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How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

nytimes.com

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Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#141

Post by colingauvin »

kulahan wrote: post #88
Der_Einzige wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make America far more healthy by doing the following: 1. Mandating lower amounts of sugar, and significantly switching to zero calorie non glycemic sweeteners. 2. Removing plastic packaging and eliminating sources of microplastics and other endocrine disruption contamination of our food supply/ 3. Banning most of the stuff that the European food agencies ban 4. Getting GLP-1's in the hands of every overweight…

I couldn't possibly disagree with your last point harder. What's with people and blindly trusting that the pharma companies found a holy grail medicine and didn't rush it to market well before the necessary research is in? Even more than that, dosing hundreds of millions of Americans for life is one insanely expensive and ridiculous solution. Side note, is there good research on the effects of microplastics on the bo…

If you're worried about the possible, unknown side effects of GLP1s, check out the inevitable, well-known side effects of being morbidly overweight.

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#142

Post by chimpanzee »

nradov wrote: post #117
arrozconcosas wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They exist but are a small minority of the shelf. You have to really look for them.

Look? As in open your eyes? It's literally right on the front of the package in large letters. You can see exactly what you're getting without even squinting at the fine print on the back.

> You can see exactly what you're getting without even squinting at the fine print on the back.

So the nutrition facts and ingredients list doesn’t convey any new information? The designers managed to cram all that info into an appealing front facing label? And the marketers refrained from soft deceptions and convenient omissions, prioritizing truth and clarity over sales numbers? Sure.

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#143

Post by appreciatorBus »

secabeen wrote: post #79
nradov wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your comment. Trader Joe's sells plain yogurt with no added buttermilk. https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/greek-whole-mil... Or you can buy essentially the same thing for less at Walmart. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Mountain-High-Low-Fat-Yogurt-Vani... While there are some people who live in "food deserts" with very limited options, complaints by most HN users about the difficulty of find…

FWIW, Greek Yogurt is not the same as Yogurt, it's a different product. Those two items are not "essentially the same thing". Also, low/zero-fat yogurts dominate the market in the US. Plain Whole-Milk traditional yogurt is more available now than it was a decade or two ago, but it's still nowhere as common as the high-sugar flavored ones.

I am continually astounded that zero fat/low fat yogurt is just seen as normal. Ditto for oatmeal with added sugar.

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#144

Post by orochimaaru »

portaouflop wrote: post #106
orochimaaru wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just get plain unsweetened full fat yogurt. Every store has that. Yeah - the sweetened/flavored variety are more but the basic unsweetened is also easily available. Bread is a bit of a shit show. Stick to something like sourdough for 0 adde sugars. Hormones are banned for meat and poultry. I’m not sure how antibiotics are treated. Fwiw - with vegetarian food you also run the risk of pesticide contamination. Either wa…

In my experience the store has 10000 different kinds of sweetened yoghurt and exactly one that is “real” yogurt - often doesn’t have full fat yogurt at all. Completely impossible to get normal bread unless you go to some hipster store that charges an insane amount for it. It’s just really really hard to get decent food in America, which is crazy because the land is so rich in resources and nature.

Depends on where you shop. But I think even Walmart has organic options these days.

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#145

Post by jjtheblunt »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #85
jjtheblunt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just as a datapoint: we learn to carefully (compulsively perhaps) read labels stateside, for all the reasons you mention. i.e., these same revelations and frustrations are shared by a huge swath of people born in the States (probably Canada too), and it is indeed a pain in the neck being continually paranoid about what nutritional rubbish is included in ingredient lists.

Food labels in the US and Canada suck as well compared to the UK and Australia. How big is a serve, who's percent daily value? Those numbers just aren't useful. Here in Australia we have a column for grams per 100g by weight. It makes it much easier to compare foods.

that sounds actually useful!

