I remember the black bread that I had in Germany, didn’t taste that great, but I lost weight eating them because it was far more filling and so I needed to eat less of them.
I’m presuming that those are made of whole grains, because I know refined grain bread filled me for a couple of hours but made me hungry soon after.
So I know there’s benefit for eating whole grain for me.
There’s nothing in Taiwan that comes close to what I had there.
Actually now that I think about it, Costco pizza kinda comes close. I have no idea what they contain but the pizza dough is incredibly chewy, and was a bit of a workout on my face muscle to eat it, it was also very filling too. When I did one meal a day a hot dog and a pizza was enough for the day.
Yea, no wonder it was so filling (and disgusting at the same time).
But anyways I did some research on Costco pizza, let’s just say it’s nothing like Pizza Hut. Thing contains some whole grain but at the right balance to result in a pizza that tastes good.
It’s an incredible value considering what ingredients they use and how much of it they use (they got a crap-ton of cheese on the pizza, like probably more cheese on their 300nt cheese pizza than the 450nt block of cheese they sell).
Most likely spoilage. despite the amount of chemical contamonationwe intentionally lace our food with, the more layers to a raw seed and seed coat you have, the easier it is for things like.fungus and arthropods to infest. Despite what people think, we havent beatennature yet.
Secondly is taste and habit.
very rarely does health enter the equation until it has been proven to kill large amounts of people for many years. only then does the FDA bother moving. And even then, only sometimes.
Yea, it tastes like crap. Maybe put a piece of grilled meat in between 2 slices to temper the bad taste. That’s what I used to do in Germany by the way. I would heat up the bread, the meat, and add some egg to it. Makes it not so bad.
But I guess best medicine is bitter but it’s good for you.
Taiwanese food is really tasty but it’s incredibly bad for you. Biandang is probably the healthiest thing out there because at least it has vegetables and such… just wish they didn’t put so damn much white rice in it.
Pan frying the meat in oil, preferably several layers of it, grilled onion, maybe some eggs, and toasting the bread makes a HECK of a difference.
And if I’m going to eat bread then might as well be the disgusting German black bread rather than the equally dry and non-filling white bread that has basically zero nutrients in it.
Yes the oil frying and grilled onion is probably less healthy than COLD meat but it makes it 100 times tastier and it actually is something you’d look forward to. It just takes a little bit of time to prepare.
Melt some cheese into the meat, and you got a meal.
I found out that it seems if you cook rice, cool it, then reheat it (like say to make fried rice) it’s healthier for you because somehow the act of cooling the rice turns the starch into some other form of starch that’s less digestible, meaning it ends up acting like dietary fiber instead of being absorbed into your blood.
It means that it looks like eating day old biandang is actually better for your health… because the rice will have cooled. Maybe that’s why Taiwanese are by and large not obese (though this is getting worse) because if they ate at home, they’re going to be eating a lot of day old rice that’s been refrigerated and reheated.
One disturbing trend I’m finding in Taiwanese nutrition fact panel is that they do NOT list dietary fiber at all. Not sure why.
But would you concede that if you’re stuck to eating grains (because of economics or whatever) would it be better to consume whole grains vs. refined grains? Because in my experience whole grain appears to be more satiating compared to refined grain (which tastes better but is not satiating). It might mean a bowl of brown rice is going to be as filling as 3 bowls of white rice, and this would effect weight control because you’re consuming less calories in general.
I also just read that eating day old rice is healthier than freshly cooked rice somehow, because the act of cooling cooked rice changes it, and decreases the amount of starch your body can absorb, and so it doesn’t raise your blood sugar as much. And I know for a fact that many Taiwanese do consume day old rice, because mom will cook enough rice for a few days, and leave it in the fridge to microwave tomorrow.
It also appears (if this is true) that 7-11 lunchboxes is healthier than fresh lunchboxes, because 7-11 rice will have been cooked then cooled before you bought it.
In that very narrow sense, yes, I suppose so, but unless you’re in prison, or washed up and unemployed in some bumfluff village in Mali, I can’t conceive of any scenario where this choice might present itself.
The size of a human stomach means that we simply can’t get all our calories from grains (or potatoes, or cassava, or whatever). A largeish serving of cooked rice - brown or otherwise - would be about 200g. Let’s say you eat that three times a day, and virtually nothing else. Apart from developing an amusing assortment of nutritional deficiencies, you’d also have insufficient energy, because that’s only 600kCal/day.
This is one of the reasons why people who eat ‘low fat’ diets appear to be always stuffing food in their faces; they actually are hungry. It’s also why, in bumfluff villages in Mali, people like adding something oily to their stodge. And it’s also why the USDA recommendations put such heavy emphasis on bread (it has about 2.0kCal/g compared to the 1.x kCal/g of cooked grains and pasta).
Costwise, your 600g of cooked rice would be roughly 250g of uncooked rice (NT$20?). That’s a third of a sensible calorie intake, so, even hypothetically, if you were subsisting on vast platefuls of rice, you’d spend a bare minimum of NT$60 a day. And you’d still need to add some protein, fat and micronutrients if you were planning not to die.
By comparison, I think pork belly is about NT$400/kg; at 5000kcal/kg, it’s twice the price per calorie (a 120g serving costs NT$50, with the same 600kCal energy content as NT$20 worth of rice and a lot of valuable protein). So the question arises: if you can assemble a day’s worth of tasty, nutritious meals for perhaps NT$200/day with a bit of careful thought and planning, exactly what is the point of eating nothing but rice, soy sauce, chicken bungholes, and vitamin pills for NT$100/day? Yes, you’ve saved yourself NT$3000 a month, but you’ve taken away much of the joy of existence; on the bright side, you’ve shortened your life and will therefore suffer less.
I’m not sure of the details of the process, but yes, cooling it apparently results in some of the starch being converted to a less-digestible form. Whether that makes it “healthier”, I wouldn’t like to say.
I occasionally bake sourdough with all purpose flour from Costco. 3 kilos ~ $129 which is 6 giant loaves or 18 pizzaa. Each recipe needs some whole wheat and rye, so I buy the whole unground grains and blend into flour what what I need.
Whole grain flours go rancid so quickly and whole grains last 20 years. Also, you keep the bran when you grind your own.
I’ve noticed the baking stores add odd fillers to their “whole” grain flours sometimes.
Yeah, I also use the same brand but the bread flour, plus some whole wheat and rye flour mixed in. And with yeast rather than sourdough. I made a sourdough starter at some point but never got around to using it (it’s still in a mason jar in the fridge, but I’m reluctant to open it at this point ).
I’ve heard of people milling their own flour and apparently it makes a massive difference to the end product (as well as extending the lifetime of the grains, as mentioned); there’s a gadget called the ‘Wondermill’ that everyone seems to swear by.
Maybe there’s a business idea in there somewhere for @Taiwan_Luthiers .
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