I'm sure you can find Parmesan somewhere.

[Although maybe not when I consider the North American absolute bastardisation of cheeses.]

Wal-Mart does not carry the same inventory in all markets.

It's easy to get real parmesean. Even in the US. But it's expensive.

Also nobody actually cooks pasta right in this country anyway. You're supposed to use just enough water. Instead we boil it until it's soft and strain it.

You can. It's my favorite cheese so I use it in (and on) virtually everything, and I have four different varieties in my fridge right now. Normal people here only use it as a condiment so they stick with the Kraft dried and powdered garbage.

Blame Kraft for it. Velveeta / Cheese Whiz, spray cheeses, American Cheddar, and the most commonly-available variant of Parmesan on the market here. This came up in a thread before, but Kraft-owned companies don't produce real cheeses that melt properly anymore. Velveeta doesn't count because it's basically a cheese-flavored cornstarch pudding.

Don't forget "swiss cheese" and that awful megaprocessed "American Cheese" stuff.

I really don't like Emmental so I'm not sure how American Swiss is any worse.

American Cheese started as processed cheddar so I call it American Cheddar even though it's not. Personally I think it has a more pleasant consistency than the actual commodity cheddars you can get here.

I like Wal Mart cupcakes, frozen pizza, Chinese takeout, barefoot wine and pre-made cookie dough. I have no problem with Kraft shredded Parmesan

Easy Cheese and Triscuits. 'Nuff said.

Truiscuits are so amazing I love them.
I used to go through like a box of them in a day but they are expensive!

Triscuits are a food?

I always thought it was a sort of clever name he got from Biscuit.

i love the sun-dried tomato and basil thin wheats. sometimes they have too much on them, but i spread a little cream cheese on them and they taste awesome.

I'm so mad they stopped making the cheddar ones.

Eggs are good, but you can't eat them all the time.

2 Eggs contain 140% of your daily cholesterol.

/me throws an egg at SAJN

[insert argument about how dietary cholesterol doesn't affect blood cholesterol in any permanent way]

heh, of course sajn would hate cholesterol, it's an immediate precursor in the synthesis of testosterone :smug:

mayo clinic sounds like an oxymoron

I laughed.

You should have read past the first paragraph.



Though the connection between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol isn't strong, it's still recommended to limit it to <300 mg/day. So, for 2 eggs, (2*213)/300 = 1.42, or ~140%. SAJN was spot on.

I was gonna try and give a mechanistic response to the whole cholesterol talk, but I'll boil it down to this: although you do synthesize most of your own cholesterol, 50% of your dietary cholesterol will wind up, over the course of 8-48 hours, in circulation. If you have a consistently high dietary cholesterol intake, it will bump up your LDL which would lead to pathology. However, two eggs only is about 1/5th of your dietary *loss* per day of cholesterol (192 mg abs, vs 1 g lost in the stool). Although not the most effective way to battle high cholesterol, lowering your own intake doesn't hurt.

There are a whole host of factors to consider, ranging from control of absorption, control of synthesis, and control of LDL vs HDL levels before a reasoned answer can be given. Practically speaking though, the most effective pharmaceutical therapy relies on directly targeting cholesterol synthesis and elimination, not dietary uptake.

I disagree with this statement though:

"dietary cholesterol doesn't affect blood cholesterol in any permanent way"

unless there are some facts behind that. Cholesterol enters through intestinal tissue, winds up in the liver, then is processed for delivery, along with synthesized cholesterol. Past the liver there is no difference between what you ate and what you made, so I don't see why if you had a consistently high cholesterol diet it would somehow not influence blood cholesterol.

I did.


Of course it's good to limit it any way -- but SAJN's implication, as I understood it, was "OMG CHOLESTEROL BAD."

take any kind of large/medium sized non-messy vegetable: zucchini, yellow squash, bell peppers... cut into quarters, toss on a grill for 5-7 minutes and presto! grilled veggies!