# Ideas to make bitter greens more palatable



## paka (Jan 22, 2018)

Hello,

I'm wondering how people, more so in traditional cuisines, cook their super bitter vegetables. For a while now, I've tended to cook indian food and pretty much only that. There are numerous greens more bitter than what's typically eaten now in any modernized cuisines and restaurants such as methi (fenugreek), bitter gourd/melon, gongura (hibiscus), and daikon radish leaves as well as non-Indian such as dandelion, red dandelion (chicory), daikon radish leaves, etc. as well as more bitter ones used in traditional cuisines such as lamb's quarters, amaranth, stinging nettle, etc. Any mixed veg I make tends to be a majority of bitter greens with roots/tubers and fruits (eggplant, capsicum, sometimes okra, ) in lesser quanitities along with garlic, onion, herbs and spices.

I've found that including sweet, and perhaps acid (just makes it taste better anyway) seems to be the only option. More traditional cuisines tend to do more than roast or sauté but mix numerous herbs and spices into some sauce, curry, soup or stew. I think those cuisines  any from the tropics and temporate climates, as well as those part of the spice routes such as North Africa  would have the best ideas though I haven't looked into many except Indian. I eat little meat, and don't really cook with it, so am looking for plant, herb, and spice combinations. Mixing with sweeter roots such as carrot, sweet potato, and yam works well. Sometimes I use crushed date and maybe fruit works the best. One that I like though is a bit hard to find even at Indian markets is dried black nightshade berries. I think in Persian cuisine there's a particular dried fruit though I've never tried it and am not sure if it's more acidic than sweet. I'd prefer not to use blanch or rub with salt as many do as I think that removes nutrients.


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## Nemo (Jan 22, 2018)

Done well, sweet and acid tastes will compliment bitterness but salt will balance it. Didn't believe it until I tried it on some of our cucumber surplus. A small grind of salt took away almost all of the cucumbers bitterness.
Edit: Which nutrients are you concerned about losing by salting?


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## paka (Jan 22, 2018)

Indeed it seems some combo of sweet, acid, and salt works best. Sometimes I might only consume half a teaspoon of salt in a meal, which happens to be one dish, a stew or something, and maybe when I use less, or use more bitter roots like burdock, I notice the difference.

It's a good question what nutrients am I concerned about with salting. Calcium oxalate levels are much higher in traditional and wild greens. I'm not sure what is the upper limit but there are plants with ~20-30x more than spinach, up to ~10-15x more in the fairly easily found ethnic greens. That might be bound to fiber and perhaps not lost in salting. Bitter gourd is among the more bitter common South, East, and South-East Asian foods, in the cucurbitaceae family along with cucumber and likely other wild more bitter members. It's common to salt, or in Chinese food combine it with I think pork and fermented black (soy?)beans. Unsure how Filipinos prepare it. It could be some other substance I'm unaware of. It's said to be beneficial for diabetes in countries that use it. Another fairly bitter ingredient I use often is uncured olives; I think what's said to be beneficial in olive oil is higher in fresh olives, and people tend to but not always cure them because of the strong taste. If you can find uncured fresh oof the tree olives, try 'em out. By itself, it leaves a lasting astringency. Love it. So I'd guess there's numerous bitter substances (tannins, ?) that I'm unaware of but try to keep. I don't know of any truly traditional home-cooking cookbooks except the rare ethnic ones that might include only a few recipes. Those I'd be curious about.

A small/medium dice might help too, allowing some bitter substances to leech into the water or sauce so the bitterness is more evently distributed.

So I'm unsure of what other options are there among sweet and acid. Dried fruits I don't know of but can be found at some ethnic market I've never looked for, vinegar, tamarand, coconut  every cuisine in the world, except maybe those that live where it's too cold, once or still uses wild and semi-wild greens , there's gotta be more.


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## daveb (Jan 22, 2018)

Feed the greens to a pig. Eat the pig. Not bitter at all:groucho:


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## panda (Jan 23, 2018)

cook it in duck and/or pork fat


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## Nemo (Jan 23, 2018)

panda said:


> cook it in duck and/or pork fat


Or butter &#128513;


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## chinacats (Jan 23, 2018)

Get rid of every bit of stem. Add fat, acid and salt...and plenty of onions and garlic...


