Welcome to our first discussion thread about Ingredients: The Strange Chemistry of What We Put in Us and on Us by George Zaidan. We’ve got a few weeks of this so there’s still time to grab a copy from Indiebound.
This will be a particular exciting read as Zaidan reached out on Twitter and will be fielding questions from this book club about the book! This is a super cool thing, and we’ll run his answers in the October 10 edition of this. To ask George a question, either put the question in the comments or email them to bookclub@numlock.news and I’ll pick a few good ones.
Here’s some questions to kick us off:
The first section kicks us off talking about the concept of “processed,” the definition of which is a pretty thorny question. One definition, PFI, measures the complexity of an ingredients table, but means that coffee 49 times as complex as a Skittle. Another, the NOVA system, looks at what was done to item, and is increasingly preferred. Going into the book, how did you define “good food” and “bad food”?
In the US, 58 percent of calories come from ultraprocessed food. That’s high, but middle of the pack compared to other rich developed countries. How do you estimate your own diet looks in comparison?
We learned some very valuable lessons about how plants make cyanide to kill those who would otherwise feast upon them, and in general how many plants are delighted to kill us. The first processing humans did to food was to remove poison from it, allowing us to diversify palates. What’s a poisonous food you enjoy?
Preservatives are essential because everything is trying to eat your food before you do. Having read the chapter on the ways we preserve and process food, will you ever look at ants the same way again or were they also kind of ruined for you with that aphid bit?
I have always had a very unscientific way of classifying real food vs utter trash that tastes really good. Basically, does it resemble anything found in nature? Bread, sure. Cheetos, not so much (but mostly because of the color, so white cheddar Cheetos, maybe 🤷♀️) Clearly not a good system. But I found the NOVA system pretty cool. The book is not what I expected at all but I’m learning a lot — And remembering a lot of science I haven’t thought about in years. So it feels like a healthy choice (but still processed?)
I really enjoyed the idea of getting into why processed foods came to be, “removal of cyanide” was not really what I had expected but I ended up really enjoying the path to like why we got to where we are now.
Did anyone else look up some of those diets? Most of them I had never heard of. I had no idea that my eating habits actually fell under a combination of The Dakota Diet, The Four-Star Diet, The Uncle Sam Diet & The Easy-Does-It Diet. With this mix in mind, I'm telling people moving forward that I'm on The Supergroup Diet. As for the rest of the list, the three that sounded the most fun or least the coolest to me was The Martini Diet, The Peanut Butter Diet & The Warrior Diet.
AHBL! The Preface rocked!! Also, have found the Footnotes useful and entertaining (Then again I'm a fan of Infinite Jest, so maybe I have an abnormal liking of Footnotes) In all I'm enjoying the book so far. Special shoutout to the super-cool NASA Ice Cream at the Air & Space Museum (I also had that as a kid) and the name dropping of the movie Snatch (Btw really liked the latest Guy Ritchie film The Gentlemen) "Have I made myself clear, boys?"
While happy to get the confirmation that “natural” doesn’t mean good (or anything at all), I was surprised to find out how many plants are trying to kill us! Perhaps it’s just human arrogance that makes it seem like plants we’ve turned into crops don’t have their own defense systems that could hurt us.
I have always had a very unscientific way of classifying real food vs utter trash that tastes really good. Basically, does it resemble anything found in nature? Bread, sure. Cheetos, not so much (but mostly because of the color, so white cheddar Cheetos, maybe 🤷♀️) Clearly not a good system. But I found the NOVA system pretty cool. The book is not what I expected at all but I’m learning a lot — And remembering a lot of science I haven’t thought about in years. So it feels like a healthy choice (but still processed?)
I really enjoyed the idea of getting into why processed foods came to be, “removal of cyanide” was not really what I had expected but I ended up really enjoying the path to like why we got to where we are now.
Did anyone else look up some of those diets? Most of them I had never heard of. I had no idea that my eating habits actually fell under a combination of The Dakota Diet, The Four-Star Diet, The Uncle Sam Diet & The Easy-Does-It Diet. With this mix in mind, I'm telling people moving forward that I'm on The Supergroup Diet. As for the rest of the list, the three that sounded the most fun or least the coolest to me was The Martini Diet, The Peanut Butter Diet & The Warrior Diet.
AHBL! The Preface rocked!! Also, have found the Footnotes useful and entertaining (Then again I'm a fan of Infinite Jest, so maybe I have an abnormal liking of Footnotes) In all I'm enjoying the book so far. Special shoutout to the super-cool NASA Ice Cream at the Air & Space Museum (I also had that as a kid) and the name dropping of the movie Snatch (Btw really liked the latest Guy Ritchie film The Gentlemen) "Have I made myself clear, boys?"
While happy to get the confirmation that “natural” doesn’t mean good (or anything at all), I was surprised to find out how many plants are trying to kill us! Perhaps it’s just human arrogance that makes it seem like plants we’ve turned into crops don’t have their own defense systems that could hurt us.