37 ms·

> In additional to the intellectual stimulation, you get more cream cheese, because there is slightly more surface area. As someone who uses half of a brick pe

by bryans 5y ago

> In additional to the intellectual stimulation, you get more cream cheese, because there is slightly more surface area. As someone who uses half of a brick per bagel regardless of size, I'd say surface area is a non-limiting factor for cream cheese application. If you want more cream cheese, just have more cream cheese -- it's delicious, on top of being more filling (and arguably healthier) than the bagel itself.

na85 5y ago
I used to love cream cheese until I looked at the ingredients list. Buncha weird ass bean gums and stuff. No thanks. Now I use ricotta, or just butter.
- blindmute 5y ago
  Yep, it's a chemical product for sure, full of xantham gum and other such "ingredients". Some cheap brands you can actually taste the gum, or so it seems... I stopped eating it
  - Cpoll 5y ago
    Isn't xantham gum just a product of sugar fermentation? I'm all for fewer ingredients, but cheese is still as much a "chemical" product if the stabilizers and mold extractors are removed.
    - blindmute 5y ago
      Lots of nasty things are "just products" of simple ingredients, like seed oils. If the ingredient was invented in a lab less than 100 years ago, I try not to eat it.
      - bryans 5y ago
        That's rather disinformative. There is nothing about locust bean gum extraction that is unusual or unsafe, and it certainly wasn't "invented in a lab." It's a seed that gets milled into powder.
        blindmute 5y ago
        > Xanthan gum was discovered by Allene Rosalind Jeanes and her research team at the United States Department of Agriculture, and brought into commercial production by CP Kelco under the trade name Kelzan in the early 1960s. I don't really care what it is exactly; a food additive that didn't exist until a research team found it 60 years ago, I can do without.
        bryans 5y ago
        > I don't really care what it is exactly; You've made that perfectly clear, but your personal standards for food safety are entirely arbitrary and not reflective of reality. If you tried applying those same standards to medicine, for example, you'd find that simple injuries all of a sudden become deadly and for no legitimate reason. Also, gums (particularly locust bean gums) have been used in food for hundreds of years, and in other uses for thousands of years. They're nothing new, and your concerns are imagined.
        blindmute 5y ago
        With the current state of nutrition "science", all food standards are arbitrary. I don't eat any compound ingredients that didn't exist 2000 years ago. So far, my health is superb and I'm one of the few remaining people to not be overweight; I'm actually extremely fit and active. The point is not that I'm right because it works for me; the point is that if you follow recommended diets from various governments, you'll end up on average worse than my entirely arbitrary made up diet I do to feel rustic. Government can be wrong about HFCS and seed oils being safe, and so instead of trusting them, I will just eat what is proven to be safe and wholesome across human history: meat, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, fry in tallow, drink bone broth. Your appeal to science is precisely what I'm avoiding.
        bryans 5y ago
        > With the current state of nutrition "science", all food standards are arbitrary. I don't eat any compound ingredients that didn't exist 2000 years ago. You were just told that gums are a simple and naturally occurring ingredient and have been used for thousands of years, and your rebuttal was to refuse them because you don't eat compound ingredients recently invented in a lab. I think that says everything about the mental gymnastics you're doing to convince yourself that you've got it all figured out. If you eat nuts, or the skins of many fruits, or any root vegetables, then you are consuming gums (aka polysaccharides (aka sugar)). You just don't call it that, because it's one ingredient among many in a larger product -- like say, a potato.
- atdrummond 5y ago
  For what it's worth, it's very easy to make at home or buy at a farmer's market without any industrial stabilisers. In larger cities, you can also get the same product (cream cheese without the various gums and other additives) at Mexican/Hispanic grocers where it will be called queso filadelfia.
  - na85 5y ago
    I'm in a pretty big city with lots of granola-type people but I haven't seen any artisanal cream cheese or whatever at the local farmer's market. Honestly cheesecake is better with ricotta anyways, and my waist can do without bagels, so I'm kinda post-cream cheese at this point.
- metafunctor 5y ago
  Perhaps try a different brand. The one I usually get lists milk, cream, whey, salt, carob powder, citric acid, and culture. So fermented milk products plus a bit of things to make it more stable.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    The "standard national (American) brand" is Philadelphia, and their ingredients are: > pasteurized milk and cream, whey protein concentrate, whey, salt, carob bean gum, natamycin (a natural mold inhibitor), vitamin A palmitate, cheese culture. https://www.myfoodandfamily.com/brands/philadelphia/product/00021000612192/philadelphia-plain-cream-cheese-spread-48-oz-tub https://www.myfoodandfamily.com/brands/philadelphia/product/... We can summarize this as "a bunch of milk products, salt, vitamin A, an antifungal, and carob bean gum". It seems pretty inoffensive. There is one (1) bean gum in there, but at this point I'd ask whether "carob bean gum" is different from "carob powder". For example, quoting from wikipedia: > Locust bean gum [another name for carob bean gum] occurs as a white to yellow-white powder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locust_bean_gum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locust_bean_gum It appears to be the powdered endosperm of carob beans. If this is bad, wait till you hear about chocolate. Or refried beans.
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      Philadelphia sold in the EU+UK: > Full Fat Soft Cheese, Salt, Stabiliser (Locust Bean Gum), Acid (Citric acid). Which is similar, except without the mould inhibitor (only allowed on hard cheeses here) or vitamin A.
elyobo 5y ago
I thought I liked cream cheese until I bought bagels in NYC and there was more cream cheese than bagel. Even I can't eat that, got used to scraping off half the topping (and it was still half a brick left).

