Category: Food

Spoon-Fed

The book Spoon-Fed by British physician and writer Tim Spector discusses the diets of people in developed countries. Spoon-Fed puts a great deal of information into a short book. It discusses a number of “myths” about food and nutrition. A myth is a story that many people have learned to believe, but not a scientifically proved factual story. The myths are the foundation of public health rules, dietary recommendations and beliefs about food. The myths are the foundation of public health rules, dietary recommendations and beliefs about food. Spoon-Fed treats eating and digestion as complex biological processes that cannot be explained by instinct, culture, culinary tradition, common sense or known science. It fails to reconcile some inconsistencies.

There is a chapter pointing out that there is no component in the education of medical doctors addressing nutrition, implying that medical doctors, unless they work on the problems, are not experts on nutrition, food and diets. There is a chapter which reviews some of the arguments of The Diet Myth, points out that digestion, and weight gain are individual, and cautions against believing that there are rules that apply to all people and all foods. In The Diet Myth, Dr. Spector explained why weight loss through calorie restriction and exercise is difficult by the data of weight loss in twin studies, and to the science of calories, based on the 1944-1945 Minnesota Starvation Experiment. Like The Diet Myth, Spoon-Fed suggests that food science has not absorbed the presence of an active microbiome in the human digestive tract.

Some chapters talk about how food is collected, processed, and sold.

The chapter on the myths of fish addresses the marketing of fish raised in fish farms, the standards for farmed fish, the marketing of wild fish harvested recklessly, and outright fraud in the way fish is misdescribed in some restaurants.

There are chapters on the myths of avoiding animal fat, reducing calory consumption or exercising to reduce weight, avoiding gluten, avoiding nuts, sports drinks, fruit flavoured drinks, and the quality, safety and convenience of bottled water. Some involve the factors affecting purchasing and processing food, including sports drinks, flavoured water, bottled water, candy, snacks and fast food.

Spoon-fed notes that the food industry, dominated by financial interests, and focussed on reducing foods into packaged commodities, fabricated with processed ingredients, and processed to taste good, package well, and sell. The food industry has convinced people try to make up for “missing” ingredients by taking supplements and seeking following diet fads, to combat obesity by restricting calories and by exercise. This has made the food industry financially successful in selling flavoured junk. Dr. Spector suggests that individuals might eat more vegetables, recommend diversity of diet, endorses Michael Pollan’s advice in his books In Defence of Food (2008) and The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006), and suggests avoiding consuming highly processed foods. He also endorses the public health advocacy of Marion Nestle and others on measures against sugary, artificially sweetened and carbonated beverages and disposable containers.

Other chapters discuss the rise and fall of beliefs about fat, calories, weight loss theories, supplements and diets. These are generally informative. Some chapters invite readers to consider changing what they eat, and are more controversial.

Spoon-Fed favours eating fermented foods because they contain nutrients produced by microorganisms and may contain beneficial and viable microorgamisms (unless the microorganisms have been killed off in the processing). Spoon-Fed favours food with some microflora or microfauna, although Dr. Spector is largely dismissive of the probiotic yogurt and the marketing claims made by the manufacturers of other highly processed food products. He is in favour of consuming fermented foods, including saurkraut and kimchi on the basis that fermentation can introduce health probiotic microorganisms. His views on probiotics may be more controversial than he implies. Fermented food with microorganisms is prepared in salted water (brine) as opposed to pickled in acidic vinegar. It is therefore salty.

Dr. Spector states that public health measures involving salt have not prevented the wide use of salt in food processing. The food industries have increased the consumption of salt, while concealing the amount of salt in processed food. He refers to studies suggesting that studies have failed to demonstrate adverse effects of high sodium levels in food on health. He explains that industrialized countries favour treating people with high blood pressure with medication to reducing salt use. He disagrees with the low sodium approach of the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet, without a discussion of the issue.

Spoon-Fed refers to the modern NOVA food classification system suggested by Carlos Monteiro, with his team at the Center for Epidemiological Research in Nutrition and Health at the University,of São Paulo, Brazil in the journal Public Health Nutrition in the 2009 paper, “Nutrition and health. The issue is not food, nor nutrients, so much as processing”, and agrees with some reservations.

Spoon-Fed carefully precise in supporting restrictions on alcohol consumption, while defending moderate alcohol consumption.

While it is dismissive of diet fads, it tends to be speculative about the benefits of some foods. It dismisses some public health information based on poor sampling and other statistical errors, and appears to encourage disrespect for all public health recommendations.

The Diet Myth

The title of Tim Spector’s 2015 book The Diet Myth refers to one “myth”. The book begans with an Introduction that discusses the author’s midlife health crisis when his blood pressure rose suddenly, and present an overview of his research into the modern diet. The Introduction identifies the problems of deciding “what is good or bad for us in our diets” and several misconceptions about food that impair discussion of food and diet, and sensible decisions by consumers. In his later book Spoon-Fed, he discusses many other misconceptions or myths about food science, appetite, differences between individual metabolism, diet and health.

The Diet Myth‘s first chapter introduces discusses some of the gut microbiota (part of the human microbiome) that process food consumed by humans by breaking it down, releasing nutrients that the human gut absorbs and metabolizes. In reviewing Dr. Spector’s, 2020 book Spoon-Fed, the English writer Bee Wilson said it contains an overview of many medical and scientific studies of genetics, microbiology, biochemistry and food:

The book’s main argument is that to find the best way of eating we need to ignore much of what we are told. … Spoon-Fed is a worthy successor to Spector’s earlier bestselling book, The Diet Myth, which focused on the powerful role that the microbes in our guts play in determining our health. This new book is broader, but he manages to distil a huge amount of research into a clear and practical summary that leaves you with knowledge that will actually help you decide what to add to your next grocery shop.

Bee Wilson, the Guardian, August 5, 2020, review of Spoon-Fed

The Diet Myth suggests that

  • food science and popular writing has not absorbed the fact of the presence of an active microbiome in the human digestive tract,
  • the importance of a healthy and diverse gut microbiome,
  • the overuse of antibiotics and other medical errors that have harmed humans by affecting their microbiome,
  • medical and cultural practices that have contributed to the increasing incidence of food allergies. The book suggests that food science and popular writing has been inattentive to genetic variations of humans as affecting metabolism and interactions with food and microorganism.

The remaining 18 chapters discuss the topics addressed by the “Food Facts” labels used to disclose information about food: calories, fats, nutrients, and warnings, with reference to genetics and the microbiome.

