Obesity

[Blue Hills]

We cut out E numbers when people wanted us to, we went low fat, likewise, salt reduction, if today's buzzword is GF then give us a year or two and we *might* get there. But manipulate the market? I should be so lucky.

you are still talking about processed and ultra processed food though.
Which isn't good for folk - it needs to be eaten as a guilty treat, not as a daily diet.
The "low fat" thing did of course allow the ultra processed food industry to sell a lot of "low fat" stuff at premium prices that was loaded with other stuff - sugar and sweeteners etc.

Am reading this at the moment
Amazon product ASIN 1787332292View: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spoon-Fed-almost-everything-about-wrong/dp/1787332292/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=spoon+fed&qid=1623302249&sr=8-1

Not that far in but he has already pointed the finger several times at the food industry for global dietary ills and health issues.
He points to their incredible economic power and their ability, nay keenness, to influence popular perceptions.
And highlights their sponsorship of research - much of which ends up serving their business needs.
May quote from it later.

 

[mudsticks]

Interesting ... if Lard or Dripping was an ingredient in a ready-meal....

Lard and dripping are arguably far healthier, and certainly more natural than most of the fats used in food processing though.

Dripping on toast from the Sunday roast never did me any harm..

But they wouldn't 'look' good congealed in the top of the plastic dish before reheating, I guess.

Selling Industrial food is about front end perceptions, consistency, and long shelf life, on the whole isn't it.?

Not about nutrition, or even eating pleasure necessarily.

Not having a go, it's just the facts of where we are in terms of our relationship with food.

And how the 'food industry' drives and influences that for maximisation* of its profits.

Human health, is a long way down the list of priorities, but that's not 'their job' .
That's the business of governments, society, and if they can choose, the individual.

This is why you can gain a not unreasonable wage being part of the industrial food complex without breaking too much of a sweat.

Whilst those of us producing healthy nutritious but short shelf life food, have to come up with some fairly ingenious methods of just about making a living from what we produce.

The multiples have a stranglehold on pricing.

And even those of us doing direct selling ,and making some kind of an income that way are somewhat dictated to by that price point.

Anyway, we are where we are.

And there's the agretti to finish planting now..


* I totally understand maximising profit is a legal obligation to their shareholders.

 

[KnittyNorah]

Lard and dripping are arguably far healthier, and certainly more natural than most of the fats used in food processing though.

Although I agree with the general idea that animal fats are not all sin, and plant fats are not all virtue - far from it! - I will somewhat play devil's advocate here. What quality is it that makes lard and dripping more 'natural'? And more natural than 'what'?

 

[mudsticks]

Although I agree with the general idea that animal fats are not all sin, and plant fats are not all virtue - far from it! - I will somewhat play devil's advocate here. What quality is it that makes lard and dripping more 'natural'? And more natural than 'what'?

Unrefined animal fats are just part of nature

Of course we'd prefer those animal to have had a nice life, pasture fed etc etc.

Highly processed vegetable fats that have undergone all sorts of processes to make them more user friendly..

See 'trans fats' Not something out guts,have evolved with ..

Of course cold pressed seed, and nut and olive oils etc .

Bring em on

 

[Fab Foodie]

Palm oil very often is in ready meals - not something one sees in home-made food ...

Not unless you live in Malaysia....
Many products need a source of hard fats, in the veg world there's only Palm, Coconut and Cocoa now that Hydrogenation is frowned-upon.
Animal fats are great, suet, butter, lard, dripping but there are issues with 'acceptability' in some parts of the population. Animal fats are also more expensive and with less stable supply chains for industrial use.
Almost all of my customers have removed Palm Oil from their products, the last few still have some tech issues to resolve.

 

[Fab Foodie]

You'd be bloody crucified...

I got taught this by a Chinese lady I know. It really does make the difference in the taste.

As they tend to be already partially degraded, they also fry much better* than veg oils (which straight from the bottle are mostly crap)...don't get me started on frying with Olive oil....

*More polar in nature which increases their heat-transfer at the surface of the foodstuff....

