Day: November 2, 2020

“Nadia spent her lunch hours racing home to stock up on supplies. She bought bags of flours and rice and nuts and dried fruits and bottles of oil, and cans of powdered milk and cured meat and fish in brine, all at exorbitant prices, her forearms aching from the strain of carrying them up to her apartment, one load after another.” (ONLINE, 1st page of Ch 4)

 

This week, we are starting the novel “Exit West” which follows Nadia and Saeed, a couple in an unknown city. Their contrasting personalities and backgrounds create a paradox in terms of how relationships are formed but the reason why I chose this passage was not just due to the “thriftiness” of Nadia but because I thought of my own obsession with food and realized that most dry goods are essential to that. Milk powder was an ingredient I had no experience with but upon experimentation, I found that it is one of the best ingredients to use for baked goods. It imparts a specific kind of fatty taste that is unmatched, it is economical and just generally such a fascinating product.

The association with powdered milk is one that is not positive. Whether we would like to admit it or not, the cheapness of the ingredient has led to stigmas relating towards when and how we should buy it. The process of creating powdered milk is fairly simple. Invented in 1872, milk is put into a kind of spray where it is used to concentrate the milk and evaporates 50% of the milk leaving you with solids. There is still some form of liquid remaining so the milk is then left to dry in a dehydrator creating our milk powder. (“How is Powdered Milk Made”).

All that being said, I chose to write about powdered milk because I believe it to be heavily misunderstood. Just like the debate between breast milk and powdered formula, there is so much information out there for us to understand. Powdered milk contains twenty one amino acids, proteins, vitamins and minerals which is already so similar to regular dairy milk. However, the heat of evaporation does inevitably “kill” a certain amount of proteins and minerals but its shelf life of more than a year can help those struggling financially.

I definitely had preconceived notions with powdered milk but it’s an accessible option which should be strongly considered and should weaken the stigma with minority groups such as Latino and Black Americans being the main purchasers of such a product (“What”).

 

“How Is Powdered Milk Made.” USA Emergency Supply, www.usaemergencysupply.com/information-center/all-about/all-about-dehydrated-dairy/how-is-powdered-milk-made.

“What Is the Difference Between Fresh Milk and Powdered Milk?” Liquidline, 7 Oct. 2020, www.liquidline.co.uk/news/what-is-the-difference-between-fresh-milk-and-powdered-milk/.

 

“But it opened onto a roof terrace that looked out over the market and was, when the electricity had not gone out, bathed in the soft and shimmying glow of a large, animated neon sign that towered nearby in the service of a zero-calorie carbonated beverage” (Hamid, 28).

I’ve always been curious and suspicious about zero-calorie sodas. How can anything be so sweet and still be zero calories? What kind of chemical lab concoction is so sugary and yet so slimming? Turns out, “diet” sodas are a myth, surprise surprise.

Coca Cola states aspartame, an artificial sweetner, as one of the ingredients in its diet sodas. But despite its low calorie count, it may backfire because “when our taste buds sense sweetness, the body expects a calorie load to accompany it. When that doesn’t happen, it may cause us to overeat because we crave the energy rush our body was expecting” (Haller). In fact, diet sodas aren’t helpful for diets at all. It actually “has no effect on glycemic response in adults with diabetes. Therefore, diet soda should not be used as a weight-loss strategy or means to control diabetes” (Laderer).

But to be fair, there are many more articles online spewing hatred about diet sodas than there are studies done about them. Diet soda haters claim that the artificial sweetners mess with your gut biome, but “the gut microbiome has become the conspiracy theory of nutrition: It’s where people go to prove something’s dangerous when there’s really no evidence that it is” (Haspel). Many of the bad things in diet sodas are also found in regular sodas, and artificial sweetners get so much hate, because they’re everything we shouldn’t be eating and makes us feel guilty. But is diet soda really that much worse than regular soda? Probably not. Is it still bad? For sure.

Haller, Madeline. “Science vs. Soda: What’s Really in Your Diet Coke?” Men’s Health, Men’s Health, 25 Feb. 2019, www.menshealth.com/nutrition/a19522511/science-vs-soda-whats-really-in-your-diet-coke/.

Laderer, Ashley. “All the Ways That Diet Soda Is Bad for You and What to Drink Instead.” Insider, Insider, 12 June 2020, www.insider.com/is-diet-soda-bad-for-you.