The science of calories is based on the 1944-1945 Minnesota Starvation Experiment. Calorie-based thinking suggests that diets aimed at reducing weight or “curing” obesity should reduce the intake of calories. This has evolved into a proliferation of diet advice: avoiding all fats (or bad fats), avoiding carbohydrates. eating “paleo”, eating protein, eating “Mediterannean”, not eating cheese or nuts. The food industry dominated by corporate interests, is focussed on reducing foods into packaged commodities, processed to taste good, package well and sell. The food industry reduces food to “ingredients”. People try to make up for “missing” ingredients by taking supplements.

The book discussed the scientific “discovery” of “vitamins” with a brief reference to the illness known as beri-beri, caused by thiamine (vitaman B1) deficiency. One of the principal causes where the food supply is primarily “white” (milled or polished) rice is processing the rice:

Beriberi was known for millennia in Asia, but was not described by a European until the 17th century when Brontius in the Dutch East Indies reported the progressive sensorimotor polyneuropathy. The prevalence of beriberi increased greatly in Asia with a change in the milling process for rice in the late 19th century. In the 1880s, Takaki demonstrated the benefits of dietary modification in sailors, and later instituted dietary reforms in the Japanese Navy, which largely eradicated beriberi from the Japanese Navy by 1887. In 1889 Eijkman in Java serendipitously identified dietary factors as a major contributor to “chicken polyneuritis,” which he took to be an animal model for beriberi; the polyneuritis could be cured or prevented by feeding the chickens either unpolished rice or rice polishings. By 1901, Grijns, while continuing studies of beriberi in Java, suggested a dietary deficiency explanation for beriberi after systematically eliminating deficiencies of known dietary components and excluding a toxic effect.

….

By the 1950s synthetic forms of the vitamin were produced cheaply, allowing both therapeutic administration and prevention with food enrichment.

Abstract of Douglas J. Lanska “Historical aspects of the major neurological vitamin deficency disorders …” in Volume 95 of Handbook Clinical Neurology, Elsevier (2009), ScienceDirect portal.

The use of polished rice was culturally and economically embedded – it was easier to cook and digest, and conserved the fuel needed to cook rice. This problem was not an exclusively pre-modern or Asian problem American and European scientists criticized the use of bleached white wheat flour to bake bread and other cereal products. The public policy response was to require that white flour be “enriched” with nutrients. The book also mentions studies demonstrating that agricultural products harvested in modern times contain less nutrients than the products harvested several decades earlier. The book does not refer to studies about the causes and consequences of this fact. One consequence is that vitamin products are marketed as necessary to supplement foods available to consumers in markets – and that supplements have become a huge industry

The idea of enrichming some processed food is embedded in public health policy, and supplements are embedded in culture. The book touches the issues with criticism of the scientific and industrial idea of “reducing” food to a mixture of ingredients, and with criticism of fad diets. Food science in the 19th century and the 20th century failed to addressed dangerous unknowns, and failed to warn against risky agricultural and food processing practices. Science is now not exploring the known unknowns, and public policy remains uninformed. This area can be developed further – although it was beyond the scope of Dr. Spector’s book.

The Diet Myth

  • suggests that food science, as discussed in the popular media, has been static,
  • suggests that individuals might eat more vegetables,
  • recommends diversity of diet and expressly and implcitly endorsies Michael Pollan’s advice to “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants” and much of what Michael Pollan wrote in his books In Defence of Food (2008) and The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006), and
  • suggests avoiding consuming processed foods,

The Diet Myth does not refer to the NOVA food classification system suggested by Carlos Monteiro, with his team at the Center for Epidemiological Research in Nutrition and Health at the University of São Paulo, Brazil in the 2009 paper “Nutrition and health. The issue is not food, nor nutrients, so much as processing” in the journal Public Health Nutrition. The NOVA system classifies many foods as ultra-processed.

Bread, Pizza & Salt

Pizza is a leavened flatbread, usually leavened with yeast. Like other bread, it is made with salt. A pizza made from scratch at a restaurant or at home can have more salt, processed cheese and processed meats than a person should eat.

Making pizza dough is similiar to making bread. A pizza crust can be made with flour, water, salt and yeast, and a little sugar or olive oil to enrich the dough. The dough will be a dough ball which will ferment (“rise”) and be flattened for baking. A dough ball to make a 10 inch thin crust pizza will be small, and have to be tenacious to stand up to rolling into a thin crust.

A pizza can be baked in a home oven, although no home ovens achieve the temperatures and conditions of the ovens used in restaurants.

Mark Bittman’s pizza dough recipe involves flour, water, salt, instant yeast and olive oil. His recipe uses 2 tsp. (11.4 grams) of salt, 1 cup of water (237 g.) & 3 cups of flour (408 g.) (B% hydration 58%). This recipe calls for 11.4 grams of salt in 650 g. of wet dough. The calculation of sodium per serving is not straightforward. 11.4 g of salt contains 4.56 g. of sodium (= 4,560 mg.) 650 g. of wet dough makes enough crust for 3 or 4 servings. Each serving would have 1,110 to 1,500 mg. of sodium. The RDA is 2,000 mg.

Mark Bittman recommends mixing and kneading in a food processor, which takes about half a minute, with some extra pulses. In a stand mixer, a yeasted dough can be mixed and kneaded in less than 10 minutes. He recommends letting it rise at room temperature, or more slowly in a refrigerator, before dividing, shaping a dough ball, wrapping and freezing. He suggests using a frozen ball within about a month.

Peter Reinhart has dough recipes in his pizza book, American Pie. His recipes use 1¾ cups of water (415 g.) & 5 cups of flour (680 g.) (B% hydration 61%) His recipes call for stand mixer or hand kneading – not in a food processor. He favours cold fermentation in a refrigerator. He says his doughs can be divided, shaped as dough balls, wrapped and frozen for up to 3 months.

Peter Reinhart, in American Pie, has a recipe to make 4 x 10 inch pre-baked crusts that can be kept frozen for 3 months. These are not thin crust pizzas.

Beth Hensperger has pizza dough recipes in The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook for doughs for 2 x 12 inch thin crust pizzas, or 1 x 14 inch deep dish pizza. A pizza cannot be baked in a bread machine; bread machines mix and knead dough in a Dough program or cycle. Her basic recipe calls for US All purpose flour which is has less gluten than Bread flour (or Canadian All purpose flour) and makes a less tenacious dough. This is a recipe for a chewy regular or deep crust.

RecipeFlour (Volume)Flour (US oz.)Flour g.Water (Vol.)Water g.B%Salt g.Instant yeast g.
Basic3.5 cups 16.625 4711.33 cups31567%8.6 (1.5 tsp.)5.6 (2 tsp.)

