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Eating Clean is Useless

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Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#81

Post by sapote »

trabant00 wrote: post #78

A little straw man here, a little twisting of the meaning of clean there and voila: trying to eat healthy is classist and racist. Junk food is being marketed at poor uneducated people. Yes! That is even more reason to fight it, not find escuses to indulge in it. And if you are really into social justice and the like, that yoga guy and the whole white middle class is not the enemy of the poor black guys. They are not…

Agreed. I'm surprised at the support for this article...

I somehow got downvoted for saying that growing one's own food is a great alternative to the narrow perspective the article is pushing.

Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#82

Post by edejong »

brucephillips wrote: post #69
edejong wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that it has been selected over centuries for minimal fiber content. Quick Google search: apricots and Snickers both have 2% fiber content.

That's by weight, and apricots are mostly water. By macronutrient content, apricots are about 15% fiber. What ultimately matters is the glycemic index. An apricot has a GI of 34, whereas a Snickers bar is ~70.

The point I was trying to make is that apricots and Snickers have both been engineered (both by humans and nature) to contain maximum sugar levels with minimum fiber content (plus to be grown as quickly as possible). There are other fruits which have a higher GI level (grapes). We need to step away from the food dogmas and understand that an apricot is heavy in fructose, low in glucose, doesn't have many good lipids and because of intense farming probably does not have much iron and magnesium. It is probably better than a Snickers bar, but that doesn't suddenly make it 'good', or 'clean', or whatever.

(Just for the record, I never eat snacks like Snickers, haven't been to a McDonalds for over a decade, grow my own food, regularly eat nuts and work out thrice a week. I focus on balance in my food, with the right intake at the right moment. So, eating sugar isn't that bad, but your body needs to be able to use that energy directly.)

Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#83

Post by sapote »

bpodgursky wrote: post #45
struppi wrote: post #13

"100-percent organic, locally sourced, non-GMO, and free of antibiotics" Even if it does not have an effect on your health, three of those four (100-percent organic, locally sourced, and free of antibiotics) are at least good for the environment. The fourth (free of antibiotics) is maybe even good for your health, in the long run: Over-use of antibiotics by farmers (not using them to cure sick animals, but to make an…

100-percent organic is often bad for the environment because it takes more land to grow the same food. It often takes more energy to grow food locally (greenhouses and fertilizer) than transported food. Antibiotic-raised foods grow faster and thus have better caloric ratios, and less farmland per pound of beef.

Organic food raised like industrial food will often take more land. But organic food raised in polyculture can sometimes take dramatically less space. Look up Land Equivalent Ratio and intercropping.

Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#84

Post by dragonwriter »

skrebbel wrote: post #31
0xbear wrote: post #3

Non-GMO and organic is mostly BS of course, but it's a fact that refined carbs are cheap and plentiful, so the poor consume proportionally more of them. They simply can't afford fruit and meat. This is in part because of the infinite shelf life of processed carbs, and in part because they're heavily subsidized by the government. Also, government dietary guidelines still push people towards relatively high carb diets,…

> They simply can't afford fruit and meat. Maybe this differs per area, but in most places i know, fruit is significantly cheaper than processed snacks. I can eat 4 apples for the price of one Mars bar.

> Maybe this differs per area, but AFAICT in most places i know, fruit is significantly cheaper than processed snacks

Fruit is bulkier and spoils faster, this means it takes more storage space and more frequent shopping trips (and/or more refrigerated space.) These have costs.

Further—for basically the same reasons—the corner convenience store that will carry processed snacks often won't carry much, if any, fresh fruit, meaning it takes many who are poor longer shopping trips, as well.

Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#86

Post by Toine »

sapote wrote: post #81
trabant00 wrote: post #78

A little straw man here, a little twisting of the meaning of clean there and voila: trying to eat healthy is classist and racist. Junk food is being marketed at poor uneducated people. Yes! That is even more reason to fight it, not find escuses to indulge in it. And if you are really into social justice and the like, that yoga guy and the whole white middle class is not the enemy of the poor black guys. They are not…

Agreed. I'm surprised at the support for this article... I somehow got downvoted for saying that growing one's own food is a great alternative to the narrow perspective the article is pushing.

Most people prefer to find justifications for their generally poor diet choices (ie eating Lucky Charms every day) rather than being objective. Food is really an emotional thing for most of us.

Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#87

Post by 0xbear »

azinman2 wrote: post #62
edejong wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes the fructose in your (selected for top sweetness over hundreds of generations) apricot so different from the fructose in the sucrose of your Snickers bar?

Snickers will contain high fructose corn syrup with different metabolism properties, and will likely contain more total sugar (plus other gunk) than the equivalent snack of (non-dried) apricots would.

Fun fact: HFCS that you'll find in drinks has nearly the same proportion of fructose and glucose as honey. Yet one is considered "good" by most people, and the other is universally considered bad. News flash: they're both bad unless consumed in very limited amounts.

Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#88

Post by deepGem »

ouid wrote: post #74
deepGem wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They simply can't afford fruit and meat. I'm not sure about meat but fruit is definitely affordable. Especially bananas and apples. Bananas are far cheaper than any other food. Yet, people snack on chips/crisps and other refined carbs.

are you considering caloric efficiency? I love this list, but I doubt it's accurate to more than an factor of 2. http://efficiencyiseverything.com/calorie-per-dollar-list/ Bananas are not a cost effective source of calories, have very little protein, and boast a fairly high glycemic index. basically, bananas are trash at being fruit.

Valid. Bananas are however very high in potassium, moderately high in Magnesium and dietary fiber.

Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#89

Post by saosebastiao »

sapote wrote: post #43
Banthum wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only a cheap option if you consider your own labor to be free. Plus don't forget about the seasonality of the crops, the effort of preservation, etc.

It is free. The time you spend in the garden is time you would have otherwise spent exercising in some other form and (to a lesser extent) shopping.

Im glad you've found something that works for you, but you must understand that you have quite the unique circumstance there. There is no gardening out there that would ever be able to replace the exercise that I do...gardening is extremely mild cardio at best. And 300-800 sqft of sun-exposed space per person in the city where I live would undoubtedly cost an order of magnitude more than I currently spend on food.

If it were really that easy to grow one's own food, industrialization would have never happened.

Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#90

Post by sprayk »

trabant00 wrote: post #78

A little straw man here, a little twisting of the meaning of clean there and voila: trying to eat healthy is classist and racist. Junk food is being marketed at poor uneducated people. Yes! That is even more reason to fight it, not find escuses to indulge in it. And if you are really into social justice and the like, that yoga guy and the whole white middle class is not the enemy of the poor black guys. They are not…

Except the author didn't call actual healthy eating classist/racist, nor did he promote the consumption of junk food. It was argued that the use of the label "clean" was classist/racist, and that pursuing it alone is pointless because science.
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