No Such Thing As A Fish and chips

chips
#1

This podcast is popular online.

It investigates interesting stories and looks at sociological research.

The benefit from it is that it is a window into nutrition misunderstanding.

Remember potatoes? They are an important survival food.

They talk about frying potatoes in oil and how the cooking oils for chips (pronounced ‘fries’ if using an American accent) has changed from tallow to seed oils since the 1980s. But the chips tasted worse, so a large fast food chain remedied that by adding beef flavouring to the sliced potato before frying it in processed industrial seed oils. :heart:

Topic starts at about the 45min mark It will switch off any remembered fried potato cravings triggered by this post.

(bulkbiker) #2

For whom? Not Europeans before the sixteenth century…

#3

never knew this. what they do to food is crazy. I know so much more of this nonsense if out there on all our products. ugh.

For potatoes being survival food…I took that as meaning it is what a lot of preppers like to have as a survival crop. Like potatoes are one of the top 5 survival foods that are easily stored in a root cellar for up to 6 months, easy to grow in many soils and all that jazz that make them very top on the list for a survival food in survival times…just my take on that wording.

(Polly) #4

In Yorkshire, where I lived for over half my adult life, they still cook potato chips in beef dripping (what some may call tallow) and that is why I am never tempted to eat fish and chips now I no longer live in Yorkshire.

(Consensus is Politics) #5

IIRC, potatoes became a thing because the above ground part is poisonous.

There was a time when… if an army marched by your farm, and needed to eat, your farm became an all you can eat buffet. Unless you were growing something they couldnt eat, like potato greens (I dont know what they might have called them then).

So as a survival food, in that since, makes sense. Then there was the great french fry famine…

#6

Part of the Peruvian economy according to the reports in the podcast. Have a listen @MarkGossage

(Bob M) #7

You might want to listen to this:

Dr. Schindler is an anthropologist who discusses potatoes and how toxic they are. He recounts his travels to live with different peoples to learn what they do to detoxify the potatoes.

(bulkbiker) #8

Link doesn’t seem to work for me… not that I’m especially interested.

(Rebecca 🌸 Frankenfluffy) #9

Yorkshire chips cooked in dripping - now that’s a happy happy memory! My student days were fuelled by these… :shushing_face::shushing_face::shushing_face: An excellent soaker-upper of too much beer.

#10

Isn’t it amazing Mark? Food science and kitchen explorers. How humans have learned to detoxify, pre digest, process the environment to eat it. Science may one day allow carnivores to eat triple fried chips.

#11

I just hope we never have science feed us Soylent Green!

#12

It’s inevitable. It’s how future humans will survive on Mars.

#13

Arrrgh….yea I see it being horrible way down the road. I won’t be here, I do feel for the longer future generations. Mars…wow.

#14

Thanks for the pod Bob :slight_smile:

#15

Sweet potatoes saved the Civil war devastated southerners. Both during and after the war, this was a majn part of the diet people for decades. They not only ate the sweet potatoes but the greens and made a horrible coffee substitute. These were indigenous to the Americas and could hardly be argued not to have been a survival food for many of my ancestors.

As to potatoes, Sir Walter Raleigh introduced potatoes to Ireland in 1589 near Cork. There is a bit of dispute on that but no question but what potatoes became a survival food for my other desperately poor ancestors in Ireland and the faine there sent many of them to America.

as the the “For whom? Not Europeans before the sixteenth century…” remember that Ireland’s population was essentially flat at 600-700k from 1100 straight through to 1500. Potatoes were one main reason that number grew to more than 8 million up to the time of the famine where it dropped in just a few years to starvation and emigration (to avoid starvation) and fell eventually to under 4.3 million. Even today the population is about 2 million less than it was in 1841.

Yes, potatoes have played a big part in survival and I think many Native American groups survived on them for certain times of year and maybe much more than that based on the research I have read.

(bulkbiker) #16

Why anyone would desire to eat stuff that has to be “detoxified” pre consumption is completely beyond my understanding…

#17

Survival

(bulkbiker) #18

I’m pretty sure that there would be many other ways of surviving without the need to detox food?

Plus that “desire” word is quite important in that sentence…

#19

Pretty sure starving peasants don’t calculate how much they “desire” food.

And if there were other calories available I am pretty sure they’d have eaten them. What we forget is that throughout history, mankind has routinely practiced IF and usually not by choice!

#20

Starting in 2200 BC and lasting for 4200 years the entire world was in near starvation mode. Global dry spells wiped out the Old Kingdom in Egypt and vast civilizations in Mesopotamia and China. Between 400 and 800 AD the population of Rome fell 90% due to famines. In 1876 for a few years a global famine killed like 30 million people when the world population was MUCH smaller than it is today. North Koreans, Venezuelans, mandy Africans and Asians today are woefully short of calories.

The absolute largest numbers of humans that have ever lived have undergone periods of intense caloric deprivation. It’s one of the reasons civilization, cities and agriculture were developed around growing grains. They can generate calories cheaply and efficiently and can be stored.

Like iphones, ESPN and garage door openers, inexpensive energy has lead to technology that allow the vast majority of Americans and Europeans to live lives of virtual splendor compared to ancestors of a few hundred years earlier. mainly fossil fuels driving such things as refrigeration, vaccines and fertilizers…

Most of humanity has never been worried about eating too many carbs! So count your blessings while you are counting those macros my friends!