You mean the diet we’re recommending to anyone with high blood pressure or heart disease now? Yeah, it’s a problem. Or rather, it would be, if we could get more people to actually *follow *the recommended low sodium diet.
Iodine levels in the US at the moment are still generally okay. Pregnant women are one subgroup who may be mildly iodine deficient, so it’s a good idea to consider iodine rich foods when pregnant, and supplementation if needed. (Page 4)
Iodine level in the population is certainly worth keeping an eye on, but the good news is that it *is *regularly and continuously researched as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
Iodine is found in far more basic foods - milk products, for example, because iodine is added to dairy cattle diets. Avoiding salt per se should not lead to a deficiency; I was referring specifically to the “avoiding iodized salt” comment.
Thanks for the other links. Basically, everything I can find says iodine deficiency is no significant problem in the US, except among pregnant women who may not be eating well and a few other isolated populations.
When my friend was diagnosed with a goiter, she protested that she eats sushi and other seafood regularly. She is a pesco vegetarian, who is otherwise in excellent physical condition. She grows vegetables and is heavily into the local foods movement. She eats a broad range of organic foods. And she has a goiter.
I can’t help noticing that the local health food stores carry salt that is proudly labeled “NON-IODIZED” (as opposed to just being labeled “SALT”), as though being non-iodized were some sort of virtue. It seems to me that there is a mindset among the organic crowd that any sort of processing is necessarily bad, and a separate mindset that you get hipster foodie cred for avoiding anything the proles eat. In this case, those twin compulsions are a recipe for thyroid problems.
Eat what you want, I guess, but if you eat only sea salt or Himalayan salt or whatever, you might want to have your doctor keep an eye on your iodine levels.
I think the issue here might be (as I already mentioned) selectivity in diet - vegetarians, vegans and most of the “pure food” types will avoid all commercial foods, so they won’t get iodine from any source - commercial dairy, processed fish, etc.
Anyone who is going to choose a selective diet needs to evaluate the nutritional balance and eat appropriate substitutes or take supplements. That’s a given. Things like goiter have not been bred out of the population, just made vanishingly rare except for people who go out of their way to acquire it.
Brunch. Too many mid-20’s looking for an excuse to day-drink on a Sunday indulging in overpriced brunches and too many bistros happily to set out cafeteria-grade eggs and bargain bin champagne to collect.
Huh? Finished sous-vide food looks like any other food. A sous-vide steak on a plate looks like a steak. Sous-vide fish looks like cooked fish. Sure, during the prep stage it looks raw, but so does food being prepped for any other cooking method.
People like to put sous-vide in the trendy, silly-foodie, too-elaborate for words category, but it’s the complete opposite. It’s a butt-simple, foolproof method of cooking. Compared to grilling or conventional roasting/braising, it’s about a thousand times easier, produces better results, and takes almost no technique or special knowledge to do. It’s the anti-cooking, IMO. When I sous-vide stuff, I feel like I’m getting away with something. It just… works.
To cook something sous-vide, you literally just throw a hunk of meat or veggies in a bag, add some herbs/spices if you feel like it, seal it with a vacuum sealer, drop it in a water bath, and walk away for a few hours. When it’s done, you pull it out. If it’s a steak or piece of fish, you might drop it in a skillet for a minute to put a crust on the outside. Other than that, you just eat it. You never have to check to see if it’s done, you don’t have to check it to make sure it’s not burning, you don’t have to turn it or baste it, and there’s absolutely no guess work. Simple enough for a child to do.
About the only thing against it is that the equipment is still pricey. But so were microwaves when they came out, and now you can pick 'em up for $30 on sale.
I guess I didn’t explain it adequately. It came across as a “you should do this because it’s trendy and this other place is doing it”, not “hey, why not this?” to everyone else involved. It was a little pushy.
OK, I’ll try a few: The fanaticism around Greek yogurt drives me nuts. Look, it’s fine, it’s great, but most of the time, I just want regular yogurt for my needs. Greek yogurt is just too damned rich and thick for my tastes. And half the time it’s not even pure yogurt, with all sorts of thickeners and stabilizers added to it.
Charcuterie. Specifically, half-assed charcuterie. I love good charcuterie. Just because you’re a restaurant or pub that picked up a copy of Mark Ruhlman’s “Charcuterie” and studied it for a month does not mean you can suddenly make world-class charcuterie that I am willing to pay $12 a plate for.
Sriracha is dangerously coming close to chipotle and bacon over-use territory. I love all of these food items, but I don’t need to see them everywhere. The Lays Sriracha chips are not helping matters in this regard.
Overly specific menu items that go to such detail as to tell you what side of the hill the fruit was picked from. OK, I’m exaggerating, but I don’t need every single menu item to list the provenance of its ingredients. Give me a footnote at the end that your ingredients are locally sourced, and name your suppliers if you want, but I hate reading overly long menu items that try to “sex up” the ingredients by being overly specific with their provenance. This Portlandia sketch, of course, kind of plays on this concept, although from the overly interested customer POV, rather than restaurant menu.
Regarding “grass fed” vs. “grain fed” beef. Grass fed beef is lean-you cannot cook it for long, because it will dry out and get tough-that is why it is beast served as thin steaks, lightly seared. Grain fed beef has “marbling”-fat within the meat. This means you can cook it longer, as the fat keeps the meat from drying out. Whether you buy bison, beef, or any other ruminant animal, the meat is the same-the cholesterol contents depends on how its been fed. In South America, grass fed beef is the norm-so you eat your steak rare.
Yes. You still dismissed the numerous people in this thread who have pointed out that there are many other food sources that contain iodine. Your only basis for that dismissal was that you knew one person who got a goiter.
Your article also states that you shouldn’t rely on iodized salt as a source for iodine.
Sure, but when I’ve had “grass fed” it’s only in the context of rare-to-medium-rare steaks, even steak tartare. I just don’t like the flavor of grass-fed beef that much–or perhaps it’s just an issue of getting used to the different flavor. I do tend to like more strongly flavored meats, but for some reason, grass-fed doesn’t quite do it for me. ETA: I’m trying to figure out how to describe the flavor that I don’t like. It’s not gaminess–it’s like minerally, or possibly a bit metallic, something in that direction.
I might add to the list of detestable foodie pretensions calling a chef/cook* a “professionally trained culinarian [sic].”
I’d also observe that every chef is a cook, but not every cook is a chef. “Chef” comes from chef de cuisine, or chief of the kitchen, and denotes a distinct role in Escoffier’s militarized kitchen hierarchy.
