28 AM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
With all this great-grandmother food stuff, I wonder if people are familiar with the history of food stall and pre-made foods. They had some pretty gnarly stuff back in the Victorian era, for instance. And chances are that if your [female relative living before the Great War, because that's really what Pollan is talking about] lived in a city and was not extremely well off, she regularly served rather dubious dishes because there was a lot of adulterated or otherwise odd food around. Bread? Don't talk to me about bread, god knows what was in it, probably a lot of chalk. And sausage! And let's not even think about the flies at the butcher's, or what was in the sugar, or how much of the raisins was really raisins, etc. Milk, you don't even want to know.
People don't want to go back to growing all their own food and milking their own cows, etc, because that's a lot of work and it's not suited to most people's skills or temperament. Ethical food production at scale is the issue, not a return to a not-so-great past. Like, gardening is fun when you are just growing enough to save a little money and enhance your diet, but it's not so fun when that's all the food you have.
posted by Frowner at 8:28 AM on November 12, 2021 [90 favorites]
People don't want to go back to growing all their own food and milking their own cows, etc, because that's a lot of work and it's not suited to most people's skills or temperament. Ethical food production at scale is the issue, not a return to a not-so-great past. Like, gardening is fun when you are just growing enough to save a little money and enhance your diet, but it's not so fun when that's all the food you have.
posted by Frowner at 8:28 AM on November 12, 2021 [90 favorites]
I see ideology is on the all-you-can-eat buffet. Delish!
posted by hilberseimer at 8:29 AM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by hilberseimer at 8:29 AM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
During these Years of the Pandemic of our Dark Lord, I've stayed at home basically every workday, and my son is coming home from school before lunchtime, so I've been cooking for both of us a lot, and he's started eating more veggies, he loves broccoli and cauliflower and carrots, and is generally more open to trying and eating something besides chicken and rice or pasta, so that's been an unexpected bonus.
posted by signal at 8:31 AM on November 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by signal at 8:31 AM on November 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
Cut-his-own-throat Dibbler will have you know that he uses only the highest quality floor-sweepings in his roasted sausages (onna stick).
posted by bonehead at 8:33 AM on November 12, 2021 [51 favorites]
posted by bonehead at 8:33 AM on November 12, 2021 [51 favorites]
My mother and stepmother and my paternal grandmother, her sister and my stepmother's mother all loved the tins and other convenience food. And as a child, I had layers upon layers of autoimmune diseases. Except when I went to my maternal grandmother at the farm for holidays, then everything was fine as a daisy. It wasn't that my grandmother grew everything herself, she didn't, and we only had poultry for one or two seasons before she got tired of chasing the fox, but she cooked from scratch, and she spent hours every day sourcing good quality produce. She wanted to eat that way, long before Pollan existed.
I've thought about what caused that difference, and one thing might be that the first women were women who grew up rich, but ended up with less means -- not at all poor, but no longer able to hire a cook and a maid. They had the skills to cook, but they saw it as demeaning labour.
My maternal grandmother was the other way round, she grew up in a small farmstead, and her dad was a drunkard, they didn't have much. But my great-grandmother had a garden and some hens, and was a solid home cook by the standards of that age and class. I know because at the end of her life, my gran asked me to cook the food she had as a child: innards, oxtail, leeks, eggs, potatoes, cauliflower, and all the recipes were really good. Sometimes my gran would go with her dad to the sea, and trade vegetables for fish. Apart from happy memories of helping her mother in the kitchen and eating the food, being a good cook was my grandmothers key to entry into the higher classes: she got a job as a live-in help at 14, in a rich family's house. There, she learnt more about cooking, which contributed to her standing among other young people.
When she married my granddad, his posh family were not happy about him marrying a divorced girl from a poor family. But time was with her, because when WW2 ended, and there was no help to hire anymore, she was a blessing, who could conjure up feasts from nothing in a broken stove. In other words, for her, cooking was a route to the good life. For my other grannies, cooking was a deroute from their former comfort. And for my mother and step-mother, who grew up in wealthy homes, cooking was a chore, part of the fifties' creation of the perfect wife. I wonder how many middle class women who embraced processed food after WW2 had similar stories.
(And I wonder if my great-grandmother had also learnt to cook as hired help in a posh household when she was 14, her recipes were almost professional).
posted by mumimor at 8:34 AM on November 12, 2021 [20 favorites]
I've thought about what caused that difference, and one thing might be that the first women were women who grew up rich, but ended up with less means -- not at all poor, but no longer able to hire a cook and a maid. They had the skills to cook, but they saw it as demeaning labour.
My maternal grandmother was the other way round, she grew up in a small farmstead, and her dad was a drunkard, they didn't have much. But my great-grandmother had a garden and some hens, and was a solid home cook by the standards of that age and class. I know because at the end of her life, my gran asked me to cook the food she had as a child: innards, oxtail, leeks, eggs, potatoes, cauliflower, and all the recipes were really good. Sometimes my gran would go with her dad to the sea, and trade vegetables for fish. Apart from happy memories of helping her mother in the kitchen and eating the food, being a good cook was my grandmothers key to entry into the higher classes: she got a job as a live-in help at 14, in a rich family's house. There, she learnt more about cooking, which contributed to her standing among other young people.
When she married my granddad, his posh family were not happy about him marrying a divorced girl from a poor family. But time was with her, because when WW2 ended, and there was no help to hire anymore, she was a blessing, who could conjure up feasts from nothing in a broken stove. In other words, for her, cooking was a route to the good life. For my other grannies, cooking was a deroute from their former comfort. And for my mother and step-mother, who grew up in wealthy homes, cooking was a chore, part of the fifties' creation of the perfect wife. I wonder how many middle class women who embraced processed food after WW2 had similar stories.
(And I wonder if my great-grandmother had also learnt to cook as hired help in a posh household when she was 14, her recipes were almost professional).
posted by mumimor at 8:34 AM on November 12, 2021 [20 favorites]
Love Virginia Sole-Smith so much, thanks for sharing her work Kitteh.
posted by ellieBOA at 8:37 AM on November 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by ellieBOA at 8:37 AM on November 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
The point being made, if I am understanding it correctly, is that you can't disentangle the food from the social production of that food. In other words, in a lot of settings, high quality food was possible because of unpaid women's labor, and/or low- or un-paid work by other women like housekeepers, slaves, servants, poor cousins from the country who are expected to do housework in exchange for their room and board, etc. Those social relations are what made the food possible.
I think the counterpoint several people have made here that the current food system mostly just hides the social relations better is really strong, though. The recent Frito-Lay strike is pretty on-the-nose as an example of this.
posted by atoxyl at 8:44 AM on November 12, 2021 [21 favorites]
I think the counterpoint several people have made here that the current food system mostly just hides the social relations better is really strong, though. The recent Frito-Lay strike is pretty on-the-nose as an example of this.
posted by atoxyl at 8:44 AM on November 12, 2021 [21 favorites]
Signal, not *everyone* had the privilege of being in a global pandemic that allowed them to…
Er, hmm. Nevermind. Carry on.
But seriously, this is a great article. Very effectively paints a far-more-accurate-than-Pollan’s picture that explains why the “like your grandmother” bullshit is unrealistic to the point of uselessness.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 8:44 AM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
Er, hmm. Nevermind. Carry on.
But seriously, this is a great article. Very effectively paints a far-more-accurate-than-Pollan’s picture that explains why the “like your grandmother” bullshit is unrealistic to the point of uselessness.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 8:44 AM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
Whenever I read these kinds of things I think about the fact that my grandparents raised their children in New York City in apartment buildings. My maternal grandmother (born in 1906) worked full time in the garment industry (look for the union label!). She never grew a vegetable in her life--where would she? She had no neighbors to get eggs or chickens from. Everything came from a store and she made what she could with the time she had available after her physically demanding job.
My father's mother (born in 1910) grew up in farm country in the Midwest--her sister's husband was a farmer--but she was a stay at home mom to three kids and a wife to a NYC building superintendent. The vegetables she cooked came (mostly) from cans. All of these "eat like your grandparents" stuff sounds great if your grandparents lived in a rural area with land to grow vegetables, but what does Michael Pollan think all those people who grew up in cities ate?
I grew up in an apartment building in NYC too, and by then there were lots of supermarkets with more fresh produce and I still ate plenty of Swanson frozen dinners as a kid. My mom cooked from scratch fairly often but she definitely used canned short cut foods. I think Michael Pollan has a romantic view of what lives have been like. It reminds me a lot of people who think that moms working outside of the home is a new thing rather than something that has happened for generations and life would be so much better if only we could all go back to the good old days that never really existed.
posted by ceejaytee at 8:45 AM on November 12, 2021 [41 favorites]
My father's mother (born in 1910) grew up in farm country in the Midwest--her sister's husband was a farmer--but she was a stay at home mom to three kids and a wife to a NYC building superintendent. The vegetables she cooked came (mostly) from cans. All of these "eat like your grandparents" stuff sounds great if your grandparents lived in a rural area with land to grow vegetables, but what does Michael Pollan think all those people who grew up in cities ate?
I grew up in an apartment building in NYC too, and by then there were lots of supermarkets with more fresh produce and I still ate plenty of Swanson frozen dinners as a kid. My mom cooked from scratch fairly often but she definitely used canned short cut foods. I think Michael Pollan has a romantic view of what lives have been like. It reminds me a lot of people who think that moms working outside of the home is a new thing rather than something that has happened for generations and life would be so much better if only we could all go back to the good old days that never really existed.
posted by ceejaytee at 8:45 AM on November 12, 2021 [41 favorites]
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly potatoes."
If I remember correctly, I stole this line from Ursula Vernon, but it accurately describes my childhood, and my parents childhood, and presumably all the way back until the Lumper descended from heaven into the bogs of Ireland.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 8:46 AM on November 12, 2021 [29 favorites]
If I remember correctly, I stole this line from Ursula Vernon, but it accurately describes my childhood, and my parents childhood, and presumably all the way back until the Lumper descended from heaven into the bogs of Ireland.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 8:46 AM on November 12, 2021 [29 favorites]
My main concern is that it doesn’t sound like nearly enough food to keep any adult full
A hundred years ago diners didn't exist, pesticides didn't exist, fertilizers were animal supplied, plastic wrap to keep food longer didn't exist, refrigeration didn't exist beyond ice, and chicken was a luxury and lobster was for the poor. So food was made fresh, lots of labor, but also at a time when women weren't hired to work in factories or fields, and housework was DIY. I think people would be shocked at how an average American dinner table was set at the time, with stews or chipped beef and gravy poured over bread, assorted pickles, lots of butter if during peacetime. But little variety and fresh vegetables weren't eaten as much as modern people like to imagine. If one was still hungry they ate the remains, or bread and butter with pickles.
posted by Brian B. at 8:47 AM on November 12, 2021 [11 favorites]
A hundred years ago diners didn't exist, pesticides didn't exist, fertilizers were animal supplied, plastic wrap to keep food longer didn't exist, refrigeration didn't exist beyond ice, and chicken was a luxury and lobster was for the poor. So food was made fresh, lots of labor, but also at a time when women weren't hired to work in factories or fields, and housework was DIY. I think people would be shocked at how an average American dinner table was set at the time, with stews or chipped beef and gravy poured over bread, assorted pickles, lots of butter if during peacetime. But little variety and fresh vegetables weren't eaten as much as modern people like to imagine. If one was still hungry they ate the remains, or bread and butter with pickles.
posted by Brian B. at 8:47 AM on November 12, 2021 [11 favorites]
My aunts are great-grandmothers now... they grew up in 1950's and 60's USA, eating fluffernutter sandwiches, TV dinners, cheez whiz, sugary breakfast cereal, velveeta, and all the the other wonders of the industrial processed food system. They talk nostalgically of eating all that stuff too!
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:49 AM on November 12, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:49 AM on November 12, 2021 [9 favorites]
I really liked this article.
I have been trying to good healthy from scratch with a farm share over the summer for years now. I do consider it a good thing. But it is exhausting, especially trying to do it around full-time work. It is a marker of privilege. Nostalgia wipes that labour off the map. I will give Pollan that he at least supplies some recipes to try to mitigate it.
I will note also there is a step in the middle between "full out meals" and "processed" which my boss's family seems to use and I'm trying to achieve where you rework your idea of a meal somewhat. They tend to have one cooked component - poached fish, say - and then everything else on the plate is raw vegetables and maybe a piece of whole grain bread or whatever. I'm working on it.
Working on it is exhausting.
I have come to a point where the processed stuff tastes wrong, so I did it to myself.
Any good beans recipes?
Cheesy beans:
- dollop of garlic
- 3 garlic cloves sliced
- 1/2 a small can of tomato paste or about like, 3-4 tablespoons
- 2 cans of beans
- 1/2 cup of water
- salt and pepper
- about 2 cups of grated cheese like old cheddar, gouda, etc.
- fry garlic in oil for about a minute in a large frying pan
- add the tomato paste and cook for 30 seconds, this is key to make it taste better
- drain the beans and dump them in; add the water, salt and pepper. You can also add thyme or rosemary if you want to be crazy about this
- bring to a boil then simmer
- after about 10 minutes, stirring on and off and adding a dash of water, put the cheese on top until it melts
- serve
Lentils diavolo
Mashed beans with onions:
- splash olive oil in pan
- dice and add onion
- add garam masala to taste (a teaspoon?) when onions are soft and cook a minute longer
- drain a can of beans -pinto or white kidney or whatever - mostly (leave a bit of liquid) and put into the pan
- cook a few minutes and then mash more-or-less and add salt and pepper to taste
- can serve on toast
Bread is a great example. Anyone who watches the great british baking show knows that bread is really fucking hard to make (and apparently makes for good drama!). If you had to make all the bread you ate, you wouldn't neat that much bread.
Yes and no. I have a bread maker to do the heavy lifting but I've made most of our own bread, pizza dough, buns, sub rolls, muffins, etc. from scratch for 15 years since I got the first bread maker. Even doing it by hand (which I do for challah, see below), while there's a "minding" component - you mix and knead, then you proof, then you knead, then you proof, etc. - it's one of the things I make that doesn't drive me crazy. I've recovered lots of bread disasters. Two things help:
1. Don't be so picky about the crumb, like, occasionally my bread is denser and the kids call it 'stompin' bread' and like it.
2. Anything you do regularly becomes easier. I've made the Smitten Kitchen challah recipe at least once a month for like 5 years (I turn it into four loaves, and freeze.)
posted by warriorqueen at 8:49 AM on November 12, 2021 [28 favorites]
I have been trying to good healthy from scratch with a farm share over the summer for years now. I do consider it a good thing. But it is exhausting, especially trying to do it around full-time work. It is a marker of privilege. Nostalgia wipes that labour off the map. I will give Pollan that he at least supplies some recipes to try to mitigate it.
I will note also there is a step in the middle between "full out meals" and "processed" which my boss's family seems to use and I'm trying to achieve where you rework your idea of a meal somewhat. They tend to have one cooked component - poached fish, say - and then everything else on the plate is raw vegetables and maybe a piece of whole grain bread or whatever. I'm working on it.
Working on it is exhausting.
I have come to a point where the processed stuff tastes wrong, so I did it to myself.
Any good beans recipes?
Cheesy beans:
- dollop of garlic
- 3 garlic cloves sliced
- 1/2 a small can of tomato paste or about like, 3-4 tablespoons
- 2 cans of beans
- 1/2 cup of water
- salt and pepper
- about 2 cups of grated cheese like old cheddar, gouda, etc.
- fry garlic in oil for about a minute in a large frying pan
- add the tomato paste and cook for 30 seconds, this is key to make it taste better
- drain the beans and dump them in; add the water, salt and pepper. You can also add thyme or rosemary if you want to be crazy about this
- bring to a boil then simmer
- after about 10 minutes, stirring on and off and adding a dash of water, put the cheese on top until it melts
- serve
Lentils diavolo
Mashed beans with onions:
- splash olive oil in pan
- dice and add onion
- add garam masala to taste (a teaspoon?) when onions are soft and cook a minute longer
- drain a can of beans -pinto or white kidney or whatever - mostly (leave a bit of liquid) and put into the pan
- cook a few minutes and then mash more-or-less and add salt and pepper to taste
- can serve on toast
Bread is a great example. Anyone who watches the great british baking show knows that bread is really fucking hard to make (and apparently makes for good drama!). If you had to make all the bread you ate, you wouldn't neat that much bread.
Yes and no. I have a bread maker to do the heavy lifting but I've made most of our own bread, pizza dough, buns, sub rolls, muffins, etc. from scratch for 15 years since I got the first bread maker. Even doing it by hand (which I do for challah, see below), while there's a "minding" component - you mix and knead, then you proof, then you knead, then you proof, etc. - it's one of the things I make that doesn't drive me crazy. I've recovered lots of bread disasters. Two things help:
1. Don't be so picky about the crumb, like, occasionally my bread is denser and the kids call it 'stompin' bread' and like it.
2. Anything you do regularly becomes easier. I've made the Smitten Kitchen challah recipe at least once a month for like 5 years (I turn it into four loaves, and freeze.)
posted by warriorqueen at 8:49 AM on November 12, 2021 [28 favorites]
One of my favourite childhood dinners was a heated corned beef hash out of a tin, and sometimes we got the fried egg on top, sometimes we didn't, but man, that was good.
posted by Kitteh at 8:50 AM on November 12, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 8:50 AM on November 12, 2021 [9 favorites]
Anyways, suffice it to say that my aunts' great-grandkids eat WAY healthier in 2021 than they did in the 1950s and 60s.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:52 AM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:52 AM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
Anyone who watches the great british baking show knows that bread is really fucking hard to make (and apparently makes for good drama!). If you had to make all the bread you ate, you wouldn't neat that much bread.
Really puzzled by this; it's a bit hard for me to envision what exactly about these shows would make you think that bread is hard and dramatic (I don't watch them), but this is ... extremely not true, bread is pretty dead simple. Of course, I have the benefit of learning how to make it from my mother, who did make all our bread growing up and learned how to make it from my grandfather.
I do buy bread, but when I do I usually either buy things more on the elaborate side that I don't like to go to the trouble of making (e.g. brioche, braided challah, bagels), or, to be honest, industrial bread that has calcium propionate (an extremely effective anti-molding agent) in it.
posted by advil at 8:54 AM on November 12, 2021 [12 favorites]
Really puzzled by this; it's a bit hard for me to envision what exactly about these shows would make you think that bread is hard and dramatic (I don't watch them), but this is ... extremely not true, bread is pretty dead simple. Of course, I have the benefit of learning how to make it from my mother, who did make all our bread growing up and learned how to make it from my grandfather.
I do buy bread, but when I do I usually either buy things more on the elaborate side that I don't like to go to the trouble of making (e.g. brioche, braided challah, bagels), or, to be honest, industrial bread that has calcium propionate (an extremely effective anti-molding agent) in it.
posted by advil at 8:54 AM on November 12, 2021 [12 favorites]
Jello (or gelatin desserts generally) are another interesting example to consider. At one time, it didn't just require an overworked grandma, serving gelatin implied that you had an extended household staff who could perform the tasks of extracting the gelatin and making it into desserts. There was a class aspect to it: it implied wealth.
Then boxed, packaged gelatin came along and much of society could have Jello if they wanted it, with not much more effort than boiling a kettle of water.
Now that upper-class sheen is long-gone, but gelatin products like Jello are still there, both on their own, and as component ingredients in family recipes that have been passed down a couple of generations now.
posted by gimonca at 8:54 AM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
Then boxed, packaged gelatin came along and much of society could have Jello if they wanted it, with not much more effort than boiling a kettle of water.
Now that upper-class sheen is long-gone, but gelatin products like Jello are still there, both on their own, and as component ingredients in family recipes that have been passed down a couple of generations now.
posted by gimonca at 8:54 AM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
My grandmother, who was born in Poland but came here as a teenager. ate this way and WAS fat for most of her life. I was shocked when I saw her wedding picture how thin and pretty she was. She was born in 1890 so is the age of the great-grandparents of most people here. When I was a child we lived with my grandparents who has a small farm, cows, chickens, pigs, turkeys, and a big vegetable garden. My grandma was a good Polish cook. She raised 5 children, at least one stillbirth. She did buy things like canned fruit, but also canned some of her own. My grandfather was thin all his life, they ate the same food but he was always working outside. These things are always too complicated for an easy answer, but of course there is too much junk in prepared food now.
posted by mermayd at 9:02 AM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by mermayd at 9:02 AM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
Also, one hundred years ago is 1921.
I think there's a tendency to underestimate the modernity of the 19th and early 20th centuries. My periodization is vague, here, but women were doing pink/white collar jobs by the end of the 19th century, lunch carts and diners and food for men working away from home were extremely institutionalized, a lot of people lived in boardinghouses and ate many meals out or had them catered, not always in luxury, by the landlady. Canned food more or less as we know it dates back to the early 19th century. Even before that, people weren't literally making everything from scratch, even in the country. You might well buy your bread, or take your dough to the baker's to bake, or bring your meat somewhere to be cooked, or buy it cooked.
I suspect that for any but the really rural households, it has been a long, long time since total cooking self-sufficiency was literally the norm.
posted by Frowner at 9:04 AM on November 12, 2021 [42 favorites]
I think there's a tendency to underestimate the modernity of the 19th and early 20th centuries. My periodization is vague, here, but women were doing pink/white collar jobs by the end of the 19th century, lunch carts and diners and food for men working away from home were extremely institutionalized, a lot of people lived in boardinghouses and ate many meals out or had them catered, not always in luxury, by the landlady. Canned food more or less as we know it dates back to the early 19th century. Even before that, people weren't literally making everything from scratch, even in the country. You might well buy your bread, or take your dough to the baker's to bake, or bring your meat somewhere to be cooked, or buy it cooked.
I suspect that for any but the really rural households, it has been a long, long time since total cooking self-sufficiency was literally the norm.
posted by Frowner at 9:04 AM on November 12, 2021 [42 favorites]
And yes, from the photos they were all skinny. But I also note....
Yeah, it's the "also note" that's equally important. I learned to drive in a Corvair, of all things, with no power steering or brakes. No joke, parallel parking worked even 16-year-old-me into light perspiration. And also lawn mowers before power drive -- the point being that yes, there has been a change in foodstuffs, but also yes our tools, too, have been designed to eliminate even simple sources of physical exertion that helped keep us skinny.
Jeepers, author, please re-embrace complexity.
posted by Silvery Fish at 9:06 AM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
Yeah, it's the "also note" that's equally important. I learned to drive in a Corvair, of all things, with no power steering or brakes. No joke, parallel parking worked even 16-year-old-me into light perspiration. And also lawn mowers before power drive -- the point being that yes, there has been a change in foodstuffs, but also yes our tools, too, have been designed to eliminate even simple sources of physical exertion that helped keep us skinny.
Jeepers, author, please re-embrace complexity.
posted by Silvery Fish at 9:06 AM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
My grandmother lived on a ranch (when she was young - when she was older she lived in town) and made dinner often. She also had pecan trees so pecans were in literally everything. Pecan green beans. Pecan pie, pecan turkey, pecan mashed potatoes. Everything.
That same grandmother also went to college in the the 1930s.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:08 AM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
That same grandmother also went to college in the the 1930s.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:08 AM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
Am I the only one who thinks this mostly cancel culture button pushing inside a cheap framing device?
She's not wrong, just.... shitty? IDK. Pollan didn't (AFAIK) open carry at a school board meetings about race theory, put out vaccine misinformation, run his car into protesters, shove his hand up any shirts uninvited. His books are about plants, he talks about his gardens in his early writings when he was his own labor, he knows the work involved. I'm not saying he's perfect. But he didn't say "eat like grandma" he said Grandma wouldn't know go-gurt and ___poppers are food unless you told her, so like, maybe we shouldn't accept that as food, either. I don't think he's the front line of the fat police. That said, I haven't read every word he's written so maybe his is....
More thoughts on Michael Pollan, and the other thin, white men who invented diet culture, in this piece I wrote for Bitch a few years ago.
Nah.
posted by everythings_interrelated at 9:14 AM on November 12, 2021 [37 favorites]
She's not wrong, just.... shitty? IDK. Pollan didn't (AFAIK) open carry at a school board meetings about race theory, put out vaccine misinformation, run his car into protesters, shove his hand up any shirts uninvited. His books are about plants, he talks about his gardens in his early writings when he was his own labor, he knows the work involved. I'm not saying he's perfect. But he didn't say "eat like grandma" he said Grandma wouldn't know go-gurt and ___poppers are food unless you told her, so like, maybe we shouldn't accept that as food, either. I don't think he's the front line of the fat police. That said, I haven't read every word he's written so maybe his is....
More thoughts on Michael Pollan, and the other thin, white men who invented diet culture, in this piece I wrote for Bitch a few years ago.
Nah.
posted by everythings_interrelated at 9:14 AM on November 12, 2021 [37 favorites]
My grandmother... WAS fat for most of her life. I was shocked when I saw her wedding picture how thin and pretty she was.
Yipes, I'm resigned to encountering at least some fatphobia and weight-shaming in basically all MetaFilter conversations about food and diet, but could we please not equate "thin" with "pretty" as if this is some sort of objective truth?
posted by rogerroger at 9:18 AM on November 12, 2021 [50 favorites]
Yipes, I'm resigned to encountering at least some fatphobia and weight-shaming in basically all MetaFilter conversations about food and diet, but could we please not equate "thin" with "pretty" as if this is some sort of objective truth?
posted by rogerroger at 9:18 AM on November 12, 2021 [50 favorites]
We went through maybe a month of bread baking every day. Pre-mix the "our daily bread" recipe from Modernist Bread and put it in the fridge. Pull off a small piece, proof it, then bake it.
Used a combi oven, so it was largely hands off. Every day we had a delicious and tasty loaf of bread.
The side effect of baking a loaf of bread every day is that you end up with a loaf of bread every day. It's locked in. The Dough is doing it's dough thing on a clock. If you don't use it, it goes bad. After you cook it, you get a day, maybe 2 if you repurpose it into bread crumbs.
So even if you spent the day doing nothing, you have a whole loaf of bread to eat.
Which we did. For a month.
But we did not have the lifestyle commensurate with that degree of consumption. (Which sucks because IT WAS SO GOOD). Creating the "back to basics" food requires a degree of prep, but more importantly, a degree of lock-in. Decisions you make 2 weeks ago are influencing what you are eating today.
I guess that's another difference. If you had to slaughter and prep a cow, you damn well better have a plan for what to do with all that meat before it goes bad. Eat, Cure, Share. How efficient do you need to be with your source ingredients and how far ahead do you need to think based on what you are making..
posted by Lord_Pall at 9:18 AM on November 12, 2021 [17 favorites]
Used a combi oven, so it was largely hands off. Every day we had a delicious and tasty loaf of bread.
The side effect of baking a loaf of bread every day is that you end up with a loaf of bread every day. It's locked in. The Dough is doing it's dough thing on a clock. If you don't use it, it goes bad. After you cook it, you get a day, maybe 2 if you repurpose it into bread crumbs.
So even if you spent the day doing nothing, you have a whole loaf of bread to eat.
Which we did. For a month.
But we did not have the lifestyle commensurate with that degree of consumption. (Which sucks because IT WAS SO GOOD). Creating the "back to basics" food requires a degree of prep, but more importantly, a degree of lock-in. Decisions you make 2 weeks ago are influencing what you are eating today.
I guess that's another difference. If you had to slaughter and prep a cow, you damn well better have a plan for what to do with all that meat before it goes bad. Eat, Cure, Share. How efficient do you need to be with your source ingredients and how far ahead do you need to think based on what you are making..
posted by Lord_Pall at 9:18 AM on November 12, 2021 [17 favorites]
Any good beans recipes?
*ears perk up*
You have inadvertently tripped the "Hi I'm a recent convert to Rancho Gordo" booby trap that is me, but I'm going to be very very very very very restrained here. Here's some things I've had that work out well:
* Tuscan Bean Soup from the Moosewood cookbooks is easy and can use canned beans. (This also indulges my other food obsession, the Moosewood cookbooks.)
2 c. diced onions (about 1 large)
1 c. peeled and diced carrots (2-3 medium)
4 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1 T. olive oil
15 large fresh sage leaves (or other herbs)
6 c. cooked pinto, Roman, or small red or white beans (either 3 cans, undrained, or 2 cups dried beans, cooked)
3-4 c. vegetable stock, bean-cooking liquid, or water
salt and pepper to taste
*Beans: 3 15 or 16 oz. cans, undrained. Or, 2 c. dried beans yields about 6 c. cooked.
In a soup pot, saute the onions, carrots, and garlic in the olive oil on medium-low heat until the onions are translucent and the carrots are tender, about 10 minutes. Stack the sage leaves and cut them crosswise into thin strips. Stir the sage into the vegetables. Add the cooked beans and 3 c. of the stock or other liquid. Continue to cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the soup is hot and simmering, 5 to 10 minutes.
Carefully ladle about 3 c. of the soup into a blender and puree into smooth. Stir the puree back into the soup. (Using an immersion blender sparingly also works.) If you wish, add more liquid for a less thick consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste. If necessary, gently reheat the soup. Serve hot.
* Marinated Lima Beans
I found this in a cookbook with the delightful title Cool Beans; and it is dead simple. It starts from dried beans, so it'll take a while, but it's pretty damn good, and most of the work is just letting something sit on the stove in a pot.
2 cups dried lima beans, soaked several hours or overnight (I started soaking them at 9 am and started cooking them at about 5 pm, and it worked perfect)
2 bay leaves
1 piece of dried kombu seaweed
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
chopped parsley, if you want
Dump the beans, kombu and bay leaves in a pot and cover them with enough water to cover by 2 inches. Bring that to a boil and boil the hell out of it for 2 minutes, skimming off the scum; then reduce heat to low and simmer for about an hour until the beans are tender. Fish out the bay leaves and kombu (the kombu may fall apart as you're doing it, just keep picking out the pieces if it does). Then, dump the beans into a colander to drain out most of the water; then dump beans immediately back into the pot. You want a LITTLE water still sticking to the beans. Add the oil, vinegar, and red pepper flakes, and stir everything kind of fast for about 30 seconds; the water still clinging to the beans will help emulsify the oil and vinegar into a sauce. Stir in the chopped parsley and you're done.
You can serve that over rice or any other grain, as a side dish to anything you want, or serve leftovers cold on a bed of lettuce. It is surprisingly good and I've been living off it for a few days now.
* Phillipine Mung Beans in Coconut Milk
This is another Moosewood thing that I've been living off for a while now.
1 1/2 cups dried mung beans
1 -1 1/2 cup onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons fresh gingerroot, peeled and finely minced
1 -2 small fresh chili pepper, minced
5 -6 garlic cloves, minced
14 ounces coconut milk
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 cups finely chopped chard leaves, spinach or other tender leafy green (I used turnip greens when I made it)
1. Soak the beans in water for several hours or overnight. Drain, then dump into a pot with enough water to cover by 1 inch or so. Bring to a boil, then turn down heat and simmer them until tender (about 1 hour). Drain.
2. While the beans are cooking, saute the onions in the oil with salt. When translucent, add ginger, chiles, and garlic. Simmer on low heat for a few minutes.
3. Add the coconut milk to the ginger/chiles/garlic and simmer for 5 more minutes.
4. Combine the beans and the coconut milk mixture in a large pot. Add the soy sauce and greens, and cook until the greens wilt. Remove from heat and serve.
....I threw in some fresh shrimp as well when I added the greens, and that was good.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:32 AM on November 12, 2021 [31 favorites]
*ears perk up*
You have inadvertently tripped the "Hi I'm a recent convert to Rancho Gordo" booby trap that is me, but I'm going to be very very very very very restrained here. Here's some things I've had that work out well:
* Tuscan Bean Soup from the Moosewood cookbooks is easy and can use canned beans. (This also indulges my other food obsession, the Moosewood cookbooks.)
2 c. diced onions (about 1 large)
1 c. peeled and diced carrots (2-3 medium)
4 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1 T. olive oil
15 large fresh sage leaves (or other herbs)
6 c. cooked pinto, Roman, or small red or white beans (either 3 cans, undrained, or 2 cups dried beans, cooked)
3-4 c. vegetable stock, bean-cooking liquid, or water
salt and pepper to taste
*Beans: 3 15 or 16 oz. cans, undrained. Or, 2 c. dried beans yields about 6 c. cooked.
In a soup pot, saute the onions, carrots, and garlic in the olive oil on medium-low heat until the onions are translucent and the carrots are tender, about 10 minutes. Stack the sage leaves and cut them crosswise into thin strips. Stir the sage into the vegetables. Add the cooked beans and 3 c. of the stock or other liquid. Continue to cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the soup is hot and simmering, 5 to 10 minutes.
Carefully ladle about 3 c. of the soup into a blender and puree into smooth. Stir the puree back into the soup. (Using an immersion blender sparingly also works.) If you wish, add more liquid for a less thick consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste. If necessary, gently reheat the soup. Serve hot.
* Marinated Lima Beans
I found this in a cookbook with the delightful title Cool Beans; and it is dead simple. It starts from dried beans, so it'll take a while, but it's pretty damn good, and most of the work is just letting something sit on the stove in a pot.
2 cups dried lima beans, soaked several hours or overnight (I started soaking them at 9 am and started cooking them at about 5 pm, and it worked perfect)
2 bay leaves
1 piece of dried kombu seaweed
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
chopped parsley, if you want
Dump the beans, kombu and bay leaves in a pot and cover them with enough water to cover by 2 inches. Bring that to a boil and boil the hell out of it for 2 minutes, skimming off the scum; then reduce heat to low and simmer for about an hour until the beans are tender. Fish out the bay leaves and kombu (the kombu may fall apart as you're doing it, just keep picking out the pieces if it does). Then, dump the beans into a colander to drain out most of the water; then dump beans immediately back into the pot. You want a LITTLE water still sticking to the beans. Add the oil, vinegar, and red pepper flakes, and stir everything kind of fast for about 30 seconds; the water still clinging to the beans will help emulsify the oil and vinegar into a sauce. Stir in the chopped parsley and you're done.
You can serve that over rice or any other grain, as a side dish to anything you want, or serve leftovers cold on a bed of lettuce. It is surprisingly good and I've been living off it for a few days now.
* Phillipine Mung Beans in Coconut Milk
This is another Moosewood thing that I've been living off for a while now.
1 1/2 cups dried mung beans
1 -1 1/2 cup onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons fresh gingerroot, peeled and finely minced
1 -2 small fresh chili pepper, minced
5 -6 garlic cloves, minced
14 ounces coconut milk
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 cups finely chopped chard leaves, spinach or other tender leafy green (I used turnip greens when I made it)
1. Soak the beans in water for several hours or overnight. Drain, then dump into a pot with enough water to cover by 1 inch or so. Bring to a boil, then turn down heat and simmer them until tender (about 1 hour). Drain.
2. While the beans are cooking, saute the onions in the oil with salt. When translucent, add ginger, chiles, and garlic. Simmer on low heat for a few minutes.
3. Add the coconut milk to the ginger/chiles/garlic and simmer for 5 more minutes.
4. Combine the beans and the coconut milk mixture in a large pot. Add the soy sauce and greens, and cook until the greens wilt. Remove from heat and serve.
....I threw in some fresh shrimp as well when I added the greens, and that was good.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:32 AM on November 12, 2021 [31 favorites]
In regards to Frowner's point, if you are in the UK, what your "great-grandmother" (of course Pollan's fantasy past is really only that for the currently elderly, today's great-grandmothers grew up with the Beatles) ate was bread. A lot of bread. Often bread with adulterants. Maybe with some butter or cheese, with a tiny bit of meat on good days.
posted by tavella at 9:39 AM on November 12, 2021 [16 favorites]
posted by tavella at 9:39 AM on November 12, 2021 [16 favorites]
Not fast, but easy beans:
put some olive oil in a heavy pot. Slowly soften at least two cloves of garlic. At some point add some chili flakes. You know your chili best, between a teaspoon and a tablespoon worth. Let it all simmer, but do not let the garlic brown at all.
Now add a tin of tomatoes and some salt and pepper. Bring to a slow simmer.
Add a tin of beans, for this I like plain white or butter beans best, it's a color thing. Bring to a simmer.
Add about 250 grams/ half a pound of frozen spinach. Bring to a simmer. When the spinach is thawed, season to taste with salt and pepper.
This whole part takes ten minuts, and the stew/soupy thing will be edible. But let it cook very slowly for half an hour or more, seasoning carefully on the way, and it will gradually improve considerably. Maybe add a few drops of balsamic vinegar or apple cider vinegar for extra flavor. Keep the lid on, you don't want to loose too much moisture. Don't stir too much, it is visually more pleasing if the spinach remains separated into islands in the sea of tomatoes and beans, and it is also interesting from a taste point of view.
Eat when you can't wait any longer, with a bit of good bread. Cheap, healthy, easy student food that grownups like too.
This is a basic recipe where you can improvise by adding different other green vegetables. My favorite is okra.
posted by mumimor at 9:45 AM on November 12, 2021 [10 favorites]
put some olive oil in a heavy pot. Slowly soften at least two cloves of garlic. At some point add some chili flakes. You know your chili best, between a teaspoon and a tablespoon worth. Let it all simmer, but do not let the garlic brown at all.
Now add a tin of tomatoes and some salt and pepper. Bring to a slow simmer.
Add a tin of beans, for this I like plain white or butter beans best, it's a color thing. Bring to a simmer.
Add about 250 grams/ half a pound of frozen spinach. Bring to a simmer. When the spinach is thawed, season to taste with salt and pepper.
This whole part takes ten minuts, and the stew/soupy thing will be edible. But let it cook very slowly for half an hour or more, seasoning carefully on the way, and it will gradually improve considerably. Maybe add a few drops of balsamic vinegar or apple cider vinegar for extra flavor. Keep the lid on, you don't want to loose too much moisture. Don't stir too much, it is visually more pleasing if the spinach remains separated into islands in the sea of tomatoes and beans, and it is also interesting from a taste point of view.
Eat when you can't wait any longer, with a bit of good bread. Cheap, healthy, easy student food that grownups like too.
This is a basic recipe where you can improvise by adding different other green vegetables. My favorite is okra.
posted by mumimor at 9:45 AM on November 12, 2021 [10 favorites]
You know, if you take a poisson distribution (e.g.) of calories in for the population of the world, and just make it so that the whole thing shifts to the left, the peak would shift so that most people would eating a lower number/healthier number.
The fact that a giant chunk of people represented in the left part of the curve would end up starving -- just like the good old days -- is just extra.
The best part is it could just happen without any real effort.
posted by amtho at 9:46 AM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
The fact that a giant chunk of people represented in the left part of the curve would end up starving -- just like the good old days -- is just extra.
The best part is it could just happen without any real effort.
posted by amtho at 9:46 AM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
A hundred years ago diners didn't exist
Wait, what? They absolutely did, lol.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:57 AM on November 12, 2021 [44 favorites]
Wait, what? They absolutely did, lol.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:57 AM on November 12, 2021 [44 favorites]
(They had fast-service lunch counters in Pompeii, friends.)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:58 AM on November 12, 2021 [99 favorites]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:58 AM on November 12, 2021 [99 favorites]
....now I have decided that I'm going to cook up some beans for that Tuscan Bean Soup this weekend.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:58 AM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:58 AM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
My mother and grandmother both cooked with fresh vegetables. And they boiled the living fuck out of them, as did their friends and neighbors. That was how regular folks cooked back in this far-flung nostalgic past.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:59 AM on November 12, 2021 [23 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 9:59 AM on November 12, 2021 [23 favorites]
Ooh and now that we are to the part in the thread of posting bean recipes I will share a cached WaPo link to MY favorite Tuscan bean soup which is Samin Nosrat's Tuscan Bean and Kale Soup from the Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat cookbook. Although the cookbook is designed to teach you to cook without a recipe, it does include some structured recipes and this is my favorite one. The parmesan plus the small amount of bacon/pancetta puts it over the top.
posted by rogerroger at 10:03 AM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by rogerroger at 10:03 AM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
My great-grandparents were dirt farmers and casual laborers and lived on biscuits and boiled potatoes, and they were still heavyset.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:06 AM on November 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:06 AM on November 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
At least one of my great-grandmothers was a very rich lady who lived on gin and literally instructed her household staff to monitor my already very thin grandmother's food consumption so she would stay even more thin. Said grandmother would go on to live on cigarettes and gin herself (+/- the occasional handful of cocktail peanuts between tennis games at the club) and would pass on the same incisive commentary onto her daugthers and granddaughters (only the girls, never the boys).
Truly the eating disorders in the family date back at least a century and a half at this point (says the odd fat lady in the family)
posted by thivaia at 10:18 AM on November 12, 2021 [14 favorites]
Truly the eating disorders in the family date back at least a century and a half at this point (says the odd fat lady in the family)
posted by thivaia at 10:18 AM on November 12, 2021 [14 favorites]
Also for what it's worth I always think it's weird that stuff like go-gurt and goldfish crackers get trotted out as the exemplars of food our great grandmothers etc. would not recognize as food. I mean...what? My great grandmother almost certainly knew what both yogurt and crackers are. And she almost certainly was familiar with the clever names given to things by marketers--like diners, marketing has absolutely existed for longer than 100 years!
