Category: Food and Drink

Seth Roberts in NYTimes

Seth Roberts may soon be waking up to see his own face on television.  That ought to make him happy!  Roberts, as you may recall, is the Berkeley psychologist whose novel self-experiments have led to some strange but important new ideas.  Stephen Dubner, who read about Roberts on MR, and Steve Levitt have just profiled him in the NYTimes Magazine; they do an especially good job of explaining Seth’s theory of weight loss:

[Roberts] had by now come to embrace the theory that our bodies are
regulated by a "set point," a sort of Stone Age thermostat that sets an
optimal weight for each person. …But according to Roberts’s
interpretation of the set-point theory, when food is scarcer, you
become less hungry; and you get hungrier when there’s a lot of food
around.

This may sound backward, like
telling your home’s furnace to run only in the summer. But there is a
key difference between home heat and calories: while there is no good
way to store the warm air in your home for the next winter, there is a
way to store today’s calories for future use. It’s called fat….

During an era of scarcity –
an era when the next meal depended on a successful hunt, not a
successful phone call to Hunan Garden – this set-point system was
vital. It allowed you to spend down your fat savings when food was
scarce and make deposits when food was plentiful. Roberts was convinced
that this system was accompanied by a powerful signaling mechanism:
whenever you ate a food that was flavorful (which correlated with a
time of abundance) and familiar (which indicated that you had eaten
this food before and benefited from it), your body demanded that you
bank as many of those calories as possible….

So
Roberts tried to game this Stone Age system. What if he could keep his
thermostat low by sending fewer flavor signals? One obvious solution
was a bland diet, but that didn’t interest Roberts. (He is, in fact, a
serious foodie.) After a great deal of experimenting, he discovered two
agents capable of tricking the set-point system. A few tablespoons of
unflavored oil (he used canola or extra light olive oil), swallowed a
few times a day between mealtimes, gave his body some calories but
didn’t trip the signal to stock up on more. Several ounces of sugar
water (he used granulated fructose, which has a lower glycemic index
than table sugar) produced the same effect. (Sweetness does not seem to
act as a "flavor" in the body’s caloric-signaling system.)

The results were astounding. Roberts lost 40 pounds and never gained it back.

I can verify the appetite suppressing properties of the fructose water.  A glass of fructose water and I can easily go without lunch.  The only problem is that the sophists lure the unsuspecting to lunch anyway.

Jokes about opportunity cost

So this guy is driving down the high and passes an orchard… 

He sees this farmer holding up a pig so that it can gobble apples right off the tree.  The pig is going crazy eating apples. 

"That’s the craziet thing I ever saw," the guy tells himself and he pulls over to the side of the road, gets out of the car, and goes up to the farmer. 

"Hey, I couldn’t help noticing what you were doing.  Does your pig like apples?"

The farmer says, "My pig loves apples." 

"Well, if you don’t mind my saying so, if you took a stick and knocked the apples on the ground instead of lifting the pig up, you would save lots of time." 

And the farmer answers, "What’s time to a pig?" 

That is attributed to Paul Willis, and is from Peter Kaminsky’s new and excellent (for foodies) Pig Perfect.

What went wrong with red delicious apples?

I now find these apples inedible.  Why?  Falling prices led to overbreeding and lack of care:

Who’s to blame for the decline of Red Delicious? Everyone, it seems. Consumers were drawn to the eye candy of brilliantly red apples, so supermarket chains paid more for them. Thus, breeders and nurseries patented and propagated the most rubied mutations, or "sports," that they could find, and growers bought them by the millions, knowing that these thick-skinned wonders also would store for ages…

The Washington harvest begins in mid-August and runs to late October, and most apples sold through December are simply stored in refrigerated warehouses. Fruit shipped later in this cycle is kept in a more sophisticated environment called controlled-atmosphere storage — airtight rooms where the temperatures are chilly, the humidity high and the oxygen levels reduced to a bare minimum to arrest aging. Last year’s fruit will be sold through September, just as the new harvest is in full swing.

Storage apples must be picked before all their starches turn to sugar. Pick too late, and the apple turns mealy in the supermarket, but pick too soon, and the apple will never taste sweet. Growers test for optimum conditions, but today’s popular strains of Red Delicious turn color two to three weeks before harvest, making it difficult for pickers to distinguish an apple that is ready from one that isn’t…

The grower could deliver a better apple by harvesting a tree in two or three waves — the outside fruit ripens earlier than fruit in the center of the tree. This is done for Galas and other premium varieties, but the prices for Red Delicious are so depressed that farmers can’t afford that. "You would put yourself out of business," said Roger Pepperl, marketing director for Stemilt Growers Inc., a major grower in Wenatchee. In addition, the redder strains’ thicker skins, found to be rich in antioxidants, taste bitter to many palates.

The bottom line is that this practice has backfired.  Consumers are no longer looking to buy artificial fruits simply for their color or durability.  Here is the full story, and please support this trend by refusing to buy the standard red delicious apple.