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## boomchakabowwow (Jan 23, 2018)

no clue.

one of my favorite veggies is Bitter Melon. but i grew up on it. that is very bitter..boy, i hope that means it's awesome for me.


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## paka (Jan 23, 2018)

It's rare that I don't use garlic, onion, and tomato. Looking at filipino recipes for bitter melon, that's typical plus sometimes or often meat. Same for Indian. I'm not looking to reduce bitterness of the ingredient itself, I leave stems as I think that means certain nutrients, and I don't typically cook with animal products  once used and still enjoy ghee and butter but don't regularly use it , so the only option is perhaps various fruits used in traditional cuisines. As it seems all cookbooks, at least the ones I can find in English, cater to modern tastes and what's available at the typical non-ethnic and modern market, it's really hard to find ingredients and recipes from home cooking, traditional, rural, and village cuisine as they existed centuries ago. Sometime, I'll have to go to every ethnic market I can find, note all possible ingredients, and look 'em up.

I don't really often try new dishes and have little interest. I prefer finding new ingredients I've never heard of, such as wild plants, and then figuring out how to combine them, usually following older ways. Among the things I'm mindful of each time I cook is Brillat-Savarin:



> Gastronomy is the intelligent knowledge of whatever concerns mans nourishment.
> 
> Its purpose is to watch over his conservation by suggesting the best possible sustenance for him.


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## Keith Sinclair (Feb 10, 2018)

Garlic, onions, ginger, and Pork. The acid in vine ripe tomatoes goes good with bitter melon. Chinese, Okinawans, Filipinos cook it with pork good flavor combination.


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## MarcelNL (Feb 11, 2018)

in my endevour for good espresso I've learned that bittter is offset by acidity, you can try too, add some f.e. drops of angosturabitters in a glass of water and taste, then add some lemon juice in small amounts. You'll notice that there is a sweet spot where it's neither really sour nor really bitter.

You could have a look in the 'flavor bible', to see what flavors compliment bitter. I however tend to follow what local cuisine does with a specific veggie, these people have struggled with it for many years and usually found the right solutions.


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## paka (Feb 23, 2018)

Indeed I use some kind of acid regularly. It is hard finding a wide variety of recipes that list less commonly known ingredients paired with greens. I sometimes find bitter melon recipes but rarely ones with wild amaranth, dandelion, lamb's quarters, stinging nettle, etc. Most cookbooks are adapted to outside audiences so it's difficult to find new ingredients. Some common pairings are vinegar, tamarind, coconut, black nightshade berries, .. I found mention of a Indian Goan spice related to sichuan peppercorn though I'm sure there's much more. Encyclopedic type books of cuisines that make heavy use of spices too are difficult to find.


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## Keith Sinclair (Feb 24, 2018)

Sounds like you are experimenting & will make tasty food.


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## LifeByA1000Cuts (Feb 24, 2018)

Also, don't underestimate the role of starchy ingredients here - it works in pasta with pesto (which is full of bitter things), it works in yam woon sen, it works in salads that have croutons added or are eaten alongside fries...

BTW, if you want to experiment with a few really bitter but somehow still interesting ingredients: Bitter melons. Neem buds. If you can make a dish with these in palatable, you can do anything when it comes to constructively using bitterness


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## paka (Feb 24, 2018)

Yes I cook with bitter melon somewhat often, leaves when I can find them. I wish I could get neem, sticks too for traditional Indian tooth cleaning. My username comes from Sanskrit, pakashastra. There are shastras for dharma, artha, and kama though paka (translated as kitchen or cooking?) I'm not sure though there is a Tamil cookbook named Hindu pakashastra.

Traditionally, there's many greens used in Indian cooking more bitter than bitter melon. Some of these might be more bitter, some not as much: leaves of black nightshade, black mustard, wild amaranth, neem, lotus, jute, sorrel, gotu kola, calamus, velvet leaf, gourds like bitter melon, ginger, figs, asparagus, willow, etc. The ayurvedic texts mention many greens that seem to have been mostly forgotten, though they likely still grow wild in India and elsewhere.

What I typically make is very similar to a sambar rice (sambar sadam, bisibelebath) except using more traditional ingredients like mixed grains, red rice, barley, mung dal, etc. and in my vegetable mix I tend to focus on greens more than it seems currently typical.