If handed a go-gurt, great grandma Julie might very well have said, "that's a silly name" and she would be correct, but she'd also fucking know it is a yogurt, what the heck.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:21 AM on November 12, 2021 [35 favorites]
If handed a go-gurt, great grandma Julie might very well have said, "that's a silly name" and she would be correct, but she'd also fucking know it is a yogurt, what the heck.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:21 AM on November 12, 2021 [35 favorites]
Pollan's takes give me the same rage twitch I get when I hear Alice Waters lamenting about how most people don't make time consuming fresh ingredient meals daily. Shut the fuck up with the sanctimonious bullshit that ignores material realities of life.
posted by Ferreous at 10:35 AM on November 12, 2021 [18 favorites]
posted by Ferreous at 10:35 AM on November 12, 2021 [18 favorites]
I think the bedrock is obviously the quality of the food. That's the main point. The Grandmother thing is incidental, it doesn't matter who's cooking it.
I mean. Damn.
I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but you managed to encapsulate a lot about what's wrong with the great-grandmother argument in this statement. Because it does actually matter that this great-grandmother of legend was an actual person who did a lot of labor she may have hated in order to hold up this supposedly superior dietary system. Or if she was lucky enough, she paid a poorer woman to do it. Those women did matter and that's kind of the point of the argument. It's not "incidental" that they were doing this labor.
posted by lunasol at 10:37 AM on November 12, 2021 [45 favorites]
I mean. Damn.
I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but you managed to encapsulate a lot about what's wrong with the great-grandmother argument in this statement. Because it does actually matter that this great-grandmother of legend was an actual person who did a lot of labor she may have hated in order to hold up this supposedly superior dietary system. Or if she was lucky enough, she paid a poorer woman to do it. Those women did matter and that's kind of the point of the argument. It's not "incidental" that they were doing this labor.
posted by lunasol at 10:37 AM on November 12, 2021 [45 favorites]
I suspect a lot of people's "100 years ago" clock is still set in their heads for, like, 100 years since 1970 or something like that and not 100 years ago from 2021. (Note that Wikipedia says the first proto-diner was 1872, in the form of a horse pulled wagon. So even setting the clock at 1970, diners aren't that novel...)
posted by jzb at 10:40 AM on November 12, 2021 [10 favorites]
posted by jzb at 10:40 AM on November 12, 2021 [10 favorites]
I'm more with everythings_interrelated - it requires multiple leaps to get from "eat mostly plants" and "stay away from artificial ingredients" to snarking at Pollan because of the (indisputable) problems of earlier household cultures and expectations.
Clarence Birdseye was a freaking genius with his development of easy-to-cook frozen veggies like the ones in my own freezer, and I've also got a bunch of unadulterated canned veggies in my cupboard and my earthquake stash. It's not oppressing householders nor food conglomerate employees to say it's better to avoid feeding our young'uns Oreos or any Pepperidge Farm product, especially when there are so many healthy, easy-to-prepare-and-serve options available.
Even after the shittiest day at work I or anyone can make a cheap, healthy dinner that contains no artificial additives in just a couple of minutes. It may not be the ideal of what Michael Pollan and Alice Waters are advocating, but snarking at him for being a thin white guy and having formulated what is a damn good shorthand way to think about what I put in my cart when I go to the grocery store is, just, why?
posted by PhineasGage at 10:42 AM on November 12, 2021 [19 favorites]
Clarence Birdseye was a freaking genius with his development of easy-to-cook frozen veggies like the ones in my own freezer, and I've also got a bunch of unadulterated canned veggies in my cupboard and my earthquake stash. It's not oppressing householders nor food conglomerate employees to say it's better to avoid feeding our young'uns Oreos or any Pepperidge Farm product, especially when there are so many healthy, easy-to-prepare-and-serve options available.
Even after the shittiest day at work I or anyone can make a cheap, healthy dinner that contains no artificial additives in just a couple of minutes. It may not be the ideal of what Michael Pollan and Alice Waters are advocating, but snarking at him for being a thin white guy and having formulated what is a damn good shorthand way to think about what I put in my cart when I go to the grocery store is, just, why?
posted by PhineasGage at 10:42 AM on November 12, 2021 [19 favorites]
Have a core dump.
One good thing from Pollan so you don't have to read him. Probably from The Omnivore's Dilemma. "People used to eat according to pleasure and custom." He was fulminating about how much eating was driven by fads, and I think he had a point even though he's one of the fads though one of the less extreme fads.
I was pretty much done with Pollan when he talking about not spending less than $7 a dozen for eggs. I could afford that, but at the time and living in a food jungle (opposite of a food desert) part of Philadelphia, I couldn't *find* eggs that cost so much. Since then, there's more variety and some inflation, so I can get $7/dozen eggs, but I still doubt he knows what he's talking about a lot of the time.
I like my farmer's market fresh veggies, but I suspect frozen is almost as good for many veggies and easier on the environment.
And yes, home cooked from scratch food isn't a moral requirement.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 10:44 AM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
One good thing from Pollan so you don't have to read him. Probably from The Omnivore's Dilemma. "People used to eat according to pleasure and custom." He was fulminating about how much eating was driven by fads, and I think he had a point even though he's one of the fads though one of the less extreme fads.
I was pretty much done with Pollan when he talking about not spending less than $7 a dozen for eggs. I could afford that, but at the time and living in a food jungle (opposite of a food desert) part of Philadelphia, I couldn't *find* eggs that cost so much. Since then, there's more variety and some inflation, so I can get $7/dozen eggs, but I still doubt he knows what he's talking about a lot of the time.
I like my farmer's market fresh veggies, but I suspect frozen is almost as good for many veggies and easier on the environment.
And yes, home cooked from scratch food isn't a moral requirement.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 10:44 AM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
Even after the shittiest day at work I or anyone can
If you find yourself projecting from what you can do to what anyone can do, just stop.
There are many, many complicating factors in people's lives that range from what foods are easy to acquire, what foods are easy to acquire given their financial situation (e.g., food stamps), whether they're feeding themselves or a household including picky kids... working one job or three and their physical and mental health.
The objection to Pollan and others is, in part, that they handwave away everything and not everybody lives like them or thinks like them or has the same resources or priorities.
posted by jzb at 10:50 AM on November 12, 2021 [49 favorites]
If you find yourself projecting from what you can do to what anyone can do, just stop.
There are many, many complicating factors in people's lives that range from what foods are easy to acquire, what foods are easy to acquire given their financial situation (e.g., food stamps), whether they're feeding themselves or a household including picky kids... working one job or three and their physical and mental health.
The objection to Pollan and others is, in part, that they handwave away everything and not everybody lives like them or thinks like them or has the same resources or priorities.
posted by jzb at 10:50 AM on November 12, 2021 [49 favorites]
@rogerroger....Sorry, I did not intend to equate thin with pretty. In the few pictures there are of her, my grandma was still pretty when she got fat. But when I knew her she was old and had a hard working life. I am almost as fat as my grandma was at the same age, but I am not bad looking. I have seen plenty of people who are both thin and ugly at any age. My grandmother was a kind, beautiful human being all her life.
posted by mermayd at 10:51 AM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by mermayd at 10:51 AM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
Highly processing foods are just a way to shift labor elsewhere.
Yes, to machines. Which don't suffer. I suspect in terms of human exploitation, corn syrup, product of a chain of extremely mechanized farms and factories, has less human pain per ounce than sugar from sugar cane. Which is not to ignore other costs in that mechanized chain, but all those fresh "plants" that Pollan suggests as the basis of diet were almost certainly picked by badly treated farmworkers. Even the shiny organic ones.
posted by tavella at 10:52 AM on November 12, 2021 [13 favorites]
Yes, to machines. Which don't suffer. I suspect in terms of human exploitation, corn syrup, product of a chain of extremely mechanized farms and factories, has less human pain per ounce than sugar from sugar cane. Which is not to ignore other costs in that mechanized chain, but all those fresh "plants" that Pollan suggests as the basis of diet were almost certainly picked by badly treated farmworkers. Even the shiny organic ones.
posted by tavella at 10:52 AM on November 12, 2021 [13 favorites]
The funny thing about the goldfish crackers - when I was a kid, my great-aunt lived downtown in the teeniest tiniest studio condo in a very posh building. (She bought during the real estate crash; it was a great building, fully staffed, little grocery store, tres recherche, in the basement, little restaurant on the plaza, and she was able to stay there until the end of her life because of those things.)
Anyway. We'd go there for a fancy lunch every so often - upscale cold cuts, fancy bread, specialist pickles, torte for dessert. Before lunch we'd have various nibbles...and among them, the goldfish crackers, which were not then especially a toddler food.
posted by Frowner at 10:53 AM on November 12, 2021 [10 favorites]
Anyway. We'd go there for a fancy lunch every so often - upscale cold cuts, fancy bread, specialist pickles, torte for dessert. Before lunch we'd have various nibbles...and among them, the goldfish crackers, which were not then especially a toddler food.
posted by Frowner at 10:53 AM on November 12, 2021 [10 favorites]
Highly processing foods are just a way to shift labor elsewhere.
Yes, to machines. Which don't suffer.
Don't you think there are humans working at those plants with the machines? Underpaid workers, who can't even go out to pee because it will stop the conveyor belt, and have to wear diapers, for instance.
posted by mumimor at 10:55 AM on November 12, 2021 [15 favorites]
Yes, to machines. Which don't suffer.
Don't you think there are humans working at those plants with the machines? Underpaid workers, who can't even go out to pee because it will stop the conveyor belt, and have to wear diapers, for instance.
posted by mumimor at 10:55 AM on November 12, 2021 [15 favorites]
In general field corn harvest and processing has relatively few human interventions, compared to sugar cane which still has a substantial amount of manual harvest. And certainly compared to vegetable and fruit harvests for the table, which are still vastly human-done and I can assure you have all the issues you are worried about to a vastly larger scale.
posted by tavella at 11:01 AM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by tavella at 11:01 AM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
Of course, I have the benefit of learning how to make it from my mother, who did make all our bread growing up and learned how to make it from my grandfather.
I think being taught/exposed to dough work probably does some heavy lifting. My dad made bread off and on throughout my childhood. Not a lot of it or consistently, so we still bought a lot of our bread. But I had minimal exposure to how water and dough interact.
I probably do more from scratch cooking than my parents, but I also don't have kids. They did cook from scratch often enough that I'm generally comfortable trying new recipes. If something has gone wrong I can start to triage: is this something that will make it inedible, is it fixable/how to do that, or is it not perfect, but just fine?
My husband is (more than) competent in the kitchen for a lot of things. But he'd never really worked with dough before. So the first time he tried making ravioli...there was an existential crisis.
After a lot of YouTubing, practice, and a bit of input from me, he's got some pasta and bread recipes he can whip up easily.
So I think a lot people could eventually get to bread is easy, but the process of getting there may not itself be easy (and not everyone wants to, which is fine too).
posted by ghost phoneme at 11:03 AM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
I think being taught/exposed to dough work probably does some heavy lifting. My dad made bread off and on throughout my childhood. Not a lot of it or consistently, so we still bought a lot of our bread. But I had minimal exposure to how water and dough interact.
I probably do more from scratch cooking than my parents, but I also don't have kids. They did cook from scratch often enough that I'm generally comfortable trying new recipes. If something has gone wrong I can start to triage: is this something that will make it inedible, is it fixable/how to do that, or is it not perfect, but just fine?
My husband is (more than) competent in the kitchen for a lot of things. But he'd never really worked with dough before. So the first time he tried making ravioli...there was an existential crisis.
After a lot of YouTubing, practice, and a bit of input from me, he's got some pasta and bread recipes he can whip up easily.
So I think a lot people could eventually get to bread is easy, but the process of getting there may not itself be easy (and not everyone wants to, which is fine too).
posted by ghost phoneme at 11:03 AM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
Even after the shittiest day at work I or anyone can make a cheap, healthy dinner that contains no artificial additives in just a couple of minutes.
I'm sorry, but even I, someone who has admitted to loving the fuck out of cooking, still has no earthly idea what "cheap, healthy dinner" would take "just a couple minutes", unless you're eating nothing more than a handful of raw carrots.
I'm dying to know more specifically what you're thinking about when you say this. What goes into this cheap, healthy dinner?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:22 AM on November 12, 2021 [40 favorites]
I'm sorry, but even I, someone who has admitted to loving the fuck out of cooking, still has no earthly idea what "cheap, healthy dinner" would take "just a couple minutes", unless you're eating nothing more than a handful of raw carrots.
I'm dying to know more specifically what you're thinking about when you say this. What goes into this cheap, healthy dinner?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:22 AM on November 12, 2021 [40 favorites]
Please stop with the sanctimony. Anyone can open a package of vegetables as easily as they can open a container of something much less healthy.
I don't even know where to start with this. You do know that the difference is what has to happen after the package is opened, right? You can't just throw a kid a pile of raw brussels sprouts and call it dinner.
Look at this point I'm basically Metafilter's resident noncooker, and I am more than aware that it's possible to eat a halfway-decent diet without really cooking anything (not that I do, particularly, because where is the fun in that). But the tradeoffs are more or less ironclad:
-easy and healthy but not cheap
-cheap and healthy but not easy
-easy and cheap but not healthy
That's what you got. It's the iron triangle.
There is absolutely a difference in time and effort between a complete, prepared meal that is processed vs "a package of vegetables," which is incomplete as a meal, likely inedible without additional time and effort, and honestly probably not that much more affordable.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:23 AM on November 12, 2021 [51 favorites]
I don't even know where to start with this. You do know that the difference is what has to happen after the package is opened, right? You can't just throw a kid a pile of raw brussels sprouts and call it dinner.
Look at this point I'm basically Metafilter's resident noncooker, and I am more than aware that it's possible to eat a halfway-decent diet without really cooking anything (not that I do, particularly, because where is the fun in that). But the tradeoffs are more or less ironclad:
-easy and healthy but not cheap
-cheap and healthy but not easy
-easy and cheap but not healthy
That's what you got. It's the iron triangle.
There is absolutely a difference in time and effort between a complete, prepared meal that is processed vs "a package of vegetables," which is incomplete as a meal, likely inedible without additional time and effort, and honestly probably not that much more affordable.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:23 AM on November 12, 2021 [51 favorites]
I'm basically Metafilter's resident noncooker, challenge accepted
posted by supermedusa at 11:33 AM on November 12, 2021 [13 favorites]
posted by supermedusa at 11:33 AM on November 12, 2021 [13 favorites]
Also, one hundred years ago is 1921.
I think there's a tendency to underestimate the modernity of the 19th and early 20th centuries. My periodization is vague, here, but women were doing pink/white collar jobs by the end of the 19th century, lunch carts and diners and food for men working away from home were extremely institutionalized, a lot of people lived in boardinghouses and ate many meals out or had them catered, not always in luxury, by the landlady. Canned food more or less as we know it dates back to the early 19th century. Even before that, people weren't literally making everything from scratch, even in the country. You might well buy your bread, or take your dough to the baker's to bake, or bring your meat somewhere to be cooked, or buy it cooked.
Yep, this isn't my field, but I think the 'industrialization of food' started with commercial canning and preserving at the beginning of the 19th century. Boarding houses or residential hotels provided room and board, and most single people lived in single rooms, ate bread and butter for breakfast and had most meals cooked by others. And cafes, in cities, were EVERYWHERE.
Even in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, people ate in ordinaries or pubs, or bought pies or other 'takeout' food from stalls. Kitchens were expensive, hot and dangerous (fire!) and were usually built in outbuildings. The baker would put a chicken or a roast in the oven for you, for a fee, and then you'd pick it up and carry it home.
The bucolic farm life may have been common in the USA, but not in a lot of other places.
posted by jrochest at 11:34 AM on November 12, 2021 [20 favorites]
I think there's a tendency to underestimate the modernity of the 19th and early 20th centuries. My periodization is vague, here, but women were doing pink/white collar jobs by the end of the 19th century, lunch carts and diners and food for men working away from home were extremely institutionalized, a lot of people lived in boardinghouses and ate many meals out or had them catered, not always in luxury, by the landlady. Canned food more or less as we know it dates back to the early 19th century. Even before that, people weren't literally making everything from scratch, even in the country. You might well buy your bread, or take your dough to the baker's to bake, or bring your meat somewhere to be cooked, or buy it cooked.
Yep, this isn't my field, but I think the 'industrialization of food' started with commercial canning and preserving at the beginning of the 19th century. Boarding houses or residential hotels provided room and board, and most single people lived in single rooms, ate bread and butter for breakfast and had most meals cooked by others. And cafes, in cities, were EVERYWHERE.
Even in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, people ate in ordinaries or pubs, or bought pies or other 'takeout' food from stalls. Kitchens were expensive, hot and dangerous (fire!) and were usually built in outbuildings. The baker would put a chicken or a roast in the oven for you, for a fee, and then you'd pick it up and carry it home.
The bucolic farm life may have been common in the USA, but not in a lot of other places.
posted by jrochest at 11:34 AM on November 12, 2021 [20 favorites]
Here is a cheap, healthy dinner that takes a couple of minutes! When I am well-organized and don't need to cook for anyone else, I often eat this kind of thing. But honestly, cognitive load, availability, individual preferences, need to cook for kids, etc, make this not ideal for everyone:
Some of the following:
Rye crackers (the big swedish kind that come in a wheel or Wasa)
Goat cheese, nut butter, pate, whatever is spreadable and reasonably wholesome
Baby carrots
Cherry tomatoes
Nuts, dried figs, dried apricots
Piece of fresh fruit
Alternatively, if you don't mind a sort of sweet dinner:
Bowl of greek or swedish yogurt with a little jam stirred in
Fresh fruit
Nuts, dried figs, dried apricots
We underestimate cognitive load and stress. Technically, yes, you can eat an easy healthy meal every night for a reasonable cost assuming that you don't have any picky eaters or serious dietary restrictions involved; no laws of physics prevent you. But if you've got ten million things on your mind or you're really stressed out, doesn't pizza sound better? It's delicious, soothing and requires no decision-making.
In theory, most people who are not in truly desperate circumstances could eat a fairly healthy meal every night, in the sense that it is possible to find fairly cheap food that doesn't require too much cooking and isn't bad for you. But stress and responsibilities make that hard, plus if you're having a bad time food is probably one of the few pleasures you have, and while of course one might have been brought up to prefer a small portion of sashimi and some pomegranate seeds rather than a burger, most people find the most pleasure in salt/fat/sweet/carb, etc.
My point is that probably helping people to eat healthily isn't just making sure that everyone has rye crackers and figs available, it's giving people enough time, health and security that they can really make food choices from a place of happiness and freedom.
posted by Frowner at 11:36 AM on November 12, 2021 [33 favorites]
Some of the following:
Rye crackers (the big swedish kind that come in a wheel or Wasa)
Goat cheese, nut butter, pate, whatever is spreadable and reasonably wholesome
Baby carrots
Cherry tomatoes
Nuts, dried figs, dried apricots
Piece of fresh fruit
Alternatively, if you don't mind a sort of sweet dinner:
Bowl of greek or swedish yogurt with a little jam stirred in
Fresh fruit
Nuts, dried figs, dried apricots
We underestimate cognitive load and stress. Technically, yes, you can eat an easy healthy meal every night for a reasonable cost assuming that you don't have any picky eaters or serious dietary restrictions involved; no laws of physics prevent you. But if you've got ten million things on your mind or you're really stressed out, doesn't pizza sound better? It's delicious, soothing and requires no decision-making.
In theory, most people who are not in truly desperate circumstances could eat a fairly healthy meal every night, in the sense that it is possible to find fairly cheap food that doesn't require too much cooking and isn't bad for you. But stress and responsibilities make that hard, plus if you're having a bad time food is probably one of the few pleasures you have, and while of course one might have been brought up to prefer a small portion of sashimi and some pomegranate seeds rather than a burger, most people find the most pleasure in salt/fat/sweet/carb, etc.
My point is that probably helping people to eat healthily isn't just making sure that everyone has rye crackers and figs available, it's giving people enough time, health and security that they can really make food choices from a place of happiness and freedom.
posted by Frowner at 11:36 AM on November 12, 2021 [33 favorites]
What this made me think about was the enormous variation in how our great grandparents ate, even assuming we were all the same age...
Communal cooking in various forms is both a cultural tradition in many contexts, and also a policy choice or radical mutual aid project in several historical contexts. So for some, our great-grandmothers could have had more egalitarian food ways than we do. Doesn't mean the food was that great. I regularly give thanks for the lucky happenstance that I was born middle class in California instead of in rural Scotland or small town Eastern Europe as my great grandparents were. The food was pretty fucking boring and bland in those contexts. And as hte author mentions, also nutritionally limited.
However you want to frame it symbolically, I think there's pretty good evidence that fewer chemicals and added sugars, and more variation, is generally 'better' nutritionally, even if the benefits are over-hyped. But the focus on our individual consumer choices over massive flaws in our food system is a problem ripe for critique.
posted by latkes at 11:38 AM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
Communal cooking in various forms is both a cultural tradition in many contexts, and also a policy choice or radical mutual aid project in several historical contexts. So for some, our great-grandmothers could have had more egalitarian food ways than we do. Doesn't mean the food was that great. I regularly give thanks for the lucky happenstance that I was born middle class in California instead of in rural Scotland or small town Eastern Europe as my great grandparents were. The food was pretty fucking boring and bland in those contexts. And as hte author mentions, also nutritionally limited.
However you want to frame it symbolically, I think there's pretty good evidence that fewer chemicals and added sugars, and more variation, is generally 'better' nutritionally, even if the benefits are over-hyped. But the focus on our individual consumer choices over massive flaws in our food system is a problem ripe for critique.
posted by latkes at 11:38 AM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
Man, now I want some "stompin' bread"!
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:39 AM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:39 AM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
Also, I think the metrics on "not bad for you" get shifted around so much that it gets exhausting. Like, I remember when the FDA or whomever went from recommending five servings of fruits and vegetables every day to ten, and I just about cried because I had finally adjusted my diet such that I was getting five pretty much every day. And then all the messaging that whoops, dairy is bad for you, better drink oat milk, except oat milk is expensive and doesn't have any protein to speak of, and eggs, are eggs good or bad?
And "macros", etc etc etc, and one gets the impression that "not bad for you" consists of about five foods, all of which taste like cardboard, cost 10.99 a pound and can only be prepared by sous vide.
posted by Frowner at 11:42 AM on November 12, 2021 [23 favorites]
And "macros", etc etc etc, and one gets the impression that "not bad for you" consists of about five foods, all of which taste like cardboard, cost 10.99 a pound and can only be prepared by sous vide.
posted by Frowner at 11:42 AM on November 12, 2021 [23 favorites]
My great grandmother almost certainly knew what both yogurt and crackers are.
My own great-grandmother (1884-1981) was apparently a little vague on the distinction between bread and biscuits/crackers. She knew of course that bread dried out after a few days but money was tight as a young widow with five daughters to raise and I gather that crackers were a rare purchase in that household. I have heard she was not above scolding grocers of they sold her a box of crackers that turned out to be crisp and hard. She wanted them soft, by gum.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:48 AM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
My own great-grandmother (1884-1981) was apparently a little vague on the distinction between bread and biscuits/crackers. She knew of course that bread dried out after a few days but money was tight as a young widow with five daughters to raise and I gather that crackers were a rare purchase in that household. I have heard she was not above scolding grocers of they sold her a box of crackers that turned out to be crisp and hard. She wanted them soft, by gum.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:48 AM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
I suspect in terms of human exploitation, corn syrup, product of a chain of extremely mechanized farms and factories, has less human pain per ounce than sugar from sugar cane.
Corn definitely involves a lot less particulate matter in the form of smoke blanketing downwind cities for a couple of weeks a year when they're burning the fields. How the rest of it balances out, I can't say. I just know that when I lived near corn fields everything was either chopped up as silage for cows or the leftover stalks after harvesting the ears were chopped and either left until being plowed under next year or immediately plowed under depending on the specific farmer's preference.
posted by wierdo at 11:51 AM on November 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
Corn definitely involves a lot less particulate matter in the form of smoke blanketing downwind cities for a couple of weeks a year when they're burning the fields. How the rest of it balances out, I can't say. I just know that when I lived near corn fields everything was either chopped up as silage for cows or the leftover stalks after harvesting the ears were chopped and either left until being plowed under next year or immediately plowed under depending on the specific farmer's preference.
posted by wierdo at 11:51 AM on November 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
The bucolic farm life may have been common in the USA
It's not terribly bucolic, at least in Canada. Subsistence farming or "family" farms were frequently hard scrabble. I'm a generation/two generations off the farm. My aunts and uncles and grandparents left the farm because of food insecurity and the level of labour needed to raise meat animals and a few acres of potatoes/grain. Talking to my Chinese, Indian, North African and South American friends, they have similar family histories, in that respect.
posted by bonehead at 11:51 AM on November 12, 2021 [10 favorites]
It's not terribly bucolic, at least in Canada. Subsistence farming or "family" farms were frequently hard scrabble. I'm a generation/two generations off the farm. My aunts and uncles and grandparents left the farm because of food insecurity and the level of labour needed to raise meat animals and a few acres of potatoes/grain. Talking to my Chinese, Indian, North African and South American friends, they have similar family histories, in that respect.
posted by bonehead at 11:51 AM on November 12, 2021 [10 favorites]
I'm basically Metafilter's resident noncooker, challenge accepted
There are dozens of us, Michael! DOZENS!
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:55 AM on November 12, 2021 [18 favorites]
There are dozens of us, Michael! DOZENS!
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:55 AM on November 12, 2021 [18 favorites]
scolding grocers of they sold her a box of crackers that turned out to be crisp and hard. She wanted them soft.... so ricochet biscuits?
posted by zengargoyle at 11:55 AM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by zengargoyle at 11:55 AM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
If you mostly eat restaurant food or convenience food, you will be used to a lot of seasoning in your food that is very hard to match if you are an inexperienced cook. It is not easy to cook if you have never learnt it. On the other hand, if you are used to cooking, there is very little time and no money gained by convenience products and the gain in flavor is less than none.
I remember my ex bringing me a Knorr Bolognese package to try, and for me, the time I spent preparing and cooking it was the same as I usually spend, but the end-result was significantly worse. I also had the worst astma attack ever after tasting it. Staying on that theme, for me to buy a mornay sauce is ridiculous, it's expensive and has a weird taste, and I can whip one up in the same time as it takes to heat the can.
But: I know kids whose parents and grandparents are complete strangers to the kitchen, and stressed out by what I see as simple tasks. Those kids are not going to cook from scratch without a lot of coaching, and for years, that won't be fast. One young man I know who is otherwise very intelligent and creative was gobsmacked to see that anyone can cook lasagne at home. He had never even seen one not from a freezer.
Add to that: a lot of the recipes we can find online or in newspapers and magazines are complicated and not really tasty, because that industry is naturally driven by novelty and false assumptions about consumers rather than the real needs of human beings who eat. I have recommended Jack Monroe before, even though I disagree with some of their ideas, because the very real idea they have is that food needs to be healthy, cheap and easy to cook if one is a poor single provider.
Oh, and a final thing. It has been mentioned that our ancestors' food was bland, boring and with little variation. First of all I'm not sure that is entirely true, except for some populations. And again, it has more to do with skill than with money. Second, most people I have met actually prefer some stability. Not three identical meals seven days a week, but for example the same breakfast and tea every day, as mentioned in TFA, with lunch as the variable. I certainly enjoy having some staples that are repeated again and again.
posted by mumimor at 11:57 AM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
I remember my ex bringing me a Knorr Bolognese package to try, and for me, the time I spent preparing and cooking it was the same as I usually spend, but the end-result was significantly worse. I also had the worst astma attack ever after tasting it. Staying on that theme, for me to buy a mornay sauce is ridiculous, it's expensive and has a weird taste, and I can whip one up in the same time as it takes to heat the can.
But: I know kids whose parents and grandparents are complete strangers to the kitchen, and stressed out by what I see as simple tasks. Those kids are not going to cook from scratch without a lot of coaching, and for years, that won't be fast. One young man I know who is otherwise very intelligent and creative was gobsmacked to see that anyone can cook lasagne at home. He had never even seen one not from a freezer.
Add to that: a lot of the recipes we can find online or in newspapers and magazines are complicated and not really tasty, because that industry is naturally driven by novelty and false assumptions about consumers rather than the real needs of human beings who eat. I have recommended Jack Monroe before, even though I disagree with some of their ideas, because the very real idea they have is that food needs to be healthy, cheap and easy to cook if one is a poor single provider.
Oh, and a final thing. It has been mentioned that our ancestors' food was bland, boring and with little variation. First of all I'm not sure that is entirely true, except for some populations. And again, it has more to do with skill than with money. Second, most people I have met actually prefer some stability. Not three identical meals seven days a week, but for example the same breakfast and tea every day, as mentioned in TFA, with lunch as the variable. I certainly enjoy having some staples that are repeated again and again.
posted by mumimor at 11:57 AM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
One of my great-grandmothers grew up on, and fed her own family on bread and jam. The jam was mainly sugar and had colour added to make up for the fact that their wasn't much fruit. It was more sugar jelly. The bread was white. She worked out of the home, of course, just as most women without a baby at home did, and her cooking facilities were the same as the heating facilities, a tiny coal range in the parlour with a surface on top large enough to boil a kettle, so they drank tea with their bread and jam. There was no kitchen. They got the water for the tea from the faucet down the hall, same like everyone else in the building. If there was milk it was canned but they certainly didn't see that every week. Fruit and vegetables were regarded with suspicion because they give you the runs. Lettuce could easily be fatal. A much better choice was a cold meat pie bought from a shop. At least once a week they brought home fish and chips. Her grandmother had brought home boiled eel sold by a street vendor after being caught from an urban river that was ripe with sewage, a beloved delicacy because it set into a jelly that was half grease but by the time great-grandmother was preparing meals nothing alive was pulled out of that water.
Some weeks it was bread and jam for breakfast, dinner and tea, and not even the fish and chips on Friday, if too much of the pay packet went to the bills. They were all exceedingly skinny, and their teeth were terrible.
Before he got married one of my great grand-fathers ate every meal at a cook shop. It was mainly chops and potatoes or liver and potatoes. The liver was better than the chops. He couldn't afford to eat at the cook shop once he was married because he had a family to support. On the other hand he DID get a raise because he got married. Married men automatically were paid more than single chaps. His wife had a kitchen. That great grandmother fed her family on a lot of boiled rice, boiled turnip, boiled cabbage and boiled white fish, and fried bloaters that were so full of pork fat they could explode. The kids didn't get the sausage as it was considered indigestible until you reached puberty. They avoided potatoes and margarine because that was what poor people ate and they were not poor. They also eschewed any vegetables or fruit that was raw, but would serve it boiled or baked. Everything was cooked as soft as possible due to the bad teeth that this family also experienced. Sunday dinner was always a roast, with bread and dripping for two or three days after as it was too small for much in the line of meat leftovers. They mainstay of this family's diet was also white bread, delivered by the baker, two loaves a day. Bread in the evening was likely fried.
They were all exceedingly skinny also, and the children ground their teeth at night because somehow, somewhere, they had gotten pin worms. It wasn't from eating raw fruit.
Both of these families were concerned about how skinny the children were and how short they grew up, so the rule for their grandchildren which was "no tea or coffee before you are twenty". They would have loved to give their own children milk, but it wasn't economical, especially with no ice box. One great grandmother kept goats for their milk which she grazed on the railway line, something she could get away with because her husband worked for the railway. The milk was for the children, in case her own milk failed. Once the kids were weaned she got rid of the goats, with relief.
My ancestors grew up and lived in cities. The great-great grandmother who grew up on a dairy farm married a man who drank. Then she lived in a city too and ended up having to send her kids out to work when they were small. Three of those kids got into the Lilliputian Opera Company and were touring, performing in D'Oyle Carte up until they reached their teens. One was my great-grandmother, who married a man she barely knew when he was about to be shipped out in the war, and then spent the next five years with only letters from the other side of the ocean to build a relationship with him. Their firstborn died in the influenza pandemic before she was two years old, and he never met her.
The main take away from this diet was how monotonous it was and how they were all so skinny that they "had no resistance". By the thirties there were summer camps that the skinnier children got sent to, to try and fatten them up. My ancestors didn't get married until they were thirty and they were dead by the time they were sixty. They regarded being skinny as an undesirable thing. Plump people were not only healthy, but were notably jolly. Being fat protected you from melancholy. The reason grandmothers pinched kids cheeks was to reassure themselves that the kids were round and rosy.
posted by Jane the Brown at 12:10 PM on November 12, 2021 [66 favorites]
Some weeks it was bread and jam for breakfast, dinner and tea, and not even the fish and chips on Friday, if too much of the pay packet went to the bills. They were all exceedingly skinny, and their teeth were terrible.
Before he got married one of my great grand-fathers ate every meal at a cook shop. It was mainly chops and potatoes or liver and potatoes. The liver was better than the chops. He couldn't afford to eat at the cook shop once he was married because he had a family to support. On the other hand he DID get a raise because he got married. Married men automatically were paid more than single chaps. His wife had a kitchen. That great grandmother fed her family on a lot of boiled rice, boiled turnip, boiled cabbage and boiled white fish, and fried bloaters that were so full of pork fat they could explode. The kids didn't get the sausage as it was considered indigestible until you reached puberty. They avoided potatoes and margarine because that was what poor people ate and they were not poor. They also eschewed any vegetables or fruit that was raw, but would serve it boiled or baked. Everything was cooked as soft as possible due to the bad teeth that this family also experienced. Sunday dinner was always a roast, with bread and dripping for two or three days after as it was too small for much in the line of meat leftovers. They mainstay of this family's diet was also white bread, delivered by the baker, two loaves a day. Bread in the evening was likely fried.
They were all exceedingly skinny also, and the children ground their teeth at night because somehow, somewhere, they had gotten pin worms. It wasn't from eating raw fruit.
Both of these families were concerned about how skinny the children were and how short they grew up, so the rule for their grandchildren which was "no tea or coffee before you are twenty". They would have loved to give their own children milk, but it wasn't economical, especially with no ice box. One great grandmother kept goats for their milk which she grazed on the railway line, something she could get away with because her husband worked for the railway. The milk was for the children, in case her own milk failed. Once the kids were weaned she got rid of the goats, with relief.
My ancestors grew up and lived in cities. The great-great grandmother who grew up on a dairy farm married a man who drank. Then she lived in a city too and ended up having to send her kids out to work when they were small. Three of those kids got into the Lilliputian Opera Company and were touring, performing in D'Oyle Carte up until they reached their teens. One was my great-grandmother, who married a man she barely knew when he was about to be shipped out in the war, and then spent the next five years with only letters from the other side of the ocean to build a relationship with him. Their firstborn died in the influenza pandemic before she was two years old, and he never met her.
The main take away from this diet was how monotonous it was and how they were all so skinny that they "had no resistance". By the thirties there were summer camps that the skinnier children got sent to, to try and fatten them up. My ancestors didn't get married until they were thirty and they were dead by the time they were sixty. They regarded being skinny as an undesirable thing. Plump people were not only healthy, but were notably jolly. Being fat protected you from melancholy. The reason grandmothers pinched kids cheeks was to reassure themselves that the kids were round and rosy.
posted by Jane the Brown at 12:10 PM on November 12, 2021 [66 favorites]
And they boiled the living fuck out of them, as did their friends and neighbors.
Mmmm [Not] ... Hot lunch spinach.
posted by y2karl at 12:11 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
Mmmm [Not] ... Hot lunch spinach.
posted by y2karl at 12:11 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
Honestly Frowner, some of this might be location difference but that meal you described is NOT cheap, at least not where I am. Goat cheese, figs, nuts-- those are all expensive enough that even I, as a reasonably well-off hedonism bot, occasionally blanch a bit at buying them. (It's not as bad as cherries, for which I am fairly sure my grocery store conducts a credit check a la L'Idiot, but still.)
(It's still definitely quick and reasonably healthy, though.)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:13 PM on November 12, 2021 [11 favorites]
(It's still definitely quick and reasonably healthy, though.)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:13 PM on November 12, 2021 [11 favorites]
if you are used to cooking, there is very little time and no money gained by convenience products
For some things, perhaps. But I can assure you that boiling frozen ravioli and adding a jar of Classico is a enormous amount of time saving over making the ravioli and bolognese sauce by hand, even if I spend the time to jazz up the sauce with added veggies and spices. And that's even if we are not counting flour as a 'convenience product' (which it most certainly is, ask our ancestors who had to use quorns every day.) And unless I'm using high end Rana and Rao, I doubt it costs much more if you factor in food waste.
I'm perfectly fine at cooking, and enjoy it if not as an everyday thing. But I'm not going to pretend that it isn't work and time, even if you have the skills.
posted by tavella at 12:17 PM on November 12, 2021 [10 favorites]
For some things, perhaps. But I can assure you that boiling frozen ravioli and adding a jar of Classico is a enormous amount of time saving over making the ravioli and bolognese sauce by hand, even if I spend the time to jazz up the sauce with added veggies and spices. And that's even if we are not counting flour as a 'convenience product' (which it most certainly is, ask our ancestors who had to use quorns every day.) And unless I'm using high end Rana and Rao, I doubt it costs much more if you factor in food waste.
I'm perfectly fine at cooking, and enjoy it if not as an everyday thing. But I'm not going to pretend that it isn't work and time, even if you have the skills.
posted by tavella at 12:17 PM on November 12, 2021 [10 favorites]
A hundred years ago diners didn't exist
-Wait, what? They absolutely did, lol.
Only as lunch wagons for the vast majority, typically repurposing old horse trolley cars when they electrified trolleys, and often banned apparently. The modern diner, known as a diner, was mass produced as a prefab around 1917, and were modeled on former railroad dining cars, also relocated to niche lots in cities as very small buildings, hence the name coined by Tierney. They quickly spread out from the Northeastin the 1920's, highly dependent on car travelers. Previous to these new diners, dinner anywhere would likely be limited to one's boarding house.
posted by Brian B. at 12:20 PM on November 12, 2021
-Wait, what? They absolutely did, lol.
Only as lunch wagons for the vast majority, typically repurposing old horse trolley cars when they electrified trolleys, and often banned apparently. The modern diner, known as a diner, was mass produced as a prefab around 1917, and were modeled on former railroad dining cars, also relocated to niche lots in cities as very small buildings, hence the name coined by Tierney. They quickly spread out from the Northeastin the 1920's, highly dependent on car travelers. Previous to these new diners, dinner anywhere would likely be limited to one's boarding house.
posted by Brian B. at 12:20 PM on November 12, 2021
The modern diner, known as a diner, was mass produced as a prefab around 1917, . . .They quickly spread out from the Northeast around the 1920's
So...around/over 100 years ago. It is the year of our lord 2021, my dude.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:22 PM on November 12, 2021 [23 favorites]
So...around/over 100 years ago. It is the year of our lord 2021, my dude.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:22 PM on November 12, 2021 [23 favorites]
There are dozens of us, Michael! DOZENS!
Is that regular dozens, or baker’s dozens?
Never mind, I can guess.
posted by notoriety public at 12:23 PM on November 12, 2021
Is that regular dozens, or baker’s dozens?
Never mind, I can guess.
posted by notoriety public at 12:23 PM on November 12, 2021
I'll happily eat too thick dough or too big pierogi if only someone else makes the bloody things for me.
It only recently occurred to me that one could make pierogi at home, but I can't imagine ever doing so. So much work! I think I would get as far as the mashed potatoes and think, enh, good enough, let's eat.
(Then again, I rarely eat potatoes these days since they are so much more effort than rice or pasta.)
posted by jb at 12:36 PM on November 12, 2021
It only recently occurred to me that one could make pierogi at home, but I can't imagine ever doing so. So much work! I think I would get as far as the mashed potatoes and think, enh, good enough, let's eat.
(Then again, I rarely eat potatoes these days since they are so much more effort than rice or pasta.)
posted by jb at 12:36 PM on November 12, 2021
I mean, in the sense that there were not things called "diners" in 1890, sure, whatever, but there have been food stalls, food carts and small restaurants in metropolitan areas since for, like, ever, and especially since modern-ish office and factory work consolidated.
If those places were anything like my favorite restaurant in Shanghai circa 1996, not having refrigeration did not mean they didn't store stuff. It was just stored for a shorter time in the coolest available area and was reheated very thoroughly. Actually that was probably some of the most wholesome, additive-free food I've ever regularly eaten, since it was basically Things Mixed With Spices And Fried In A Giant Pan with very plain rice or noodles. Ah to be in Shanghai in 1996 eating a bowl of tiny vegetable wonton.
posted by Frowner at 12:39 PM on November 12, 2021 [13 favorites]
If those places were anything like my favorite restaurant in Shanghai circa 1996, not having refrigeration did not mean they didn't store stuff. It was just stored for a shorter time in the coolest available area and was reheated very thoroughly. Actually that was probably some of the most wholesome, additive-free food I've ever regularly eaten, since it was basically Things Mixed With Spices And Fried In A Giant Pan with very plain rice or noodles. Ah to be in Shanghai in 1996 eating a bowl of tiny vegetable wonton.
posted by Frowner at 12:39 PM on November 12, 2021 [13 favorites]
a lot of the recipes we can find online or in newspapers and magazines are complicated and not really tasty
As a general rule, I've found that at least doubling the garlic and other seasoning ingredients (including things like mirepoix/sofrito/etc. and vinegar; for salt it depends) vastly improves most of those recipes.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:40 PM on November 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
As a general rule, I've found that at least doubling the garlic and other seasoning ingredients (including things like mirepoix/sofrito/etc. and vinegar; for salt it depends) vastly improves most of those recipes.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:40 PM on November 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
Anyone who watches the great british baking show knows that bread is really fucking hard to make (and apparently makes for good drama!).
