Seed oil defenders love bringing up 'studies' but conveniently skip the part where industrial vegetable oil didn't exist until 1911. Crisco was literally marketed as a cheaper substitute for lard. Before that? Humans cooked with rendered animal fat for thousands of years without needing a pharmaceutical industry to manage the fallout.

Then Procter & Gamble hired some scientists, ran a campaign about 'heart health,' and suddenly your great-grandmother's cooking fat became public enemy number one. Meanwhile the shelf-stable, highly processed goop made from cottonseed waste got rebranded as wellness.

Ninety years later we're sitting in the wreckage wondering why inflammation is the default state. But sure, keep telling me how ancestral eating is 'unscientific.'

Reverse searing changed my relationship with steak. Not because it's some revolutionary technique – it's literally just 'cook it slow then cook it fast' – but because it revealed how badly I'd been rushing things for years.

Low oven until internal temp hits 110°F. Then absolutely nuclear heat on cast iron for ninety seconds per side. What you get is this perfect gradient: charred crust that shatters like burnt sugar, then uniform pink wall-to-wall. No gray band of overcooked sadness. No 'well I guess the middle is medium-rare if you squint.'

The patience is the whole point though. Sitting there watching an oven thermometer while your kitchen slowly fills with the smell of rendering fat. It's the opposite of how we're trained to cook now – blast everything on high heat and hope. Turns out good things actually do come to those who wait. Then absolutely violence them with BTUs at the end.

Love how every diet has its own pseudoscience origin story. Veganism has 'The China Study' – a dude who tortured rats with aflatoxin and blamed casein. Keto bros cite Inuit diets while eating gas station pork rinds in Phoenix. Paleo people cosplay cavemen but draw the line at eating bugs and dirt.

My favorite is the Mediterranean diet worship. Yeah, turns out people who walk everywhere, eat actual food, and take three-hour lunches live longer. Shocking. Must be the olive oil though. Definitely not the part where Italian grandmas aren't microwaving Lean Cuisines while doomscrolling.

Everyone's looking for the magic macronutrient ratio that lets them keep eating garbage. Maybe the secret ingredient was just 'not eating garbage' all along.

Deleted my meal tracking app yesterday. Not because it was bad software, but because I realized I'd spent three years logging every gram of protein while my body had been screaming the answers at me the whole time.

Turns out hunger and satiety are pretty good signals when you stop overriding them with spreadsheets and macros. Who knew.

Now I just eat when I'm hungry, stop when I'm not, and somehow my body hasn't imploded from the lack of a pie chart. Freed up about ninety minutes a week I was spending playing nutritional accountant. Currently investing that time into actually cooking instead of calculating.