Category: Food and Drink

Fatty acids derived from pork bone fat are used as a hardening agent in crayons and also gives them their distinctive smell.

Here is more, including a comparison to Leonard Read.

Andrew, a loyal MR reader, has a request:

Tyler, why don't more people like spicy food? What prevents them from trying spicy dishes?

Mexicans acculturate their small children to spicy food gradually, by mixing increasing amounts of chilies into the meal.  It takes a while before the kids enjoy it and at first they don't like it.  If this has never been done to you, you need to make the leap yourself, usually later in life.  The whole point of spicy food is that at first it is painful, causing the release of endorphins to the brain.  With time the pain goes away and you still get the endorphins, although you may seek out an increasingly strong dose to boost the endorphin response.

Not all Americans think this is a good deal.  Older people are less likely to make this initial investment and endure the initial pain.  The same is true for uneducated people (adjusting for ethnicity), who both are less likely to know it will end up being a source of pleasure and who on average have higher discount rates.  What other predictions can be made?  If you and your country are too obsessed with dairy you will be led away from spicy food, one way or the other.  Milk usually counteracts the pleasing effects of chilies.

Jason Kuznicki asks why do they do it?  Why don't they make the "secret menu" common knowledge?  He gives some answers, including:

Americans have some very set though inaccurate ideas about what
“Chinese food” really is. They will generally balk at anything else.
More people will break this way, and avoid the restaurants, than will
break my way, and go to them more often, if they are offered something
new and different.

I would add that perhaps many Chinese restaurants do not want too many non-Chinese customers.  Especially for immigrants, restaurant life is often about ambience, social contacts, and feeling you have a space to call your own.  A restaurant cannot be all things to all people and the #1 best way of judging a restaurant is to look at its customers.  The "beef with broccoli" menu will attract a certain kind of American customer, but without breaking down the sense of segregation and the basic Chineseness of the place.

That said, there is also the fear that the American customers will order from the secret menu and then not like the chicken feet, etc. and give a bad report to their friends.

Thai restaurants don't have secret menus per se, but often you can talk a so-so restaurant into, for your sake, becoming a very good restaurant with real Thai food.

1. Rant about agriculture, hat tip goes to Ezra Klein.

This one is from Jacqueline:

"Tap water?" said Alison Szeli, 26, picking up the clear plastic bottle
with orange letters: "Tap'd NY. Purified New York City tap water."

She studied the description: "No glaciers were harmed in making this
water." She compared prices: Smartwater cost $1.85. Tap'd NY was 35
cents less.

I suspect this will seem odder to you, the older you are.

…the restaurant is designed from top to bottom in a medical theme.
wheelchairs, hospital beds, operating lights, test tubes and more, the
design is completely off the wall. The interior is far more subtle than
the al fresco seating out front.

It's called The Clinic and here is more information, and photos, including information on one of its tastiest dishes.  Here is their imaginative website.  Here is a floor plan with two excellent photos.  You sit in wheelchairs and drink out of IV bags. 

Sadly, I've never been to Iran, though I would love to go.  Here are a few tips for the Iranian food I've had elsewhere:

1. A good koresh (stew) almost always beats a good kabob.  Ghormeh sabzi and bademjan are national treasures.

2. The choice of rice is a central decision.  Get zereshk polo — barberry rice — as much as you can.  Or get cherry rice, rice with pistachio, etc.  All those choices are winners.

3. Lamb shank can end up being dull in a Persian restaurant.  If served with dill the dish is often too dry.

4. Fesanjan, fesanjan, fesanjan.  In Iceland I once ate fesenjan guillemot.  The fesenjan in a can that you find in Persian groceries is actually pretty good.

5. Don't be afraid to smear mast-o-moseer (or musir; the spellings and transliterations vary, as with many of these dishes) into your rice.  Always order mast-o-moseer.

6. Soups are excellent, especially if they are fragrant and have noodle-like entities.  Soups without barley are usually better than soups with barley.

7. In this country Westwood, Los Angeles has the best Iranian food overall.  Check out Westwood Ave. and also Pico.

8. If you are in a country where you do not expect to see Persian food, and you see Persian food, it is usually very good.  As a partial exception to a rule of good eating, a single Persian restaurant can be very good even if there are not other Persian restaurants around.

Americans are more overweight than ever but Burke, Heiland and Nadler find:

…that the probability of self-classifying as overweight is significantly
lower on average in the more recent survey, for both men and women, controlling
for objective weight status and other factors….The shifts in self classification are not explained by differences between
surveys in body fatness or waist circumference, nor by shifting demographics. We
interpret the findings as evidence of a generational shift in social norms
related to body weight, and propose various mechanisms to explain such a shift,
including: (1) higher average adult BMI and adult obesity rates in the later
survey cohort, (2) higher childhood obesity rates in the later survey cohort,
and (3) public education campaigns promoting healthy body image. The welfare
implications of the observed trends in self-classification are mixed.