Controversy Ahoy

I started this last week and kept not finishing it off to post properly. Sorry. I've got a lot of posts coming up this week to make up for it. It's a little controversial, so let's just bite the bullet and get those points out of the way first.

1. Organic food is not better for you.
2. Michael Pollan is a bit of a dickhead.

Wait, what? Well, these two topics have been floating round the intertoobz recently.

First, organic food. Ben Goldacre has a good article on the topic. Basically a couple of studies came out in the UK that showed no nutritional benefits to organic food. There is no measurable difference in chemical composition or in health benefits.

I'm actually not surprised by this one little bit. I've never been a fanatic about organic foods - I place fair trade, low food miles, and free range much higher in my priorities. I do buy organic quite often, though, and I'm not to going to stop. I'm pretty sure that a lot of the organic farming practices are better for the environment, and long term sustainability. I'm not convinced by all of the methods - old and traditional isn't automatically better. For example, what's with copper sulphate being considered organic? High school chemistry should tell you that it's an inorganic compound. It was my favourite in my chemistry set - such a pretty blue. I'm not saying it's actually bad or good; I am completely ignorant on this topic. It just makes me go "huh?"

I am also fairly sure that some of the "heritage" varieties of plants are better for you than the modern breeds - another question not addressed by these studies. We humans have been busily breeding our foods to be sweeter and fatter for millennia. We've changed that in the last century to selecting easier to transport and store, and lower in fat. But some of those bitter and sulphury compounds are the ones that are good for us; and the less intensively bred variants tend to be much higher in antioxidants and other nutrients. Australian bush foods are a prime example - super high in various nutrient levels, they are surely bound to one of the next faddy "superfoods". Oat bran, wild blueberries, wheatgrass, gojiberries, pomegranates... How about Kakadu plum, Davidson plum, akudjura or finger lime? Ooh, look, Kakadu Juice! Sounds good - get in early and beat the trendy price rises!

But these points are not at all what is addressed by the studies, and no amount of yelling "look, over there!" forms any kind of rebuttal. I really love how Goldacre phrased it; I could not imagine writing it better.

The emotive commentary in favour of organic farming bundles together diverse and legitimate concerns about unchecked capitalism in our food supply: battery farming, corruptible regulators, or reckless destruction of the environment, where the producer’s costs do not reflect the true full costs of their activities to society, to name just a few. Each of these problems deserve individual attention.

But just as we do not solve the problems of deceitfulness in the pharmaceutical industry by buying homeopathic sugar pills, so we may not resolve the undoubted problems of unchecked capitalism in industrial food production by giving money to the £2bn industry represented by the Soil Association.

So - what's up with Michael Pollan, our ethical foodie hero? Plain old unthinking sexism is what. His latest column on the merits of home cooking is mostly pretty good. But he blindly assumes that cooking is women's work, and blames feminism for its decline. Read the Salon commentary here. And Pollan's NYTimes article here. ORLY, Michael? What, you maybe think men do not need to eat? Or do you think all men should come equipped with a personal chef as a birthright?

To be fair, he does actually think that men should learn to cook. Where he goes off the rails is in ascribing the downfall of home cooking to, of all things, feminism. It's as if Betty Friedan all by herself persuaded 1950s middle class housewives that they were unhappy. Because every educated woman before Friedan just LOVED being forced to quit her job to cook, clean and care for children and wait on her husband. The intellectual joys of scrubbing the kitchen floor were unquestionable until Evil Betty hypnotised us all! And working class women are just dumb, and were totally taken in by this. Instead of spending hours making casseroles, they chose to go and work for the money to feed and clothe and house their families. Imagine! How silly! They ate macaroni cheese from a box instead of making a proper boeuf bourgignon, and baking apple pies. What could they possibly have been thinking?

Actually, my bloke does have a personal chef (hi there!), and he is very happy about it by all accounts. But that's us individually. He trades cleaning duties for the shopping and cooking. He seriously hates shopping. Cooking is OK, though he's out of practice. He used to be quite good at whipping up a pasta dinner, and unlike me he actually got the knack of steaming rice on the stovetop. He's crap at BBQs, though, which has got to be bad for his Bloke cred.

Cooking can indeed be creative and fun - obviously it's one of my own joys. And I quite agree that a certain level of it is an essential life skill for all of us. Nobody should have to depend on fast food and microwaved readimeals. But ALL of us should have the basics, independent of our plumbing. The complexities may safely be left to those of us who enjoy it - also independent of our plumbing.

