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All praise to the lunch ladies

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Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#141

Post by margalabargala »

sevg wrote: post #134
margalabargala wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point wasn’t that taste is bad, it’s that when you optimize solely for taste like restaurants do (using high salt, high fat etc without disclosure), you can create health problems when consumed daily. Your implication is that high salt in meals causes these health problems. It does not. You might as well say high vitamin, high nurrient meal. Don't conflate the effects of eating ultraprocessed foods with the effe…

Nice strawman. I didn’t mention ultra-processed foods :) If anyone else is reading this and wants to do their own reading about the effects of salt, I can point you to the WHO, the NHS, the FDA, one of many highly cited studies, and wikipedia: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/sodium-redu... https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-types/salt-in-you... https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling…

You're right, it was someone else mentioning ultraprocessed foods, I didn't track usernames.

Are you aware that you are being a condescending asshole with the way you wrote that comment?

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#142

Post by [deleted] »

Auracle wrote: post #69
AstroNutt wrote: post #66

Great read! I sent this story to my girlfriend who works as a lunch lady in a small West Texas town for the last 10 years. She said they are still able to provide nutritional food for the kids. Her mother had an aunt that worked at the same school in the 50's and 60's and they made everything from scratch. Vegetables were bought locally too. She also mentioned the kids hated the whole wheat pasta and breads when Mich…

I will never understand why Michelle Obama’s plan included low salt. It’s not like kids have major hypertensive issues.

[deleted]

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#143

Post by thaumasiotes »

chongli wrote: post #127
speed_spread wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it conditions your expectations of tasting salt everywhere, which is what industrial food provides. Good food should taste great even if it's low on salt.

Good food should taste great even if it's low on salt Said no chef ever. The first thing any chef will tell you is to season your food correctly. Salt activates our taste buds. Without it everything tastes bland. They used to pay soldiers in salt . That’s the origin of the word salary . Cities were founded near salt mines. Wars were fought over it. Salt is essential to the function of neurons and kidneys. Salt is lif…

> They used to pay soldiers in salt. That’s the origin of the word salary.

Note that the amount of evidence supporting this claim is zero. There is a Roman source that makes the claim, based on the resemblance of the words, but at the time of writing, no one was paid in salt, and there is no record of anyone ever having been paid in salt.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#144

Post by hexbin010 »

tenthirtyam wrote: post #138
hexbin010 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd have eaten way more salad as a kid if my mum didn't treat salt as if it were the devil itself. There is nothing enticing about raw cucumber, lettuce and tomatoes on the side of a plate. A pinch of salt and pepper, small amount of olive oil, oregano and lemon? Now we're talking.

> raw cucumber, lettuce and tomatoes on the side of a plate Jeepers, I love a plain salad - no salt, no vinegar, nothing at all added is fine. Maybe a little olive oil but no problem without it. It's all about what you're used to. We (self, wife, children) stopped adding salt to our cooking years ago - pasta, rice, potatoes are cooked without salt and they taste fine. As you might expect, when some people eat at our…

What made you go without salt? Have you seen any major health benefits?

We don't have the best-tasting product here in this part of north west Europe unfortunately, so things do taste pretty bland. And if you're trying to get your kid to eat more veg, a tiny bit of dressing is worth the trade off.

Even the Italians and French love dressing salads despite much better tasting produce. I tend not to disagree with what the Italian and French do when it comes to food :-)

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#145

Post by thaumasiotes »

buu700 wrote: post #95
jandrewrogers wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An enormous amount of traditional food from around the world has a lot of salt in it. Salt is not a modern invention. For example, humans have been eating olives for tens of thousands of years. Olives contain and require prodigious amounts of salt to taste good, usually in the form of seawater.

High salt intake is only an issue on a high-carb diet or with inadequate hydration. Otherwise, consuming adequate salt/electrolytes can actually be a bit of a chore. Like saturated fat, salt has been incorrectly demonized in the course of propping up ill-conceived modern dietary standards.

> Like saturated fat, salt has been incorrectly demonized in the course of propping up ill-conceived modern dietary standards.

