4 ms·
Good article. I take it a step furter and tie the hunger system to the satiated feeling one gets from appreciating and savoring the food. Much has been written
by athenot 10y ago
Good article. I take it a step furter and tie the hunger system to the satiated feeling one gets from appreciating and savoring the food.
Much has been written about the French Paradox[1] but my belief is that it's not so much about the individual ingredients' metabolic properties as it is about the art of not only crafting but appreciating meals. Savor each bite. Chew and eat slowly. Think about the food you are eating instead of trying to ignore it.
An Italian friend had once remarqued to me about his traditional family dinners where, not only was there an amazing spread of food, people would spend almost all the meal talking about the food. I have to confess doing the same in many cases.
I believe this is the biggest problem with American diets: we try to abstract away the taste and focus on a feature list (anti oxydants, low-carb, high-this, low-that) and all the while rely on poor shortcuts for actual taste. Those poor shortcuts are of course sugar, salt and fat. My French background earns me a perception that I'm a food snob. Perhaps that's true. But things don't need to have fancy preparations to be appreciated, in fact less processing is usually more. I can appreciate the favor of unseasoned steamed rice at a Japanese restaurant, or fresh tomatoes from the garden with no seasoning.
And yes, over time, you will start craving higher-quality ingredients, for the simple reason you can taste the difference. But again, it's a matter of being appreciative, whether it's an elaborate preparation or a simple unseasoned ingredient.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_paradox
- edejong 10y agoI wish I could upvote your comment more. My first revelation that our (dutch) appreciation of food was deteriorating was when I met my Slovenian wife and got properly introduced to balkan and Mediterranean cuisines. Perhaps food industrialisation distanced us from truly identifying with our food culture.
- wineisfine 10y agoThis is a global problem but extreme in the Netherlands... Albert Heyn, for example, really sells questionable quality of meat (a chicken becomes half its size when cooked), adds loads and loads of sugar to simple products like mustard and bread and even salads. It is really a race to the bottom. In Germany, Belgium and France, if you're willing to spend a bit more it's easy to find quality ingredients...
- rublev 10y agoI count every calorie I eat and maintain an extremely strict diet while spending only 2hr on prep/week. I heat my meal up in 30s, scoop it in, and I'm done with it, it's just fuel to me now. I did this to enforce discipline and consistency, but now that I'm there I'd like to start introducing some more advanced cooking techniques and flavours. Where do I start? I'd love to be able to make some advanced platters for guests in the future. I've essentially completely squeezed out all fun from food and broke down the entire process.
- antognini 10y agoI have a couple of cookbooks that are now very well worn. I think the best of them is probably Appetite by Nigel Slater. It's a little unique in that he treats his recipes more as suggestions rather than rules. He encourages lots of experimentation --- after all, everyone's taste is different, so you should make something you like instead of something the author likes. Each recipe comes with a handful of variations so you can see how you can start to build new dishes out of ones you already know. There's a great section at the beginning that goes through lots of herbs and spices and suggests combinations of ingredients that generally work well together. But maybe the best thing about the book is just the writing. It's hard not to read it and not start to appreciate food. If you're strictly interested in techniques, I like Keys to Good Cooking by Harold McGee. If you're brave, you can read through his magnum opus, On Food and Cooking, which goes through all the science. Keys to Good Cooking is sort of the cliffs notes version and just tells you what you need to know. But there are no recipes in either. Then there's Joy of Cooking. It's an old standby and it's hard to go wrong with it. There's tons of information in there. Lastly, look into anything by America's Test Kitchen. It's sort of the polar opposite of Nigel Slater's approach. They test every recipe, sometimes ~100 variations, to try to find the precise recipe that they think works best. If you want a recipe that you know will just work, it's probably the best place to start.
- greendestiny 10y agoSerious eats food lab recipes are fun and effective. Additionally very highly rated food network or taste recipes are usually good and simple.