The Hacker's Diet

It's going to be lower quality than unprocessed fresh food, for several reasons:

1) Food spends longer between harvest and mouth, so any nutrients that are lost over time will be reduced in the final product.

2) Food crops are of varying quality, and the highest quality will go directly to places people will see it (e.g. tomatoes in the supermarket vegetable section) and the lower quality (less ripe, overripe, blemished, part squished or bruised) will go to the industrial processing where it ends up not being noticable (e.g. XYZ in tomato sauce).

3) There's a lot of scope for badness to be included in processed foods. When dealing with trailer loads at a time, detailed checks are impractical so contaminants become more possible. Food processing is factory work which is generally low skilled, low paid and long hours, so there's more room for things like poorly cleaned machinery, accidental contamination by people, gross fooling around, a nod and a wink and sod the overbearing health and hygiene rules when workload is high.

4) Labelling laws in some countries only require ingredients of more than X amount to be included, so there is room for contents that you don't know about and therefore can't choose whether or not to eat.

5) Industrial processing is full of bizarre things. Who eats cotton? Nobody. So how come it's OK to put cottonseed oil in food? Why is nickel used as a catalyst in the making of margarine? Nobody uses nickel as an ingredient or as a material for cooking utensils.

6) It exists to make money, not to make you healthy. Food processing is better if it takes cheaper ingredients and makes a more expensive desirable product. They are hacking your perceptions, studying flavouring and colouring and mouth-feel and so on, to make something look and taste nicer, while not actually doing you more good (or even, less harm).

and is there evidence to prove it?

I think this comes under the side of "prove God doesn't exist". Humans lived for a long time without mass food processing, and now we have it it's accepted as fine and the suggestion is that we have to prove that it's bad. Surely the default state is to be without food processing, and supporters should have to prove why it's good? (Apart from the fact that it makes lots of money, that is).

Is it possible to make up for whatever negative effects it (anything one is advised not to eat) has

Who knows? Ask yourself why some 70 year olds are out hill walking, travelling, working, are healthy-albeit-old and some are demented, plagued with ill health, bedridden, seriously forgetful, suffering arthritis, heart disease, loss of balance, etc.

Is it really all luck and genetics?

The approach outlined here is pretty similar to what Weight Watchers uses. Theirs is a little looser, tracking calories on a weekly basis and offering incentives to eat filling foods. But it's basically the same idea.

I lost 70 pounds in about a year on a system like that, and most of the experience was simply being surprised at how easy it was. There was a bit of a fiery adjustment during the first week, but thereafter, I felt better than ever. I wasn't hungry a lot. I didn't feel overly disciplined. Really, I was eating exactly what I wanted, just subject to the full consequences of the decisions. A year of just paying attention and making informed decisions saw me at my ideal weight, and my main reaction was, "People think this is hard?"

It's not a moral/discipline approach at all. More like lifestyle engineering. You have the numbers in hand, you know what you want to achieve, you know what you're willing to part with and what you aren't. I personally incorporated a weekly pizza & pop D&D night I didn't want to part with . . . and still lost about a pound a week. When you compensate via cost instead of guilt, treats are guilt-free; pizza for lunch just means soup for dinner, pie on Wednesday means no candy bars on Thursday or Friday. It's really just a question of engineering, knowing your body, and setting up the system to do what you want.

The most curious effect of the whole affair was that my appreciation and enjoyment of food went up. My initial approach was that since I could only afford a couple ounces of cheese, I was going to make darn sure it was goooood cheese. But there was a strange feedback there; good food makes you happy faster. An ounce of fancy chocolate left me feeling treated in a way five ounces of crappy chocalate never did--and of course, neither ever satisfied hunger, so the smaller amount didn't matter. Net effect: not hungry, losing weight, enjoying food more.

It really is a total hack.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/chapter1_2_5.html

Very simple and absolutely doable even without any room or extra gear.

Don't let the simplicity deceive you.

Are you sure of that? I'll offer myself up as a datapoint. My weight is exactly (to the kg) the same as it was 12 years ago. I do not exercise, at all, and eat pretty much whatever I want, whenever I want (and that's a lot.) For comparison purposes, my sister-in-law runs a few miles every day, and consumes less than half the calories that I do-- and her weight has also remained constant for the past decade.

Her incoming calorie-count is much less than mine, and her calories expended is much higher than mine. If my body does not discard un-needed calories, how is it that she's not losing weight, and I'm not gaining weight?

(By the way: I worked for Ben & Jerry's for several years, and ate a pint of ice cream every single day. No weight gain, and only a marginal rise in my cholesterol count.)