Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Frumple]

... you can let them cool a little, yes. Slicing in half and then eating the halves individually also make things easier, but it's not really necessary. It doesn't actually take very long before it's in non-scalding edible territory if it's not wrapped in tinfoil or whatever.

Fork, though... no. Too much effort, and entirely too inefficient. Just eat the thing, skin and all. Nothing left. Potatoes are finger food. Except the mashed ones, I guess. And they can be too, if you cook 'em right -- there's these awesome little... things... where you sorta' bake the outside so you have the delicious mashed core surrounded by tasty browned containment. Still need to get around to figuring out how to cook 'em, but they're really good. Also impeccable finger food.

E: Though I guess using a fork to section off bits and then spear those is okay. That silly scoop out the center stuff is just... no. I've never actually seen someone manage to eat the entire potato doing that. There's always so much left ;_;

How American culture has convinced people that's the right way to eat a baked potato in the face of it being one of the worst ways to eat a baked potato I will never know. The day I first picked up a baked potato and just ate it was the day I achieved a portion of enlightenment.

[Reelya]

High salt intake is linked to a number of illnesses, including heart disease and stomach cancers. Most people eat way over the recommended intake already, so basically it's not a good idea to create food that's any higher in salt than what we have now. So yeah, we want salt-tolerant crops, but in a way that separates the salty part from the edible part.

[Sirus]

Nah Frump, I still eat the skin. What I do is use a fork to sorta section-out the insides of the potato for ease of spearing (and to allow fixings, if I'm using any, to get maximum coverage), and then when most of the innards are gone I roll the skin up a bit like a burrito and eat it as well. Not a single scrap of potato wasted.

And the "awesome little things" are what I call put-back potatoes. Scrap out the innards, mash em up, put them back into the skin. They're good.

[Frumple]

High salt intake is linked to a number of illnesses, including heart disease and stomach cancers. Most people eat way over the recommended intake already, so basically it's not a good idea to create food that's any higher in salt than what we have now. So yeah, we want salt-tolerant crops, but in a way that separates the salty part from the edible part.

I doubt that's an actual problem in the areas this stuff is initially intended to target. Push comes to shove, just... reduce salt intake elsewhere, not that low sodium is particularly good for us, either. I'd rather see 'em get it working before worrying about stuff that might kill people decades from now (as opposed to starvation and whatnot, which will kill them shortly).

And @Siru, good, good. You're on the right path. If you really want fixin's for finger-food style baked potatoes, chop it in half and the use a knife to cut little irrigation paths into each half, then dribble whatever you're adding into the tiny canals. Inundates the potato with flavor and still lets you forgo the fork.

[Descan]

... Isn't that how you're supposed to eat a baked potato?

[redwallzyl]

salt intake isn't actually a big problem most people eat about the normal level. the fda just sets salt intake to the minimum needed to survive to try to make people lower there intake. the normal healthy level is 3 grams*(of sodium) i think.

*im not good with units of measure so it might be the wrong one.

[Gentlefish]

Heh. I heard recently that our recommended salt intake is actually just as bad for our health as overindulging in salt. The apparent recommended amount should be, like, 2.5 grams a day or so, in terms of sodium.

[Frumple]

... Isn't that how you're supposed to eat a baked potato?

You'd think, but I'm the only one in this area I've actually seen doing that. Usually they just kinda' cut it open -- not in half, just... open -- and kinda' mash up part of the inside and then stick stuff on it. Which leaves most of the potato untouched. And then they spend forever making what amounts to impromptu mashed potatoes inside a potato skin and frumple just gets sad.

Heh. I heard recently that our recommended salt intake is actually just as bad for our health as overindulging in salt. The apparent recommended amount should be, like, 2.5 grams a day or so, in terms of sodium.

Last time I paid attention, undershooting too much is actually somewhat worse than overindulging. Low sodium intake is apparently also pretty damn bad for you.

Know a lot of popular dietary stuff rides aiming for low salt really hard, though. Personally, I just try not to go too wild and... ignore most of that. I might listen to a well practiced dietitian, but recommended everything has fluctuated too damn much in my lifetime to give much of it any particular credence. Maybe another decade or two and some goddamn stability in recommendation, preferably coupled with a decoupling of dietary practices from modern media and advertising, and I'd be more willing to listen.

[Dutchling]

Made me remember this.
Mind you, I never actually read it myself.
But you know, ~relevant~

Also you people, baking entire potatoes...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

D:

[Reelya]

Back to the point, the question I was replying to was basically "why don't we just eat kelp rather than screwing around with salt-tolerant varieties?"

The answer is the same reason we don't drink salt water. It dehydrates you, and you need to consume more fresh water to balance that out. I'm pretty sure the salinity of kelp is very close to that of sea water, which means you need to drink additional fresh water to level out the body flushing the salt out as urine.

So, if we mass produce salty crops then say "just consume more stuff that's not salty along with it" then that defeats the purpose, because the recipients will need to consume additional fresh water to compensate for the salty diet problem. And this will also put more strain on the already meager sewerage systems in those poor countries (people will pee more because of the salt, plus waste much more fresh water flushing the pee away).

So feeding people salty stuff would mostly defeat the purpose of using the salt water for crops in the first place.

[Dutchling]

"Doctors found this one weird trick, deities hate them!"

[Levi]

Salt might not be so bad for you.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/we-only-think-we-know-the-truth-about-salt.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

"Doctors found this one weird trick, deities hate them!"

That is pretty cool!

[miauw62]

I don't actually like potatoes. Here's hoping that they'll invent salt water rice soon
(Seriously though, almost all rice is frigging delicious unless it's prepared abysmally)

[Dutchling]

(Hence me never eating rice)

[Frumple]

I don't actually like potatoes. Here's hoping that they'll invent salt water rice soon
(Seriously though, almost all rice is frigging delicious unless it's prepared abysmally)

Hint: You can combine the two.

Diced or mashed, either work. Stick it in rice, make yummy ricetato dish. Probably wouldn't suggest just shoving a whole potato into a bowl of rice, though.

Mind you, you can shove basically anything normally edible into rice and have it come out pretty well. And the other way around. It's a nice staple. Being able to get it out of salt contaminated ground would also be nice.