Unless I’m misunderstanding you, that’s the opposite of what your link seems to recommend.
- Add a variety of foods to your plate. “Instead of eating a big bowl of the same food, give your taste buds variety by adding herbs and spices, different textures from seeds or nuts, and different colored vegetables for toppings like red cabbage and microgreens,” she said.
I do too. Seattle is not known as great pepper growing country, but I have a thriving pepper garden with seranos, fresnos, jalapenos, poblanos, and shoshitos, which are all going off the hook right now. I have plenty of tomatoes and more tomatillos than I can handle, and considerable acreage dedicated to cilantro.
I have oceans of fresh salsa and pico at the moment–just how I like it. I also make fermented sauces (think Tabasco or Siracha, but way better) and the first batch of those this season just came online, with a good number in the pipeline.
If bland food is the key to weight loss…then screw it. I’d rather eat good food. There are some outdoor stairs nearby that I run up and down a few times a week. It isn’t fun, but better than eating bland food.
YYYYYyyyyeeeessssssSS!
And far too few understand the crucial role of tomatillos as the crux mild diplomatic base for turning chilies into the food of the gods!!
USAian spicy culture was highjacked back in the 60s by 13 year old gringo boys of all ages who believed myths about a link between adolescent “development and growth” (ahem) and eating insanely nasty acidic spicy pepper sauces. A superb Mexican style chili sauce readily found in the USA and throughout Mexico is
I never travel to away from North America without it. But far better is to do what syke6 and my dear friend Antonia here in Mexico do and make your own custom cooked blend.
d fb
These GIP and GLP-1 drugs are awesome.
I’ve swung plus minus 60 lbs several times in my life - on willpower going down and lack of willpower going up. The mental toll is heavy.
All the talk around these drugs is about how losing weight helps in diabetes, heart disease, etc. And it’s true in my case. On Ozempic I’m down 40 pounds and still losing. My blood pressure is now normal and my blood work diabetic indicators are now all normal.
However it’s my mental state that has improved the most.
What is true happiness? Lack of worry.
The GIP and GLP-1 drugs are as much a mental benefit drug as a physical benefit drug.
Well, I guess I have to admit that I’m more of the persuasion that “nothing tastes as good as skinny (or, in my case slim and fairly muscular) feels…and, more importantly, looks”. Frivolous, I know, but there you go.
One of the things about taste buds is that they quickly become habituated to intense flavours…especially spicy, salty and sweet…and the food industry capitalizes on this with the manufacture of ultra processed food designed especially to be more-ish. Doing any sort of reverse rehabbing inevitably has regular, “real” food (to quote Denny) tasting bland or boring…usually for far longer than folk are willing to spend to get used to food in its natural state. Nothing wrong with the foodstuffs quoted above, mind…not that I’d be able to eat them myself…but for a good many it means finding unsweetened, unsalted or unspiced food or drinks bland when ithey actually taste the way they’re supposed to.
It isn’t!
Plant eaters like cows and deer eat all day because grass and leaves are low in nutrients and calories and cellulose (fiber) is hard to break down. Carnivores, like snakes, can go days between meals. Humans are omnivores, meaning we eat everything so we are much more adaptable to all kinds of situations and environments. Before the agroindustrial food complex got into high gear we didn’t have snacks every minute of the day. Earlier we had three square meals. Before that, when out for the hunt, we might have had one meal a day. One has to wonder who invented snacking all day, energy drinks, and energy bars.
I started hearing about intermittent fasting but didn’t pay much attention to it. I know I can’t resist hunger pangs when there is something at hand to munch on. Just one more crazy fad. I started to notice that when I went for long walks starting mid morning I would not crave any food until I got back home late in the day. I also noticed that I started to lose the extra pounds I had gained back in Portugal. Supposedly exercise does not lead to weight loss, the logic being that the fat you burn is replaced by denser muscle tissue. What was going on?
