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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31040 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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Are food allergies another aspect of the culture war? I was reading Reddit and a person was feeding 100 people and someone mentioned to make sure you have all the allergies/food restrictions covered. Being honest I’ve never met anyone with a food restriction I can think of except a lot of brown friends who won’t eat sausage but also have no problem with alcohol.

Ancient religions had a lot of restrictions, now Im borrowing this from elsewhere that the rise of food restrictions is just the same thing as ancients banning certain foods as holy acts. I’ve long argued that the culture wars are less of a culture war and more of a religious war and dietary restrictions are just a modern form of Jews and Muslims banning pork/shellfish etc and Catholics not eating meat on fridays. All religions seem to have focuses on eating and sexual rituals.

I know mental illness has far higher rates amongst lefties. My guess is dietary restrictions and food allergies are much higher in lefties and if your not in that religion it’s something you never think of.

It goes back to the Moral foundations theory and the red / blue split.

Red tribe expresses purity through sexual restrictions. Blue tribe expresses purity through dietary restrictions.

So if you're holding an event with a very blue tribe group like climate change policy you are going to have to deal with a massive matrix of dietary restrictions.

Conservatives doing exotic eating plans is definitely a thing these days, but they generally view it as a pure health issue and don't feel that anyone else should have to accommodate them. So they tend to pack their own lunches if it's an issue.

Conservatives doing exotic eating plans is definitely a thing these days, but they generally view it as a pure health issue and don't feel that anyone else should have to accommodate them. So they tend to pack their own lunches if it's an issue.

Anecdotally, quite a few of these people are still evangelists for their diets. I can barely believe how many people who are obviously less fit than me still want to give me advice on how those carbohydrates totally make people fat and sluggish.

There's something to carbs making people sluggish. I had a bad habit of substituting cookies for cooking, and I'd eat like 8 ounces and then feel sleepy, as if I'd drunk a beer. Stopped buying that kind of snack, my self control is not good.

Haha, I feel like this replicates every one of those conversations I've had. Eating a half pound of cookies is absolutely wild to me. Just don't do that! It's obviously bad for you! Just eat one cookie, or maybe two! I realize that in practice people have very different impulses around these sorts of things, so this is a completely useless suggestion, but it seems like the heart of every anti-carb conversation winds up being people going absolutely bonkers on things that I just eat a little bit of and then walk away from. Admittedly, impulse control is a hell of a lot easier with steak and eggs than with a giant pile of fried rice.

Haha, I feel like this replicates every one of those conversations I've had. Eating a half pound of cookies is absolutely wild to me. Just don't do that! It's obviously bad for you! Just eat one cookie, or maybe two!

Cookies are like that. I love cookies, but they completely ignore my satiety centers and hit only the pleasure ones. I used to have some cookies and a piece of candy after a meal, and when I tried to cut down on superfluous carbs, I realized I would feel hungry for something sweet after wolfing down a few cookies, but not after skipping cookies and eating a single chocolate candy.

My wife and I work around this by completely banning having a cookie by yourself in the house. If you want one, you have to get one for the other, too. This means you have both the impulse control of each person as well as making it relatively rare for both people to be craving cookies at the same time, so it's very rare for us to have more than one or two each. I can't think of the last time we've done anything even close to having a whole box in one sitting.

It also helps we don't keep particularly delectable cookies like flavored Oreos in the house at all, anymore.

I just switched to protein bars. I've found a brand that makes organoleptically great bars (with "chocolate" glazing and "caramel" and a blend of non-caloric sweeteners that works for me) and eating one triggers that "had dessert" switch in me.

You want me to spend 25 minutes fixing dinner when I can just down a liter of milk and half a pound of cookies and get back to whatever unnaturally rewarding thing* I was doing with the Skinner box on my desk ?

Ha!

*I feel the meme is correct, if you play a game where, if you do very well you see the message 'target destroyed' flash on the screen, you'll probably enjoy watching videos with that message rather a lot.

Milk is great though! If you insist on literally prep replace the cookies with bread or something, perhaps rye, which is great with milk, and plenty of fruit/veg are edible without cooking. Fixing dinner doesn't need to take time though, throwing some potatoes and meat in an oven and browsing the web for 30min is a lot easier than 30min spent on making a 'real meal'

But still not as easy as lying on the couch, cramming cookies into your mouth until you can't close your lips, and then pouring milk and baileys into your mouth so that the cookies all disintegrate inside your mouth! And then doing that again and again until you pass out.

Admittedly, impulse control is a hell of a lot easier with steak and eggs than with a giant pile of fried rice.

Not necessarily. Someone who might consider an entire American sized large (14" dia) pizza as something for two proper meals but probably consumed as one long meal might be equally undeterred from treating a 40oz porterhouse in the same way.

very fatty 2lb+ pieces of meat are very filling and become actively unappetizing once you've eaten 'enough' in my experience

I'm exactly that sort of pizza eater. On keto, a 14oz steak with some veggies on a mostly empty stomach is plenty. It genuinely feels like a totally different experience with hunger. Like the conversion from hunger to mere appetite just doesn’t happen.

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