f13.net

Boy that sounds wholesome, doesn't it? (http://m.examiner.com/extreme-weight-loss-in-dallas/what-s-a-mcnugget)



(http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_scaled_mobile/hash/01/1f/011f63e88a795a8b9f008c67799bbea7.jpg)
McNugget's prior to "cooking"

I honestly can't believe that I have eaten this shit.  Food in the US absolutely has to be cleaned up or we're going to end up with a rash of cancers to rival Chernobyl and even more heart disease than we have right now. 

I recently had a 10-piece of this shit. My god, by the 6th McNugget, I was ready to McHurl. I realize processed chicken nuggets are in general made up of disreputable bits, but fuck's sake MickeyD's nuggets are just stomach-turning. I don't need to know what's in them to know that.

The problem is that most people DO need to know what's in them to know to stay away.  The same goes for all the processed shit that these fast food chains churn out. 

That picture looks like strawberry soft serve. I will just keep telling myself that is indeed what it is.

Ok, but is anyone here surprised that McNuggets are made of shit? Because...


...seems like a lot of people here and others like us do in fact still eat in McDonalds occaisionally. I'm not sure the problem is people not knowing that McDonald's food is bad.

Personally McDonalds makes me nauseous, though I'm sure I've eaten my share of shit elsewhere.

Let's talk about what Arby's roast beef actual is  :grin: :drill: :why_so_serious:

All the picture really tells you is that it is really, really finely ground before they shape it into what are essentially patties. The actual text of the article is what you should get concerned about if you're going to worry.

I had a 10 piece today. Its good with hot mustard sauce!

1 - Those same chemicals are used in girl scout cookies
2 - You'd have to drink 11 pounds of cooking oil to get the side effects associated with them.

I can't remember the last time I went to a McDonald's.  The stuff from the mom-and-pop joints might not be as good for me as a home-cooked meal, but I have the small comfort of knowing that they don't have a massive R&D budget dedicated to simulating food with maximum economic efficiency.

Is dimethylpolysiloxane bad for you?

The only thing you really have to worry about from those type places is the Hepatitis B that you're gonna get when the cook wipes his ass with his bare hand and then doesn't wash. 

I'm not sure if I believe that picture.  As for the text I basically stop listening when people say X has Y in it and Y can be found in this/that/theotherthing because it tends to be hysterical nonsense created by the ignorant.

You can find a chemical called H₂O in McNuggets!  You know what else has H₂O in it - gasoline, tumours, snake venom and even urine!

Edit: Not sure where they are getting those percentages from either, I don't see any on the website.  Not to mention they have already ignored the breading and oil in concluding everything not chicken must be chemicals.

Edit2: I guess the picture could be real but when I think of it it's really just the same thing as ground beef but chicken.

Also found this while looking on snopes: Hahahaa. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9B7im8aQjo&feature=player_embedded)

Not as far as I can tell (http://www.inchem.org/documents/jecfa/jecmono/v06je42.htm), it's supposed to be fairly inert.  It's just used in some stuff that isn't normally eaten and therefore it sounds inedible.

Lots of food before it's cooked/prepared is visually horrifying.


Ever make your own sausages?  :why_so_serious:

It's most likely real:

http://www.snopes.com/food/prepare/msm.asp

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/04/mechanically-separated-meat-chicken-mcnugget-photo_n_749893.html

From the Snopes thinger:

Yup but the picture is still likely to be MSP or MSM, even if McNuggets don't come from that anymore.

If McNuggets don't come from that any more I'm sure there's something equally repulsive that they're doing to the meat.  I don't even want to think about what's in the McRib.

While we're talking about shitty foods, you might want to think about the arsenic that is in all the fruit juices that you're drinking. (http://www.foodrenegade.com/high-levels-of-arsenic-found-in-fruit-juice/) 

Usually if I am going to get nugget like chicken I get it from Hardees you can easily tell their chicken bits are from an actual avian and not ground up meat slurry.

McDonald's has Chicken Selects if breasts from factory farmed chickens is your preferred protein source :awesome_for_real:

Everything you eat is bad for you, particularly if super-sized with a large tub of soda. 

Its ok, guys. The effects can be reversed with a gastric bypass.

My dad was a chicken company manager when chicken nuggets first appeared.

They were a way to profit from every last scrap of a chicken carcass. The bits you wouldn't usually think about eating, from which meat can be extracted in processing.

A few friends worked at KFC in high school.  They said the 'popcorn chicken' was nothing more than gristle super coated in batter.  There was literally no meat on them, all gristle and fat.  Blech. 

My kid loves McD nuggets.  I take her maybe once every three months or so, just when we're too busy to do anything else.  Plus, it's the only meal that she will eat without complaining about.  What really sucks is that once a week I take whole, organic chicken breasts, cut them into nugget sizes, bread and bake them... and she won't eat them.  They taste so, so much better than McD and they're a lot healthier. 

I can't do that fast food stuff anymore, for the most part.  Every once in a while I need a McD breakfast sandwich, just to remind me why I don't eat them regularly. 

Hell, if you knew my grandma from Mississippi, you'd know that.

Try mixing up your recipe a little? This guy's one seems like it could be ok. Once you get your kid eating yours, you can change it back ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5SPdt2Zj6g&feature=g-like&context=G240ece8ALTwQEkQAAAA

I doubt anything he does will work.  McNuggets where just about my most favorite food in the world when I was a child, and I also hated the "better" shit my mother made (and my mother is an amazing cook).  No really, our parents relenting and taking us to McDonalds was like a second Christmas every time.  As I've grown up my taste have broaden, obviously, but while I rarely eat any fast food anymore, I still have an unholy love of McDonalds Cheeseburgers and McNuggets.  The only food in the world better is Taco Bell.
Shouldn't we be happy about this?  In school everybody praised how the Indians never wasted any part of the buffalo.   :why_so_serious:

I just think of mcnuggets as the chicken version of spam. Mostly eyelids, lips, and anuses, not stuff I want to eat.

Never ever visit any island in the Pacific then.   :awesome_for_real:

Well, this guy uses a different kind of breadcrumbs, double-crumbs them and there's a little bit of sugar and paprika in the flour. I'm tempted to try it myself - and I've eaten McDonalds once in the last 5 or so years. (nuggets and fries, coincidently). I prefer the Colonel's nuggets. Far less horrible.

That's a decent recipe.  It's fairly close to what I do, though his double Panko coating and deep frying them add a lot of calories (and flavor!).  It's a great idea, though.  I'll have to try it and see if I can get her to eat that instead. 

I've made a few sweet chili Thai dishes that prepare the chicken almost exactly like that recipe, and they're phenomenal in those dishes.  For whatever reason, I never really thought of just eating them as nuggets. 

I think I have a project for this weekend.

Yeah, my thought was that maybe she'll eat them and then once she's happily eating yours, you can start changing them back to the less unhealthy version...

If this thread has accomplished anything, it is that my two boys will not be eating fucking McNuggets again any time soon.  I dislike McD to begin with, but holy shit.

I sent the pic to my wife and asked her what favorite food product it was.  Her first guess was bubble gum.

Once every two months I venture into McD's and get an Angus Mushroom and Swiss. The two months is about the time when it has fully exited my system and memory. If I am really behind and really need breakfast and do not what to venture an extra block for a bagel or doughnut, I will pick up an Egg McMuffin with sausage. Something about that sandwich is like crack to me. Again though, that is maybe 6-7 times a year.

This.  And that was this morning, because I've been freaking tired as hell all week and really just did not feel up to packing stuff for breakfast to take to work.  Nope, couldn't even manage to pull a frozen block of steel cut oats and toss it into the lunch bag.  Plus, I woke up starving and didn't want to wait the hour until I made it to work to eat.

I've eaten and liked McNuggets in the past but after seeing that, I think I'll pass next time.

Am I the only one here that clearly remembers the difference between the old McD's nuggets and what they serve now? The old ones were this dull brown color with essentially no texture. Quite obviously the slurry shown above. Now they are actually white meat, though the lack of a true chicken texture does make me question what process they go through. Either way, the breading is what actually grosses me out on McD's nuggets.

Just don't tell me what thier cinnimelts are made from, I really don't want to know. (I get about one every two months)

Pink Slime. Google it.

