Eat This Newsletter 261: Consistently flawless
Hello
Dietary guidelines face “an unfair fight from the start”. No such thing as officially organic cannabis. Family-owned fast food is sketchier. And, what would nonna think of a “consistently flawless” recipe that depends on a cheat?
Guidance on Dietary Guidelines
The US government reviews its Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) every five years through a complex procedure that can take more than two years. There have been a lot of questions about the guidelines and how they are decided. Now an editorial in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by Dariush Mozaffarian pulls back the curtain on a study of the systematic evidence reviews that are the heart of the decisions made by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.
The details are not for the faint-hearted. A systematic review of several strategic evidence reviews concluded that there were “critical weaknesses in the conduct of the SRs”. Drawing on his own experience reviewing the strategic evidence review on ultra-processed foods, in which he found numerous flaws, Mozaffarian comes to a sobering conclusion.
[G]uiding Americans toward a healthier diet is an unfair fight from the start. The food industry can do almost anything it wishes to our food, combining diverse ingredients, additives, and processing methods with virtually no oversight or required evidence for long-term safety. In contrast, the DGAs and other federal agencies can only make recommendations to avoid certain foods or limit certain manufacturing methods when there is extensive, robust, and consistent evidence for harm. In this severely imbalanced playing field, industry wins again and again. With far more Americans ill from diet-induced diseases than becoming healthy, it is time to flip this script. Based on the cautionary principle and the ethical obligation to do no harm, food ingredients, additives, and processing methods must only be used when they meet SR-equivalent standards proving their long-term safety. Moreover, the DGAs should be able to recommend avoidance of any foods not meeting such standards of evidence.
Cleaner Weed
Cannabis remains illegal at the federal level in the US, although that hasn’t stopped sales from booming in the many states that permit its growth and sales. Most consumers probably know that the vast majority of the product is grown very intensively, hydroponically under high-energy lighting, cosseted with synthetic fertilisers and protected with pesticides. They probably don’t care either. But for the few who might, there’s a catch. Because it is illegal federally, cannabis cannot be certified organic.
Ambrook Research has just published a sweet piece on the people growing premium-priced purer pot and the organisations that certify the stuff. The pitch, of course, is not just that it is better for the environment, but also that it is better for the consumer.
Organically grown cannabis tends to have somewhat lower THC levels but much higher levels of terpenes and other compounds, which he said creates a much more enjoyable experience. (Judges at the California State Fair agreed, awarding six gold medals to Sun+Earth-certified farms this year.)
Franchisees and Food Safety
Big chain fast-food joints are generally franchises, owned and run by independent operators not the owner of the brand. Those franchisees come in three basic sizes. There are supersized corporations that operate several outlets; regular sized collections of a few outlets are often family-owned; and mini operations owned by a lone individual. Does the ownership structure affect cleanliness at the restaurant?
Two Mississippi State University professors thought it might.
“We hypothesized that family-operated franchises would receive fewer health code violations compared with nonfamily-operated restaurants,” they write in an article summarising their research, because “family-owned businesses often prioritize maintaining a strong reputation over short-term profits.”
I’d have made the same bet, and I’d have lost. Turns out that “family-owned franchises received more health-code violations than both lone-founder and corporate owned outlets”.
The authors suggest that company representatives visit their outlets often and would stress compliance with health and safety standards, while lone-founders identify and control their operations and so are likely more attentive to standards. Family-run businesses are focussed on building and maintaining family wealth and local community ties, but “may struggle with day-to-day operational compliance pertaining to health and safety”.
The big question remains: faced with a choice among fast-food chain outlets, how do you discover who owns which? If, that is, you care.
“Consistently Flawless” Cacio e Pepe
Pasta alla cacio e pepe is having a moment. Again.
First came a sorrowful report from Slate’s in-house pasta-eating altruist Danny Palumbo who, after “a series of dissatisfying, clumpy, overly ordinary busts” was beginning to think that “something is amiss in restaurant kitchens”. He identifies butter as the culprit, pointing out that it smooths the way for the deceptively simple recipe — pasta, cheese, pepper — that can be very tricky to pull off.
Just 10 days later comes news of a thoroughly scientific investigation by a pan-European group of physicists. Phase behavior of Cacio and Pepe sauce is, like some dishes of cacio e pepe, heavy going. You might prefer the easier-to-digest version served up by Popular Science. To simplify even further, the crucially important factor is the amount of starch in the water. Less than 1% of the weight of cheese is likely to result in a sauce in which the cheese separates out into lumps. More than 4%, however, “results in a sauce that becomes stiff and unappetizing as it cools”. But how is one to achieve the magical quantity of starch in the water?
A search online for perfect cacio e pepe will offer a range of suggestions. Use more expensive pasta, extruded through bronze dies and dried slowly, because that sheds more starch into the water. Cook the pasta risottata, in a shallow pan and using very little water, which concentrates the starch but offers very little control over the final concentration, risking failure at the other extreme. Or, use the scientists’ proffered cheat: 4 grams of potato or corn starch heated gently in 40 grams of water. Blend that with the required amount of cheese (they say 160 grams for 240 grams of pasta, which strikes me as way too much) and then adjust the consistency with reserved pasta water. (Full details are in the paper and the Popular Science article.)
All those other results also offer a range of approaches to the cheese and pepper. Melt the cheese in warm water. No, blend it with ice water. No, whizz it and the pepper with very little water into a paste that you can dump on the freshly cooked pasta and then adjust with pasta water. Do what you do. I will say, I do none of these things and I have so far had no complaints.
Well, not quite. The recipe I use specifies 100 grams of young pecorino to 450 grams of pasta, a third of the amount prescribed by the scientists. But here’s the thing; the scientists don’t actually offer a quantity of pepper, just the intensely annoying (and perfectly correct) qb: “season with freshly ground black pepper to taste”. The recipe I used advised “4 heaping tablespoons (60 grams) black peppercorns”. The first time I made it, for two, I thought, that’s an awful lot of pepper, so I halved it, to 15 grams. The sauce, while perfect in consistency, was almost inedible. In fact, one of us couldn’t eat it. Even 5 grams can be a bit overwhelming. You have been warned.
Take care
