Too Much of One Thing

[oliviamanda]

I realized that I've been eating a lot of fries recently. I am a vegetarian, so with limited options, I am happy to fill up on fries, but I really want to avoid fried foods. So for August I am going fry free, unless they are baked at home. I know I can have fries with my meal on No S. I just found I was having fries very frequently (sometimes with cheese) and I am not losing right now... so I think I'll make this mod for myself this month. Anyone experience anything similiar with one kind of food?

[Thalia]

No S doesn't dictate what to eat -- but common sense certainly does, and I think that French fries are a wonderful, delicious treat, but not a great staple food in anyone's diet. Setting some kind of limit, like only eating them if you make them at home, sounds very sensible to me!

[wosnes]

"Consider some recent research on the links between cooking and dietary health. A 2003 study by a group of Harvard economists led by David Cutler found that the rise of food preparation outside the home could explain most of the increase in obesity in America. Mass production has driven down the cost of many foods, not only in terms of price but also in the amount of time required to obtain them. The French fry did not become the most popular “vegetable†in America until industry relieved us of the considerable effort needed to prepare French fries ourselves. Similarly, the mass production of cream-filled cakes, fried chicken wings and taquitos, exotically flavored chips or cheesy puffs of refined flour, has transformed all these hard-to-make-at-home foods into the sort of everyday fare you can pick up at the gas station on a whim and for less than a dollar. The fact that we no longer have to plan or even wait to enjoy these items, as we would if we were making them ourselves, makes us that much more likely to indulge impulsively. Cutler (an economist) and his colleagues demonstrate that as the “time cost†of food preparation has fallen, calorie consumption has gone up, particularly consumption of the sort of snack and convenience foods that are typically cooked outside the home. They found that when we don’t have to cook meals, we eat more of them: as the amount of time Americans spend cooking has dropped by about half, the number of meals Americans eat in a day has climbed; since 1977, we’ve added approximately half a meal to our daily intake. Cutler and his colleagues also surveyed cooking patterns across several cultures and found that obesity rates are inversely correlated with the amount of time spent on food preparation. The more time a nation devotes to food preparation at home, the lower its rate of obesity. In fact, the amount of time spent cooking predicts obesity rates more reliably than female participation in the labor force or income. Other research supports the idea that cooking is a better predictor of a healthful diet than social class: a 1992 study in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that poor women who routinely cooked were more likely to eat a more healthful diet than well-to-do women who did not."

If you're going to have French fries, make them yourself. From scratch. Fry them, don't bake them (which isn't all that time consuming, but more so than buying them ready-to-eat). Its time-consuming enough to make them that at most you'll have them monthly and probably less often.

[Bushranger]

I include items such as French Fries in the sweets category. It's a tiny mod I made that lumps non-sweet treats which are obviously unhealthy in with the rest of the sweets. This is something I would recommend to anyone who naturally tends to want to eat this kind of rubbish regularly and with meals.

Common sense just could not allow me to consume things like this regularly with regular meals. The mod I have made is very simplistic and easy to habitualise, all key requirements for a successful mod. Applying that logic to the No S system by way of this mod has made it easy and efficient to enforce.

[gratefuldeb67]

I realized that I've been eating a lot of fries recently. I am a vegetarian, so with limited options, I am happy to fill up on fries, but I really want to avoid fried foods.

Hi Olivia. I think Bushranger's idea of limiting them to S days is great.
I just wanted to ask how long you've been vegetarian. To be honest, I feel that vegetarians don't have such a limited amount of options, especially if you cook for yourself or plan your restaurant visits well.
But yeah, maybe at McDonald's it might seem this way.
Try finding exciting new vegetarian recipes and you won't feel so limited.
I love fries, but I am having less and less fried food these days, and in general have fries maybe three times a month, if that much.

Good luck!
Debs

[wosnes]

Interesting about making fries a special occasion food. Again, from Michael Pollan (from the interview on NPR):

Mr. POLLAN: Yes. Or we might say allowing corporations to cook for us has contributed to obesity. I don't think you can pin the whole thing on that. But it's very interesting to watch, as the amount of time spent cooking has fallen by about half since the 1960s, you know, obesity has risen dramatically. Now why should that be? Well, there is some very interesting research that correlates the amount of time that a culture spends cooking with its obesity rates, and that when you don't cook and you rely on corporations to cook for you, you tend to eat more special-occasion food, things like French fries.

I mean, take the French fry. It's a great example. I mean, the French fry did not become the most popular vegetable in America, which it now is, until corporations relieved us of all the work of preparing them. French fries are a whole lot of trouble to make. You've got to wash the potato. You've got to peel the potato, slice the potato, fry the potato and then clean up a kitchen that's going to be a wreck. And, you know, you wouldn't do that very often, and indeed, people didn't do it very often.

But now, since corporations are making all the French fries, we can have them two or three times a day, and many of us do. So, you see, when there's something built into the process of cooking that delays gratification, the work itself makes you think twice before you embark on a cake or French fries or fried chicken. And so as soon as you outsource that work, it becomes possible to indulge in all these special-occasion foods that no longer are special-occasion foods. They're everyday foods.

[Blithe Morning]

Hunh. I make fried potatoes every week to have in lieu of meat with tacos. You take white potatoes, rinse well, dry even better, slice (not too thin, not too thick) and drop them into a cast iron sauce pan about 2/3 full of hot (375° - 400°) canola oil. A few stirs with a slotted spoon and about 12 minutes later you have "french fries" draining on a paper towel.

A little sprinkle of coarse Kosher salt or some Cajun seasoning and they are ready to eat.

If I start heating the oil before I do anything else, grate the cheese or chop the tomato and onion or what have you, everything comes out at about the same time.

It's really not THAT hard to fry potatoes. As I've state in Wosnes out of the kitchen thread, I don't enjoy cooking. Believe me, if I'm doing it, it's easy.

Although given people's concern about overconsuming fried potatoes maybe I shouldn't have made this point...

[oliviamanda]

Thanks for all the information. I guess I got concerned because I had fries out like 4 time in one week. Then I went back and checked my food journal and I hadn't had fries for awhile up until last week. I definitely should make them from scratch. And maybe I will make them an S.

I have been vegetarian for about 8 months now. I know my options are not that limited, and I need to start getting more creative!

[reinhard]

I think what you're feeling now might be all the disincentive you need.

Limiting yourself to three single plate meals makes you notice your food more. Excess -- in this case, French fries -- jumps out at you.

So I'm not sure you need any more systematic intervention. Just remember this unpleasant feeling of being confronted with excess next time you do your grocery shopping.

Cooking your food from scratch is certainly a great idea, and my family usually does, but I don't think you need to be systematically rigid about it. You can, of course. And others here successfully have. But beware diet hubris. The fewer rules you can use to achieve your ends (moderate, reasonably healthy, pleasurable eating), the better. Again, the spotlight of a single plate can be your ally here: just think how satisfying to contemplate the sight of a single plate meal cooked from scratch will be.

Reinahrd