I like the nuggets. I eat them probably once a month.

Why would you do that!?  :ye_gods:  :why_so_serious:

I'll eat McDonald's hashbrowns and occasionally their chicken selects.  I used to love their Homestyle burgers, though.  Still, I'd rather eat at Popeye's any day of the week if I'm going to eat fast-food chicken.

I haven't had McDonald's at all since I moved away from Chicago in June 2006. That is not to say I have not eaten fast food but none of it has been from meat-slurry central.

I am glad I discovered I have Coeliac, as it's made me totally avoid fast food of any kind, and visiting most restaurants I used to spend money in.

Gluten free kind of sucks, especially when it comes to pasta/bread/pizzza/baked deserts, but I'm cooking lots of things for myself, from fresh ingredients, and actually not feeling like I'm digesting glass anymore. I also have significantly more energy and definitely am not anemic looking or lethargic anymore.

McDonald's I can totally do without, and really hadn't been a fan of most of their food after dating a girl who was an Assistant Manager at one. Not only did she constantly smell like a french fry, but she expounded on how poorly prepared the food was because of their mostly incompetent minimum wage employees. As a kid I liked Chicken Nuggets, and an occasional Big Mac, but honestly I've always been living more local to Wendy's so I never really want to go to the Golden Arches.

Every once in a while I just need a Big Mac.  Then I remember that $3 is way too much to pay for a double cheeseburger while I am wiping Thousand Island off my chin.

--Dave

Yeah, I don't eat much at fast food joints... KFC is probably the only one (maybe 2-3 / year), but I'm not sure I want to know where the Colonel gets the chickens from, either.  :ye_gods:

(random aside: as I understand it, fast food chains are supposed to be really cheap -- but in Hungary random local eateries are a lot cheaper and have more/better food. For the price of a big mac I can buy a soup + main course + dessert combination easily...)

e: spelling is hard

I used to have a KFC (or very occasionally a McDs) sometimes, like once a month, tops. Then one week we had fillet steaks for a birthday meal. Dry aged, prime fillet, pieces about 150g and they were £3 each and it suddenly clicked that that was cheaper than a KFC and about 10 million times nicer. Add a couple of quid for some nice bread and an onion or some salad and you still come out around the same price as a fast food meal but omg the difference.

So now when we get the urge for a shitburger we go to the local butchers and buy some unbelieveably awesome fillet steak instead.  :awesome_for_real:

I think people lose sight of the fact that when you buy fast food, you're buying convenience... not necessarily food.  I can make some amazing meals for the price of fast food.  Especially when the Farmer's market is in season.

I'm getting pretty good at making cheap food that is also tasty.  I might try to simulate a McD burger by puree'ing the meat, using lots of salt and mixing in corn syrup.

On the other hand, I have little sympathy for people in my home that won't eat lightly-seasoned cooked vegetables.

The convenience really is the issue.  Between travel and work, we're doing 12-14 hour days.  Trying to make a meal around that is hard.  Not impossible, but hard.  I can't stand eating dinner at 7:30.  If I had my way, we'd eat at 4 when I'm still at work.  (yeah, I eat with the elderly.  I take shit from my wife all the time about that.)

On nights that we don't have time to prepare a full meal, we do things like eggs and toast, which take all of five minutes to make.  Or cut vegetables, crackers and short cheese board. 

One of our favorite meals that goes together really fast is this:

fresh green beans, steamed
baked potato or sweet potato
frozen warm n serve rolls
boneless chicken breasts baked in a pan at 375, marinated in salt, pepper, olive oil and balsamic.  Sprinkle with herb de provance.  When cooked through, serve with chevrie.

Lots of flavor, lots of healthy food there.  It takes maybe 15 min of prep for one person now that we have that dinner down to a science.  Hardest part is cleaning the chicken and green beans.  What's great is that 3 of the 4 things can just go in the oven, so using the oven timer allows me to help the kid with homework and such while making dinner, which is impossible if I make a complex meal. 

Small Baked potato = 3 mins in a good microwave

Steamed veggies = 3 mins after water boils

Fish = 4 mins a side = 8 total mins

Rice = buy a rice cooker.  Star when you get home.

Stir Fry day old rice with some frozen veg, an egg, and some garlic/onion/ginger/soy = 6 mins

There are many many recipes that you can make in 15 mins or less.  The time consuming part is the prep.  I use prep as wind-down time to chat.  That or I use frozed pre-cut stuff.

Chicken breasts are faster if you pound them out first.  Turkey burgers are a decent alternative.  There's also shrimp which is fast if it's already peeled and deveined.  How about some scallops or squid?  Also fast.

Fuck nuking baked potatoes.  Stove or gtfo.  That is all. 

It is never a time thing with me. It's the god damn mess afterwards that I can't deal with very well.

Stove at 400 degrees.  Cut potato into wedges and spray lightly with olive oil.  Season with salt and pepper.  Takes about 10-15 mins.  Yum.

Yeah, the prep and the clean up is the most time consuming and annoying part of home cooking for me.  Its especially hard when I can walk to all sorts of awesome cheap restaurants in downtown Oakland/China town right outside my door.

I'm still not sure why the original picture is suddenly making people want to stop eating McNuggets.  That picture is actually a lot nicer and more sanitary looking than any of the mental images I had of how McNuggets are created.  Its a selling point!

Yes, though when we do that it's usually with yukon golds, add a mashed clove of garlic and a sprig of rosemary.  Mine take 25-30 though, I like them crispy.  And Yum, yes.

Microwave whole potato after cleaning for about 3 minutes. Take potato from microwave, put on foil/baking pan, place in toaster oven or regular oven on Broil, about 3-4 mins per side. Crispy baked potato 15 mins.

I also do this with basically everything you can make from potatoes, and is an especially fast way of making french fries.

I always thought the "horsey sauce" was a hint.

Cut potato into 1" chunks.  Microwave for 5-10 minutes depending on MW and quantity, in a bowl covered with plastic wrap.  Give a good shake part way through.

Place well seasoned bone-in, skin on chicken breast(s) along with 1 tbsp olive oil into hot pan skin side down until skin turns golden brown (5-10 min).  Move chicken to oven safe dish skin side up and place into pre-heated 450 oven for 10 minutes (or until probe therm reads 160ish).

Meanwhile place potatoes into chicken fat left in pan and fry until GBD.

30 minutes, 5 bucks and it's some of the best roasted chicken and home fries you'll ever have.

Do we have to do this anytime someone mentions fast food or cooking?

For the same reason every MMO thread devolves into an exploration of why SWG or WAR failed.

What has all this to do with Shadowbane ?

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/111434/groundhogdayclock.jpg)

Know what I like to eat instead of fast food?

Apples.

Don't hate the playah, hate the game.

I eat fast food on occasion and have my whole life. What my body doesn't want, it shits out - at times violently, but still.  :why_so_serious:

I enjoy that the topic keeps coming up. Keeps my mind fresh on what I should be doing.

Speaking of rice, I just installed my microwave oven hood thing that has a steam setting. Anyone have a recommendation for a good cooker thingy for rice in a modern steam setting microwave? Probably going to want something for veg, too.

One of the reasons people used spices was to preserve and cover up the taste of rotting meat. People eat bugs and fish eggs and all kinds of horrible gooey stuff. Why would some pureed chicken be any different?

Haha indeed.

Pesticides.

(http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/384542_10150517388407421_127882247420_8774634_1506073384_n.jpg)

Well, that one's not their fault, but fuck me (http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/consumerinformation/acrylamideandfood.cfm).

I've quit smoking, I've quit drinking (for the most part).  I've quit using drugs.  Hell, I've even cut out soda. 

I'll be damned if anyone is taking my black coffee.  From my cold, dead hands, motherfuckers. 

Microwave for 3 mins then convection oven for 15 > oven for 60-90 min and tastes the same.  Still get the crispy skin, too.

Oh, and everything's going to kill you.  It doesn't matter. We've spread chems across so much of the environment that there's no avoiding them. We just don't have old food to compare it to and scare the shit out of ourselves. 

It's really not that hard to cook decent food at home.  We both work and can generally manage to cook something decent for us and the kids in the time between getting home from work and bedtime for the boys.  Roasted veggies and potatoes the way Nebu described are pretty easy, and stir frying up some chicken takes no time at all.  I just can't bring myself to feed that fast food shit to them.  We will, on occasion, get Chipotle for dinner or Chick Fila, but that is pretty much the extent of our fast food eating. 

