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Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition

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Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition

#291

Post by coffeecat »

dragontamer wrote: post #86
scruple wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but... How much lumpia and stir-fry is going along with the fresh chicken, pork, fish, and rice? My personal anecdote of around a dozen Filipino friends shows me that they're eating their mothers fried food far too often. Preparation matters.

Stir-Fry is unprocessed foods. Its just rice, veggies, and meats. That's what's so ridiculous about this "unprocessed" vs "processed" label. Lumpia is just flour + water for the wrappers, and then fillers (beef+rasins is pretty common, but maybe you're a veggie-lumpia person). Ultimately, its just flat + fresh dough wrapping fresh foods. Nothing processed about it at all. I bet you that frying your food and filling i…

Frying (and cooking in general) is absolutely a type of processing. It generally degrades a food's micro-nutrient content to at least some extent (chemical breakdown of vitamins due to the high temperature, and leaching of nutrients in the case of boiling).

That's not to say we shouldn't cook our food (and in some cases cooking can make food more nutritious by destroying anti-nutrients like phytic acid), but we should be aware of how the cooking time, temperature, and method affect nutrient content. Boiled vegetables are generally going to be less nutritious than steamed vegetables, for example.

And of course, frying tends to use industrially produced oils which are highly processed. Oily foods like avocados that you find in nature are going to have some fiber and other nutrients; the process of removing all that to produce pure oil is a form of processing.

Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition

#292

Post by matheusmoreira »

jriot wrote: post #79
jasode wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>, but in my experience most people prefer these foods because they think it's more convenient. [...] Everyone should learn how to cook some boring, staple meals using basic ingredients from the store. It's amazing how many people don't know how easy and cheap it can be to prepare simple crock pot or stir-fry meals that are healthy and delicious. I'm a strict health food eater but I have to be realistic and concede t…

Cooking in general is time consuming. You and I appear to eat vastly differently, yet we both make our own food from scratch. For breakfast I eat 10oz whole milk, 2 - 3 strips of bacon, 2 - 3 eggs, and grits with butter (at time I'll have potatoes or toast depending). Our other other meals will include roasted vegetables, potatoes and meat. Preparing each meal everyday is time consuming but I view as the best investm…

It's extremely time consuming. It takes hours to properly cook meals for an entire family. That's time I'd rather spend doing something else since I don't really enjoy the process of cooking itself. There's also the time required to prepare the dining room, clean the dishes, shop for ingredients and supplies and more incredibly boring tasks that I'm probably forgetting. Doing this every single day is just so tiresome!

Of course people would rather open an app and order some delicious fast food which arrives in about 20 minutes. It's not healthy but it wastes less time.

Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition

#293

Post by bumby »

esyir wrote: post #284
bumby wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we added a 10% tax to soft drinks, fries and pizza The argument against this is that it becomes a regressive tax scheme. Many in the lower income strata disproportionately eat these foods because they are convenient and relatively cheap. A 10% increase in the food budget of someone at or near poverty isn’t trivial. Talk to chefs at high-end restaurants and you’ll see how much fat is inherent in (or gets added to…

Sure, but the lower income strata are also the ones who are more disproportionally fat as well, so they benefit. Something I've always found amazingly annoying is the tendency to throw pragmaticism out the window for "virtue points". Also, chefs at high ends restaurants is a non-sequitur. People, even of wealth, do not eat those every day. And those with the capability to do so are a tiny subset of the population. Fu…

Fair enough on the frequency argument. But you could easily substitute a different, more apt comparison. Even making the case that sugar laden coffee deserves an equal tax even though it would probably apply to the middle class. It does come across as condescending that since they are likely to benefit, it necessitates the government telling a particular group what personal choices they should make, almost as if they aren’t capable without regulation.

It’s not about “virtue points.” Its about understanding the true nature of the problem. Poorer people don’t disproportionately eat that food just because they’re too dumb to know better or somehow lack willpower. They often lack the time or access to higher quality affordable food. So by taxing it, you’ve just made a hard lifestyle even harder. To a large extent, the food consumption is the symptom of much larger problems. It’s not like just taxing soda will fix the US’s obesity epidemic. (The percentage of calories coming from soda doesn’t actually amount to enough - the numbers I’ve heard are around 6%). If anything, this type of taxation is the feel-good regulation that ignores the root problem. IMO that’s anything but pragmatic and tends to be be a shortfall of technocrats who sometimes fail to see the larger picture that spans multiple domains.

Now if we’re talking about using those taxes to address the deeper problems, I can get on board with that. I’ve yet to have anybody reply to that effect though, almost as if they think banning soda would magically fix our health crises.

Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition

#294

Post by nwienert »

dolni wrote: post #43
shanecleveland wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why the headline emphasis this is in reference to "ultra-processed" foods and they further go on to define ultra-processed as: Ultra-processed foods and beverages can be defined as products with additives and industrially processed ingredients that have been technologically broken down and modified.7 They are not merely processed foods with high levels of sugar, salt, and fat but also contain ingredients and…

Yes, I read the definition. It does little to clear up confusion. What constitutes a synthetic flavor? Is vanilla extract an example or do you have to go further than that? Emulsifiers are things that actually get used in regular cooking. According to https://www.thespruceeats.com/what-does-emulsify-mean-480592... . egg yolks and honey are both emulsifiers. Based on how that sentence is phrased, you'd think that an e…

It’s a bit like porn or automatic guns, hard to define perfectly but easy to see and discuss.

Not one person thinks of egg yolks or honey when talking about “ultra processed additives”.

I don’t think you’re making any point here about confusion you’re just ranting. If I were to try and extract some coherent positive thought out of this, I’d say a website that tracks and allows discussion of ingredients and products that are good/bad would be interesting so we could stop bikeshedding on naming when obviously there exist many levels of better/worse foods and ingredients.

Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition

#295

Post by ptcampbell »

Damorian wrote: post #193
Miraste wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the US and recently tried to find bread--standard, sliced bread--without sugar in it at my local store. They don't have any. The lowest I could find was a gram of sugar per slice!

I bake various types of bread on a weekly basis, and have never seen a recipe that doesn't require sugar or honey. I'm pretty confident it's needed to fuel the yeast for the rising process vs the flour alone.

I started baking bread when I moved to the US cos it was so hard to find any without sugar.

Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition

#296

Post by vram22 »

selimthegrim wrote: post #247
vram22 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, Ayurveda recommends cooked vegetables more than raw vegetables, and less (but not zero) of raw food generally, on the principle (IIRC) that cooked foods are usually easier for humans to digest - and digestion is "the key to health" in Ayurveda. Source: Prakruti - your Ayurvedic Constitution, by Vaidya* Robert Svoboda. *Vaidya is the title for an Ayurvedic doctor.

If this stuff has the same veracity as what was in Aghora, I have to wonder if Svoboda met any Ayurvedic experts at all

He has not just met experts, he has gone through the full 4 or 5 year Indian Ayurvedic degree, which includes some parts of MBBS degree, IIRC.

I have not read his Aghora series. That could be esoterica or even a spoof, who knows. I have only read his Ayurveda book. Doubt that that book is wrong, since my family has some background in Ayurveda as users for two generations or more. Also read his bio on his site - says he was gold medals winner in his Ayurveda degree exams from the Pune university he studied at. I know of that school. Unlikely to be fake info, could easily be verified.

Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition

#297

Post by esyir »

bumby wrote: post #293
esyir wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the lower income strata are also the ones who are more disproportionally fat as well, so they benefit. Something I've always found amazingly annoying is the tendency to throw pragmaticism out the window for "virtue points". Also, chefs at high ends restaurants is a non-sequitur. People, even of wealth, do not eat those every day. And those with the capability to do so are a tiny subset of the population. Fu…

Fair enough on the frequency argument. But you could easily substitute a different, more apt comparison. Even making the case that sugar laden coffee deserves an equal tax even though it would probably apply to the middle class. It does come across as condescending that since they are likely to benefit, it necessitates the government telling a particular group what personal choices they should make, almost as if they…

Mind you, I'm personally opposed to a sugar tax myself, since I like soda, so you have my bias explicitly stated here. I'm also interpreting his initial thing as a proxy for the more established "unhealthy food tax", most commonly proposed as a sugar tax.

>It’s not about “virtue points.” Its about understanding the true nature of the problem. Poorer people don’t disproportionately eat that food just because they’re too dumb to know better or somehow lack willpower. They often lack the time or access to higher quality affordable food. So by taxing it, you’ve just made a hard lifestyle even harder. To a large extent, the food consumption is the symptom of much larger problems. It’s not like just taxing soda will fix the US’s obesity epidemic. (The percentage of calories coming from soda doesn’t actually amount to enough - the numbers I’ve heard are around 6%). If anything, this type of taxation is the feel-good regulation that ignores the root problem. IMO that’s anything but pragmatic and tends to be be a shortfall of technocrats who sometimes fail to see the larger picture that spans multiple domains.

