This is a good heuristic? I wouldn’t have guessed it, but then I don’t pay a lot of attention to what exactly I eat. Why is this a good idea, do you think? For now I’ll adopt your beliefs, but I’d like more evidence. :)
Ideally, you want food with one ingredient (e.g. “cherries” or “peas” or “olive oil” or “oregano”) and then you assemble it into multi-ingredient food yourself at home (or in the case of the cherries you can eat the one ingredient by itself). If you need to buy multi-ingredient things, then the fewer ingredients they have, the less likely they are to contain weird pseudo-food like coloring agents, the distressingly vague “natural flavors”, more preservatives than you really want in your lunch, etc.
This being a heuristic, not a comprehensive meal plan, it has to be simple and easy, so “fewer than five ingredients” is what I said instead of “avoid the following evil food additives”. I go into a little more detail in this post of Improv Soup, 2a.
Mostly, I simply have no patience for it. Any minute spent on food preparation is a wasted minute I’ll never get back. Even frying an egg is too much trouble for me to bother with, when I could just have a bowl of cold cereal instead. I do like good-tasting food, but not nearly enough to make it myself when I could just grab a slice of cheese or something and continue surfing the Internet instead.
Two years later: This is a good heuristic for cooking!
Edit: it doesn’t always work, especially when trying new atomic ingredients. I’d say stick to things you’ve at least kind of done before if you’re feeding other people.
This is a good heuristic? I wouldn’t have guessed it, but then I don’t pay a lot of attention to what exactly I eat. Why is this a good idea, do you think? For now I’ll adopt your beliefs, but I’d like more evidence. :)
Ideally, you want food with one ingredient (e.g. “cherries” or “peas” or “olive oil” or “oregano”) and then you assemble it into multi-ingredient food yourself at home (or in the case of the cherries you can eat the one ingredient by itself). If you need to buy multi-ingredient things, then the fewer ingredients they have, the less likely they are to contain weird pseudo-food like coloring agents, the distressingly vague “natural flavors”, more preservatives than you really want in your lunch, etc.
This being a heuristic, not a comprehensive meal plan, it has to be simple and easy, so “fewer than five ingredients” is what I said instead of “avoid the following evil food additives”. I go into a little more detail in this post of Improv Soup, 2a.
I absolutely cannot stand cooking. :(
Just um… think of it as deck construction? Get your land balance right and you’ll have an excellent aggro dish.
It sounded like a better suggestion in my head...
Mostly, I simply have no patience for it. Any minute spent on food preparation is a wasted minute I’ll never get back. Even frying an egg is too much trouble for me to bother with, when I could just have a bowl of cold cereal instead. I do like good-tasting food, but not nearly enough to make it myself when I could just grab a slice of cheese or something and continue surfing the Internet instead.
This is a problem I often have myself. I will note that cooking for two ameliorates much of the pain, and cooking with two is even better.
Why not?
Two years later: This is a good heuristic for cooking!
Edit: it doesn’t always work, especially when trying new atomic ingredients. I’d say stick to things you’ve at least kind of done before if you’re feeding other people.