The bakers on GBBO knead everything by hand when that fuck-you big kitchenaid on the counter will do an entirely satisfactory job. I think this is 95% playing to the camera and/or judges and about 5% actual quality control.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:45 PM on November 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
The bakers on GBBO knead everything by hand when that fuck-you big kitchenaid on the counter will do an entirely satisfactory job. I think this is 95% playing to the camera and/or judges and about 5% actual quality control.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:45 PM on November 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
This is peripheral, of course, but a friend of mine was telling me about a big backyard barbecue a few months before his wedding. He and his fiancée had been together for a couple of years and their parents and assorted siblings had all met each other, but this was a big shindig for all the aunts/uncles/cousins and such on either side to meet.
Both he and his wife were thirtyish at the time and still had some grandparents around. He introduced these elders present to each other, but with a degree of formality consistent with their generation (all born late in the Victorian era — salutation and surname). He said it was not until he was introducing their respective maternal grandmothers to I’ve another that he realized that he was saying, “Mrs. Baker, this is Mrs. Cook; Mrs. Cook, this is Mrs. Baker.”
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:48 PM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
Both he and his wife were thirtyish at the time and still had some grandparents around. He introduced these elders present to each other, but with a degree of formality consistent with their generation (all born late in the Victorian era — salutation and surname). He said it was not until he was introducing their respective maternal grandmothers to I’ve another that he realized that he was saying, “Mrs. Baker, this is Mrs. Cook; Mrs. Cook, this is Mrs. Baker.”
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:48 PM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
I can't imagine ever doing so. So much work! I think I would get as far as the mashed potatoes and think, enh, good enough, let's eat.
The trick to homemade pierogi is having a pierogi making party*. Still time consuming, but the work is spread around and now you're hanging out with people you like (otherwise why would you be there?).
My uncle is smart, he doubles the amount of mashed potatoes he makes for Thanksgiving. The excess are used to make pierogi later that weekend. Usually his kids and some of the niblings helped. Sometimes family friends who grew up eating homemade but never learned would ask for a lesson.
But if that's not your jam no shame in store bought (Mrs. T's is our go to). It's one of those times where convenience can definitely save you time.
If you like the social aspect, but hate dough, you can still partake in pierogi making parties by being the designated taste tester and beer pourer.
*Sometimes I just like making pierogi on my own. Then I can eat my ugly ones before they are seen and my shame is hidden.
posted by ghost phoneme at 12:53 PM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
The trick to homemade pierogi is having a pierogi making party*. Still time consuming, but the work is spread around and now you're hanging out with people you like (otherwise why would you be there?).
My uncle is smart, he doubles the amount of mashed potatoes he makes for Thanksgiving. The excess are used to make pierogi later that weekend. Usually his kids and some of the niblings helped. Sometimes family friends who grew up eating homemade but never learned would ask for a lesson.
But if that's not your jam no shame in store bought (Mrs. T's is our go to). It's one of those times where convenience can definitely save you time.
If you like the social aspect, but hate dough, you can still partake in pierogi making parties by being the designated taste tester and beer pourer.
*Sometimes I just like making pierogi on my own. Then I can eat my ugly ones before they are seen and my shame is hidden.
posted by ghost phoneme at 12:53 PM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
Shepherd and I have made homemade pierogi at least twice in our 13 year marriage, and while it was fun and delicious, it was definitely not something I'd undertake on the regular. Like, I tend to definitely try my hand at food projects like pierogi, bagels, knishes, etc, but I am always always happy to buy store bought if they're vegan friendly!
posted by Kitteh at 12:57 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 12:57 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
The modern diner, known as a diner, was mass produced as a prefab around 1917, and were modeled on former railroad dining cars, also relocated to niche lots in cities as very small buildings, hence the name coined by Tierney.
They were made back in Worcester Mass of aluminum and bakalite and glass.
Fast food restaurant found in Pompeii
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:58 PM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
They were made back in Worcester Mass of aluminum and bakalite and glass.
Fast food restaurant found in Pompeii
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:58 PM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
I think pierogi are like tamales in that ideally you either make a LOT yourself at once and freeze them or you have a big group together and you all make tamales for everyone to take home. Probably like tamales you can sort of shorten the process by familiarity after you've done it a few times - I was making tamales a lot one year and it got to be fairly quick. It takes less time to get quick than to get truly good at shaping them, but I was at least making tamales that didn't leak. (A tamale secret from a friend's grandmother's recipe - chili and cumin in the dough itself. Not everyone does this and if you are, like me, sort of an ehhh tamale maker, the extra seasoning covers up a multitude of failings.)
In re bread, if you're looking for simple breads at home, make quick breads. They're easy and reliable, although better for toast and rustic/crumbly sandwiches than for dignified presentation. In fact, you could probably make, like, a cheese quick bread and just have that for dinner with some vegetables or a little spinach salad. Or scones! Cheese scones are great for dinner with vegetables. Scones are quick enough that you really can make them for dinner if you're at all confident with baking.
posted by Frowner at 12:59 PM on November 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
In re bread, if you're looking for simple breads at home, make quick breads. They're easy and reliable, although better for toast and rustic/crumbly sandwiches than for dignified presentation. In fact, you could probably make, like, a cheese quick bread and just have that for dinner with some vegetables or a little spinach salad. Or scones! Cheese scones are great for dinner with vegetables. Scones are quick enough that you really can make them for dinner if you're at all confident with baking.
posted by Frowner at 12:59 PM on November 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
I recall reading that when Britain began conscripting men to fight in the Great War, it was found that many, many men were too small and undernourished to meet the lowest standards of the army. These problems were not invented in the 1950s.
I wrote an essay years ago comparing the eating habits of the working classes in London and New York City c1900-1910. This is what I recall for the Brits: they lived off bread, (a little bit of) margarine and tea. They had almost no vegetables and little protein. Waged members of the family - the father, maybe an older child - were prioritized in terms of calories and what meat (generally on Sunday) or eggs there were; children and especially mothers did without. (Round About a Pound a Week, a contemporary study from 1913) is an excellent source on this, and is now available through Project Gutenberg.)
The New Yorkers seemed to eat a bit better, especially the Italian families (I remember them buying more vegetables like tomatoes and zucchini). Some of the London issues were cultural - Sunday roast was so important to try to have that they stinted themselves the rest of the week. But others were access and poverty. I recall reading about social reformers trying to get families to start eating oatmeal (very nutritious), but they didn't think about how families might only have the one pot that was hard to get clean and would still taste like last night's dinner.
Yeah, depending on where they lived, a lot of our great-grandparents didn't eat so well. Even rural people didn't always have enough. I did hear a seminar by an expert in 17th-18th century living standards who mentioned that the English lower class people were probably eating better in 1700 than we had thought. But one reason this was a surprise was that a lot of research relied on contemporary accounts from c1800 which described the lower classes as starving - which they were, thanks to war and high food prices.
Of my own great-grandmothers - well, one raised her kids in New York City in the 1930s and 40s, so I don't expect that she was getting much fresh or unprocessed food to start. This was the generation of the Ritz Cracker Apple Pie (absolutely no apples), and mock apple (cracker) pies apparently date back to the mid-19th century.
That said, back to the height issue for British soldiers in WWI: it's not just nutrition that affects childhood growth, but also the burden of disease. I read a great book recently on disease and climate in ancient Rome (The Fare of Rome (review)), and that noted that Romans were often quite small not primarily due to a lack of food but because of the serious disease burden of living in a pre-modern city. Even Roman engineering couldn't make up for lack of germ theory or anti-biotics.
posted by jb at 1:04 PM on November 12, 2021 [24 favorites]
I wrote an essay years ago comparing the eating habits of the working classes in London and New York City c1900-1910. This is what I recall for the Brits: they lived off bread, (a little bit of) margarine and tea. They had almost no vegetables and little protein. Waged members of the family - the father, maybe an older child - were prioritized in terms of calories and what meat (generally on Sunday) or eggs there were; children and especially mothers did without. (Round About a Pound a Week, a contemporary study from 1913) is an excellent source on this, and is now available through Project Gutenberg.)
The New Yorkers seemed to eat a bit better, especially the Italian families (I remember them buying more vegetables like tomatoes and zucchini). Some of the London issues were cultural - Sunday roast was so important to try to have that they stinted themselves the rest of the week. But others were access and poverty. I recall reading about social reformers trying to get families to start eating oatmeal (very nutritious), but they didn't think about how families might only have the one pot that was hard to get clean and would still taste like last night's dinner.
Yeah, depending on where they lived, a lot of our great-grandparents didn't eat so well. Even rural people didn't always have enough. I did hear a seminar by an expert in 17th-18th century living standards who mentioned that the English lower class people were probably eating better in 1700 than we had thought. But one reason this was a surprise was that a lot of research relied on contemporary accounts from c1800 which described the lower classes as starving - which they were, thanks to war and high food prices.
Of my own great-grandmothers - well, one raised her kids in New York City in the 1930s and 40s, so I don't expect that she was getting much fresh or unprocessed food to start. This was the generation of the Ritz Cracker Apple Pie (absolutely no apples), and mock apple (cracker) pies apparently date back to the mid-19th century.
That said, back to the height issue for British soldiers in WWI: it's not just nutrition that affects childhood growth, but also the burden of disease. I read a great book recently on disease and climate in ancient Rome (The Fare of Rome (review)), and that noted that Romans were often quite small not primarily due to a lack of food but because of the serious disease burden of living in a pre-modern city. Even Roman engineering couldn't make up for lack of germ theory or anti-biotics.
posted by jb at 1:04 PM on November 12, 2021 [24 favorites]
Of my eight great-grandparents, one died of some kind of reproductive cancer in her early 40s; another died of breast cancer in her late 50s; two of heart disease; two were South Boston alcoholics who ate mostly sausages and both died of stomach cancers. So whatever they were all eating, it either didn't matter or didn't help! I interviewed my grandmas for a school project and one grandma regularly ate salted lard sandwiches (and was sickly throughout childhood with frequent bouts of pneumonia - don't forget, everyone smoked indoors constantly); another one started drinking coffee as a toddler, probably because it helped curb hunger as they were extremely poor.
One great-grandma lived to 98 but she cooked and ate whatever they could get their hands on, as she was a single mother with three children during the Great Depression and was working cleaning houses to try to earn enough to get by. My guess is she'd probably have killed for a few boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese or canned soup. In her old age she regularly slipped my uncle cash so he'd smuggle a bottle of blackberry brandy into the nursing home, so fingers crossed I inherited that genetic line.
posted by castlebravo at 1:07 PM on November 12, 2021 [12 favorites]
One great-grandma lived to 98 but she cooked and ate whatever they could get their hands on, as she was a single mother with three children during the Great Depression and was working cleaning houses to try to earn enough to get by. My guess is she'd probably have killed for a few boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese or canned soup. In her old age she regularly slipped my uncle cash so he'd smuggle a bottle of blackberry brandy into the nursing home, so fingers crossed I inherited that genetic line.
posted by castlebravo at 1:07 PM on November 12, 2021 [12 favorites]
In addition to the points Virginia Sole-Smith made, I'm also well aware that eating as my great-grandparents did would involve consuming a huge proportion of foods that are salt-cured or smoked -- methods of food processing that aren't exactly 'healthy' compared to other, more modern forms of food processing that Pollan wants us to move away from.
So I'm going to say no, thank you, Michael Pollan. I don't want to die of gastric cancer like many of those previous generations did.
(This isn't to say that I don't enjoy salt-cured and smoked things in moderation or that I don't like a lot of stuff Pollan has written)
posted by theory at 1:09 PM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
So I'm going to say no, thank you, Michael Pollan. I don't want to die of gastric cancer like many of those previous generations did.
(This isn't to say that I don't enjoy salt-cured and smoked things in moderation or that I don't like a lot of stuff Pollan has written)
posted by theory at 1:09 PM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
For some things, perhaps. But I can assure you that boiling frozen ravioli and adding a jar of Classico is a enormous amount of time saving over making the ravioli and bolognese sauce by hand, even if I spend the time to jazz up the sauce with added veggies and spices.
The thing is, I just don't see bolognese as a weeknight dinner. It is a slow-cooked or pressure-cooked slow food. There are thousands of other options for a Thursday. But that is just another aspect of cooking from scratch. You need to know the options, relative to your situation, and also to have a repetoire that fits with all the changing seasons and all the other conditions, like your geographical region and your income and your kitchen as well as your other workload. This is not a criticism of you, more a confirmation that cooking the Pollan way is not something anyone can do from day one. You need knowledge to feed your family, and many people don't have that knowledge.
From a feminist point of view, this is also about how married women's housework is not acknowledged as a profession. I think what I learnt from my maternal grandmother, mentioned above, was that since cooking was something she was educated in and worked at, she was always proudly aware of her life as a housewife as a profession, not a chore and goddammit not a calling. She actually demanded my granddad paid her a living wage, and he did.
This thread has inspired me to think about an other dimension of the whole knowledge aspect of householding. I wonder if the great migrations, starting in the 18th century but accelerated in the 19th and 20th centuries, also cut people off from the knowledge of householding. I once read a book (I can't find it, sorry), that painted a very bleak picture of the immigrants to America in the last part of the 19th century, who suffered terribly because they were completely unequipped to survive on the prairies. Far from the Laura Ingalls hardship romance, thousands of people never overcame the hardships. They just died of starvation, or turned to crime (for the men) or prostitution (for the women). Migrations from rural areas to cities, as it still happens today, is perhaps even bleaker. As many people above have mentioned, people lived many people to a room with no kitchen and no running water. How were they supposed to pass on knowledge of foraging, of household economics, of proper seasoning?
In a way, we humans are too good at surviving. We carry on even under the most extreme conditions.
posted by mumimor at 1:20 PM on November 12, 2021 [15 favorites]
The thing is, I just don't see bolognese as a weeknight dinner. It is a slow-cooked or pressure-cooked slow food. There are thousands of other options for a Thursday. But that is just another aspect of cooking from scratch. You need to know the options, relative to your situation, and also to have a repetoire that fits with all the changing seasons and all the other conditions, like your geographical region and your income and your kitchen as well as your other workload. This is not a criticism of you, more a confirmation that cooking the Pollan way is not something anyone can do from day one. You need knowledge to feed your family, and many people don't have that knowledge.
From a feminist point of view, this is also about how married women's housework is not acknowledged as a profession. I think what I learnt from my maternal grandmother, mentioned above, was that since cooking was something she was educated in and worked at, she was always proudly aware of her life as a housewife as a profession, not a chore and goddammit not a calling. She actually demanded my granddad paid her a living wage, and he did.
This thread has inspired me to think about an other dimension of the whole knowledge aspect of householding. I wonder if the great migrations, starting in the 18th century but accelerated in the 19th and 20th centuries, also cut people off from the knowledge of householding. I once read a book (I can't find it, sorry), that painted a very bleak picture of the immigrants to America in the last part of the 19th century, who suffered terribly because they were completely unequipped to survive on the prairies. Far from the Laura Ingalls hardship romance, thousands of people never overcame the hardships. They just died of starvation, or turned to crime (for the men) or prostitution (for the women). Migrations from rural areas to cities, as it still happens today, is perhaps even bleaker. As many people above have mentioned, people lived many people to a room with no kitchen and no running water. How were they supposed to pass on knowledge of foraging, of household economics, of proper seasoning?
In a way, we humans are too good at surviving. We carry on even under the most extreme conditions.
posted by mumimor at 1:20 PM on November 12, 2021 [15 favorites]
If you had to make all the bread you ate, you wouldn't eat that much bread.
My knowledge is of northwestern Europe from about the middle ages forward - but before about 1800, very few people made bread at home. They didn't have the right kinds of ovens or the fuel to run them. They either took their dough to the baker to bake, or bought it from him. It's one of the reasons the "price of bread" is something historians can easily find sources on -- it's something that most people in western Europe have bought premade (processed even) for centuries.
Later, home ovens and metal wood burning stoves meant that people could make bread at home, so I've read accounts of 19th century people (particularly rural people) making their own bread. But for centuries before, bread was made centrally - and people really did eat a LOT of bread. A late medieval/early modern western European diet would have been primarily bread and porridges made from the same grains, supplemented by vegetables (both garden-grown and wild), dairy (milk, butter and/or cheese), and occasionally meat (mostly bacon in the records I've seen from the 17th century) - and, of course, beer (aka liquid bread). No potatoes, of course, and no rice in northern Europe.
posted by jb at 1:20 PM on November 12, 2021 [21 favorites]
My knowledge is of northwestern Europe from about the middle ages forward - but before about 1800, very few people made bread at home. They didn't have the right kinds of ovens or the fuel to run them. They either took their dough to the baker to bake, or bought it from him. It's one of the reasons the "price of bread" is something historians can easily find sources on -- it's something that most people in western Europe have bought premade (processed even) for centuries.
Later, home ovens and metal wood burning stoves meant that people could make bread at home, so I've read accounts of 19th century people (particularly rural people) making their own bread. But for centuries before, bread was made centrally - and people really did eat a LOT of bread. A late medieval/early modern western European diet would have been primarily bread and porridges made from the same grains, supplemented by vegetables (both garden-grown and wild), dairy (milk, butter and/or cheese), and occasionally meat (mostly bacon in the records I've seen from the 17th century) - and, of course, beer (aka liquid bread). No potatoes, of course, and no rice in northern Europe.
posted by jb at 1:20 PM on November 12, 2021 [21 favorites]
Bread? Don't talk to me about bread, god knows what was in it, probably a lot of chalk. And sausage! And let's not even think about the flies at the butcher's, or what was in the sugar, or how much of the raisins was really raisins, etc. Milk, you don't even want to know.
Yep! That's what I also found when doing that research on food in New York & London c1900-1920. Chalk in the milk too, I believe, to make it look white and less blue.
posted by jb at 1:23 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
Yep! That's what I also found when doing that research on food in New York & London c1900-1920. Chalk in the milk too, I believe, to make it look white and less blue.
posted by jb at 1:23 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
Well, my grandmother bought salted codfish that came in a little wooden box full of salt and had to be soaked for a day before you could start to cook it. She then boiled it and served it with a white sauce that was essentially flour and water.
It was very authentic, minimally processed, and it was horrible, horrible shit. I will fight you if you try to make me eat that crap again. I will fight you so hard that it will not be worth the effort. You should just let me be hungry in peace.
posted by Naberius at 1:25 PM on November 12, 2021 [26 favorites]
It was very authentic, minimally processed, and it was horrible, horrible shit. I will fight you if you try to make me eat that crap again. I will fight you so hard that it will not be worth the effort. You should just let me be hungry in peace.
posted by Naberius at 1:25 PM on November 12, 2021 [26 favorites]
Add to that: a lot of the recipes we can find online or in newspapers and magazines are complicated and not really tasty, because that industry is naturally driven by novelty and false assumptions about consumers rather than the real needs of human beings who eat.
And if you don't know anything about cooking, you can't easily modify them to actually be good. I have absolutely no sense for what I can change in a recipe and what will make it taste better. I have tried so many "easy slow cooker meals" recently that tasted pretty terrible and though I think the basic recipe works I have no idea how to make it taste like something I want to eat. I tried adding onions to this one beef recipe and that was garbage, so now I'm supposed to buy ANOTHER hunk of roast beef and try AGAIN with some random assortment of spices and hope it works? I still haven't eaten the half I froze so I just keep... not trying again. It's fucking demotivating.
posted by brook horse at 1:27 PM on November 12, 2021 [17 favorites]
And if you don't know anything about cooking, you can't easily modify them to actually be good. I have absolutely no sense for what I can change in a recipe and what will make it taste better. I have tried so many "easy slow cooker meals" recently that tasted pretty terrible and though I think the basic recipe works I have no idea how to make it taste like something I want to eat. I tried adding onions to this one beef recipe and that was garbage, so now I'm supposed to buy ANOTHER hunk of roast beef and try AGAIN with some random assortment of spices and hope it works? I still haven't eaten the half I froze so I just keep... not trying again. It's fucking demotivating.
posted by brook horse at 1:27 PM on November 12, 2021 [17 favorites]
But cook that codfish in a stew with tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, garlic and olives, and eat it with a crusty bread, and it will be heavenly...
posted by mumimor at 1:27 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by mumimor at 1:27 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
They regarded being skinny as an undesirable thing. Plump people were not only healthy, but were notably jolly. Being fat protected you from melancholy.
I distinctly remember my grandma (getting me ready for school when I was little in the mid-70s because mom went to work early) telling me I had to eat all of the breakfast that she made for me because "you don't want to be skinny, do you?" as if that was one of the worst things I could be.
I definitely did not wind up skinny.
posted by Foosnark at 1:28 PM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
I distinctly remember my grandma (getting me ready for school when I was little in the mid-70s because mom went to work early) telling me I had to eat all of the breakfast that she made for me because "you don't want to be skinny, do you?" as if that was one of the worst things I could be.
I definitely did not wind up skinny.
posted by Foosnark at 1:28 PM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
Add some diced potatoes, an onion, a bit of salt pork, and some milk to that salt cod and you have a nice chowder. We eat that fairly often.
I'm planning on making that for dinner on Sunday.
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:30 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
I'm planning on making that for dinner on Sunday.
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:30 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
Now that upper-class sheen is long-gone, but gelatin products like Jello are still there, both on their own, and as component ingredients in family recipes that have been passed down a couple of generations now.
Now the way that you demonstrate your status is by NOT serving jello, but serving fresh fruits that someone (possibly paid) had to fetch that morning.
posted by jb at 1:31 PM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
Now the way that you demonstrate your status is by NOT serving jello, but serving fresh fruits that someone (possibly paid) had to fetch that morning.
posted by jb at 1:31 PM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
Add some diced potatoes, an onion, a bit of salt pork, and some milk to that salt cod and you have a nice chowder. We eat that fairly often.
The point people are trying to make is that eating that fairly often means that you have had practice in making it. Not everyone has, so just blithely saying "oh, just add some diced potatoes and an onion and make chowder out of it" sounds like you're saying "oh, just take that lump of concrete and just add some basic smelting compounds and you'll get a barracuda".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:34 PM on November 12, 2021 [17 favorites]
The point people are trying to make is that eating that fairly often means that you have had practice in making it. Not everyone has, so just blithely saying "oh, just add some diced potatoes and an onion and make chowder out of it" sounds like you're saying "oh, just take that lump of concrete and just add some basic smelting compounds and you'll get a barracuda".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:34 PM on November 12, 2021 [17 favorites]
But cook that codfish in a stew with tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, garlic and olives, and eat it with a crusty bread, and it will be heavenly...
OK so...how does one cook a stew? How many tomatoes? Do you chop the bell peppers finely? Saute them first? Which kind of onion and how much? What kinds of olives? When do you put the fish in? Do you put the fish in raw? How do you cook it before hand if not? Do you chop it up?
Add some diced potatoes, an onion, a bit of salt pork, and some milk to that salt cod and you have a nice chowder. We eat that fairly often.
What kind of potatoes? Do you cook them first? What kind of onion? WTF is salt pork? How much milk? What do you mean by 'add to the cod?'
When you are not good at or familiar with cooking those sentences are meaningless.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:38 PM on November 12, 2021 [23 favorites]
OK so...how does one cook a stew? How many tomatoes? Do you chop the bell peppers finely? Saute them first? Which kind of onion and how much? What kinds of olives? When do you put the fish in? Do you put the fish in raw? How do you cook it before hand if not? Do you chop it up?
Add some diced potatoes, an onion, a bit of salt pork, and some milk to that salt cod and you have a nice chowder. We eat that fairly often.
What kind of potatoes? Do you cook them first? What kind of onion? WTF is salt pork? How much milk? What do you mean by 'add to the cod?'
When you are not good at or familiar with cooking those sentences are meaningless.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:38 PM on November 12, 2021 [23 favorites]
That is unkind. It is a Newfoundland fisherman's recipe. It is easy to make which is why I make it, and was easy the first time I made it. The worst part is remembering to soak the cod.
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:39 PM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:39 PM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
I don't see what is unkind about noting that lots of people would find a chowder "recipe" containing absolutely no cook times, temperatures, quantities, or techniques to be opaque.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:41 PM on November 12, 2021 [14 favorites]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:41 PM on November 12, 2021 [14 favorites]
Actually, that is pretty well my "recipe", i.e., I don't have one, I just have a list of ingredients. I throw it in a pot and cook it. What kind of potatoes? What kind of onion? Not even questions I have considered, just whatever is in the house? Salt pork, sure that is regional. Milk till it looks milky.
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:42 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:42 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
When the potatoes are soft it is done.
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:43 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:43 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese, exactly. I agree.
How do we change this? If more people knew how to feed themselves, they would be healthier and happier. And the world would be healthier, since convenience food does cause environmental damage.
Generally, I don't think public education can do much, but I was actually in a very good program in third grade, so maybe my own experience contradicts my opinion.
posted by mumimor at 1:43 PM on November 12, 2021
How do we change this? If more people knew how to feed themselves, they would be healthier and happier. And the world would be healthier, since convenience food does cause environmental damage.
Generally, I don't think public education can do much, but I was actually in a very good program in third grade, so maybe my own experience contradicts my opinion.
posted by mumimor at 1:43 PM on November 12, 2021
Yeah I feel like you are definitely not understanding just how comfortable you are with cooking relative to many people.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:44 PM on November 12, 2021 [14 favorites]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:44 PM on November 12, 2021 [14 favorites]
Which I understand! It's not a personal dig; everyone does it. I certainly underestimate the effort and knowledge required for skills with which I'm highly competent, and every time I send an editing checklist to a newbie I am reminded of how much background familiarity I take fully for granted. But it's alienating, and it isn't helpful, and the best way to respond when someone says "I think I'm going to need like, 10-12 more pieces of info to do this task" isn't "you're being mean to me."
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:46 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:46 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
Yes, I perfectly understand how comfortable I am with cooking. Very comfortable, I know that, many people aren't, I've read the thread. Thank-you for pointing out my failings. I will be humble now.
Sheesh. I made a quip about boiled salt cod.
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:47 PM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
Sheesh. I made a quip about boiled salt cod.
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:47 PM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
before I got married I could cook very very basic stuff. I could keep myself alive, and not completely malnourished but I got a lot of take out too.
my husband is a fantastic cook and understands the 'principles' of food prep. he would not need more details on fimbulvetr's recipe. but I would have! I have absorbed some principles of good cooking via osmosis, but only through observation, not by doing the things myself. so I don't know if I would get them right.
when you are a 'not cooking' type person, it can seem really intimidating and overwhelming to parse even a fairly simple recipe. I am so grateful (and SO spoiled) that my husband feeds me delicious healthy food every day. of course we are also immensely privileged to have access to wonderful foodstuffs and the resources to afford it. we eat almost all cooked-from-scratch whole foods, tons of fruits n veggies etc., but I don't know if I could maintain that myself.
posted by supermedusa at 1:52 PM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
my husband is a fantastic cook and understands the 'principles' of food prep. he would not need more details on fimbulvetr's recipe. but I would have! I have absorbed some principles of good cooking via osmosis, but only through observation, not by doing the things myself. so I don't know if I would get them right.
when you are a 'not cooking' type person, it can seem really intimidating and overwhelming to parse even a fairly simple recipe. I am so grateful (and SO spoiled) that my husband feeds me delicious healthy food every day. of course we are also immensely privileged to have access to wonderful foodstuffs and the resources to afford it. we eat almost all cooked-from-scratch whole foods, tons of fruits n veggies etc., but I don't know if I could maintain that myself.
posted by supermedusa at 1:52 PM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
I'm sorry, but even I, someone who has admitted to loving the fuck out of cooking, still has no earthly idea what "cheap, healthy dinner" would take "just a couple minutes", unless you're eating nothing more than a handful of raw carrots... What goes into this cheap, healthy dinner?
It's not always just a few minutes, but frozen vegetables are a god-send. No salt, kept fresh, microwave or saute in a couple of minutes.
We always have cooked rice in the house, so one of my husband's go-to's for a meal when he has no time is rice with frozen peas, a bit of grated cheese and soy sauce for flavour. Me, I'll do a bowl with a bunch of kale on the bottom, rice, maybe some TVP or tuna for protein and hot sauce and some cheese. Microwave for 1-2 minutes, the kale cooks down and softens, I mix it up and it's delicious and has lots of fibre, green veg, protein and healthy carbs. Tomatoes are also nice to cook on top, but I don't often have those (they go off too fast).
Notably, neither of us is a kid and we've obviously picked meals that we like. But really, one of the key things is having easy-to-cook-but-keep-well vegetables - like kale or broccoli (rip off leaves, rinse) or frozen vegetables (pour out of bag) - that can be steamed in a microwave or fried in a pan very quickly. For flavour, we use a lot of olive oil, garlic, soy sauce and/or hot sauce.
Our other technique for faster dinners/lunches is that when we do make rice (in a rice cooker) or pasta, we make way too much and keep it in the fridge to reheat when we want it. (Though, because of differing preferences among our 4 person family, we often have both white and brown rice in the fridge.)
posted by jb at 1:52 PM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
It's not always just a few minutes, but frozen vegetables are a god-send. No salt, kept fresh, microwave or saute in a couple of minutes.
We always have cooked rice in the house, so one of my husband's go-to's for a meal when he has no time is rice with frozen peas, a bit of grated cheese and soy sauce for flavour. Me, I'll do a bowl with a bunch of kale on the bottom, rice, maybe some TVP or tuna for protein and hot sauce and some cheese. Microwave for 1-2 minutes, the kale cooks down and softens, I mix it up and it's delicious and has lots of fibre, green veg, protein and healthy carbs. Tomatoes are also nice to cook on top, but I don't often have those (they go off too fast).
Notably, neither of us is a kid and we've obviously picked meals that we like. But really, one of the key things is having easy-to-cook-but-keep-well vegetables - like kale or broccoli (rip off leaves, rinse) or frozen vegetables (pour out of bag) - that can be steamed in a microwave or fried in a pan very quickly. For flavour, we use a lot of olive oil, garlic, soy sauce and/or hot sauce.
Our other technique for faster dinners/lunches is that when we do make rice (in a rice cooker) or pasta, we make way too much and keep it in the fridge to reheat when we want it. (Though, because of differing preferences among our 4 person family, we often have both white and brown rice in the fridge.)
posted by jb at 1:52 PM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
For some things, perhaps. But I can assure you that boiling frozen ravioli and adding a jar of Classico is a enormous amount of time saving over making the ravioli and bolognese sauce by hand, even if I spend the time to jazz up the sauce with added veggies and spices.
The thing is, I just don't see bolognese as a weeknight dinner. It is a slow-cooked or pressure-cooked slow food. There are thousands of other options for a Thursday.
I do see it as a lazy weekday dinner, and I know how to make homemade noodles, and that is the biggest waste of time! They don't taste different enough for it to be worth the time and cleanup. I know how to make sauce too, and that at least tastes different from the jar, but not necessarily 'better' when you count cook time and clean up unless it is a special occasion.
In any case, sometimes food is decadent and sometimes it is fuel, and premade jars and cans recognizes that.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:53 PM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
The thing is, I just don't see bolognese as a weeknight dinner. It is a slow-cooked or pressure-cooked slow food. There are thousands of other options for a Thursday.
I do see it as a lazy weekday dinner, and I know how to make homemade noodles, and that is the biggest waste of time! They don't taste different enough for it to be worth the time and cleanup. I know how to make sauce too, and that at least tastes different from the jar, but not necessarily 'better' when you count cook time and clean up unless it is a special occasion.
In any case, sometimes food is decadent and sometimes it is fuel, and premade jars and cans recognizes that.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:53 PM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
I have a very patient partner who is teaching me to cook and they are routinely startled by the things they didn't realize they had to teach me. They ask me to cook the bacon, show me how to protect myself from the fat, how many to put in, what pan to use, etc. I come to them 10 minutes later frantic because the middles are nearly burnt but the ends are still raw! They realize they didn't tell me that bacon has to be cooked on a low heat, rather than medium, because that's something they do automatically. There are countless examples like this. I am really trying but it is so hard to learn even with a patient and supportive partner and enough financial stability to risk a ruined meal here or there.
posted by brook horse at 1:54 PM on November 12, 2021 [21 favorites]
posted by brook horse at 1:54 PM on November 12, 2021 [21 favorites]
Seems to me there's some value in pillorying Pollan for being a privileged white dude who's oblivious to the suffering and inequities inherent in "great-grandma" cuisine. That's a type of thing that society enjoys doing, right now; it might help make more room for other types of voices in these discussions; and I'm sure Pollan can take it.
I hope we don't throw Pollan's baby out with his bathwater, though. It takes the most ungenerous reading of his words to think that he literally meant that we should acquire and prepare food in ways that enforce the inequities of 100 years ago. Most of the things he actually meant have value regardless of whom they came from.
posted by gurple at 1:55 PM on November 12, 2021 [17 favorites]
I hope we don't throw Pollan's baby out with his bathwater, though. It takes the most ungenerous reading of his words to think that he literally meant that we should acquire and prepare food in ways that enforce the inequities of 100 years ago. Most of the things he actually meant have value regardless of whom they came from.
posted by gurple at 1:55 PM on November 12, 2021 [17 favorites]
I mean, whatever, this conversation is an entire mess, but there's certainly nothing intentionally mean about "hey this is actually one of those things that we were talking about above, where there's an invisible skill gap that comes into these conversations, and in this case the gaps are X, Y, Z."
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:55 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:55 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
I am a self-taught cook, not even starting to learn in earnest until my early thirties. I’m acutely aware of how long it took to get to the point of “just throw some stuff together”. A lot of time, a lot of equipment, a lot of failures. It’s daunting. That education was a serious investment. I might be able to put together good cheap meals now, but that’s glossing over the amortized cost of getting to this point.
posted by notoriety public at 1:56 PM on November 12, 2021 [11 favorites]
posted by notoriety public at 1:56 PM on November 12, 2021 [11 favorites]
My beef (if you'll pardon the expression) with Pollan was the rule in his Food Rules book that said to not eat alone. "Bite me," I said (if you'll pardon the expression), and tore that page out of the book and threw it away.
posted by JanetLand at 1:59 PM on November 12, 2021 [20 favorites]
posted by JanetLand at 1:59 PM on November 12, 2021 [20 favorites]
How do we change this? If more people knew how to feed themselves, they would be healthier and happier. And the world would be healthier, since convenience food does cause environmental damage.
I mean, I don't know. We have to change literally everything about everything. Schools can't teach this unless we stop being assholes about funding, until we bring down class sizes, hire teachers with expertise, take some of the pressure of college prep and test scores off so that students feel they can take a "non-college-track" class without tanking their scholarship options.
People can't cook "ideal" meals for themselves unless they can afford to live in housing with good, working appliances, with enough money left over to buy quality ingredients and the equipment to prepare them. People can't cook meals for themselves when they have to work three jobs to attain the things listed above.
If we shorten the work week, raise wages, improve and increase housing stock (fuck the NIMBYs), and provide ample affordable or free public instruction for all ages, we might get to a point where 2 or 3 generations down the line, more people have the kind of intuitive knowledge that comes from watching your parents prepare balanced, tasty meals every day.
But even with all of that...Food is emotional. People get touchy if they feel they aren't good cooks, and also if they feel they aren't good teachers, and people have aversions and preferences that are hard to work around in a global way. People get defensive when you tell an adult "you don't know how to feed yourself." I know how to feed myself, dammit, I'm not an infant. I don't know how to cook. (Lest you think I'm not including myself in the problem, lol.)
It's not anything Michael Pollan is going to fix, even with the most quotiestly quotable of quotes, even if he is correct.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 2:11 PM on November 12, 2021 [24 favorites]
I mean, I don't know. We have to change literally everything about everything. Schools can't teach this unless we stop being assholes about funding, until we bring down class sizes, hire teachers with expertise, take some of the pressure of college prep and test scores off so that students feel they can take a "non-college-track" class without tanking their scholarship options.
People can't cook "ideal" meals for themselves unless they can afford to live in housing with good, working appliances, with enough money left over to buy quality ingredients and the equipment to prepare them. People can't cook meals for themselves when they have to work three jobs to attain the things listed above.
If we shorten the work week, raise wages, improve and increase housing stock (fuck the NIMBYs), and provide ample affordable or free public instruction for all ages, we might get to a point where 2 or 3 generations down the line, more people have the kind of intuitive knowledge that comes from watching your parents prepare balanced, tasty meals every day.
But even with all of that...Food is emotional. People get touchy if they feel they aren't good cooks, and also if they feel they aren't good teachers, and people have aversions and preferences that are hard to work around in a global way. People get defensive when you tell an adult "you don't know how to feed yourself." I know how to feed myself, dammit, I'm not an infant. I don't know how to cook. (Lest you think I'm not including myself in the problem, lol.)
It's not anything Michael Pollan is going to fix, even with the most quotiestly quotable of quotes, even if he is correct.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 2:11 PM on November 12, 2021 [24 favorites]
Or, shit man, why does every individual house need to prepare every individual meal? Fuckin...what is literally the problem with buying something prepared? Always feels like a bit of holdover victorianism or pastoral nostalgia trip to me, the person (and let's be real, it's almost always a woman) in a sun-drenched kitchen with bundles of fresh herbs and a light dusting of flour producing plates of Pure Human Love. Which, sure, great, let's also have Christmas every day, right? It's a fantasy.
Prepared doesn't have to mean processed--even now, my grocery store offers a pretty significant selection of full, balanced meals, made fresh every day, that you heat-and-eat. Make that more standard! Raise wages so people can afford those instead of heavily-processed, shelf-stable/frozen stuff. Those meals at my grocery are prepared by union workers for a decent hourly wage, and are tastier than anything I could make without a few years' practice. Are they the platonic ideal of food? I mean, probably not, but what in my entire life is the platonic ideal of anything?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 2:20 PM on November 12, 2021 [37 favorites]
Prepared doesn't have to mean processed--even now, my grocery store offers a pretty significant selection of full, balanced meals, made fresh every day, that you heat-and-eat. Make that more standard! Raise wages so people can afford those instead of heavily-processed, shelf-stable/frozen stuff. Those meals at my grocery are prepared by union workers for a decent hourly wage, and are tastier than anything I could make without a few years' practice. Are they the platonic ideal of food? I mean, probably not, but what in my entire life is the platonic ideal of anything?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 2:20 PM on November 12, 2021 [37 favorites]
Just noting that shelf-stable food might be less likely to go bad instead of being eaten.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:26 PM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:26 PM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
If the "why don't you just cook something fancy, I do and it's easy" derail has a silver lining, it's that it illustrates the central problem quite nicely. People who have the superpower of flight don't understand why other people spend so much on shoes.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:30 PM on November 12, 2021 [17 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:30 PM on November 12, 2021 [17 favorites]
My great-grandparents were dirt farmers and Okies. During the Depression my maternal grandad (oldest of 11) seldom had shoes and hunted rabbits and anything else he could get to help feed the family. When things started to go better for them (thanks WPA!) he had to teach his siblings things like what it means to brush your teeth and how to act in town, because, well, they had all been trying to survive and hadn't really had time to do that. He loved to fish and was great at frying up a mess of them for the family.
My maternal grandma never learned to cook (she burned everything) properly, as her stepmother hadn't liked her and refused to teach her. My mom learned to cook mostly from the back of Bisquick boxes and women's magazines. She was a good cook but didn't enjoy it and never really bothered to teach me or my sister.
I never met my paternal grandfather, dead of cancer before I was born, but his wife cooked as little as possible by the time I knew her. She kept her pantry stocked with sugary cereals and took us out to eat when she babysat us kids. She had been married at the age of 15 and had six kids, so possibly she just figured she had done enough.
I don't think Pollan would have approved of most of those meals, but you can make a pretty good chicken n' dumplings with Bisquick and corn bread from a box tastes fine and my mom was pretty good at mashing potatoes and cooking meats so long as she didn't have to fry them. We ate canned vegetables, which I still prefer because cooking fresh ones is hard for me to get right and remember to do it before they go bad is a lot of pressure.
Any vegetable beats none. And it's almost certainly more nutritious than most of what my grandparents ate.
posted by emjaybee at 2:45 PM on November 12, 2021 [11 favorites]
My maternal grandma never learned to cook (she burned everything) properly, as her stepmother hadn't liked her and refused to teach her. My mom learned to cook mostly from the back of Bisquick boxes and women's magazines. She was a good cook but didn't enjoy it and never really bothered to teach me or my sister.
I never met my paternal grandfather, dead of cancer before I was born, but his wife cooked as little as possible by the time I knew her. She kept her pantry stocked with sugary cereals and took us out to eat when she babysat us kids. She had been married at the age of 15 and had six kids, so possibly she just figured she had done enough.
I don't think Pollan would have approved of most of those meals, but you can make a pretty good chicken n' dumplings with Bisquick and corn bread from a box tastes fine and my mom was pretty good at mashing potatoes and cooking meats so long as she didn't have to fry them. We ate canned vegetables, which I still prefer because cooking fresh ones is hard for me to get right and remember to do it before they go bad is a lot of pressure.
Any vegetable beats none. And it's almost certainly more nutritious than most of what my grandparents ate.
posted by emjaybee at 2:45 PM on November 12, 2021 [11 favorites]
remember to do it before they go bad is a lot of pressure.
