This is discouraging

[wosnes]

Based on a comparison of various editions of The Joy of Cooking, home cooking today has 63% more calories than it did several decades ago due to higher use of fat and sugar.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/wei ... ries_N.htm

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/health/i ... od-355300/

[gratefuldeb67]

Hahah you should see the stats compared to 100 years ago!!
I think Reinhard had a quote in his book about the average persons consumption of sugar per year from back then and it was only 10 lbs per year!!
Debs

[kccc]

Still beats eating out hands down.

I would love to see the details of that study, compete with graphs showing the change per recipe over the editions.

My copy is Joy is from the mid-70's. Recently, I used to it make "real" chocolate pudding for a pie. It didn't make enough, because the 4 servings were calculated at 1/2 cup each - about half what I needed to fill the pie shell. I have also noticed that "sweets" from this edition are less sweet than more modern recipes (which I'm good with).

So, I'd love to see the "trend lines" on this study. I remember being grateful that someone had given me the 70's version, b/c later versions were criticized as having abandoned basic principles. (Too much "add a can of..." recipes - over-reliance on convenience foods.) My hunch is that the trend is not linear over the years.

I still think home cooking is SO much better than eating out... but I also have begun to recognize that not everyone knows enough about nutrition to know when a recipe is healthy/reasonable or not. (That's one take-away from all the dieting years that I'm actually glad to have - I developed an interest in and awareness of nutrition.)

[BeingGreen]

Check out Mark Bittman's comments about how much better off we would all be if we did almost all of our cooking at home--there's a video link on the New York Times website (http://bitten.blogs.nytimes.com/). He's written a new book called Food Matters.

I've basically instituted a "home made" rule in our house. We are currently at 90% home-cooking. I'm striving for 99% in 2009!

[wosnes]

Check out Mark Bittman's comments about how much better off we would all be if we did almost all of our cooking at home--there's a video link on the New York Times website (http://bitten.blogs.nytimes.com/). He's written a new book called Food Matters.

I've basically instituted a "home made" rule in our house. We are currently at 90% home-cooking. I'm striving for 99% in 2009!

Check a bunch of my other posts for links to Bittman and about Food Matters. Heh -- you'd think I do publicity for him. (I don't.)

[wosnes]

The study was done by Brian Wansink, the man who wrote Mindless Eating. I guess it's another way we mindlessly eat more than we need or should!

The Joy of Cooking Too Much
Posted by Brian Wansink at 1/16/2009 4:39 AM EST

Lots of people like to point at the increasing portion-size trend in restaurants and fast food as being the source of their extra pounds.

But is this any different than what we've done at home? I thought it would be interesting to see how the calorie levels and serving sizes of our home-cooked recipes have changed with time -- say, over the past 75 years.

We took the classic book, the Joy of Cooking, and we analyzed the calories and serving size of the recipes that were common to all 8 editions, (1937-2006). All but one of the recipes we had analyzed had increased in calories per serving. The average increased by 63%. About 2/3 of this was due to more caloric ingredients (more fat, sugar, sauces, meat, nuts, and so on), and 1/3 was due to larger servings (6 vs. 8 slices to a pie).

Home-cooked meals are a great way to get the family together and to save money. They don't always save us calories. Just because its home-cooked doesn't mean it's 5 times better than the drive-through.

If you're interested in more, the forthcoming article is:

Wansink, Brian and Collin R. Payne (2009), "The Joy of Cooking Too Much," Annals of Internal Medicine, forthcoming

Another researcher compared identical brownie recipes from the 1975 and 2006 editions of the book. The 1975 version yielded 30 brownies; the 2006 edition yielded 16.

"Joy" has never been one of my favorite cookbooks, though my ex-husband loves it and has given (more recent) copies to both of our daughters. I may have to find earlier editions for them! But, I've noticed that many popular cookbook authors and TV hosts use way more meat than needed to serve "x" number of people. I often cut the recipes in half to serve the same number of people. One very popular recipe blog recently had a recipe for meatloaf that uses 3 pounds of meat to serve about 6 people. By my calculations, it should serve about 12 people.

[Thalia]

I just read Julia Child's memoir, "My Life in France," and I was really struck by one anecdote -- when she and her cowriters handed in their draft of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the first thing the editor said was that the portion sizes were too small for Americans.

I think the portion-size creep is the reason that recipes have more fat and sugar now -- they just have MORE of everything per serving, because a serving is larger.

I just made cookies yesterday (S day! Oatmeal cookies for all at my house!) from the early '60s Betty Crocker New Picture Cookbook, and the cookies are one heaping teaspoonful each. That is NOT a large cookie. No matter how rich you make it, you are not getting a whopping amount of fat and sugar when you eat one of those (and stop at one).

[wosnes]

I think the portion-size creep is the reason that recipes have more fat and sugar now -- they just have MORE of everything per serving, because a serving is larger.

I just made cookies yesterday (S day! Oatmeal cookies for all at my house!) from the early '60s Betty Crocker New Picture Cookbook, and the cookies are one heaping teaspoonful each. That is NOT a large cookie. No matter how rich you make it, you are not getting a whopping amount of fat and sugar when you eat one of those (and stop at one).