A home cook can mix dough, divide it into balls and refrigerate or freeze dough balls for future use. A recipe that uses 3 cups of flour will make enough dough for a large pizza or 2 smaller pizzas, or 4 small or thin pizzas.

Some grocery stores sell pizza dough balls. These are warmed or thawed, shaped, topped and baked at home. The Holy Napoli brand distributed by a firm in Port Coquitlam is available in local stores, occasionally. The dough ball is 300 g., and contains 1.3 g. sodium, 72% of the RDA. Salt is crystallized sodium chloride, not pure sodium. A recipe for 300 g. of wet dough will, normally, require 3.3 g. salt (a little more than half a teaspoon of table salt). The other ingredients are flour, water and yeast. I am not sure how to compare frozen dough to wet dough at room temperature. 300 g. of wet dough is a little less than 200 g. (1.5 cups) of flour and a letter more than 100 g. (less than half a cup) of water. That seems to be a normal ratio of salt to flour, consistent with other dough recipes.

Any of the dough recipes above would have to be adjusted to reduce sodium. for users with hypertension or salt sensitivity, or concerned to limit consumption of sodium. A pre-mixed dough, or course, cannot be adjusted. A pizza made from scatch can be heathier than a frozen, pre-made pizza, or pizza made with pre-mixed dough.

Frozen pizza is a dressed pizza on a partially baked crust. It is kept frozen and is baked in an oven in about 15-20 minutes in a 400-425 degree (F) oven to finish the crust and heat the pizza to serving temperature. Frozen pizzas are easily heated and baked. They are not healthier than other pizzas. A short survey of some 10 inch (25 cm.) frozen pizzas in the freezer cases of local grocery stores follows. For some of these pizzas, the calories, sodium and other food facts label ingredients are stated for a 1/4 pizza serving. The numbers here are for the whole pizza. The processed frozen pizzas are not more salty than some pizza dough recipes, but that is not saying much. I include the % of USDA RDA (which is 2,300 mg.):

BrandLineStyleCrustToppingSpecialtyMassCaloriesSodium
Dr. OetkerRistoranteThin CrustplainMargherita330 g.8401260 mg., 55% RDA
Dr. OetkerRistoranteThin CrustplainSpinach390 g.9101420 mg., 62% RDA
Dr. OetkerRistoranteThin CrustplainVegetable385 g.7601560 mg., 64% RDA
Dr. OetkerGood Baker
Feel-Good		Multigrain
Stonebaked
Spinach &
Pumpkin Seeds		Vegan350 g.720 g.1340 mg., 58% RDA

Much of the sodium found in the industrially processed frozen pizza is in the dough. On industrially processed frozen pizza, the processed cheese is abundant, and salty. They contain wheat flour unless the product is a gluten free fake pizza. There is soy bean oil, and there are mystery additives. These products are convenient, but not particularly tasty.

Zambri’s, a restaurant in Victoria sells a proprietary “Pantry” line of frozen restaurant dishes, including pizza. The pizzas are not labelled with retail nutrition/food facts labels. The pizza are larger, thicker and heavier than those above – about 580-600 g.

Some stores have Pillsbury pizza dough in a tube. The ingredient lists indicate that the dough has been mixed to bake to some thing like a frozen pizza. The oil is soy oil, and there are mystery additives.

The Way We Eat Now

The Way We Eat Now, a 2019 book by British writer Bee Wilson discusses paradoxes of food in the modern world: the success of farmers in growing enough food to feed the world, the inequalities of access to food, and the prevalence of unhealthy eating. Ms. Wilson does not identify herself as a chef, biologist, ecomomist or food scientist. She approaches food as a consumer, cook, parent and journalist.

The book suggests that individuals might spend more time cooking and eat more vegetables, apparently endorsing Michael Pollan’s advice to “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants” and much of what Michael Pollan wrote in his books In Defence of Food (2008) and The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006). The book makes a stronger argument about the problems of modern food.

The prevalance of unhealthy food was discussed in this excerpt or digest from the book:

What we eat now is a greater cause of disease and death in the world than either tobacco or alcohol. In 2015 around 7 million people died from tobacco smoke, and 2.75 million from causes related to alcohol, but 12m deaths could be attributed to “dietary risks” such as diets low in vegetables, nuts and seafood or diets high in processed meats and sugary drinks. This is paradoxical and sad, because good food – good in every sense, from flavour to nutrition – used to be the test by which we judged the quality of life. A good life without good food should be a logical impossibility.

….

Almost every country in the world has experienced radical changes to its patterns of eating over the past five, 10 and 50 years. For a long time, nutritionists have held up the “Mediterranean diet” as a healthy model for people in all countries to follow. But recent reports from the World Health Organisation suggest that even in Spain, Italy and Crete, most children no longer eat anything like a “Mediterranean diet” rich in olive oil and fish and tomatoes. These Mediterranean children, who are, as of 2017, among the most overweight in Europe, now drink sugary colas and eat packaged snack foods and have lost the taste for fish and olive oil. In every continent, there has been a common set of changes from savoury foods to sweet ones, from meals to snacks, dinners cooked at home to meals eaten out, or takeaways.

….

For most people across the world, life is getting better but diets are getting worse. This is the bittersweet dilemma of eating in our times. Unhealthy food, eaten in a hurry, seems to be the price we pay for living in liberated modern societies.

Bee Wilson, March 16, 2019, Good Enough to Eat, the Guardian

The author appears to agree that Green Revolution succeeded in breeding growing plants that put calories in mouths, but observes that agriculture failed to add to the quality of diet of most humans. She appears to agree with the United Nations’ Committee on World Food Security that food security means that “all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life”, and that the Green Revolution did not provide humans with food security. She does not attempt to explain how the Green Revolution changed the way that food is purchased by food processing companies and sold in markets of the world or discuss the issue in terms of agricultural economics.

The Way We Eat Now refers to the NOVA food classification system suggested by Carlos Monteiro, with his team at the Center for Epidemiological Research in Nutrition and Health at the University of São Paulo, Brazil in the 2009 paper “Nutrition and health. The issue is not food, nor nutrients, so much as processing” in the journal Public Health Nutrition. The NOVA system classifies many foods as ultra-processed.

In a 2015 article, Ms. Wilson discussed her thoughts on the way food is discussed:

It’s easy to be negative about this: much easier to criticise the overweight two thirds of the country than observe the smaller proportion who are in, well, proportion. “What they should be telling us,” she insists, “is that one third of the population, assuming they are not anorexic, bulimic or compulsive exercisers, have positive eating habits which means that eating well is a pleasurable thing.” We’ve become moralistic about food and size, waging war with words. “It’s not ‘naughty’ or ‘virtuous’. It’s food,” Bee fumes. “Painting chocolate as naughty and salad as virtuous just enforces the dualism in which salad is unpleasant and sweet things, frankly, sound like way more fun.”

