In a blind taste test the animal-like protein was preferred over 100% beef burger

OK, I am bowled over by this information. I had thought it was a simple typo, but yeah, this is news to me.

Sorry, @Michele71 , for doubting you!

ETA: I just realised that the above reads like sarcasm. It is absolutely meant to be taken literally

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Only the best people make Soylent Green.

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Yeah, but what do they make it out of?

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Only the best people.

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If someone wanted to be truly pedantic “Authentic” is a moving target, because if one were to really think about it tomatoes are from the Americas so a 100% authentic Italian pasta dish would not include it

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Are we defining Italian as pre-Columbian, then? Considering Italy has only existed since 1861, I don’t see a contradiction between Italy and tomatoes.

I’m being facetious of course, since Italy as a concept existed before the unification. But why does authentic have to mean specifically pre-Columbian exchange?

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Culture, including food, is something that is malleable. A sauce with or without meat, saying one is authentic vs the other not is an argument that i understand but ultimately families all have their own way to making a dish.

As far as pre-columbian exchange or not being authentic it’s not a hill i’m willing to die on. Just saying that it could be argued that dishes with native/local ingredients would be more authentic than those without but obviously that’s not really true in the real world.

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We used to eat at an ex nunnery up in the foothills near where I lived, they used to serve only pre-columbian food, but actually a good amount of that food could probably then be deliniated into foraged, cultivated from natives, and cultivated from seeds imported from other parts of the med/africa, and so on. Also a lot of food that is thought of as authentic today can be traced back to roman times, pecorino romano, mortadella, and many others. Lots of medieval era food too.

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Emulsification happens in all sorts of home cooked dishes: salad dressing and mayonnaise are two obvious examples.

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Yes, of course—making use of normal food ingredients to result in emulsification. But when was the last time any of us cooked at home with a recipe that called for ingredients like carboxymethylcellulose and polysorbate 80?

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I’ve used methyl cellulose as a binder in whipped cream, it helps keep it from weeping. It’s great to stabilize vegan whipped toppings too. If you look at the cuisine known as molecular gastronomy you’ll find a lot of so called industrial processes adapted for the home or restaurant kitchen.

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Emulsification and emulsifying, yes they’re normal parts of cooking, substances added only because they’ll keep your mayonnaise solid for a year are emulsifiers, and that’s the “problem”. They’re not food, like egg, oil and vinegar, they’re something added only recently to dishes, and our gut flora often has issues with it. I’m not saying they’re bad, I’m just pointing out that people who know far more than me about these things suggest further studies.

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I only use organic, ethically sourced polysorbate 80.

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