The concern there is a tad overwrought.  Some of the most potent carcinogens in, for example, wood smoke (or tobacco, for that matter) are due to a process called pyrolysis: exposure to heat insufficient to cause oxidization but sufficient to cause other chemical changes.  Or, you know, cooking.

Humanity has had millenia to evolve some defenses against eating acrolein as a result of scorching food cooked in animal fat over an open fire before we ever though to use it to gas the poor fuckers manning the trenches on the western front.

Your missing out if you don't nuke potatoes for baked. I mean if you look at the energy your buying nuking is free. Bake if you have invested in the natural gas/electric comp. 3 min 4 for huge and there done. In reality using air for heat transerir is the lose. Mike is much more efficient if your trying to heat something up.

Could you repeat that, in English?

Conventional ovens are comparatively energy-inefficient.

I have a thing called "The Potato Pot", given to me for my birthday, which works miracles with potatoes in the microwave. It's basically just a clay pot with a clay lid. Fill it with potatoes, microwave on high for 10 minutes, and they're perfect. None of the tough/leathery/soggy effect a microwave can have. They taste like they were steamed.

We've already been over that. (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=21243.msg999791#msg999791)  :oh_i_see:

If people knew how everything's made, they'd starve to death. Anyone living in or around Germany probably heard the name Zentis, some fairly big manufacturer of jam, and shit like that. I've heard enough stories from a friend working there, about how bug infested it is and how the hygiene is handled. That still doesn't keep me from buying their shit, because other manufacturers are the same. I'd not eat a drop of mass produced jam ever again, were it that way.

It's that way in practically every industry. Myself I work in cable manufacturing. My company's one of the very few in Europe that manufacturers cabling for nuclear power plants. We have the LOCA certification (Loss of control accident, nice eh?) and give a guarantee of 40 years on them. Now if you knew what kludging's involved in the production of these, you'd become a radical treehugger stat.

And if it isn't shitty procedure and hygiene in production, it's science that shits on your plate. The most recent news is that processed meat increases the chances of pancreatic cancer considerably. Just when I finally started seemingly eating more "healthy" breakfasts, i.e. ham instead of Nutella and shit like that, they tell me my unhealthy ways were better.

It's an interesting cycle, to be sure.  The more we remove ourselves from the preparation the more we get disgusted by the process and want to remove ourselves and ignore it, allowing the process to become even more disgusting and unhealthy.

Inconveniencing one self could improve things. Like buying from a butcher or a local vegetable and fruit store. But it stops at some products. I don't see anyone locally who makes jam or cheese for instance.

Jam and Jellies are easy to do. Voodoolilly posts about doing it quite often on Facebook when items are in season.  My mom used to do it and pickles every two years or so as well.  Certainly something to look at doing if you're concerned about it.

Cheese, yeah, but so long as you're buying non-processed cheese or "cheese food" products you should be good.  Not that large amounts of cheese are good for you anyway.

I wouldn't call it 'easy'. It's a lot of fucking labor to pickle/jar on any useful scale.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6413146/Eating-more-cheese-can-help-fat-people-lose-weight-study-claims.html

Holy shit I'm buying a whole damn wheel of cheese right now!

For all we know about healthy eating, we don't know shit.

"as long as during the weight loss period total energy intake is less than their requirements"

Meaning you have to keep doing a fuckload of exercise to burn off all the cheese fat, while eating less of it than you feel like eating. And then, only then, does it help you lose weight and keep it off.

Like when I cycled across France. Twice. Eating brie and camembert. And lost weight omg.

Or.. "so long as calorie intake is less than energy expended."  Shit, why has nobody come on this before?  Eat fewer calories than you burn and you lose weight?! No Wai!

I didn't mean you'd get fat.. I was referring to other issues, like binding-up.

Re: the convenience thing.

I've long advocated that the best way to improve people's diets is to reduce working hours and increase pay. That would be massively more effective than any punitive taxation of unhealthy foods, education campaigns or Jamie fucking Oliver TV shows.

Universal free childcare would also have a huge impact on people's ability to cook proper meals.

Read the article again.


Yeah, I wouldn't be eating bricks of cheese.

Discussion of this will circle into politics, but do you realize how unfeasible this really is? 

I believe quite a few European countries provide what we'd consider unbelievable amounts of childcare support. The theory is a woman's working wage will pay for childcare and then some.

I understand the theory and I suspect that most here would agree with the sentiment.  However, I would personally like a gold plated Bentley.  It's just not going to happen.   :awesome_for_real:

My favorite cheese (bacon horseradish cheddar) is made about ten minutes from here and there is a fantastic mozzarella shop here in town. Jams and jellies are very common locally, from kitchens/small business/orchards/etc.

Potatoes: red potatoes steamed in the microwave in an olive oil/herb mix, then browned in the oven at high heat. Awesome crunchy outside and creamy interior.

As far as gross mass production: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/05/9980804-mountain-dew-offers-odd-defense-in-mouse-charge

I loved that Mt.Dew article. Both shock factor and factual. The more you ingest of it, the greater your tolerances to the poison. Does wonders for Iocane!

My favourite part of that article.

I've heard that quite often from my hygienist and dentist over the last several years because of my love for acidic beverages like OJ and grapefruit juice.  It's eating the fuck out of my teeth and apparently rinsing or just not drinking them are the only solutions.

Me too. I fucking love my juice too. Dammit.

Juice is tasty, but its really just not that good for you.  There is an extremely high content of sugar which contributes to obesity and diabetes.  In addition, there are some very questionable methods of production for juice, and you tend to see things like arsenic (http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45491242/ns/today-today_health/t/high-levels-arsenic-found-fruit-juice/#.Txbmq2_OzGA) and other strange chemicals (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-14/fda-suspends-orange-juice-imports-to-examine-for-fungicide.html) in the juices.  Then there's the dental effects as well.  Juices are so high in sugar that they greatly contribute to decay rates and the erosion that you are seeing.  And all of this is topped off by the juice industry trying to cram it into us that juice is so healthy for kids. 

Its better then that battery acid they call soft drinks.

It is less better than you think (http://www.hookedonjuice.com/).....

We use coke to clean the battery terminals in the car still ;-)

All this of course leads to the question - what the hell are we supposed to drink? And don't fucking say water...

Yes, I know everyone should drink (more) water.


I honestly think that the "healthiest" thing I drink on a regular basis is beer.

I'm sorry. I do not believe any site that tells you to drink empty calories with no nutritional value ( Diet sodas ) over juice. No one should. I get the points about sugar content, and acidity. But ill stick to my juice. Thanks.

Tea. Without sugar. Coffee isn't too bad. Beer, juice, sodas, etc, all are fine in moderation although watch the calories. It's the lack of moderation thing that can make almost anything harmful.

Our bodies are remarkably good at repairing damage caused by unpleasant substances, just don't overload your repair mechanisms.

I don't agree with his recommendation to drink diet soda either, but that doesn't mean that the rest of the information that he presented is bad.  Juice is really not good for you.  That's a fact.

Typically you're better off just eating an orange and drinking a glass of water.

Fewer calories that way, too.

Absolutely.  The way that juices are made (http://www.foodrenegade.com/secret-ingredient-your-orange-juice/) is just as bad as soft drinks.

I think is where the phrase everything in moderation comes in.. It's ok to have a beer occasionally, but that can be taken too far. This is also usually the case with sugar sweetened drinks of any kind, and small doses of a combination of all of them can't be as bad as 3 big gulps daily of soda or an 8 pack of beer.

Drinking water in between other drinks is something I've been recommended by a dentist, because it helps prevent the sugars from remaining in your mouth.

I think you should all drink chicken mcnugget slurry.

Or at least Liquid Chicken. It don't promote tooth decay. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfSfK0AMWlc (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfSfK0AMWlc)

Diet sodas are not empty calories; they are NO calories. "Empty" calories are something else entirely.

Yes indeed. Now go look on the back of a can of Coke Zero and tell me how many calories it has. I'll wait.  :-P

Less than 5.

But I got your point.