Peruvian Food

You can eat pizza in Cusco but why would you?  Neverthless, many people must since the places are everywhere – lcd dining.  The local speciality is cuy (click on the link if you do not know what it is.  But do not tell my children what Daddy has been eating!)  Roasted cuy is an old tradition – recall the discussion of syncretism and subterfuge and check out this Cusconian painting of the last supper (scroll down to the third picture for a good view.)

You can get western cuy in town but I wanted the real thing so I asked the hotel guide where the locals go.  After some argument (si, si, yo no quiero cuy touristico, yo quiero muy bien cuy tipico) she relented and got me a taxi for the next day.

We traveled well out of Cusco, past the shanty towns and out into the countryside where cows roam next to the highway and the occasional llama can be seen on the mountains.  After about 40 minutes we arrived at a downtrodden pueblo.  I thought this was it but we then headed out on a dirt road finally pulling into an alley/driveway behind a house.  Just like in the movies a fat goose and a skinny dog (you work it out!) moved slowly out of the way as we pulled up to a terrace behind the house. The restaurant, if you can call it that, wasn’t much to look at but opposite were the mountains.

Two Andean mamas right out of the tourist book seated us and began to stoke a large earthenware stove with wood.  The cuy was roasted and served with excellent Andean potatoes as well as macaroni and cheese (!).   

The cuy: good.  The view: great.  The experience: priceless.

Meat without Feet

Earlier I wrote that the animal-welfare movement will explode as in-vitro meat becomes commercially viable.  A new paper discusses some novel techniques for growing in-vitro meat.  New Harvest, a non-profit firm, has been created to experiment with and promote the technology.   We will soon need a new word for people who eat meat but not animals.  Email me if you have suggestions and I will publish the best.

Why Mexican barbeuce [barbacoa] is superb

Goat and lamb are the specialties.  They cook the food in a buried pit at low heat, for about ten hours.  It is then shipped out by truck, early in the morning.  The restaurants, or should I say tables, open between nine and ten o’clock, yes that is a.m..  When they run out of fresh meat, the restaurant simply closes, usually by 1 p.m. or so.  You can only keep the stuff heated and fresh for so long.  A few restaurants receive a second shipment of meat, in which case you sit there and wait until it arrives.

Markets in everything — brown rice edition

Foodies are feeling a little "flushed" about a new restaurant in Taiwan that serves them food in pint-sized toilet-bowl dishes.

And, yes, the food is designed to look like something that belongs in pint-sized toilet-bowl dishes.

Restaurateur Eric Wang’s theme eatery, called "Marton" – named after the Chinese word for "toilet," matong – has become quite the popular one in the southern city of Kaohsiung (search), Taiwan’s second-largest, since its opening last year.

You see, at Toilet, the food isn’t served on boring old plates. No, no, no. The meals "bowl" diners over as they arrive at the table in miniaturized Western and Asian-style porcelain thrones.

And Wang doesn’t stop with the theme. The venue is a bottomless pit of toilet tricks and treats [TC: dare I mention the phrase pu pu platter?].

Nestled in the teeny-tiny toilet bowls are squishy offerings like curry chicken rice, chocolate ice cream and anything else that reminds one of, well, the real thing.

Patrons seem to love it.

Here is the link.

Markets in everything — gross me out version

Hufu:  The Healthy Human Flesh Alternative!

This is from the FAQ:

What does Hufu TM taste like? Does it taste like human flesh?
HufuTM is designed to resemble, as humanly possible, the taste and texture of human flesh. If you’ve never had human flesh before, think of the taste and texture of beef, except a little sweeter in taste and a little softer in texture. Contrary to popular belief, people do not taste like pork or chicken.

Who actually buys HufuTM?
HufuTM was originally conceived of as a product for students of anthropology hungry for the experience of cannibalism but deterred by the legal and logistical obstacles. However, our preliminary market research revealed the existence of a larger segment of the public that was interested in the availability of a legal and healthy human flesh substitute.

But if you wish to feel better (worse?) about the whole thing, the CEO and cook admits he has never sampled human flesh.  I believe this to be tofu plus a clever marketing idea.

Thanks to John Wilson for the pointer. 

How to order in a restaurant

Kottke.org offers the following parody:

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Glance quickly at the menu and order whatever catches your eye first. Spend no more than 2-3 seconds deciding or the quality of your choice (and your meal) will decline.

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
The key to ordering a good meal in a restaurant is understanding the economic incentives involved. Ask the server what they recommend and order something else…they are probably trying to get you to order something with a high profit margin or a dish that the restaurant needs to get rid of before the chicken goes bad or something. Never order the second least expensive bottle of wine; it’s typically the one with the highest mark-up on the list (i.e. the worst deal).

The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz
Take the menu and rip it into 4 or 5 pieces. Order from only one of the pieces, ignoring the choices on the rest of the menu. You will be happier with your meal.

The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
Poll the other patrons at the restaurant about what they’re having and order the most popular choices for yourself.

Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson
Order anything made with lots of butter, sugar, etc. Avoid salad or anything organic. A meal of all desserts may be appropriate. Or see if you can get the chef to make you a special dish like foie gras and bacon covered with butterscotch and hot fudge. Ideally, you will have brought a Super Sized McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese Meal into the restaurant with you. Smoke and drink liberally.

Thanks to Chris Masse for the pointer.