The mentioned books by Karen Page  The Flavor Bible, The Vegetarian Flavor Bible, and her newer Kitchen Creativity , are very helpful. There's other works like The Cook's Book of Intense Flavors, The Flavor Thesaurus, The Art of Flavor, Salt Fat Acid Heat, and various books devoted to spices. For acid, I'd like to try other ingredients besides tamarind and amchur. Sumac, plus some indian relative, are related to amchur; it seems that could work. Fat as mentioned indeed helps a lot too such as the often used milk, cream, and ghee though since milk isn't produced quite like it once was, I use soymilk. Other traditional fats like cashew, ground may be more effective, and other nuts and seeds (sesame) should work well too.


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## paka (Feb 24, 2018)

Forgot to mention, inclusion of sweeter vegetables works well. Manathakkali (black nightshade berries used in South Indian Tamil cuisine) and sweeter roots like red capsicum, carrot, sweet potato, squash, pumpkin, and particullarly purple yam. I've been trying to figure out what yams (disocorea) are common in India though I haven't found much yet. Purple yam seems to not be used much except for desserts though it works well and tastes great; maybe too sweet when not mixed with bitter. Other sweet/sour ingredients, some used in cooking, others not, I might try are apricot and two syzygiums (jambu & jamun).

I wish I could find more 500+ recipe ethnic cookbooks that would cover more ways of combining spices. There are some Indian and I've started to look through Roden's The New Book of Middle Eastern Food.


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## LifeByA1000Cuts (Feb 25, 2018)

Amchur and sumach are certainly underused in the west - hey, acidity you can add without diluting anything with liquids!


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## paka (Feb 25, 2018)

Used bitter melon last night. I used to mainly use vinegar as an acid but now more tamarand and amchur. I think they work better since they are also slightly sweet. If you're making a bitter melon dish with only bitter melon and spices (garlic, onion, ginger, etc.), it can be hard to make it taste good but mixed with dozens of ingredients in a sambar like dish, you can barely taste it.


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## LifeByA1000Cuts (Feb 26, 2018)

I guess "saute them, and build a cream sauce with bacon (or smoked tofu for us vegetarians) and lemon around it. Then put it in a lasagna, probably with alternating layers of something tomato based" completely defies the point of cooking with greens


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## paka (Feb 26, 2018)

Indeed. It's possible all food traditions were once based on some sort of common spiritual sense of health, totemism or something else. The French tradition and even Roman by the time of Apicius, they are the products of luxury, with the upper classes no longer being aristoi (best, aristocratic) or wise, and even early French philosophical gastronomists that might have suggested health in their idea of food, all that disppeared. The idea of a restaurant being restoring too disappeared with them competing by making food taste "good" and most addictive so people return, that hasn't helped much either. Even a century ago, diet sort of resembled what it once did but no longer.

This sums it up quite nicely. 

[video=youtube;Qo2b531x4H4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo2b531x4H4[/video]

[video=youtube;SqDI9VRQMWI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqDI9VRQMWI[/video]


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## LifeByA1000Cuts (Feb 26, 2018)

@paka I guess the secret with indian food is that the more luxurious the dish is, the more active time you will have procuring the ingredients and actually cooking it  

And what is wrong with me - I am European yet watching that girl cut Roti with a butter knife REALLY had me cringe.

Now we need to find out why the japanese invented the nakiri but not the thoran method of cooking, and the indian invented the thoran and had no nakiri


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## paka (Feb 26, 2018)

I too have been curious why Indians seem to have no nakiri. A Google search long ago found a knife similar in style. I've only started investigating the history of Indian cuisine, and it's a todo to seek various parts of it. So far, since a primary goal has been in following one aspect of Asian medicines, living as long as possible [also somewhere in Greco-Roman with the term macrobios, long life (macrobiotic)], it's been mainly seeking pre-modern ingredients found in medical texts and used by those that still live in villages. It took a while to find them, and I'm still looking, since too I am not Indian and none are mentioned in English cookboks.

I don't think Indian is particularly unique in the use of 10-20+ ingredients in a dish. Indeed the greatest variety of herbs & spices, and perhaps all plants, tends to be in the tropics. Any people that were once part of the spice trade also had such customs. Meso/Latin-America likely once cooked as such as well but was surpressed by foreigners since food was once always related to religious concepts such as purity of mind & body, with numerous effects such no common use of amaranthus except for spinach. African, and some others, I haven't looked at much yet since there seem to be no cookbooks that would cover truly tradition methods and ingredients. I'm not sure why heavy use of herbs & spices, that is more than 5-10, seems to disappeared from many cuisines, maybe that is recent. I can't recall any Greco-Roman works that have been particularly helpful in figuring out their ingredients and methods. Dioscorides I've looked through a bit and need to study it.