I just don't see why it's such a big deal for people to drink water.  It's actually kind of refreshing. :oh_i_see:

I do drink water ( Lots, after my stone ). I'm just not giving up my juice for diet sodas, as your link suggested.

The point of the article was to show that juice is just as bad as sodas, which it is.  But you can read so I'm sure you understood that.

And, for the record, drinking diet coke all day is preferable to drinking regular coke or juice (unless you want to develop diabetes and weight 500 pounds), but you shouldn't drink any of them.  Ever. 

Except that's NOT WHAT IT SAYS AT ALL. The article says that like sodas, the juices you buy are mixed up according to a recipe that happens to use a chemical packet. That chemical packet is not listed on the ingredients because it is essentially byproducts of that juice's fruit. It doesn't actually provide any evidence that said flavor packs are bad for you other than "if a food needs a flavor packet to be added to it to make it palatable, how can it be good for you?"

Different article.  

Edit:  Also, as someone that I know hates big business I'm surprised that you're supporting them in this.  Do you really believe that what is in mass produced food is good for you?  Do they have it in your best interest to provide you with good, healthy food or to make as much money as humanly possible from you?



BW is referring to this one.

Didn't say that either. But claiming that juices are as bad as soda even with the article you linked about the flavor packs isn't really convincing me. Do I think big business is essentially shitting in my food for profit? Sure, I'll buy that. I don't buy that fruit juices made by Coca-Cola are worse than the HFCS-laden diabetes bombs they call sodas.

Did you see the other articles about arsenic and strange fungicides that are known carcinogens being found in mass produced juices?  It's not good stuff, man. 

Nope it isn't, but those things can be chalked up to the legacy of Bush's laisse faire FDA regulators as opposed to saying that fruit juices are inherently as bad for your health as soda.

What the fuck does "inherently" have to do with it?  Absolutely nothing.  This is about mass produced shit that comes out of the corporate world to get shoved down our kids' throats.  And you're fooling yourself if you think the amount of sugar that is in fruit juice is inherently healthy.

But some of the shit that's in juices is in fruit too, I guarantee it. And it's just about industrially-processed food, you know. There are certain kinds of pathogenic dangers that are basically an intrinsic part of food and drink no matter what. Though there probably *is* a mass produced system that could plausibly exist which could minimize both 'classic' sources of contamination and 'modern' contaminants. The unit costs of food would be far higher in that system, which I suppose you could argue would be better in terms of decreasing the sheer number of calories available to most people on their budgets.

However. One of the things that's increasingly well-understood about why population started to rise in the 17th-18th C. in Europe was: a) higher agricultural yields through changes in land tenure, agricultural techniques and household organization and b) sugar coming from the American slave plantations. Essentially a lot of people died in infancy simply because there were very few calories available and much of what was available was contaminated. (The other big issue was sanitation and water quality, which also started to improve at this time.)  More food, even the cheap 'bad' calories of sugar, basically made the quality of life vastly better for almost everyone, and got far more people out of childhood alive.

Food production, consumption and circulation is probably the single most complex, intricate dimension of modern, human global society. People that come at it thinking that you can just pull at a few simple variables and hey presto! no more fatties or no more cancer or whatever are messing with something that can spawn forty unintended consequences for every simple good outcome.

This is all very true, however it is inarguable that massive amounts of calories (and particularly shite carbohydrates) that people ingest in the current times are significant contributors to obesity, diabetes mellitus and heart disease.  Recommending for a child to drink water over orange juice is not a stretch at all. 

As for you, BW, I'm not sure how you can possibly read what's in the linked articles and think, "hey, juice is great, let's sit down and drink a shitload every day".  As a clinician, I would not recommend to any patient that they drink either cola, diet cola or juices at all, nor give them to their children.  There is not gray area, and it matters not whether you believe diet cola to be worse than juice at all.  If pressed, and a parent said that they were going to give their child one of the three no matter what, and I had to choose, I would probably choose diet coke over the others due to the massive amounts of calories that would be given to the child.  Diabetes is on the rise in children, and obesity is one of (if not the biggest) health care issue in the United States right now.  But in the end I recommend nothing but water for children and adults, period.  So I guess I agree with the guy that I would recommend diet coke over the other two, but that's like choosing which GOP candidate you like best. 

My personal slightly-educated feel is that HFCS is a big culprit, too.  Sugar-based drinks aren't as good as water, but preferable to ones mainly using fructose.

The sugars in fruit juice are fructose.


Carbohydrates are the only really viable source of your required daily caloric intake unless you happen to fancy trying a diet of whisky and steak.

Eh, I like some sodas, but being a responsible adult I keep mine in moderation to no more than 1-2 a month, if that.  I drink water the rest of the time and don't really miss soda.  I can't stand diets, so that is out and I tend to gulp fruit juice down too quickly, so I just make the educated decision to drink water 97% of the time.  My ex-wife would drink soda like it was going out of style and never understood why it was an issue...

Sugars are carbohydrates.  More specifically mono or disaccharide carbohydrates. 

Also, many fruit juices have HFCS added to them. 

My favorite are the "Juice Drinks" with 0-15% real juice.

You "should" just drink water or tea. But really, drink whatever you want. Just don't kid yourself about its healthiness.

I personally like fresh squeezed (like, in the store) OJ. With bits. Mmmm pulp. But I only get it in season, the oranges they ship in just don't taste right in the offseasons. It's a different color, too.

Glucose is a monosaccharide.  Lactose is a disaccharide.  Starch is a polysaccharide.  Fructose is a monosaccharide.  All of it is yummy and/or more or less essential to live.  The first two in particular are essential to the continued survival of the human race.  Carbohydrates in general are required for humans to live.  Apes, because they don't have the equipment to digest starches efficiently, thrive off of eating mostly fructose.  That being said, humans too are fully capable of digesting fructose.  I for one rejoice for the fact that, in most ways, I am better than an ape.

That isn't to say you should drink corn syrup though, and those dumbfucks on the linked website that think it's better for them because it's honey or fruit are: :uhrr:

If you look at obese people a common factor is they drink lots of juice.

Ha ha ha.

Sure, juice has a lot of sugar and in theory drinking tons of juice can make you obese but let's get real, the average obese person is not binging on fruit juice. In terms of fighting obesity I imagine getting people to drink less juice should be priority 2000 or so.

I want to agree with Ghost in spirit, but the above is very true.  Doesn't change the fact that Ghost is saying something important and useful, however, so I think it is a good idea to pay attention to these kinds of things.

In terms of caloric content most fruit juices are indistinguishable from sugary soft drinks.  I just took a glance at some cran-grape juice I have, which contains no HFCS, and it actually has a higher ratio of calories per ounce than Coca-Cola (15 calories/oz compared to 11.6 calories/oz).  Apple juice has an even higher concentration.  While I'm sure that most obese people aren't binging on fruit juices a lot of people fall into the trap of thinking that fruit juices are genuinely healthy for them and thus they can drink them and not worry as much about the consequences.  If you want to do something healthy with fruit you should eat it; at least then you'll get some fiber to slow down your digestion of the sugars and you'll feel full longer while probably ingesting less energy.


I would actually say that cutting down on calories from beverages is near the top of the list when trying to lose weight, and whether those calories are coming from soft drinks or juices is immaterial.  It's the very first thing I did when I got my weight under control and lost 70 pounds nine years ago.

What Ruvaldt said. I basically lost 20kg (44 pounds, or so google tells me) just by switching from Soft drinks (mostly flavored mineral water) to water and eating at roughly the same times three times a day.

So yes, beverages are worse than stuffing your face with cake. At least you realize what you are doing to yourself with the cake.

NSFW language:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94ozLQToei0

I'm amazed at how scared of water people are, especially for living in a first world country. The need for bottled/filtered water being a deterrent for why some people just go with crap drinks boggles my mind.

I actually prefer water over almost every drink now, especially warm water when eating food. I just need to kick my occasional habit of drinking Monster energy drinks.

The average obese child very well may be.  You clearly don't understand child health and the dramatic rise in obesity in young children.  The shit parents feed their kids is insane.  I have parents that actually try to get as much OJ into their kids as possible because it's "real fruit" and "vitamin C is healthy". 

What's really amazing is that in first world countries, the water is fine out of the tap.  When you go elsewhere you have to drink bottled water.  Our water is just fine, but it's like if we're not paying a premium for it, it can't be good for us.