Changing the lingo is just one part of the battle; changing attitudes is the objective. A good starting point, Bee suggests, is to remind ourselves that as omnivores, eating has long been a complex thing. “We don’t have an instinct that tells us what to eat,” she says. “We have to educate ourselves. It’s not a moral thing. It’s a skill we learn.” When people say it’s easy to lose weight—move more and eat less—it is not just insensitive, but patronising. “It’s not about intelligence. It’s about education.”

In Scandinavia they’ve tried diet interventions at various ages: using cooking workshops and meal planning, they’ve introduced both young and old to new tastes. Projects carried out in Finland proved that children’s tastebuds can be broadened considerably, and in Sweden even 70-year-olds were taught to like vegetables eventually. “It’s not hopeless at any age.” On the other hand, she reminds me “there are plenty of highly intelligent people who haven’t worked out how to stop when they’re full.”

Clare Finney, June 29, 2015, “It’s not ‘naughty’. It’s not ‘virtuous’. It’s food.” in the Market Life section of online magazine of the Southwark Borough Market, archived at the Wayback Machine

Ms. Wilson critiicizes sweetened soft drinks – ultra-processed compounds of water, dissolved sweetener, and flavourings. The majority are sweetened with sugar. The brain registers that the liquid quenches thirst, but does not register that the person has consumed enough sugars to provide energy for hours of activity. In the absence of activity, the body converts the glucose to fat. She also says:

The occasional bowl of instant ramen noodles or frosted cereal is no cause for panic. But when ultra-processed foods start to form the bulk of what whole populations eat on any given day, we are in new and disturbing territory for human nutrition. More than half of the calorie intake in the US – 57.9% – now consists of ultra-processed food, and the UK is not far behind, with a diet that is around 50.4% ultra-processed. The fastest growing ingredient in global diets is not sugar, as I’d always presumed, but refined vegetable oils such as soybean oil, which are a common ingredient in many fast and processed foods, and which have added more calories to what we eat over the past 50 years than any other food group, by a wide margin.

Bee Wilson, March 16, 2019, Good Enough to Eat, the Guardian

Ms. Wilson criticizes fad diets including food promoted by the inventors and supporters of “clean eating”, meal replacement fluids and powders (e.g. Soylent, Huel,). She thinks many energy bars and gels are largely candy snacks (ultra-processed), dressed up as special foods with benefits for some people (e.g. athletes competing in endurance sports). Her view of protein bars is similiar. She discusses the growth of prepared food – whether prepared in haute cuisine restraurants or fast food shops. The food is appealing and plentiful but not nutritious.

She also refers to psychological issues influencing how humans make decisions about buying and consuming food.

Cooking has been socially deprecated. Cooking skills and home economics are not part of the education of children. Nutritious foods are hard to identify, inconvenient, or not available in grocery stores. At the same time ultra processed food is cheap, convenient, strongly flavoured and available anywhere in the world. The book supports the campaigns to regulate the marketing and sale of soft drinks (e.g. the campaigns discussed in the writing of Marion Nestle). In part, this reinforces comments of Michael Moss, the author of Salt Sugar, Fat (2013) about modern food, poor public health policy and advice on diet, the biases and failures of so-called food science in America, calories and obesity.

Another of Ms. Wilson’s criticisms of the food supply and processing industries is that they buy and sell ony a few varietals of several fruits and vegetables, usually based on durability, size and availability in bulk rather than nutrition or taste. The Cavendish banana is ubiquitous, often used to sweeten ultra-processed grain “breakfast”cereals. It is not a nutritious fruit. Some vegetables – e.g. most winter squashes (or all squashes) – are water in a plant fibre shell, and are not palatable. She discusses the efforts of Dan Barber to breed a better tasting squash, which have been covered in articles including Tom Philpott’s Squash Is a Mediocre Vegetable. It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way in Mother Jones in 2018.

In part, Ms. Wilson describes the the world food markets as a giant mess that cannot be solved without political action affecting farmers, processers and consumers:

A smart and effective food policy would seek to create an environment in which a love of healthy food was easier to adopt, and it would also reduce the barriers to people actually buying and eating that food. None of this looks easy at present, but nor is such change impossible. If the transformations we are living through now teach us anything, it is that humans are capable of altering almost everything about our eating in a single generation.

Bee Wilson, March 16, 2019, Good Enough to Eat, the Guardian

The goal of creating an environment of a love of healthy food is vague, and involves changing the role and power of food companies in the markets of the world and altering the present climate of respecting the perceived preference of consumers for fast food which can be harvested, processed and brought to market with the least expense to producers and processers.

Much of this book discusses ideas first discussed in Ms. Wilson’s column in the Daily Telegraph, interviews with other writers, and articles in publications such as the Guardian. Her material at the Guardian is indexed under her profile.

Curry in England

The London Review of Books (“LRB”) published “Too Specific and Too Vague“, a review by the English culinary writer Bee Wilson of two recent books that refer to the ways that Asian cooking encountered English tastes in England in the 20th century. One book is about the work of 7 women presenting immigrant dishes in British and American restaurants and cook books. The other was about the history of the English word curry. The article appears to be accessible, LRB has had a paywall. I am not sure if the paywall is taken off selected articles, or has been removed, or if a bypass plugin is necessary.

The story is complicated and nuanced. English adventurers encountered Indian cooking as early as the 16th century. Manufactured curry powders – blends of ground dry spices -became popular in the 19th century. The English labelled several other spicy dishes encountered in Asia as curry. In the 20th century, immigrants to Britain cooked and sold spicy food. The English liked the food. The English found it simpler to call anything made by immigrants from India, Pakistan, Bangla Desh and other parts of Southeast Asia “curry”. English lexicographers concluded that the English decided that anything like anything cooked with manufactured condiment curry powder was curry. As the history of the term involved English colonialism and empire, and the reaction of the English to South Asians immigrants, the lexicographers’ decision was controversial.

Ms. Wilson mentioned Madhur Jaffrey, an Asian immigrant writer:

As a teenager, I started cooking from Madhur Jaffrey’s books and saw with a jolt that, for Indian cooks, hearing British people declaring they loved curry could come across as a crass postcolonial misrepresentation. Jaffrey arrived in London from Delhi in 1955 to study at Rada, and taught herself to cook using her mother’s recipes because she disliked English food (except fish and chips). In England, Indian food was thought to be anything sprinkled with curry powder …

‘To me the word “curry” is as degrading to India’s great cuisine as the term “chop suey” was to China’s,’ Jaffrey wrote in An Invitation to Indian Cooking (1973). ‘“Curry” is just a vague, inaccurate word which the world has picked up from the British, who, in turn, got it mistakenly from us … If “curry” is an oversimplified name for an ancient cuisine, then “curry powder” attempts to oversimplify (and destroy) the cuisine itself.’