From the Roman work by Apicius, the barley and vegetable soup seems be the only recipe that I think might resemble a staple dish, which is often legumes (beans, lentils), vegetables, herbs & spices, and occasionally a little meat, preferably wild. That also has many ingredients. From one translation:



> 60 g chickpeas
> 60 g red or brown lentils
> 60 g green split peas
> 60 g pearl barley
> ...



Another translation lists the following: oil, dried onion, savory pork hip bones, salt, barley groats, pepper, lovage, pennyroyal, cumin, silphium, honey?, vinegar, defrutum (grape syrup), liquamen (fish sauce), chickpeas, lentils, peas, leek, coriander, dill, fennel, beetroot, mallow, cabbage, fresh herbs, cabbage sprouts, fennel seeds, oregano

Experience with mixing 10+ herbs & spices, since being in America, I don't know which peasant/village traditions still do that, and Indian being the most accessible with historical writings, and the only tradition with a fair amount of translations, I've stuck with it.


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## Chef Doom (Feb 28, 2018)

You will all die eventually. Life extension is meaningless. Eat what tastes good or make what doesn't taste good taste good. That is the whole point of cooking.


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## paka (Feb 28, 2018)

yes but I'd prefer to never need a doctor. Many traditional cultures are free of most of our common modern diseases. There are also less studied factors such as things people think are now common such as irregular/painful menstruation & morning sickness, that in this case, women, can experience at any age. Clarity of mind, productivity, energy, no feeling of heaviness after a meal, remaining thin, no aches or pains and no need for pain killers, etc., there are many things that can affect us all at any age. It also possible to remain active one's whole life, tend a garden and farm at age 100+ or not need viagra at 80+, maybe 90+. What is important to you? Attention to mixing ingredients, varying quantity, interval taken, etc. by season and moment, a combining as complex as going for taste but going for how one feels, with constant adjustment, is to me food.

The point of cooking is a modern concept rare in antiquity.


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## LifeByA1000Cuts (Feb 28, 2018)

@Chef Doom the irony is, many bitter green things taste bitter to us because they are far from life extending, at least in overabundance and in their wild forms


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## DamageInc (Feb 28, 2018)

Chef Doom said:


> You will all die eventually. Life extension is meaningless. Eat what tastes good or make what doesn't taste good taste good. That is the whole point of cooking.



Hang on, let me get my rope then.


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## Chef Doom (Feb 28, 2018)

DamageInc said:


> Hang on, let me get my rope then.


I prefer to go out with a heart attack brought on by a naked woman. Do you have that option in stock?


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## Chef Doom (Feb 28, 2018)

I use viagra regardless of need. I need to reup my supply as a matter of fact. Thank the heavens for generic brand.


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## paka (Mar 1, 2018)

Very funny guys.



LifeByA1000Cuts said:


> the irony is, many bitter green things taste bitter to us because they are far from life extending, at least in overabundance and in their wild forms


I am curious if you have any specific examples. It really is quite difficult finding all the undomesticated plants that various cultures once ate. Estimates could be true even of plant species alone, there are 250,000+ varieties, I'd guess not counting strains (like of what I've heard some examples: 30,000 of rice, 10,000+ corn, 1,000 pepper (piper)). Indeed, bitterness can be a sign of toxicity though also nutrients. Of what you can find in the market, bitterness and other strong flavors is an indication of nutrients, brassicas like kale, collard, mustard, and shepherd's purse, brussels, chicory, dandelion, alliums, lemon, spinach (quite low compared to other members of amaranthus like lamb's quarters or others far better than that), etc.. I have collected a significant amount of foraging works, ancient medical texts, and contemporary medical food science books listing traditionally eaten plants. Of one nutrient, calcium, known rates go past 900 mg per 100 g, Vitamin C can reach 100x that of an orange, antioxidants somewhere in the hundreds of times higher than the common berries, etc. Some plants like wild greens, unsure if they have significanty higher antioxidants, but part of life extension is getting all necessary nutrients with less calories.

