Documentary

Link to video: http://youtu.be/rWA2cca23F

Microwaves

Prongs(n):  A branch; a fork

I have always had a love-hate relationship with microwaves. I hate the fact that when I am going to heat a mug of tea or a plate of food, the dishware gets hot but my food doesn't. I never wondered what made this happen as the microwave was something very common to me. I grew up with microwaves all around me as if they had always existed. Never wondering on how they worked, and why they heat up food as they do. This has risen much controversy, and ignorant people complain about the "useless and inefficient" way microwaves heat our food. This is specially evident in meme webpages such as 9gag or Reddit , i which people criticize different things in our everyday lives. They aren't aware of the science behind it, and rather name microwaves as: "scumbags."

Bee Wilson narrates the circumstances in which the microwave was introduced to modern times. She goes beyond explaining how people acknowledged its introduction, but also how it works. I have always been curious about it, but never payed much attention to looking for the information. Microwaves are waves, that can "only penetrate food by around 4 to 5 cm" (Pg. 103). Nevertheless, microwaves aren't freaky technologies as they "obey the same laws of physics as spit roast." People are left behind in old technologies, and when new ones appear they expect them to be perfectly flawless. They fail to understand that science is an advancing technology, that we still haven't achieved absolute knowledge. The thing is that many people criticize it, but don't even use it correctly. As Wilson says, "the real drawback of the microwave is not with the device itself but with how it is used." (Pg. 107). It makes me laugh at how people don't give it enough credit, but still fail to use it correctly. 

This has lead to the industry of unhealthy fast-food to develop. Precooked, microwave freezes meals govern the refrigerators in supermarket. The act of cooking isn't as valued in everyday lives as it was before. It isn't given as much importance as before, and as Wilson said, "the microwave is not used as a form of cooking, but as a way of avoiding cooking." and has "provided a way to eat without the sociability of sitting around a family table. " (Pg. 110) The microwave consequently has an effect not only on the way we cook, and its importance on everyday life but on how we interact as families and communities as we did before on the dinner table. 

Singeing (v): burn (something) superficially\
 or lightly.

Cruelty

It is incredible how cruel humans can be. I have never had much pity or been rather positive towards humanity. I have said it many times before a subject like this comes up. Humans are selfish creatures, that seek whats best for themselves without much benevolence or respect towards others, specially towards those inferior to them. I have been reading the chapter about fire in Consider the Fork and came across a not medieval, but medieval like human or animal powered roasting spit.

In order to slow cook food, people since the middle of the fifteenth century in Europe people started using roasting spits. It was an arduous labor that took at least 10 hours to complete. It was not only tiring, but those turning it "must have near-roasted themselves" (Pg. 88). It was the specialty in the large mansions of the medieval wealthy, servants would "charr their faces and tire their arms to satisfy the royal appetite for roast capons and ducks and venison and beef, crammed in cubbyholes to the side of the fireplace" (Pg. 90). The onerous job of turning the spit for hours was so accepted that the job even had a proper name: the "turnspit" or "turn broach". It was the position for the poorest, youngest and animals to take. The worker changed through time. First, young boys used to have the job, then dogs, then geese (as they had deemed to be dumber, and easier to trick for the job) and then african american boys. 

It enrages me that people could have been so cruel to animals, and especially other human beings just for the sake of their big fat bellies. They should be charged with gluttony in the inferno. It is absurd to have dogs walk indefinitely for twelve hours. Turnspit dogs "used to hide themselves or run away when they observes indications that there was to be roast for dinner" (Pg. 92). The cruelest I believe is that fact, than when animal rights supporters, made it illegal to have turnspit dogs, they "had been replaces at the fire by young black children"(Pg. 90). There is not modesty in the European high class of the time. With each more act of egocentrism I think I dislike humanity a little more each time. It is simply amazing how people can do that just for food. 

What's Normal?

Scullion (n): a kitchen helper (Pg. 85) 

It is really ironic in how we strictly need food to survive, but it is what kills us too. Food can make you fat, or skinny. You can die from obesity or anorexia. You can be gluten intolerant, or peanut intolerant. You can die from a heart attack due to the food you eat. In other words: Food kills us, but keeps us alive. Furthermore, in Consider the Fork by Bee Wilson we learn that the way we eat food affects our bodies in greater ways than we can imagine.

Our eating habits have changed a lot through time, and specially with the fork and the knife. To us it is a more civilized way of eating, and proper too. Nevertheless, our bodies weren't build to eat the way we do nowadays. Usually people would "stuff-and-cut"(Pg. 84). This is that with one hand you "grasp the food. Then clamp the end of it forcefully between your teeth. Finally, separate the main hunk of food from the piece in your mouth" (Pg. 86). People used to eat like this, which is why the "End-to-end" bite position is much more useful than the nowadays normal overbite. It makes grasping food with your teeth much easier, however with the arrival of the fork and the knife things changed. We are now able cut food into little pieces and eat it without grasping or using your teeth to yank things. 

Consequently, our teeth start to slide down and move as we grow older and our jaw develops it "adapts" to the way we eat. (I put "adapt" in quotations mainly because our bodies don't change from use and disuse of our organs or limbs). Furthermore, as Wilson clearly states "the overbite is not a product of natural selection" (Pg. 87) It is absolutely normal for our teeth to move over time. For instance, if you don't wear your retainer after your braces have been removed, most likely your teeth are going to get crooked again. I never, ever had thought on how food has influenced my teeth or my body besides getting too fat or too skinny and the consequences that come with that. 

Through this book I have learned little details on how cooking, food and the way we eat has changed through time and has influenced us in many different aspects. Human cooking has changed and made us change too. It is really interesting how just the way we eat changed our teeth structure, and perception of what is a "normal bite position" and what is not. Food and cooking affect even the deepest corners of our everyday lives. It not only influences our food, cooking, eating manners and body weight, but our body structure too. It is simply bewildering. Imagine this: how would only eating liquid food influence our teeth through time? Would we loose them completely? Would they shrink? I might never know the answer to that, but I keep wondering: what else does cooking affect? 

How We Came To Be

Have you ever wondered why we cook the way we do? Why we roast things, and boil things like we do? I had never really given it much thought. I paid attention to the fact that we roast and boil mainly because that is what we had too. This book called Consider the Fork byBee Wilson book has enlighten me in the history of cooking in ways I never thought it would have. There are many things about cooking that I just assumed were normal all the time, and that cooking had been changing through ages as technology advanced. However, never paying attention to the details behind that cooking, the burden and arduous work it took in being a cook. It was come to my attention how fire has influenced our ways of cooking. 

Noxious (Adj): harmful, poisonous,
 or very unpleasant

Can yoWilson states that "the English predilection for roast beef was not, at root, a question of taste; it was a question of resources" (Pg. 82) Imagine if the English hadn't had so much firewood to spare, roasting wouldn't have been such a British custom. It is weird to think that due to our resources and not our wit we are what we are. I have always absentmindedly thought people in medieval times just cooked like we did. They had the same basic utensils like us: pots, pans, forks, knifes etc. I had never thought on the tedious task cooking with fire had. It wasn't simple at all, but it was a matter of what resources they had at hand to develop a meal in order to survive. Basic cooking before was rudimentary, and this book has taught me so many things I had never thought on before. It has opened my eyes to things I wouldn't usually have thought of before.