The history actually runs in the other direction - step one was that someone decided that salt was bad, and step two was that a bunch of dietary standards were created to express the revealed truth that salt was bad. The demonization is the beginning of the process and was done for its own sake.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#146

Post by collingreen »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #129
jandrewrogers wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An enormous amount of traditional food from around the world has a lot of salt in it. Salt is not a modern invention. For example, humans have been eating olives for tens of thousands of years. Olives contain and require prodigious amounts of salt to taste good, usually in the form of seawater.

OMG I ate an olive off a tree once in Italy because I was stupid. Never, never do that.

I'm intrigued. Please share more details!

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#147

Post by thaumasiotes »

buu700 wrote: post #100
jandrewrogers wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salt pills were a thing for people working in hot climates. The military requires electrolyte augmentation in such conditions. These days we use fancier electrolyte blends but it is still largely salt. If you are on a multi-day fast it is the primary thing you need to replenish aside from water. I do some pretty serious backcountry trekking in the summer. You can feel when your electrolytes are low after several hour…

Agreed. The idea that salt is merely a flavoring with negative side effects has always struck me as indicative of an unhealthy relationship with food. It aligns with a broader Calvinistic tendency to view pleasure and harm as inherently linked, which is fortunately at odds with reality.

Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World observes that even in relentlessly noncommercialized societies, robust markets existed in two commodities: iron and salt. They were traded on the market within villages that otherwise had little use for markets, and they would make their way by international trade routes to even the most isolated cultures.

For iron, that trade would have mostly been in tools. For salt the only reason is that salt is a vital nutrient and if you can't get enough of it, you die. (Though I think it's worth observing that iron is a vital nutrient too.)

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#148

Post by thaumasiotes »

krapp wrote: post #72
komali2 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I watch a video about American military nutrition, the only takeaway I have is "are these people incompetent?" Sailors in the USA navy get fat after their first deployment, common knowledge. Why? Because half the time their food is frozen chicken nuggets, frozen tater tots, etc, chucked into the oven, served bulk at mess. 2025's most well funded army, that's the best they came up with? Why not just freeze no…

>Hire a chief lunch lady who has the same job a head chef does - find the local produce and dairy and fish and meat, plan meals and portions, organize supply, and direct meals. Who's going to pay for all of that? Not the American taxpayer, who would consider it theft and waste, and not the poor kids who actually need school lunches, and probably not their parents. You'll wind up with a Macdonald's kiosk in every scho…

I found a twitter thread years ago that talked about how the author had gone to school with a lot of (US) mafia children, and the school had unsurprisingly provided lunch via a local vendor with mob connections. Presumably some of the money wound up going to the mob.

But, the thread pointed out, since high-level mafia officials sent their children to that school, they had no interest in skimping on the lunches. And the lunches were excellent. After a big FBI bust, the mob-affiliated vendor was replaced with a major interstate school lunch vendor, and the quality of the food was rock-bottom.

I've tried to find the thread again, but I can't. If anyone else wants to dedicate an unreasonable amount of time to it, I'm pretty sure I originally found it through a links post on Marginal Revolution.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#149

Post by rafabulsing »

wtcactus wrote: post #133
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here we are, back to the poor people are lazy argument. That didn't take long.

Well, some of us refuse to indulge in this permanent complete lack of accountability for one’s choices and actions, that people like you try to push.

Regardless of what you think of the parents, it's certainly not the kids fault their parents failed to provide them food, for whatever reason. I don't care if the reason their parents couldn't afford the time or money to pack a lunch is because they spend it all on collecting nazi memorabilia and kicking orphaned puppies. I still want their children to be appropriately fed.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#150

Post by wtcactus »

rafabulsing wrote: post #149
wtcactus wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, some of us refuse to indulge in this permanent complete lack of accountability for one’s choices and actions, that people like you try to push.

Regardless of what you think of the parents, it's certainly not the kids fault their parents failed to provide them food, for whatever reason. I don't care if the reason their parents couldn't afford the time or money to pack a lunch is because they spend it all on collecting nazi memorabilia and kicking orphaned puppies. I still want their children to be appropriately fed.

You are right it's not the kid's fault, and that they should be properly fed by the state since their parents are bad parents, but that doesn't mean you can't blame and call out the parents.
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