Of toxic plants, indeed there are some even commonly eaten that might be toxic, like black nightshade. Of nightshades, even the common white/yellow fleshed potato has been found to increase inflammation, c-reative protein, and cooked in any form has been associated with increased mortality. There are plenty of other roots & tubers so I'm fine with avoiding potatoes. Eventually trying to study ever single plant, at least the ones known to have been eaten sometime ago by some culture.

If wild animals can survive alone on meat, is that because they're eating other nutritionally complete wild animals that eat wild plants? One thing I heard recently, the goat that makes Greek feta has a diet of 5,000+ plants. Wild animals will taste better, perhaps needing older ways of combining more herbs & spices.



Chef Doom said:


> I prefer to go out with a heart attack brought on by a naked woman. Do you have that option in stock?



I'd prefer to be able to satsify a woman at whatever oldest age is possible. What is that? I don't know. You see Chinese qigong guys pull trucks with their teeth I think it is? They have various exercises for men and women pulling weights with their genitals. They're still having sex at 80+. That and herbs such as far more aphrodisiacs that what are commonly known, who knows. The kamasutra and other texts mention things like an ejaculation as violent as a horse or elephant. Viagra isn't gonna give me that. Chimps, and who knows what other animals, they're still getting it on at 90+ and even at that age giving birth.


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## LifeByA1000Cuts (Mar 1, 2018)

@paka Spinach and Rhubarb, when raw, have enough oxalic acid to be toxic ... native forms of lettuce are said to sometimes be so high in alkaloids that they can give you a high... and you have your betel leaves, right?

@Chef doom, paka you both bring bright light to this world - though some might regard that light as punishingly bright and blinding 

With global warming, we can expect thai and south indian food becoming more and more popular - it is such good food for hot days.


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## Jovidah (Mar 1, 2018)

paka said:


> If wild animals can survive alone on meat, is that because they're eating other nutritionally complete wild animals that eat wild plants? One thing I heard recently, the goat that makes Greek feta has a diet of 5,000+ plants. Wild animals will taste better, perhaps needing older ways of combining more herbs & spices.


The trick is to eat the entire animal. Organs, offal... not just the muscle fiber (as we tend to do now in a lot of places). There were actually a bunch of guys who tested it like a 100 years ago, surviving a full year on nothing but meat without any health issues. But they did eat all the organ meat too. Otherwise you'll run into issues.


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## StonedEdge (Mar 1, 2018)

Also stay away from industrially/mass produced meat and farmed fish. No GMO veggies and anything wheat/corn based.

Although I agree with Doom that we're here for a good time, not a long time so my Krispy Kreme box for dinner is nothing to scoff at  furthermore, the less humans on this planet the better off the natural world is, so I applaud people for eating fast food and chainsmoking cigarettes on a daily basis, keep on keepin on, people!


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## paka (Mar 1, 2018)

LifeByA1000Cuts said:


> @paka Spinach and Rhubarb, when raw, have enough oxalic acid to be toxic ... native forms of lettuce are said to sometimes be so high in alkaloids that they can give you a high... and you have your betel leaves, right?
> 
> @Chef doom, paka you both bring bright light to this world - though some might regard that light as punishingly bright and blinding
> 
> With global warming, we can expect thai and south indian food becoming more and more popular - it is such good food for hot days.



I have been curious about oxalic acid, more about I think it binds to calcium and inhibits absorption? I recall it might relate to other varieties of amaranthus besides spinach, though some are high enough it might matter less, and I think it was in taro leaves which I had considered then decided to not seek out. How much does the oxalic acid matter if one cooks it and combines with other spices? Don't know. They say brassica affects the thyroid if one is low on iodine. Considering all possible foods, there's a complex interaction that we're quite unaware of, that those that had millennia to experiement figured out fairly well or quite well. Traditional cultures already knew some of the best available or common foods such as dark colored rice, corn, millet, and other grains, amla fruit (phyllanthus emblica), or whatever tended to be much better in any category of grain, vegetable, legume, herb, spice, nuts, seeds and meat, and their properties and effects such as cooling, warming, light or heavy, and how to combine. Some say eating enough amla itself adds 20 years. Allium (garlic/onions) has been shown to increase zinc & iron absorption and aid somehow in dealing with the useful and also anti-nutrient phytates. We also have started to think seasonally, but not for every single ingredient we consume, and considering what season, in what quantity, ratio, interval, etc. to eat or avoid, plus how the tastes of bitter, sour, sweet, pungent, astringent, am I missing something, should also be considered as such.