Fuck paying for water. If I am forking over cash, I want sugar, flavor, caffeine, coloring 28, sodium, everything else.  :oh_i_see:

Coke ZEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO  :drill:

Yeah, my girlfriend keeps bugging me about buying another Brita filter, which I never intended to do. I bought the damn thing so people would think I was giving them filtered water because so many would complain I only ever had tap water.

It all reminds me of the Penn & Teller's Bullshit show on bottled water (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfPAjUvvnIc).

The USA has some of the best tap water in the world.  There's really no reason to not drink it, unless you're in some sort of creepy old building with nasty pipes.  Another benefit of tap water is the fluoride, which you don't get with bottled water. 

This sounds like less of a problem with juice and more of a problem with parents.

Not here. It was voted down a few years ago because it was dangerous and contaminated our precious bodily fluids or something.

For me, having an on faucet filter when we lived down in DC was essential, not because of safety, but the taste of all the chlorine.

Yeah, the water locally just doesn't taste good all the time.  We didn't have water service when we first moved in, I think that came a few months later in the fall when the water tables turned over and the water out the tap smelled and tasted funky.  Oh, it was still perfectly safe to drink! according to the village, but it was just icky.  So we got bottled water service and have been using it since.  Most of the time the water is fine but there are periods where it's just not palatable or appealing to drink out of the tap.

You must be a real joy at parties.  :why_so_serious:

Well, if you object, he'll be happy to pull out the big book of british smiles.

No argument from me that most parents are absolute fucktards.  That doesn't change the fact that mass produced juice has extremely high levels of carbohydrates and strange chemicals that aren't good for you, both of which make it fall in the "you shouldn't drink it" boat.  

And don't make me get all dentisty on you, bhodi..... :awesome_for_real:

Filter on the fridge makes our water drinkable.  Straight out of the tap?  Do you like your water cloudy and smelling slightly of sulfur? Barely suitable for swallowing pills.

My wife refuses to drink our tap water because it makes her sick to her stomach. So we buy bottled water.

That's totally cool for adults.  For kids you'll probably want to talk to your dentist about fluoride supplements if they're going to drink bottled water.  
Come to think of it, there are definitely some places that I wouldn't drink the tap water.  Like the whole state of Louisiana. 

Oh man.  Did you really have to go there?   :ye_gods:

Then report it to the local water agency and have them test.

Americans are fucking spoiled about water. Fucking. Spoiled.

This. With less swearing. When I moved into my last place the water was cloudy and smelled terrible and within a couple weeks of complaining there were surveys with empty water samples in bags hung on everyone's door knob in the complex. Not sure what they did, but not long after the water was no longer an issue. You're paying for water treatment somewhere in your taxes, might as well get the most out of it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1572840/Tap-water-beats-bottles-in-taste-test.html
Admittedly that's because Thames tapwater is basically mineral water, but still....

Good luck with that in some areas.  I grew up in West Texas where the water was so hard it corroded your pipes and water heaters out within 3-4 years.  Many many arguments were made to improve the taste and smell, many many millions were spent on improving the process, but in the end it was still hard water that tasted bitter and corroded pipes and water heaters out in 5-6 years.  I used a Brita pitcher to slightly improve it, a true RO system fixed it but required constant cleaning.  Moving to Northern California and drinking the water made me realize how good tap water can actually be.

West Texas is kind of stuck.  Most places get theirs from a well or from an aquifer with limestone and other soft minerals lining it.

Fuck you bottled water haters.

Not everywhere in the first world, the tap's water acceptable. Drinkable sure, but if it tastes bad, nothing's to be won here. I'd invite you to try my tap water, it's like you're shoveling pure limestone into your yap.

And that's different from mineral water...how?  :awesome_for_real:

The ratio of limestone to water?

That's why I have an under-the-counter filter.  The water that comes out is better tasting than bottled.

A number of the tourist camps where I live, often built in the early 1900's, have water quality problems where they just meet the provincial criteria for lodgings.  The owners of one of them, suspecting that their UV and cartridge filtration system must be at fault, decided to test the lake water to establish a baseline.  They discovered that the lake has next to no dissolved mineral content, and little enough organic matter that it would pass regulations.

That's generally going to be the case, unless you are downstream from London. 

The US is very lucky in that we have good, drinkable water in all locations.  It may not taste to your liking, but it's very potable.  The bottled water industry is about as silly as the new age supplements industry. 

The Ontario standard includes no detectable coliforms.  Most water systems will pass that, but a lake or river is another matter.  Older systems tend to have more troubles with metals.

I meant London, England, i.e. at the mouth of the Thames. 

Yeah, we're pretty lucky in Northern California.  Most of the water is stored in mountain reservoir up in the Sierra's, so even large cities like the Bay Area can get good mountain water sent down to it.  Though it can be hit or miss.  When I was a kid, I lived in a town up in the mountains for a few years.  Every glass of tap water tasted like they had somehow managed to cram a gallon of Chlorine into it.

Though having said that, until my tap can start pumping out carbonated water, I'm going to keep buying lots and lots of bottles every week.  Luckily I can get 1.25 liter bottles for a $1 each.

Carbonated water is different.  I drink the hell out of La Croix grapefruit flavored water. 

Can't you carbonate your own water?

Wouldn't that be a spectacular waste of time?

You just like that the can says it's pamplemousse flavored. Freak.

I think there are supposed to be machines that will do it for you?

Soda Stream. (http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=soda+stream&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=7873801765&ref=pd_sl_9ms28ymp5b_e)

Though they look damned expensive, but hey, still cheaper than labeled brands in the long run.

I'm aware you were referring to London, England.  The point was that I know of places where the water quality at the source tests safer than the tap water, you're still fucking crazy if you think that it's safe to drink straight out of a river anywhere near human habitation.

Well, there is a London, Ontario isn't there?   :awesome_for_real:

And yes.  Mmmmm.  Pamplemousse   :yahoo:

I don't want to hear about London, ON

I'm a direct reason AirCanda now clarifies between London UK and London Canada.

"Everyone knows about London, ON we have a famous mathematics university here."

No. No one knows about your city. Shut up lady and give me my refund.

There is no famous math university in London, Ontario.  The lady was thinking of Waterloo which is WAY more famous.

Pink Slime, Ammonium Hydroxide Fast Food Ground Beef Additive, Dropped By McDonald's Et Al.  (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/27/pink-slime-fast-food_n_1237206.html)

For fuck's sake, I can't imagine how anyone could eat food from a restaurant chain that would even think about using this shit in the first place.   :ye_gods:

Between this and the removal of flavored milk from schools, its a big shame Jamie Oliver is no longer on air. But, he went up against people and organizations with way to much money. Like LAUSD.

BTW, its still used in school lunches.

Watching Jamie Oliver bash his head off of Capitalism over there was heartbreaking.  Truly Heartbreaking.

And I hate the flap mouthed Essex sockpuppet.

Here's what I don't get. On the one hand, America is hugely fat. Supposedly 26.5% of Americans are obese, and another 39% are overweight. A lot of that is due to crap diets and sedintary jobs and lifestylers.

Then, on the other hand, Feeding America reports that 1 in 8 Americans is on food support. What? So we're either fattening up or we're going hungry? There's a ridiculous imbalance here.

Well yeah.

If you have nothing to eat, you're starving.  If all that is on offer is Shite that won't pass a single inspection, you'll get fat.

Exactly. The cheapest, easiest to obtain food is often the most fattening/least nutritious.

IE:

(http://www.jamieoliver.com/us/foundation/jamies-food-revolution/school_lunch_pic/LAUSD-April-26-2.jpg)

Enjoy kids.

What's even more depressing is he showed how they make school lunches in Italy in his Jamie's Great Italian Escape show (skip to 03:05):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmBH1pa1kfc

The 1% are the only ones that can afford healthy diets.  :oh_i_see:

To get on SNAP (food stamps, but actually EBT cards now) you just need to show that without it you don't have enough money to eat.  Unless you have a large family (6+) food stamps are around $200/month.  I defy you to find a way to feed a family of 2 (let's make it simple: a single mom and one kid) on $200/month without cramming in a lot of empty calories from simple starches and HFCS.

--Dave

Why do you hate freedom capitalism?