….

For all its flaws, we seem to be stuck with the word because there are many occasions when there is no satisfactory synonym in the English language. Look at what a hash the OED [Oxford English Dictionary] makes of trying to pin it down. Curry, it says, is ‘a preparation of meat, fish, fruit or vegetables, cooked with a quantity of bruised spices and turmeric, and used as a relish or flavouring, esp. for dishes composed of or served with rice. Hence, a curry = a dish or stew (of rice, meat, etc) flavoured with this preparation (or with curry powder).’ This definition is both far too specific and too vague.

….

Some of the curry deniers have softened their stance. … in the years since Jaffrey’s diatribe against curry in 1973, she has written a series of curry-themed books including Curry Easy, Curry Easy Vegetarian, 100 Essential Curries, 100 Weeknight Curries, Madhur Jaffrey’s Ultimate Curry Bible and Madhur Jaffrey’s Curry Nation. Presumably, this was partly a way of luring as many readers as possible by seeming to offer something familiar. In Madhur Jaffrey’s Curry Nation she wrote: ‘If Britain once colonised India, India has now returned the favour by watching spellbound as its food completely colonised Britain.’ That book was dedicated to Britain, ‘the Curry Nation that welcomed me all those many years ago’.

Last week I found a recipe in the American writer Anupy Singla’s Indian Slow Cooker for a dish titled “Chickpea Flour Yogurt Curry” which explained that this curry is a kadhi, a northern dish made with dairy and chickpea flour. I used the slow cooker recipe, (that book had options for full size crockpots and 3.5 quart pots), in a 6 quart Instant Pot, in a slow cooker program. I used buttermilk for the dairy, intead of yogurt. See Anupy Singla’s online Instant Pot recipe for a pressure cooker/multicooker method of cooking this dish. Ms. Singla also describes stir fried vegetable – e.g. Aloo Gobi – by the word sabji.

Breadboxes

Most bread is made of grain that has been harvested and milled, to be hydrated, kneaded, and baked. Agricultural, industrial and culinary art have extended the usefulness of grain, but have not created a product to compare to the lembas bread of the elves in The Lord of the Rings. Bread is edible and palatable for a few days.

Bread is … an intermediate-moisture food product that is prone to mould spoilage. Normally bread is eaten fresh or preserved using additives or modified atmosphere packaging.

Stanley P. Cauvain, Breadmaking, 2nd ed. 2012

There are some breads that are baked hard and last longer – crackers and hardtack. Commercial bakers use additives and packaging – plastic – to extend the period of time that ordinary soft bread remains safe and palatable; there are some uses for stale bread.

Bread is porous and moist; it is vulnerable to mould (mold in the American spelling). Moulds reproduce by releasing microscopic spores. There are hundreds or thousands of spores in every cubic meter of household air. Most household filtration devices do not trap or control these spores. Mould spores will get on bread. Not all moulds thrive on bread, but several do. A mould, like a mushroom, has a mycelium of thread-like “roots”. Mould has health effects. Many moulds produce toxins. The antibiotic penicillin was derived from a common mould, that is popularly said to have been a bread mould. That is not a reason to eat mouldy bread.

Breadboxes are a convenient way of storing bread, and largely effective at protecting bread from most household animal and insect pests. Most people have a storage system for bread. Some kitchens have bread drawers in counters and cabinets. Modern breadboxes are often vented or have loose doors and lids or some mechanism to allow air flow that lets bread dry a bit – which delays mould, although it exposes the bread to some risks. Packaging can keep loaves from drying out for a few days. A consumer can combine a ventilated bread box with paper or bread bags or other wrapping. Many modern breadboxes use plastic or silicon seals to maintain the bread in an airtight chamber. This retains moisure and creates a humid storage space for bread. This delays bread drying out, and protects against some pests. This kind of box needs to be washed and disinfected regularly.

Refrigeration does not delay drying and staling. Some moulds grow in/on refrigerated foods. Some people use the refrigerator to store sandwich breads. Bread can be frozen and thawed. There is the practice, said to popular among the Dutch, of freezing and thawing bread.

Home bakers, bread machine bakers and internet advice sites have suggestions on inhibiting mould:

I have tried storage options:

  • Vented breadboxes;
  • A Tupperware 23 cup (5.5 liter) plastic box with a hinged sealed lid. It is large enough to hold large (2 lb.) bread machine loaves. It seems to be airtight. Bread picks up mould spores which grow into mould on anything in the box, even crumbs. After a week or so it starts to become a petrie dish;
  • Metal tins with lids. Old cookie tins are too small, I have a manufacturer’s container for potato chips as sold in the 1950s and early 1960s. My mother had a few, used to store flour, rolled oats and sugar. This can hold a loaf or two. It may not do well with humid contents – I don’t want to see if the interior metal rusts, or find out what rust does for bread.

There are plastic food storage boxes on the market that will hold a loaf of bread. These keep a loaf from drying out, but are humid. These. like my Tupperware, have to be regularly washed to remove crumbs and prevent mould. I don’t want a new ceramic bread storage container, an accessory suggested on some sites, or another airtight container.

My answer is a ventilated bread box, with some packaging, in a clean kitchen. Housework, more housework.

Chiles and Chillies

Chile (Chili) Peppers

The chile is the fruit of a plant in the genus capsicum, cultivars of capsicum annuum, a South American plant that travelled to Mexico before the common era. The plant grew in Mexico, Central America, and northern South America and was introduced to Europe and Asia in the 16th century in the Columbian “exchange”. It is used in cuisine that is considered, in modern terms, to be traditional or indigenous to those areas.

Fresh and dried capsicum cultivars were used in the indigenous cooking of Mexico and Central America for centuries before the Spanish conquest. Mexican cooking uses chiles in moles and other sauces, chiles rellenos (chiles stuffed with a filling and cooked), and other dishes.

Most cultivars produce the alkaloid capsaicin. Most capsicums, including jalapenos, serranos, cayennes and Thai (Bird’s Eye) peppers are “hot”; new spicier cultivars have been developed. Capsaicin is an irritant which makes some peppers “red hot”. Capsaicin is not found in the seeds; little is found in the flesh of the capsicum fruit. It is in the white pith of the seed pod and the ribs of the fruit. The 1912 Scoville scale, based on detection of the diluted substance by tasters, is still used to assess the concentration of capsaicin although chemical analysis has superceded the 1912 method.