As for as global warming, too I have been wondering why capsicum/chili became popular in the tropics. Some say the induced sweat is not enough to cool. (Long?) pepper was primarily used before the introduction of capsicum. In that case, unsure. Besides considered more longevity-promoting than black, maybe heat was part of it. Pepper doesn't seem to have enough antioxidants to slow oxidation and spoiling in the tropics. It does increase absorption of turmeric, numerous herbs, and possibly all foods. Of so far studied nutrients that protect against sun damage, lycopene dwarfs beta carotine. That may partially expain the adoption of capsicium and tomato. Wish I could more easily find red carrots. Something in tamarind has also been noted in some way though don't know how it compares.



Jovidah said:


> The trick is to eat the entire animal. Organs, offal... not just the muscle fiber (as we tend to do now in a lot of places). There were actually a bunch of guys who tested it like a 100 years ago, surviving a full year on nothing but meat without any health issues. But they did eat all the organ meat too. Otherwise you'll run into issues.



Indeed the whole animal, or knowing which parts to eat when needed. I think there's more to it. There are enough studies showing effects in humans, various nutrients accumulating in various parts of the body, that I think every animal part is better in particular wild animals that eat wild plants. Besides the mentioned lycopene, a different nutrient protects the eyes and are absorbed by them: lutein/zeaxanthin. How do all other animals likely have no eye decay without need for sunglasses? Herbivores greens. If carnivores are not eating eyes, maybe the main source would be blood and organs, and digestive organs. Different Indian works specify only certain wild or desert animals can be eaten regularly, preferably considering the moment, season, their diet, location, etc. Yet so far, enough of the plant-based doctors say so, and traditional texts often suggest a diet of mostly plants is best. After long hybridization, we just have a pale selection of what's available. Wherever we are, in the fields, mountains, looking up in the trees, sky, in the waters, food is everywhere.

As for animal products, after a century or more of industialization, perhaps no where is unpolluted. Of all the chemicals everywhere, such as what we breath in at any time, hundreds have been found already present in us, many cancer-risk increasing, with the worst tested place California. As it bioaccumulates in animal fat in higher levels, at least some or many, and many are more absorbed when consumed from animals, so despite whatever amount of milk or meat might be helpful, I tend to avoid it.


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## DamageInc (Mar 1, 2018)

Rope is ready.


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## Keith Sinclair (Mar 1, 2018)

Bitter Melon is healthy Okinawans eat quite a bit. A Filipino cook turned me on Pork, ginger, onions, tomato & bitter melon. After a while came to like it.

Americans are used to eating food made in taste test labs in New Jersey. Too much sugar. Prefer fresh herbs & vegetables. Like vinegar kosher dill pickles. Hate sweet pickles taste like crap.

The only reason English speaking white people have good food is because of the brown people living in their countries.


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## paka (Mar 1, 2018)

I need to look through 18th-19th century American writings. There's mention of shepherd's purse; I recall Jefferson having a variety of radishes. There was once perhaps thousands of varieties of corn. The food industry maybe started there, or at least more quickly hyperdeveloped and now little is natural. Some common traditional plants like chicory and dandelion are still known but very few. Unsure if any early Americans left behind detailed farming and diet records.

Indians and everyone else aren't doing well either. Hybridized and other low nutrient vegetables: peas, green beans, cauliflower, potato, okra, maybe taro, modern? varieties of eggplant, and who knows what else. In larger cities, maybe lack of leaves of common taro, bitter melon, orka, yam, etc.. Where did the heavy and all-season round use of ghee and oil come from, Court cuisine?


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## Jovidah (Mar 1, 2018)

paka said:


> I need to look through 18th-19th century American writings. There's mention of shepherd's purse; I recall Jefferson having a variety of radishes. There was once perhaps thousands of varieties of corn. The food industry maybe started there, or at least more quickly hyperdeveloped and now little is natural. Some common traditional plants like chicory and dandelion are still known but very few. Unsure if any early Americans left behind detailed farming and diet records.
> 
> Indians and everyone else aren't doing well either. Hybridized and other low nutrient vegetables: peas, green beans, cauliflower, potato, okra, maybe taro, modern? varieties of eggplant, and who knows what else. In larger cities, maybe lack of leaves of common taro, bitter melon, orka, yam, etc.. Where did the heavy and all-season round use of ghee and oil come from, Court cuisine?