 

[fossyant]

...don't get me started on frying with Olive oil....

Is that because it doesn't do so well at high temperatures ? We use olive oil most of the time, and occasionally coconut oil for stir fry/oriental meals.

 

[Fab Foodie]

Is that because it doesn't do so well at high temperatures ? We use olive oil most of the time, and occasionally coconut oil for stir fry/oriental meals.

Mostly....
If you want to brown stuff or quick-fry it's very poor. Also, it smokes and produces off-flavours at high temperatures. In which case use Rapeseed as it's cheaper and works much better.
If you have to use Olive oil for browning (as it's all you have), a knob of butter added to it works wonders.... I sometimes low-slow sauté leeks this way as all butter is a bit much! Browning mince for example is OK as the beef fat helps, but again I don't see the point of using Olive oil when Rapeseed is cheaper (OK, for a more 'authentic' Italian' experience maybe...).
I would only use Olive oil if you are frying at very low temps i.e. gently sautéing garlic for pasta aoli where the flavour from the olive oil is also preserved.

 

[battered]

35p soup... Thick, gloppy and woefully underseasoned. Forget it. The branded stuff is no better.

I'd much rather spend the time prepping veggies and making my own. What you seem to be conveniently forgetting is that the act of preparing and cooking food can be a pleasure in itself.

I'm not forgetting it for an instant. That's why I stood at the cooker for an hour doing it. However I can understand plenty of people not wanting to bother.

I cannot agree that tinned soup is any where near as good as home made
I also would likely get sick of chopping vegetables for a FULL hour as its usually a couple minutes max to chop a few veggies up fir family pot of soup ...and I'm slow at chopping

A FULL hour is an awful lot of veggies

I never said tinned was as good as home made. An hour is the time it took me to turn half a swede, most of a bag of carrots, a head of celery, 2 onions, into 1cm dice and get it in a pan. I think my knife skills are reasonable, but it took an hour. It is a big pan of soup. Most people don't want to do this.

I promise you, the solution to the obesity epidemic is not 'convince people to spend an hour chopping vegetables in order to replicate a 35p tin of soup'.

I didn't say it was, so the quote marks are inappropriate.

you are still talking about processed and ultra processed food though.
Which isn't good for folk - it needs to be eaten as a guilty treat, not as a daily diet.
The "low fat" thing did of course allow the ultra processed food industry to sell a lot of "low fat" stuff at premium prices that was loaded with other stuff - sugar and sweeteners etc.

Am reading this at the moment
Amazon product ASIN 1787332292View: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spoon-Fed-almost-everything-about-wrong/dp/1787332292/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=spoon+fed&qid=1623302249&sr=8-1

Not that far in but he has already pointed the finger several times at the food industry for global dietary ills and health issues.
He points to their incredible economic power and their ability, nay keenness, to influence popular perceptions.
And highlights their sponsorship of research - much of which ends up serving their business needs.
May quote from it later.

Of course I am talking about manufactured foods. Natural foods, by their very nature, do not come in low fat/high fat variants. You can't generate a high fat carrot, or a high sugar carrot.
The food manufacturing industry manufactures what people want to eat. Just like bike manufacturers make what people want to ride. Of course they will try to present their products in as attractive a light as possible. They will also sponsor research that supports their business aims. Well, obviously. Bike manufacturers don't sponsor research into increasing car use, do they?

 

[winjim]

I didn't say it was, so the quote marks are inappropriate.

I promise you, the solution to the obesity epidemic is not convincing people to spend an hour chopping vegetables in order to replicate a 35p tin of soup.

 

[mudsticks]

I'm not forgetting it for an instant. That's why I stood at the cooker for an hour doing it. However I can understand plenty of people not wanting to bother.

I never said tinned was as good as home made. An hour is the time it took me to turn half a swede, most of a bag of carrots, a head of celery, 2 onions, into 1cm dice and get it in a pan. I think my knife skills are reasonable, but it took an hour. It is a big pan of soup. Most people don't want to do this.
I didn't say it was, so the quote marks are inappropriate.