Many sources write chile for the capsicum fruit, and chili for stews made with chile. The English speaking inhabitants of South Asia (India) and Southeast Asia spelled the name as chillies. That spelling is still used.

Sweet or bell peppers are chiles. The bell pepper cultivar was developed in Europe early in 20th century and is widely grown and sold. The gene for production of capsaicin is recessive – bell peppers are not “hot” or spicy. Banana peppers and pimentos are mild too. Mild chiles add a sweet fruity flavour.

In pre-industrial practice, chiles could be used fresh, or dried. In the 18th and 19th centuries, processsors established methods of grinding dried chiles and storing and using chile powders and sauces made from dried chiles or chile powder. Ground spice powders made food safer and food preparation in kitchens more efficient. Powders of ground single cultivar chiles – e.g. ancho (dried ripe poblano) are available in some markets in the 21st century. In Mexican traditional cooking, a cook needed a supply of fresh or dried chiles, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and Mexican oregano (as opposed to the Mediterranean Origanum vulgare).

Black, green and white peppercorns are the fruit of the Asian piper negrum. The East Asian Sichuan pepper is neither capsicum or piper.

Allergies to bell peppers and other capsicum chiles are common, yet not well known or understood by the public. Many websites offer or share advice based on theories, some of which are or appear medical. The medical foundation of such theories is that allergies are immune responses to toxic glyco-alkaloids, or other alkaloids or proteins that may contact the skin or internal organs of humans. The theories blame substances in capsicum plants or in related plants in the nightshade family.

Con Carne

Chile con carne is a popular American stew:

Chili con carne (also spelled chilli con carne or chile con carne and shortened to chili or chilli; … meaning “chili with meat”, is a spicy stew containing chili peppers (sometimes in the form of chili powder), meat (usually beef), tomatoes and optionally kidney beans. Other seasonings may include garlic, onions, and cumin. The dish originated in northern Mexico or southern Texas.

Wikipedia (November 2021) Chili con carne

Amercan Chili is based on meat. Pork and beef are traditional choices. The meat can be ground or cut to bit sized stewing pieces. There are recipes with other meats. It is customary to brown the meat to flavour the dish. Some make chili without beans. Many use beans. The beans used in chili (pinto, black turtle, red kidney, cranberry) are the dry seeds of cultivars or varietals of the central American wild bean, phaseolus vulgaris. The beans dry naturally and are harvested as a dry grain. The dry beans are hard and have to be cooked until they are tender and “creamy”. Dry beans can vary by age and other factors, making cooking times a matter of judgment or luck. Beans can be booked in boiling water or simmered in water near the boiling point. The slow cooker was developed to simmer beans, but is losing popularity.

Meat cooked in a chile sauce – carne con chile – is/was a north Mexican dish. Rick Bayless has established restaurants offering Mexican cooking, as an advance on American regional cooking, including “Tex-Mex” Western and Southwestern cooking. Bayless provided a recipe for carne con chile colorado from the state of Chihuahua in his first book, Authentic Mexican (1987). He has chile con carne on the menu in Frontera, a restraurant chain, and has published a version of the Frontera Uptown Texas Chili. By mentioning the question about whether chili con carne was invented in Texas and ny publishing the following comment he suggested that chili con carne is not an authentic Mexican dish.

Chile con carne: detestable food that under the false Mexican title is sold in the United States from Texas to New York

Rick Bayless, in Authentic Mexican (1987), quoting and translating Diccionario de Mejicanismos

Carne con chile was adopted by non Hispanic/indigenous consumers in the southwest US as American settlers migrated into the land annexed by the US from Mexico in the wars of annexation in the 1840s. It can be prepared and presented in thousands of way. It is often served with cornbread, a baked “cake” associated with the Southern states of the US. A “Tamale pie” is chili with a cornbread topping, baked in an oven.

In the early 20th century, food scientists at the New Mexico State University recovered “heritage” peppers from indigenous peoples and started the lines of New Mexico cultivars of capsicum annuum for agricultural use.

Proprietary chili powder spice blends and sauces became popular in the late 19th century. A few brand names endured; the idea of a blended powder became dominant in the American market. The chile in chili con carne is usually a blend of powdered dried chile with other dried ground spices including cumin, oregano (often not Mexican oregano), garlic powder, onion powder and coriander In modern (late 20th and 21st century) chili competitions, cooks may use multiple branded chili powders and sauces to get a unique and pleasing effect.

The origins and authenticity of chile con carne are, on the internet, a vast cavern. There are many web pages and videos of methods, recipes, festivals and competitions. In modern times it is a stew of meat and other ingredients in a tomato sauce flavour by onion, aromatics and spices including chile.

For several years I made stews, including chili, in a slow cooker with a ceramic insert (a crockpot). I used the methods suggested by cookbooks including the America’s Test Kitchen book Slow Cooker Revolution (2011). The ATK approach was to use canned beans, drained of the can fluid, which is not appealing and assumed to be unpalatable, Considering the use of salt in canning, salty broth is normally a health concern. I have been using an Instant Pot to prepare or cook beans for the last few years, and have given up using a crockpot.

Potassium

I had been taking prescribed hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ) 12.5 mg per day, a diuretic – to control (reduce) blood pressure, since 2011. It was not effective to counteract edema, a side effect of another medication. It has side effects that interfere with digestion and absorbing potassium. I was hospitalized for 2 days in June 2021 as a result of falling. Someone on the hospital team thought I had a potassium deficiency (this was not suggested to have been a cause of the accident). Someone changed my medications to eliminate the diuretic, and prescibed a potassium supplement, for the days I was in hospital. This 2 day intervention did not affect my blood pressure, as far as I was told.

Potassium is an element; the chemical symbol is K. It is measured in milligrams (1/1000 of a gram, abbreviated as mg.) in nutrition. It is an electrolyte, and can also be called a mineral or a nutrient. The US Department of Health, National Institute of Health (NIH), Office of Dietary Supplements, publishes an online Fact sheet for Health Professionals which recommends an adult male person weighing about 80 kg. should consume 3,400 milligrams of potassium per day. The fact sheet, which has been varied 2018-2021, lists some foods high in potassium. The putative source data is found in the US Department of Agriculture’s database, available onlinein 2021 by an application program interface called FoodData Central. The database includes

  • SR (Standard Reference) data, in the USDA “National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Legacy (2018)”;
  • Branded data about foods presented as branded commodities “generated by industry through a public-private partnership” with LabelInsight, a data firm.

The data is not easy to search. A food source may be spelled differently than expected – moong beans may be moong or mung (the latter is a more popular version of spelling in on product packages in the USA). Many dry beans are listed both raw and cooked (boiled), but not all.