So, this isn't a feel-good regulation, nor is it something that ignores the root problems, The current research shows that a sugar tax would be effective. The fundamental issue here is that they ingest too many calories, and sugar is by far and large the easiest way to do so. You're saying that they'll have problems affording sugary foods. That's the entire point. This is not a tax that's targeted at revenue or fairness, this is a tax that's fundamentally constructed to modify behavior.

Furthermore, from a nutritional standpoint, 6% of calories from soda is huge. That's a half litre of soda per day or double what the Europeans drink on average. Remember that for obesity, it's the little things done many times that gets you. A consistent increase in calories per day, compounded over the years is exactly how you get an obesity problem. Of course it's one of many factors, but it is an important factor and low hanging fruit at that.

Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition

#298

Post by bumby »

esyir wrote: post #297
bumby wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough on the frequency argument. But you could easily substitute a different, more apt comparison. Even making the case that sugar laden coffee deserves an equal tax even though it would probably apply to the middle class. It does come across as condescending that since they are likely to benefit, it necessitates the government telling a particular group what personal choices they should make, almost as if they…

Mind you, I'm personally opposed to a sugar tax myself, since I like soda, so you have my bias explicitly stated here. I'm also interpreting his initial thing as a proxy for the more established "unhealthy food tax", most commonly proposed as a sugar tax. >It’s not about “virtue points.” Its about understanding the true nature of the problem. Poorer people don’t disproportionately eat that food just because they’re t…

>You're saying that they'll have problems affording sugary foods.

That’s not quite what I’m saying and I think this is probably the core of our disagreement.

I’m saying they are buying fatty or sugary (or otherwise unhealthy) food because they often lack access to suitable alternatives. “Suitable” being defined as relatively convenient and affordable. In that context, extra tax makes a bad situation worse.

A somewhat clunky analogy would be levy a tax on any grocery store that doesn’t have a competitor within 50 miles. For the sake of the analogy, let’s say it’s in the vein of logistics/transportation externalities related to getting food to said store disproportionately contributing to climate change. What do you think that does to people in that community? It makes a shitty situation of lack of alternatives even worse. Before you hand waive this analogy as silly, I’ve lived in communities that were almost two hours from a grocery store and people had to pack coolers of ice in their pickup beds. There’s many other rural communities where a Family Dollar is the main grocery store.

>The current research shows that a sugar tax would be effective.

As an aside, a smaller point of disagreement is that I don’t think soda would fix the obesity problem. If it would, simply banning it would be a near panacea for our healthcare system. As you stated, obesity is much more complicated. As I understand it, the research shows sugar taxes are useful for reducing sugar consumption not necessarily at producing better health outcomes. It’s important to not conflate the two. That’s not to say it won’t lead to better health outcomes, just that the longitudinal data has isn’t there yet.

Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition

#299

Post by 01100011 »

reportingsjr wrote: post #211
at-fates-hands wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think its the food, I feel its several cultural shifts: - The tamping down of phy ed classes and general removal of exercise from elementary schools with more of an emphasis on learning. If you are not ok shape in middle school, it leads to learning issues. One problem begets the other - Shifts in parenting. When I grew up in the 1980's, our family ALWAYS ate dinner at home, together as a family. My mom got h…

You missed the most significant issue outside of portion size changes, etc. Car dependency. The shift over the last 60-70 years to push everyone to drive more and more and walk, bike, etc less has had an absolutely massive impact on obesity and being unfit. Compare the obesity rates in any area in the US versus types of transport and you'll see a huge correlation when other factors are fixed. e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi…

When I was a kid growing up in the Pacific Northwest I would say adults biked less but kids walked/biked more than today. I think adult biking is massively more popular and accepted today than in the 80s.

Re: Ultra-processed foods and the corporate capture of nutrition

#300

Post by 01100011 »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #166
01100011 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

45 here. Here's what I've noticed since the 80s: - More wealth and more choices now. - More eating out now. Meals are bigger, sweeter, richer, etc. - Less activity now. When I was a kid, video games were just getting started and most folks didn't own computers. TV & media was less engaging. Food addiction seems more... refined these days. There is a lot less fat shaming too, although I'm not suggesting we bring it ba…

I don't think its the food, I feel its several cultural shifts: - The tamping down of phy ed classes and general removal of exercise from elementary schools with more of an emphasis on learning. If you are not ok shape in middle school, it leads to learning issues. One problem begets the other - Shifts in parenting. When I grew up in the 1980's, our family ALWAYS ate dinner at home, together as a family. My mom got h…

One other thing: I think more jobs are desk jobs these days. Jobs that are desk jobs are more tied to the desk than they ever were.

Oh, and one big thing I don't thing anyone mentioned yet: Smoking. When I was a kid, a lot more people smoked. That has a well known side-effect of reducing calorie intake.

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