One of the dangers of large economies of scale with processed foods, is that the companies that produce these foods accumulate market power and then force the entire agricultural industry towards producing particular crops as cheaply as possible. This has not only led to a drastic reduction in variety and diversity of foods that people eat, but large-scale crop monocultures also have significant environmental implications. And the continual search for lower prices means we're growing ridiculously high-yield crops that are disrupting local water balance and draining water tables like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer
Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition
51–60 of 345 posts
Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure what approach syntaxing used, and "processed" is a fuzzy term, but bread and pasta have a lot more in common with twinkies and oreos than fruits and vegetables.
And apples are full of sugar. Drawing the line is hard.
Apples are not processed at all. Coincidently, they have tons of fiber and you wont actually get fat from eating apples.
Unless you eat them dried, in the form of juice or in other "processed" form.
Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious, what's your cut off point for processed food? Just things that are ready to eat besides fruits and veggies? What about white flour and rice as opposed to whole grains?
For me personally: if (foodItem.ingredientList.size()>9) {return false;} else if (foodItem.inventedYearsAgo() So I can eat a baguette prepared traditionally, and a few brands of prepared bread from the grocery store.
But not ciabatta?
Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious, what's your cut off point for processed food? Just things that are ready to eat besides fruits and veggies? What about white flour and rice as opposed to whole grains?
I'm not sure what approach syntaxing used, and "processed" is a fuzzy term, but bread and pasta have a lot more in common with twinkies and oreos than fruits and vegetables.
> bread and pasta have a lot more in common with twinkies and oreos than fruits and vegetables.
Not if you make your bread yourself from unbleached flour. It's cheaper (except for the really industrial sliced junk) and better than most that you can buy and if you let it ferment overnight there is not work involved in kneading it.
My usual recipe is 500 g plain flour (flour here is about 11.5% protein), 400 g water, 8 g salt, 1 g dried yeast. Mix, leave overnight, fold over a couple of times, wait one hour, heat a conventional oven and a cast iron casserole with a lid until it reaches 230 C, drop the dough in the pot, put on the lid, cook for 35 minutes at 230 C, take off the lid cook further for 20 minutes. Total time I spend actually working is probably less than ten minutes. You can use any container suitable for cooking dry at that temperature. Keeping the lid on keeps the moisture in and helps develop the crust.
Adjust the times depending on how brown you like the crust.
Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
If half of our food is ultraprocessed, then that's a problem with the definition of ultraprocessed. Breakfast cereal is "ultraprocessed" by the definition of the article. But Grain Berry cereal is going to be grossly different from a nutritional perspective than Frosted Flakes. For both to be lumped into the same category of "ultraprocessed" is a bit ridiculous. ----------- Its not like "processing" makes something m…
> If half of our food is ultraprocessed, then that's a problem with the definition of ultraprocessed. Why? Just because we consume a lot of it does not mean it is not "ultraprocessed". We should be afraid of a name just because a lot of modern food falls into the definition.
* Are there bad foods that are ultraprocessed? (Ex: Frosted Flakes)
* Are there good foods that are ultraprocessed? (Ex: Grain Berry)
* Are there good foods that are unprocessed? (Ex: Brown Rice)
* Are the bad foods that are unprocessed? (Ex: Pork Belly)
If "ultraprocessed" fails to distinguish good from bad, then the word itself is worthless.
Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition
#56This statistic from the article is mind-boggling: > Ultra-processed products now account for nearly half of the average dietary intake of some high income countries, with consumption rising rapidly in most other countries. Note that they aren't just referring to processed foods. They classify ultra-processed foods as a step beyond what we typically think of as processed foods: > Ultra-processed foods and beverages ca…
> but also contain ingredients and additives not commonly used in home kitchens and artisanal restaurants That is incredibly broad though? Not sure what "processed foods" would be then.
That eliminates anything with preservatives or anything that's vitamin enriched.
I've been baking cornbread from scratch a lot recently. Is that bad because the cornmeal has thiamin, riboflavin, and folic acid added and the milk has vitamin D added?
Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition
#57I mentioned this before on HN but it still blows my mind how much weight I lost by simply not eating processed food. Thanks to COVID, I cook most of my meals now and I lost a considerable amount of weight even though I didn't cut my portions. I think the biggest problem is that processed food makes me crave food even though I'm not hungry and the stuff used is just so packed in calories (fructose syrup).
I'm curious, what's your cut off point for processed food? Just things that are ready to eat besides fruits and veggies? What about white flour and rice as opposed to whole grains?
