The day before yesterday I made Borscht. It was delicious, if I do say so myself. Making Borscht is like a conjuring trick: you put a bunch of boring root vegetables in a pot, and it turns into a delicious soup.

When I was making this pot of Borscht the other day, I kept being tempted to put some interesting ingredients in it; to spice things up a bit. But the more-experienced cooks I consulted, both in person and on the internet, all advised against it. The secret of Borscht, they said, is its simplicity.

A good heuristic for whether a food is healthy is the length of the ingredients list, and the length of the words in that list. If you don’t know what something is, question whether you should be eating it. If a candy bar took that much sweetener and flavouring and preservatives just to make it edible, question whether you should eat it. What are they trying to cover up with all that stuff?!

Lousy quality, most likely. Have you ever had plain rice? Plain fresh rolled oats? Straight organic milk? Delicious! Exquisite, just on their own. Sweet. Flavourful. Addictive, even. The same goes for almost every good-quality food I have tasted in its traditional form. But if you have bad-quality, flavourless ingredients, you have to somehow bury that rank taste under a bunch of bold look-at-me spices. It’s like hanging an air freshener in a porta-potty that need cleaning: it fools nobody.

And what are those Tocopherols for, anyway? They’re there because the food is so old, or so poorly stored, that it’s actively trying to decay. It has reached the end of its natural life. But somebody wanted to profit, so they pumped it full of preservatives, to make it remain presentable when it really should be feeding the worms.

But things that have just a few ingredients don’t give bad quality anywhere to hide. If something’s rotten about it, you’ll know.

This doesn’t just apply to food. It applies to, like, everything. Websites that have so much bling and hype that you can’t even figure out what product they’re selling. Books that use big words and sweeping statements to create a diversion from the fact that they have absolutely nothing to say that is of any real relevance. There are people like that, too. And songs. The best songs are often very focussed. They say one thing, lyrically, musically, and emotionally, but they say it well.

Don’t underestimate a good pot of Borscht.