The information in the NIH fact sheet generally aligns to the database, but do not always align on product or serving,. The fact sheet seems confused on how much a consumer will consume as a serving. The NIH fact sheet does not list all the foods high in potassium. I transposed some foods from the fact sheet in a table below, and interpolated some foods – mainly legumes – not in the fact sheet. Comments on the fact sheet, the list, and the table:

  • A calorie is a unit of heat. Literally, food scientists burned food to see how much energy the food contained;
  • The Calorie on a food package is 1,000 times larger than the calorie used in chemistry and physics. A Calorie is a kilocalorie (kcal,), the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water 1 degree Celsius.(), abbreviated mg.
FoodAmountSizeK (mg)Mass (g)Water (g)CaloriesTotal carbs (g)Starch (g)Sugars (g)lipids
(fat) g.		protein (g)
Dried apricots½ cup11018024.71935042.7
Cooked lentils1 cup73119813823039.817.9
Boiled mature
White beans: Navy, Great Northern
Cannellini		1 cup100017911324944.9.617.4
Boiled mature
black turtle beans		1 cup80118512224045.1.615.1
Boiled mature
red kidney beans		1 cup71317711822540.4.615.1
Boiled mature Cranberry
(Roman) beans		1 cup68517711424143.316.5
Wheat bran1 cup684585.712537.4.29.1
Boiled mature chickpeas:
Garbanzo, Bengal gram		1 cup47716498.726944.97.914.5
Boiled mung beans1 cup457185
Raisins1/2 cup6188012.42395752
Potato, baked, flesh1medium61015611814533.72.73.1
Cauliflower, raw1 headmedium176058854414729.211.211.3
Eggplant1medium125054850613732.219.35.4
Banana1med. 7
to 7⅞ “		4221208810526.96.314.41.3
1% milk*1 cup36624622110612.712.2
Spinach, raw2 cups3346054.813.82.1.21.7
Tomato, raw1medium292
Apple, with skin 1medium195
Cashews1 oz.18728.41.51578.66.71.712.45.2
Brown rice, cooked1 cuplong grain17420214224851.750.1.55.5
Brown rice, cooked1 cupmed. grain15419514221845.84.5
Sources: Fact sheet for Health Professionals and Food Data Central. In Food Data Central, a food may be listed as “Foundation”. “Legacy” or “Survey”.

*The mg. K number for 1% milk. The fact sheet says 366 mg; the database says 391 mg.

The NIH fact sheet states 1 cup of cooked lentils contains 731 mg K. It aligns with lentils cooked by boiling in water, without salt, in the database. This is a large “serving”. 1 cup of dry lentils braised in 2 cups of water yields what consumers would regard as 4 servings. The USDA data search returns on specific lentils and legumes in the branded product data are incomplete. Some show raw red lentils as containing significant potassium. US and Canadian farmers have been growing mainly large green and brown lentils. Red lentils are split, hulled, brown lentils. But hulled whole brown lentils are red or pink in appearance and marketed by farmers and distributors as red lentils. Brown lentils became scarce in grocery stores near me during the Covid-19 pandemic; red lentils (hulled split brown lentils) remained plentiful. French green lentils and black lentils are available some times in some stores.

Dried apricots and raisins, and banana and apples contains sugars, which are metabolized differently than the carbohydrates in vegetables including legumes such as beans and lentils. Sugar metabolizes into body fat if the body does not need the energy within hours of consumption. Some of the foods listed as high in K provide a rationale for eating high sugar fruits and dried fruits.

Spinach is bulky when raw but wilts. Folding a few cups of chopped raw spinach into a hot dish is easy and fast.

I have recipes for Aloo Palak (potato/spinach stir fry), Aloo Gobi (potato/cauliflower stir fry), Aloo Baingain (potato/eggplant stir fry), braised lentils with spinach, dal (split hulled moong beans) with spinach and other dishes. The potato/vegetable recipes, like lentils, will make several servings but are high in potassium. The grocery stores have been able to provide potatoes, spinach, cauliflower, eggplants and several kind of dry lentils and beans in 2020 and 2021.

A cup of wheat bran has 684 mg. of K. I have recipes for a dozen bran muffins made with 1.5 cups of bran and a half cup of raisins has 1642 mg. of K. 1 muffin has 137 mg. of K.

Recipe error – Potatoes

The recipe book is Anupi Singla’s Indian for Everyone, published in 2014 by the Surrey Books imprint of Agate Publishing; also a quality paperback 2016, and an ebook in the Amazon Kindle store.

The problem in the recipes for Aloo Mattar at p. 95, Panak Aloo at p. 97, and Aloo Gobi at p. 98, in the printed editions, is the cooking time for the potatoes (aloo). In these recipes, the raw chopped potatoes are added to lightly fried onions and spices and stir fried for a couple of minutes and then cooked on low after other vegetables are added, for about 20 minutes. These are all sabji or stir fried dishes, in this author’s presentation. The result was crunchy and barely cooked potatoes.

The author prefers to use peeled Russet potatoes. Russets is the collective term of a few cultivars, including Idaho – the brown, thick skinned starchy potatoes chosen as baking potatoes and potatoes for deep frying as “French fries. This does not explain the outcome.

The error is a missed or unstated step. The missing step adds to the time to prepare this meal, and involves additional vessels and resources – another pot on the stove or an Instant Pot or other pressure cooker to cook or parcook the potatoes. Madhur Jaffrey has similiar vegetable stir fry recipes for potatoes in At Home with Madhur Jaffrrey but she has boiled the potatoes before using them.

It is not necessary to cook the potatoes until they crumble, but the potatoes need some cooking time before putting them a stir fry.

The technique to cook potatoes on in a vessel on a stove is to scrub the potatoes and cut out eyes and other visible surface defects,cover the potatoes in water, bring the pot to a boil and simmer. Thick skinned starchy potatoes should be better peeled. Peeling thinner skinned potatoes (i.e. white or yellow or many varieties of red) is a matter of taste and purpose. Salting the cooking water is an option. The cooking time depends on the kind of potatoes and size of the pieces. Baby waxy potatoes may take less than 15 minutes. Small potatoes and quarters of medium and larger potatoes may take 20-25 minutes.

