Unflavored gelatin is a source of umami? Do tell Chefguy!
~VOW
Sure, our society, including food production and distribution, makes it easy to be sedentary and eat crap. So choosing not to requires SOME effort - at least in terms of willpower or character. But having made that choice, I’m finding the “effort” minimal.
Fennel tea is good for reducing fartiness.
“Willpower” is a bullshit term invented to make people feel weak and stupid.
I know exactly what slalexan is talking about. Some people are missing that “off” switch. And you can’t shame them into having one. Then you combine that with the Agribiz contrived junk food, it’s a recipe for disaster.
I’ve lived it. I know how society makes you feel like a moral failure, all the while you use the scale and measuring cups and portions, all the while you know that pittance on the plate simply will not assuage your hunger.
Fortunately, weight loss surgery is more readily available. It won’t replace your busted “off” switch, but it HELPS. And before people jump on me and tell me how the surgery can be circumvented, save your breath and your keyboarding fingers. I know already. It isn’t a perfect solution. But it’s a Helluva lot better than a quack diet, a strict calorie regimen, or harping about willpower.
If you can’t or won’t try surgery, then read up about the Glycemic Index of foods, read about Insulin Resistance, and then take a serious look at Veganism.
And if anyone mentions “willpower” again, you’re gonna get served a soap sandwich.
~fat VOW
I strongly disagree. Whether you call it willpower, character, or something else, some people are obviously able and/or willing to resist gratification in ways others claim is impossible.
This presupposes the same inner experience exists uniformly in everyone and consequently the same level of ‘resistance to gratification’ is required of everyone. That may not be the case. It’s likely individuals register hunger and satiety at very different levels.
I’m reminded of a part in M.K. Ghandi’s Autobiography where he said someone was heaping praise on him how he was so virtuous for being so open-minded and tolerant of different races and religions, and Ghandi replied he could make no claims to being virtuous in that regard, as he grew up in an environment where such open-minded attitudes were pervasive and considered perfectly normal. It required no effort on his part to assume those attitudes; they were simply given to him because of where he grew up. Similarly, people may be wired to perceive hunger triggers at different levels owing to no particular effort or virtue on their part. In other words, how much can one be ‘resisting gratification’ if they’re registering little or no hunger impulse to resist, as compared to someone who is experiencing far stronger impulses? Willpower is needed relative to the internal impulse that’s being opposed.
It’s a thickener and emulsifier, which helps spread the joy throughout the dish. Umami includes those other things I mentioned, plus fish sauce, soy sauce, marmite, tomato paste and Parmesan cheese to name a few.
“Willpower” is when someone of normal weight wants to lose ten pounds before the High School reunion. Cuttibg back on the carbs, eliminating junk food, and upping an exercise routine will handle the ten pounds. There are no gigantic pangs, no urge to stand in front of the refrigerator with a fork, no self-questioning of your moral worthiness.
When a person is 100 pounds or more overweight, the “off” switch is busted, or absent entirely. No “off” switch means there is no satiation. One cookie or a hundred, the person will still want more. That is NOT a moral failing or an absence of willpower. Something is physically wrong.
There are studies of vagal nerve stimulation, to mimic the “off” switch. There will probably be some brain irregularity, a missing genetic code. If the hardwiring is whack, it’s almost impossible for the power of the mind to overcome it.
~VOW
I mostly agree with this, but I wouldn’t put all the focus on a “busted switch,” which implies a physical abnormality at the individual level. If that were the most common cause of obesity, we wouldn’t have seen the dramatic increase we have witnessed in the US in the last few decades. Clearly, something external is at work. I wouldn’t presume to know the exact answer, but it is pretty clear that the foolish emphasis on “low-fat” and the constant temptation of easily available, tasty, highly processed junk food are factors. Perhaps somewhere along the way, the switch gets busted - but I don’t think that’s where a lot of cases of obesity begin.
You are spot-on about the moral dimension, though. I’m among those lucky folks for whom maintaining a decent weight is not absurdly hard. I did gain 20 unwanted pounds after menopause, and taking them off was hard work, but I know it was nothing like what actually fat people go through trying to lose weight (for one thing, it’s such a long slow process that it must be horrifyingly depressing).