By the way, one thing I'm very glad to learn from this is that there's a film of Julia Child's life, mashed up with the Julie/Julia project, coming out soon. VERY EXCITED OMG WHEN IS IT OPENING HERE?!!! *Ahem* Sorry, getting carried away. VERY EXCITED VERY EXCITED VERY EXCITED! Australian release date 08-Oct-09, US release date 07-Aug-09 WTF? DOWNLOAD DOWNLOAD DOWNLOAD. *oops, management does not endorse any naughty illegal stuff, treely ruly.*

Wheatless, Eggless, Butterless, Milkless, Sugarless... Cake?

I stumbled on this recipe in a post by The Old Foodie, who is actually a not-so-old person interested in Old Food. This is a cake from the 1918 wartime, and it sounds completely impossible that such a thing could be edible. And yet - cinnamon, raisins and cornmeal... that could be pretty good.

It might perhaps be a decent breakfast type of cake? Not too rich, not too sweet, perhaps it could work? I like sweet food in the morning, but not too sweet. I go for things like toast and marmalade, a peanut butter and honey sandwich, fruit yoghurt, porridge with golden syrup, or hot cross buns... Definitely not a dessert level of sweetness.

I made some muffins on Tuesday that I am just going to have to throw out. I found a White Wings "low fat" variety muffin packet mix up the back of the pantry, that I bought in a fit of unreason when I tried out Weight Watchers a few years back. I boldly challenged my prejudices about diet foods! And in consequence, had them confirmed in spades. These aren't even "diet" muffins, just low-fat. And ingredient number one on the list is not flour, but sugar. The orange-poppy ones are very nasty, and the chocolate ones are sorta kinda OKish, if you think of them as cake. I've eaten half a one, and not actually spat it out like I did with the orange.

Anyway, here is the original recipe, copied over for convenience.

Wheatless, Eggless, Butterless, Milkless, Sugarless Cake
1 cup corn syrup
2 cups water
2 cups raisins
2 tablespoons fat
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 ½ cups fine cornmeal, 2 cups rye flour; or, 3 ½ cups wholewheat flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder, or, ½ teaspoon soda

Cook corn syrup, water, raisins, fat, salt and spices slowly 15 minutes. When cool, add flour, soda or baking powder, thoroughly blended. Bake in slow oven 1 hour. The longer this cake is kept, the better the texture and flavor. This recipe is sufficient to fill one medium-sized bread pan.

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So how would I go about that?

It's an American recipe, and the corn products they use are not common here. You can substitute a few things, though. This page from The Joy of Baking is quite useful to give you ideas. Also, as you see, the recipe uses an out-dated sense of "sugarless". It actually does contain sugars, just not the granulated white stuff that presumably was in short supply in 1918.

"Fat" - that is pretty vague. I'm personally inclined to toss the butterless aspect and go for real butter here. Obviously if you wanted that austerity/vegan version you could go for a vegetable shortening like margarine, or maybe an oil. I had a quarter pack of butter left after the seedcake, which is about double the amount you officially want. Since this is an austerity recipe, a little extra is unlikely to hurt, so I used it all. (Remembering that 1 US tbsp=15ml - and that's about 15g, since butter and water weigh much the same.)

Salt - I tend to reduce this. A small pinch, rather than a teaspoon works better for my taste.

"Corn syrup" - We can actually buy corn syrup here. The recipe doesn't say whether light (very mild) or dark (stronger flavoured). IGA & Woolies both stock the imported Karo brand: it's kept near the sugar and baking supplies. But I like the taste of golden syrup, so I'll stick with that. Honey is another obvious option. Or I suppose you could even use sugar.

"Cornmeal" - fine polenta will do here. But absolutely not cornflour/cornstarch. I don't quite understand why the different quantities of different flour options. I'm only baking one, though. If it works, I may try a different flour some other time.

"Raisins" - in the US, they call sultanas "golden raisins". I strongly prefer the dark raisins, but you could legitimately use sultanas. Or perhaps notice that this recipe is quite big on alternatives, and just use any dried fruit you fancied.

And a "slow" oven is 140-150C.

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How did it work? Surprisingly well! I may well even make it again.

I was worried at a couple of points. The mix is very liquid, and it just poured into the loaf pan. It didn't rise at all, that I noticed, the top is totally flat. I think I took it out of the pan a little early: it almost cracked. I'd recommend that you let it cool in the pan for fifteen minutes or so, for safety.

