6 ms·
Tl;dr 1. Dishes with the same name are conflated despite being completely different. 2. Many dishes don't have a serving size they simply yield things like "1
by jsonne 9y ago
Tl;dr
1. Dishes with the same name are conflated despite being completely different.
2. Many dishes don't have a serving size they simply yield things like "1 cake".
3. The researcher choose a particularly small sample size (18 out of ~4500)
As a cooking enthusiast I find it frustrating that a researcher forces a narrative that home cooked meals are the problem when the reality is that all the fast an processed foods we have today are much more likely the culprit of obesity. We need to be encouraging people to cook for themselves with fresh ingredients and not publishing dubious studies that suggest to do the opposite.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> The researcher choose a particularly small sample size It wasn't a sample, it was supposedly (but very much not, in fact) the entire universe, that is, the set of recipes that were present across the entire time period from the first to the most recent edition, and thus could be compared across time.
- emodendroket 9y agoI think it seems accurate enough: > Wansink also insisted on only comparing recipes that bore identical names in different “Joy” editions, regardless of the accompanying recipes, which sometimes led him to compare two entirely different dishes. He liked to point to gumbo as one of the most egregious calorie gainers, but the recipe from 1936, a clear soup of chicken and sliced vegetables simmered in water, has almost nothing in common with the sausage-studded, roux-thickened chicken variety featured in the 2006 book. “It’s like comparing a Chateaubriand to a whole roast steer,” Heathers said, “and saying they’re both roast beef.” Presumably this would also exclude many recipes whose names were changed but are basically the same.
- cwyers 9y agoIt was a sample. Wansink's conclusion wasn't that the Joy Of Cooking got fattier, it was that home cooking got fattier, and Joy of Cooking was a proxy for that. So it was a sample from the larger universe of home cooking.
- vkou 9y ago'Fresh ingredients' are not the problem, slathering everything in oil and butter is. People do that in home-cooking too, because it is the easiest way to make things taste delicious. It really doesn't matter that your potatoes have been sitting in the fridge for two weeks, or that your steak's been in the freezer for a month, or that heaven forbid, your onions did not magically arrive from a farmer's market to your plate. The problem is that you fried your potatoes in half a cup of butter, and that you're eating steak.
- emodendroket 9y agoWhat dish is made by doing that? Frankly, I don't think I agree with this, because someone who's cooking with fresh ingredients gets to see, for instance, that they are adding a boggling amount of sugar to their food.
- vkou 9y agoHashbrowns. Mashed potatoes. Fried in butter or oil in the former, butter added to make them taste good for the latter. Who actually adds a mind-boggling amount of sugar to their food when they cook from basic ingredients? Everyone I know overdoes fats, but sugar?
- emodendroket 9y agoWho the hell fries hash browns in butter? It's liable to burn. As to your second paragraph, well, here is my point illustrated. Added sugars are probably our biggest problem. Even when it comes to lipids, I don't think most people cooking at home are making Cheesecake Factory-style meals. But my understanding of the latest research is that trying to remove fats from your diet is no longer necessarily recommended.
- Afton 9y agoYou can make delicious hash browns with just potatoes, salt, and butter. Yes, you have to keep it from burning, but it's not that hard, you just use a lower temperature. The result is delicious and crisp. It's not the only way (Honestly, I prefer duck/goose fat if I'm feeling fancy, beef if not), but it's a perfectly acceptable way of making crispy delicious hash browns.
- seanwilson 9y agoThanks, I found the article really difficult to skim for the main points.
- TillE 9y agoI'm generally allergic to long-form articles, but this was short and very readable. It introduces the situation and then gets straight into the various problems.
- seanwilson 9y agoI'm not against longer articles but the first paragraph should do a better job of letting you know where the story is going to help you know if you're going to be interested in it. Some subheadings (there's none) would help you know where you are in the story and let you skip to the part you're interested in.
- emodendroket 9y agoI mean, the primary audience for these pieces are magazine subscribers, not people scanning the page coming in from link aggregators. Your suggestions might improve the experience for skimmers, but not necessarily for people who want to just read an interesting article.
- Tloewald 9y agoIt’s worse than that: 4) researcher is a serial p-hacker who even boasted about the practice 5) reason given for the small sample (most recipes had changed) was a lie and sample appears to have been cherry-picked
- throwa_way_ 9y agoHe didn't just boast about p-hacking. He emailed his grad students telling them to p-hack more!