Talk:Freekeh

Not sure how wiki-worthy this is... But in the novel Midaq Alley by the Egyptian Nobel Prize Winner, Naguib Mahfouz, the recipe of green wheat and pidgeon meat is discovered to be an aphrodisac in the alley. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.194.215.7 (talk) 23:11, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Palestine

User:Breein1007 has replaced the word Palestine with Palestinian territories three times now [1], [2], [3]. Please note that the source cited states clearly "It is popular in Syria, Palestine, and Jordan and one finds famous freekeh dishes in Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria." Breein1007's change therefore misrepresents the reliable source cited.

Palestine refers to a geographical region that is much broader than the Palestinian territories. The source is using the term to indicate that this dish is eaten in this wider region (i.e. Palestinians in Israel also eat Freekeh).

Breein1007 has changed "Palestine" to "Palestinian territories" or "Palestinian" to "Arab" in mutliple articles. Yet in his edit summaries, he is accusing me of violating policy and threatening admin action. Can someone do something about this please? Tiamut^talk 20:55, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Your interpretation of what the "source is using the term to indicate" is WP:OR. You do not have the authority to make that statement. If you want to show that Israeli Arabs eat it too, find a source for that and add Israel to the list. Palestine is a historical region that no longer exists. It is not used by the mainstream in the way you described above. If people want to refer to the land of "historical Palestine" in modern times, they say Israel and the Palestinian territories. That is clearly the case in this article. If it were saying that it WAS eaten in the past in that area, we could say "historical Palestine". What you are suggesting is completely counter-intuitive and misleading. It makes absolutely no sense from the perspective of an uninformed reader, and it reeks of nationalistic POV. Your continued reversions of my edit are in violation of the WP:NPOV policy. Even if the source says Palestine, it doesn't mean it is accurate and in line with the standards of our encyclopedia. Breein1007 (talk) 21:00, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Are you quite done your WP:SOAPy, WP:OR rant? The source is an WP:RS. He uses the term Palestine. Our article on Palestine indicates its the name of region and that it has been used in various ways over time and is still in use today. Your notion that this is a "historical" term, rather than a contemporary one is your POV. You do not have a right to superimpose your POV (and your problems with the term Palestine) into every article where the term is used by reliable sources. We use reliable sources to write this encyclopedia. Not your unsourced opinion. Tiamut^talk 21:05, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Wow, what an enlightening argument. "No, I'm not - YOU ARE!" You are the one engaging in WP:OR here, as I already explained above, dear. As for WP:SOAP, nothing in my comment came close to touching a violation of that policy. I suggest you get yourself reacquainted with it by checking out the link. If, as you suggest, the term is used in various ways over time, then an encyclopedia should give a more specific term so that readers are not mislead. I really don't feel compelled to continue repeating myself just because you are choosing to ignore my rational explanation above. If you come up with something new and valid, I'll be happy to give my response. So far, you haven't said anything that can't be answered by my original comment. Breein1007 (talk) 21:10, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Breein1007, WP:NPOV requires that we represent all significant viewpoints on a given subject. Clifford A. Wright is a leading expert in Arab cuisine. When he says Freekeh is eaten in Palestine, we should write that down.

Your POV that Palestine is a political term is your own. It is not the gospel truth and I don't have to stop using the word Palestine when it is used by reliable sources because of your sensitivity to it. As noted in this source, which is also cited in our article on Palestine: "The term 'Palestine' has over many centuries retained its relevance as an apolitical geographical term regardless of the nation-states and administrative entities that have existed in this region." That you cannot accept this view is not my problem. It is your problem and you are in violation of WP:NPOV when you seek to deny the right of others to use a term that is used without difficulty by reliable sources.

If I see you replace "Palestine" with "Palestinian territories" or "Palestinian" with "Arab" one more time at any article where the source cited supports the wording used, I will be opening a case against you at WP:AE. I've had enough of your crusade against a word that reasonable people use to refer to a region in all kinds of scholarship of repute. Good day. Tiamut^talk 21:16, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Who's making threats now? Bring it. Do you think I'm scared? If you open an AE against me, it'll just save me the effort of having to write one up against you. You make a big fuss about the change from "Palestine" to "Palestinian territories" in several articles, and yet you never reverted me back in most of them (except this one). I wonder why. Could it be that you are worried you will face consequences for violating WP:NPOV? Let's not forget that you've been blocked multiple times for edit warring in Israeli-Arab issues and you have been warned that next time, you'll be facing discretionary sanctions. If you want to put yourself under the spotlight in AE, by all means. Anyway, this is an article talk page and the wrong place for this discussion. If you wish to continue with the threats or personal discussions, feel free to do so in the appropriate venue. Good night. Breein1007 (talk) 21:21, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