Easy. Same way we did it growning up. None of these items are terrible expensive.

Dried Beans, brown rice, various greens (usually collard or turnip), chicken when it's on sale, pork roasts, skim milk, onions, peppers, bananas, apples, pears, cottage cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, corn meal, butter, vegetable oil, sweet potatoes, whole wheat bread, turkey, low-fat cheese, mustard, vinegar, spices.

When you were growing up, they would teach about food. We are likely on the second generation that thinks a happy meal is food preparation.

Take note of that video Trippy linked. Those kids could identify vegetables. Jamie already has shown this is not the case in the USA.

Red beans and brown rice with turkey sausage, tobasco, and collard greens on the side with fresh cornbread?

That's still one of my favorites from growing up.

(http://www.grubgrade.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/tb2.jpg)

Beans and brown rice is a wonderful way to feed lots of people in a relatively nutritious manner.  You can feed a lot of people on $200 per month, it's just that most people are lazy when it comes to food, rich and poor alike.  Hence why fast food is so popular. 

I know I shouldn't, but I love me some Taco Bell Beefy Crunch Burrito.

That is actually my favorite flavor of Dew as well... Goes particularly well with Malibu Rum.

And that Jamie vid Trippy linked just made part of me die. Seriously... those kids eat better than I do most days.  :ye_gods:

I have one. I think the base unit cost about 99 bucks. I can make my own knock-off LaCroix flavors as well as various diet sodas that don't taste like shit. Oddly enough, I think my soda consumption has actually gone down as a result of owning one of these things. This is largely because I don't impulse fountain soda, etc. when I'm not at home -- I feel stupid paying for something I can make at home.

Hey this episode is cut. There's also a scene where he shows the cooks at that school some of the food lunch "products" from England.

Sounds very Pink Floyd's The Wall-ish.   :ye_gods:

Beans were pretty much a precursor to the human race advancing out of the dark ages.  Your average medieval peasant probably got the vast majority of his daily protein requirement from beans, due to the scarcity and issues of not rising above your station when dealing with meat.

You all know the answer to this - the vast majority of people, if you were to hand them that whole list of food from Paelos, wouldn't have the faintest clue how to make something edible out of it. Maybe you would get a decent sandwhich out of it, but oops, you picked whole wheat bread. Good luck getting the average American kid to eat that.

It really is sad. I grew up in the 70s. My mom was third oldest of eleven siblings. She learned to cook for her family. When money was iffy, I grew up on chillis and stews in the winter, and during the summer, it was meat, veggie, starch - every meal. My mom baked, pickled, canned, preserved, etc.

As a side note, I figure being raised to eat like this is why I actually love all the vegetables that everyone seems to hate.

As a kid, McDonalds was considered a special treat - about once every two months.

I also left off eggs. Forgot about that. Good protein source that's dirt cheap.

Man I love me some eggs. My wife gives me a hard time but I absolutely have to have a two egg sandwich lightly salt and peppered on two pieces of homemade seven grain bread at least once every day. Sometimes I add a little bit of homemade catchup. Yummy.

I could easily survive as a happy man, with just eggs, beans, and various rices. With the occasional vegetable and meat serving. Oh, yeah forgot to add, I got to have me some hot sauce, I put my homemade pepper sauce on everything hehe. It drives my wife crazy.

More than the constant farting?

You really want to ruin a room? Sauteed purple cabbage, brown rice, and beans. Toss some southern Chow-Chow on that.

Holy hell.

If a kid gets hungry enough they'll eat just about anything.  That always drives me nuts about parents who give their kids soda and juice all the time instead of water.  "He just won't drink anything else," is a common response.  Bullshit.  That is why we have thirst and hunger drives.  It is guaranteed that if food and water are available that your child won't starve to death or die from dehydration. 

You have a great point about people not being able to cook any more.  The shit that some of the families in my neighborhood cook for their kids is appalling. 

One thing we've done to help broaden our kids' eating tastes is baby led weaning (http://www.babyledweaning.com/).  Because our kids have always eaten real food instead of shitty baby food they really like real food.  My oldest boy will eat spicy food and mexican/chinese/indian and just about anything we throw at him.  And he's in that picky 2-3 year old range. 

Don't forget fish. There's a reason most population centers on earth are near water.

Guy at the fish counter is talking me into getting back into fishing. I was never big into it, but I really really like trout. Around here, the streams are all stocked up so it's kinda silly to pay good money for something you can go pull out of a river. Be nice to catch a stringer of rainbow trout and freeze em up for whenever.

Be a real man and use a spear.  :why_so_serious:

Real men catch the fish in their beard net.

Rainbow trout done right is delicious.

While somewhat true, there are those of us who will starve.  My mom tried this and I outlasted her.

Cleaning fish is on the list of things I never intend to do again personally.

What Ingmar said. I am sure the innards of any tasty animal are unappetizing to look at as they come out, but being the one taking said gibblies out of the animal just lowers my appetite for said aminal.

Because you're unused to it and it's been removed from your life's experience.

My grandmother thinks nothing of killing snakes or wringing the necks of fowl, while my mother is creeped out at the very idea.  That's just one generation removed from the farm.

Fuck, I know women our age who won't touch raw meat or fish at all.   They've never, ever cooked.   "It's gross!"  That's 2 generations.

It's only going to get worse and we're going to keep removing ourselves from the "distasteful" (according to current socieital norms) bits of the food process.    I mentioned this before.

Good points. I have a hard time visualizing myself slaughtering any farm animal for food. I believe I could eventually do it and become accustomed to doing it for survival, but currently... I doubt I could kill a pig and bleed it out.

Goats however, fuck goats. I will smite them all if given a chance... creepy fuckers.

Most of my generation never learned to cook or bake from base ingredients.  Most of my daughter's generation doesn't even know how to bake from prepared kits, and think cooking is what microwaves are for.

I *can* do all of the things that are involved in preparing a meal, including growing/raising/processing the raw materials.  But it's all very labor intensive, and is more a credit to my Heinlein imprinting when I was young and a childhood spent in rural Montana than anything else.  Fine, I should have included the caveat "and nobody ever taught you to cook", now feed yourself and a child on $200/month from what you can find on the shelves at Walmart.

--Dave

For the record my objection to cleaning fish is more about the amount of work involved. (And cleanup generated.) :-P

I still think we should start harvesting and mass producing bug farms. Roasted bugs have to be somewhat profitable, albeit difficult to market. I would so snack on a bag of roasted mealworms at work if they sold them in the local grocery store.

Just go to Mexico!

I don't like cultural foods.   :ye_gods:

C'mon, really go for broke, juggle a few minimum wage jobs in there too.

Using a speargun is often easier than using a rod.  Combine it with a rebreather and you are basically cheating.


The only way filleting a walleye could get any easier is if they came equipped with a zipper. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2njws7UYFg)

(Don't click the link if you don't want to see how it's done)

One of these days I'm going to have to check out one of the ricing lakes around here.  A well made cream of wild rice soup is fucking delicious.

Fuck that guy in the ear. I hate when people do that shit because I can never do it that easy. "Oh you just take the knife and slice it like this... *slisss* ... and there is your filet!" Meanwhile I am trying to imitate that and I am left with fish bits that do not even resemble meat of any kind due to the fact I have not sliced it properly or the knife cut into the skin or I left a ton of meat on the skin or any number of ways I find to fuck it up.

Kudos to those that can do it easily enough, but hell with that... I'll stick with, cut cellophane, pull clean meat out of package, plop in breading and fry.

Sounds like you may need a sharper knife. Learning to hone knives on a steel  and also getting some good knives has made my raw protein prep so much easier. My wife is a fishmonger and she won't even attempt to debone or skin a fillet without using our best knife .... hell, she says ours suck compared to the ones they use. Having seen what they use (and knowing they have pros coming to sharpen that shit on a regular basis), I know she's right.

I figure it's also a bit of practice.  I haven't gone fishing since I was 15 or so. There's no way I'd be able to fillet a fish like that guy did, no matter how good the knife.  And his looked a little dull given the way he was fighting on some bits.

Yeah, agreed. She told me about a trip to a major fish supplier wherein they watched a guy break down a giant fish in a matter of minutes. It was very much an "Are a Wizard?" moment for her team.

I have four words for you.