Not to rain on your parade, but domestification of plants / crops, and things such as seed selection started far earlier. As in...thousands of years B.C. The green revolution and industrialization might have brought stuff to the next level in the last hundreds of years, but it's only a continuation of a process that was already happening from the moment people started settling down and practising agriculture.

I agree on your earlier point that there is some effect of an animal's nutrition on the nutritional value of the meat; for example grass-fed cows tend to have higher levels of omega-3 fats, and farmed salmon are actively fed supplements to boost their omega-3 fat content which would otehrwise be lacking. It's also something you can often taste... in unpasteurized cheeses you really can taste the diet of the cow, and for example taste a difference between cows that have been grazing fresh grass or fed for example grain.

But this isn't 'exclusive' knowledge hidden by food industries... the main issue though is that the understanding of dietary influences is still rather limited, and scientists are still unsure about what is 'best'. I'd also be cautious about going down a 'ancient knowledge is better' path. Life expectancy in a lot of cases was lower than it is now. Sure there might be a few hidden gems in there where people had the right idea, but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of ********, bogus and outright dangerous stuff in there as well.


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## paka (Mar 1, 2018)

Indeed domestication began much earlier. I don't know specifics, I vaguely recall cabbage and perhaps other things from Rome & Greece. But there seems to have been a much greater variety before the recent food industry, or at least more than now knew of and grew wild varieties or took part in breeding themselves. It's maybe mainly the growth of city life and increased reliance on markets, however it developed, from old local stores, old forms of farmer's markets, to supermarkets, that we slowly narrowed variety, with most of it recent.

Trying to a few varieties of rice used millennia ago, grown only in certain regions of India. One's available, the other only starting to look.

I don't know what hope there is of wild plants becoming known again. They grow everywhere; some or a fair amount of farmers know of at least some eaten varieties. Smaller farmers may eat some themselves. In my area, I can only find a few like nettle and rarely lamb's quarters. Amaranth are all the non bitter varieties that East-Asians eat, worse than lamb's quarters. Wild radish, curly dock, and few I've been able to get from every week asking one guy for months for wild. As there's many Indians in the area, such plants are selling well enough for him to continue to pick them. There is a case of breeding for more nutrients: Monsanto has a variety of broccoli, meant to be more anti-cancerous. I'd guess more glucosinolates with a slightly more peppery taste. If Monsanto in some decade finds the anti-GMO backlash strong enough that they need to profit in another way, maybe that kind of breeding will continue. They and no one else seems to so far just try to bring back wild seeds themselves. I don't know how well that broccoli is doing in popularity or distribution. If at farmers markets, when I find other parts of common plants, and I always get asked how do you cook them, sauté?, the average person seems to not be able to just take a random plant or part, of whatever taste and make something with it, any change is gonna be slow. Plant-based doctors sometimes say the nutrition of wild is much higher but they're not doing anything to encourage use; studies are rare and doctors are trying to just get people to eat more plants of any kind.


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## Tobacco (Mar 8, 2018)

Enjoyed this thread, even the videos. 

A year ago I tried making karela in a north Indian style. It sucked..tasted lousy and made me physically ill. It wasnt the spicing or something that could be tweaked. It was irrecoverably bad.

I wouldnt say it ever was delicious, but I've had decent. Any suggestions on how to prepare?


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## LifeByA1000Cuts (Mar 11, 2018)

@paka healthy or not, "broccoli" means "let's make pakora" to me  

BTW, is it true that the hindi word for eggplant means "nothing much, actually"? I always feel reminded of it when seeing the eggplants normally on sale here in europe - they are so big that a well presented pan of stuffed eggplants (arranged in a circle pattern) would need a 60cm diameter kadai, but they really don't taste of much (what do people do with these - they do not make good fish fragrant eggplant, not good masala stuffed eggplant, a bharta I tried also ended up disappointing) ... whereas you only get great thai and japanese style eggplants at specialty grocers.

I am actually glad that you can even get taro root and occasionally cassava and raw bamboo shoots here, given these things can be somewhat unsafe if prepared wrong....


