u/u-Wot-Brother

Suppose you make a pot of split peas and a pot of cream of wheat. Both are cooked and then allowed to cool overnight before eating. The former is kept as is, but the latter has psyllium husk added to it prior to resting overnight — as much as would make it have equal fiber calorie-for-calorie as the split peas.

From the perspective of digestive health and glycemic index (ie: disregarding the other benefits the split peas have, like the extra protein), will the split peas still be “better”, or does the body not really distinguish between low fiber foods mixed with fiber versus foods that are naturally high fiber?

(And, as a bonus question, what if you instead had a theoretical fiber paste slathered on a slice of white bread, again making the fiber-per-calorie of your meal identical? In this case, the fiber isn’t mixed into the low fiber food, but you’re still consuming them together. Does this meaningfully differ from the “evenly incorporated fiber” option, or even the “naturally high fiber” option?)

I’m sure this is splitting hairs, but I’m curious.

I was so excited when the keto / “low sugar” craze hit because so many new food alternatives became available. The poptart rip offs have to be some of my favorites, and the sugar free gummies made with sugar alcohols other than maltitol have been great, too.

But I have never once found a decent alternative for candy corn. I know it’s a meme that people don’t like candy corn. I’m sorry. I love it. I’m hoping there will be a day when a genuinely sugar-free, maltitol-free alt comes out that won’t spike my blood sugar into a billion.

I feel like when I’m at the grocery store looking to pick out bouillon powder, I’m always left deciding between the Hispanic and the East Asian imports of the same brand. When I read the ingredients label, they’re different, so they are different products. Is there a generally accepted rule of thumb about which to use when, or even if one is just patently “better”?

I keep budgets and spreadsheets with the price of things at various stores, and the price of chocolate has SKYROCKETED.

Cocoa powder at most stores is upwards of $6 for the store brand, and even Trader Joe’s (which, for reasons I cannot determine, has been much more resilient to the chocolate price explosion) has gone up almost 20% in the last year alone. A bar of Lindt chocolate at my CVS is 8.29, and it’s not much better at other locations. Hell, the *Walmart* is selling single Ghirardelli bars for ~$5. I remember not too long ago these were in the $2-3 range, and at this point most popular protein bars are lower calorie per dollar than chocolate, which is crazy to me because protein bars were always my metric of “overpriced thing”.

It’s clear to me that chocolate has gotten wildly more expensive, but I don’t know why. Maybe a bad cocoa harvest is part of it, but like I’ve read about bad harvests on the news before and it’s NEVER had this effect. I also don’t see anyone talking about stuff going down in the cocoa industry. What happened???

I’ve recently gotten into popcorn (which is a hell of a sentence, I know, but this sub exists so I’m sure it’s fine). It was like $2.30 for a 2lb bag of kernels at Walmart and I’m a broke college student, and working it out compared to the weight of a bag of premade snack food, it literally paid for itself. So I finished the bag, and thought it was delicious, and then finished another bag, and here I am like 6lbs of popcorn kernels later wondering if there are other varieties that might be good.

I stuck with the generic yellow kind for a bit. Then I tried the white kernels that are sold next to the yellow ones, and I thought those were fantastic. There were these unique circular shaped pieces of popcorn that used to be sold by the brand Popzero, if anyone remembers them, that was my favorite before they shut down. Idk where I’d find those. I’m also not sure if there are other interesting varieties, or if it’s worth it to try out the different colored kernels. If they’re exactly the same and just 3x the money I’d rather skip it, but I’d be more than willing to try something that’s actually different. Any help appreciated!

Please hear me out. I am not making bean jello. This started because I always make 1-2lbs of dried beans (or split peas, which I love and are underrated) to eat a week. It’s a massive part of my diet with how cheap they are. They’re always best when cooking with homemade stock, which I made from all the bones and skin of chicken drumsticks or other boney things. But I eat more beans than I do meat, so maybe only 1/3 of my batches is made with the good broth. Adding bouillon to the other batches is fine I guess, but nothing special.

It occurred to me that part of what makes the broth beans good, besides the flavor, is the texture they get. It’s almost kinda sticky on the lips, and shiny. And whenever I use the stock, it is completely solid and gelatinized from all the collagen. So I thought: what if I add gelatin to my beans? I did so. Just like 1-2 packets to a pound of beans with water and spices and bouillon, not enough to make it into cubes or anything. And it improved it. SO. MUCH. This is like $0.50 worth of gelatin if you buy it in envelopes and less if you buy it in a big bag, and the difference is significant enough to warrant it imo.

Anyway 10/10