That was an extremely cheap shot, Breein1007. Also: your statement that "Palestine is a historical region that no longer exists" is interesting. You see, I work a bit over at commons, now there you have a huuuge category of files in http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Historical_images_of_Israel ..all dating from before 1948, when Israel did not exist. I assume you want to delete those pictures from that category, too, then? Just for consistency? Cheers, Huldra (talk) 22:48, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

What happens on commons has no bearing on what happens on this project. The two are separate. Please stick to discussing the issue at hand. You are violating the WP:TALK policy with your latest message. Also, this discussion is irrelevant now that the political regions have been removed altogether. I'd appreciate if you stopped trying to cause added trouble where conflicts have already died down. Breein1007 (talk) 23:11, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

The basic problem here is that the article talks about the places (in fact, the political entities) in which freekeh is popular, rather than the cuisines it's part of. And those cuisines fall into natural groupings, namely Levantine cuisine (according to the cited sources including Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Jordanian, and Turkish (presumably the southeast)), Egyptian cuisine, and North African cuisine. There doesn't seem to be any particular reason to mention individual political entities here. Heck, I know an Arab Jewish family in Argentina that cooks pure Levantine cuisine. --macrakis (talk) 22:00, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Nutritional Value

"Freekeh is higher in protein compared to couscous and appreciably higher compared to white rice."

I removed this sentence because it is meaningless. It compares a processed grain -- white rice -- and a grain product -- couscous is a pasta, not a grain -- with whole grain freekeh. There is enough other information here, including a link to the cited sources, although it is a marketing site, to inform the reader appropriately if not fully. However, mining some of the original sources provided by the site (http://greenwheatfreekeh.com/) for specific data would, I believe, take this paragraph out of the real of marketing and into actual usable information. Zlama (talk) 03:29, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

"Baking or roasting grains, as done in the preparation of freekeh, substantially reduces vitamin levels, and may increase availability of some minerals[citation needed] (roasted durum or freekeh nutrient data are not available)."

Without citations of a real source I am very suspicious of this statement. From my understanding dry roasting of anything does a fine job of keeping vitamins in place. This sounds like "food woo". Nonotever (talk) 10:15, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Nonotever: I believe background on the statement that cooking/roasting durum wheat ("freekeh") reduces nutrient content generally comes from evidence that high heat destroys vitamins and diminishes other nutrient values. A similar example is amaranth for which nutrient analyses have been done by the USDA both for raw grains here (USDA data, set "serving size" to 100 g from the pick list) and cooked grains here, the comparison of which shows general reduction of nutrient values, especially B vitamins, in the cooked material. There appear to be no reliable data for comparing raw vs. roasted durum wheat. I question the article's statement that roasting "increases availability of some minerals" (implies that cooking makes minerals more easily absorbed) -- that part, I believe, is wrong and could be edited out of the article. --Zefr (talk) 15:36, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Zefr First you are comparing, by weight, dry grain and grain cooked in water. Did you notice the calories shrinking too? That is because you are including the x3 of water in the cooked variety. In addition, dry roasting and wet cooking do very things to the nutrients in the food. With wet cooking the water leaches the nutrients from the food, with dry roasting that doesn't happen although some properties change. There are a lot of studies about this but here is one:

Nonotever (talk) 13:32, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

References

A note on sources in reference to this article

• Sources can be dated, i.e., if a book was printed or an article written while the political entity "Palestine" existed, that needs to be considered and so noted because using Palestine to designate a current political entity is inaccurate. (Although using Palestinian cuisine as a designation, as the article does as of the time I am writing this, is appropriate because it refers to the culture of a people.)
• Sources can be wrong, i.e., anyone with a blog can promulgate information. That doesn't mean they know what they are talking about or even that they intend to be accurate.
• Sources can have an agenda, i.e., marketing sites/pages want to promote a product. Their information can be correct, incorrect, or slanted. I don't know what Wikipedia's guidelines are on this, but in other attribution-based writing, saying something like, "according to..." flags this data as unsubstantiated by the author of the current article without actually calling it into question. Of course, if the data is questionable, it is not used, even with the weasel wording.

It's all about that old saw, "Consider the source." Zlama (talk) 04:30, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

non a citation

dear User:Kleuske could you explain what you meant by 'non a citation'. the reference i added is very useful on the diets of the region, thus my inclusion. any changes you suggest? thanks!Pharling (talk) 11:19, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

It was intended to read "noT a citation". Sorry for the typo. I removed it since it references a website which does not actually provide the cite in question. Kleuske (talk) 11:21, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

No worries. It's not a website but a book, which I have in the library and added via ISBN. Should I reinsert? Happy to include any necessary changes. But given how hard it is to find references on these topics, I'd rather we kept the book in there somewhere — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pharling (talk • contribs) 11:58, 23 November 2021 (UTC) Pharling (talk) 13:36, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Food in the Islamic Middle East

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 12 January 2023 and 24 April 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): BrokenLogicBoard (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Egguser44 (talk) 22:56, 19 March 2023 (UTC)