I'm noticing that my produce lately has not been as nice or lasting as long as I'm used to. I've never been great at buying the exact right amount of produce for the week, but now I'm constantly failing. I don't love the texture of frozen and done have a lot of freezer space, but I may have to start making room for them.
posted by ghost phoneme at 2:55 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
I'm noticing that my produce lately has not been as nice or lasting as long as I'm used to. I've never been great at buying the exact right amount of produce for the week, but now I'm constantly failing. I don't love the texture of frozen and done have a lot of freezer space, but I may have to start making room for them.
posted by ghost phoneme at 2:55 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
How do we change this? If more people knew how to feed themselves, they would be healthier and happier.
Exactly why would they be invariably healthier and happier? "feeding yourself" would mean farming everything you eat, and as people have noted in that thread, subsistence farming is a brutal way to live, even if it is an option for you (which it is not for nearly everyone.) For everyone else, they are relying on other people to produce food and get it to the point of being a "raw ingredient". And if you discount that and jump straight to only considering cooking, it is perfectly possible to subsist on your own cooking very unhealthily -- eating boiled rice and butter for every meal is still 'feeding yourself'.
And second, please understand some people do not want to spend the time and energy, and would not be "happier" at having to. I've made pasta, I still regularly make my mother's bolognese sauce, but I am in fact happier that if it's what I want, I can have pasta on a weekday night.
And the world would be healthier, since convenience food does cause environmental damage.
Again, case not made. Consider split pea soup. I've made it a number of times, I enjoy it, it's tasty. Is the sum total of environmental damage for peas, ham, carrots, celery being individually packaged and shipped to me, and then being cooked for hours on my stove, actually less than the extremely efficient shipping and cooking of a Campbell canning plant? Especially when you consider the amount of celery I end up throwing out? And the amount of energy the leftovers use to stay frozen in the freezer of my one person household?
I'm all for people gaining the knowledge of basic cooking -- it's a great skill to have. But I consider it equally important for them to be able to evaluate convenience foods and know what is cost-effective and healthy.
posted by tavella at 2:58 PM on November 12, 2021 [27 favorites]
Exactly why would they be invariably healthier and happier? "feeding yourself" would mean farming everything you eat, and as people have noted in that thread, subsistence farming is a brutal way to live, even if it is an option for you (which it is not for nearly everyone.) For everyone else, they are relying on other people to produce food and get it to the point of being a "raw ingredient". And if you discount that and jump straight to only considering cooking, it is perfectly possible to subsist on your own cooking very unhealthily -- eating boiled rice and butter for every meal is still 'feeding yourself'.
And second, please understand some people do not want to spend the time and energy, and would not be "happier" at having to. I've made pasta, I still regularly make my mother's bolognese sauce, but I am in fact happier that if it's what I want, I can have pasta on a weekday night.
And the world would be healthier, since convenience food does cause environmental damage.
Again, case not made. Consider split pea soup. I've made it a number of times, I enjoy it, it's tasty. Is the sum total of environmental damage for peas, ham, carrots, celery being individually packaged and shipped to me, and then being cooked for hours on my stove, actually less than the extremely efficient shipping and cooking of a Campbell canning plant? Especially when you consider the amount of celery I end up throwing out? And the amount of energy the leftovers use to stay frozen in the freezer of my one person household?
I'm all for people gaining the knowledge of basic cooking -- it's a great skill to have. But I consider it equally important for them to be able to evaluate convenience foods and know what is cost-effective and healthy.
posted by tavella at 2:58 PM on November 12, 2021 [27 favorites]
As a general rule, I've found that at least doubling the garlic and other seasoning ingredients (including things like mirepoix/sofrito/etc. and vinegar; for salt it depends) vastly improves most of those recipes.
Bland = sodium: O mg
Tasty = sodium: OMG
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:30 PM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
Bland = sodium: O mg
Tasty = sodium: OMG
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:30 PM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
Or, shit man, why does every individual house need to prepare every individual meal? Fuckin...what is literally the problem with buying something prepared?
Speaking as someone who does like to cook (when I have the time), let me just say: Absolutely, 100% this.
People are just weird about food and cooking.
In the abstract, everyone understand the benefits of specialization and efficiencies of scale, even when/if they come hand-in-hand with capitalism's downsides. We all know, for example, that a lot of our shoes were probably made in sweatshops by underpaid overworked children in 3rd-world-countries and we all agree that sucks, but nobody seriously proposes that the solution to that problem is for everyone to make their own shoes from leather they cured themselves from the hides of cows they raised and slaughtered themselves, because that's completely insane. But when it's food, suddenly all those centuries of our society romanticizing farming life come roaring to life in everybody's subconscious minds and everybody thinks you should be doing it all yourself. Just...no. No. It is just as staggeringly inefficient for everyone to regularly bake their own bread themselves as it is for everyone to cobble their own shoes themselves. "But it's a good skill to have!" Sure it is, agreed. So is making shoes! Or fixing cars! Or flying a plane, or emergency first aid, or any of a thousand other skills that are all good skills to have. Doesn't mean everyone needs to know how to do them, and nobody can realistically learn them all. Specialization works.
We can have healthier food without completely "disrupting" away all the benefits of specialization and economies of scale in food production. And honestly, that's mostly what I see happening, when I go to the grocery store: manufacturers are being pushed by market demand to make healthier, less-processed food because that's what consumers want. Capitalism actually (partially) working for once! Now if we could just get the workers paid decent wages and treated fairly...
posted by mstokes650 at 3:48 PM on November 12, 2021 [33 favorites]
Speaking as someone who does like to cook (when I have the time), let me just say: Absolutely, 100% this.
People are just weird about food and cooking.
In the abstract, everyone understand the benefits of specialization and efficiencies of scale, even when/if they come hand-in-hand with capitalism's downsides. We all know, for example, that a lot of our shoes were probably made in sweatshops by underpaid overworked children in 3rd-world-countries and we all agree that sucks, but nobody seriously proposes that the solution to that problem is for everyone to make their own shoes from leather they cured themselves from the hides of cows they raised and slaughtered themselves, because that's completely insane. But when it's food, suddenly all those centuries of our society romanticizing farming life come roaring to life in everybody's subconscious minds and everybody thinks you should be doing it all yourself. Just...no. No. It is just as staggeringly inefficient for everyone to regularly bake their own bread themselves as it is for everyone to cobble their own shoes themselves. "But it's a good skill to have!" Sure it is, agreed. So is making shoes! Or fixing cars! Or flying a plane, or emergency first aid, or any of a thousand other skills that are all good skills to have. Doesn't mean everyone needs to know how to do them, and nobody can realistically learn them all. Specialization works.
We can have healthier food without completely "disrupting" away all the benefits of specialization and economies of scale in food production. And honestly, that's mostly what I see happening, when I go to the grocery store: manufacturers are being pushed by market demand to make healthier, less-processed food because that's what consumers want. Capitalism actually (partially) working for once! Now if we could just get the workers paid decent wages and treated fairly...
posted by mstokes650 at 3:48 PM on November 12, 2021 [33 favorites]
This seems like a pretty egregious misreading of what Pollan is trying to say with that quote. It's very clearly a pithy way of suggesting reducing your consumption of highly processed food, which there is lots of evidence is not great for you. It's not about growing your own turnips or eating like people ate in wartime Britain or saying that nobody would be fat or anything like that.
And as the author points out herself with her examples, you don't need to do a lot of work to eat food that isn't highly processed. I get that highly processed food can be an easy option when you are stressed, tired and out of time. Sometimes eating something from the freezer for dinner is fine. Sometimes bread and cheese is fine too (to use an example from the article). But the evidence shows highly processed food has significant health impacts and we can't just argue those away because we don't like them. There's very clearly something wrong with our food systems and we're not going to deal with those issues by burying our heads in the sand.
posted by ssg at 3:57 PM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
And as the author points out herself with her examples, you don't need to do a lot of work to eat food that isn't highly processed. I get that highly processed food can be an easy option when you are stressed, tired and out of time. Sometimes eating something from the freezer for dinner is fine. Sometimes bread and cheese is fine too (to use an example from the article). But the evidence shows highly processed food has significant health impacts and we can't just argue those away because we don't like them. There's very clearly something wrong with our food systems and we're not going to deal with those issues by burying our heads in the sand.
posted by ssg at 3:57 PM on November 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
I just somewhat amused myself by going to see what gets defined as "ultra-processed", and per Harvard it includes anything made with flour and some of the other sites' definitions aren't much better. Which is why I have trouble taking the whole phrase seriously. Much of the history of human cooking has been about learning how to ultraprocess things!
posted by tavella at 4:25 PM on November 12, 2021 [15 favorites]
posted by tavella at 4:25 PM on November 12, 2021 [15 favorites]
jb: I rarely eat potatoes these days since they are so much more effort than rice or pasta.
Only if you insist on peeling them, which I generally don't. If you can get nice, clean potatoes, you can chop them into thick slices, stick them in a microwaveable dish with a lid, and cook them until they're done.
Or until they're half done, and then fry them in some olive oil.
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:28 PM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
Only if you insist on peeling them, which I generally don't. If you can get nice, clean potatoes, you can chop them into thick slices, stick them in a microwaveable dish with a lid, and cook them until they're done.
Or until they're half done, and then fry them in some olive oil.
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:28 PM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
One thing to consider is that a lot of stuff great-grand-mama would recognize is now highly processed. Take bread. Bread was a staple in her era that she probably bought but might have baked herself. Have you read the ingredients on a bag of standard sliced bread lately?
Here's the list from the bag on my kitchen table: Whole wheat flour (it's not whole wheat flour - the germ was removed so the wheat germ oil would not go rancid and it was reconstituted from measured amounts of white flour and bran), water, sugar, wheat gluten, vegetable oil (highly processed and treated so that if it does go rancid you can't smell or taste it), yeast, salt, wheat germ, calcium propionate, diacetyl tartaric acid esters of mono and di-glycerides, sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate, sorbic acid, vegetable monoglycerides.
Or how about cream? The 10% cereal cream in my fridge is made from: milk, cream, mono and diglycerides, disodium phosphate, sodium citrate, carrageenan. And that's the carton I bought because the other brand had all that and sugar in the ingredients list as well.
If you look at a lot of the basic ingredients you might use to cook with, many others now include a similar list of interesting poly-syllables. Flour is another one that you might assume didn't have anything but flour in the bag, although you might assume that it just has some vitamins added the way milk has vitamin D added to it. Then again it might just have half a dozen ingredients, none of which are vitamins. Aziodicarbonamide, anyone?
Fresh fruit and veggies are sold from open bins with out ingredients lists visible. One day take a look at the boxes that many of them are shipped in before they are removed for display. A lot of them are chemically treated to prevent spoilage, chemically treated to make them ripen, and sprayed with wax and sometimes dye. Great-grandmother would recognize an apple all right, but neither you nor her are going to be able to tell me if it was sprayed with napthaleneacetic acid just by looking at it.
posted by Jane the Brown at 4:39 PM on November 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
Here's the list from the bag on my kitchen table: Whole wheat flour (it's not whole wheat flour - the germ was removed so the wheat germ oil would not go rancid and it was reconstituted from measured amounts of white flour and bran), water, sugar, wheat gluten, vegetable oil (highly processed and treated so that if it does go rancid you can't smell or taste it), yeast, salt, wheat germ, calcium propionate, diacetyl tartaric acid esters of mono and di-glycerides, sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate, sorbic acid, vegetable monoglycerides.
Or how about cream? The 10% cereal cream in my fridge is made from: milk, cream, mono and diglycerides, disodium phosphate, sodium citrate, carrageenan. And that's the carton I bought because the other brand had all that and sugar in the ingredients list as well.
If you look at a lot of the basic ingredients you might use to cook with, many others now include a similar list of interesting poly-syllables. Flour is another one that you might assume didn't have anything but flour in the bag, although you might assume that it just has some vitamins added the way milk has vitamin D added to it. Then again it might just have half a dozen ingredients, none of which are vitamins. Aziodicarbonamide, anyone?
Fresh fruit and veggies are sold from open bins with out ingredients lists visible. One day take a look at the boxes that many of them are shipped in before they are removed for display. A lot of them are chemically treated to prevent spoilage, chemically treated to make them ripen, and sprayed with wax and sometimes dye. Great-grandmother would recognize an apple all right, but neither you nor her are going to be able to tell me if it was sprayed with napthaleneacetic acid just by looking at it.
posted by Jane the Brown at 4:39 PM on November 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
Goat cheese, figs, nuts-- those are all expensive enough that even I, as a reasonably well-off hedonism bot, occasionally blanch a bit at buying them.
Seriously, this.
If it -whatever food it is - costs more than about 3$ a pound, I probably can’t afford to buy it.
And also - a lot of us aren’t starting thin. It takes more calories to feed a fat body than a skinny one, and the answer isn’t “well, starve then”. If I eat goat cheese and raw vegetables, I’ll be hungry in an hour. The amount of food I need to feel full is such that it needs serious starches or serious volume. Crackers just won’t cut it.
And when I say “quick”, I mean “it needs to be done, including cleanup, in about half an hour” because I just don’t have the time, because I have so many other things I have to do.
If anyone has a cheap, quick meal - prep, cooking, and cleanup within half an hour, that uses no pre processed foods, under about 10-12$ to feed a family of 3 - I’ll make it. But I personally certainly haven’t found one.
And honestly, I’m a little frustrated this is how the conversation has gone overall. The article is largely a feminist critique of the advice provided, and a lot of folks have responded largely by talking about how great the original advice is, rather than engaging with its critique.
posted by corb at 5:05 PM on November 12, 2021 [34 favorites]
Seriously, this.
If it -whatever food it is - costs more than about 3$ a pound, I probably can’t afford to buy it.
And also - a lot of us aren’t starting thin. It takes more calories to feed a fat body than a skinny one, and the answer isn’t “well, starve then”. If I eat goat cheese and raw vegetables, I’ll be hungry in an hour. The amount of food I need to feel full is such that it needs serious starches or serious volume. Crackers just won’t cut it.
And when I say “quick”, I mean “it needs to be done, including cleanup, in about half an hour” because I just don’t have the time, because I have so many other things I have to do.
If anyone has a cheap, quick meal - prep, cooking, and cleanup within half an hour, that uses no pre processed foods, under about 10-12$ to feed a family of 3 - I’ll make it. But I personally certainly haven’t found one.
And honestly, I’m a little frustrated this is how the conversation has gone overall. The article is largely a feminist critique of the advice provided, and a lot of folks have responded largely by talking about how great the original advice is, rather than engaging with its critique.
posted by corb at 5:05 PM on November 12, 2021 [34 favorites]
Bread? Don't talk to me about bread, god knows what was in it, probably a lot of chalk. And sausage! And let's not even think about the flies at the butcher's, or what was in the sugar, or how much of the raisins was really raisins, etc. Milk, you don't even want to know.
Yep! That's what I also found when doing that research on food in New York & London c1900-1920. Chalk in the milk too, I believe, to make it look white and less blue.
The chalk was to hide the fact that the milk had been watered down. White lead in the milk was worse than that - but then, before pasteurization the milk could easily give you tuberculosis or gastritis, so perhaps the best choice was to avoid milk altogether.
And then there was the practice of putting lard in the butter which meant it could contain trinchinae...
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:13 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
Yep! That's what I also found when doing that research on food in New York & London c1900-1920. Chalk in the milk too, I believe, to make it look white and less blue.
The chalk was to hide the fact that the milk had been watered down. White lead in the milk was worse than that - but then, before pasteurization the milk could easily give you tuberculosis or gastritis, so perhaps the best choice was to avoid milk altogether.
And then there was the practice of putting lard in the butter which meant it could contain trinchinae...
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:13 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
And honestly, I’m a little frustrated this is how the conversation has gone overall. The article is largely a feminist critique of the advice provided, and a lot of folks have responded largely by talking about how great the original advice is, rather than engaging with its critique.I think that's a really fundamental divide in these discussions. To Pollan and his fans, it really just isn't important that women have mostly been responsible for home cooking in the societies he's talking about, and that women continue to be mostly responsible for food preparation. It may be true, but it's not relevant to the important things that they want to discuss. Food should not be a gendered responsibility, and we could imagine a situation in which it would not be, so we don't have to discuss the fact that it is.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:16 PM on November 12, 2021 [27 favorites]
Isn't it a defacto criticism of the dietary habits of men who live alone and don't cook for themselves, then?
posted by Selena777 at 5:20 PM on November 12, 2021
posted by Selena777 at 5:20 PM on November 12, 2021
I just somewhat amused myself by going to see what gets defined as "ultra-processed", and per Harvard it includes anything made with flour and some of the other sites' definitions aren't much better.
No one is defining ultra-processed foods as anything that contains flour — and the link you include specifically says flour is a processed food, not an ultra-processed food. These are not the same thing at all.
posted by ssg at 5:27 PM on November 12, 2021 [9 favorites]
No one is defining ultra-processed foods as anything that contains flour — and the link you include specifically says flour is a processed food, not an ultra-processed food. These are not the same thing at all.
posted by ssg at 5:27 PM on November 12, 2021 [9 favorites]
Potatoes: much to my surprise, canned diced potatoes are pretty decent, and they’re parboiled or something because they cook faster when I make dosa fillings. If I’m already dealing with dosa batter I don’t want the fillings to be a hassle.
posted by aramaic at 5:31 PM on November 12, 2021
posted by aramaic at 5:31 PM on November 12, 2021
And then the endless dishes to wash.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:33 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:33 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
Well, the flour in my kitchen consists of milled wheat, no additives. The cream in my fridge is full fat cream, no additives. The apples I bought this evening are apples, no chemicals. I could of course go on. If I buy a bag of frozen spinach, I will only be buying blanched spinach and water. My food is protected by EU rules and does not contain additives unless I specifically buy processed, packaged food. And I know that is a huge elephant in this room.
Jane the Brown, you are pointing out how Pollan's rule is difficult to follow in the some countries, or at least a very elitist aspiration or alternatively one that demands national political action rather than individual habits.
We live on a budget in my family, and do not eat strictly organic food (except for meat and dairy). But in many cases, organic costs the same as or less than regular products. It wasn't like this 20 years ago. It has taken collective political action, on both the farmer and the consumer side to get here. I think Pollan is hoping for something like this.
When I said above that for me, Bolognese is not a weeknight dinner, it doesn't mean that I always make my pasta from scratch, I rarely do, I have access to fresh pasta with no additives. It means it is a sauce I find is better when cooked long and slow. Dried pasta is great too. I could eat pasta every day, but I restrict myself a bit
It could be a plain pasta with oil, chili flakes and garlic. Not exactly health food, so I'll have some fruit that day as dessert, or a salad as an appetizer. But a simple pasta dish that can be made in minutes and is also healthy is pasta with peas and bacon or grilled artichoke hearts or both. Cook the pasta. Meanwhile cook bacon cubes, add frozen peas to the pan with the bacon. When the pasta is done, add a bit of the pasta water to the bacon-pea mix and then the pasta, stir vigorously, serve sprinkled with grated parmesan cheese. Right now grilled, marinated artichokes are for some reason very cheap here, and one can use those in place of or as a supplement to bacon, just don't cook them as much, heat them in their own oil, add peas etc. If you need a bit of a punch in your food, add garlic and chili flakes to the bacon and/or artichokes before the peas.
Right now, the kids are eating ful medames all the time. Use broad beans from a tin with no additives. Heat them in their own liquid or rinse them and add fresh water to avoid the gas. Add a generous amount of garlic and cumin to the pan, maybe also some tahini. Crush some of the beans with a fork. Meanwhile, make hard-boiled eggs. Garnish the plate of beans with parsley, quartered tomatoes and a drizzle of olive oil. Eat with whole grain bread or pita.
A green lentil stew can be made from scratch in 45 minutes, from a tin in twenty. Either way, start with a mirepoix of finely chopped carrot, onion and garlic. I mostly have some celery or celeriac too. Adding a few cubed potatoes is a good thing, for several reasons. Fry gently in olive oil till the onions are soft and translucent. Add the lentils and liquid, either from the can or tap water. Season with salt, pepper, thyme and bay leaf. Cook till the lentils are cooked to your taste. Eat plain with bread, or with some form of sausage.
When the kids where small, I'd always put some cut up carrot and cucumber and frozen peas on the table while I cooked dinner. That way, the wolf was kept from the door, and I was sure they got some vegs, regardless of what they ate later. For dessert, there would be fruit and some bread and cheese most days.
posted by mumimor at 5:52 PM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
Jane the Brown, you are pointing out how Pollan's rule is difficult to follow in the some countries, or at least a very elitist aspiration or alternatively one that demands national political action rather than individual habits.
We live on a budget in my family, and do not eat strictly organic food (except for meat and dairy). But in many cases, organic costs the same as or less than regular products. It wasn't like this 20 years ago. It has taken collective political action, on both the farmer and the consumer side to get here. I think Pollan is hoping for something like this.
When I said above that for me, Bolognese is not a weeknight dinner, it doesn't mean that I always make my pasta from scratch, I rarely do, I have access to fresh pasta with no additives. It means it is a sauce I find is better when cooked long and slow. Dried pasta is great too. I could eat pasta every day, but I restrict myself a bit
It could be a plain pasta with oil, chili flakes and garlic. Not exactly health food, so I'll have some fruit that day as dessert, or a salad as an appetizer. But a simple pasta dish that can be made in minutes and is also healthy is pasta with peas and bacon or grilled artichoke hearts or both. Cook the pasta. Meanwhile cook bacon cubes, add frozen peas to the pan with the bacon. When the pasta is done, add a bit of the pasta water to the bacon-pea mix and then the pasta, stir vigorously, serve sprinkled with grated parmesan cheese. Right now grilled, marinated artichokes are for some reason very cheap here, and one can use those in place of or as a supplement to bacon, just don't cook them as much, heat them in their own oil, add peas etc. If you need a bit of a punch in your food, add garlic and chili flakes to the bacon and/or artichokes before the peas.
Right now, the kids are eating ful medames all the time. Use broad beans from a tin with no additives. Heat them in their own liquid or rinse them and add fresh water to avoid the gas. Add a generous amount of garlic and cumin to the pan, maybe also some tahini. Crush some of the beans with a fork. Meanwhile, make hard-boiled eggs. Garnish the plate of beans with parsley, quartered tomatoes and a drizzle of olive oil. Eat with whole grain bread or pita.
A green lentil stew can be made from scratch in 45 minutes, from a tin in twenty. Either way, start with a mirepoix of finely chopped carrot, onion and garlic. I mostly have some celery or celeriac too. Adding a few cubed potatoes is a good thing, for several reasons. Fry gently in olive oil till the onions are soft and translucent. Add the lentils and liquid, either from the can or tap water. Season with salt, pepper, thyme and bay leaf. Cook till the lentils are cooked to your taste. Eat plain with bread, or with some form of sausage.
When the kids where small, I'd always put some cut up carrot and cucumber and frozen peas on the table while I cooked dinner. That way, the wolf was kept from the door, and I was sure they got some vegs, regardless of what they ate later. For dessert, there would be fruit and some bread and cheese most days.
posted by mumimor at 5:52 PM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
Goat cheese, figs, nuts-- those are all expensive enough that even I, as a reasonably well-off hedonism bot, occasionally blanch a bit at buying them.
I get my goat cheese at Aldi, the figs are Sunmaid/mass market and they come from Cub where they sit next to the prunes, and the nuts are usually store brand peanuts. There are eight servings in a container of goat cheese, six or seven servings in a container of figs and I don't even know how many in a bottle of peanuts. I do not view myself as a hedonism-bot - in fact, I'm pretty cheap, food-wise, and I don't find these outrageously expensive. You can certainly buy cheaper cheese, also at Aldi, but not that much cheaper.
Goat cheese is a great thing to have around because you can stir in about 1/2 a serving (with spices) to flavor about three servings of rice, quinoa or pasta. Rice, a little goat cheese, some sauteed vegetables and a few spices make a lunch dish.
Figs are good because they are a dried fruit, so there's one serving of fruit out of the way. They're extremely fibrous, so they don't raise your blood sugar as much as most dried fruit does. Before the pandemic, my usual breakfast was coffee and a serving of dried figs, because they are filling and portable.
If you're envisioning a dinner where you dump the whole goat cheese onto a cheese board and eat most of it plus a bunch of fresh figs, yes, that's costly. But if you're saying, "Dinner tonight is a serving of rye crackers, 1/8 of the goat cheese, carrots and tomatoes, peanuts and an apple ", I think the cost stacks up pretty favorably to anything much more expensive than bottom of the market chicken.
posted by Frowner at 5:56 PM on November 12, 2021 [9 favorites]
I get my goat cheese at Aldi, the figs are Sunmaid/mass market and they come from Cub where they sit next to the prunes, and the nuts are usually store brand peanuts. There are eight servings in a container of goat cheese, six or seven servings in a container of figs and I don't even know how many in a bottle of peanuts. I do not view myself as a hedonism-bot - in fact, I'm pretty cheap, food-wise, and I don't find these outrageously expensive. You can certainly buy cheaper cheese, also at Aldi, but not that much cheaper.
Goat cheese is a great thing to have around because you can stir in about 1/2 a serving (with spices) to flavor about three servings of rice, quinoa or pasta. Rice, a little goat cheese, some sauteed vegetables and a few spices make a lunch dish.
Figs are good because they are a dried fruit, so there's one serving of fruit out of the way. They're extremely fibrous, so they don't raise your blood sugar as much as most dried fruit does. Before the pandemic, my usual breakfast was coffee and a serving of dried figs, because they are filling and portable.
If you're envisioning a dinner where you dump the whole goat cheese onto a cheese board and eat most of it plus a bunch of fresh figs, yes, that's costly. But if you're saying, "Dinner tonight is a serving of rye crackers, 1/8 of the goat cheese, carrots and tomatoes, peanuts and an apple ", I think the cost stacks up pretty favorably to anything much more expensive than bottom of the market chicken.
posted by Frowner at 5:56 PM on November 12, 2021 [9 favorites]
Also, swedish/imitation swedish rye crackers are exceedingly robust huge slabs. (Wasa, also at Cub.) I guarantee that a serving or two of those spread with anything fatty plus apple and carrots takes way longer to eat and is way more filling than you think. I'm not saying that no one could ask for anything more, but they're not a handful of saltines. Highly recommended if you like rye things.
posted by Frowner at 6:06 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 6:06 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
Before I developed celiac disease I ate those whole grain rye cracker wheels a couple of times a month as a base in a pizza-like layered arrangement I finished off under the broiler.
They were very tasty and had an extremely satisfying densely chewy/crispy texture as well.
I think it took me two or three years to realize they were also giving me LSD flashbacks.
I wish I knew whether those were caused by ergot generated alkaloids that were already in the crackers, or by fungi resident somewhere in my system, possibly established there by earlier trips. Those tabs always gave me sharp stomach pains, and I’m sure they were anything but sterile.
posted by jamjam at 6:26 PM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
They were very tasty and had an extremely satisfying densely chewy/crispy texture as well.
I think it took me two or three years to realize they were also giving me LSD flashbacks.
I wish I knew whether those were caused by ergot generated alkaloids that were already in the crackers, or by fungi resident somewhere in my system, possibly established there by earlier trips. Those tabs always gave me sharp stomach pains, and I’m sure they were anything but sterile.
posted by jamjam at 6:26 PM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
Only as lunch wagons for the vast majority, typically repurposing old horse trolley cars when they electrified trolleys, and often banned apparently. The modern diner, known as a diner, was mass produced as a prefab around 1917, and were modeled on former railroad dining cars, also relocated to niche lots in cities as very small buildings, hence the name coined by Tierney. They quickly spread out from the Northeastin the 1920's, highly dependent on car travelers. Previous to these new diners, dinner anywhere would likely be limited to one's boarding house.
No, you're thinking of a particular and classic style of building -- but you could eat at a cheap chop house or caff or ordinary or pub for centuries before those buildings were built and sold. People ate out all the time in the 19th century mostly because they didn't have kitchens in their homes.
posted by jrochest at 6:29 PM on November 12, 2021 [13 favorites]
Ah, Frowner--as I suspected, it's mostly just a location issue. I reaaaaaaally need to get myself to a neighborhood where I have regular access to an Aldi, for that reasonably priced cheese life.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 6:43 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 6:43 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
Aldi's festive holiday cheeses are often quite good! That said, I have been known to overbuy on the cheeses by kidding myself that if each individual cheese is fairly cheap, then extra cheese is also cheap.
On the other hand, it's weird and disturbing to me that I can get, eg, genuine imported English cheeses that cheaply. And various things that used to be super luxurious are cheap at Target. I cannot believe that this is because ethical lines of production and distribution have been established.
Also my dad was visiting from elsewhere and he finally admitted that food prices are higher here. I'd been telling him this for years and he put it down to my having champagne tastes, but we finally went grocery shopping together.
posted by Frowner at 6:57 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
On the other hand, it's weird and disturbing to me that I can get, eg, genuine imported English cheeses that cheaply. And various things that used to be super luxurious are cheap at Target. I cannot believe that this is because ethical lines of production and distribution have been established.
Also my dad was visiting from elsewhere and he finally admitted that food prices are higher here. I'd been telling him this for years and he put it down to my having champagne tastes, but we finally went grocery shopping together.
posted by Frowner at 6:57 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
Yeah, similarly my brother came into town for a visit this week and did some shopping for our mom, and was like "this grocery store is going to fucking bankrupt me." I honestly hadn't thought our city would be that much more expensive than his! But again, we don't have strong Aldi or Cub Food representation. Only more evidence, I suppose, that giving out individual advice on this systemic problem is going to be fraught!
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:01 PM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:01 PM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
Isn't it a defacto criticism of the dietary habits of men who live alone and don't cook for themselves, then?Not really, because I don't think it's possible to eat according to Pollan's rules if you live alone and cook for yourself. Pollan fetishizes the family meal, and one of his food rules is "enjoy food with the people you love." If you're single and cooking for yourself, you're automatically doing it wrong. And again, I think he would deny that his "family meal" thing is in any way tied to heteronormativity, because obviously eating with the people you love could encompass all sorts of arrangements other than hetero families. But he has explicitly blamed feminism for the decline of the family meal (and of American food culture, because Betty Friedan tricked American women, who have always done most of the food preparation, into thinking that cooking was drudgery and that it was better to work outside the home than to devote oneself to cooking delicious meals made of whole, natural foods). So again, he would say that it's not important that he's centering the hetero family, because that's just a random artifact of how things worked in America at the time when everything started going downhill, but I don't find that any more convincing than saying that it's just a random coincidence that women had been doing all the cooking and therefore that feminism is to blame for the downfall of American society.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:29 PM on November 12, 2021 [26 favorites]
While we're on the topic of the difficulty of acquiring healthy food, let me just tell you that I recently applied for SNAP benefits and just got back a letter saying that my application has been denied because, among other errors, they have calculated that I receive $24,000.00 every month in "other income." Was this user error in the application? Quite possibly, but I've spent two hours on the application system and can't figure out how to fix it it (nor do I see this amount anywhere on the online system but it's also not showing me half of the information I know I submitted so who knows, maybe I made a typo or maybe they pulled out of the ether). So, I guess there goes that hope that I'd have a little extra money on which to risk trying new, healthier things.
posted by brook horse at 7:38 PM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by brook horse at 7:38 PM on November 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
I am concerned that some plastics, like BPA, and other additives, may be endocrine distuptors. I wish the FDA was more assertive. I hate that beef is full of antibiotics and chicken is fiull of salmonella. How is it that we can't have good, safe food?
People who lived in small towns or on farms ate a limited number of vegetables in winter, mostly what kept well or could be preserved. Pollan has a magical view influenced by privilege. I doubt my grandparents ate kale, but I know they ate squash, pumpkin, cabbage, salt pork, salt cod, corned (salted) beef, potatoes, probably turnips. Good luck promoting turnips. Lots of people kept chickens for eggs and meat. The arrival of greens in the spring was celebrated. Variety was rare.
His premise of Eat real food, not too much, mostly plants, is valid. But people on a budget, with limited time, people exposed to constant ads, are going to eat stuff that's affordable and strongly appeals to the palate, like KFC, McDonalds, etc. I quite like vegetables, didn't eat many veg today, just had a can of mandarin oranges for some balance. Eating fresh veg takes time and effort. Why the fuck do I have to buy a large plastic container of arugula? I regularly send half of it to the compost bin because it's a lot of arugula. Eating reasonably should be a lot easier.
posted by theora55 at 7:56 PM on November 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
People who lived in small towns or on farms ate a limited number of vegetables in winter, mostly what kept well or could be preserved. Pollan has a magical view influenced by privilege. I doubt my grandparents ate kale, but I know they ate squash, pumpkin, cabbage, salt pork, salt cod, corned (salted) beef, potatoes, probably turnips. Good luck promoting turnips. Lots of people kept chickens for eggs and meat. The arrival of greens in the spring was celebrated. Variety was rare.
His premise of Eat real food, not too much, mostly plants, is valid. But people on a budget, with limited time, people exposed to constant ads, are going to eat stuff that's affordable and strongly appeals to the palate, like KFC, McDonalds, etc. I quite like vegetables, didn't eat many veg today, just had a can of mandarin oranges for some balance. Eating fresh veg takes time and effort. Why the fuck do I have to buy a large plastic container of arugula? I regularly send half of it to the compost bin because it's a lot of arugula. Eating reasonably should be a lot easier.
posted by theora55 at 7:56 PM on November 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
But if you're saying, "Dinner tonight is a serving of rye crackers, 1/8 of the goat cheese, carrots and tomatoes, peanuts and an apple ",
One of the things I've come to love the most about food discussions here is the little window it gives into how other people are living. People think of as normal (and normative) such incredibly different combinations of foods, or different amounts (as a tall person who eats a lot, that quoted "dinner" would be more like a small snack!), or different flavors/textures.
The descriptions don't always make me want to be invited over for dinner, but it is always fascinating.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:01 PM on November 12, 2021 [16 favorites]
One of the things I've come to love the most about food discussions here is the little window it gives into how other people are living. People think of as normal (and normative) such incredibly different combinations of foods, or different amounts (as a tall person who eats a lot, that quoted "dinner" would be more like a small snack!), or different flavors/textures.
The descriptions don't always make me want to be invited over for dinner, but it is always fascinating.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:01 PM on November 12, 2021 [16 favorites]
My paternal great-grandfather was a farmer of vague Franco-Belgian descent in western New York in the early 20th century. He would literally eat a plate of mashed potatoes and gravy before his actual dinner every day.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:35 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:35 PM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
I cooked every day without eating out and mostly without processed foods for a solid three months in quarantine and let me tell, I burned out right quick.
Also, you people are way too fancy. What happened to rice and beans with a cheese quesadilla? That’s done in 20 minutes, I promise. Or cheese sandwiches with fucking apple slices. Yes, I have kids, why do you ask?
posted by bq at 8:46 PM on November 12, 2021 [16 favorites]
Also, you people are way too fancy. What happened to rice and beans with a cheese quesadilla? That’s done in 20 minutes, I promise. Or cheese sandwiches with fucking apple slices. Yes, I have kids, why do you ask?
posted by bq at 8:46 PM on November 12, 2021 [16 favorites]
(as a tall person who eats a lot, that quoted "dinner" would be more like a small snack!)
The funny thing is, I am a big fat person. I just can't eat a lot on a regular basis - my theory is that dieting as a teenager messed up my metabolism, because I see many average-weight people regularly eating routine day to day meals that would result in rapid weight gain for me, and for whatever reason I'm healthy at a fairly high weight but past that weight my blood sugar and other numbers go bad.
Rye crackers and cheese, nuts, figs, carrots, tomatoes and an apple would actually be a pretty big dinner for me; in reality it would almost certainly be crackers and cheese, carrots, tomatoes and an apple only.
But in any case, the whole crackers tangent really only started as a "what is a wholesome meal that requires no prep to speak of" - it's not even what I eat regularly and certainly isn't what I'd serve a guest.
posted by Frowner at 8:54 PM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
The funny thing is, I am a big fat person. I just can't eat a lot on a regular basis - my theory is that dieting as a teenager messed up my metabolism, because I see many average-weight people regularly eating routine day to day meals that would result in rapid weight gain for me, and for whatever reason I'm healthy at a fairly high weight but past that weight my blood sugar and other numbers go bad.
Rye crackers and cheese, nuts, figs, carrots, tomatoes and an apple would actually be a pretty big dinner for me; in reality it would almost certainly be crackers and cheese, carrots, tomatoes and an apple only.
But in any case, the whole crackers tangent really only started as a "what is a wholesome meal that requires no prep to speak of" - it's not even what I eat regularly and certainly isn't what I'd serve a guest.
posted by Frowner at 8:54 PM on November 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
My go-to quick, easy, cheap, healthy meal when I'm in a town with a good Mexican grocery is nachos. The local supermarket near my mother's house sells big tubs of freshly made salsa (3 kinds!) and guacamole, plus big bags of freshly made tortilla chips. If we're feeling fancy we run a tray of chips with cheese under the grill for a few minutes and then dig in. If we're feeling lazy we just do plain chips in the salsa and guacamole.
Well, maybe a bit of sour cream as well, plus sliced jalapenos, if someone is wildly industrious some thinly sliced green onions.
Cleanup consists of the dinner plates and the oven tray, plus putting any tubs with stuff left back into the refrigerator.
posted by tumbling at 9:13 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
Well, maybe a bit of sour cream as well, plus sliced jalapenos, if someone is wildly industrious some thinly sliced green onions.
Cleanup consists of the dinner plates and the oven tray, plus putting any tubs with stuff left back into the refrigerator.
posted by tumbling at 9:13 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
What happened to rice and beans with a cheese quesadilla?
Every day the same thing - variety. I want something different!
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:22 PM on November 12, 2021
Every day the same thing - variety. I want something different!
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:22 PM on November 12, 2021
Yes, having a picky teenager, makes variety difficult.
posted by Windopaene at 9:26 PM on November 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Windopaene at 9:26 PM on November 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
the point about how silly it is to fetishize the past is well taken. most everyone's great grandma was dirt poor, anywhere on earth, and got by however they could, and if they were alive today would not begrudge us modern convenience food in moderation and with common sense.
also well taken is the point about how food production and foodways are so integral to culture. there is nothing more central to culture than food.
but this whole reduction of everything to "exploitation" is wrong. yes, grandma's life was filled with exploitation that we would not wish to emulate. then again, so are our lives now. driving a car to the store causes climate change and exploits those with lung problems caused by our exhaust. buying a carrot exploits the farm worker (to say nothing of a steak). using a gas range again contributes to climate change and disease. food waste is a problem too. but the reference frame of exploitation has diminishing returns in people's minds when taken too far, to the point where everyone has to become an ascetic monk to qualify as a good person. you dont have to feel bad about emulating grannie's veg soup.
in other words, making fun of pollan's nostalgic boomerisms works on its own terms, no more needed.
posted by wibari at 9:39 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
also well taken is the point about how food production and foodways are so integral to culture. there is nothing more central to culture than food.
but this whole reduction of everything to "exploitation" is wrong. yes, grandma's life was filled with exploitation that we would not wish to emulate. then again, so are our lives now. driving a car to the store causes climate change and exploits those with lung problems caused by our exhaust. buying a carrot exploits the farm worker (to say nothing of a steak). using a gas range again contributes to climate change and disease. food waste is a problem too. but the reference frame of exploitation has diminishing returns in people's minds when taken too far, to the point where everyone has to become an ascetic monk to qualify as a good person. you dont have to feel bad about emulating grannie's veg soup.
in other words, making fun of pollan's nostalgic boomerisms works on its own terms, no more needed.
posted by wibari at 9:39 PM on November 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
Those meals at my grocery are prepared by union workers for a decent hourly wage, and are tastier than anything I could make without a few years' practice.
This is what a lot of the 1848-to-WWI US women activists imagined as their possible utopia. Cooking is work, they said, skilled work to do it well, make it a profession so good cooks will do the cooking for everyone, and families will be able to afford it because women who aren’t good cooks will be freed to work in other jobs. Make it efficient with big kitchens and shared dining rooms and meals delivered to local homes*. They pointed out that society didn’t expect every woman to cook for her own family since rich women already didn’t.
Parts of that even happened!
* I’m only a little sure of the carry outs, but I think it comes up when the proto-socialists run up against the sanctity of the family.
posted by clew at 10:45 PM on November 12, 2021 [16 favorites]
This is what a lot of the 1848-to-WWI US women activists imagined as their possible utopia. Cooking is work, they said, skilled work to do it well, make it a profession so good cooks will do the cooking for everyone, and families will be able to afford it because women who aren’t good cooks will be freed to work in other jobs. Make it efficient with big kitchens and shared dining rooms and meals delivered to local homes*. They pointed out that society didn’t expect every woman to cook for her own family since rich women already didn’t.
Parts of that even happened!
* I’m only a little sure of the carry outs, but I think it comes up when the proto-socialists run up against the sanctity of the family.
posted by clew at 10:45 PM on November 12, 2021 [16 favorites]
In regards to Frowner's point, if you are in the UK, what your "great-grandmother" (of course Pollan's fantasy past is really only that for the currently elderly, today's great-grandmothers grew up with the Beatles) ate was bread. A lot of bread. Often bread with adulterants. Maybe with some butter or cheese, with a tiny bit of meat on good days.
Read Orwell on the diet of the British miner circa WWII...if you dare.
posted by praemunire at 10:49 PM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
Read Orwell on the diet of the British miner circa WWII...if you dare.