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#146

Post by supportengineer »

Jensson wrote: post #51
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, Whole Foods targets upper middle class folks, you’re far away from the average American experience

Yeah, when I visited USA I was shocked to find lots of larger "grocery stores" didn't even stock the basics. In Europe that isn't a thing, everything larger than a regular room has fresh vegetables and meat and other staples, even in immigrant areas. Sure it might be possible to find that in USA as well, but its so much harder as not every store has it.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Please provide some, or retract your claim.

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#147

Post by duped »

talkingtab wrote: post #133

People in the US are so trained by the food industry, that they do not know what good food is. Yogurt for example. Here is an experiment you can do at home if you want to disbelieve my statement. Step #1 Make good yogurt and eat it. 1. Go buy a quart of milk, full fat. 2. Buy some yogurt culture. Bulgarian preferred. 3. Follow the directions. You need to keep the temp at around 110F, warm water bath, heating pad, hot…

I mean there are things you can reasonably do better than the grocery store but something things are unrealistic. Like "just go to a gourmet cheese store" is not something you can do in most of the country.

I live in one of the largest metro areas with quite a few Michelin star and recommended eateries, lovely food culture, and we love our dairy. I think there are two dedicated cheese mongers you can walk into in the entire area, neither are particularly accessible.

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#148

Post by tptacek »

littlestymaar wrote: post #139
tptacek wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're talking about American-style bacon, and it tastes like bacon, there's no such thing. They're just exploiting labeling rules by selecting very specific nitrite sources. Nitrites are what give bacon (and ham) its flavor. This is before we get to the whole premise of avoiding nitrates. Would you eat a beet? That's a serving of industrial bacon's worth of nitrates right there. Later (Actually, super bad example…

> Nitrites are what give bacon (and ham) its flavor. Are you sure about that? Because it's the first time ever I stumbled upon this argument. The explanation I heard is that there are legit bacterial food safety concerns (salmonella and listeria, IIRC) that justify using nitrites even if they are by themself harmful, the benefit/risk ratio is simply favorable to nitrites.

Pretty sure. I make bacon and dabble with salumi. It's definitely not strictly a food safety issue. I sometimes put a pinch of pink salt in with my duck confit cure, and it comes out distinctively hammier. Nitric oxide interacts with myoglobin in ways that alter your taste perception; sort of the way I understand miracleberries make things taste sweeter (by cutting off your perception of bitterness), nitrites do to the metallic flavor compounds in meat.

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#149

Post by chimpanzee »

nradov wrote: post #45
throwway120385 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's marked as "plain" yogurt. You can still find adulterants in it, just not added sugars. For example Trader Joe's "plain yogurt" is a mixture of yogurt and buttermilk.

I don't understand your comment. Trader Joe's sells plain yogurt with no added buttermilk. https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/greek-whole-mil... Or you can buy essentially the same thing for less at Walmart. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Mountain-High-Low-Fat-Yogurt-Vani... While there are some people who live in "food deserts" with very limited options, complaints by most HN users about the difficulty of find…

> While there are some people who live in "food deserts" with very limited options, complaints by most HN users about the difficulty of finding healthy food don't align with reality.

Some… Most…

You’ve made some broad assumptions here. I’ve lived in various neighbordhoods in one of the largest cities in this country and near and far suburbs of the same. Only when I’ve lived in ritzy or trendy areas have I had no issue eating healthy (according to my definition of healthy), and always at significantly greater financial cost.

My guess is either your concerns are less restrictive than mine annd others’ on this thread. Or you’ve been privileged enough to not have a clear perspective on just how large, dispersed and discontinuous, the American “food desert” truly is.

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#150

Post by aidenn0 »

supportengineer wrote: post #113
tptacek wrote: post #93

This all has very big "uncured bacon" energy to me (if you didn't already know: there's no such thing; vendors of uncured bacon performatively drive the same chemical nitrite reaction using vegetable extracts). For example: yogurt becomes a UPF simply by dint of adding carrageenan, which is on the order of calling dashi a UPF because of the kombu. It's not that there isn't a very legitimate issue underneath all this:…

I only get the bacon that says "No nitrates, no nitrites"

That means they use celery powder as the source of nitrates, not that it has no nitrates.
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