The recipe claims that it's best as it gets older, but I cut a slice when it was still warm. It was nice - the crust was a bit chewy, the crumb quite soft and packed with juicy raisins. I've also tried it cold, yesterday morning, and it does indeed work for me as a breakfast item. It's got cereal, fruit and sugar and is not too cloying. Last night I tried heating up a chunk, to pretend it was a pudding, but this was less successful. It seemed drier when warm.

The raisin flavour in this cake is very strong. And I mean very strong indeed: I find that it overpowers the golden syrup, which is no mean feat. I rather like the idea of swapping in chopped dates for a different effect. And after my recent post on Hot Cross Buns, perhaps adding in some mixed peel and using orange juice instead of water might be a good idea.

So there you go: surprise! It's actually rather good.

Word of the Day: Orthorexia

Orthorexia is an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. This is a cool word for a behaviour that pretty much everyone finds annoying: when some diet fanatic starts preaching at you about the One And Only True Diet, you know that they suffer from orthorexia. Whatever it is - Weight Watchers, Atkins, vegan, palaeolithic, raw food, low carb, low GI, the latest fad - they are fanatical about it. All deviations are a crime. That carrot contains carbs, is not low GI. There's too much salt in that lentil soup. That free range chicken was not organic. Milk is poison. Some people can take this to such an extreme that they can kill themselves, or their children.

I was put in mind of this yesterday when reading an article at Shapely Prose. A couple of women from the Fat Acceptance movement in the US were on TV, and they handled themselves brilliantly. You can see the YouTubes at that link. Against the smarmy hosts and the ignorant doctor and the wasted blonde commentator, they looked happy and glowing with health. It's worth a look. The doctor just blew me away though - first she said that we have to look at BMI, not just weight and height. Hello? What does she think BMI is? Then at the end she tried to give some advice on healthy eating - and it was hilarious. Don't drink your calories, there's no nutrients in them. And don't eat white food. Ha! Clearly milk is the devil. The Shapely Prose commenters (including me) immediately got busy on our lists of white food. You know, stuff that's really terrible for you like jicama, cauliflower, parsnips, daikon, tofu, yoghurt, chicken & turkey breast, cottage cheese, cannelini beans, peeled apples...

The Genuine One And Only True Diet, as far as I'm concerned, is moderation. Eat mostly healthy fresh real food. Eat when you're hungry, don't eat when you're not. Don't eat treats every day; that makes them into non-treats. Enjoy celebrations. Don't get obsessive. Exercise your moderation in moderation.

I rather like to mix up things that are 'healthy' with things that are 'unhealthy'. It confuses silly people. Some of my favourite bamboozle'm tricks include:
* skim latte with cake
* salad and chips
* low fat bran muffin with nutella
* real dhal makhani - lentils with butter & cream
* ma po tofu - tofu with pork

I would have a diet coke with my burger and fries, too, but I hate coke, diet soft drinks, and big chain burgers and fries anyway. And I'm not convinced that diet soft drinks are healthy anyway.

On Losing Weight

I've done it. I lost 12 kg in 2006. In 2007, I've gained and lost and gained and lost a couple of kg, but I've kept the big loss. Eventually I want to lose maybe another 15-20kg, which would take me down to the "normal" BMI range. I'm not really doing much about it now, though. I'm settling around the BMI overweight/obese border - and if you think that makes me an elephant, well, here I am in my burlesque alter ego. Not skinny, sure, but not exactly spherical. (Photo credit to the amazing Allyeska.)

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I've been reading some sites that made me think about this thing. The evidence of harm from obesity per se is nowhere near as solid as you might think from the media. Or, for that matter, from common wisdom and diet books and government advisory offices. I'm especially impressed by Junkfood Science here at blogspot. And this particular post from Shapely Prose summarises a lot of the common arguments. As a die-hard skeptic, I especially appreciated CSICOP's take on the subject. I'm not quite so sure of the credentials of this one, from The Center for Consumer Freedom, whoever they are; it has a slight astroturf flavour. It can be hard to judge the truth of what's on teh internets.

It's looking more and more as if the main health issue is fitness, well over and above diet. And with diet, it's about being mostly healthy, rather than obsessively meticulous about counting calories and avoiding fat or carbs or whatever. And BMI is a sucky measure. People with lots of muscle turn up as overweight or obese. People in the "overweight" category seem to have a lower risk of death from heart disease, cancer, and most other diseases, than people in the "normal" category. And the whole fat-morbidity correlation goes away when you factor in fitness. I'd better get back on that bicycle!

