Culinary, Health, Popular Culture, Science And Society

Popcorn At The Movies

14 Comments

A history.

But here’s a question for paleo types. Yes, I know it’s a grain, and grains are bad, but it’s probably the least processed grain we eat. How bad is it, relatively?

Hmmmmm… [googling]

There seems to be a consensus that it’s definitely not paleo. But some say there are worse things if you’re going to cheat. I saw this one horror story, but I think that’s more a problem of the crap they put on it in the theater than the corn itself. I always pop it in butter, and put butter on it, but there are a lot of recommendations for coconut oil instead..

There are a lot of warnings (appropriately, I think) about the microwaved variety. I have to say, that I hadn’t realized how many paleos are anti-GMO. I think that’s taking it beyond eating healthy, and turning it into a religion.

14 thoughts on “Popcorn At The Movies”

  2. But here’s a question for paleo types. Yes, I know it’s a grain, and grains are bad, but it’s probably the least processed grain we eat. How bad is it, relatively?

    Corn is from the neolithic (when agriculture and animal husbandry were developed) so it cannot be considered paleolithic eating. What you should be able to eat however are things like pine nuts, walnuts, carrots, and chestnuts which an hunter-gatherer would eat if he had those around. Those even raw foodies, or whatever they are call themselves now, would call safe foods. More debatable are things like almonds which were domesticated in the neolithic and cannot be consumed raw because of toxic products which are removed upon roasting. Same thing applies to all major complex carbohydrates be it wheat, corn, rice, potatoes, oats, or whatever you want to label here. Those may need milling, roasting, leavening, polishing, cooking, etc. It is considered there may be less body tolerance to those products since they were introduced to the human diet relatively recently when appropriate processing methods were developed to be able to eat them more or less safely. Same thing applies to beans and animal milk. More neolithic products.

    In my opinion this will all be rendered irrelevant once we start screen to people for allergies better and determine which kind of foods they can eat safely or not. I don’t follow these diets anymore but they are a good guideline for things which may be a problem. Not everyone suffers from the same allergies. Quite often things are just plain toxic because no one has a digestive system which can handle them yet. Otherwise we would all be eating cheap cellulose like termites do.

    If you are that interested in corn you probably should look at sweet corn rather than field corn since it only requires cooking and not roasting prior to eating. That suggests to me that it probably has less toxic content. but only a bona fide nutritionist/biochemist would know for sure and there are plenty of nutritionists out there which are just plain quacks and have little knowledge of science or even history for that matter. Goods places to get info are the USDA or the FAO nutrition databases. But even those only list the basic nutrients in foods, not the nasty stuff.

    1. Well, I was really referring specifically to popcorn, which at least has a lot of fiber in it. Modern varieties of sweet corn are actually edible, and even palatable, raw, though it tastes better when cooked. But I tend to restrict myself to half an ear with a meal, when I eat it.

      I remember as a kid in Michigan, though, when we’d have corn roasts in the fall (twenty years for a buck), and my uncle would eat a dozen ears (I never understood why they called it “sweet” corn, because it never tasted that sweet to me, and was much less so than the modern ones, but I guess it was just relative to field corn, which was considered fit only for animal feed). But my uncle died relatively young (late sixties) from an aortal aneurysm.

      1. There are a lot of theories about the causes of vascular diseases and quite frankly most of them are probably just a load of bull. However back in the mid XXth century people still used lard for cooking and things like that. Today people will probably use olive oil for the same purposes. People back then ate margarine because butter was too expensive, at one time margarine was even considered a health food, just proves the power of advertising.

        This has probably nothing to do with vascular diseases but every time I see a bottle of Sunny Delight next to the frozen orange juice aisle I feel sick just looking at it. Misleading advertising at its best.

        The only data point I have for longevity is my grandmother. She is in her late 90s. She seldom eats exactly the same thing every day. What she does eat is either fish or white meat (chicken, turkey) plus plenty of vegetable soup. Not exactly my cup of tea but at least for her it seems to work.

        1. I think the science on vascular disease has gotten a lot more solid; see Peter Attia’s The Eating Academy (http://www.eatingacademy.com) and review his series on cholesterol. Attia is a MD with a master’s in aerospace engineering (!!), and definitely knows what he is talking about. He is also cofounder of the Nutrition Science Institute (with Gary Taubes), whose mission is to do the experiments that need to be done to clear up the relationships between diet and disease.

      2. If you are concerned about the aneurysms it is probably a good idea to occasionally take small amounts of aspirin in order to unclog the pipes. To increase the strength of the vascular vessels themselves however I have little idea of which foods are best. Hunter gatherers usually ate the organs of prey. This means they ate a lot of organ meat which people would scoff at today. I can speak personally on that. I had some heart muscle issues some years back and I felt a lot better after eating heart of ox. It needs to be cleaned a lot prior to cooking and its not to everyones taste. But for me at that time it did the trick.

  3. A good way to make popcorn in the microwave:
    – Pour some popcorn in a brown paper lunch bag, just enough for a single layer on the bottom.
    – Hit the popcorn button on your microwave.
    – Wait.
    – Season to taste.

  4. Speaking of coconuts, I sometimes make ranch dressing by mixing Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing mix with coconut milk instead of mayonnaise or sour cream. I highly recommend it and most people couldn’t even figure out what’s different.

  6. Do they still make those hot-air popcorn poppers? That’d seem like a healthier way to make the stuff: you ‘d have control of how much oil/fat/ranch dressing/whatever you’re adding to flavor it, instead of adding (say) butter on top of the oil you popped it in.

    1. My roommate in college had a hot-air popper. The other methods usually retain the moisture in the popped kernels, but this one doesn’t because it blows hot air. The popcorn was so very, very dry, salt wouldn’t even stick to it. It was inedible as far as I am concerned.

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