The basis of their diet, therefore, is white bread and margarine, corned beef, sugared tea and potatoes – an appalling diet...The only great-grandmother I have any idea about was the Polish immigrant wife of a Polish immigrant coal miner and the mother of, I believe, nine children. Hard to imagine that they ate other than badly and yet at the cost of huge effort on her part.
posted by praemunire at 10:49 PM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
All this cracker discourse has got me to reminiscing- remember when saltines came in sheets of four and you snapped them apart yourself?
Also remembering a time when we were particularly poor and someone gave us a big case of expired matzohs. We got pretty creative trying to keep every meal from being “Here, gnaw on this matzoh. It ain’t much, but then neither are you.”
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:21 AM on November 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
Also remembering a time when we were particularly poor and someone gave us a big case of expired matzohs. We got pretty creative trying to keep every meal from being “Here, gnaw on this matzoh. It ain’t much, but then neither are you.”
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:21 AM on November 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
remember when saltines came in sheets of four and you snapped them apart yourself?
Our local version still does.
posted by flabdablet at 2:18 AM on November 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
Our local version still does.
posted by flabdablet at 2:18 AM on November 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
No one is defining ultra-processed foods as anything that contains flour — and the link you include specifically says flour is a processed food, not an ultra-processed food. These are not the same thing at all.
Observe what I said: "*made* with flour". Observe the table half way down the page. Minimally processed: Wheat. Processed: Flour. Ultra-processed: Cookie. In other worlds, if you bake anything with your flour, it becomes ultra-processed, evil, and must be scorned. As opposed to being basic cooked/baked food. Other sites had cheese and sausage in the evil ultra-processed category. When you start claiming basic staff of life stuff for thousands of years must be avoided, your categories start to lose all meaning.
posted by tavella at 2:24 AM on November 13, 2021 [13 favorites]
Observe what I said: "*made* with flour". Observe the table half way down the page. Minimally processed: Wheat. Processed: Flour. Ultra-processed: Cookie. In other worlds, if you bake anything with your flour, it becomes ultra-processed, evil, and must be scorned. As opposed to being basic cooked/baked food. Other sites had cheese and sausage in the evil ultra-processed category. When you start claiming basic staff of life stuff for thousands of years must be avoided, your categories start to lose all meaning.
posted by tavella at 2:24 AM on November 13, 2021 [13 favorites]
I tend to agree with Michael Pollan's basic ideas. But I think that America (and Canada) are just not set up to do this. And I think that with climate change this will have to change, probably a great deal. It is not at all sustainable to be importing our produce from another continent and charging more than local farmers.
I'm living in rural small-town France. Here, it IS set up to live as he suggests. The vast majority of our food is local--because there are markets where food (fresh and sometimes prepared) is easy and cheap to buy. There are local bakers and butchers. There are little restaurants that serve local food cheap enough for even construction workers (who are paid reasonable wages here) eat a good lunch (as opposed to fast food in the US because they are underpaid and get no breaks).
I've lived in Asia, where I can go to street markets and get good food. Or to the woman two doors down who has the time and skill to make a giant pot of XYZ for half the neighborhood to buy. The later isn't even legal in the US!!
And I've lived in the rural US, where even in the countryside local produce is expensive and the only real option is Walmart (or Dollar General). There sure as hell aren't bakers and butchers and cheap local markets.
And I've loved in US big-city suburbia, where you need (at least) two full-time salaries to support a family, everyone has to work too much, farm markets are expensive luxuries, and I am aware that my cheap produce is basically the result of slave labor.
The US system is utterly broken. It isn't our fault that we can't eat "real" food, but I, at least, would happily do it if I could.
posted by mkuhnell at 2:39 AM on November 13, 2021 [20 favorites]
I'm living in rural small-town France. Here, it IS set up to live as he suggests. The vast majority of our food is local--because there are markets where food (fresh and sometimes prepared) is easy and cheap to buy. There are local bakers and butchers. There are little restaurants that serve local food cheap enough for even construction workers (who are paid reasonable wages here) eat a good lunch (as opposed to fast food in the US because they are underpaid and get no breaks).
I've lived in Asia, where I can go to street markets and get good food. Or to the woman two doors down who has the time and skill to make a giant pot of XYZ for half the neighborhood to buy. The later isn't even legal in the US!!
And I've lived in the rural US, where even in the countryside local produce is expensive and the only real option is Walmart (or Dollar General). There sure as hell aren't bakers and butchers and cheap local markets.
And I've loved in US big-city suburbia, where you need (at least) two full-time salaries to support a family, everyone has to work too much, farm markets are expensive luxuries, and I am aware that my cheap produce is basically the result of slave labor.
The US system is utterly broken. It isn't our fault that we can't eat "real" food, but I, at least, would happily do it if I could.
posted by mkuhnell at 2:39 AM on November 13, 2021 [20 favorites]
And honestly, I’m a little frustrated this is how the conversation has gone overall. The article is largely a feminist critique of the advice provided, and a lot of folks have responded largely by talking about how great the original advice is, rather than engaging with its critique.
I am a woman and a very angry feminist, but it does not make sense to me to put my health at hazard or that of my children just because Michael Pollan is blinded by his privilege when it comes to the roles of women in society and issues of class and race. I can see that Pollan (wrongly) blames feminists for the decline in food quality and at the same time agree with his basic principles when it comes to the food I eat.
Also, while I find it immensely interesting to read what everyones' great-grandmothers ate and how, because I love food history, nitpicking about which grandmothers are more real than Pollan's misses the point by several miles.
A criticism of Pollan that might be relevant, I think, after reading all the comments here, is that he puts too much responsibility on the individual family rather than on the political and economical forces who have created the food systems we have today. And he doesn't really seem to have strong ideas for how to change the food industry.
Just the other day, I was talking with my daughter about how difficult it was to make healthy food, cooked from scratch on a budget, when we lived in the US. But at the same time, before I read all the comments here, I had forgotten just how difficult it was. And in the meantime, this country (Denmark) has undergone a food revolution, which at this point has spread to the most porky, food industry dominated provinces. Lots of people here still eat processed convenience food, but fresh produce is now available everywhere, at fair prices.
To me that shows that one can create change, by coordinating political action, consumer demands and producers innovating. It wasn't easy, Denmark is the most cultivated country in the world -- maybe tied with the Netherlands -- and most of that cultivation happens as high tech industrial farming, employing underpaid migrant workers. A lot like the US. But we are at a point now where the political pressure for change is harsh because of climate issues, and there are enough demonstrated alternatives that the agricultural industry can no longer pretend they are the only solution. I'm not posting this to be smug about my country of origin, more to point out that activists can make a change, even though that change will be far too slow for anyone who cares.
An example: at this point, a farmer with 120 apple trees may well be better off than a farmer with 20.000 pigs, because the market price on pigs is so low and the costs of raising them is so high. Just like in the US, the pig farmer may well be caught in a debt-spiral he cannot get out of. His work is no fun, and his workers are suffering. The apple farmer works with high risks, but can offset those risks with dozens of free-range organic pigs roaming in the orchard, that sell at a far higher price. Now the political challenge is to help those industrial pig farms transition into a more sustainable practice -- it can't be done without subsidies, and it is fair enough to provide those subsidies because the creation of those pork factories was political in the first place.
There has to be consumer demand, agricultural knowledge and political support to make change. Shaming home cooks of either gender won't do it.
posted by mumimor at 3:35 AM on November 13, 2021 [28 favorites]
I am a woman and a very angry feminist, but it does not make sense to me to put my health at hazard or that of my children just because Michael Pollan is blinded by his privilege when it comes to the roles of women in society and issues of class and race. I can see that Pollan (wrongly) blames feminists for the decline in food quality and at the same time agree with his basic principles when it comes to the food I eat.
Also, while I find it immensely interesting to read what everyones' great-grandmothers ate and how, because I love food history, nitpicking about which grandmothers are more real than Pollan's misses the point by several miles.
A criticism of Pollan that might be relevant, I think, after reading all the comments here, is that he puts too much responsibility on the individual family rather than on the political and economical forces who have created the food systems we have today. And he doesn't really seem to have strong ideas for how to change the food industry.
Just the other day, I was talking with my daughter about how difficult it was to make healthy food, cooked from scratch on a budget, when we lived in the US. But at the same time, before I read all the comments here, I had forgotten just how difficult it was. And in the meantime, this country (Denmark) has undergone a food revolution, which at this point has spread to the most porky, food industry dominated provinces. Lots of people here still eat processed convenience food, but fresh produce is now available everywhere, at fair prices.
To me that shows that one can create change, by coordinating political action, consumer demands and producers innovating. It wasn't easy, Denmark is the most cultivated country in the world -- maybe tied with the Netherlands -- and most of that cultivation happens as high tech industrial farming, employing underpaid migrant workers. A lot like the US. But we are at a point now where the political pressure for change is harsh because of climate issues, and there are enough demonstrated alternatives that the agricultural industry can no longer pretend they are the only solution. I'm not posting this to be smug about my country of origin, more to point out that activists can make a change, even though that change will be far too slow for anyone who cares.
An example: at this point, a farmer with 120 apple trees may well be better off than a farmer with 20.000 pigs, because the market price on pigs is so low and the costs of raising them is so high. Just like in the US, the pig farmer may well be caught in a debt-spiral he cannot get out of. His work is no fun, and his workers are suffering. The apple farmer works with high risks, but can offset those risks with dozens of free-range organic pigs roaming in the orchard, that sell at a far higher price. Now the political challenge is to help those industrial pig farms transition into a more sustainable practice -- it can't be done without subsidies, and it is fair enough to provide those subsidies because the creation of those pork factories was political in the first place.
There has to be consumer demand, agricultural knowledge and political support to make change. Shaming home cooks of either gender won't do it.
posted by mumimor at 3:35 AM on November 13, 2021 [28 favorites]
That is unkind. It is a Newfoundland fisherman's recipe.
Much like not everyone knows how to cook, not everyone is a Newfoundland fisherman either.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:01 AM on November 13, 2021 [6 favorites]
Much like not everyone knows how to cook, not everyone is a Newfoundland fisherman either.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:01 AM on November 13, 2021 [6 favorites]
Like most white liberals, Pollan is a well-intentioned guy with a lot of expertise in his subject area, but he suffers from a variety of engineer's disease that makes reading his work feel a little bit like Charlie Pierce's Five-Minute-Rule.
Eat more plants? Avoid processed carbs whenever possible? Don't buy your meat from CAFOs? OK, this all sounds good so far.
4:58, 4:59...
...and that's why all your meals should be served every evening promptly at 6:00, at which point all three generations shall gather around the gingham tablecloth, where they shall recount whimsical tales as they savor the meal made entirely from ingredients grown within the lush backyard garden (which spans three full acres despite the home residing on the Upper East Side).
posted by Mayor West at 6:07 AM on November 13, 2021 [15 favorites]
Eat more plants? Avoid processed carbs whenever possible? Don't buy your meat from CAFOs? OK, this all sounds good so far.
4:58, 4:59...
...and that's why all your meals should be served every evening promptly at 6:00, at which point all three generations shall gather around the gingham tablecloth, where they shall recount whimsical tales as they savor the meal made entirely from ingredients grown within the lush backyard garden (which spans three full acres despite the home residing on the Upper East Side).
posted by Mayor West at 6:07 AM on November 13, 2021 [15 favorites]
Trouble with Rules of Thumb: why does it always have to be the thumb? we really are neglecting the work of the other equally important fingers, plus you have to be pretty privledged just to have thumbs.
Things people get real touchy over: food sex, power, their culture. I am really enjoying reading this discussion: it has it all. Dietary advice and arguments over recipes. Industrial and pre-modern labor exploitation, gendered labor and erasure! And everyone's favorite: does it have to be exactly 100 years from the moment i read this article? Bonus points for avoiding almost the beauty thin fat health nexus.
Recipe. Per person: Pull 2 carrots, 1 apple, 1 cabbage, 2 tomatoes 1 onion, from garden, rootcellar or store, pull 1 handfull of mushrooms from garden or store. Cut everything into 1/4s remove apple seeds and stem, and greens from carrot and tomatoes, stem from cabbage. Plop in 1/4 gallon of water in pot, heat as much as possible for 8 minutes. Add any available fat or oil to pot: 1 stick butter or 1 mug olive oil best. Use mug or bowl to serve, add salt and pepper from shaker into bowl until the flavor allows the horror of the unsustainable industrial climate sucide to subside. Garnish with shot of dayglow cottoncandy flavored moonshine.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 6:26 AM on November 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
Things people get real touchy over: food sex, power, their culture. I am really enjoying reading this discussion: it has it all. Dietary advice and arguments over recipes. Industrial and pre-modern labor exploitation, gendered labor and erasure! And everyone's favorite: does it have to be exactly 100 years from the moment i read this article? Bonus points for avoiding almost the beauty thin fat health nexus.
Recipe. Per person: Pull 2 carrots, 1 apple, 1 cabbage, 2 tomatoes 1 onion, from garden, rootcellar or store, pull 1 handfull of mushrooms from garden or store. Cut everything into 1/4s remove apple seeds and stem, and greens from carrot and tomatoes, stem from cabbage. Plop in 1/4 gallon of water in pot, heat as much as possible for 8 minutes. Add any available fat or oil to pot: 1 stick butter or 1 mug olive oil best. Use mug or bowl to serve, add salt and pepper from shaker into bowl until the flavor allows the horror of the unsustainable industrial climate sucide to subside. Garnish with shot of dayglow cottoncandy flavored moonshine.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 6:26 AM on November 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
Our current food system relies on slave labor from prisons, from ethnic outsiders without defacto legal rights, from slave ships in international waters and from unpaid and underpaid gendered labor, the food system was 90% of the human population when that population was under 1 billion people, and is now 8% of our 7.6 billion people, so in addition to everything else, we are also in the Plantation A/B paradox
Plantation A has 2 slaves and 2 lazy masters. Plantation B has 4 slaves and 6 lazy masters. If you go from A to B or B to A which is progress on slavery? Less actual slaves or less % slaves? Both systems are 100% dependent on exploitation.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 6:34 AM on November 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
Plantation A has 2 slaves and 2 lazy masters. Plantation B has 4 slaves and 6 lazy masters. If you go from A to B or B to A which is progress on slavery? Less actual slaves or less % slaves? Both systems are 100% dependent on exploitation.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 6:34 AM on November 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
Minor historical nitpick with the article. Once rationing began in 1940, it’s safe to say that neither of these women was eating a hugely varied or plentiful diet. Lots of potatoes and tuna in a can. No Brit would have eaten tinned tuna during the war, the John West company claim to have introduced it here in 1952 and it would probably have been a middle class curiosity.
posted by epo at 6:59 AM on November 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by epo at 6:59 AM on November 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
Good point epo. I don't think I had even tasted tuna till the seventies. We had sardines on toast, which was delicious. But now I really want a tuna melt sandwich, and I have all the ingredients...
posted by mumimor at 7:07 AM on November 13, 2021
posted by mumimor at 7:07 AM on November 13, 2021
A whole lot of comments dancing around the fact that convenience in the modern Western home comes at the expense of someone (preferably unseen's) labour and that a lot of people would rather not think about that.
If your grandmother isn't stood at the stove cooking it's because someone else's is.
posted by Ardnamurchan at 7:09 AM on November 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
If your grandmother isn't stood at the stove cooking it's because someone else's is.
posted by Ardnamurchan at 7:09 AM on November 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
An aside: it drives me absolutely bonkers when someone posts an article which can obviously be approached from different angles, it generates a long discussion with a good amount of back and forth and some disagreement and after there's been this long discussion there's a series of complaints and handwringing about how we didn't discuss the article right. It's one thing when someone, eg, posts about China and we immediately start talking about the US, but I always find myself wondering what these platonic-ideal, brilliant, non-repetitive, non-disagreeing, correct-analysis discussions are supposed to look like, whether they'd be more than four or five comments of correct response and whether, in that case, it would be worth having comments at all.
posted by Frowner at 7:10 AM on November 13, 2021 [14 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 7:10 AM on November 13, 2021 [14 favorites]
fimbulvetr: "Add some diced potatoes, an onion, a bit of salt pork, and some milk to that salt cod and you have a nice chowder. We eat that fairly often. "
Or, switch out the cod for seafood, dig a big hole in the ground, start a wood fire, heat rocks on them, put the rocks in the hole, grate potatoes, make potatoe pancakes, put them over the rocks, cover with big nalca leaves, put the seafood and smoked pork in layers with nalcas in between, cover with more hot rocks, let cook for a few hours and you've got a Curanto.
posted by signal at 7:16 AM on November 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
Or, switch out the cod for seafood, dig a big hole in the ground, start a wood fire, heat rocks on them, put the rocks in the hole, grate potatoes, make potatoe pancakes, put them over the rocks, cover with big nalca leaves, put the seafood and smoked pork in layers with nalcas in between, cover with more hot rocks, let cook for a few hours and you've got a Curanto.
posted by signal at 7:16 AM on November 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
Not to derail but I hear Aldi is about to shutter many of their North American stores.
In preview this may be an internet rumor.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:45 AM on November 13, 2021
In preview this may be an internet rumor.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:45 AM on November 13, 2021
No Brit would have eaten tinned tuna during the war, the John West company claim to have introduced it here in 1952 and it would probably have been a middle class curiosity.
My grandmother (born 1934) who grew up in comparative poverty (she'd talk about only being able to go to school on days when it was her turn to wear the shoes she shared with her sisters) used to call tuna "poor man's salmon" - there's definitely a vein of fish/class stuff here but I don't know the dynamics well enough to describe it any further. It seemed to irritate her that child-me in the 90s had a strong preference for canned tuna over canned salmon (which was much more likely to have bones in it, and much worse in terms of quality, taste and texture than salmon served in any other format).
posted by terretu at 8:04 AM on November 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
My grandmother (born 1934) who grew up in comparative poverty (she'd talk about only being able to go to school on days when it was her turn to wear the shoes she shared with her sisters) used to call tuna "poor man's salmon" - there's definitely a vein of fish/class stuff here but I don't know the dynamics well enough to describe it any further. It seemed to irritate her that child-me in the 90s had a strong preference for canned tuna over canned salmon (which was much more likely to have bones in it, and much worse in terms of quality, taste and texture than salmon served in any other format).
posted by terretu at 8:04 AM on November 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
If your grandmother isn't stood at the stove cooking it's because someone else's is.I'm not sure that I can even parse this sentence, but I think I get the drift. And I guess that I would say that this is also true of a lot of things that my grandfather and great-grandfathers did, such as minor home and car repairs. There seems to be a level of moralizing about outsourcing women's work that doesn't really exist for tasks that have traditionally fallen to working-class men. For instance, if you pressed people they might say that it was exploitative for pay someone to change the oil in your car, but I don't think there's the same visceral sense that it's morally wrong as there is when women don't want to take on the daily task of preparing family meals.
One thing that occurs to me, when I think about my actual great-grandmothers and not some generic great-grandmother who is a stand-in for the idea of the good old days, is that my actual great-grandmothers grew up in times and places where there was a real danger of people suffering from malnutrition and nutritional deficiencies. My great-grandmother spent several years as a child living in dire poverty in the US South, at a time when pellagra, which is caused by vitamin B deficiency, was endemic in that region. In the 1920s, there were large swathes of the US where many people were iodine deficient. You can say what you want about the industrial food system, but we don't see a whole lot of pellagra or goiter anymore, thanks in part to campaigns to add certain nutrients to processed foods. And that is not to defend the current industrial food system, which is indefensible in many ways. It's to say that I don't think that nostalgia is a very good way of addressing the systemic problems with how Americans produce and consume food, because there were serious systemic problems with the situation that existed before the one we're currently dealing with.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:06 AM on November 13, 2021 [21 favorites]
Quoting myself:
A criticism of Pollan that might be relevant, I think, after reading all the comments here, is that he puts too much responsibility on the individual family rather than on the political and economical forces who have created the food systems we have today. And he doesn't really seem to have strong ideas for how to change the food industry.
Now, after a bit of a Pollan binge on YouTube, I realize that he has long since moved there, and also that the feminist critique builds on a straw-man version of Pollan. I can only speak for myself, but the currant version of Pollan aligns very closely with my own opinions. Maybe he isn't as much into the details of agricultural economy, but hey, it is OK to put pressure on the agricultural-industrial complex without knowing every detail.
posted by mumimor at 8:07 AM on November 13, 2021 [10 favorites]
A criticism of Pollan that might be relevant, I think, after reading all the comments here, is that he puts too much responsibility on the individual family rather than on the political and economical forces who have created the food systems we have today. And he doesn't really seem to have strong ideas for how to change the food industry.
Now, after a bit of a Pollan binge on YouTube, I realize that he has long since moved there, and also that the feminist critique builds on a straw-man version of Pollan. I can only speak for myself, but the currant version of Pollan aligns very closely with my own opinions. Maybe he isn't as much into the details of agricultural economy, but hey, it is OK to put pressure on the agricultural-industrial complex without knowing every detail.
posted by mumimor at 8:07 AM on November 13, 2021 [10 favorites]
The thing is, Pollan's peak influence on these issues was around 2008 and 2009, and he continues to be known for the work he produced and the things he said at that time. It's great that he's responded to sustained feminist critique of his work, but nothing he has done subsequently has had nearly the influence of the stuff that he put out when he was a ubiquitous media presence around the time of In Defense of Food and Food Rules.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:22 AM on November 13, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:22 AM on November 13, 2021 [6 favorites]
Yes, yes, there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism.
posted by bq at 8:36 AM on November 13, 2021
posted by bq at 8:36 AM on November 13, 2021
An alternate way of looking at this, ArbitraryAndCapricious, would be that Pollan continues to be best known for things he didn't actually say in 2008. I certainly don't agree with everything he said then or says now, but it's bizarre to insist that he's telling everyone to eat exactly like their great grandparents did.
posted by ssg at 8:47 AM on November 13, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by ssg at 8:47 AM on November 13, 2021 [8 favorites]
Saying to not eat the things your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food isn't the same thing as eating like your grandmother.
This being said, I don't think my grandmothers would recognize raw fish as food, but that doesn't mean there's something wrong with sushi.
They would recognize Tastykakes (founded in Philadelphia, 1914) as food, I think.
Or Pollan might have meant names of ingredients.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 10:14 AM on November 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
This being said, I don't think my grandmothers would recognize raw fish as food, but that doesn't mean there's something wrong with sushi.
They would recognize Tastykakes (founded in Philadelphia, 1914) as food, I think.
Or Pollan might have meant names of ingredients.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 10:14 AM on November 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
This being said, I don't think my grandmothers would recognize raw fish as food, but that doesn't mean there's something wrong with sushi.
Anecdotally, my maternal grandmother fully embraced sushi. She would have it as often as her budget permitted. And she found it hilarious to serve it to my uncle, who hated it. The thing was: while she loved her son, he grew more conservative and narrow-minded as he got older, and she moved further to the left and open-minded as she grew older. The sushi became a symbol of that, somehow. She challenged him with food.
posted by mumimor at 10:26 AM on November 13, 2021 [4 favorites]
Anecdotally, my maternal grandmother fully embraced sushi. She would have it as often as her budget permitted. And she found it hilarious to serve it to my uncle, who hated it. The thing was: while she loved her son, he grew more conservative and narrow-minded as he got older, and she moved further to the left and open-minded as she grew older. The sushi became a symbol of that, somehow. She challenged him with food.
posted by mumimor at 10:26 AM on November 13, 2021 [4 favorites]
No, no! It is a sign that, like Him, we must think not of the things of the body, but of the face and head!
posted by flabdablet at 10:26 AM on November 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 10:26 AM on November 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
And I guess that I would say that this is also true of a lot of things that my grandfather and great-grandfathers did, such as minor home and car repairs. There seems to be a level of moralizing about outsourcing women's work that doesn't really exist for tasks that have traditionally fallen to working-class men. For instance, if you pressed people they might say that it was exploitative for pay someone to change the oil in your car, but I don't think there's the same visceral sense that it's morally wrong as there is when women don't want to take on the daily task of preparing family meals.
ArbitraryAndCapricious, are you really trying to tell us that a task that occurs at most twice a year (changing the oil in a car) is equivalent to making a meal and then cleaning up afterwards for a family, 2 plus times a day, every freaking day of the year? Seriously?
posted by tumbling at 10:41 AM on November 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
ArbitraryAndCapricious, are you really trying to tell us that a task that occurs at most twice a year (changing the oil in a car) is equivalent to making a meal and then cleaning up afterwards for a family, 2 plus times a day, every freaking day of the year? Seriously?
posted by tumbling at 10:41 AM on November 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
That seems an obvious misreading of her statement, which is that we as a culture don't feel the same way about outsourcing the home tasks traditionally done by men (which are indeed less often daily chores) as we do about outsourcing those traditionally done by women. There is not the same guilt or moral outrage about hiring a handyman or a gardener or a mechanic or or or that there is to hiring a cleaner or not making your own meals.
posted by jeather at 10:48 AM on November 13, 2021 [23 favorites]
posted by jeather at 10:48 AM on November 13, 2021 [23 favorites]
And that guilt/etc is at least in part because the role of women has been to reproduce the labor force. Fixing the car or installing a ceiling fan is a different kind of labor. I mean, in a sense it's home work that does contribute to reproducing the labor force - can't labor if you can't get to work, etc - but the whole thing of reproducing the labor force is to make the work unpaid and invisible because then you can't demand wages or organize and therefore labor is cheaper in cash terms. Like, the reason we don't see paying a handyman the same as paying a cook is because the whole point of this kind of reproductive labor is that it needs to be "free" and invisible, and once you start paying then it starts becoming visible.
Also, once you start paying you get into questions like, "why is it that I can both afford to pay a cook and use that free time to work more and/or see my kids, but the cook can't afford to pay a cook or spend time with her kids, how fair is that in human terms if we assume that humans are basically equal" and then the whole thing falls apart. A long time ago, someone linked some article about a woman CEO and her wonderful, super-competent, well-paid PA, and it was clear that there was a whole declining scale of labor - the CEO could afford to pay the PA well and the PA only missed out on a little time with her kids because of being on call, the PA could afford to pay a nanny okay and the nanny missed out a little more time, the nanny could afford to pay for a little babysitting and daycare and missed a lot of time, the babysitters and daycare barely make a living wage, etc etc etc. In short, at the end of the labor chain is someone being exploited and invisibilized - if it's a short chain, it's your grandmother, if it's a long chain it's your grandmother's cook's babysitter.
posted by Frowner at 11:13 AM on November 13, 2021 [14 favorites]
Also, once you start paying you get into questions like, "why is it that I can both afford to pay a cook and use that free time to work more and/or see my kids, but the cook can't afford to pay a cook or spend time with her kids, how fair is that in human terms if we assume that humans are basically equal" and then the whole thing falls apart. A long time ago, someone linked some article about a woman CEO and her wonderful, super-competent, well-paid PA, and it was clear that there was a whole declining scale of labor - the CEO could afford to pay the PA well and the PA only missed out on a little time with her kids because of being on call, the PA could afford to pay a nanny okay and the nanny missed out a little more time, the nanny could afford to pay for a little babysitting and daycare and missed a lot of time, the babysitters and daycare barely make a living wage, etc etc etc. In short, at the end of the labor chain is someone being exploited and invisibilized - if it's a short chain, it's your grandmother, if it's a long chain it's your grandmother's cook's babysitter.
posted by Frowner at 11:13 AM on November 13, 2021 [14 favorites]
God I swear I comment on MeFi articles without recommending Behind the Bastards sometimes, but today is not that day.
This week's bastard was the first fitness influencer (1868-1955, ostensibly some overlap with the rhetorical grandmother who looks at food?) who definitely had a hugely disordered relationship with food and also invented an intense number of modern publicity/publishing practices.
posted by snerson at 11:23 AM on November 13, 2021 [6 favorites]
This week's bastard was the first fitness influencer (1868-1955, ostensibly some overlap with the rhetorical grandmother who looks at food?) who definitely had a hugely disordered relationship with food and also invented an intense number of modern publicity/publishing practices.
posted by snerson at 11:23 AM on November 13, 2021 [6 favorites]
And a lot of this relates to sex work, and the idea that sex should be kept out of the money economy.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 11:45 AM on November 13, 2021
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 11:45 AM on November 13, 2021
In a historical perspective, the housewife, cooking alone for a nuclear family of mum and dad and two children is an outlier. Families have mostly been more complex and layered and people have been included in families at different levels.
I've looked at the census for our district. At our farm, 200 years ago, there was a family of four and also four other people who were laborers but who absolutely ate at the same table as the rest of the family, the same table my family sits at today. Two of these workers did "women's stuff", like milking cows, churning butter, making cheese, preserving fruit. (Our farm was famous for fruit in the middle of a literal desert, I had no idea!) These women probably contributed to the production of daily meals as well. The others, men, worked the fields and the mills. Every tiny little chore was essential and respected as such. The neighbor still had their parents living on the farm, and obviously, they contributed to the household at the level they were able to and joined in at the table as equals.
At the same time as industrialization and colonialism was at full speed in other places in the world, this was a place where the balance between workers and landowners was based on a real respect for the pure necessity of everyones' contribution, and there are still millions of farms that work like this all over the world. I don't want to romanticize it. The laborers were sent out into nothing when the then-owner sold the farm. Their pay was near nothing, which probably didn't matter much when they had food and lodging, but left them helpless and with no savings when they were fired. The people who lived at our farm in 1820 were dirt poor, both the employers and the employees. Even the head of the house was technically an indentured farmer at the 1820 census. There was nothing good about the economics of that. The old people worked hard till they died. We don't want to go back to that. But if we singularly look at the meals as part of this economy, they were solid, fair and only gendered in the sense that there was a labour division where all parties were equally rewarded. For instance, at the time a woman was elected to go to the central government to negotiate taxes.
This is in one of the most remote parts of Denmark where everything was backward. It is clear that during the 19th century, women's rights were continuously curtailed. I don't know enough about history to understand this. I do know that my granddad found it confusing, he was not brought up to think of women as lesser beings, even as he was born in 1916.
What I want to say is that the nuclear family of the fifties is a historical anomaly, and no-one should want to go back to that. It made both men and women and children miserable.
BUT, the concept of food made from local products with care makes sense, regardless of gender, race and class. It is important to recognize that the work needed to produce that kind of food is not valued in our society at all. And that if it is valued, it will cost more.
When it costs more, people will be less able to eat imported foods, meats and some spices every day. I am not able to feel sorry about that, because as a person who has lived through poverty but insisted on food quality for my kids, I have learnt to live with restraint. I don't need to have a burger every day, and I can still provide great food. In this I am no different from millions of men and women all over the world who cook for their families.
posted by mumimor at 12:12 PM on November 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
I've looked at the census for our district. At our farm, 200 years ago, there was a family of four and also four other people who were laborers but who absolutely ate at the same table as the rest of the family, the same table my family sits at today. Two of these workers did "women's stuff", like milking cows, churning butter, making cheese, preserving fruit. (Our farm was famous for fruit in the middle of a literal desert, I had no idea!) These women probably contributed to the production of daily meals as well. The others, men, worked the fields and the mills. Every tiny little chore was essential and respected as such. The neighbor still had their parents living on the farm, and obviously, they contributed to the household at the level they were able to and joined in at the table as equals.
At the same time as industrialization and colonialism was at full speed in other places in the world, this was a place where the balance between workers and landowners was based on a real respect for the pure necessity of everyones' contribution, and there are still millions of farms that work like this all over the world. I don't want to romanticize it. The laborers were sent out into nothing when the then-owner sold the farm. Their pay was near nothing, which probably didn't matter much when they had food and lodging, but left them helpless and with no savings when they were fired. The people who lived at our farm in 1820 were dirt poor, both the employers and the employees. Even the head of the house was technically an indentured farmer at the 1820 census. There was nothing good about the economics of that. The old people worked hard till they died. We don't want to go back to that. But if we singularly look at the meals as part of this economy, they were solid, fair and only gendered in the sense that there was a labour division where all parties were equally rewarded. For instance, at the time a woman was elected to go to the central government to negotiate taxes.
This is in one of the most remote parts of Denmark where everything was backward. It is clear that during the 19th century, women's rights were continuously curtailed. I don't know enough about history to understand this. I do know that my granddad found it confusing, he was not brought up to think of women as lesser beings, even as he was born in 1916.
What I want to say is that the nuclear family of the fifties is a historical anomaly, and no-one should want to go back to that. It made both men and women and children miserable.
BUT, the concept of food made from local products with care makes sense, regardless of gender, race and class. It is important to recognize that the work needed to produce that kind of food is not valued in our society at all. And that if it is valued, it will cost more.
When it costs more, people will be less able to eat imported foods, meats and some spices every day. I am not able to feel sorry about that, because as a person who has lived through poverty but insisted on food quality for my kids, I have learnt to live with restraint. I don't need to have a burger every day, and I can still provide great food. In this I am no different from millions of men and women all over the world who cook for their families.
posted by mumimor at 12:12 PM on November 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
Metafilter: not everyone is a Newfoundland fisherman
posted by lewiseason at 2:00 PM on November 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by lewiseason at 2:00 PM on November 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
but my grandmother on my mom's side was certainly the daughter of one. I don't remember too much of her cooking beyond really good apple pies but she is famous for her two of her lines about drinking.
"Nothing ever tops that two and a half drink glow" and "it doesn't matter how much you drink really, as long as it ends with a meal."
posted by philip-random at 2:49 PM on November 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
"Nothing ever tops that two and a half drink glow" and "it doesn't matter how much you drink really, as long as it ends with a meal."
posted by philip-random at 2:49 PM on November 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
Also, one hundred years ago was 1921.
Which was the year White Castle was founded.
posted by SisterHavana at 6:44 PM on November 13, 2021 [4 favorites]
Which was the year White Castle was founded.
posted by SisterHavana at 6:44 PM on November 13, 2021 [4 favorites]
Not to derail but I hear Aldi is about to shutter many of their North American stores.
Kinehora
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:39 PM on November 13, 2021
Kinehora
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:39 PM on November 13, 2021
I've checked. Aldi isn't talking about pulling out of any regions, and it's opening new stores in North America.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:54 AM on November 14, 2021
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:54 AM on November 14, 2021
...some of which might well have shutters.
I heard they made Christmas illegal again if you don't have a vax card.
posted by flabdablet at 3:33 AM on November 14, 2021 [1 favorite]
I heard they made Christmas illegal again if you don't have a vax card.
posted by flabdablet at 3:33 AM on November 14, 2021 [1 favorite]
I heard that using the shutters at Aldi requires a 25¢ deposit.
posted by box at 5:09 AM on November 14, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by box at 5:09 AM on November 14, 2021 [2 favorites]
but the whole thing of reproducing the labor force is to make the work unpaid and invisible because then you can't demand wages or organize and therefore labor is cheaper in cash terms.
This, entirely.
The work hours are long, especially with commute, such that it is enormously difficult for a working person to prep and cook enough good meals for their family. This means you must either depend on the unpaid labor of another family member, be making enough money to purchase pre cooked food each day, or do without. At very best, eating pre-prepared and bought food for three people is roughly 100$ a day, or about 3000$ a month. Few people can afford this, and most of the time it’s more expensive than this and requires shopping time nearly every day.
It is cheaper for capital to push this work on the families of its workers. There is not the political appetite for, say, forcing capital to consider commute time as work and paying accordingly, or being required to feed its workers full meals for the work hours it expects and make them responsible for the quality of that food. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be done, just that it isn’t how society is currently organized.
posted by corb at 8:38 AM on November 14, 2021 [4 favorites]
This, entirely.
The work hours are long, especially with commute, such that it is enormously difficult for a working person to prep and cook enough good meals for their family. This means you must either depend on the unpaid labor of another family member, be making enough money to purchase pre cooked food each day, or do without. At very best, eating pre-prepared and bought food for three people is roughly 100$ a day, or about 3000$ a month. Few people can afford this, and most of the time it’s more expensive than this and requires shopping time nearly every day.
It is cheaper for capital to push this work on the families of its workers. There is not the political appetite for, say, forcing capital to consider commute time as work and paying accordingly, or being required to feed its workers full meals for the work hours it expects and make them responsible for the quality of that food. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be done, just that it isn’t how society is currently organized.
posted by corb at 8:38 AM on November 14, 2021 [4 favorites]
Allowing it to be a social bonding experience
Which leaves people who live alone -- never married, divorced, widowed -- exactly where?
Not obsessing over the nutrient makeup of your food? Great. Not counting carbs and/or calories? Also great. Eschewing pre-20th century ingredients? Awesome. Enjoying your food? Excellent.
But if you live by yourself, especially during a seemingly never-ending global pandemic, you will never leave Pollan's purgatory of food consumption, defined loosely as "isolating (oneself) from normal social experiences."
posted by virago at 10:41 AM on November 14, 2021 [3 favorites]
Which leaves people who live alone -- never married, divorced, widowed -- exactly where?
Not obsessing over the nutrient makeup of your food? Great. Not counting carbs and/or calories? Also great. Eschewing pre-20th century ingredients? Awesome. Enjoying your food? Excellent.
But if you live by yourself, especially during a seemingly never-ending global pandemic, you will never leave Pollan's purgatory of food consumption, defined loosely as "isolating (oneself) from normal social experiences."
posted by virago at 10:41 AM on November 14, 2021 [3 favorites]
How many of you are convinced that if you let yourself eat what you wanted and made you feel good, without trying to not eat "too much," you would spiral out of control, eat nothing but "junk food," and gain a ton of weight?
That's certainly been my experience for the majority of the last 59 years, except for the junk food part. My diet's always been quite adequately nutritious and varied, the issue has always been that eating has always stimulated my appetite rather than bringing on anything vaguely resembling satiety until I am literally stuffed full. So if I do just let myself eat whatever makes me feel good, I do spiral into an appetite feedback loop and will just keep on eating until my stomach literally has no physical capacity left for more. And sometimes I just don't have the spoons for conscious control, so it has failed often enough that I have gained a ton of weight.
Judging by what a lot of people say about "intuitive eating", it seems that it's extremely difficult for those whose digestive systems generate appropriate satiety signals to wrap their minds around what it's like to live with one that doesn't. The inverse isn't true, because under the influence of a now-discontinued drug (sibutramine) I once spent three glorious months experiencing a "normal" satiety response. It made the whole relationship with food so incredibly easy. I miss it a lot.
I don't think this is an "extremely rare medical condition". I think it's just how appetite works for many who naturally run to fat.
Over the last few months I've given up entirely on conscious control over how much I eat at a sitting, applying it instead to not eating at all for up to three days at a time. That's been working quite well for me: ordinary hunger up to and including actual starvation is proving much more amenable to discipline and delayed gratification than the roaring appetite stimulated by food, regular starvation is also slowly reducing my stomach capacity, and I'm dropping weight at quite a satisfactory rate. But I'm still green with envy at people whose bodies satiate properly without medication.
I don't think any of my great-grandmothers would have approved of eating this way.
posted by flabdablet at 1:54 PM on November 14, 2021 [6 favorites]
That's certainly been my experience for the majority of the last 59 years, except for the junk food part. My diet's always been quite adequately nutritious and varied, the issue has always been that eating has always stimulated my appetite rather than bringing on anything vaguely resembling satiety until I am literally stuffed full. So if I do just let myself eat whatever makes me feel good, I do spiral into an appetite feedback loop and will just keep on eating until my stomach literally has no physical capacity left for more. And sometimes I just don't have the spoons for conscious control, so it has failed often enough that I have gained a ton of weight.
Judging by what a lot of people say about "intuitive eating", it seems that it's extremely difficult for those whose digestive systems generate appropriate satiety signals to wrap their minds around what it's like to live with one that doesn't. The inverse isn't true, because under the influence of a now-discontinued drug (sibutramine) I once spent three glorious months experiencing a "normal" satiety response. It made the whole relationship with food so incredibly easy. I miss it a lot.
I don't think this is an "extremely rare medical condition". I think it's just how appetite works for many who naturally run to fat.
Over the last few months I've given up entirely on conscious control over how much I eat at a sitting, applying it instead to not eating at all for up to three days at a time. That's been working quite well for me: ordinary hunger up to and including actual starvation is proving much more amenable to discipline and delayed gratification than the roaring appetite stimulated by food, regular starvation is also slowly reducing my stomach capacity, and I'm dropping weight at quite a satisfactory rate. But I'm still green with envy at people whose bodies satiate properly without medication.
I don't think any of my great-grandmothers would have approved of eating this way.
posted by flabdablet at 1:54 PM on November 14, 2021 [6 favorites]
....At the risk of perpetuating a derail - since when has Aldi even been IN North America in the first place? I thought that was only a UK thing.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:55 PM on November 14, 2021
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:55 PM on November 14, 2021
I'm coming at this from the perspective of someone who is fat and used to have binge eating disorder and go through cycles of restricting and then overeating, and no longer has an eating disorder, doesn't spend tons of time being anxious about food, and is still fat. In case you were envisioning one of those annoying thin people who has never had this experience and doesn't get it.
I'm glad it has worked for you but this is not a universal experience.
Telling someone with disordered eating that they'll be fine if they start listening to their body is presuming a lot about their life circumstances in addition to their digestive system.
posted by zymil at 4:00 PM on November 14, 2021 [4 favorites]
I'm glad it has worked for you but this is not a universal experience.
