Eat This Newsletter 237: Shredded
Hello
Why is this newsletter half a day late? Because I’ve been away riding my bicycle on an exciting three-day adventure, which included eating my first ever energy bars. There’s something slightly odd about them as food, I can report, but they. do seem to work.
Shed a Tear for Milk
In America, bird flu has found its way into cow’s milk, giving people there even less of a reason to drink the stuff, even though the Food and Drug Administration has said that pasteurisation renders the virus completely inactive. An article in The Atlantic uses bovine bird flu as a reason to dive into the more general decline in milk drinking, which started long before this latest scare.
The drop in milk as a drink, along with industrial concentration, has already resulted in many smaller dairy farms ceasing to operate. Bird flu, the article suggests, may be the last straw for those that remain as it adds to healthcare costs while at the same time reducing the amount of saleable milk a herd provides.
One thing that struck me about recent reporting on milk drinking is the different ways the decline is expressed. Peak milk occurred in 1945. The Atlantic says average consumption then was “45 gallons a person”. Another report, to which I’m not going to link, represents that as “720 cups annually”. Identical amounts, but does one sound like more to you?
Faith in pasteurisation is not misplaced, and the article points out that although no humans have contracted bird flu from raw milk, cats fed raw milk from infected cows sickened and died. If bird flu does evolve to become transmissable from person to person, it will probably happen in the context of a poultry or dairy operation, where contact is close and long-term.
Speaking of bird flu set me to wondering about chicken pox. Only English seems to call it that, other European languages mostly being variants on Varicella, the virus’ Latin name. Why chicken? I prefer the derivation from Old English giccan, to itch, which becomes Middle English yicche and icchen. So it is the itching pox, which I can remember, and nothing to do with birds. There are, of course, other ideas.
Cursed are the Not Cheesemakers
A cracking story in the Washington Post a couple of weeks ago, about a vegan cheese that had its Good Food awards victory snatched from it under some very dubious circumstances. The two sides have very different versions of what happened, although I find it hard, based on the story, to believe the Good Food foundation’s account.
At heart, I suppose, the issue is partly to do with labelling and partly to do with expectations. A fermented product made from “a blend of ingredients including pumpkin seeds, lima beans, hemp seeds, coconut fat and cocoa butter” was judged better (or not) than others made from the milk of cows, sheep and goats. Some people say it isn’t cheese. Even the maker is inclined to bow to that, insisting that he “isn’t hung up on terminology, and would defer to consumers on the matter”. If you call it cheese, and judge it against other things called cheese, why should the name matter?
There is, however, an echo here for me of a similar distinction that affects me (and perhaps thousands of other people like me) directly. Take this paragraph, quoting Mateo Kehler, co-owner of Vermont cheese company:
“One could make the argument that this is like a fraudulent cheese,” Kehler said. “As a cheesemaker, it’s a fraud. It looks like a cheese. It might taste like a cheese. But it’s not. It’s not connected to our historical understanding of what cheeses are.”
Call it sour grapes, but I believe you can substitute podcast for cheese in there and understand how many of us feel.
Influencers Influence
Two nuggets from the social media hosepipe.
Apparently, Tik-tokkers have been claiming that freezing bread makes it healthier. That gives Duane Mellor, Lead for Evidence-Based Medicine and Nutrition at Aston Medical School in Birmingham, an opportunity to explain a bit about the gelatinised starches in bread and how, with time, they become resistant starches and harder to digest. In other words, “less likely to cause a blood sugar and insulin ‘spike’ after eating them”. That process happens twice as quickly in the freezer as on the kitchen counter, hence the claim that frozen bread is healthier. Explaining the studies and the science, Duane Mellor concludes: “[T]he actual health effects are not nearly as significant as they’ve been made out to be”.
And, quite by coincidence I’m sure, Aston University also reports that asking people to follow healthy eating Instagram accounts for two weeks resulted in them eating 1.4 extra portions of fruit and vegetables a day and 0.8 fewer energy-dense items. “This is a substantial improvement compared to previous educational and social media-based interventions attempting to improve diets.” Fine. The control group, I have to note, was asked to follow interior design Instagram accounts. Alas, the study has nothing to say about how the decor of their rooms changed.
Garlic: All You Need to Know
My compadre Luigi alerted me to The origins and distribution of garlic: How many garlics are there? from Philipp W. Simon at the USDA. It truly is, as he put it, “Garlic 101”. I appreciated the distinction between cultivated, which garlic has been for centuries, and domesticated, which it really only became in the 1980s. The article explains the difference, the problems that surround identifying garlic clones and much else besides. Lots to entertain your favourite vampire.
A Plan for Ukraine’s Seeds
You may remember the scare in the opening days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that the national genebank in Kharkiv had been destroyed. We were happy to correct that impression, as was Newsweek, although that hasn’t stopped some excitable writers recently repeating the story that everything was “reduced to ash”. Rather than name and shame, let’s focus on potentially good news.
A meeting convened by the Nordic Genebank at the end of April brought together experts in genetic resources and conservation to agree a plan that will secure the Ukrainian genebank and encourage its further development. Details are currently sketchy, but it sounds like things are moving forward.
Dancing to a Different Tuna
Emily Nunn’s name crops up regularly as someone who knows how to write about food and recipes. She may, singlehandedly, be responsible for the greatest expansion in the meaning of “salad” since John Evelyn in 1699. And this summer, I swear, I will take her advice and up my tuna salad game.
Nunn’s latest — The Tuna Salad Conversation Continues? — rounds up her previous efforts to identify and catalogue the vast number of tuna salad variations that exist beyond “the most basic version the human mind is capable of conjuring … mayonnaise-laced and fortified with celery, hard-cooked egg, and maybe pickle relish”. She links back to her previous posts on the topic (which require you to subscribe) and does offer two additional recipes to tempt you (and me). Maldivian Tuna Salad (Mas Huni) sounds like a winner to me, even if it does mean I have to find a coconut to shred (or shredded coconut).
Take care