I recently made a new pasta recipe. The recipe was supposedly sized to serve 4 and was made in a 9x13 pan. I cut the recipe in half, made it in an 8x8 pan and we still had leftovers!

I was looking at some dippers for cookie dough at the King Arthur store online. They said that the "heaping teaspoon" is actually just about a measuring tablespoon. So I use a measuring tablespoon for cookies.

[bizzybee]

We have 4 hungry people and big plates and often end up with 1/2 left in the pan. I just can't imagine who could eat so much.

[Nichole]

Wow, looks like I'll stick to my grandma's copy!

[paulawylma]

I was looking at some dippers for cookie dough at the King Arthur store online. They said that the "heaping teaspoon" is actually just about a measuring tablespoon. So I use a measuring tablespoon for cookies.

Uh, sorry. I don't want to be rude, so I'm trying to find a polite way to say this. . .and I don't personally know any of the folks at the King Arthur store, but they are clearly wrong. To make sure I was right, I went to my kitchen and filled my teaspoon as heaping as it would hold and then poured it into a tablespoon. It didn't even come close to a tablespoon (as I figured it wouldn't).

I just re-read your post and noticed you were looking at "dippers for cookie dough ." I don't even know what those are and I've been cooking for --well about 40 years (assuming I started when I was ten). If you want to make drop cookies just get a couple of regular teaspoons. Use one to dip the cookie dough and use the back of the other one to push the dough off the spoon onto the baking sheet. That's the way everyone I know has always done it. If all you are doing are dipping dough, then tablespoons are fine instead of teaspoons, it's not anywere close to an exact measure, they will just be a bit bigger. If they fit on the baking sheet, that's all that really matters.

A word on measuring for those who weren't forced to take home ec or are otherwise confused about the old-fashioned terms. A heaping tablespoon that's when you take a standard teaspoon and instead of leveling it off even, you let the top stand up in a "heap". Same thing for "rounded" measurements, except it's a little less than a heap--but who cares? In recipes like that, it depends on the taste of the cook. If it is the first time making the recipe and you don't know what it tastes like, then just level the spoon off.

I looked in my 1964 Joy of Cooking--because I wanted to quote an authority instead of expecting you to take my say-so, but it said that "hedgers like 'heaping or scant' having been weeded out of our instructions years ago." I'd forgotten about "scant"; but then when I add sugar to something, you can be sure it will be a "heaping" or "rounded" teaspoon, not a "scant" one.

If you have a recipe that uses these terms, then it's probably an older cookbook. My grandmother didn't even use real measuring equipment most of the time. We asked her to teach us to make her delicious rolls one summer during a visit and much to our surprise and confusion, she used an old china teacup to "measure" out the flour. She didn't even count the cups. She just dipped the flour out into a bowl and expected us to know how much she was using by eyeballing it. She thought we were nuts! We kept asking how much flour to use and she kept pointing to the bowl and saying "that much. It's right there in the bowl. That's how much you use." The problem was that my sister and I had learned to cook from recipes and my grandmother had learned to cook by watching others and then by doing it herself. My grandmother is long gone now and so are her delicious rolls. I now wish I had understood the problem and applied myself to learning by watching. After all, it is how generations of women (and men) learned to cook before books became cheap and commonplace. I really miss those rolls.

I suppose that learning from watching applies to portions as well. People used to know how big a serving was from their parents--I guess cookbooks and restuarants changed all that. I was just remembering the other day about my first trip to a burger place. We all just ate the small hamburger (they call it the junior burger now) and shared, all four of us shared a fry (the size they now put in the kid's meals). A small burger and 1/4 of a small fry--that used to be a meal. Hard to believe isn't it?

[Thalia]

I think you got the wrong attribution on your quote there.

[paulawylma]

[quote="Thalia"]I think you got the wrong attribution on your quote there. [/quote]

Sorry, I noticed it right away (I edited the quote incorrctly) and clicked the edit button to change it. I also added a bit because I have a verbal problem--I just can't shut up, not even in print.

Again, I'm sorry for the poor editing job on the quote.

[wosnes]

I was looking at some dippers for cookie dough at the King Arthur store online. They said that the "heaping teaspoon" is actually just about a measuring tablespoon. So I use a measuring tablespoon for cookies.

Uh, sorry. I don't want to be rude, so I'm trying to find a polite way to say this. . .and I don't personally know any of the folks at the King Arthur store, but they are clearly wrong. To make sure I was right, I went to my kitchen and filled my teaspoon as heaping as it would hold and then poured it into a tablespoon. It didn't even come close to a tablespoon (as I figured it wouldn't).

I didn't remember the measurement correctly. It's closer to 4 teaspoons. I just did the same thing. We have two sets of flatwear and one has much smaller spoons than the other; I used the smaller one. I didn't have any cookie dough handy, so I used some oatmeal. A heaping teaspoon turned out to be a heaping measuring tablespoon.

In all fairness, it probably depends on what you're measuring. You're going to get less of some things that others. A heaping teaspoon of sugar, for instance, is going to be less than a heaping teaspoon of oatmeal -- or cookie dough.

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/det ... 95&id=5639