Of course I am talking about manufactured foods. Natural foods, by their very nature, do not come in low fat/high fat variants. You can't generate a high fat carrot, or a high sugar carrot.
The food manufacturing industry manufactures what people want to eat. Just like bike manufacturers make what people want to ride. Of course they will try to present their products in as attractive a light as possible. They will also sponsor research that supports their business aims. Well, obviously. Bike manufacturers don't sponsor research into increasing car use, do they?

Just to be picky.here but they do breed higher sugar carrots..

And all manner of other vegetable variants.

But overall yes, still a lot more 'natural' than many of the 'food type products' that are passed off as suitable components of a decent diet .

And

 

[KnittyNorah]

Of course I am talking about manufactured foods. Natural foods, by their very nature, do not come in low fat/high fat variants. You can't generate a high fat carrot, or a high sugar carrot.

Oh yes they do, and oh yes you can!
A natural vegetable, for instance from millennia ago, would be scarcely recognisable as such either by taste or appearance nowadays.
The tomatoes, pumpkins/squashes, carrots, peas and many other veggies available today come in many varieties - significantly sweeter or less sweet varieties as well as early and late, large and small, blight resistant or susceptible, hardy and less hardy etc etc; dark green leaf veggies - cooked or salad - come in bitter (or 'strong') and less bitter varieties, as well as the bitterness being somewhat alterable by age at harvest and weather conditions ...
Corn/maize comes in low fat/high fat varieties - you don't think the growers of maize/corn for the production of oil grow the same variety as that grown for the sweetest corn on the cob, do you? Sunflowers too - the ones I used to grow in my garden for multiple cutting heads are not the same variety grown for the production of the pressed oil ... Sugar beet is basically the same plant as field or fodder beet but is a variety with a much higher sugar content ... Vegetable crops, whether grown for home consumption, farm gate sale, delicatessen display, industrial processing or entry into the Worlds Biggest Parsnip competition, vary enormously in their 'make up', from starch, fibre, and protein content through to sugar and fat/oils. Some of this is affected by growing conditions, but a great deal of it is varietal.

 

[Reynard]

As they tend to be already partially degraded, they also fry much better* than veg oils (which straight from the bottle are mostly crap)...don't get me started on frying with Olive oil....

*More polar in nature which increases their heat-transfer at the surface of the foodstuff....

And that's exactly why I use lard or dripping to fry / deep fry with or to make roasties. I might not have the exact scientific know-how, but that's what my years of experience in the kitchen tell me.

Otherwise, I use rape seed oil. Fewer food miles on that, too, as the one I buy is UK-produced.

Olive oil only gets used for salad dressings and for making hummus. Or maybe as a bit of flavouring, right at the end.

Previous week, I bought a 2.5kg slab of pork belly on yellow sticker for £3. Turned the leaner three fifths of it into a lovely porchetta. The rest went to make rilettes de porc And I filled up my dripping jar as well.

P.S. I do love dripping (szmalec) on toast

 

[matticus]

This gets interesting when we move towards GM crops. Is there anything inherently bad about GM?

<pulls up chair>

 

[Fab Foodie]

And that's exactly why I use lard or dripping to fry / deep fry with or to make roasties. I might not have the exact scientific know-how, but that's what my years of experience in the kitchen tell me.

Otherwise, I use rape seed oil. Fewer food miles on that, too, as the one I buy is UK-produced.

Olive oil only gets used for salad dressings and for making hummus. Or maybe as a bit of flavouring, right at the end.

Previous week, I bought a 2.5kg slab of pork belly on yellow sticker for £3. Turned the leaner three fifths of it into a lovely porchetta. The rest went to make rilettes de porc And I filled up my dripping jar as well.

P.S. I do love dripping (szmalec) on toast

Spot-on! Animal fats are more saturated and in general proportionally longer chained than veg oils and so are also more heat stable....great for roasting - high temp/long time.
I also collect and reuse fats/oils/dripping.