Should questions about nutritional composition be off- or on-topic?
I've posted a question about nutritional differences in sea and table salt which also corners the question if one is "better" than the other one.
Do we want questions related to nutrition to be off-topic or on-topic? Where are the boundaries to decide when it's off-topic?
I think that completely allowing questions about nutritional differences or composition of different kinds of food could lead to questions like "Are apples better than oranges?" which is practically unanswerable as both fruits are completely different in their chemical makeup and cultural history and factors coming from the person asking would have to be considered to thoroughly answer it.
For the question I've posted, I tried to ask a question about the comparison of the same kind of food and its variations. Is this reasonable or should this also be off-topic?
What do you think?
2 answers
I think comparisons between ingredients that affect cooking decisions should be on-topic. (And by the way, I too have wondered about the sea-salt fad and whether it actually makes a difference.) If ingredients A and B are different that probably has implications for when to use which, whether it's cooking properties (like smoke point for oils), flavor, or something else.
Subjective questions like "which is better, apples or oranges?" wouldn't be a good fit anyway, but not just because it's about different foods. "Which is better, gas or charcoal grill" also isn't a good fit. The problem is the subjectivity -- better for what? On the other hand, if the question is about choosing fruits for a crisp (and how you might need to modify recipes if you're using apples instead of peaches), or it's about trying to produce a certain effect where grill type seems relevant, that's a question that can be answered more objectively.
I haven't answered your broader question, I know, only parts of it. I think scope boils down to "does the answer to this question help make me a better cook?", and subjectivity boils down to moving from pure opinions (everyone's got one; how do you evaluate them?) to questions that prompt answers that can be supported.
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Nutrition is important, and is a key factor in cooking - determining both what to cook and how to cook it. The only reason I can see not to include nutrition as on-topic is if somehow that would lead to liability - e.g., the equivalent of "ask your doctor" on a health site or "ask your Rabbi" on Judaism. But nutrition is a very key part of cooking, and in fact a limited amount of nutritional facts are actually required on packaged foods in the US and many other places, so clearly this is a "normal" thing to discuss. I could see some safety issues in extreme situations - e.g., a question asking how to determine which fish are safe for sushi - but that is more food safety than nutrition.
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