Telling someone with disordered eating that they'll be fine if they start listening to their body is presuming a lot about their life circumstances in addition to their digestive system.
posted by zymil at 4:00 PM on November 14, 2021 [4 favorites]
....At the risk of perpetuating a derail - since when has Aldi even been IN North America in the first place? I thought that was only a UK thing.
We've had an Aldi in my medium-sized New York college town for decades. (I haven't been able to bring myself to shop there since the day I found a Band-Aid in a can of green beans, but that's just me.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:41 PM on November 14, 2021 [1 favorite]
We've had an Aldi in my medium-sized New York college town for decades. (I haven't been able to bring myself to shop there since the day I found a Band-Aid in a can of green beans, but that's just me.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:41 PM on November 14, 2021 [1 favorite]
They have a small footprint in LA, out on the east side of the sprawl. I love it. I don't do all my shopping there, but I'm very glad to have it.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:23 PM on November 14, 2021
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:23 PM on November 14, 2021
Aldi's first US store opened in Eastern Iowa in 1976. They've only started to expand to big cities and the coasts within the past 15 years or so, but they've been in the hinterlands forever.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:40 PM on November 14, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:40 PM on November 14, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'm coming at this from the perspective of someone who is fat and used to have binge eating disorder and go through cycles of restricting and then overeating, and no longer has an eating disorder, doesn't spend tons of time being anxious about food, and is still fat. In case you were envisioning one of those annoying thin people who has never had this experience and doesn't get it.
I was anorexic ages 13 to 23. I'm now a decade out from that, and I still have never regained normal hunger signals. In fact, they're completely backwards. I'm hungriest right after I finish a meal. Sometimes I get hunger signals, but if I don't act on them, they quickly fade and I become super not hungry. I've even tested my blood sugar and found that what feels like "low blood sugar" - hungry, shaky, lightheaded - actually correlates with higer blood sugar and vice versa.
I don't get urges to binge or to eat junk food (except a few very hormonal days each menstrual cycle), but I'm pretty sure my years of restrictive eating and crash diets and weird diets just completely fucked up my hunger signals. And if that were something that could just fix itself, I'm pretty sure it would have by now.
And yes, I eat an incredibly healthy diet. Lots of veggies, fresh fruit, minimally processed, low carb, whatever. (This isn't bragging - I have a lot of health problems that require me to be very vigilant about the foods in my diet. I hate my current diet, but it beats the alternative, and the easiest way to avoid food that will make me sick is to cook it myself and make sure ingredients are as limited and controlled as possible.)
Also, these health issues cause extreme fatigue and mobility issues which makes cooking for myself a horrid chore that I hate because it's exhausting and I can't lift things and it just sucks. Even 30 minutes a day cooking is more than I can really handle.
posted by litera scripta manet at 6:37 PM on November 14, 2021 [2 favorites]
I was anorexic ages 13 to 23. I'm now a decade out from that, and I still have never regained normal hunger signals. In fact, they're completely backwards. I'm hungriest right after I finish a meal. Sometimes I get hunger signals, but if I don't act on them, they quickly fade and I become super not hungry. I've even tested my blood sugar and found that what feels like "low blood sugar" - hungry, shaky, lightheaded - actually correlates with higer blood sugar and vice versa.
I don't get urges to binge or to eat junk food (except a few very hormonal days each menstrual cycle), but I'm pretty sure my years of restrictive eating and crash diets and weird diets just completely fucked up my hunger signals. And if that were something that could just fix itself, I'm pretty sure it would have by now.
And yes, I eat an incredibly healthy diet. Lots of veggies, fresh fruit, minimally processed, low carb, whatever. (This isn't bragging - I have a lot of health problems that require me to be very vigilant about the foods in my diet. I hate my current diet, but it beats the alternative, and the easiest way to avoid food that will make me sick is to cook it myself and make sure ingredients are as limited and controlled as possible.)
Also, these health issues cause extreme fatigue and mobility issues which makes cooking for myself a horrid chore that I hate because it's exhausting and I can't lift things and it just sucks. Even 30 minutes a day cooking is more than I can really handle.
posted by litera scripta manet at 6:37 PM on November 14, 2021 [2 favorites]
I don't mean to go on a rant, but I am just so tired of other people coming into threads like this and just dismissing the lived experiences of others, like they know that person's life and body better. And sometimes it may even be coming from a place of trying to be helpful, but it doesn't make it any less frustrating to hear.
I mean, it's not like people who are overweight (and I include myself in this category now) or disabled or poor or whatever don't already have enough issues with internalized bias and the whole world telling them if they just suck it up and try harder none of this isn't a problem. Ugh. I'm just sick of it.
posted by litera scripta manet at 6:40 PM on November 14, 2021 [5 favorites]
I mean, it's not like people who are overweight (and I include myself in this category now) or disabled or poor or whatever don't already have enough issues with internalized bias and the whole world telling them if they just suck it up and try harder none of this isn't a problem. Ugh. I'm just sick of it.
posted by litera scripta manet at 6:40 PM on November 14, 2021 [5 favorites]
I was anorexic ages 13 to 23. I'm now a decade out from that, and I still have never regained normal hunger signals.
It is worth noting for the record that women, in part due to shitty societal messaging and real consequences, have incredibly high rates of eating disorders; stats have 75% of American women having experienced disordered eating at some point, with roughly 30% having had full bulimia or anorexia.
I personally struggled with these and also do not have “normal” satiety response, even two decades later. My body doesn’t know if it’s full until some time after the meal, and if I eat a single big meal my body tells me it is starving to death if I don’t consistently give it big meals. I cannot trust my body. And if I try, I continue gaining weight to the point where it causes me health problems. I’m not talking about trying to diet to an unreasonable standard, I’m talking about not being able to stand or walk without pain.
Squalor, I don’t think you’re a bad person for suggesting this, but I do think there’s some aspects you -and others - might not be considering. Which is normal! We can never know everything! Which is why it’s generally a bad idea to suggest other people do things if we’re not in Ask.
posted by corb at 7:39 PM on November 14, 2021 [5 favorites]
It is worth noting for the record that women, in part due to shitty societal messaging and real consequences, have incredibly high rates of eating disorders; stats have 75% of American women having experienced disordered eating at some point, with roughly 30% having had full bulimia or anorexia.
I personally struggled with these and also do not have “normal” satiety response, even two decades later. My body doesn’t know if it’s full until some time after the meal, and if I eat a single big meal my body tells me it is starving to death if I don’t consistently give it big meals. I cannot trust my body. And if I try, I continue gaining weight to the point where it causes me health problems. I’m not talking about trying to diet to an unreasonable standard, I’m talking about not being able to stand or walk without pain.
Squalor, I don’t think you’re a bad person for suggesting this, but I do think there’s some aspects you -and others - might not be considering. Which is normal! We can never know everything! Which is why it’s generally a bad idea to suggest other people do things if we’re not in Ask.
posted by corb at 7:39 PM on November 14, 2021 [5 favorites]
That message was a big improvement for the expected/intended audience of his book, who were all miserably following the South Beach diet or Weight Watchers or whatever and isolating themselves from normal social experiences.
So a long time ago, I was a stubbornly anemic vegetarian. My then-partner, who was also a staunch vegetarian but unfortunately a bad-faith-reading-of-Pollan disciple, felt that doctor-recommended supplements played into nutritionism so the only solution that didn't create friction in our relationship was for me to find ways to hack my diet to improve my iron absorption. It didn't work as well as I'd liked, but the worst part was having to deal with my partner acting as if my personal meal planning was, well, weird and problematic. I could just write said ex-partner off as an ass but the views you've espoused...well, they're basically what justified negging the way I ate.
So guess what? It sure as hell wasn't diet culture that isolated me from normal social experiences. Instead, the rejection-of-diet-culture-and-nutritionism masquerading as virtue that you're standing up for caused my problems.
If you're counting calories or carbs or whatever, you're going to have issues even eating food prepared by someone else. Or maybe you're going to make gross diet versions of recipes that everyone hates. Dieting and eating disorders cause actual social problems, which is sad if you remember food can actually be enjoyable instead.
You know what also causes actual social problems? Weaponizing other people's food choices because they make you uncomfortable with your own boundaries for some reason.
Look, I'm pro-intuitive eating and I appreciate that many people need a safe haven from diet culture. That said, even implying that people who make deliberate choices to eat for function rather than pleasure or community are doing something wrong does the exact opposite of creating that safe haven. You might have having a really bad day thanks to this thread, but surely you can understand how even a charitable reading of what you said sends a lot of mixed messages about how you view people's rights to make their own self-care decisions and have said decisions respected.
posted by blerghamot at 9:09 PM on November 14, 2021 [5 favorites]
So a long time ago, I was a stubbornly anemic vegetarian. My then-partner, who was also a staunch vegetarian but unfortunately a bad-faith-reading-of-Pollan disciple, felt that doctor-recommended supplements played into nutritionism so the only solution that didn't create friction in our relationship was for me to find ways to hack my diet to improve my iron absorption. It didn't work as well as I'd liked, but the worst part was having to deal with my partner acting as if my personal meal planning was, well, weird and problematic. I could just write said ex-partner off as an ass but the views you've espoused...well, they're basically what justified negging the way I ate.
So guess what? It sure as hell wasn't diet culture that isolated me from normal social experiences. Instead, the rejection-of-diet-culture-and-nutritionism masquerading as virtue that you're standing up for caused my problems.
If you're counting calories or carbs or whatever, you're going to have issues even eating food prepared by someone else. Or maybe you're going to make gross diet versions of recipes that everyone hates. Dieting and eating disorders cause actual social problems, which is sad if you remember food can actually be enjoyable instead.
You know what also causes actual social problems? Weaponizing other people's food choices because they make you uncomfortable with your own boundaries for some reason.
Look, I'm pro-intuitive eating and I appreciate that many people need a safe haven from diet culture. That said, even implying that people who make deliberate choices to eat for function rather than pleasure or community are doing something wrong does the exact opposite of creating that safe haven. You might have having a really bad day thanks to this thread, but surely you can understand how even a charitable reading of what you said sends a lot of mixed messages about how you view people's rights to make their own self-care decisions and have said decisions respected.
posted by blerghamot at 9:09 PM on November 14, 2021 [5 favorites]
I really do wish there was some kind of coherent, widely agreed on definition of "ultra-processed", because without it there's no science. Once you have a coherent fixed definition, then the studies start to mean something, and if they then still showed a consistent worse outcome, there could be investigation of exactly what led to that. Is it specific ingredients? It it specific kinds of chemical processes?
As it is, frankly it feels like woo. "These things that I disapprove of are definitely worse for you! I can't actually identify *what* is worse for you and why, but it's bad!"
posted by tavella at 10:32 PM on November 14, 2021
As it is, frankly it feels like woo. "These things that I disapprove of are definitely worse for you! I can't actually identify *what* is worse for you and why, but it's bad!"
posted by tavella at 10:32 PM on November 14, 2021
Your comment takes it as a given that you need to lose weight or that being fat is an undesirable state. Why?
Because I'm rising 60 now, my spine and my knees and my ankles can no longer take the load without causing me more pain than I'm willing to talk myself into believing doesn't matter, and I flat refuse to be immobile for the last 44 years of my life.
posted by flabdablet at 11:05 PM on November 14, 2021 [4 favorites]
Because I'm rising 60 now, my spine and my knees and my ankles can no longer take the load without causing me more pain than I'm willing to talk myself into believing doesn't matter, and I flat refuse to be immobile for the last 44 years of my life.
posted by flabdablet at 11:05 PM on November 14, 2021 [4 favorites]
Mod note: Sorry, folks — very many comments deleted by poster's request, so some of this thread is going to seem weirdly unconnected, and there's not really a reasonable way to handle that via pruning responses as well. So responses to some deleted comments remain, but okay! The general info that people are sharing still comes through! One member was having a tough time because of other real life circumstances and found themselves over-responding / explaining an early comment, in a thread on a reliably contentious, highly personal topic, where such a thing can easily happen. Hugs to all, please take care of yourselves and each other.
posted by taz (staff) at 11:48 PM on November 14, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by taz (staff) at 11:48 PM on November 14, 2021 [8 favorites]
Telling someone with disordered eating that they'll be fine if they start listening to their body is presuming a lot about their life circumstances in addition to their digestive system.
Suggesting that somebody whose satiety regulation mechanisms have unambiguously proved unreliable over decades of lived experience that their most successful attempt yet to compensate for that amounts to an eating disorder, and that they'd be better off just accepting their inexorably increasing body mass instead, likewise.
If I had the slightest doubt that what I was doing was both well supported by evidence of safety and efficacy and the best choice I could possibly be making for the sake of my health in the long term, or if I hadn't yet been forced to have as much practice as I have at compensating for the worms of self-doubt planted by the thinsplaining that's been directed at me my whole life, such a suggestion could only ever do harm. As it is, all it does is fail in any way to help.
I don't take it badly because it clearly comes from a place of kindness and concern, and the assumed risks I'm being advised to steer clear of clearly do arise from somebody else's lived experience. But one thing I've learned from years of having rough corners knocked off here at MeFi is that any time I am going to put lived experience up for discussion, I had better play very close attention to the way such recounts are framed. Unsolicited advice has almost always turned out to be something I'd have been better off saving in a text file and offering to myself in six months than posting online.
I note with wry amusement that I've also been misgendered here; diagnose eating disorder = assume female, apparently. Fat is indeed a feminist issue.
posted by flabdablet at 11:59 PM on November 14, 2021 [2 favorites]
Suggesting that somebody whose satiety regulation mechanisms have unambiguously proved unreliable over decades of lived experience that their most successful attempt yet to compensate for that amounts to an eating disorder, and that they'd be better off just accepting their inexorably increasing body mass instead, likewise.
If I had the slightest doubt that what I was doing was both well supported by evidence of safety and efficacy and the best choice I could possibly be making for the sake of my health in the long term, or if I hadn't yet been forced to have as much practice as I have at compensating for the worms of self-doubt planted by the thinsplaining that's been directed at me my whole life, such a suggestion could only ever do harm. As it is, all it does is fail in any way to help.
I don't take it badly because it clearly comes from a place of kindness and concern, and the assumed risks I'm being advised to steer clear of clearly do arise from somebody else's lived experience. But one thing I've learned from years of having rough corners knocked off here at MeFi is that any time I am going to put lived experience up for discussion, I had better play very close attention to the way such recounts are framed. Unsolicited advice has almost always turned out to be something I'd have been better off saving in a text file and offering to myself in six months than posting online.
I note with wry amusement that I've also been misgendered here; diagnose eating disorder = assume female, apparently. Fat is indeed a feminist issue.
posted by flabdablet at 11:59 PM on November 14, 2021 [2 favorites]
I was anorexic ages 13 to 23. I'm now a decade out from that, and I still have never regained normal hunger signals. In fact, they're completely backwards. I'm hungriest right after I finish a meal.
Do you remember life before anorexia well enough to recall whether or not your hunger signals were backwards beforehand as well? I'm interested to compare notes just because the backwards signals thing has been my lifelong experience, and it's been that way since well before my first experiments with extended water fasting thirty years ago, so in my own case I can't put it down to lasting aftereffects of starvation.
What I'm wondering is whether it's just easier for those of us with backwards hunger signals to accept and get accustomed to the sensations of starvation in the first place. If so, knowing that could be valuable to people who might thereby find themselves at higher risk of acquiring an anorexic disorder.
posted by flabdablet at 12:15 AM on November 15, 2021
Do you remember life before anorexia well enough to recall whether or not your hunger signals were backwards beforehand as well? I'm interested to compare notes just because the backwards signals thing has been my lifelong experience, and it's been that way since well before my first experiments with extended water fasting thirty years ago, so in my own case I can't put it down to lasting aftereffects of starvation.
What I'm wondering is whether it's just easier for those of us with backwards hunger signals to accept and get accustomed to the sensations of starvation in the first place. If so, knowing that could be valuable to people who might thereby find themselves at higher risk of acquiring an anorexic disorder.
posted by flabdablet at 12:15 AM on November 15, 2021
I'm the only person in my wider group of friends and acquaintances who has actually experienced severe hunger (bordering on starvation but not quite there) as a child. I'm also one of the only fat people. Because my mum was an alcoholic and my stepdad was often away, when he was away, she would prioritize booze over food, and while we did get a little food everyday, it wasn't near what we needed. We were all physically very small and of course underweight. And when we could get food, we ate. From when I moved out to this day, I have had issues with overweight in specific periods of time, including right now, though I think and hope I have found a way out of it now (yes, those damn knees). In all, I've been overweight a little more than half of my life after I was 16.
Everyone I know and spend time with says I have healthy eating habits, and my kids are healthy and have good eating habits. It's not like I go on secret binges either, it's just as if my body wants to cling to every single gram of fat as long as possible.
And, relevant to the discussion, I definitely know the backwards hunger signals. Fasting works well for me, because after a point, I almost can't eat. And on the other hand, I don't know what the triggers are exactly, but in some situations I become the 9-yo squirrel me who was always loading up to be ready for harder times.
I don't fast for days, though, I just skip one or two meals, because I am working on developing my gut-microbiome, and it's hard to eat enough different foods and fiber if I fast for too long. This I will not call a diet, but a change in lifestyle, and though the numbers are not impressive yet, they are there, and the change in well-being is significant.
posted by mumimor at 4:30 AM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
Everyone I know and spend time with says I have healthy eating habits, and my kids are healthy and have good eating habits. It's not like I go on secret binges either, it's just as if my body wants to cling to every single gram of fat as long as possible.
And, relevant to the discussion, I definitely know the backwards hunger signals. Fasting works well for me, because after a point, I almost can't eat. And on the other hand, I don't know what the triggers are exactly, but in some situations I become the 9-yo squirrel me who was always loading up to be ready for harder times.
I don't fast for days, though, I just skip one or two meals, because I am working on developing my gut-microbiome, and it's hard to eat enough different foods and fiber if I fast for too long. This I will not call a diet, but a change in lifestyle, and though the numbers are not impressive yet, they are there, and the change in well-being is significant.
posted by mumimor at 4:30 AM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
Speaking for myself, I have relatively mild diabetes. I don't restrict quantity of food, but if I'm not careful about carbs (even some unrefined carbs), it pushes my blood sugar up.
I used to think people could benefit by noticing how food makes them feel three or four hours after they eat it. I still think this is somewhat useful, but I had no idea how many people do a lot less self-monitoring than I do. Also, some migraine triggers can take three or four days to have their effect.
I've also become more aware that there are people who default to putting on more fat than their joints and strength can handle easily.
And I still think American diet/exercise culture is dangerous, but there may be nothing that's completely safe.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:32 AM on November 15, 2021
I used to think people could benefit by noticing how food makes them feel three or four hours after they eat it. I still think this is somewhat useful, but I had no idea how many people do a lot less self-monitoring than I do. Also, some migraine triggers can take three or four days to have their effect.
I've also become more aware that there are people who default to putting on more fat than their joints and strength can handle easily.
And I still think American diet/exercise culture is dangerous, but there may be nothing that's completely safe.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:32 AM on November 15, 2021
I am working on developing my gut-microbiome
I've had good results from experiments in giving that process a fast helping hand, using various kinds of yoghourt administered with a syringe (without needle!) via the back door. The results from even quite small doses (5ml) are readily apparent within hours.
posted by flabdablet at 5:13 AM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
I've had good results from experiments in giving that process a fast helping hand, using various kinds of yoghourt administered with a syringe (without needle!) via the back door. The results from even quite small doses (5ml) are readily apparent within hours.
posted by flabdablet at 5:13 AM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
Do you remember life before anorexia well enough to recall whether or not your hunger signals were backwards beforehand as well?
This is a good question! I think it's probably a combination. I do think I always had this to a certain extent. Even before I started engaging in more extreme dieting behaviors, I remember sort of dipping my toe in the water and realizing that once I pushed through the initial couple hours, it was super easy for me to just not eat. I just wouldn't be hungry.
So my best guess would be that I was predisposed to this already, which made it easier for me to engage in more extreme periods of starvation, which then further messed up my hunger signals.
I also remember being very young and just resenting eating. Not just because of gaining weight, but also just because I resented the time and effort it took.
flabdablet, I'm curious if you experience any other issues reading your body signals (if you feel like sharing)? I hadn't really connected this before now, but some of this comes through in other areas for me as well. Like, I won't notice I need to use the restroom until suddenly my bladder is about to burst. I'm bad at recognizing pain signals until they get debilitating. I do also have a trauma history from childhood, so maybe some of that plays into it.
posted by litera scripta manet at 6:08 AM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
This is a good question! I think it's probably a combination. I do think I always had this to a certain extent. Even before I started engaging in more extreme dieting behaviors, I remember sort of dipping my toe in the water and realizing that once I pushed through the initial couple hours, it was super easy for me to just not eat. I just wouldn't be hungry.
So my best guess would be that I was predisposed to this already, which made it easier for me to engage in more extreme periods of starvation, which then further messed up my hunger signals.
I also remember being very young and just resenting eating. Not just because of gaining weight, but also just because I resented the time and effort it took.
flabdablet, I'm curious if you experience any other issues reading your body signals (if you feel like sharing)? I hadn't really connected this before now, but some of this comes through in other areas for me as well. Like, I won't notice I need to use the restroom until suddenly my bladder is about to burst. I'm bad at recognizing pain signals until they get debilitating. I do also have a trauma history from childhood, so maybe some of that plays into it.
posted by litera scripta manet at 6:08 AM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
Oh, also, I have a super weird metabolism. Again, I think I always had this to some extent, but then my eating disorder made it worse.
For example, the minute I start skipping meals, my metabolism basically grinds to a halt, so I find it nearly impossible to lose weight by cutting calories, unless I actively just stop eating. But if I increase physical activity, then I can lose weight more quickly (but only until I get back to baseline).
(Unfortunately, I've been dealing with health problems that have kept me from even being able to walk for more than a couple minutes at a time for the past 2 years, and as a result, I've packed on weight, despite overhauling my diet so that I'm eating way healthier than before. For obvious reasons, I do not ever let myself count calories anymore, because there's no way I can do that without becoming insane.)
I have been diagnosed with dysautonomia - basically, my autonomic nervous system (parasympathetic/rest and digest vs sympathetic/fight or flight) is completely messed up. The more tired I am, the more my sympathetic nervous system ramps up, until eventually I crash and my parasympathetic kicks in. Rinse and repeat. I've had this my whole life most likely b/c it's secondary to another genetic condition (hEDS). It makes me wonder if this plays some role.
posted by litera scripta manet at 6:14 AM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
For example, the minute I start skipping meals, my metabolism basically grinds to a halt, so I find it nearly impossible to lose weight by cutting calories, unless I actively just stop eating. But if I increase physical activity, then I can lose weight more quickly (but only until I get back to baseline).
(Unfortunately, I've been dealing with health problems that have kept me from even being able to walk for more than a couple minutes at a time for the past 2 years, and as a result, I've packed on weight, despite overhauling my diet so that I'm eating way healthier than before. For obvious reasons, I do not ever let myself count calories anymore, because there's no way I can do that without becoming insane.)
I have been diagnosed with dysautonomia - basically, my autonomic nervous system (parasympathetic/rest and digest vs sympathetic/fight or flight) is completely messed up. The more tired I am, the more my sympathetic nervous system ramps up, until eventually I crash and my parasympathetic kicks in. Rinse and repeat. I've had this my whole life most likely b/c it's secondary to another genetic condition (hEDS). It makes me wonder if this plays some role.
posted by litera scripta manet at 6:14 AM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
Sorry for the back to back comments, but since I was a little more "grar" originally, I just wanted to say that it has been really great to hear experiences that are similar to mine as far as messed up hunger signals/metabolisms/etc.
It's nice to know that I'm not alone in having these experiences, because I hear so much stuff about how you should "just listen to your body" and I'm like, okay, if I did that, I would either starve or eat until I explode. It's like, there's no winning, you know? I currently eat a very healthy diet, but I don't enjoy it, and I don't listen to my body. So when I hear that kind of messaging, it makes me feel like I'm just broken. And yet, the best thing I did for myself was to pre-plan portions in advance, and start approaching eating as completely functional/practical.
But I also think there are probably a lot of people out there who don't have the kind of hunger signals that let them "just listen to their body". But it's just so much nicer and easier for everyone to pretend like everyone can do it. Same thing with the calories in/calories out scenario, which is both true in the strictest sense, but also meaningless, because "calories out" is dependent on so many variables it's really hard for a given person to know what metric to use for themselves in a lot of cases.
posted by litera scripta manet at 6:20 AM on November 15, 2021 [5 favorites]
It's nice to know that I'm not alone in having these experiences, because I hear so much stuff about how you should "just listen to your body" and I'm like, okay, if I did that, I would either starve or eat until I explode. It's like, there's no winning, you know? I currently eat a very healthy diet, but I don't enjoy it, and I don't listen to my body. So when I hear that kind of messaging, it makes me feel like I'm just broken. And yet, the best thing I did for myself was to pre-plan portions in advance, and start approaching eating as completely functional/practical.
But I also think there are probably a lot of people out there who don't have the kind of hunger signals that let them "just listen to their body". But it's just so much nicer and easier for everyone to pretend like everyone can do it. Same thing with the calories in/calories out scenario, which is both true in the strictest sense, but also meaningless, because "calories out" is dependent on so many variables it's really hard for a given person to know what metric to use for themselves in a lot of cases.
posted by litera scripta manet at 6:20 AM on November 15, 2021 [5 favorites]
Y’all might find the term “proprioception” helpful. Typically used to describe “body in space” sense but poor internal signals for hunger is one of the manifestations of poor proprioception too. Very common in autism but of course others can have it too. Often results in either not eating enough because you never feel hungry, or eating too much because... you never feel hungry so just eat at mealtimes and have no idea when to stop because what’s a satiety? Can also result in “I don’t know what hunger feels like, so anything happening in my body must be hunger” which leads to a lot of anxious eating because the only reason I know I need food is because I’m getting anxious and lightheaded; hence, if I’m anxious and lightheaded I must be hungry (never mind that I just got some bad news or had a scare).
You’re not alone and you’re not broken. Intuitive eating is not designed with people like us in mind—but I have still found it helpful. Rather than relying on day to day internal signals, I look at it on a macro level: when do I, generally, find myself needing food (which I can’t tell until I’m so hungry it’s affecting me physically)? Ok, plan that into my calendar. Over long periods of time, how does x make my body feel? Ok, plan specific days and times to eat the things that make me feel good. Etc. It doesn’t work on a day to day level, but I find it helpful as a way to guide my strictly planned Google Calendar for eating—which is almost universally so strict because otherwise I won’t eat, not because I’m calorie counting.
posted by brook horse at 6:40 AM on November 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
You’re not alone and you’re not broken. Intuitive eating is not designed with people like us in mind—but I have still found it helpful. Rather than relying on day to day internal signals, I look at it on a macro level: when do I, generally, find myself needing food (which I can’t tell until I’m so hungry it’s affecting me physically)? Ok, plan that into my calendar. Over long periods of time, how does x make my body feel? Ok, plan specific days and times to eat the things that make me feel good. Etc. It doesn’t work on a day to day level, but I find it helpful as a way to guide my strictly planned Google Calendar for eating—which is almost universally so strict because otherwise I won’t eat, not because I’m calorie counting.
posted by brook horse at 6:40 AM on November 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
I won't notice I need to use the restroom until suddenly my bladder is about to burst.
I never had a problem with that kind of urgency until just the last few years, which I initially put down to ageing but now think was probably mostly obesity. I say "was" because after dropping 21kg it's pretty much gone away.
Bladders are weird though. Have you had much experience with cannabis, and if so, have you also found that getting stoned can apparently increase the capacity of yours by at least 50%?
I'm bad at recognizing pain signals until they get debilitating.
That's not an experience I share. As I've got older I've noticed a shift in my response to acute injury, where the physical sensation of it is every bit as intense as it always was but my brain no longer responds to it with the old outraged howl; it's more like I've instantly read a detailed 10 page report on what's just been injured and how debilitating that's likely to be until it heals and about how long that's likely to take.
Chronic pain, such as I've been dealing with in my lower back since about a month before I last re-boarded the weight loss train, is every bit as zucked up as it always was. I still have no more useful response to that than trying to keep moving as much as I can in ways that don't exacerbate it, and doing regular gentle stretching, and otherwise just putting up with it until it goes away on its own, assuming it ever will. It never does, for lots of people.
My sense of body-in-space has never given me cause for complaint, for what that's worth.
I do also have a trauma history from childhood, so maybe some of that plays into it.
Quite likely does. I am lucky enough to have sidestepped that particular life landmine myself, but as a foster carer I have had quite a lot of second hand experience with the effects of childhood trauma and it seems to me that these are often profound and often persist for way longer than people with no exposure to it would easily credit. Accept no safesplaining.
posted by flabdablet at 7:40 AM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
I never had a problem with that kind of urgency until just the last few years, which I initially put down to ageing but now think was probably mostly obesity. I say "was" because after dropping 21kg it's pretty much gone away.
Bladders are weird though. Have you had much experience with cannabis, and if so, have you also found that getting stoned can apparently increase the capacity of yours by at least 50%?
I'm bad at recognizing pain signals until they get debilitating.
That's not an experience I share. As I've got older I've noticed a shift in my response to acute injury, where the physical sensation of it is every bit as intense as it always was but my brain no longer responds to it with the old outraged howl; it's more like I've instantly read a detailed 10 page report on what's just been injured and how debilitating that's likely to be until it heals and about how long that's likely to take.
Chronic pain, such as I've been dealing with in my lower back since about a month before I last re-boarded the weight loss train, is every bit as zucked up as it always was. I still have no more useful response to that than trying to keep moving as much as I can in ways that don't exacerbate it, and doing regular gentle stretching, and otherwise just putting up with it until it goes away on its own, assuming it ever will. It never does, for lots of people.
My sense of body-in-space has never given me cause for complaint, for what that's worth.
I do also have a trauma history from childhood, so maybe some of that plays into it.
Quite likely does. I am lucky enough to have sidestepped that particular life landmine myself, but as a foster carer I have had quite a lot of second hand experience with the effects of childhood trauma and it seems to me that these are often profound and often persist for way longer than people with no exposure to it would easily credit. Accept no safesplaining.
posted by flabdablet at 7:40 AM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
I have ADD and some mix of anxiety and depression (and may -- likely -- need to be re-diagnosed for other 'spectrum' associated stuff).
I definitely have weird proprioception issues and something I've noticed is that when I'm having trouble getting things done I will stop eating much food for a day or two, mostly just taking in dairy (keifer) and caffeine (lots of coffee) and carbs/sugar (in variously convenient forms including alcohol), and sometimes will even delay eliminating (more immediately) when amidst a task because the sense of urgency created by both propels me; even if it's a haywire kind of urgency I by which I am flailing at mental my to-do list without any methodicity and feeling miserable.
Not sure if that's quite an 'eating disorder;' rather than disordered eating, symptomatic of a different underlying condition? I dunno.
Depending on the circumstances of my life, and how much I'm doing the above (and to what extent I can afford more interesting groceries to make cooking more creative than obligatory), my weight bounces around from 175ish to 200. I'm 41 year old (sob) 5'11" cis dude.
Even with all that I mostly do cook and eat the way Pollan suggest, and in fact always have. So at least on that level "instinctive eating" is not an answer for all of these problems.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:02 AM on November 15, 2021
I definitely have weird proprioception issues and something I've noticed is that when I'm having trouble getting things done I will stop eating much food for a day or two, mostly just taking in dairy (keifer) and caffeine (lots of coffee) and carbs/sugar (in variously convenient forms including alcohol), and sometimes will even delay eliminating (more immediately) when amidst a task because the sense of urgency created by both propels me; even if it's a haywire kind of urgency I by which I am flailing at mental my to-do list without any methodicity and feeling miserable.
Not sure if that's quite an 'eating disorder;' rather than disordered eating, symptomatic of a different underlying condition? I dunno.
Depending on the circumstances of my life, and how much I'm doing the above (and to what extent I can afford more interesting groceries to make cooking more creative than obligatory), my weight bounces around from 175ish to 200. I'm 41 year old (sob) 5'11" cis dude.
Even with all that I mostly do cook and eat the way Pollan suggest, and in fact always have. So at least on that level "instinctive eating" is not an answer for all of these problems.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:02 AM on November 15, 2021
Have you had much experience with cannabis, and if so, have you also found that getting stoned can apparently increase the capacity of yours by at least 50%?
Huh. I do use quite a bit of cannabis.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:08 AM on November 15, 2021
Huh. I do use quite a bit of cannabis.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:08 AM on November 15, 2021
I'm like, okay, if I did that, I would either starve or eat until I explode.
Those were always my options as well, and it's taken me nearly sixty years to work out that I'm best served by embracing both of them. These days I do either starve completely or eat until I'm physically full, using morning weighings as a guide to how much of each of those I need to be doing.
It's nowhere near as pleasant as the few months I had with a medication-enabled working sense of satiety, but only because I don't now get to spend every day eating to satiety without worrying about eventually dying in immobile agony as a direct consequence. But the periodic starvation has been proving so worth it: I am now able to eat without feeling that exact worry every! single! time. It's a worry that has always been debilitating, and I just got to the point of being over proving to myself and others that it was always eating as they insisted I should that kept it fully justified.
my weight bounces around from 175ish to 200. I'm 41 year old (sob) 5'11" cis dude.
59 year old (creak, groan) 6' cis dude here, and 92-95kg (203-209lb) is the range I'm aiming to stabilize in maybe a year from now if all goes to plan. I've been as low as 95kg at this height before, and although it puts me squarely in the middle of the "overweight" range by BMI, I would not have felt healthy getting thinner. The putatively "normal" range for my height tops out at 82kg and that would be utterly insane for my build. There is no way I would ever want to be that thin.
posted by flabdablet at 8:22 AM on November 15, 2021
Those were always my options as well, and it's taken me nearly sixty years to work out that I'm best served by embracing both of them. These days I do either starve completely or eat until I'm physically full, using morning weighings as a guide to how much of each of those I need to be doing.
It's nowhere near as pleasant as the few months I had with a medication-enabled working sense of satiety, but only because I don't now get to spend every day eating to satiety without worrying about eventually dying in immobile agony as a direct consequence. But the periodic starvation has been proving so worth it: I am now able to eat without feeling that exact worry every! single! time. It's a worry that has always been debilitating, and I just got to the point of being over proving to myself and others that it was always eating as they insisted I should that kept it fully justified.
my weight bounces around from 175ish to 200. I'm 41 year old (sob) 5'11" cis dude.
59 year old (creak, groan) 6' cis dude here, and 92-95kg (203-209lb) is the range I'm aiming to stabilize in maybe a year from now if all goes to plan. I've been as low as 95kg at this height before, and although it puts me squarely in the middle of the "overweight" range by BMI, I would not have felt healthy getting thinner. The putatively "normal" range for my height tops out at 82kg and that would be utterly insane for my build. There is no way I would ever want to be that thin.
posted by flabdablet at 8:22 AM on November 15, 2021
Uh, the reason reason farm house, agrarian style of food is held up as the plutonic ideal of healthy food is because before FDA came to exist the stuff people had access to in cities was largely literally poison.
Out on the farms folks didn't have access to industrial food processes and chemicals so nothing got added to the food.
Big companies making factory food used any and every chemical that cut costs and increased profits with no one around to give a damn if it was killing people. So it did.
Food was completely unregulated so in the cities most of it was poison and most people were various levels of sick as a result. Out on the farms people were healthier because they didn't have the ability to put arsenic and junk like that in their food.
If your great grandmother grew up in a US city, whatever she might recognize as food may well be full of rat poison.
It sure as hell doesn't have much to do with the high-fructose-corn-syrup and other ultra-processed food issues that we see today.
I bring this up because I feel like people have largely forgotten or never knew what the food industry is and what things were like before the FDA because it was horrendous!.
It puts things in a bit different perspective for me to know that without the FDA most of these companies would almost certainly go back to slipping actual poisons into their products again. So with the FDA in place my assumption is that they'll attempt to put whatever nasty junk into their products as they can get the FDA to allow.
There's nothing magic about what our rural forbearers ate. They just had access to food that wasn't laced with poison and were physically active.
posted by VTX at 9:07 AM on November 15, 2021 [6 favorites]
Out on the farms folks didn't have access to industrial food processes and chemicals so nothing got added to the food.
Big companies making factory food used any and every chemical that cut costs and increased profits with no one around to give a damn if it was killing people. So it did.
Food was completely unregulated so in the cities most of it was poison and most people were various levels of sick as a result. Out on the farms people were healthier because they didn't have the ability to put arsenic and junk like that in their food.
If your great grandmother grew up in a US city, whatever she might recognize as food may well be full of rat poison.
It sure as hell doesn't have much to do with the high-fructose-corn-syrup and other ultra-processed food issues that we see today.
I bring this up because I feel like people have largely forgotten or never knew what the food industry is and what things were like before the FDA because it was horrendous!.
It puts things in a bit different perspective for me to know that without the FDA most of these companies would almost certainly go back to slipping actual poisons into their products again. So with the FDA in place my assumption is that they'll attempt to put whatever nasty junk into their products as they can get the FDA to allow.
There's nothing magic about what our rural forbearers ate. They just had access to food that wasn't laced with poison and were physically active.
posted by VTX at 9:07 AM on November 15, 2021 [6 favorites]
Going back to the whole ancestors thing (although now I'm going way past great grandmother territory), I could definitely see how there might be an evolutionary advantage to this eat until you explode alternating with not wanting to eat.
Like, in hunter gatherer days or whatever, if you're hunting for food, you might kill like a buffalo, and then you better eat as much as you can before it goes bad, but you might also have to then go days without eating until your next kill. I feel like my eating habits would be super well adapted to that.
posted by litera scripta manet at 9:16 AM on November 15, 2021 [3 favorites]
Like, in hunter gatherer days or whatever, if you're hunting for food, you might kill like a buffalo, and then you better eat as much as you can before it goes bad, but you might also have to then go days without eating until your next kill. I feel like my eating habits would be super well adapted to that.
posted by litera scripta manet at 9:16 AM on November 15, 2021 [3 favorites]
That's absolutely one of the Just So stories I use myself to reassure myself that what I'm doing would surely have to have been a normal pattern for some culture somewhere somewhen :-)
I'm keenly aware that it is a Just So story, but it's at least as pretty as any of the wild guesses I've seen "respectable" academics describe as "evolutionary psychology" and better than most of the justifications I've seen offered for paleo diets.
posted by flabdablet at 9:25 AM on November 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'm keenly aware that it is a Just So story, but it's at least as pretty as any of the wild guesses I've seen "respectable" academics describe as "evolutionary psychology" and better than most of the justifications I've seen offered for paleo diets.
posted by flabdablet at 9:25 AM on November 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
Oh and I also do have ADHD (and maybe on the autism spectrum, though never bothered pursuing this), and I do think the hyperfocus thing can play in to ignoring hunger signals (and other body signals), and the impulse thing can also play into eating too much.
Unfortunately, I don't think the intermittent fasting thing would work for me, because I find the minute I start skipping meals, it's like everything comes to a screeching h alt. My brain stops working right, my body gets sluggish, and I think my metabolism also grinds to a halt. And I have a feeling that this is very much a legacy from my eating disorder, just because I used to be able to tolerate fasting without these issues. But I sort of wonder if my extreme levels of starvation trained my body to immediately stop and conserve resources during a "not eating" time.
I'm also fortunate because one side effect of the ADHD drugs is that they curb the impulses to overeat. I still get that same "feeling hungry right after I finish eating instead of feeling full" thing, but it's not something I feel the need to act on. I think maybe the meds also keep me from being as excited about food, but they also make it easier for me to force myself to eat when needed.
Although there is a certain point in time about a week before my period where I do get that feeling of hunger which just feels like it's a bottomless pit and it needs to be filled. But then my hunger levels drop shortly after so I've learned to just not fight it as much because I think it balances out at the end of the day.
posted by litera scripta manet at 9:27 AM on November 15, 2021 [3 favorites]
Unfortunately, I don't think the intermittent fasting thing would work for me, because I find the minute I start skipping meals, it's like everything comes to a screeching h alt. My brain stops working right, my body gets sluggish, and I think my metabolism also grinds to a halt. And I have a feeling that this is very much a legacy from my eating disorder, just because I used to be able to tolerate fasting without these issues. But I sort of wonder if my extreme levels of starvation trained my body to immediately stop and conserve resources during a "not eating" time.
I'm also fortunate because one side effect of the ADHD drugs is that they curb the impulses to overeat. I still get that same "feeling hungry right after I finish eating instead of feeling full" thing, but it's not something I feel the need to act on. I think maybe the meds also keep me from being as excited about food, but they also make it easier for me to force myself to eat when needed.
Although there is a certain point in time about a week before my period where I do get that feeling of hunger which just feels like it's a bottomless pit and it needs to be filled. But then my hunger levels drop shortly after so I've learned to just not fight it as much because I think it balances out at the end of the day.
posted by litera scripta manet at 9:27 AM on November 15, 2021 [3 favorites]
I've been as low as 95kg at this height before, and although it puts me squarely in the middle of the "overweight" range by BMI, I would not have felt healthy getting thinner. The putatively "normal" range for my height tops out at 82kg and that would be utterly insane for my build. There is no way I would ever want to be that thin
So I'm 5'2" and female (age 33, but my body feels like it's 70 most days), and I spent most of my life at 115 to 125 lbs (not counting during crash diets/ED stuff). But over the last couple years, I've crept up to 150 lbs, probably due to various aging hormonal changes + stress + not being as physically active due to a series of injuries. Based on BMI, this puts squarely in the overweight range as well.
