TracyFood

Monkey Monday: belated Thursday thanks. 18 May 2009 2:01 pm

Posted by Tracy in : cooking,good news,health,kitchen gear,Marion Nestle,monkeys,nutrition,school,sustainability,thank you Thursday , trackback

So first of all: thanks for being over, spring semester! I am getting way too old and cranky to stay up like I did last Wednesday night/Thursday morning to finish my vitamin C paper, but I did get it done, even if I forgot to cite any of Dr. Nestle‘s books in it (sigh). The fortification chapter of Food Politics would’ve been particularly appropriate for examples of how ascorbic acid is a great way to give junk food a health aura — and on top of that, it’s a preservative! Double whammy! On the other hand, I came in at exactly the 10-page limit (after severely truncating my Works Consulted section, which is where all of Dr. Nestle’s books should’ve gone if I’d had the pages), and I’d lost enough sleep without shoehorning in yet another chunk of information. So I’m going to hope everything’s all for the best.

Next, one more item related to the vitamin C paper: big thanks to Andrew for pointing me at a very recent study about vitamin supplements and exercise. So perfect for the “discuss a current paper about your nutrient” requirement!

Let’s see, what else? Oh, right: Remember the Kyoto Box cardboard solar cooker? I wrote about this awesome gadget it back in March, when it was in the Financial Times / Forum for the Future Climate Change Challenge. (Here’s more background information about solar cookers won the $75,000 prize just like I hoped it would when I wrote about it, so I’m thankful for that. Yay!

And now onto things I’m thankful to have read. First of all, big thanks to Helen Rennie for sharing the results of her experiments in using water, homemade stocks, and storebought stocks in a variety of recipes. Her result: it’s almost always best to use water (or dried mushroom-soaking liquid, or some other quick and dirty homemade broth) when you don’t have homemade stock, instead of using something from a box or can or cube or powder. Yay for having my cooking prejudices confirmed!

And finally, big thanks to Matthew Amster-Burton for his month-old blog post about a deeply-held belief that he can’t prove:

Health messages about food are hazardous to your health. I mean this literally and I mean it emphatically. I believe we would all be better off with absolutely no guidance on what to eat other than tradition and our taste buds, and I believe that health messages about food literally cause health problems. “Can’t prove it by me,” 18 April 2009

Thank you, sir. In fact, I would like to propose a deal: the food industry stops using health claims to advertise that their products will help us live forever, and in exchange the government and other well-meaning agencies stop telling us that what we eat is going to kill us. (And while I’m dreaming, everybody gets really transparent about how food is grown, processed, cooked, inspected, regulated, and sold.) That arrangement, I would be really thankful for.

Now I’m off to be thankful for the enormous pan of baked ziti made I myself for bachelorette chow while Peter’s out in Oregon. As almost always, I totally overestimated how much I would need, so I’m thinking dinner party in the not too distant future (Goat cheese! Roasted red peppers! Fancy ricotta and provolone!) Nom.