High Fructose Corn Syrup.

The 1 of 8 on food support could very likely be obese too. The shitty food is really easy to choose when you're poor and looking at calories/$.

That brings up another even weirder oxymoron. Fat hunger victims?

This is the winner here. 

There's a big difference between cleaning and filleting a big ocean fish and dealing with a brook trout. There's no reason to fillet a trout, you're just going to pan fry it whole anyway.
You need a river, a sharp knife, and a plastic bag (because apparently just dropping all the guts in the river is bad). Chop off the head just behind the gills, slice from the little hole up to the neck, stick your thumb in and scrape - one motion, 90% of its done, and you really don't even have to look. Then just hold it in the river as you scrape out any remnents with your thumbnail.
Yes, this is one of the only gross manly things I know how to do.

My grandfather was way better at it though, could cut it just right to pull 90% of the guts out still attached to the head in one motion.
Sky - one problem with catching your own trout though - you'll never bring yourself to buying store bought trout again.

Makes you wonder how non-farm raise pork and beef would be.

I have had wild boat sausage before. It was ok but it was a bit gamey a la venison. Was definitely a bit leaner than you usual pork though.

Do you use an industrial strength blender or something to break down all the parts?

I'm more interested in how you land one.  Sailfish are bad enough.

God damnit. Posted that on my phone and did not notice the auto-correct on boar.

I had wild boar sausage once.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYzisqaKzjU

When I was in Tuscany, boar sausage was apparently in season. It's sort of like eating a cross between really strong venison mixed with red wine earthy depth.

I love wild pork.  Any wild game meat, really, but then I prefer lean meat.

Boar is a common food item here in Southern Germany, there are a lot of them in the Black Forest and hunters get generous quotas. Every one they bag has to be inspected though as a good proportion are too radioactive to eat as a result of the Chernobyl disaster.

 :ye_gods:

Never eat anything that glows or cooks itself.

Story (http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,709345,00.html)

 :awesome_for_real:

(http://mimg.ugo.com/201012/9/5/8/134859/cuts/bebop-tmnt_480_poster.jpg)

Cracked.com weighs in on the food industry (http://www.cracked.com/article_19433_the-6-most-horrifying-lies-food-industry-feeding-you.html). 


 :oh_i_see:

I've been doing the Cracked rounds again after the link above (you know, when you click on one link, read it, and open two or three more, and then it takes days to get through them all).

I found the first part of this one pertinent to the discussion we've been having in this thread. I think it was this thread. It could have been the other food one..

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you-develop-growing-up-poor/

You know, Az, I was thinking that this was a great point when I read it, but that is me living in the 80s and 90s.  Right now that shit is in ALL food, even the stuff the richies supposedly get. 

Dude! Mel Brooks was a combat engineer?  I miss reading MAD and Cracked Magazines :)

McDonald's gets rid of immobilization stalls for pregnant pigs (http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/14/news/companies/mcdonalds_pigs/?hpt=hp_t3).  Now I'm not some sort of PETA weirdo, but these practices produce very poor quality meat and it's frankly a little appalling.  I have been thinking very seriously about going Vegetarian for a while now, but by ceasing to eat meat I won't be helping these guys out a bit because I don't eat at McDonald's. 

Ya, seriously, try to find meat sources that at the very least claim humane raising. Never mind the morality element, the meat is just plain better tasting.

Ah, good old Monsanto.  These guys are going to be the death of us all. 

http://www.facebook.com/politicalsoundoff/posts/239447442805405 (http://www.facebook.com/politicalsoundoff/posts/239447442805405)

Incidentally, I was forced to take the family to McDonald's last night.  Was birthday for the 7 year-old, and that's where he wanted to go  :oh_i_see:

We had recently see a commercial on TV from McD's - which we assumed was some kind of global firefighting initiative for the whole pink slime thing - extolling the virtues of the McNugget.  How it was cut directly from the breast of a chicken, and unalterted, etc., etc.  I don't knnow if the implication was that they changed their method, or if they were just reinforcing that this was how they always prepared them.  In any event, it was meant to give the impression that this was, in fact, and actual cut of chicken breast that was battered and fried.

I ate one.  It tasted the same as always (which is to say disgusting).  My son took one of those wooden coffee stirring sticks and was able to PERFECTLY cut a McNugget in half.  I mean, each side of the cut was so flat that not a molecule was out of place.  The effect you would expect from cutting cheese with a cheese knife.  Such a thing would not be possible on an actual piece of chicken breast - even if you could cut through it with a blunt piece of wood, there would be grains and fibers and stuff.  Seriously, fuck this place. 

So... who's had the bacon shake from Jack in the Box?

First... I miss Jack. First time I had it was in Cali and then I ate there a ton when I lived in Louisiana. Haven't been back since. That said, I will never be able to have any type of bacon shake after I had the Apple Pancakes & Bacon shake from here (http://www.burgatorybar.com/heavenly-shakes/). I was a tad leery about pieces of bacon in my shake, but it worked - at least with the fat ass straws they gave you.

That is the most awesome restaurant name I have ever heard.

I was browsing my RSS feed a few minutes ago and laughed my ass off when I saw this:

(http://i.imgur.com/Lvb0B.png)

Thanks, google ads.

Umm.

That was an episode of Better Off Ted, right down to using electric shocks because the first batch of meat tasted like "despair".

And people thought the results of stem cell reserch would cureing Alzhiemers etc  :grin:

That requires experimentation with human cells, which is pretty much banned everywhere because OMG Clones!  If we clone people, how will we resolve the question of them having souls?!

Still...did I read that right that they were cloning the meat from HUMAN stem cells?  Because I gotta tell you, that's kinda gross.

I presume thats adult cow stem cells. Nowhere in the article there are humans mentioned.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33271127/soylent-green.jpg)

Annnd at page 8, this thread finally made me hungry... :oh_i_see:

Pink Slime For School Lunch: Government Buying 7 Million Pounds Of Ammonia-Treated Meat For Meals  (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/pink-slime-for-school-lun_n_1322325.html)

... and you guys think I'm nuts for eating everything from whole, non-processed ingredients.  I'll happily take a bag of dried beans, a bag of rice, and a handful of fresh veggies over this crap. 

Humanity has lost its mind.

I find it interesting that the two doctors on the site tend to be very careful about the kinds of food that they eat.

Don't go lumping me into the 'doctor' category.  I don't practice.  Working with people gives me a rash. 

The general excuse for eating crap is convenience.  As much television as people watch, they could watch one less sitcom and have plenty of time to make a decent meal that doesn't cost any extra, particularly if you buy in bulk.

Yes, but like it or not you are a doctor.  You did the education and training.  Just because you act as a scientist does not mean that suddenly everything you knew leaked out of your ear onto the floor.   :why_so_serious:

I'm a PhD that went to medical school... not the other way around, damnit!  Don't go tainting my reputation.

Once you've had your finger in someone's butt your either a doctor or a porn star.......... :awesome_for_real:

Why not both?

Doctor Rocks Jour Bocksors.

And now we know what you do when your patients are under sedation.

You sick, sick man.

Wait a god damn minute... if that were true, well I can assure you, I am no doctor which means...  :grin:

Digital rectal examinations are pretty much all medical students are good for.   :grin:

Pink slime to rectal exams. Pretty much still on topic.

It's all one big long tube.   :oh_i_see:

I guess that explains why the internet is so full of crap too...

Dude.  It doesn't count when it's your own pooper.

How malnutrition causes obesity. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/malnutrition-obesity_b_1324760.html?ref=mostpopular)

Not sure if this is the best place to post this, but I found it a really easy to read and insightful article.

It's great, but also worrying in that even if you try to eat healthy, you're still not getting the same nutrients our grandparents did.

I think you can, it's just going to require a LOT more effort.

Yeah, but they are dead! It couldn't have been THAT good for them.

Wow.  This is worth watching (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM), if you want to know about food and sugar and obesity. 

That's a Bloodworth, but still an interesting view. 

Hey, it's new to me.   :awesome_for_real:

And thus did the Internet bestow upon the poster known as ghost the Blessing of St. Bloodworth!

I dunno of an hour and a half lecture can ever really be a BW. In any event, I'd not seen it, and its pretty cool. No idea of the veracity of what he's saying, but much of it is common sense.

