Reflections on Metabolic Balance and External Modifiers

This week we cooked to the theme of metabolic balance and external modifiers. We played with the idea that humans are more likely to overeat when presented with lots of variety in their meal and the opposite which is that people with less variety in their diet tend to eat less. For the increased enjoyment of our classmates, we decided to go with a meal full of variety. We decided on the base meal being a baked potato with many options for toppings. The options for toppings included bacon, vegetarian chili, broccoli, cheese, and sour cream.

Another aspect of our meal represented the innate drive humans have towards highly dense, caloric foods. For this reason, we included skirt steak. Our chefs decided to add a delicious chimichurri to add some more taste variety to our meal.

I know that I overate at this meal because there were so many delicious options available to me. It is very interesting to see that the data mostly show that this is almost solely because of an increased consumption and does not have much of an association with activity level, so this should really be the source of our interventions. Unfortunately, as we have explored in this course, there are so many influences on appetites that it will take a multi-faceted approach to truly tackle this public health concern.

Our ingredients list:

-30 large roasting potatoes 

-sour cream 

-avocado

-bacon

-shredded cheddar cheese

-salted butter 

-scallions (green onion)

-chives 

-chili fixings (1.5# ground turkey or beef, 1 can each black and kidney beans, 1 large onion, 1 can crushed tomatoes, 1 fresh jalapeno) 

-chimichurri fixings (2 heads garlic, 1 lemon, 2 red onions, red wine vinegar, 1 bunch fresh parsley) 

-8# skirt steak 

-vegetables (broccoli & cabbage)