Thread 15 - TalkLair: “I Can't Lie To You About Your Chances, But... You Have My Sympathies.”

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous thread 14).

Autumn seems to have gone straight into winter. It's cold, wet and windy. In the TalkLair, the hearth is glowing, the walls covered in dubious artwork, books by non-approved authors line the shelves, rugs are down on the floors (and assorted pets curled up on them). The denizens of the lair are a welcoming bunch though, always eager for general chit-chat on all manner of topics.

We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

I wish them both well, @duc748 ... but rather her than me! Mind you, I would have said that at any age.

This morning I did something I consider mad, which was to visit an acupuncturist in the (almost certainly vain) hope that something can be done about an increasingly annoying allergy/intolerance to rapeseed oil. The NHS just shrugs. It was only slightly strange and entirely painless, though I could have done without the "woo" mood-music in the background. I almost fell asleep. Late this afternoon my knee went painfully wonky, which (obviously) I blamed on the acupuncture, although it's far more likely that I twisted it on the step down from our front door. Anyway, it's fine now!

I was told that all seed oils are the devil's work, and that only olive oil, butter and ghee are okay. Though I would assume that the last two are out if you're lactose intolerant (which I'm not).

Anyway, it was an interesting experience. I may or may not repeat it.

Did it work?

Where did they put the needles?

I have absolutely no idea if it worked, as I haven't eaten anything that might trigger it since. The rash on my face has gone down, but that's more likely to be coincidence/time/the power of suggestion.

He's not a multi-stabber, so I had one needle in the left hand side of my left wrist, which started to feel uncomfortable after a few minutes. So I whinged and he took it out and replaced it with one just under my left ankle bone (left leg). That was fine.

Curiously, when I had my last Covid jab about 2 weeks ago the (Polish) pharmacist asked if I had any allergies and I said no and added (joking) "assuming there's no rapeseed oil in the vaccine". This made her laugh but set her off on a rant about seed oils in general. It does seem to be an issue for a very small number of people.

Are you OK with nut oils, @Gonners ? Walnut is a good one for things that don't apply too much heat to it.

And I still love pumpkin seed oil, which I think @bezmills introduced me to, many years ago.

Walnut oil is lovely and I'm a big fan of sesame oil for my attempts at Chinese food.

The seed oils thing is why I switched over to using lard and dripping a decade or so ago. I have no idea whether it's been good for me or bad for me (though the only time I've had to see the GP was when I dislocated and then relocated the bones in my elbow, which wasn't diet-related afaik).

Is olive oil out for you as well @DeanElderberry ? That's the one I mainly use.

No, I use olive oil more than the others because it goes in things, but if I want to fry and need a high temperature I use the animal fats. I've never made ghee - must get round to that some time.

Elderberry, you've got me thinking that the next time we stir fry we should try using lard. Surely that's what would have been used in the days before seed oils became so common.

I also fry even less than I used to because the air 'fryer' is so handy - breakfast rashers etc all get cooked in that nowadays.

Pumpkin seed oil is awesome but kind of hard to find. A big Tesco might have it

I’ve never tried pumpkin seed oil but see it’s available from both Ocado and Abel and Cole. The one from A&C sounds more promising according to the reviews (although Ocado reviews are often batshit). I may add a bottle to my next order.

Lard is not an option for me as a vegetarian. I mostly use olive oil but have assorted other oils in my kitchen including rapeseed (possibly cold pressed but I may be misremembering), avocado and sesame.