Summary for the video-impaired?

HFCS is bad, um kay?

An Inconvenient Sweetener.

A bit more complicated than JUST HFCS. It basically says all fructose sweeteners (including table sugar) is poison.

Gotcha.  Right on.

Fructose is OK in small quantities or when in a complex with glucose.  By itself, the small intestine, instead of the large, takes it up in greater quantities and the liver prioritizes processing it over most other things.  This leads to both a fatty liver and not properly metabolizing other things we need (whether toxins or otherwise).

If you think about it, the human body just wasn't meant to utilize 300 pounds of sugar over the course of a year.  It was meant to process protein and fat and plant products (some fructose/glucose).  I'm surprised nobody thought of this sooner.

Well, back to the Atkins diet!   :drill:

Mad Cow disease found in California (http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2012/04/24/mad-cow-disease-confirmed-in-california/?hpt=hp_t2)


Ewwww.  More fucked up shit from our food producers.  Cows aren't meant to eat other cows.  There's a reason why.....

The danger of this is overstated.  BSE was all through the cattle population in Britain, and there were around 1 dozen cases of Creutzfeldt–Jakob that they think *might* be linked, in some unknown way, to BSE, and that in a country where cow brain was a traditional part of the cuisine.

Yet when I went to Canada in 2004, I got nasty looks for ordering a steak (and got an overdone piece of shoe-leather instead of the medium-rare ribeye I ordered and paid for) because 3 cows in British Columbia (I was in Nova Scotia) had tested positive for BSE several months earlier.

People get stupid about novel ways to die.  Every indication is that if I eat a cut of meat from a BSE-positive cow, I have a better chance of choking on it than of catching CJD.

--Dave

True, particularly if you stay away from ground beef.  But it only takes one case of Cruetzfeldt Jakob to fuck your world.  It's a bit like tetanus- you only get it once.  Anyway, I'm more turned off by the fact that they are re-feeding cows to cows.  That can't be good for the cows, and if it isn't good for the cows it isn't good for us once we eat those cows or drink their milk. 

176 cases of vCJD, about 180,000 confirmed cases of BSE in cattle.

While the risk may be low that doesn't justify disregarding it. vCJD is a terrible disease and completely untreatable. It's also hard to diagnose and presents late. It can be transmitted via surgical instruments that have been used on contaminated patients and the prion protein agent is very hard to eradicate.

BSE is spread in cattle because of intensive farming methods and cost-cutting, i.e. feeding animal carcasses to the rest of the herd. Arguing that such food production methods are a bad idea isn't being stupid, and BSE is just one in a very, very long string of reasons why they're a bad idea. Remember H1N1? Salmonella? Add it to the list of unecessary risks caused by having profit dictate food production methods.

It sounds like the cows were not properly cooked to 160F before being served to the other cows.

I don't think you can reverse prion damage with cooking.  Well, not with normal cooking.

And the prions themselves are remarkably resilient I seem to remember. Because they're just protein - i.e. no DNA or RNA (no other infectious agent is like this, everything else, viruses, bacteria, etc., has genetic material) - then they're very hard to render non-infectious.

I just looked up the recommended proceedures for sterilizing surgical instrument suspected of being contaminated with prions and they involve fairly strong sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) at high temperatures (121^oC) and then normal autoclaving. Pretty extreme and certainly not applicable to foodstuffs in any way.

Of course just not feeding ground up dead cows back to the herd would kinda obviate the need.

The prions are abnormally folded proteins that self replicate, so no, you're not going to get them with cooking. But they're only found in central nervous system cells, so that is why it is so important to have good procedures at meat processing plants.  It generally is only going to be an issue with ground meat.  I tend to try to stay away from ground beef, and have been seriously considering avoiding even "organic" beef at the store.  I'm going to try to get a part of a local cow next year and buy a deep freeze.

I was trying not to nerd-out on people.

From an academic perspective they're pretty cool.  Proteins folded in an unusual fashion which cause other proteins to fold in the same way.

Trying not to nerd out around here?   :drill:

Prions are super cool.  Unless they're in your body. 

US Expected to reach 42% obesity rate in the next 18 years. (http://news.yahoo.com/fat-forecast-42-americans-obese-2030-192747932--abc-news-health.html)

Based on my recent trip to Disney:

1) We'll hit that goal a lot sooner than 2030. Go USA!
2) I need to invest in Hutt Palanquins electric scooters.
3) Someone will bring up this being a national security issue and be shouted down for being a vegan communist.
4) We will continue to ignore this and fat will be the new normal in only 10 years.

Fat is already the new normal.  They'll continue to dick around with this until people are living to an average age of 60 and everyone is diabetic.

Those fucking scooters make Disney intolerable if you are taking the Disney transportation system.  There were probably 1 in 10 people when we were there that actually  needed them.  The rest were just fat asses.

No, I think what used to be "big" is the new normal. With "fat" when I was in high school now being "just a little big." We've got another step before the morbidly obese (those whose genitalia are hidden by the gut fat...) are only considered "a little big"

Yeah, on the day we took it the bus had to stop for 3 scooters, only one of whom was an elderly person.  We drove everywhere after that nonsense.

So apparently Beef Products, Inc., the producer of "pink slime" is suing ABC for defamation (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444709004577649552576092254.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection). 


 :ye_gods:

I've got a new rule.  If I can't tell what something is prior to eating it, it's not going in my tummy. 

That's a great rule.  My shopping cart is filled with fruits, veg, seafood, whole grains, eggs, and baking materials.  About the only premade food I eat any more is yogurt and I'm getting away from that due to all of the additives.  Bread, pasta, and tortillas take almost no time to make and I've almost completely eliminated bread from my diet.   If I go to a restaurant with friends now, I can tell immediately if something on my plate was prepackaged, frozen, or canned.  It almost makes me not want to eat out any more.

Yogurt is pretty easy to make yourself.  Even the Greek style yogurt.  My sister used to do it all the time.  She lives in an area where there are a lot of dairy farms though and now usually buys fresh made yogurt from them.  She gets raw milk there, too, although the government hates that.

I saw a travel thing in Iceland where they make Skeer(sp?) which is some sort of icelandic yogurt homemade cheese thing. Sounded awesome.

You may have missed my carbohydrate/sugar paranoia, Signe.   :awesome_for_real:  Yogurt is a killer.

I'm a little sketchy on dairy.  I do cheese and some Yogurt, but try to avoid it if I can. 

As opposed to some type of unhealthy and repulsive liquid product that is meat.

Is this the same law that allowed that assgoblin beef manufacturer to sue Oprah?

Who knows?  It's fucking stupid though.  Hopefully they're so damaged that nobody will eat their shitty "meat" ever again.

But if we can't make $1 hamburgers people might notice it's not 1950 and they need to be paid more than inflation!

That's a pretty scary thought.  In this day and age paying .99 for a hamburger that you actually intend to ingest ought to scare the pants off of anyone. 

You can barely buy an apple for $1 and they grow on trees!

Unless you go to farmers markets. Then you get the good apples for 60 cents.

Do I really have to put an emoticon on everything?   :oh_i_see:

Probably. It's like the day before tax extension filing deadlines. I'm in a very literal place today.

I'm sorry.  I shall be nice to you the rest of the day.   :heart:

I suppose we should also consider the fact that you are a CPA.  Is there another place for you to be?

I'd like to believe I can toss the sarcasm around with the best of them on a good day.

Today I'm just running on coffee and a smile.

Maybe you should head over the politics forum.   :why_so_serious:

I'd rather just stick needles in my eyes and call it a day.

That is the difference over there, no?  The choice?

Well, suppose if you get lazy you still have the option of them doing it for you  :why_so_serious:

Can't be that bad if you can still summon up a smile.

I stole the smile from someone else.

Where did you toss their bloody carcass? 

Did you stab them with a pen to get it?   Because pen stabbings should make even the most literal of folks smile, especially if ink leaks out.

They probably have a designated corpse dumping location there in Atlanta.

Yeah it's called "anywhere below I20."

I'm going to be spending Thanksgiving in Columbus, I hope it's not full of corpses that far south of Atlanta.

My CPA's office has a chipper shredder in the back to dispose of the bodies more easily.  Maybe that's where we get pink slime? 

Mostly it's full of Auburn fans and soldiers.