Comments on: No. No they don’t. They really, really, REALLY don’t.

By: ymarsakar

ymarsakar — Fri, 10 Aug 2018 14:43:39 +0000

Have Western genius scientist girls and boys figured out why sugar does that, Aesop? Or has human wisdom hit a bottleneck… once again.

Stuff they do not understand, the Divine Counsel and the starry sky already knew before they were born.

By: GRA

GRA — Fri, 10 Aug 2018 08:14:17 +0000

@ Neo: Now that I actually did like. I’d make sqaghetti squash again. One recipe I was rather disappointed with was squash lasagna. It was good but too watery.

By: neo

neo — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 17:07:20 +0000

GRA:

And spaghetti squash for pasta—the worst.

By: GRA

GRA — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 17:05:36 +0000

Yea, bread is bread. It any substitute is just that – a substitute. Portobello mushrooms can work out better than the rest of the list due to its texture, but 9/10 times I’d choose actual bread. Same thing with cucumbers.

I mean, I’ve tried cauliflower pizza dough and it was alright but I’d never choose it over the real thing.

By: AesopFan

AesopFan — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 00:11:15 +0000

I wouldn’t call any of those a sandwich, but some of the pairings don’t look too bad. For instance, the cucumber roll could be sliced into rounds for snacking, and stuffed bell pepper is an old dish (we used meatloaf).
However, portabello mushrooms go inside the bun; they are too juicy to be the outside.

By: Kate

Kate — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 00:09:27 +0000

Neo, yes, I lived in India for two years, and I saw that they do love sweets. I also wonder about the oils used. In the traditional diet, it was probably ghee (clarified butter). Now, the grocery stores sell lots of processed oils which are likely cheaper. I bought Italian olive oil because at least I could tell what it was.

By: AesopFan

AesopFan — Wed, 08 Aug 2018 23:47:28 +0000

“It’s just that the carbs were very different, ” — Neo
In the West, that would have been full-grain breads, which don’t lend themselves to the problems that processed white-breads do.
All populations introduced to the processed-high-sugar foods-diet develop problems, including the Arctic Inuit, American Indians in most of the north & south, and Europeans themselves (sugar was not largely available until around the 15th or 16th century, although introduced much earlier).

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/history-sugar-food-nobody-needs-everyone-craves/

Yes, sugar is primarily responsible for the huge Atlantic slave trade, along with tobacco, and cotton only much later.
Sweet tooths of the world have so much to answer for!

By: neo

neo — Wed, 08 Aug 2018 18:12:02 +0000

Kate: Traditionally India did not have much diabetes, following a traditional Indian diet (that diet is what I'm referring to). The rise of diabetes in India follow dietary changes,:

A third driver of dietary change is the availability of commercial processed foods. One participant, who lived the largest of the sampled villages, told us, “Thirty years ago, there was only one shop in our village. In that shop, they sold tea, ragi, rice, pulses, some root vegetables, and some supplies. But now, there are many shops, and they sell new foods, like sodas, crisps, and sweets. There is even a bakery! They have cakes, pastries, and northern [i.e., north Indian] sweets like gulab” (Lakshmi, 64). These comments provide evidence that the study region is experiencing similar trends to those seen at the state level, which include increased availability and intake of sugar sweetened beverages, oily snacks, and sugar (Government of India 2012; Praduman Kumar and Dev 2007; Shetty 2002). Increased availability of processed foods is rooted in recent historical political and economic processes, including market liberalization...Participants also claimed that taste preferences of young people are shifting to favor high-fat and high-sugar foods, which Kessler (2007: 44) called “hyperpalatable” (Pingali and Khwaja 2004). One woman told us, “My children refuse to eat ragi. They only want rice dishes and sweets. All the young people are like this” (Chinnthayi, 46).

Also, about half the patients with diabetes 2 in India are under 40. This is an unusually high proportion. My guess is that the Indian population may have some genetic predisposition for developing diabetes under the right circumstances. With the traditional diet, the "right" circumstances did not exist. With the adoption of a high sugar and high refined carbohydrate more-western-type of diet, diabetes 2 has suddenly soared in a place where it was rather rare before. But the diet used to be heavy on carbs, as well. It's just that the carbs were very different, as well as the general amount of calories people were eating.

By: Kate

Kate — Wed, 08 Aug 2018 13:55:06 +0000

I eat low carb, high fat, and no, these are not bread substitutes. I love bread. I don’t want to be fat and pre-diabetic, so I don’t eat it any more. (And no, my cholesterol didn’t go up because of the butter and cream I consume. The reverse. Down forty points.) Lettuce wraps work. The cucumber idea looks good.

India has a very carb-rich diet. India also has a Type 2 diabetes epidemic.

By: RigelDog

RigelDog — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 23:34:24 +0000

Article isn’t about diabetes. As someone who needs to restrict starch and sugar carbs, I could not agree more that these veggies are not good sandwich platforms. The closest IMO is to use lettuce as a “wrap.” If you wrap lettuce around ingredients that would normally be on a sandwich with a lot of lettuce (like a taco, BLT, or burger-with-fixins, then you get a lot of the “experience” of eating that cheeseburger with lettuce and tomato, just no bun. If you put the burger between slices of eggplant, it’s a completely different experience than the typical burger. Right now husband and I are using a limited number of low-carb tortillas as our only true bread substitute. They taste kinda strange and are non-absorbent, but it’s close to tortilla and supposedly very low carb. We have our doubts about the claim of “low carb” so we only have a couple over the course of a the week, if that.