You know you do.

Despite being thirsty, overproduced, and a sign that the Portland hipster vibe is becoming too mainstream to function, these “ask an expert” style Epicurious vids are an interesting way to learn about food.

I just wish they would make the challenge a bit more obvious. Pedantic doesn’t belong on YouTube.

Excuse me, I just looked at the thumbnail again. If you put Buzzfeed in a blender with Bon Appetit.

ANYWAY.

I like the cured meats episode because the expert explains a lot of things. We learn how cured meats are made, and what are details to look for in each style of curing. We learn what goes into a high-end/traditional product, and what goes into a mass produced product.

After watching this, I never want to eat a supermarket processed meat product again. No wonder our bodies hate us.

Nitrates. Nitrites. Liquid smoke. Collagen casings. Fake mold made out of rice flour (!). Laquer’d sugar. All sorts of weird stuff that goes into hot dogs, or salami, or ham.

The more I go without all that stuff (I had to quit eating cured meats, with the exception of the occasional prosciutto, after I realized that the microbes in things like salami were contributing to my health problems) the more I realize that all those curing agents and stabilizers make digestion more difficult. They might even make living more difficult.

(Certainly it would be difficult to live if you’re prematurely cured, amirite.)

This won’t scare me off of cured meats forever–they are delicious and I hope to add them back to my diet someday–but it does make me more motivated to purchase only high-quality cured meats.

In fact, now I want to plan a trip to Spain to eat my bodyweight in jamón ibérico. Maybe in 5 years.