I liken it to sitting next to a stranger on an airplane. If you get seated next to a really overweight person who is encroaching on your space, it’s easy to start thinking, “fat slob! Why don’t they get some willpower and stop stuffing their face, lazy pig!” But for all you know, that 250-pound woman you are sitting next to was 350 pounds last year, and is in the middle of a valiant struggle to lose weight.
On the other hand, you could be seated next to a handsome, well-dressed stranger who is the very picture of grace and charm. And he may be beating his wife, cheating on his taxes, or making life miserable for his employees by his insane demands.
The difference is, you can SEE fat. You can’t see a lot of other dimensions of people just by looking at them. So yeah, I’m not into judging fat people as moral failures.
.
Thank you for your generous input, CairoCarol!
A HUGE part of the increasing obesity epidemic is what I call Agribiz. Soda used to be an occasional treat. Now it’s cheaper than milk, and more readily available. High fructose corn syrup, a key ingredient in soda, is a concentrated sweetening agent, and it’s cheap to make. What goes with soda? Salty, greasy snacks.
People would be appalled at the power of the marketing force. A lot of number crunching and psychoanalyzing goes into selling you processed foods.
Women in the workforce depend on convenience (read: sugar, salt, grease, processed) foods to feed their families. God knows, I certainly depended on Hamburger Helper, Tuna Helper, even Chicken Helper as a frazzled working mom. And let’s be honest, when you are coming home at night, tired down to the bone, a trip to McDonald’s is a Godsend.
People are more sedentary. Kids get driven everywhere! Those who do exercise drive to the gym!
But one of the most insidious causes is evolution. We used to be nomadic hunters and gatherers. When Ock and Tik killed a mastodon, their tribe feasted. And they ate everything! People packed on the pounds in times of plenty, especially the womenfolk. Those extra pounds meant that when there were no more berries to gather, and the antelope had migrated to new areas, the people survived on their fat. The extra fat on a woman allowed her to carry a pregnancy to term, and feed her child. Folks in those days prided in their extra fat as a sign of wealth.
Evolution hasn’t yet progressed to the computer age. The availability of empty calories and the absence of exertion to hunt and gather tells our metabolism, “This is a time of plenty! Eat and save the fat for later on!”
We never reach the lean times, so we are all stuck in “storage” mode.
THEN folks decide to diet! The abrupt reduction of calories tells the metabolism, “EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY! It’s time of famine!” And the metabolism slows down to that of a rutabaga, and burns very very few of those extra fat cells.
It’s a sad but true story!
~VOW
And now for more history, a ditty from the Civil War:
*The German is fond of sauerkraut.
The potato is loved by the Mick.
But the soldiers have long since found out
That through life to our beans we should stick.
T’is the bean that we mean.
And we’ll eat as we ne’er ate before.
Army bean, nice and clean.
We shall stick to our beans evermore.*
I made your peanut soup today, VOW (though I used regular milk instead of soymilk since that’s just not a thing in our house). It is delicious and the texture is fantastic (and finally got me to use the peanut butter grinder at our co-op today, I’d been curious about it for awhile. It smells wonderful while making your peanut butter for you).
Thank you, romansperson! I do so appreciate the feedback!
I think my favorite of all the soups was the pumpkin sausage. I easily could have hidden in the back of a closet with the whole soup pot and a big spoon…just so I wouldn’t have to share with anyone!
I hope you try some of the other soups as well!
~VOW
Millions of people on Rice and bean diets can’t be wrong. You will be hard pressed to find fat Brazilians. When I lived there I found it impossible to maintain weight and actually got around 40 pounds underweight, even by cheating eating peanut butter sandwiches.
Update:
For the past 10 years or more, my weight has been between 205-210#. I remain consistently below 205#, and last week hit a recent low of 200.6#. Just think that’s been pretty crazy, since I’ve eaten as much as I’ve wanted, and even splurged on junk whenever it has been available.
Also, my wife is having a colonoscopy tomorrow. That posed a bit of a problem, as for the past couple of days she was supposed to not eat beans, and other fibrous things that had become major parts of our diets. So we had an excuse to eat like we had previously. We had a couple of meat dishes, a pizza one night. Even bought ice cream yesterday since she was going on jello and gatorade today! Punchline? Eating that stuff, we both felt hungrier than we did on our beans, veggies and grains.