This ties in with some other things I've been reading, such as the "Don't Go Hungry Diet" of Dr Amanda Sainsbury-Salis and the "low GI diet"of Dr Jennie Brand-Miller. There's sound scientific reasons for not starving yourself, and eating the slow-release carbs can help with that. All you need to do is simply eat a good variety of food, with most of it healthy, traditional foods - whole grains, fruit, veg, dairy, seafood, lean meats. Or even more fatty foods if you're off for a day's heavy toting of barges and lifting of bales, but most of us aren't these days. And add a bit of sugar or oil for the taste; it will not kill you. Listening to your body is the best guide. That New York Times article by Michael Pullan that was being passed around the net a while back was similar - remember, the one that started with "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

It sounds sensible and unarguable, but surprisingly, even this is unsupported by actual research. Diet seems to matter less than anyone thought. On the whole, though, I think the popular idea of healthy eating is largely correct. When really eating "ad lib", I naturally want to eat plenty of fruit and veg; I start feeling logy and bloated if I eat too much high fat food. I'm satisfied by very small servings of chocolate or cake.

One thing that I think is missing from most of these discussions is the problem of "portion distortion". This page has some contrasts in standard serving sizes from 1950 to 2003, or you could look at the slightly annoying portion distortion quiz. Other research suggests that we are psychologically very easily led to overeat simply by large plates and containers. The "not too much" in Pullan's piece is a very important part of the puzzle. It's also a theme in the popular "French Women Don't Get Fat" book. Sure, eat your patisserie and fry your steak in butter - but in small amounts. Take the filet mignon, not the 2lb steak challenge. The Japanese variant mentioned the same thing, as I recall from skimming in the bookshop. (I couldn't bring myself to buy "Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat". Really?? What do they do? Shoot them? I have every intention of getting old thank you.) But anyway, it's like the French one: eat many tiny portions of varied and beautiful food, and stop when not quite full. Mmm, must go to Iori again sometime.

I found that my few months with Weight Watchers was simply invaluable for getting a grip on sane serving sizes. I needed this. I hated the primary school hectoring style, and the group-think, and the commercialism, and the lame educational materials that assumed that everyone was a housewife, but I still feel that I got my money's worth. I've never been much of a junk food eater. I couldn't give up soft drinks, or stop eating chips in front of the telly, because I'd never started. But I could reeducate myself on how much pasta or rice or butter or steak was a reasonable serve. It took a few weeks of feeling that I was eating far too little, but it eventually stuck, and I readjusted. I'll need to watch that this does not creep back up.

I'm pretty sure that I will lose more weight eventually. I'm getting more active, although I lapsed badly over winter with my many illnesses. I'm getting better at stopping eating when I've had enough. And I'm get better at eating what I really want, rather than just what's there on the tea table, or comfort food. This is surprisingly hard - genuinely eating "what you want, when you want" requires a fair bit of emotional self-awareness and maturity. A bad day at work doesn't necessarily have to mean chocolate or beer - though usually it does, still. A plate full of chips doesn't need me to eat it just because it's there. There is no shortage. Over time all of these changes have got to have some effect. But if I just get healthier, will that be enough for me? I don't know. I'm not too obsessed with the BMI and kilogram numbers. But I do want to be a size 14 again, as I was in most of my 20s.

Nom nom nom it are my birthday

I'm a fan of the lolcats, and I've been sending this particular one around to everyone I know who has a birthday. It's not Plummet, though the colouring is similar. It's just some random cat from the infamous icanhascheezburger collection. Actually, while I'm at it, I also have especially enjoyed the stranger end of the lol-phenomenon: loltheists, lolpilgrims, loltrek, lolcthulhu, lolgrammar, lolbible, lolcode...

It are indeed my birthday and I've been baking. I've made lemon yoghurt cupcakes in my new rose-shaped silicon muffin pans. The recipe is from this month's Delicious magazine, and they were for afternoon tea today with a couple of friends. They were good - quite dense and moist, and very lemony. I also made Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Guinness cake, from her book Feast, to take to work tomorrow. I'm not completely happy with that one - the Guinness cake has sunk a bit in the middle. But I've tipped it upside down and iced it, and it looks good enough.

I'm not as good at baking as I used to be. I'm out of practice. Since I've been trying to lose weight, the baking of cakes, biscuits, puddings, pies & tarts has had to be quite drastically curtailed. And I'm not sure I ever quite adjusted to the speed of this oven, even though I've been here for 5 years now. Just how much does one reduce the temperature to compensate for the fan forcing? It's all very well with roast dinners, but baking is more sensitive.