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## paka (Mar 12, 2018)

Tobacco said:


> A year ago I tried making karela in a north Indian style. It sucked..tasted lousy and made me physically ill. It wasnt the spicing or something that could be tweaked. It was irrecoverably bad.
> 
> I wouldnt say it ever was delicious, but I've had decent. Any suggestions on how to prepare?


Actually I don't really even like bitter melon that much.  I cook it somewhat often but mainly in some mixed vegetable sambar like dish and always with more of other vegetables. Some book on aphrodisiacs mentioned bitter melon seeds and I have been curious about that.

The usual ingredients of fat, sour (tamarind, pomegrante powder, mango powder [amchur]), and sweet should help. I've seen more than a few recipes that use sugar and also soak bitter melon in salt water for several hours. Some recipes also fry the bitter melon. If you're cooking a dish with a significant amount of bitter melon, I think the salting and/or non-vegetarian addition of meat are likely the best ways of reducing bitterness.



LifeByA1000Cuts said:


> BTW, is it true that the hindi word for eggplant means "nothing much, actually"?


I'm not Indian so I'm not sure.  I think eggplant is mentioned in some histories of Indian cuisine but not in classical medical texts. I do eat it though in lower quantities of other vegetables. About eggplant and nightshades, I have been investigating that recently because of the nightshade question. Potatoes, except for purple, look to be not great. It's possible other nightshades such as tomatoes have enough antioxidants to make the overall benefit greater than any harmful effects, plus less glycoalkaloids than potatoes. I've been wondering since the mentioned black nightshade, is a highly valued ancient vegetable though now seemingly only more frequently used in South India.



LifeByA1000Cuts said:


> I am actually glad that you can even get taro root and occasionally cassava and raw bamboo shoots here, given these things can be somewhat unsafe if prepared wrong....


If you can find taro leaves, that might be worth eating. For same reason as needing to cook them, the leaves seem rather high in oxalates though unsure how it compares with other foods. I've been investigating the identity of ancient Indian yams which I think are also high in oxalates. Taro leaves look to be worth eating more so than roots. I think I remember seeing them in Filipino markets, once when I used to live close by many of them.


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## LifeByA1000Cuts (Mar 18, 2018)

YMMV... but... there might be something in raisins and sour mango that balances bitterness ... tried an obscure recipe for a boiled fenugreek seed & raisin condiment, and while it is really unpalatable bitter before the raisins and amchur are added, it is still bitter but in an "interesting. might work as a condiment if used in moderation" manner... and I see some karela recipes also have raisins added. Another post suggests trying raisins with spinach. I doubt it is just sugar at work here...


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## paka (Mar 19, 2018)

Hasn't the whole thread been about combing with tastes such as sour and sweet?  I have used raisins, grapes, or dates occassionally and that's a good idea to try them more often. In Indian medicine, grapes are noted for also having the taste of slight pungency (depending on variety I'd assume) while mango is noted as also being pungent and astringent.

Someday I need to investigate studies on karela. The primary reason for me favoring bitterness is calcium. Cultivated plants tend to have very low levels. Karela has been noted at around 300 mg per 100 g, higher but not highest of foods you can find in ethnic markets, but (now called wild) leaves range up to, so far that I've found, 900+ mg. The RDA/RDI of recommendated nutrients may not be ideal but to get all of it in one meal, I've had to change my diet to include a fair amount of wild leaves or other not typically consumed parts of cultivated plants that take some work to find, so that I can consume only one meal plus snacks of fruits, nuts, and seeds. The bitter tannins and other substances in karela may have some beneficial effect but for now, I stick with other leaves that too are bitter but in a manner more pleasant.


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## LifeByA1000Cuts (Mar 21, 2018)

One articles suggest poppy seeds are rich in calcium ... so maybe feasting on white mughlai gravies and german poppyseed cake isn't so bad an idea


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## paka (Mar 22, 2018)

I haven't used poppy much but it's up there on the list of experiments todo. Each time I've gotten some in the past, I've used it a few times then left the spice to sit. Study of plants, the ones most valued by various cultures, their qualities and nutrients goes on. 1000 mg of calcium is possible from maybe 50-60 calories but my scale changes as I find better, not knowing the upper limit.

If I were in Germany, I might be tempted by the cakes. Though since that's the word used in one of the translations, when I hear it I now think kama sutra recipes.


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