I used to eat a lot of quick meals (mainly instant food like instant noodles or mac and cheese and the occasion microwave food). It sounds crazy and purely anecdata, but I found that processed organic stuff tend to have less calories than non organic food. I have started eating the less processed variant of food (brown calrose rice, wheat bread, and steel cut oats) and maybe that has helped(?). But one thing I cannot tolerate is whole grain pasta. That stuff taste like cardboard+sand paper to me.
Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did wonder that same thing, this breaks it down nicely: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-are-ultra-processed... One example: Corn vs Canned corn vs Corn chips Where corn is not, canned is processed, and chips are Ultra. My favorite example is Doritos. "Favorite" because they're soooo damn good, but sooo damn bad for me. Ultra Processed for sure.
> Where corn is not, canned is processed And that's where this distinction immediately becomes ridiculous. Fresh corn vs canned corn is well studied: the nutrition in canned corn can be higher due to preserving the food at peak-ripeness. Fresh corn loses nutrition the longer it sits around. If you're able to grab corn from a farmer's market, its really good and nutritious. But if that corn was shipped for miles, sat…
Which is part of why, in a below, I mentioned how egregious it was to oversimplify foods to "processed" or not. There needs to be more information disseminated about what kind of convenient foods people _can_ choose and what the impacts are to your health are.
Most people would consider frozen or canned fruits and vegetables as more processed, and therefore less good, than fresh fruit or vegetables.
Although I do have a bone to pick with your assessment of why "fresh" produce tends to be less nutritious. While you correctly note that frozen or canned items are picked at peak ripeness, the fresh items don't have less nutrition simply because the nutrients "evaporated away". Instead, they have to be picked _far before_ peak ripeness in order to avoid spoilage. That means the plants just take in fewer nutrients.
Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition
#59I mentioned this before on HN but it still blows my mind how much weight I lost by simply not eating processed food. Thanks to COVID, I cook most of my meals now and I lost a considerable amount of weight even though I didn't cut my portions. I think the biggest problem is that processed food makes me crave food even though I'm not hungry and the stuff used is just so packed in calories (fructose syrup).
Same. I stopped going to supermarket and ordered only uncooked healthy ingredients. Lost 12 kg!
That's awesome! Losing weight makes you feel better too IMO. It's weird but grocery delivery has made it easier to cook healthier. I can see my options better and maybe I'm less tempted because of the way groceries store stock their shelves?
Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition
#60This statistic from the article is mind-boggling: > Ultra-processed products now account for nearly half of the average dietary intake of some high income countries, with consumption rising rapidly in most other countries. Note that they aren't just referring to processed foods. They classify ultra-processed foods as a step beyond what we typically think of as processed foods: > Ultra-processed foods and beverages ca…
If half of our food is ultraprocessed, then that's a problem with the definition of ultraprocessed. Breakfast cereal is "ultraprocessed" by the definition of the article. But Grain Berry cereal is going to be grossly different from a nutritional perspective than Frosted Flakes. For both to be lumped into the same category of "ultraprocessed" is a bit ridiculous. ----------- Its not like "processing" makes something m…
pork-belly contains a ton of fat and is just innately unhealthy
Citation needed. Not all fats are created equal.
For example Inuits consume 50% of their calories from fat [1]. They do not have the "western diet disease" (obesity, heart disease, etc.)
It really IS the processed fats that are bad for you. You can see this all over the world when Aboriginal peoples are introduced to industrial cooking / ultra-processed foods / "western corporate diet".
They literally get addicted, and their body size increases by double digit percentages within a generation. This also happened in the US, but happens faster around the world. The average body weight for a man in the US increased from ~166 in the 1960’s to ~196 today [2].
This is an amazing fact that needs an explanation if you don't believe it's a result of the rise in industrial cooking.
And if you believe in capitalism, you would have to explain how this would NOT happen. Why wouldn't companies gradually develop cheap, consistently manufactured, addictive foods? The profit motive would lead them there, even if it weren't intentional.
I suggest reading some of Michael Pollan's books like Omnivore's Dilemma or Cooked; they talk about this (and probably talk about Inuits specifically as far as I remember)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_cuisine
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/12/look-...
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Another anecdote: I know someone from the Midwest with "industrial cooking disease" who dropped from 350 lbs to 200 lbs in a year by going on the "carnivore diet", where he ate exclusively beef and chicken (yes, literally).
I remember someone else remarking the same thing on HN, and observing that going vegan can have the same effect.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19177116 (not sure if this is the thread but there are many of them on HN)
Hypothesis: Both the carnivore diet and a vegan diet are BOTH suboptimal. The reason that they help many people with "western diet disease" is that you eliminate industrial cooking / ultra-processed foods from your diet.
The human body is extremely flexible and can metabolize a wide variety of things in the environment. What it apparently can't metabolize is addictive foods that corporations have created...