I used to buy that 'vegetarian ghee' that you used to get in massive tins, red and yellow? You'd see them round the back of 'Indian' restaurants. It was a scary yellow colour. God knows what it was made from. Haven't seen it in ages. It's a lot cheaper than 'proper' ghee. Ah, Google suggests it's still around

encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/shopping?q=tbn:ANd9GcSTu8UublSy_k1YNb91_7wXDg4GANFxsIA7g0li6hnDWCNnMyiUatSItt-L7NhuovylLL5HQHBoRqw_ybd1pCReoJVVFzmcavR14hFuVHUBvMKf-Auz8aXx

According to this https://www.nutritionadvance.com/what-is-ghee/

'Vegetable ghee, otherwise known by the brand name of Vanaspati, comes from India, and it is a common alternative to ghee.
Unfortunately, this is one of the worst things you can possibly eat.
For one thing, this product is made by partially hydrogenating vegetable oil, so it is full of trans fats.
Trans fats hurt various health markers, including those related to cardiovascular risk.'

I have no idea - these things come and go, but the warnings about sunflower oil in particular have been around for at least 30 years, and seed oils more generally have been regarded as not very safe for the last decade or so. Some new health scare will be along soon.

Obviously I don't keep up with the news as I really hadn't heard any scare stories about seed oils. Maybe Big Seed Oil has a stranglehold on American media.

No surprises there. As the old song went, everything I like is "illegal, immoral, or it makes you fat". And lard is disgusting stuff IMO.

The vegetable ghee looks like melted margarine. I would rather eat dry toast for the rest of my life than eat margarine.

There's always a scare about something. And we are all going to die. Obviously, prefer it wasn't next week, but still... I don't eat any shite. No biscuits, cakes, sweets, puddings, fizzy drinks, etc. Just food. So I don't agonise over saturated fats or owt like that.

The case against seed oils is contested according to the people at Zoe: https://zoe.com/learn/are-seed-oils-bad-for-you (obviously this only applies to those without actual allergies)

Ocado reviews are heavily anti seed oils. Although I get that this is about the industrialised processing of the oils, I do find it especially bizarre in relation to hummus given that the fat in hummus should come entirely from sesame seeds (in the form of tahini). A drizzle of olive oil on top is a good addition but it’s not an actual ingredient in most convincing hummus recipes. Natoora hummuses get good reviews because they use olive oil. In some of the variations the ingredients list a baffling 25% or more of olive oil!

I don't eat shite either. I was brought up that way and my parents actually banned us having sugar when we were quite small. They'd been to a meeting about children's dental health and that weekend we had a bonfire and my dad threw our sweetie box onto the fire. I can still see it in my mind's eye - the box, which was clear plastic with a red, lid flying into the flames.

For a while the sugar ban resulted in all of us kids craving it terribly and we spent our pocket money on all sorts of crap, but it didn't last.

One thing that helped was reading one of Greg Bear's sci-fi novels. In one ('Anvil of Stars'), the Earth had been destroyed and a small number of people were on ark ships, provided by friendly aliens. Their food was somehow manufactured by the ship and was called Fake Matter. I always remembered that term and every time I saw very processed food the term came to mind and put me off buying it.

I work on the principle that a mix of oils is best - they all seem to swing between being superfoods or poison, so I reckon a bit of all and not too much of any is the only way to not be driven mad.

That seems like a very sound approach!

I eat a lot of healthy food and a quite a lot of crap. This is not good. I’m making the bad stuff less bad by mostly limiting myself to only having things like cake and ice cream if I’ve made them myself (unless I’m eating out, which I don’t do much at the moment). This means that the sweet stuff I have isn’t crazily processed and it’s not eaten in quantity because I’m just too lazy to make ice cream on a regular basis. Like many rules this has an exception in the form of a chocolate ginger biscuit with my coffee after dinner. I really need to eat a lot less of everything though!

limiting myself to only having things like cake and ice cream if I’ve made them myself

I tried this, but it was counter productive as I live alone so I’d end up having cake 10 nights in a row.

I love baking but I mostly do it for other people and keep a little bit back if I want to eat some (easier with shortbread than with cakes!). I'd be sorry never to do it again. Maybe I need to start going to church, which judging by my mum's experience, is an unfillable maw for all such things.

I rarely bake these days, because we're not big cake-eaters, but when I do I generally take half of it over to a neighbour's or down the road to the library. The librarians love me.