by bryans 5y ago

na85 5y ago

I used to love cream cheese until I looked at the ingredients list. Buncha weird ass bean gums and stuff. No thanks. Now I use ricotta, or just butter.

blindmute 5y ago
Yep, it's a chemical product for sure, full of xantham gum and other such "ingredients". Some cheap brands you can actually taste the gum, or so it seems... I stopped eating it
- Cpoll 5y ago
  Isn't xantham gum just a product of sugar fermentation? I'm all for fewer ingredients, but cheese is still as much a "chemical" product if the stabilizers and mold extractors are removed.
  - blindmute 5y ago
    Lots of nasty things are "just products" of simple ingredients, like seed oils. If the ingredient was invented in a lab less than 100 years ago, I try not to eat it.
    - bryans 5y ago
      That's rather disinformative. There is nothing about locust bean gum extraction that is unusual or unsafe, and it certainly wasn't "invented in a lab." It's a seed that gets milled into powder.
      - blindmute 5y ago
        > Xanthan gum was discovered by Allene Rosalind Jeanes and her research team at the United States Department of Agriculture, and brought into commercial production by CP Kelco under the trade name Kelzan in the early 1960s. I don't really care what it is exactly; a food additive that didn't exist until a research team found it 60 years ago, I can do without.
        bryans 5y ago
        > I don't really care what it is exactly; You've made that perfectly clear, but your personal standards for food safety are entirely arbitrary and not reflective of reality. If you tried applying those same standards to medicine, for example, you'd find that simple injuries all of a sudden become deadly and for no legitimate reason. Also, gums (particularly locust bean gums) have been used in food for hundreds of years, and in other uses for thousands of years. They're nothing new, and your concerns are imagined.
        blindmute 5y ago
        With the current state of nutrition "science", all food standards are arbitrary. I don't eat any compound ingredients that didn't exist 2000 years ago. So far, my health is superb and I'm one of the few remaining people to not be overweight; I'm actually extremely fit and active. The point is not that I'm right because it works for me; the point is that if you follow recommended diets from various governments, you'll end up on average worse than my entirely arbitrary made up diet I do to feel rustic. Government can be wrong about HFCS and seed oils being safe, and so instead of trusting them, I will just eat what is proven to be safe and wholesome across human history: meat, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, fry in tallow, drink bone broth. Your appeal to science is precisely what I'm avoiding.
        bryans 5y ago
        > With the current state of nutrition "science", all food standards are arbitrary. I don't eat any compound ingredients that didn't exist 2000 years ago. You were just told that gums are a simple and naturally occurring ingredient and have been used for thousands of years, and your rebuttal was to refuse them because you don't eat compound ingredients recently invented in a lab. I think that says everything about the mental gymnastics you're doing to convince yourself that you've got it all figured out. If you eat nuts, or the skins of many fruits, or any root vegetables, then you are consuming gums (aka polysaccharides (aka sugar)). You just don't call it that, because it's one ingredient among many in a larger product -- like say, a potato.
atdrummond 5y ago
For what it's worth, it's very easy to make at home or buy at a farmer's market without any industrial stabilisers. In larger cities, you can also get the same product (cream cheese without the various gums and other additives) at Mexican/Hispanic grocers where it will be called queso filadelfia.
- na85 5y ago
  I'm in a pretty big city with lots of granola-type people but I haven't seen any artisanal cream cheese or whatever at the local farmer's market. Honestly cheesecake is better with ricotta anyways, and my waist can do without bagels, so I'm kinda post-cream cheese at this point.
metafunctor 5y ago
Perhaps try a different brand. The one I usually get lists milk, cream, whey, salt, carob powder, citric acid, and culture. So fermented milk products plus a bit of things to make it more stable.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  The "standard national (American) brand" is Philadelphia, and their ingredients are: > pasteurized milk and cream, whey protein concentrate, whey, salt, carob bean gum, natamycin (a natural mold inhibitor), vitamin A palmitate, cheese culture. https://www.myfoodandfamily.com/brands/philadelphia/product/00021000612192/philadelphia-plain-cream-cheese-spread-48-oz-tub https://www.myfoodandfamily.com/brands/philadelphia/product/... We can summarize this as "a bunch of milk products, salt, vitamin A, an antifungal, and carob bean gum". It seems pretty inoffensive. There is one (1) bean gum in there, but at this point I'd ask whether "carob bean gum" is different from "carob powder". For example, quoting from wikipedia: > Locust bean gum [another name for carob bean gum] occurs as a white to yellow-white powder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locust_bean_gum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locust_bean_gum It appears to be the powdered endosperm of carob beans. If this is bad, wait till you hear about chocolate. Or refried beans.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    Philadelphia sold in the EU+UK: > Full Fat Soft Cheese, Salt, Stabiliser (Locust Bean Gum), Acid (Citric acid). Which is similar, except without the mould inhibitor (only allowed on hard cheeses here) or vitamin A.

elyobo 5y ago

I thought I liked cream cheese until I bought bagels in NYC and there was more cream cheese than bagel. Even I can't eat that, got used to scraping off half the topping (and it was still half a brick left).