Anyway, I've been away down to Solar Springs in Bundanoon, for a girlie weekend with my mates Belinda and Beth. It was heaps of fun, though with a few minor annoyances. The service tended to the production line in style; it was not quite the pampering we were expecting. The mealtimes got to be quite wearing, as the dining room was very noisy. It did have a gorgeous view out over the mountains, though, and the food was good - healthy, and really fresh and well made - brilliant salads at lunchtime; nicely done steamed veggies at dinner. It's unusual to find vegetables at a buffet in a bain marie that are actually still crisp and fresh; all kudos to the cook for that. I was especially taken with the sesame, sweet potato & spinach salad; and the whole baked salmon en croute. I think it would be quite hard to lose weight there, despite all the walks and swims and gym classes - the food is just so appealling, and the little bicycle shop cafe down the road is so delightful (and has cake).

While I was there, I had a really good massage, a fitness test, two bushwalks, a sauna and spa, and a go at archery. I also had a "face and feet" treatment which I did not like, and a mud wrap, which I did enjoy. The mud was soothing and warm and relaxing, as well as rather silly. I'm not sure what was wrong with the face treatment, but I ended up feeling really twitchy and uncomfortable and had to go wash the stuff off. It was all supposed to be hypo-allergenic, but I ended up with a big rosacea flush, so maybe it wasn't.

I've put on about a kilo in the last month, having been too sick to exercise most of the time, but not too sick to eat. Now that I'm feeling a lot better (though still not at 100%) I should be able to start up the exercise again. My fitness test was not too bad - glucose, cholesterol & blood pressure good; flexibility OK; weight & body fat definitely too high; and my aerobic capacity not so good. I really noticed how much of that hard-won fitness I'd lost in the last few months when I was walking back up the hill from the glow-worm glen. It was very rough, a lot harder than when I walked up Mount Ainslie just before I got sick for the first time this season.

I have a number of special events with food temptations coming up. Today is my birthday; tomorrow is the work morning tea; Friday a dinner out with the choir; on Saturday the bloke's due back, and not too long after that we'll have my belated birthday dinner; it's a friend's birthday in two weeks... Clearly I need to have an action plan to get back on track. There are too many opportunities to eat a lot of rich food. So my plan is to give in to temptation at these designated events - though ideally in small tasting amounts rather than big pig-out amounts - and make sure I eat very healthy for all the rest of the time, until I go overseas. And exercise. Right, that's sorted.

My knickers fell down at Stomp

Saturday night's Stomp went off with a bang. This is the second one I've been to, and I intend to keep on going. They run quarterly at the Albert Hall, raising funds for charities. For your $25 you get a couple of half hour dance classes (be in at 7pm), a DJ playing anything from Jazz & Swing through Latin to trashy 70s, a live band, and demos from lots of different dance groups. Miss Kitka's and Jumptown are my personal favourites, but some of the Latin dancers are spectacular. The band this time was Big Boss Groove - a bright and cheerful local band, with brass and multiple vocalists, and a nice range of danceable tunes.

You get a good chance to have a dance - and if you need a break, it's pretty wild just watching the crowd doing their individual things. Who cares what the music is? Salsa away to a swing tune, swing on to disco, do the twist to some hot latin number...

And yes, my knickers did fall down while I was dancing, but since I was wearing turquoise velvet trousers under my groovy purple & blue paisley kaftan, they didn't go far. No-one could have noticed. (Kaftan?? Did I mention the 60s theme? Well, that's why. Peace, man.) I had a quick look at said knickers before I threw them out, and was chuffed to notice that the elastic had not gone bung. They were simply too big for me. Yay! It's nice to have these confirmations of progress.

I've been working on losing weight and getting healthier since January 2006. At the time I was 97kg, well into the obese range. Now I'm on the overweight/obese borderline, 14 kg down on where I started. I'm about halfway to my goal. My blood pressure is down; my fitness is up. Even with residual tiredness hanging round from that damn flu, I could still dance more and longer than I could have 2 years ago. I'm not losing weight very quickly, but it is moving slowly but steadily in the right direction. It's not easy to combine a love of good food and cooking with weight loss, but it is possible. It's all about learning proper portion sizing; choosing quality over quantity; loving your fruit & veg & pulses; cutting out boredom & social eating in favour of eating only when hungry; and choosing exercise that is actually enjoyable. For me, this is dancing, cycling and walking. I've been considering jogging, but I hear the ice falls out of your glass if you do that.