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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   2081 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 13, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Just got done planting 300 row-feet of garlic, like 450 plants. Hopefully going to be a good crop next year, even though the last went in almost a month late.
The cloves are also much larger than the commercial seed I bought last year--basically planted the largest third of this year's crop. So that should give them a head start.

Probably overdo the garlic just because it's one of the few things you can do in the garden this time of year. But I use a ton of it and it's a remarkably good gift for the kind of people who like "organic garlic" as a health food.

The only kind of gardening I'd ever consider doing. It's a great spice and needed in small quantities. Wish I'd never learned of the whole seed oil controversy because crushed garlic in mayo is the best tasting thing I know of.

It's really the process of creating the unhealthy seed oils that make them dangerous, not necessarily the base ingredient. The cheap crap they put in highly processed food is created with harsh chemical processing and high heat. Anything could become unhealthy if prepared like that.

No. It's an unusual type of fatty acid.

The processing matters.

Which type?

Linoleic acid. I wouldn't say it's unusual, but you wouldn't normally get it in the concentrations you get in processed foods cooked in seed oil.

Canola oil has similar amounts of linoleic acid to chicken fat, and rather less linoleic acid than almonds or sesame oil.

Canola oil is unusually low in LA for a seed oil. Also, it has about the same LA content as almond oil, and considerably more than whole almonds, which are only about 50% fat by weight.

There simply is no logical argument for why seed oils are uniquely bad for you to an extent that justifies online hysteria. You would think they were on the level of smoking two packs a day.

Natural source is only in nuts. That's a very novel food source. Hazelnuts were sometimes a staple food, but generally before 10k yrb ago people were primarily carnivorous.

Linoleic acid is an essential fatty acid that humans require in their diet.

There are seed oils and seed oils. Some things like cold pressed sunflower oil have been in our diet for centuries - so are probably safe-ish enough.

Actually, sunflower is the worst, canola best.

The whole thing is kinda dumb, the issues are marginal I believe. But it's hard to quantify. Best to avoid all such and fry in animal fats I guess. Ofc, pigs are fed omega-6 feed, so lard has a fairly high omega 6 content too.

best to avoid all such and fry in animal fats I guess.

Depends on what you worry about, but if its linoleic acid, animal fats are not the silver bullet. Pork fat is around 15% linoleic acid, chicken fat is around 20%.

The entire seed oil discussion is a red herring. Avoiding them only works because you end up eating less processed foods and less fried foods.

There are different kinds of sunflower oil, high-oleic, high-linoleic, and I guess maybe some in between.

I'm a big fan of the theory that it's not necessarily the crops themselves, but the adoption of crop dessication for cereal grains in the 1990s that caused "gluten intolerance" (that Americans don't seem to experience when eating bread in Europe), then the same thing happened with seed oils when they started using crop dessication for soy and oil crops in the 2000s and 2010s. Cereals, brassicas, and legumes are the most lindy foods that exist outside of animal products. It'd be bizarre if they caused persistent inflammation to humans over their histories without selecting it out of either the humans eating it or the plants themselves.

I also think that this is possibly why alcohol's J-curve is disappearing, despite alcohol being so lindy as well. Phthalates in tubing used in bottling plants, pesticide residues, and other rarified byproducts all end up in the final product and have started to outweigh the protective effects.

"gluten intolerance" (that Americans don't seem to experience when eating bread in Europe)

Isn't it basically a fad, like women declaring they're bi etc? In Europe I know IRL like 2 gluten intolerant people out of say, 100. Real but rare disease. In US it's massively overrepresented

Mayonnaise is not traditionally made with seed oils. Olive oil is traditional. The modern stuff is basically just a big canister of canola but there's no reason it should be so.

Yes, I found a two month old mayo jar in the back of my fridge recently, and was disturbed that it looked and smelled exactly the same as when it was opened. Probably time to start avoiding the modern stuff

Supposedly making your own is incredibly easy. An immersion blender, eggs, lemon, olive oil, salt, and pepper as a base and go from there. If I wasn't worried about raw egg consumption, I'd probably try it myself. It's on my 'try it out sometime' list

If I wasn't worried about raw egg consumption, I'd probably try it myself.

Stop being such a coward and do it. I swear I'm about to go on a hock-like quest to slap every safetyist on this site. I could just barely remain silent when it came to bicycle-helmet-wearers or fist-fight-avoiders, but when people are too afraid to make their own mayonnaise I have to speak up.

It's freaking tasty, you're missing out!

Here mayo ..goes rancid (yellowish crust) on the surface I guess after a couple of weeks storage after opening.

The shelf life of refrigerated mayo is about 3 months, fwiw

Surely olive oil is uncontroversial even among seed oil disrespecters.

Olive oil is respected, and also the oil of the fruit pulp. In this way it is similar to coconut, avocado, and palm oil.

Why not make toum?

Just make or buy a non-seed oil mayonnaise then?

I've heard some claims you can make a decent substitute using schmaltz but never attempted it.

Am a bit leery of working with uncooked eggs tbh.

I have seen both baconnaise and duckennaise advertised for sale, though I haven't tried either myself.

You can also make an eggless mayo with a spoonful or two of aquafaba, the liquid from a can of beans.

Wow, it's real. Huh.

IME it's practically a perfect egg white substitute in everything short of, uh, egg white omelettes. Good for baking, cocktails, etc.

I can also recommend Just Egg plant-based egg replacer for baking. My brother has an egg allergy but I've been able to bake some stuff that turned out pretty well using that.

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