I imagine other people’s metabolisms and such might work differently, and the restaurants and food companies sure make it easy to eat unhealthy stuff - but it has just been so easy for us to eat less crao and more fiber and veggies.
I just heard about a study on the radio that seems designed to grace this thread:
Here’s the punchline:
I am lucky to have a good “off switch”. I’m fat because I gained a lot of weight with each pregnancy, and decided I didn’t want to do the work to try to lose it. But other than that, my weight has been stable for decades, despite eating whatever the hell I want. I’m convinced that maintaining weight is just objectively harder for some people than for others.
Fwiw, my diet is less processed than the typical American’s, and my husband and I cook a lot of what we eat. But I also have a good intuitive sense of how filling (caloric) different foods are. I remember reading some expose of how many calories were in a Starbucks frappe. Now, I ordered one of those once. It was at an airport, and I was starving because I’d missed supper. And I couldn’t finish the thing. I mean, I took it onto the plane with me and then I was stuck holding this drink that I could not bring myself to consume. It was delicious. It was just too filling. Yeah, not surprised to learn that it had enough calories to fuel me for a day.
This also feels like a good thread to post my favorite bean dish. I just had it for supper.
2-3 carrots
1-2 sticks of celery
3-6 leaves of chard. (it’s better with 3, but my supermarket sells chard in bundles of 6, so I use 6.)
2 cans butter beans. (Goya, 15.5 oz)
1 can dark kidney beans (progresso, 19 oz)
1 can cannellini (progresso, 19 oz)
1 can diced tomatoes (15 oz, I like del Monte)
3 quarts broth (since getting an instant pot, I’ve been using home made chicken broth, but canned vegetable broth is okay.)
1 lb pasta (Barilla holds up well without disintegrating as leftovers)
Tomato paste (I used to use “sun dried” tomato paste, which was fabulous, but any old tomato paste will do, or none. I used none today.)
Basil (several leaves, fresh picked, or a spoonful of dried)
Vegetable oil
Start heating the frozen broth in a large pot (you can skip this step if you use canned or boxed broth)
Peel and chop the carrots,
Chop the celery
Separate the chard stems from the leafy parts. Chop the stems and cut the leaves into large pieces, maybe 2"x2"
Saute the chopped veggies in the oil in a large pot. Hmm, mine isn’t labeled, but it’s bigger than the 6 quart pot, and smaller than the 11 quart pot. The 6 quart pot isn’t big enough.
Open the cans of beans, rinse them in tap water (I think it makes them less gassy) and dump into the pot. Immediately add the broth, so the beans don’t saute. Add the diced tomatoes and tomato paste. Then bring to a boil.
When the soup has just begun to boil, add the pasta, chard leaves, and basil. Stir well. Return to a simmer and cook about 10 minutes, or until the pasta is done to your taste.
Serves lots. Or three of us with lots of leftovers. I portion out the leftovers into 2/3 or 3/4 quart servings, which is a good size for lunch. The pasta will absorb the broth and the leftovers will be stew, not soup. I add a little water and nuke until hot.
I really like the variety of textures and flavors in the soup, and think the three beans play well with each other.
One thing to watch out for: If you’re on a reduced-sodium diet, stay away from canned beans. They contain a lot of hidden sodium. It’s really no big deal to soak “raw” beans overnight instead.
That recipe sounds a lot like something we would cook, but we’d skip the pasta. Reducing carbs/refined grain is another part of our efforts. PAsta might not be “ultra-processed” - whatever that means. But it is still quite processed. If we wanted some filler, we’d make whole grain rice, quinoa, buckwheat, etc.
And we’d generally make it w/o the broth. Just ends up more of a stew than a soup.
From my perspective, anything that requires advanced planning is a big deal. That’s why I never use a slow cooker. (Well, also I didn’t like any of the food I made in it.) And even soaked brand take q while to cook, at least, the large ones like butter beans do. One thing I love about this recipe is that I can pick up the chard on the way home from work and have a nice supper quickly.
But my broth is very low sodium, so the dish needs salt. Getting it from the canned beans and canned tomatoes just means I don’t need to add any salt separately. I can see it being a problem if you also start with salty broth.