The funny thing is, most people who see me in person wouldn't guess this. Like, I had a doctor recently comment that it's good I don't have any extra weight on me (in the context of preserving my already messed up joints). I can definitely see the difference, and obviously am still my body's biggest critic, but objectively, I still think I look like I'm at a "healthy" weight.
But then I had a video visit (so they couldn't actually see what I look like below the neck) with an endocrinologist a couple months ago. I told her right away about my eating disorder history since I knew weight might come up, but she still repeatedly brought up how I would have to lose weight to fix the hormone issue. Of course, she prefaced it with, "I hate to say this but..." as if that made it any better.
It really fucked with my head. Suddenly, I felt guilty for eating my bowl of broccoli, quinoa, and kale. I had to work so hard not to fall back into old habits.
Then later when I got a little more distance from it, I just got kind of pissed. Because she has no idea how I actually look. She just asked for my height and weight and plugged it into the BMI. She can't see how much muscle I've gained from all the PT and physical rehab I've been doing. And her ultimate diagnosis was that the hormone irregularities are just due to stress! (Same diagnosis as I got when I starved myself into no longer having a period incidentally). I just think she's so reflexively used to lecturing people about how to lose weight, she does it automatically. Or something.
Because while I'd feel a lot happier if I could get back to my previous baseline of 125 lbs, I also think objectively I'm probably just as healthy at my current weight.
tl;dr: Fuck BMI and fuck doctors who reflexively tell people that losing weight will solve all their problems.
posted by litera scripta manet at 9:36 AM on November 15, 2021 [5 favorites]
So I'm 5'2" and female (age 33, but my body feels like it's 70 most days), and I spent most of my life at 115 to 125 lbs (not counting during crash diets/ED stuff). But over the last couple years, I've crept up to 150 lbs, probably due to various aging hormonal changes + stress + not being as physically active due to a series of injuries. Based on BMI, this puts squarely in the overweight range as well.
The funny thing is, most people who see me in person wouldn't guess this. Like, I had a doctor recently comment that it's good I don't have any extra weight on me (in the context of preserving my already messed up joints). I can definitely see the difference, and obviously am still my body's biggest critic, but objectively, I still think I look like I'm at a "healthy" weight.
But then I had a video visit (so they couldn't actually see what I look like below the neck) with an endocrinologist a couple months ago. I told her right away about my eating disorder history since I knew weight might come up, but she still repeatedly brought up how I would have to lose weight to fix the hormone issue. Of course, she prefaced it with, "I hate to say this but..." as if that made it any better.
It really fucked with my head. Suddenly, I felt guilty for eating my bowl of broccoli, quinoa, and kale. I had to work so hard not to fall back into old habits.
Then later when I got a little more distance from it, I just got kind of pissed. Because she has no idea how I actually look. She just asked for my height and weight and plugged it into the BMI. She can't see how much muscle I've gained from all the PT and physical rehab I've been doing. And her ultimate diagnosis was that the hormone irregularities are just due to stress! (Same diagnosis as I got when I starved myself into no longer having a period incidentally). I just think she's so reflexively used to lecturing people about how to lose weight, she does it automatically. Or something.
Because while I'd feel a lot happier if I could get back to my previous baseline of 125 lbs, I also think objectively I'm probably just as healthy at my current weight.
tl;dr: Fuck BMI and fuck doctors who reflexively tell people that losing weight will solve all their problems.
posted by litera scripta manet at 9:36 AM on November 15, 2021 [5 favorites]
I don't have an ADD diagnosis but certainly recognize in myself a lot of the kinds of thoughts and preferences frequently described by people who do, including my daughter. At this point in my life I'm pretty much used to the way I operate, though, and none of my ADD-like patterns are causing me enough grief to motivate me to address them; the workarounds I've been using for years are good enough.
The more tired I am, the more my sympathetic nervous system ramps up, until eventually I crash
An elevated, chronic, easily activated and hard to settle fight-or-flight state is super common in people who have experienced childhood trauma, and it seems to me that any kind of treatment offered for it that doesn't assume by default that PTSD symptoms can only be expected in such cases is misguided.
posted by flabdablet at 9:48 AM on November 15, 2021 [3 favorites]
The more tired I am, the more my sympathetic nervous system ramps up, until eventually I crash
An elevated, chronic, easily activated and hard to settle fight-or-flight state is super common in people who have experienced childhood trauma, and it seems to me that any kind of treatment offered for it that doesn't assume by default that PTSD symptoms can only be expected in such cases is misguided.
posted by flabdablet at 9:48 AM on November 15, 2021 [3 favorites]
It really fucked with my head. Suddenly, I felt guilty for eating my bowl of broccoli, quinoa, and kale.
So been there. So many times. So with you on it. Zucking thinsplainers can all zuck off into the middle of the zucking sun.
posted by flabdablet at 9:54 AM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
So been there. So many times. So with you on it. Zucking thinsplainers can all zuck off into the middle of the zucking sun.
posted by flabdablet at 9:54 AM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
BMI, like a lot of ways to measure things, is wildly misused. BMI by itself doesn't really tell you much. Someone with a BMI just over 30 with an average mix of muscle and fat could probably stand to improve....something.
But take an elite powerlifter like my man Greg Johnson (Trigger warning, IG thirst, borderline NSFW). He just came in sixth in the world equipped championships last week and narrowly missed a world record deadlift attempt, GO GREG! The nature of weight class based strength sports means that at this level you need to be as lean as you can be without it affecting your strength (12-15% typically).
His BMI is 31. He's dealing with a labrum tear but is otherwise, as you might imagine from the pic in the link, pretty healthy. BMI is just one number and you need to put into context with a bunch of other number and qualitative stuff to tell the whole story. By itself, it's not terribly useful.
posted by VTX at 9:56 AM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
But take an elite powerlifter like my man Greg Johnson (Trigger warning, IG thirst, borderline NSFW). He just came in sixth in the world equipped championships last week and narrowly missed a world record deadlift attempt, GO GREG! The nature of weight class based strength sports means that at this level you need to be as lean as you can be without it affecting your strength (12-15% typically).
His BMI is 31. He's dealing with a labrum tear but is otherwise, as you might imagine from the pic in the link, pretty healthy. BMI is just one number and you need to put into context with a bunch of other number and qualitative stuff to tell the whole story. By itself, it's not terribly useful.
posted by VTX at 9:56 AM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
In mid-August I went to get a long overdue medical checkup to help ms flabdablet stop worrying about my health. The doctor was one I'd met only by chance, his practice being the one I'd ended up at in May after searching online for nearby places offering COVID vaccinations, and the checkup appointment fell on the last day of the week-long water fast that I used to kick off my current body mass control regimen.
So I'd already dropped 11kg from peak mass, but when I stood on the scales in the doctor's office he read off the 155kg number without a trace of concern or condemnation or condescension in his voice, and when I told him I'd been fasting for a week his only comment about that was that I would need to eat for at least a couple of days before doing the blood tests he'd be prescribing for me because extended fasting can cause misleading results for several of the tests he wanted done.
Not a hint of eyebrow raising or finger wagging. And the only thing he did express worry about was the crazy high reading on his blood pressure meter, which worried me too since it was at least 30mmHg higher than the one I'd taken that very morning with my own meter at home. He told me there's a thing called white coat syndrome. I had no idea. He gave me a blood pressure log sheet to take home and asked me to bring a week's worth of morning and afternoon readings with me when I next came in for the blood test results.
I'm really hoping that he's still going to be there when I go back for my next checkup next year. Doctors who actually do the non-judgemental thing they all claim to be able to do and actually listen to what their patients have to say are, in my experience, rare and wonderful creatures to the point of being almost mythical.
Dr Amer Nabi is his name, and his practice is Service St Medical Centre in Bairnsdale. So that's a strong recommend from me if you find yourself in need of a GP in this neck of the woods.
posted by flabdablet at 10:31 AM on November 15, 2021 [4 favorites]
So I'd already dropped 11kg from peak mass, but when I stood on the scales in the doctor's office he read off the 155kg number without a trace of concern or condemnation or condescension in his voice, and when I told him I'd been fasting for a week his only comment about that was that I would need to eat for at least a couple of days before doing the blood tests he'd be prescribing for me because extended fasting can cause misleading results for several of the tests he wanted done.
Not a hint of eyebrow raising or finger wagging. And the only thing he did express worry about was the crazy high reading on his blood pressure meter, which worried me too since it was at least 30mmHg higher than the one I'd taken that very morning with my own meter at home. He told me there's a thing called white coat syndrome. I had no idea. He gave me a blood pressure log sheet to take home and asked me to bring a week's worth of morning and afternoon readings with me when I next came in for the blood test results.
I'm really hoping that he's still going to be there when I go back for my next checkup next year. Doctors who actually do the non-judgemental thing they all claim to be able to do and actually listen to what their patients have to say are, in my experience, rare and wonderful creatures to the point of being almost mythical.
Dr Amer Nabi is his name, and his practice is Service St Medical Centre in Bairnsdale. So that's a strong recommend from me if you find yourself in need of a GP in this neck of the woods.
posted by flabdablet at 10:31 AM on November 15, 2021 [4 favorites]
An athlete is already evaluating his or her physical health/prowess by a bunch of other numbers besides BMI. Some of those (performance-based) numbers are irrelevant to a non-athlete, and others would also be upsetting metrics for the average American, like BF%.
posted by Selena777 at 10:45 AM on November 15, 2021
posted by Selena777 at 10:45 AM on November 15, 2021
One of the things all of this idea misses is the sheer mental load of cooking, especially if you are in a house with kids / various food needs.
After handling kidlet school things, working a full day, doing other household chores, etc, some days I just don't have the mental capacity to look in my fridge and whip something together. I'm so busy toiling for sustainment in the monetary sense I don't have the energy to properly sustain myself in the way a Pollock would like.
posted by skittlekicks at 11:03 AM on November 15, 2021 [5 favorites]
After handling kidlet school things, working a full day, doing other household chores, etc, some days I just don't have the mental capacity to look in my fridge and whip something together. I'm so busy toiling for sustainment in the monetary sense I don't have the energy to properly sustain myself in the way a Pollock would like.
posted by skittlekicks at 11:03 AM on November 15, 2021 [5 favorites]
An athlete is already evaluating his or her physical health/prowess by a bunch of other numbers besides BMI. Some of those (performance-based) numbers are irrelevant to a non-athlete, and others would also be upsetting metrics for the average American, like BF%.
I hear what you are saying, and on the population level, I agree. But, one of my ways of handling my situation as a child and later in an abusive relationship was to be very, very fit. I felt that if I was strong, I could survive. And from the physical point of view, I could, for a while.
But: even when I was very thin, my BMI was very high. The simplest way I can describe this, is that no one can fit my "skinny" clothes. Not the person with severe anorexia I shared an apartment with once. Not my literally model-slim daughters. I was wearing clothes made for skinny young boys. I had clothes made to measure or altered so I didn't look like someone wearing their mum's clothes. But when I went to my doctor to talk about my periods disappearing, she just looked at my BMI and said I was fine. Reader, I wasn't. This was twenty years ago. Maybe if I had been an athlete, with specialist medical care, the reaction would have been different.
Now, I have a different doctor, and I am obviously overweight. But even though my BMI is over 30, I don't look that overweight, and apart from the knees and somewhat high blood sugar, I have no symptoms. And my doctor has been saying for years that we need to get my mental health issues under control before we can talk about my weight issues. That is very nice of him, but I'm thinking those things are intertwined somehow and that they can't be treated separately. That is why I am exploring the gut microbiome thing.
posted by mumimor at 11:12 AM on November 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
I hear what you are saying, and on the population level, I agree. But, one of my ways of handling my situation as a child and later in an abusive relationship was to be very, very fit. I felt that if I was strong, I could survive. And from the physical point of view, I could, for a while.
But: even when I was very thin, my BMI was very high. The simplest way I can describe this, is that no one can fit my "skinny" clothes. Not the person with severe anorexia I shared an apartment with once. Not my literally model-slim daughters. I was wearing clothes made for skinny young boys. I had clothes made to measure or altered so I didn't look like someone wearing their mum's clothes. But when I went to my doctor to talk about my periods disappearing, she just looked at my BMI and said I was fine. Reader, I wasn't. This was twenty years ago. Maybe if I had been an athlete, with specialist medical care, the reaction would have been different.
Now, I have a different doctor, and I am obviously overweight. But even though my BMI is over 30, I don't look that overweight, and apart from the knees and somewhat high blood sugar, I have no symptoms. And my doctor has been saying for years that we need to get my mental health issues under control before we can talk about my weight issues. That is very nice of him, but I'm thinking those things are intertwined somehow and that they can't be treated separately. That is why I am exploring the gut microbiome thing.
posted by mumimor at 11:12 AM on November 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
An athlete is already evaluating his or her physical health/prowess by a bunch of other numbers besides BMI.
I think this why most of the experience lifters that I chat with all understand that BMI means nothing without additional context.
But it's still true whether or not you're an athlete*. BMI measures your mass, not how much of it is fat. The BMI guidelines all assume you've got something close to the average BF%. While I agree that attempting to accurately measure your own body-fat percentage is mostly a fool's errand it is worthwhile to at least understand that it's part of the larger picture of a person's health.
But there are still limits. Someone that has a very large BMI, even if they're lean, is still probably putting a pretty significant strain on their heart just pumping blood around all that extra flesh.
*Many powerlifters would argue that they are not athletes and that is specifically why they train for powerlifting. Tongue planted firmly in cheek but to a powerlifter cardio is a four step squat walkout. :)
posted by VTX at 11:28 AM on November 15, 2021
I think this why most of the experience lifters that I chat with all understand that BMI means nothing without additional context.
But it's still true whether or not you're an athlete*. BMI measures your mass, not how much of it is fat. The BMI guidelines all assume you've got something close to the average BF%. While I agree that attempting to accurately measure your own body-fat percentage is mostly a fool's errand it is worthwhile to at least understand that it's part of the larger picture of a person's health.
But there are still limits. Someone that has a very large BMI, even if they're lean, is still probably putting a pretty significant strain on their heart just pumping blood around all that extra flesh.
*Many powerlifters would argue that they are not athletes and that is specifically why they train for powerlifting. Tongue planted firmly in cheek but to a powerlifter cardio is a four step squat walkout. :)
posted by VTX at 11:28 AM on November 15, 2021
others would also be upsetting metrics for the average American, like BF%
If I had a way to measure BF% directly that was as fast, easy, accurate and repeatable as using a pair of digital bathroom scales to measure body mass, I'd certainly not be using body mass as a crude proxy for BF% the way I am right now. Instead of using my mass to guide my fasting:feasting ratio I'd be using BF% because there is way more reliable guidance for what constitutes a healthy BF% than what constitutes a healthy body mass.
The only reason I can think of why knowing one's own BF% would be upsetting is the same reason that some people can't bring themselves to stand on a pair of scales, which is that there is an all-pervading shame associated with fatness in so much of modern culture.
It's so zucked up. And I think it all stems from the idea of gluttony as a challenge to the primacy of God cross-pollinating with the the widely prevalent Just World delusion, and the intellectually lazy rush to judgement so frequently brought on by that delusion.
If somebody's health is poor, then in a Just World that's clear evidence that they're Doing Something Wrong. If that poor health happens to be accompanied by fatness, it's obvious that what they're doing wrong is Being Gluttonously Sinful. That the theological basis for gluttony being sinful is its nature as a form of idolatry gets lost somewhere along the way; gluttony causes fatness, therefore fatness demonstrates gluttony, therefore fatness is cause for shame. She weighs the same as a duck, so she must be made of wood and is therefore a witch. Burn her!
This facile, fallacious chain of reasoning gives the tiny-hearted an instant opportunity to Know Better than somebody else, offering instant relief from having to feel ashamed of their own habitually shitty behaviour, and at this point is so thoroughly entrenched and has been so thoroughly weaponized by the advertising industry that I see no realistic prospect of shifting it.
posted by flabdablet at 11:31 AM on November 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
If I had a way to measure BF% directly that was as fast, easy, accurate and repeatable as using a pair of digital bathroom scales to measure body mass, I'd certainly not be using body mass as a crude proxy for BF% the way I am right now. Instead of using my mass to guide my fasting:feasting ratio I'd be using BF% because there is way more reliable guidance for what constitutes a healthy BF% than what constitutes a healthy body mass.
The only reason I can think of why knowing one's own BF% would be upsetting is the same reason that some people can't bring themselves to stand on a pair of scales, which is that there is an all-pervading shame associated with fatness in so much of modern culture.
It's so zucked up. And I think it all stems from the idea of gluttony as a challenge to the primacy of God cross-pollinating with the the widely prevalent Just World delusion, and the intellectually lazy rush to judgement so frequently brought on by that delusion.
If somebody's health is poor, then in a Just World that's clear evidence that they're Doing Something Wrong. If that poor health happens to be accompanied by fatness, it's obvious that what they're doing wrong is Being Gluttonously Sinful. That the theological basis for gluttony being sinful is its nature as a form of idolatry gets lost somewhere along the way; gluttony causes fatness, therefore fatness demonstrates gluttony, therefore fatness is cause for shame. She weighs the same as a duck, so she must be made of wood and is therefore a witch. Burn her!
This facile, fallacious chain of reasoning gives the tiny-hearted an instant opportunity to Know Better than somebody else, offering instant relief from having to feel ashamed of their own habitually shitty behaviour, and at this point is so thoroughly entrenched and has been so thoroughly weaponized by the advertising industry that I see no realistic prospect of shifting it.
posted by flabdablet at 11:31 AM on November 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
Someone that has a very large BMI, even if they're lean, is still probably putting a pretty significant strain on their heart just pumping blood around all that extra flesh.
Seems to me that strain on the heart would be much better judged at one less remove via direct measurement of blood pressure. I can't see any justification for describing anybody as having "extra flesh" on the basis of a high BMI; it may well be that they have exactly as much flesh as is completely healthy for them. BMI is a population screening tool and simply not very useful as an individual diagnostic.
posted by flabdablet at 11:36 AM on November 15, 2021 [4 favorites]
Seems to me that strain on the heart would be much better judged at one less remove via direct measurement of blood pressure. I can't see any justification for describing anybody as having "extra flesh" on the basis of a high BMI; it may well be that they have exactly as much flesh as is completely healthy for them. BMI is a population screening tool and simply not very useful as an individual diagnostic.
posted by flabdablet at 11:36 AM on November 15, 2021 [4 favorites]
If I had a way to measure BF% directly that was as fast, easy, accurate and repeatable as using a pair of digital bathroom scales to measure body mass
This actually works reasonably well! It uses just a tape measure and was developed by the US Navy. When the measurements are taken by experts the margin of error is +/-3% (which is about the same as a DEXA scan) but doing it on yourself will probably be somewhat less accurate. There is an extra measurement or two for women and that extra layer complexity likely hurts accuracy a bit too for those with women's bodies.
But I think over time it can reveal trends and provides some additional evidence for what your eyes might see in the mirror.
posted by VTX at 11:54 AM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
This actually works reasonably well! It uses just a tape measure and was developed by the US Navy. When the measurements are taken by experts the margin of error is +/-3% (which is about the same as a DEXA scan) but doing it on yourself will probably be somewhat less accurate. There is an extra measurement or two for women and that extra layer complexity likely hurts accuracy a bit too for those with women's bodies.
But I think over time it can reveal trends and provides some additional evidence for what your eyes might see in the mirror.
posted by VTX at 11:54 AM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
The last scale I had did a conductivity body fat measurement using contacts under either foot. I don’t know how accurate it was tho and the little circuit board in it was crappily mounted and that function ate it after a couple years. (It stored your height, [binary] gender and age in a user profile.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:30 PM on November 15, 2021
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:30 PM on November 15, 2021
In the interest of science, today has actually been a day where I have been extremely stressed out and not felt able to stay on the course I have made out for myself. One symptom is that I have been posting on this thread too much.
I skipped breakfast which is normal and not bad, and in theory it was also OK that I bought an organic, locally produced serving of dal for lunch because I was busy, even though I normally cook from scratch. For most people that would be entirely OK, but for me it was a warning sign. After that lovely lunch I was very hungry, but I ignored it and drank water.
Then, at dinner time, I had a tiny sandwich with liver paté and cucumber on thin dark rye bread. Not totally off my diet, but not good, and also I began drinking very sugary blackcurrant cordial. I usually don't have any other sugar than that from one piece of dark chocolate every second day, but to me blackcurrant cordial is granny-love and comfort when I'm feeling bad.
The kids made a pumpkin soup that looks and smells amazing, but I don't have an appetite for real food. I'm snacking on almonds (but not many at all) and drinking a glass of red wine.
Everything has gone wrong, but it doesn't look terrible. I just know it is.
The sugar will throw me off, and so will the lack of vegetables. Tomorrow I will have put on weight and the pain in my back and knees will be worse.
At this point in my long struggle with food, I know that I can get back on track. Before this would had gotten me on a comfort food binge which would look harmless to others because I do love my vegs and I cook from scratch, but within a week, I'd be feeling terrible. Now, I will take a fast till dinner tomorrow, and I've bought a tin of hummus (no additives) that I can have with a salad tomorrow night. And I will re-balance.
Technically, I have eaten less today than normal. But because of the sugar in the sweet drink, I know already where this is heading. I just really needed that soothing effect, combined of memories and well, sugar.
posted by mumimor at 12:42 PM on November 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
I skipped breakfast which is normal and not bad, and in theory it was also OK that I bought an organic, locally produced serving of dal for lunch because I was busy, even though I normally cook from scratch. For most people that would be entirely OK, but for me it was a warning sign. After that lovely lunch I was very hungry, but I ignored it and drank water.
Then, at dinner time, I had a tiny sandwich with liver paté and cucumber on thin dark rye bread. Not totally off my diet, but not good, and also I began drinking very sugary blackcurrant cordial. I usually don't have any other sugar than that from one piece of dark chocolate every second day, but to me blackcurrant cordial is granny-love and comfort when I'm feeling bad.
The kids made a pumpkin soup that looks and smells amazing, but I don't have an appetite for real food. I'm snacking on almonds (but not many at all) and drinking a glass of red wine.
Everything has gone wrong, but it doesn't look terrible. I just know it is.
The sugar will throw me off, and so will the lack of vegetables. Tomorrow I will have put on weight and the pain in my back and knees will be worse.
At this point in my long struggle with food, I know that I can get back on track. Before this would had gotten me on a comfort food binge which would look harmless to others because I do love my vegs and I cook from scratch, but within a week, I'd be feeling terrible. Now, I will take a fast till dinner tomorrow, and I've bought a tin of hummus (no additives) that I can have with a salad tomorrow night. And I will re-balance.
Technically, I have eaten less today than normal. But because of the sugar in the sweet drink, I know already where this is heading. I just really needed that soothing effect, combined of memories and well, sugar.
posted by mumimor at 12:42 PM on November 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
It is better to diet on your sweet than to whip on your knees.
posted by flabdablet at 7:20 PM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by flabdablet at 7:20 PM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
This actually works reasonably well! It uses just a tape measure
It also relies on a "waist at navel" measurement. My own navel has been on an exploratory mission to regions well south of my waist for some years now :-)
I'll stick with the scales. They're fast, accurate enough to be believable, and almost completely insensitive to technique.
posted by flabdablet at 7:27 PM on November 15, 2021
It also relies on a "waist at navel" measurement. My own navel has been on an exploratory mission to regions well south of my waist for some years now :-)
I'll stick with the scales. They're fast, accurate enough to be believable, and almost completely insensitive to technique.
posted by flabdablet at 7:27 PM on November 15, 2021
One thing that always amazes me in threads where we talk about what we eat is how little some of you need to get by. I'm tall, I'm fidgety, I work outdoors, and I'm an athlete, so I eat all the food, all the time. You're good, I'm good, there's just a big variety in what an individual human can and should eat to feel their best.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:39 PM on November 15, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:39 PM on November 15, 2021 [6 favorites]
I suspect that for any but the really rural households, it has been a long, long time since total cooking self-sufficiency was literally the norm.
Frowner, I will always love your posts, but that's the second comment you've made in this thread so far that makes it very, very clear you have no idea how much of the US was actually rural back then. To put it simply, you're extremely citified, and you have trouble looking outside that lens.
Loving the discussion here:
1) Pollan's very framing is sexist, and from his unique class and culture perspective. It is clumsily worded, but not meant I think to be a be-all, end all. When you write a book or an article you have to stop putting disclaimers in at some point and speak from your own truth. He did that, and <>>he's not wrong.
2)We all have different lives and anecdotes. I caught myself wanting to counter a few people with my own anecdotes. But all that is a distraction, because food is an emotional topic and everyone has slightly different spins and feelings. We are all unique.
3) Food is emotional, food is difficult, food is love and comfort and punishment and reward, food has been used as carrot and stick, food means control (ask anyone with an eating disorder), food is shame and unalloyed pleasure. And holy shit, the amount of people who come out with guns blazing because they feel judged. I could be wrong since I don't know the man, but I don't think Pollan is judging y'all. And you can argue all day that processed food is better for you and I still ain't buying it.
4) "Eat More plants" is downright reasonable and the science bears it out, and no one is holding a gun to your head. If you're angry and feel guilty and judged, maybe do what I do and give the person who hassles you for EBT benefits a secret middle finger as you walk away. Jesus. Point all that well-deserved rage and ridicule elsewhere. Pollan is not in your kitchen scolding you. "Eat more plants" isn't telling you to give up taco bell, become vegan, or to not buy the occasional Twinkie, it's just (wisely), suggesting if you're lucky enough to be able to pull it off, maybe ya oughta try it.
5) I love the point that someone made that today's convenience food culture also relies on underpaid, exploited workers in ways that are extremely problematic. Walmart workers are eating the chicken that undocumented workers are getting mangled processing. This isn't academic to me. I know a dude who lost a finger in a plant near my hometown. Undocumented. And those Walmart workers can't afford CSAs. So who is exploiting whom? I, someone who can't afford a CSA have done "volunteer" labor that strained my breaking body to bits in order to get "free" vegetables. When I tallied up the cost it was less than minimum wage, but I was still in pleased to get it, during the rare times I could handle the manual labor. Who is exploiting whom? I don't know anymore. I want people to have their CSA boxes. Some of these farms run on "volunteer" and "intern" labor. The dirty little secret is that it's all broken. Burn it all down.
6) One of those anecdotes I railed against: My parents, my siblings, aunts and uncles and cousins on both sides still can vegetables, and freeze, and gather nuts and berries, keep chickens and/or cows, and some hunt and take that to be processed. They are unusual, but not wildly so. Only perhaps to the degree they do it (they give vegetables to everyone in town and invite people over to pick fruit and berries). In not-urban areas in the south almost everyone I know at least either grows some tomatoes or keeps chickens or hunts or something. As an urban queer, long disconnected from what some might consider my roots, I too make the mistake of thinking everyone is like me. But unlike some people, I go outside my sphere/bubble at least a couple of times a year and remember that not everyone is me.
I've had people comment on EBT purchases in ways that left me seething with shame and rage.
I've experienced harassment at food banks from large dudes, and coercion to pray. I've experienced assumptions, because you can't see the expensive surgeries and medication I've needed. I've had doctors comment on my weight in ways that I find uncomfortable and weird. I've had them give me ludicrously bad food advice.
I had a lucky upbringing with good, fresh food, and yet I didn't start cooking until I was an adult and I hate it. I frequently have had days where pain was so bad I couldn't stand long enough to do more than microwave a frozen dinner.
I've been overweight and I've lost weight, and I've worked manual labor jobs that left me too tired and in pain to cook.
I have EVERY dog in this fight. Pollan's advice is advice I think is sound, and I thought the writer of the article had exact zero good points. She mostly talked about her grandparents' income, which...ok? Like I said in point one, Pollan's phrasing was sexist and simplistic and he was speaking from a culture he knows. The writer didn't reframe that, or refute it either one. She just made herself and her relatives sound rich (from my family's standards) and excessively out-of-touch.
posted by liminal_shadows at 10:57 PM on November 15, 2021 [7 favorites]
This thread was SOOOO interesting and thanks to Too-Ticky's tip here, I made the first ever home fries in my life!
I chopped up a bunch of red potatoes and an onion, microwaved them on a plate uncovered for 4 minutes in my 700 watt microwave, fried them in olive oil, and halfway during the cooking time I added a frozen schnitzel from Aldi. I added butter to make it more tasty and salt and pepper. When I was done, I added a heaping helping of fresh spinach to get in some greens (and to sop up the oil and butter). Yum!!!
(Maybe I should try that Newfoundland fisherman's chowder next, though that might be testing my cooking skills a little too far.)
Anyway, I have no idea if this is anything any of my great-grandmothers would eat-- possibly on my mother's side? They were English/Swiss-German farmers from Iowa. I have several shoeboxes of old photographs of farmers and their wives trussed in their late Victorian best.
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 11:04 PM on November 15, 2021 [5 favorites]
I chopped up a bunch of red potatoes and an onion, microwaved them on a plate uncovered for 4 minutes in my 700 watt microwave, fried them in olive oil, and halfway during the cooking time I added a frozen schnitzel from Aldi. I added butter to make it more tasty and salt and pepper. When I was done, I added a heaping helping of fresh spinach to get in some greens (and to sop up the oil and butter). Yum!!!
(Maybe I should try that Newfoundland fisherman's chowder next, though that might be testing my cooking skills a little too far.)
Anyway, I have no idea if this is anything any of my great-grandmothers would eat-- possibly on my mother's side? They were English/Swiss-German farmers from Iowa. I have several shoeboxes of old photographs of farmers and their wives trussed in their late Victorian best.
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 11:04 PM on November 15, 2021 [5 favorites]
BMI, like a lot of ways to measure things, is wildly misused. BMI by itself doesn't really tell you much.
I am 100% on board with this. I just wish more doctors were aware of this! My understanding is BMI is most useful for population level/epidemiological studies.
An elevated, chronic, easily activated and hard to settle fight-or-flight state is super common in people who have experienced childhood trauma, and it seems to me that any kind of treatment offered for it that doesn't assume by default that PTSD symptoms can only be expected in such cases is misguided.
Yes, that was eventually one of the explanations that I came around to. Further complicating things, I have a rare genetic disorder (hEDS) which also contributes to the dysautonomia, but I definitely think CPTSD symptoms are a big part of it, and in particular, contribute to the severity of the symptoms.
It is so hard to find a doctor who a) doesn't just assume my issues are caused by weight (if I were anywhere near your location, flabdablet, I would totally check out the center you linked to); b) didn't just attribute my symptoms to me being anxious/depressed; and c) is familiar enough with EDS and the secondary conditions to treat me.
I've been relatively lucky to find at least some medical providers who meet criteria a and b. Unfortunately, I have to see a boatload of specialists, so I guess it was likely too much to hope for that all of them would fit this.
But I really do want to thank everyone in this thread for sharing (special mention to flabdablet!). This has been a really interesting and surprisingly validating discussion. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one over here struggling with this stuff.
posted by litera scripta manet at 6:23 AM on November 16, 2021
I am 100% on board with this. I just wish more doctors were aware of this! My understanding is BMI is most useful for population level/epidemiological studies.
An elevated, chronic, easily activated and hard to settle fight-or-flight state is super common in people who have experienced childhood trauma, and it seems to me that any kind of treatment offered for it that doesn't assume by default that PTSD symptoms can only be expected in such cases is misguided.
Yes, that was eventually one of the explanations that I came around to. Further complicating things, I have a rare genetic disorder (hEDS) which also contributes to the dysautonomia, but I definitely think CPTSD symptoms are a big part of it, and in particular, contribute to the severity of the symptoms.
It is so hard to find a doctor who a) doesn't just assume my issues are caused by weight (if I were anywhere near your location, flabdablet, I would totally check out the center you linked to); b) didn't just attribute my symptoms to me being anxious/depressed; and c) is familiar enough with EDS and the secondary conditions to treat me.
I've been relatively lucky to find at least some medical providers who meet criteria a and b. Unfortunately, I have to see a boatload of specialists, so I guess it was likely too much to hope for that all of them would fit this.
But I really do want to thank everyone in this thread for sharing (special mention to flabdablet!). This has been a really interesting and surprisingly validating discussion. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one over here struggling with this stuff.
posted by litera scripta manet at 6:23 AM on November 16, 2021
A diet of nothing except meat, green vegetables and water will work every time. No beans, no fruits, no dairy, no grains and no vegetables that arent green (i.e. no potatoes, no carrots, no onion). Absolutely no exceptions, except the occasional egg. You’ll lose your mind in the process, but it works, 100% guaranteed.
posted by moorooka at 6:27 PM on November 16, 2021
posted by moorooka at 6:27 PM on November 16, 2021
My grandmothers were a study in contrasts. Both were single moms, raising their kids while working as teachers, but that's about it. One was raised in Iowa, and lived her adult life in Mount Holly, NJ. The other spent her whole life in New Orleans. New Jersey grandmother, Esther, could make a mean fried chicken, and always had potato salad and Waldorf salad on hand at big dinners. New Orleans grandmother, Marie Louise, did not cook, unless it was to make a banana sandwich, or to heat up soup. Maybe she did actually cook? If so, she memory-holed all the evidence, along with any trace of her ex-husband.
Growing up in South Jersey, in the '70s, we had all the best of "modern" food technology. Velveeta! Miracle whip! Margarine! Vienna sausages! Frozen orange juice concentrate! Powdered milk! We ate at McDonald's and Burger King and Gino's, an erstwhile regional burger chain that served rectangular sandwiches. My mom was proud to serve us margarine, as it clearly was not horrible for you like butter! Mom cooked and had a reasonably wide repertoire to whip up for her three kids and husband, but in retrospect, much of it was fine, nothing spectacular. I ate most everything with great gusto. One of the few things I still like to make is her linguini with clam sauce, but now I use actual spinach (not frozen!) and butter. I need to see if I can dig up Esther's potato salad recipe. That was some tasty stuff.
I didn't know what a clove of garlic looked like until I was well into my 20s, and it was only when I met my (now ex) husband that I learned any cooking technique, such as how to sautee onions or whip egg whites, or what an actually sharp knife looked and felt like.
These days, I am burned out on being responsible for "dinner," so I like to come home, crack a beer, have a couple snacks, then eventually segue into mealtime. Maybe it's carton TJ's soup, maybe it's frozen enchiladas, maybe it's something I made over the weekend, maybe it's rice cakes and cheese and avocados and a bowl of cereal.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 8:31 PM on November 16, 2021 [2 favorites]
Growing up in South Jersey, in the '70s, we had all the best of "modern" food technology. Velveeta! Miracle whip! Margarine! Vienna sausages! Frozen orange juice concentrate! Powdered milk! We ate at McDonald's and Burger King and Gino's, an erstwhile regional burger chain that served rectangular sandwiches. My mom was proud to serve us margarine, as it clearly was not horrible for you like butter! Mom cooked and had a reasonably wide repertoire to whip up for her three kids and husband, but in retrospect, much of it was fine, nothing spectacular. I ate most everything with great gusto. One of the few things I still like to make is her linguini with clam sauce, but now I use actual spinach (not frozen!) and butter. I need to see if I can dig up Esther's potato salad recipe. That was some tasty stuff.
I didn't know what a clove of garlic looked like until I was well into my 20s, and it was only when I met my (now ex) husband that I learned any cooking technique, such as how to sautee onions or whip egg whites, or what an actually sharp knife looked and felt like.
These days, I am burned out on being responsible for "dinner," so I like to come home, crack a beer, have a couple snacks, then eventually segue into mealtime. Maybe it's carton TJ's soup, maybe it's frozen enchiladas, maybe it's something I made over the weekend, maybe it's rice cakes and cheese and avocados and a bowl of cereal.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 8:31 PM on November 16, 2021 [2 favorites]
Concerning the BMI, I'll take the opportunity to plug the Maintenance Phase podcast. Here's their episode on BMI:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-body-mass-index/id1535408667?i=1000530850955
Long story short, BMI isn't really useful to measure anything, and certainly nothing to do with health. The creator of the BMI was a math guy, not a health guy, and the BMI was only incidental to his work. He was trying to quantify the "Average Man" (believing the average man was the perfect man) and one piece of data that he happened to have access to was height and weight, so he made up a this weird ratio, and put a pin in the top of the bell curve, and claimed that as the ideal. He very specifically said it should never be applied to individuals, as that doesn't make any sense, even to him. More that if a population veered away from the "Average Man", governments should develop interventions to correct that. It's a troubled premise from its foundation.
But eugenicists and insurance companies embraced the idea. Actuaries in particular loved having a number that described the ideal man (and, yes, this was all based on measurements of wealthy white men), so they could then charge more money if a person fell outside a totally arbitrary range. Then doctors took up the cause. It's all garbage "science" that took hold due to pre-existing biases against fatness. And of course racism and misogyny get in on the action.
posted by team lowkey at 12:02 PM on November 17, 2021 [5 favorites]
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-body-mass-index/id1535408667?i=1000530850955
Long story short, BMI isn't really useful to measure anything, and certainly nothing to do with health. The creator of the BMI was a math guy, not a health guy, and the BMI was only incidental to his work. He was trying to quantify the "Average Man" (believing the average man was the perfect man) and one piece of data that he happened to have access to was height and weight, so he made up a this weird ratio, and put a pin in the top of the bell curve, and claimed that as the ideal. He very specifically said it should never be applied to individuals, as that doesn't make any sense, even to him. More that if a population veered away from the "Average Man", governments should develop interventions to correct that. It's a troubled premise from its foundation.
But eugenicists and insurance companies embraced the idea. Actuaries in particular loved having a number that described the ideal man (and, yes, this was all based on measurements of wealthy white men), so they could then charge more money if a person fell outside a totally arbitrary range. Then doctors took up the cause. It's all garbage "science" that took hold due to pre-existing biases against fatness. And of course racism and misogyny get in on the action.
posted by team lowkey at 12:02 PM on November 17, 2021 [5 favorites]
A diet of nothing except meat, green vegetables and water will work every time.
I may regret asking this, but what will it "work" for every time?
For instance, for my spouse, with his irritable bowels, the main thing that would work for is a trip to the hospital. Perhaps, as many people have said over the generations, including several people in this very thread, there is no one universal diet that will "work" for everyone?
posted by hydropsyche at 12:30 PM on November 17, 2021 [7 favorites]
I may regret asking this, but what will it "work" for every time?
For instance, for my spouse, with his irritable bowels, the main thing that would work for is a trip to the hospital. Perhaps, as many people have said over the generations, including several people in this very thread, there is no one universal diet that will "work" for everyone?
posted by hydropsyche at 12:30 PM on November 17, 2021 [7 favorites]
Regarding BMI there was a useful infographic in the New York Times about its limitations, with graphs of BMI against body fat as measured by DEXA scans:
DEXA scans are more accurate, but the machines are very expensive, and generally limited to a maximum weight that excludes some people.
Height/waist size ratios are more accurate for diagnosing excess fat according to a couple of studies. But those studies have only been done on people of European ancestry, whereas with BMI while different ethnic groups have different healthy ranges, at least we have some idea what those ranges are. Also it doesn't diagnose underweight people.
Calipers are difficult to use, and also don't diagnose underweight people.
If you want a measurement that can detect both being underweight and overweight, works for a variety of ethnic groups, and doesn't cost tens of thousands in equipment, there isn't an obvious replacement for BMI.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:19 PM on November 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
Eleven percent who were overweight according to B.M.I. had normal body fat... 31 percent who were of normal weight according to B.M.I. had excess body fat...Unfortunately there isn't a clear alternative.
Overall BMI disagreed with body fat percentage 18% of the time.
DEXA scans are more accurate, but the machines are very expensive, and generally limited to a maximum weight that excludes some people.
Height/waist size ratios are more accurate for diagnosing excess fat according to a couple of studies. But those studies have only been done on people of European ancestry, whereas with BMI while different ethnic groups have different healthy ranges, at least we have some idea what those ranges are. Also it doesn't diagnose underweight people.
Calipers are difficult to use, and also don't diagnose underweight people.
If you want a measurement that can detect both being underweight and overweight, works for a variety of ethnic groups, and doesn't cost tens of thousands in equipment, there isn't an obvious replacement for BMI.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:19 PM on November 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure that we want that measurement.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:45 PM on November 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 3:45 PM on November 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
If you have a BMI under 18.5, your mortality rate is 1.8 times higher. That's useful information for an individual or their doctor to know.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:52 PM on November 17, 2021
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:52 PM on November 17, 2021
I just want to say how nice it’s been reading about actual MeFites’ actual Great-Grandmas.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:24 PM on November 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:24 PM on November 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
If you have a BMI under 18.5, your mortality rate is 1.8 times higher.
