Cereal for Breakfast, The Science of Baking Cookies, and More Long Reads

Catch up on some of this week's top stories about food right now.

The Case for Eating Cereal for Breakfast Again
Quartz

But once they adjusted for confounding factors, including age, smoking status, education, race, marital status, physical activity and the rest of the participants' diet, the results were even more telling: The people who ate the most cereal had a 15% lower risk of all-cause mortality, a 10% lower risk of dying of cancer, and a 30% lower risk for Type 2 diabetes.

Drunk With Power
New Yorker

Indeed, Prohibition is remembered chiefly for its failure to achieve its aims. The Prohibition years were also the roaring twenties, the age of rakish mobsters and glamorous speakeasies, "The Great Gatsby" and "The Untouchables" and Bessie Smith singing, "Any bootlegger sure is a pal of mine." More often than not, when we think about Prohibition, we think about a time when people seemed to drink—and seemed to enjoy it—more than ever.

Traveling the Durian Trail
Roads and Kingdoms

It was all too bizarre not to investigate, so as soon as I got home I purchased a frozen durian at the small Chinese grocery near my house. Half-frozen, it reminded me of vanilla ice cream dusted in chives. It was tasty, but not so tasty I'd travel across the world to eat it (yet; that was coming soon). What hooked me were the stories.

And, Action! The True-Life Tale of a Reluctant Food Network Star
Serious Eats

As an introvert, I hate crowds, and I especially hate attention from crowds. I hide from parties, preferring the sweet silence of a book and a cigar. Unfortunately, none of that really fits with my newfound role of creating a party atmosphere every day and schmoozing with media types. Most folks in the television industry complain that the camera adds 10 pounds and that the lights are hot. That didn't bother me—I'm already a fat, sweaty person; so what if I looked even fatter and sweatier?

The Science of Baking Cookies
Lucky Peach

To understand how butter works in your cookies, imagine heating two tablespoons of butter in a frying pan. One is a cold square cut straight from a stick of butter; the other, a blob of soft butter spooned from a stick at room temperature. The cold pat of butter will melt only at the edges, keeping its shape as the heat from the stove warms it up. The soft blob, however, will melt quickly, and shift shape, drooping and spreading as it liquefies.

Rebel Brew: What the Boston Tea Party and the Mad Hatter Had in Common
NPR

But these two tea parties have something else in common: poking fun at the elaborate upper-class English ritual of evening tea. The Boston Tea Party was not called by that elegant name till the 1830s. Initially, it was known simply as "the Destruction of the Tea in Boston."

Guy Fieri Is the Hero We Need
Playboy

When I crossed over Guy's Vegas Bar and Grill's threshold, I had a Pavlovian response that took me back more than a decade. After college I spent some time working in a couple restaurants—one bad, one good. The first was a big, corporate monstrosity: All deep fryers and microwaves and so much cheap oil that I routinely watched cooks dump excess grease off in a bucket before plating dishes. That place featured a distinctive, stale odor that I eventually discovered afflicts most corporate restaurants in a way that doesn't permeate the better places I've dined.

What Will It Take for Americans to Eat Insects
Eater

Two billion people around the world consume insects on a regular basis, from Mexico and Venezuela to Cambodia, Thailand, and sub-Saharan Africa. For centuries in the Western gastronomic world, the notion of eating bugs was seen as a dire last resort. But consuming insects is — albeit slowly — making its way into the mainstream for its health benefits, sustainability, and novelty.