The cooking time for potatoes at high pressure (11-12 psi; ie. at 242-244 degrees F.) in an Instant Pot or other electric pressure multi-cooker is 8 minutes. To parcook, I use 3 minutes on high or 4-5 minutes on low. I use a bain marie method – the potatoes in a ceramic vessel on a rack in the pressure pot. (There is water in the pressure pot of course, put the potatoes are cooked by steam water that being boiled in water). For pressure cookers, some fluid is needed but it is not necessary to cover the potatoes; the potatoes can be kept out of the fluid by using a rack or steamer basket, or a bain marie vessel. The cooking time (on high) and release method vary:

PotatoFluid (per JN)Time | release
Stovetop 15 psi		Electric or Instant Pot 12 psi
JNLPLP
Whole large or medium.5-1 cup10-14 min. | Natural 10-13 min. | Either13-15 min. | Either
Quarters
Large chunks		.25-.5 cups
More fluid for mashed		4-5 min. | Manual5 min. | Either8 min. | Either
Small whole.5 cups8-10 min. | Natural5 min. | Either7 min. | Either
Baby, fingerling.25-.5 cups1-2 min. | Manual5 min. | Natural8 min. | Natural
Sliced or diced.25-.5 cups3 min. | Manual
Jill Nussinow, Vegan Under Pressure; Laura Pazzaglia, Hip Pressure Cooking

It is possible to add a little water and leave the dish simmering and steaming for an extra hour. This works with peas (Aloo Mattar) but less well with cauliflower.

(Instant Pot) Dry Beans

Table of Contents

Endless

This post was published in 2021, with some later editing and further thoughts after more experience.

Cooked or Canned

Cooked dry beans are a staple ingredient. Some recipes provide directions for cooking dry beans as a step in a recipe, or by reference to another recipe for cooked beans in the recipe source/collection. Some recipes call for canned beans, rinsed. This is common in slow cooker recipes. Canned bean are dry beans cooked in the canning process. Dry beans may take twice the cooking time as other ingredients, or may not cook properly. Canned beans have cooking fluid in the can. This may contain sodium and other residual ingredients. It may be unpalatable. The extra fluid may affect the recipe. Most recipes recommend rinsing the beans and discarding the fluid.

Cooked beans can be substituted for canned beans in any recipe. The benefits are not paying for factory cooking and other supplier and seller costs built into in the price of canned goods, and avoidance of salt and additives. The cooking fluid can be used in the recipe or set aside and used as a vegetarian stock – it depends on how it tastes.

1/2 cup of dry beans makes 1 1/2 cups of cooked beans, the amount in one 14 fluid ounce can of canned cooked beans. Precision is generally not necessary:

For recipes requiring precise proportions, you should always cook … the dried beans before you measure them, using the average equivalents as a rough guide to estimate the amount of dried beans you need to prepare. Many bean recipes are fairly forgiving and adjustable.

The Spruce Eats – How to Measure and Use Dried Beans

Also, the Reluctant Gourmet – Bean Conversions

Soaking

Soaking before cooking starts hydration. It reduces the cooking time and improves the result. This is true for every cooking method except the extremely slow simmering e.g. in a ceramic olla as Rick Bayliss describes in some of his books on Central American and Mexican cooking. Soaking for at least a few hours prepares dry beans. The common advice is to soak overnight. This may mean 12 hours but can mean over 20 hours. Cook’s Illustrated/American’s Test Kitchen explained its tests on soaking at pp. 256-258 of The Science of Good Cooking (2012).

Some phaseolus vulgaris (Central American beans) varietals take up more water than others. For instance cannellini (white kidney beans) absorb more than pinto peas or black turtle bean.

Cook’s Illustrated/American’s Test Kitchen discusses variations on soaking: soaking in water at ambient (room) temperature, quick-soaking cook dry beans for a short time in boiling water or in a pressure cooker. The “quick-soak” or parcooking methods use any appliance and vessel that can hold dry beans in boiling water. Anupy Singla’s slow cooker recipe (The Indian Slow Cooker) for red kidney beans says quick soak in boiling water, and 5 hours on high in an electric crock pot type slow cooker. Laura Pazzaglia discusses soaking methods and times in her article/lesson Long-soaking and Quick-soaking beans in the Pressure Cooker and soaking for pressure cookers (including Instant Pots) in her article/lesson Pressure Cooking DRY versus SOAKED Beans.

Cook’s Illustrated/American’s Test Kitchen also explains soaking in brine, and/or adding baking soda to the cooking water. These use sodium to some degree. I have not tried them, as I avoid sodium. Those publishing brands tend to aim at an audience of home cooks striving to cook like restaurants, most of which use salt heavily for the taste buds of modern consumers, sensitized to highly salted foods.

The claim that soaking dry beans removes “indigestable sugars” and helps to avoid intestinal gas is common but unverified. Beans contain sugars: stachyose, verbascose and raffinose which ferment in the digestive tract, producing gas. There is support for the claim that soaking removes some sugars in some medical and scientific literature. For instance see this Michigan State University extension publication. However, soaking cannot remove sugars without removing other nutrients and flavour ingredients, and probably does not remove much sugar.

Instant Pot options

The pressure cooker program can cook unsoaked dry beans. It can be used to “quick soak” dry beans.

The pressure cooker program or the slow cooker program can be used, of cousse to cook soaked beans.

Medium and Large Phaseolus & Chickpeas

Rick Bayless’s slow cooker recipes for black (turtle) beans and pinto beans in Mexican Everyday (2006) start with unsoaked dry beans, to emulate cooking in an olla, discussed in his Authentic Mexican (1987), and Mexico, One Plate at a Time (2000). In Mexico, One Plate at a Time (at p. 192) he reported cooking in an olla heated the beans and water to 205-210 degrees (F), with little evaporation. He says 6 hours on the high setting in a slow cooker. In an Instant Pot with the slow cooker program this is 6 hours on the high slow cooker using the the sealing lid, with the pressure valve set to vent. Other traditional slow cooker recipe propose 8-10 hours slow cooker low for unsoaked black, pinto, cranberry (i.e. medium Phaseolus). I cooked small recipes in a small round traditional slow cooker on low in lower times.

Chickpeas and the large dry beans such as red kidney, Borlotti, cannellini, cranberry can be slow cooked in an Instant Pot by a three stage process:

  1. a few hours by the natural method of soaking in water at room temperature – the beans will take up some water and swell;
  2. in the Instant Pot, with enough water to cover the beans by a centimeter, a pressure cooker program “quick soak” (two minutes at high pressure, and a manual release); and
  3. top up the water to cover the beans, and 2-4 hours at slow cooker program, high. If I have time, I keep the beans simmering at slow cooker program medium (which is equivalent to traditional crock pot low) for 3-6 hours. The beans can be kept warm as slow cooker program low, or the warming program.

This works in a six quart Instant Pot with one or two cups of dry beans in the bottom of the Instant Pot in less than a quart of water.

The larger phaseolus varieties are not necessarily the hardest. This method worked with seda beans, with extra time, but the beans were old.