Except that's not really true. If you adjust for smoking, for chronic illness (which is of course associated with low BMI) and look in the long term instead of immediately (to avoid counting people who had some illness already but didn't know it), the mortality difference is significantly less. Statistically, it's still higher than someone with a BMI of 25 or so at roughly 1.4, but it's not that high.
posted by ssg at 10:20 PM on November 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
Except that's not really true. If you adjust for smoking, for chronic illness (which is of course associated with low BMI) and look in the long term instead of immediately (to avoid counting people who had some illness already but didn't know it), the mortality difference is significantly less. Statistically, it's still higher than someone with a BMI of 25 or so at roughly 1.4, but it's not that high.
posted by ssg at 10:20 PM on November 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
Even 1.4 would be about the same elevated mortality as high heart rate or high blood pressure in women, and most people don't have a problem with doctors taking pulses and blood pressure.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:08 AM on November 18, 2021
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:08 AM on November 18, 2021
You do understand that doctors don't judge people for having a high heart rate the same way they do for being slightly overweight, or assign all their medical issues to the elevated heart rate, right?
posted by jeather at 6:27 AM on November 18, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by jeather at 6:27 AM on November 18, 2021 [3 favorites]
If they did, would you be arguing that doctors should therefore stop taking pulses and blood pressures?
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:04 AM on November 18, 2021
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:04 AM on November 18, 2021
Theophile, you seem to not be understanding the point being made.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:10 AM on November 18, 2021
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:10 AM on November 18, 2021
The point being made was: "BMI isn't really useful to measure anything, and certainly nothing to do with health."
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:47 AM on November 18, 2021
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:47 AM on November 18, 2021
If doctors took blood pressure and then ignored all other medical concerns because they're probably due to high blood pressure then, yes, I'd probably say that blood pressure should no longer be routinely checked.
posted by jeather at 8:50 AM on November 18, 2021
posted by jeather at 8:50 AM on November 18, 2021
The point being made was: "BMI isn't really useful to measure anything, and certainly nothing to do with health."
I was referring to the point being made in this specific comment:
I was referring to the point being made in this specific comment:
You do understand that doctors don't judge people for having a high heart rate the same way they do for being slightly overweight, or assign all their medical issues to the elevated heart rate, right?posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:27 AM on November 18, 2021
I am more than happy to rephrase that comment to help you understand the point being made if you'd like.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:28 AM on November 18, 2021
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:28 AM on November 18, 2021
As I've said before, I'm concerned about potentially dangerous health misinformation being propagated on Metafilter.
Sometimes misinformation can consist of stating true information, but with misleading context and tone.
For instance, consider the phrase "The COVID vaccine has potentially fatal side effects and doesn't even mean you won't get COVID". This is technically a true statement. But it misses the context that serious side effects are incredibly rare, and that vaccines generally provide partial rather than complete protection.
Many of the arguments made about weight loss on Metafilter follow the same pattern. They mention true problems with weight loss or diagnosis, but in a shocked tone, without context, in a misleading way.
So from the link above, 11% of people with overweight BMI actually do not have excess body fat. But for instance 21% of people have "white coat hypertension", where their blood pressure goes up under the stress of a medical examination. BMI isn't that terrible when you start putting it into the context of other diagnostic tools. That's what I'm doing.
Now if you want to make the argument that BMI is an OK diagnostic tool, but should be abandoned because you think doctors use it to judge fat people with prejudice, I have no objections that argument.
But I don't think that's an argument you actually want to make. If you concede that BMI can diagnose excess mortality in underweight people, you start going down the road of calculating how many thin people have to die to save fat people being judged, which isn't such a popular argument.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 11:15 AM on November 18, 2021
Sometimes misinformation can consist of stating true information, but with misleading context and tone.
For instance, consider the phrase "The COVID vaccine has potentially fatal side effects and doesn't even mean you won't get COVID". This is technically a true statement. But it misses the context that serious side effects are incredibly rare, and that vaccines generally provide partial rather than complete protection.
Many of the arguments made about weight loss on Metafilter follow the same pattern. They mention true problems with weight loss or diagnosis, but in a shocked tone, without context, in a misleading way.
So from the link above, 11% of people with overweight BMI actually do not have excess body fat. But for instance 21% of people have "white coat hypertension", where their blood pressure goes up under the stress of a medical examination. BMI isn't that terrible when you start putting it into the context of other diagnostic tools. That's what I'm doing.
Now if you want to make the argument that BMI is an OK diagnostic tool, but should be abandoned because you think doctors use it to judge fat people with prejudice, I have no objections that argument.
But I don't think that's an argument you actually want to make. If you concede that BMI can diagnose excess mortality in underweight people, you start going down the road of calculating how many thin people have to die to save fat people being judged, which isn't such a popular argument.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 11:15 AM on November 18, 2021
TheophileEscargot: "The point being made was: "BMI isn't really useful to measure anything, and certainly nothing to do with health.""
Okay, that was from me, so I'll respond. Quoting from the article you linked about an extremely low BMI being useful information for individuals:
"The paper raises some interesting questions, but until we have further information, I don’t think that we can definitely say that low BMI, in and of itself, is associated with increased mortality in a person who is otherwise in good health,” Parent-Stevens said. “We do know that anorectic eating disorders are associated with an increased mortality, in part related to the underlying psychiatric issues in these patients, but some of it directly attributable to inadequate nutritional intake and low BMI."
People who are starving have higher mortality rates, and also have a low BMI. Low BMI isn't the cause of the health issue. Whatever is creating the health issue is also resulting in a low BMI. And I would really guess that is happening a lot at the other end of the spectrum. Whatever is causing a high BMI could also be causing other health issues. A higher BMI in and of itself isn't necessarily the problem. Or even a reliable indicator of a problem.
That's the issue with using the BMI as we have as an individual health indicator. When you're fighting an obesity epidemic, you are assuming that "excess" fat is a prima facie bad thing. And the only intervention is to tell people to lose weight (which has been a completely unsuccessful intervention by every measure). Then you end up with a few decades of having doctors feeling justified in telling people to lose weight, at the expense of any other diagnostic indicator (I won't get into how that likely leads to worse outcomes for individuals, not better ones, since I haven't experienced it myself). You're not targeting diabetes, or heart disease, you're only telling people to be less fat and calling it a day.
The BMI is a very rough estimate of body fat, and easy to calculate. Its only reasonable use is on a population scale to see if, on average, one population is generally fatter than another population. That can actually be useful, as they use it here to try to find environmental causes of the obesity pandemic. Just like for the guy who invented the BMI, it is readily available data that at least gives you some indication of average fatness. But that's all it does. It says nothing about your individual health, other than you are outside the average weight for your height. And you already knew that.
posted by team lowkey at 11:59 AM on November 18, 2021 [5 favorites]
Okay, that was from me, so I'll respond. Quoting from the article you linked about an extremely low BMI being useful information for individuals:
"The paper raises some interesting questions, but until we have further information, I don’t think that we can definitely say that low BMI, in and of itself, is associated with increased mortality in a person who is otherwise in good health,” Parent-Stevens said. “We do know that anorectic eating disorders are associated with an increased mortality, in part related to the underlying psychiatric issues in these patients, but some of it directly attributable to inadequate nutritional intake and low BMI."
People who are starving have higher mortality rates, and also have a low BMI. Low BMI isn't the cause of the health issue. Whatever is creating the health issue is also resulting in a low BMI. And I would really guess that is happening a lot at the other end of the spectrum. Whatever is causing a high BMI could also be causing other health issues. A higher BMI in and of itself isn't necessarily the problem. Or even a reliable indicator of a problem.
That's the issue with using the BMI as we have as an individual health indicator. When you're fighting an obesity epidemic, you are assuming that "excess" fat is a prima facie bad thing. And the only intervention is to tell people to lose weight (which has been a completely unsuccessful intervention by every measure). Then you end up with a few decades of having doctors feeling justified in telling people to lose weight, at the expense of any other diagnostic indicator (I won't get into how that likely leads to worse outcomes for individuals, not better ones, since I haven't experienced it myself). You're not targeting diabetes, or heart disease, you're only telling people to be less fat and calling it a day.
The BMI is a very rough estimate of body fat, and easy to calculate. Its only reasonable use is on a population scale to see if, on average, one population is generally fatter than another population. That can actually be useful, as they use it here to try to find environmental causes of the obesity pandemic. Just like for the guy who invented the BMI, it is readily available data that at least gives you some indication of average fatness. But that's all it does. It says nothing about your individual health, other than you are outside the average weight for your height. And you already knew that.
posted by team lowkey at 11:59 AM on November 18, 2021 [5 favorites]
Fun fact, this very ‘obesity paradox’ is covered in the most recent episode of Maintenance Phase, discussed here on Fanfare.
posted by bq at 12:32 PM on November 18, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by bq at 12:32 PM on November 18, 2021 [2 favorites]
Body Mass Index
Obesity, BMI, and Health: A Critical Review
Frank Q. Nuttall, MD, PhD
presents a clear exposition of the issues that anybody who presumes to have an opinion on BMI, especially on any other person's BMI, really needs to be across before offering it.
posted by flabdablet at 10:33 PM on November 18, 2021
Obesity, BMI, and Health: A Critical Review
Frank Q. Nuttall, MD, PhD
presents a clear exposition of the issues that anybody who presumes to have an opinion on BMI, especially on any other person's BMI, really needs to be across before offering it.
posted by flabdablet at 10:33 PM on November 18, 2021
if you want to make the argument that BMI is an OK diagnostic tool, but should be abandoned because you think doctors use it to judge fat people with prejudice
The argument I want to make is that BMI is not any kind of diagnostic tool, and its use as such should be abandoned because it yields literally zero diagnostic information beyond what can be had faster and less misleadingly just by looking at a patient stripped down to their underwear, yet manages somehow to trigger even greater levels of diagnostic-accuracy-impeding prejudice - probably because it's a number derived from objective measurements and therefore inherits the same aura of being "scientific" as its nasty little friends IQ and phrenology.
posted by flabdablet at 11:03 PM on November 18, 2021 [2 favorites]
The argument I want to make is that BMI is not any kind of diagnostic tool, and its use as such should be abandoned because it yields literally zero diagnostic information beyond what can be had faster and less misleadingly just by looking at a patient stripped down to their underwear, yet manages somehow to trigger even greater levels of diagnostic-accuracy-impeding prejudice - probably because it's a number derived from objective measurements and therefore inherits the same aura of being "scientific" as its nasty little friends IQ and phrenology.
posted by flabdablet at 11:03 PM on November 18, 2021 [2 favorites]
Why did you start the BMI derail then if it's such useless info?
posted by Press Butt.on to Check at 3:27 AM on November 19, 2021
posted by Press Butt.on to Check at 3:27 AM on November 19, 2021
For exactly the reason that it is far more useless than seems to be generally understood.
posted by flabdablet at 6:12 AM on November 19, 2021
posted by flabdablet at 6:12 AM on November 19, 2021
Good Housekeeping, of all places, has a good, succinct round-up of why the BMI is problematic, especially for Black women.
posted by LindsayIrene at 9:15 AM on November 19, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by LindsayIrene at 9:15 AM on November 19, 2021 [5 favorites]
Good Housekeeping, of all places, has a good, succinct round-up of why the BMI is problematic, especially for Black women.
Good article, thanks for sharing.
Love the section heading: All the reasons BMI should stand for "Badly Mistaken Idea"
posted by cynical pinnacle at 12:50 PM on November 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
Good article, thanks for sharing.
Love the section heading: All the reasons BMI should stand for "Badly Mistaken Idea"
posted by cynical pinnacle at 12:50 PM on November 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
For some things, perhaps. But I can assure you that boiling frozen ravioli and adding a jar of Classico is a enormous amount of time saving over making the ravioli and bolognese sauce by hand, even if I spend the time to jazz up the sauce with added veggies and spices.
There's a meme out there that describes recipes from different countries. The French recipe begins "select a chicken at the market and have the butcher kill, pluck and gut it..." and the US recipe is "open a jar of this, a package of this and a can of that, dump in a container and heat."
There an an awful lot of people who consider frozen ravioli and a jar of Classico as scratch cooking even without jazzing up the sauce. Looking at the comparative quantities the groceries stores have stocked on the shelves, I would say a heck of a lot more people are buying their ravioli frozen in a cardboard tray, or in a can, than are buying it frozen. Pretty sure a not insignificant number of the people buying in a can are eating it from the can too.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:56 AM on November 21, 2021
There's a meme out there that describes recipes from different countries. The French recipe begins "select a chicken at the market and have the butcher kill, pluck and gut it..." and the US recipe is "open a jar of this, a package of this and a can of that, dump in a container and heat."
There an an awful lot of people who consider frozen ravioli and a jar of Classico as scratch cooking even without jazzing up the sauce. Looking at the comparative quantities the groceries stores have stocked on the shelves, I would say a heck of a lot more people are buying their ravioli frozen in a cardboard tray, or in a can, than are buying it frozen. Pretty sure a not insignificant number of the people buying in a can are eating it from the can too.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:56 AM on November 21, 2021
Did I call it scratch cooking? I did not. Though I suppose you'd also look down your nose when I do a beurre noisette sauce with sage from my garden, since I am still using pre-made ravioli.
Also, I am *extremely* doubtful that the average French person begins all chicken dishes by picking out a live chicken and having it butchered.
posted by tavella at 9:01 PM on November 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
Also, I am *extremely* doubtful that the average French person begins all chicken dishes by picking out a live chicken and having it butchered.
posted by tavella at 9:01 PM on November 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
Saw a post going around on Facebook commenting on the BMI issue by pointing out that Lizzo is arguably obese according to most BMI charts, and yet she still is active to the point that a "healthy" dude can't keep up with her.
There's a meme out there that describes recipes from different countries. The French recipe begins "select a chicken at the market and have the butcher kill, pluck and gut it..." and the US recipe is "open a jar of this, a package of this and a can of that, dump in a container and heat."
Yeah, I have a feeling that the person who created that meme has a bit of a bias going on. I mean, I was once invited to the apartment of an actual Parisian dude who was actively trying to hit on me, and the bread-and-cheese he offered me was not an artisanal baguette and a perfectly aged raw milk thing, but rather some white sandwich bread out of a bag and some stuff he'd clearly gotten at a random supermarket. Still went nice with the Sauternes he also offered me, though.
Also, there is a whole chain of French stores that do nothing but frozen food, and they are so popular that for a while some people were throwing all-frozen-food dinner parties just for the goof of it.
People in other countries can be too tired to cook and need to rely on convenience foods, too, and there's no reason to single Americans out for it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:44 AM on November 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
There's a meme out there that describes recipes from different countries. The French recipe begins "select a chicken at the market and have the butcher kill, pluck and gut it..." and the US recipe is "open a jar of this, a package of this and a can of that, dump in a container and heat."
Yeah, I have a feeling that the person who created that meme has a bit of a bias going on. I mean, I was once invited to the apartment of an actual Parisian dude who was actively trying to hit on me, and the bread-and-cheese he offered me was not an artisanal baguette and a perfectly aged raw milk thing, but rather some white sandwich bread out of a bag and some stuff he'd clearly gotten at a random supermarket. Still went nice with the Sauternes he also offered me, though.
Also, there is a whole chain of French stores that do nothing but frozen food, and they are so popular that for a while some people were throwing all-frozen-food dinner parties just for the goof of it.
People in other countries can be too tired to cook and need to rely on convenience foods, too, and there's no reason to single Americans out for it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:44 AM on November 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
Also, here's a recipe being popularized by an actual Parisian person that she got from the menu in an actual Parisian restaurant, which uses not just a convenience food, but a junk food as one of its components.
(I've made it, by the way - it's awesome.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:54 AM on November 22, 2021
(I've made it, by the way - it's awesome.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:54 AM on November 22, 2021
There's a meme out there that describes recipes from different countries. The French recipe begins "select a chicken at the market and have the butcher kill, pluck and gut it..." and the US recipe is "open a jar of this, a package of this and a can of that, dump in a container and heat."
Yeah, I have a feeling that the person who created that meme has a bit of a bias going on.
posted by EmpressCallipygos
Well of course they did. All of the examples were meant to be over the top exaggerations. You're supposed to laugh after reading each one.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:49 AM on November 22, 2021
Yeah, I have a feeling that the person who created that meme has a bit of a bias going on.
posted by EmpressCallipygos
Well of course they did. All of the examples were meant to be over the top exaggerations. You're supposed to laugh after reading each one.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:49 AM on November 22, 2021
All of the examples were meant to be over the top exaggerations. You're supposed to laugh after reading each one.
...So....if you knew it wasn't meant to be taken seriously, why did you mention it in the midst of what is a serious discussion? Without at least saying that it was meant to be a parody?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:52 AM on November 22, 2021
...So....if you knew it wasn't meant to be taken seriously, why did you mention it in the midst of what is a serious discussion? Without at least saying that it was meant to be a parody?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:52 AM on November 22, 2021
You're supposed to laugh after reading each one.
I think the humor was lost in translation.
posted by CrystalDave at 10:53 AM on November 22, 2021
I think the humor was lost in translation.
posted by CrystalDave at 10:53 AM on November 22, 2021
I don't mean to share this as evidence of anything but it's a cute story and related so...
After my mom married my father they travelled back to Belgium where she had emigrated from to meet the rest of her side of the family. My dad, animal lover that he is, had a lovely time checking out the pet bunnies they kept in the back yard. You can probably guess the rest of the story from here.
They were not pets. Dinner that night was rabbit stew. Dad ate all his stew even if he was a little sad about it. So sad he asked for me and got some side-eye when he put the bowl to his lips to drink the last of the broth, but a little sad nonetheless.
Having a pen of rabbits and/or chickens on hand to make into food was and is common in the US too, it's not really anecdotal evidence of anything except that my dad is awesome.
posted by VTX at 11:05 AM on November 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
After my mom married my father they travelled back to Belgium where she had emigrated from to meet the rest of her side of the family. My dad, animal lover that he is, had a lovely time checking out the pet bunnies they kept in the back yard. You can probably guess the rest of the story from here.
They were not pets. Dinner that night was rabbit stew. Dad ate all his stew even if he was a little sad about it. So sad he asked for me and got some side-eye when he put the bowl to his lips to drink the last of the broth, but a little sad nonetheless.
Having a pen of rabbits and/or chickens on hand to make into food was and is common in the US too, it's not really anecdotal evidence of anything except that my dad is awesome.
posted by VTX at 11:05 AM on November 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
Aaargh, I just lost a long comment on agricultural subsidies, school meals, housing regulations, planning laws, labour laws and defence considerations and how they all define the difference between the US and the EU. With links. I don't have the time to recreate it, so I'll just say that while Europeans do eat a lot of convenience food, it is a completely different situation from that in the US, and that all of these six regulative systems and probably some more are what create the difference.
Recently, social, climate and biodiversity considerations have entered into the legislative system (thinking humans beings have been on to this quite a bit longer) and as far as I can see, that is going to stop a tendency within the EU towards a more US-like situation.
The take-down is that politics and government have a lot to do with what we eat, and we can change it through political action, if we want to. In this country and many other European countries, food and agriculture activism goes across the political lines, so it is a quite strong movement.
The very short version: in Europe, agricultural subsidies go to "heritage" farming as well as big ag -- school meals in some countries are meant to support that same heritage -- housing regulation makes sure (almost) everyone has a real kitchen -- planning laws regulate big box stores to protect historical towns (and higher gas taxes means car-traffic is limited compared to the US) -- labour laws ensure a living wage and limit working hours so people can afford food and have the time to cook it -- in the Alps and Scandinavia, support for traditional agricultural communities was part of keeping vast areas populated in anticipation of Sovjet aggression.
There are a lot of caveats that were lost when I pressed a wrong button, but maybe I can answer if someone is curious.
posted by mumimor at 11:22 AM on November 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
Recently, social, climate and biodiversity considerations have entered into the legislative system (thinking humans beings have been on to this quite a bit longer) and as far as I can see, that is going to stop a tendency within the EU towards a more US-like situation.
The take-down is that politics and government have a lot to do with what we eat, and we can change it through political action, if we want to. In this country and many other European countries, food and agriculture activism goes across the political lines, so it is a quite strong movement.
The very short version: in Europe, agricultural subsidies go to "heritage" farming as well as big ag -- school meals in some countries are meant to support that same heritage -- housing regulation makes sure (almost) everyone has a real kitchen -- planning laws regulate big box stores to protect historical towns (and higher gas taxes means car-traffic is limited compared to the US) -- labour laws ensure a living wage and limit working hours so people can afford food and have the time to cook it -- in the Alps and Scandinavia, support for traditional agricultural communities was part of keeping vast areas populated in anticipation of Sovjet aggression.
There are a lot of caveats that were lost when I pressed a wrong button, but maybe I can answer if someone is curious.
posted by mumimor at 11:22 AM on November 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'll just say that while Europeans do eat a lot of convenience food, it is a completely different situation from that in the US, and that all of these six regulative systems and probably some more are what create the difference.
Oh, yeah, the difference in food regulations are a whole other story worthy of another FPP. I was just pushing back against the notion that all other "cultured societies" are all 100% ye olde-worlde paradises, and that every Italian had a dinner lovingly cooked for them every night by an indulgent nonna or that all French people went to the market every day in marinières and berets and perched themselves on quaint little bicycles to pedal home with the ingredients for the afternoon's déjeuner, and it's only us Americans who go the convenience food route because we are clearly fat slobs who don't give a shit. That's a mindset that does a disservice to everyone.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:29 AM on November 22, 2021 [4 favorites]
Oh, yeah, the difference in food regulations are a whole other story worthy of another FPP. I was just pushing back against the notion that all other "cultured societies" are all 100% ye olde-worlde paradises, and that every Italian had a dinner lovingly cooked for them every night by an indulgent nonna or that all French people went to the market every day in marinières and berets and perched themselves on quaint little bicycles to pedal home with the ingredients for the afternoon's déjeuner, and it's only us Americans who go the convenience food route because we are clearly fat slobs who don't give a shit. That's a mindset that does a disservice to everyone.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:29 AM on November 22, 2021 [4 favorites]
Also, another thought to puncture the whole French-people-do-food-better notion:
Why do you think there are so many restaurants in France, at so many different price points, if not to cater to people who weren't able to cook for themselves? I mean, hell, the reason the classic French bistro exists is precisely because working-class people didn't have the money or time to cook for themselves and still had to do something about dinner every day.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:54 AM on November 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
Why do you think there are so many restaurants in France, at so many different price points, if not to cater to people who weren't able to cook for themselves? I mean, hell, the reason the classic French bistro exists is precisely because working-class people didn't have the money or time to cook for themselves and still had to do something about dinner every day.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:54 AM on November 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
I mean, hell, the reason the classic French bistro exists is precisely because working-class people didn't have the money or time to cook for themselves and still had to do something about dinner every day.
That is an excellent point! And a good reason for why France is closer to the US and UK than the rest of Europe when it comes to convenience foods, fast foods and other not-home-cooking solutions. The French love Mac Donalds more than any other European nation. The industrialization and urbanization of France was brutal, as we all know from Les Mis. And it isn't as if all is good now, look at the gilets jaunes.
I think things are slowly turning now culinarywise, but everyday French cooking has been deteriorating since the 1970s. Elizabeth David wrote about it. The fabled relais routiers and those ordinary housewives buying live chickens have been dead for decades. That is not to say that you cannot get excellent food and produce in France, of course you can. I mostly buy French chickens, they are amazing. But you can get excellent food and produce in Detroit too, if you have the means.
posted by mumimor at 12:10 PM on November 22, 2021
That is an excellent point! And a good reason for why France is closer to the US and UK than the rest of Europe when it comes to convenience foods, fast foods and other not-home-cooking solutions. The French love Mac Donalds more than any other European nation. The industrialization and urbanization of France was brutal, as we all know from Les Mis. And it isn't as if all is good now, look at the gilets jaunes.
I think things are slowly turning now culinarywise, but everyday French cooking has been deteriorating since the 1970s. Elizabeth David wrote about it. The fabled relais routiers and those ordinary housewives buying live chickens have been dead for decades. That is not to say that you cannot get excellent food and produce in France, of course you can. I mostly buy French chickens, they are amazing. But you can get excellent food and produce in Detroit too, if you have the means.
posted by mumimor at 12:10 PM on November 22, 2021
And a good reason for why France is closer to the US and UK than the rest of Europe when it comes to convenience foods, fast foods and other not-home-cooking solutions. The French love Mac Donalds more than any other European nation.
And Sweden, another heavily industrialized country, has a bit of the same.
posted by mumimor at 12:33 PM on November 22, 2021
And Sweden, another heavily industrialized country, has a bit of the same.
posted by mumimor at 12:33 PM on November 22, 2021
And hey, that also means that for many of us (she said, trying to bring us back within shouting distance of the topic) that "eating the way your great-grandmother ate" may have literally meant "picking up some takeout".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:35 PM on November 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:35 PM on November 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
The quote is "Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food." Not what she ate.
posted by Press Butt.on to Check at 12:43 PM on November 22, 2021
posted by Press Butt.on to Check at 12:43 PM on November 22, 2021
The quote is "Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food." Not what she ate.
And this whole FPP is how that quote has been spun into a whole thing about how we all need to be cooking for ourselves 365 days a year, and many of us have been pointing out that that's a mistaken conclusion for a variety of different reasons.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:55 PM on November 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
And this whole FPP is how that quote has been spun into a whole thing about how we all need to be cooking for ourselves 365 days a year, and many of us have been pointing out that that's a mistaken conclusion for a variety of different reasons.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:55 PM on November 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
As it is, I strongly believe we should be cooking for ourselves 300-something days a year, both for our own health and the planet's. But I also believe that first there has to be a societal structure that lets us do that comfortably with no pressure (and lets those who will never enjoy cooking or eating live their lives as they wish).
And, that has absolutely nothing to do with how our grandmothers or great-grandmothers lived, and framing it that way is rubbish.
posted by mumimor at 1:29 PM on November 22, 2021
And, that has absolutely nothing to do with how our grandmothers or great-grandmothers lived, and framing it that way is rubbish.
posted by mumimor at 1:29 PM on November 22, 2021
The quote is "Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food." Not what she ate.
It's pretty nonsensical that way too. My great-grandmothers would have been considerably more comfortable with tinned meat or canned fruit salad in jello than kitfo, sushi, or tofu. And I'm comparatively old! Great-grandmothers these days were born in the 50s or 60s, and were more likely to have eaten Spaghetti-Os than handmade pasta.
posted by tavella at 3:42 PM on November 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
It's pretty nonsensical that way too. My great-grandmothers would have been considerably more comfortable with tinned meat or canned fruit salad in jello than kitfo, sushi, or tofu. And I'm comparatively old! Great-grandmothers these days were born in the 50s or 60s, and were more likely to have eaten Spaghetti-Os than handmade pasta.
posted by tavella at 3:42 PM on November 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
Well if you are so intent on wilfully missing the point, I'll point out that "these days" were 15 years ago
posted by Press Butt.on to Check at 4:12 PM on November 22, 2021
posted by Press Butt.on to Check at 4:12 PM on November 22, 2021
So... Velveeta & aspic yes, bok choy & rice no?
posted by CrystalDave at 4:23 PM on November 22, 2021
posted by CrystalDave at 4:23 PM on November 22, 2021
EmpressCallipygos: " I mean, hell, the reason the classic French bistro exists is precisely because working-class people didn't have the money or time to cook for themselves and still had to do something about dinner every day."
“Jules, you know what they call a grilled burrito in Paris?”
posted by signal at 4:37 PM on November 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
“Jules, you know what they call a grilled burrito in Paris?”
posted by signal at 4:37 PM on November 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
The whole quote seems to be:
Don’t eat anything your great-great-great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. Imagine how baffled your ancestors would be in a modern supermarket: the epoxy-like tubes of Go-Gurt, the preternaturally fresh Twinkies, the vaguely pharmaceutical Vitamin Water. Those aren’t foods, quite; they’re food products. History suggests you might want to wait a few decades or so before adding such novelties to your diet, the substitution of margarine for butter being the classic case in point. My mother used to predict “they” would eventually discover that butter was better for you. She was right: the trans-fatty margarine is killing us. Eat food, not food products.posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:28 AM on November 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
Sometimes we are so far apart, we don't even speak the same language. It's OK, I have learnt a lot about American food culture here on the blue, more than I ever lived in New York, where nearly all my friends were other immigrants.
This home-made pasta thing is a derail. The only people I know who regularly make their own pasta, in Italy or other places, are foodies and also live from their cooking. The reason I don't make bolognese often is that the sauce takes at least three hours to cook unless you have a pressure cooker, and even then it is at least an hours work.
But I don't need weeknight bolognese. No one does. There are tons of different foods one can prepare and eat on a weekday, even as a person who works full-time. If...
- full time is no longer than 37 hours a week
- commute time is no longer than 30 minutes
- there is easy access to good produce at fair prices
- there is access to a functioning kitchen
- one knows how to cook a simple meal
All of these things are the norm in most of Europe (not including the UK, and not because of Brexit). In Paris and perhaps Madrid, your commute will often be longer. I know people who choose to commute for an hour in many countries, but I am not thinking of them here.
In some large cities, lack of proper kitchen can be an issue, but it is less ordinary than in the US because of stricter regulations.
And on the other hand, in many European countries eating out or take-away is more expensive relative to wages because service sector workers get a fair minimum wage. This is all the experienced side of the regulative system I described above.
And: one of my favorite meals for when I am tired is ravioli from the supermarket with olive oil, garlic and chili. The ravioli is good, no additives.
posted by mumimor at 3:16 AM on November 23, 2021
This home-made pasta thing is a derail. The only people I know who regularly make their own pasta, in Italy or other places, are foodies and also live from their cooking. The reason I don't make bolognese often is that the sauce takes at least three hours to cook unless you have a pressure cooker, and even then it is at least an hours work.
But I don't need weeknight bolognese. No one does. There are tons of different foods one can prepare and eat on a weekday, even as a person who works full-time. If...
- full time is no longer than 37 hours a week
- commute time is no longer than 30 minutes
- there is easy access to good produce at fair prices
- there is access to a functioning kitchen
- one knows how to cook a simple meal
All of these things are the norm in most of Europe (not including the UK, and not because of Brexit). In Paris and perhaps Madrid, your commute will often be longer. I know people who choose to commute for an hour in many countries, but I am not thinking of them here.
In some large cities, lack of proper kitchen can be an issue, but it is less ordinary than in the US because of stricter regulations.
And on the other hand, in many European countries eating out or take-away is more expensive relative to wages because service sector workers get a fair minimum wage. This is all the experienced side of the regulative system I described above.
And: one of my favorite meals for when I am tired is ravioli from the supermarket with olive oil, garlic and chili. The ravioli is good, no additives.
posted by mumimor at 3:16 AM on November 23, 2021
"the vaguely pharmaceutical Vitamin Water"
Okay, that part of the quote really amuses me. The ancestors who purchased so many nostrums, patent medicines and syrups the FDA had to be created in part to keep them from poisoning themselves? Pollan thinks they'd be baffled by Vitamin Water? He really is creating a fantasy past here.
posted by tavella at 6:49 AM on November 23, 2021 [8 favorites]
Okay, that part of the quote really amuses me. The ancestors who purchased so many nostrums, patent medicines and syrups the FDA had to be created in part to keep them from poisoning themselves? Pollan thinks they'd be baffled by Vitamin Water? He really is creating a fantasy past here.
posted by tavella at 6:49 AM on November 23, 2021 [8 favorites]
I've often thought one of the myriad problems with expecting people to cook for themselves when they're not equipped to do so is the phasing-out of "Home Economics" as a class in schools. I get the overall reason it fell out of disfavor - it's a holdover from a time when there were different expectations for the genders - but when I took it, it was more of a unisex let's-get-our-feet-wet-in-a-kitchen kind of thing, and I think that was an ideal situation because everyone could benefit from cooking practice, and even if it's a bunch of twelve-year-olds mucking around and making cookies that still counts.
But a few years later it stopped being a thing in schools, and I wonder if it should be brought back, with that kind of approach ("everyone needs to learn a little about how to cook") as opposed to its former approach ("keeping a home is a skill we need to train girls how to do").
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:50 AM on November 23, 2021 [4 favorites]
But a few years later it stopped being a thing in schools, and I wonder if it should be brought back, with that kind of approach ("everyone needs to learn a little about how to cook") as opposed to its former approach ("keeping a home is a skill we need to train girls how to do").
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:50 AM on November 23, 2021 [4 favorites]
when I bailed on Physics 12 because it was ridiculously time consuming and (related) the teacher was effectively psychotic, I suddenly needed another class in order to have enough credits to graduate. I noticed that one of them was Foods 11 (an elective but I already had enough of the mandatory credits).
"Am I allowed to take that?" I asked the counsellor. "Why wouldn't you be?" he said. "So I did."
It was the opposite of the physics experience. All I had to do was show up and the teacher was wonderful. Mrs. Walker. Often as not, I was stoned but that's never really been a negative in the kitchen. Long story short. I learned a bunch of cooking and meal prep basics in that course that have served me ever since. I only wish I could say the same for the stuff I had to take in high school.
posted by philip-random at 7:37 AM on November 23, 2021 [3 favorites]
"Am I allowed to take that?" I asked the counsellor. "Why wouldn't you be?" he said. "So I did."
It was the opposite of the physics experience. All I had to do was show up and the teacher was wonderful. Mrs. Walker. Often as not, I was stoned but that's never really been a negative in the kitchen. Long story short. I learned a bunch of cooking and meal prep basics in that course that have served me ever since. I only wish I could say the same for the stuff I had to take in high school.
posted by philip-random at 7:37 AM on November 23, 2021 [3 favorites]
I'm an academic advisor for college students, and they ask if we have cooking classes all the time. There's no doubt in my mind that there would be demand for classes on basic food preparation. I wonder if it would be hard to do in K-12 education because of safety/ liability issues around knives and stoves.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:43 AM on November 23, 2021 [6 favorites]
He really is creating a fantasy past here.It occurs to me that the fuzziness about actual dates is part of the appeal of the "your great-grandmother" or "your great-great-great-grandmother" or whatever it is. Because if Pollan and his followers said "you shouldn't eat anything that an American in 1860 wouldn't recognize as food," then we would be talking about an actual historical time and place, and people could discuss what the food system was like in that time and place. And chances are, that food system would not fit the Pollanites' conception of what people should be eating. But by invoking your bygone female ancestors, they can resort to a kind of gauzy fantasy about an imagined utopian past.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:43 AM on November 23, 2021 [6 favorites]
When I was nine, I was at some sort of international hippie commune school. My parents were conservative, but for some reason they thought it was a good idea.
Anyway, cooking was an elective subject (like most other subjects, they were hippies), and it was glorious. We decided what we wanted to cook, the teacher helps us find a recipe and make a shopping list and a budget, and sent us out to shop, unsupervised, with the money in an old-fashioned wallet. We cooked, ate and could bring home the leftovers for our parents to admire, and hopefully feel inspired to do some meal-planning and cooking at home. I specially remember the time we made liver paté and bread rolls to go with it. We learnt so many things packed into that one subject and it was fun! Obviously, there was no gendering, this was the seventies, and in general the boys were very fond of that class. They got to go outside the school, and eat a lot, two great attractions for any normal nine-year-old, regardless of gender.
I have used cooking classes while teaching at architecture school, for exactly the same reasons as they did it at that school. You sneak a lot of learning into something that is fun at a fundamental level, uses all the senses and is also a social practice that can reach across race and religion.
posted by mumimor at 7:54 AM on November 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
Anyway, cooking was an elective subject (like most other subjects, they were hippies), and it was glorious. We decided what we wanted to cook, the teacher helps us find a recipe and make a shopping list and a budget, and sent us out to shop, unsupervised, with the money in an old-fashioned wallet. We cooked, ate and could bring home the leftovers for our parents to admire, and hopefully feel inspired to do some meal-planning and cooking at home. I specially remember the time we made liver paté and bread rolls to go with it. We learnt so many things packed into that one subject and it was fun! Obviously, there was no gendering, this was the seventies, and in general the boys were very fond of that class. They got to go outside the school, and eat a lot, two great attractions for any normal nine-year-old, regardless of gender.
I have used cooking classes while teaching at architecture school, for exactly the same reasons as they did it at that school. You sneak a lot of learning into something that is fun at a fundamental level, uses all the senses and is also a social practice that can reach across race and religion.
posted by mumimor at 7:54 AM on November 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
He really is creating a fantasy past here.
I guess you could assume that our ancestors would have "recognized as food" (e.g.) Kilmer's swamp root. But personally this seems like a pretty bizarre stretch. Also, FWIW I regularly teach about deception in food/drug advertising and I can tell you that manufacturers/advertisers these days are extremely good at toeing the exact FDA lines around both what legally defines food products, and what legally defines drugs. This overall can lead to things that do an extremely good job at blending food vs medical implications in marketing (much, much better than 16th-early 20th century patent medicine marketing, where this wasn't really an issue), as well as things that legally aren't drugs but come as close as possible to implying medical claims.
I wonder if it would be hard to do in K-12 education because of safety/ liability issues around knives and stoves.
I literally did have a cooking class in middle school in the 90s -- "home economics" -- though there's probably a larger discussion to be had about the history and nature of this kind of course. No sense of whether these courses still exist.
posted by advil at 7:54 AM on November 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
I guess you could assume that our ancestors would have "recognized as food" (e.g.) Kilmer's swamp root. But personally this seems like a pretty bizarre stretch. Also, FWIW I regularly teach about deception in food/drug advertising and I can tell you that manufacturers/advertisers these days are extremely good at toeing the exact FDA lines around both what legally defines food products, and what legally defines drugs. This overall can lead to things that do an extremely good job at blending food vs medical implications in marketing (much, much better than 16th-early 20th century patent medicine marketing, where this wasn't really an issue), as well as things that legally aren't drugs but come as close as possible to implying medical claims.
I wonder if it would be hard to do in K-12 education because of safety/ liability issues around knives and stoves.
I literally did have a cooking class in middle school in the 90s -- "home economics" -- though there's probably a larger discussion to be had about the history and nature of this kind of course. No sense of whether these courses still exist.
posted by advil at 7:54 AM on November 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
The reason home ec classes disappeared from US schools is that they don't teach anything that will help improve scores on the tests mandated by No Child Left Behind.
posted by LindsayIrene at 10:39 AM on November 23, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by LindsayIrene at 10:39 AM on November 23, 2021 [4 favorites]
I took a semester of home ec in high school in the 1980s. It was fun and I got fed mid-morning at an age when I was always hungry (plus the stoned factor as phillip-random mentions above), but the cooking we did was completely out of the 1950s. We never made aspic but otherwise we hit all the major Betty Crocker highlights.
I also took some home ec as a visiting high school student in Europe, but I remember that as being equally about how to set the table as about cooking, with equally bland but different food.
I had a good time in those classes even if I didn't learn a lot, and I think it is too bad that those classes have mostly gone away.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:28 PM on November 23, 2021
I also took some home ec as a visiting high school student in Europe, but I remember that as being equally about how to set the table as about cooking, with equally bland but different food.
I had a good time in those classes even if I didn't learn a lot, and I think it is too bad that those classes have mostly gone away.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:28 PM on November 23, 2021
I didn't really need a cooking class in school because, until junior high, I had a parent at home full-time, making meals from scratch every day and happy to have me watch and pitch in. It's something that today's economy in the US keeps making less feasible.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:06 PM on November 23, 2021
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:06 PM on November 23, 2021
That's fine for those who want to do it, but I'm also not interested in returning to a society where becoming a mother meant you were reduced to an appendage to your husband with no independent life and career. There seems to be a whiff of "if only you stayed at home like a proper mother there wouldn't be all those problems" -- and we know, no matter how much we substitute "parent", that 90 percent of those expected to stay home would be women.
posted by tavella at 8:46 AM on November 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by tavella at 8:46 AM on November 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
That certainly isn’t what I meant to imply, and I apologize if that’s how it came off. Ideally, we’d live in a society where one parent staying home or not was a free choice, completely optional for one parent to say yes, I’d like to do that or no, I’d rather not, and nobody would be committing future career suicide or being shamed by society due to their choice. And K-12 schools would have cooking classes for those who wanted them.
All I meant to say was that although I didn’t have a cooking class I didn’t miss out, and I’m glad my mother had the choice to teach me.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:00 PM on November 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
All I meant to say was that although I didn’t have a cooking class I didn’t miss out, and I’m glad my mother had the choice to teach me.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:00 PM on November 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
And I should add, she went on to a paid career as a nutritionist and cooking teacher for the Cooperative Extension, and had many other students.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:43 PM on November 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:43 PM on November 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
Another white male adressing this question, with a trembling voice.
I agree with him. But I thought about why white men are the most visible advocates for healthy food, and then thought about my friend who has been on to this for decades, is a prolific writer and inspiring teacher who is also very angry that she is never included in the ongoing history-creation on the Danish food revolution. She is right to be angry. Her contributions have been as least as important as many of those by men. Her outreach is much wider, and probably means more for the availability of fresh produce in former food deserts than the famous chefs. But the media, and quite a few of those men, have run it as a male-only enterprise.
I haven't asked, but I think my friend would say that in spite of this unfair treatment, she still believes we should eat food, mostly vegetables and not too much highly processed food.
posted by mumimor at 11:06 AM on November 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
I agree with him. But I thought about why white men are the most visible advocates for healthy food, and then thought about my friend who has been on to this for decades, is a prolific writer and inspiring teacher who is also very angry that she is never included in the ongoing history-creation on the Danish food revolution. She is right to be angry. Her contributions have been as least as important as many of those by men. Her outreach is much wider, and probably means more for the availability of fresh produce in former food deserts than the famous chefs. But the media, and quite a few of those men, have run it as a male-only enterprise.
I haven't asked, but I think my friend would say that in spite of this unfair treatment, she still believes we should eat food, mostly vegetables and not too much highly processed food.
posted by mumimor at 11:06 AM on November 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
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