The reason exercise leads to weight loss might be because while exercising the body does not have the resources to digest food so it shuts down hunger pangs. Natural intermittent fasting? The problem is that desk jobs don’t consume enough energy so we can get hunger pangs at any time during the day and the agroindustrial food complex is more than happy to come to your aid. Munch, munch, munch and extra calories do what extra calories do, settle down in all the wrong places. BTW, on days I don’t go for walks I feel like it’s lunch time so back to three meals a day.
None of the above means one can eat anything and everything. Known unhealthy foods like sugar and industrial (vegetable) oils should be avoided. High carbohydrate food should be restricted and that includes most highly processed industrial foods. Highly processed includes juices and smoothies the reason being that their carbohydrate content is absorbed much faster than eating the fruit and veggies in their original state causing higher glucose and insulin spikes.
Spices are fine, in fact beneficial. They add all sorts of nutrients and their calorie content is minimal to non-existent based on the tiny amounts used compared to the volume of the main ingredients. Some of my favorites, onions, garlic, parsley, coriander, oregano, turmeric, ginger, paprika, black pepper, caraway seeds, curry, mustard, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and apple cider vinegar.
The Captain
For sure. There are huge swaths of the world where spicy foods are part of the culture. West Africa, parts of the Middle East, India, Malaysia, parts of China, Korea, the Caribbean, Mexico, parts of South America, and so on.
There is no evidence people who live in those parts of the world are more obese or have worse health outcomes because of their diet than in say, England.
These diets were not the creation of the food industry. Instead they evolved over very long periods of time and are examples of successful adaption of humans to their environments. Spicy and fermented foods have known, positive health benefits. That’s why we’re attracted to them.
Cholula has been our favorite for years, decades, now. In fact, the “inventor” and original owner was online back then and I recall a bunch of conversations with him. Apparently it was since sold/licensed to one of the big food companies.
[EDIT: Since the great Cholula shortage of 2020, we try to always keep a spare or two in the pantry, here’s a pic I just snapped]
Bland food doesn’t make you lose weight, :), with bland food you eat to satisfy your hunger. With spicy, salty, sugary food, you eat for the taste and you eat even after you are satiated. Of course you can burn off the extra calories… not everyone does.
Oh! The pantry and walking closet are growing as fast as our dummies.
Speaking of which, USian baby food is the same, with excessive sugar, and deficient in protein. Of course, the organization that did the study is based in Australia, and they are using WHO nutritional standards, so they are clearly both “commie one worlders, who hate America”.
/sarcasm
Big difference for me between salty sugary food and tasty food….
Bring me a traditionally made corn tortilla quesadilla filled with local cheese mixed with burned skinned chili cut into strips!!! That is tasty no sugar neligible salt big nutrition. Now we’re talking FOOD! Yum.
d fb
I made calabacitas a couple days ago.
2 yellow summer squash, onion, garlic, frozen corn carrots green peas (HEB frozen MX veggie soup), EVOO, ACV, salt n pepper, cumin seed, and
(the only 2 non “fresh” ingredients) a can of crushed organic tomatoes, and Costco Hand pulled Rotisserie chicken breast.
All to taste. 
It’s delish!
ralph
I didn’t know about the Cholula shortage. The Sriracha shortage however affected me deeply. Huy Fong got cross-threaded with their jalapeno grower and couldn’t manufacture it at all. That lead to a bunch of knock off brands entering the market. The shortage was so desperate stores were even limiting sales of the knock-off brands. I accidently bought some “one per customer” white swan Sriracha one time, thinking the real stuff was back in stock. Always look for the rooster, is my advice.
Huy Fong eventually got back into business. But one trademark of Huy Fong Sriracha was the bright red color. It even says natural color right on the bottle.
But some of the new stuff is brown! I saw some at a restaurant the other day and was shocked!
I got some at the grocery store recently that was red, but not the red of yesteryear. They have clearly not gotten the jalapeno situation straightened out.
To complicate things even further, the former pepper supplier, Underwood Ranches is making their own Sriracha, with the peppers they presumably aren’t selling to Huy Fong anymore. Even better they have it at Costco, in something resembling consumer sized packaging. I picked up a two pack, and it is pretty good! Definitely different than the original, but still really good.
But the drama prompted me to ferment my own sauces. This is a habanero carrot that I just finished up the other day.
