111–120 of 437 posts
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> I highly doubt these extra sweetened breakfast cereals are a net positive for health. You can't really evaluate this outside of a metabolic context. That goes for a lot of things, but you're a lot more likely to burn the sugar more or less immediately early in the morning, particularly before a workout. Sugar is a necessary nutrient (i.e. healthy by any sane meaning of the word, if such a meaning exists) and we've…
Sugar is absolutely not "a necessary nutrient" and we haven't gone far enough in demonizing it. Literally every study, from rats to humans and from obesity to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral health to chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar is harmful. Modern Americans eat unprecedented amounts of refined sugar compared to any point in history. Sugar should be consumed in moderation akin to alcohol, no…
Emphasis on refined sugar.
Most food products, even meat in trace amounts, has some level of some form of sugar in it.
Added sugars are not needed in mass amounts for sure.
Looking at the amount of processed food available in Japan, it is hard to think it is just the processed food that is to blame. I think it is a cheap observation, such that I expect people to push back on me, but it is hard to ignore portion sizes. Will try and take a dive on some of the data around that. But a personal level, it is hard to grapple with the fact that I just got less food per place that I went. And it…
In fast food, people are eating a day's worth of food in one sitting. Triple burger, large fries, large drink. People are doing this once a day every day of the week.Then they go home and order more high calorie food with high calorie drinks and constant snacking.
It is amazing to see how much more obese people have gotten in the last decade, and the % of fat people has gone up a lot, too.
Restaurants of all types serve massive portions, and people eat it without thinking or realizing they are eating a day's worth of calories in one meal, and I haven't touched on the amount of fat, sugar, and sodium they are packing away.
The fact that people today have shorter lifespans than their parents should be sounding alarms everywhere, but there is nothing but silence.
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Good thing I didn't make that argument :)
I'm not sure what argument you were making then. Assuming your point isn't that you used the "factory" terminology instead of calling it "unnatural", so it's not an appeal to nature. I'd actually be pleased to dig on the deeper part you were pointing to. PS: the "we are not adapted" to part of your post is the crux of it in my eyes: we're not adapted to a lot of things but that doesn't make it good or bad or problema…
Factories come with a mountain of lubricants, plastics, metals, agents, colorings, flavorings, etc that are poisonous. They are poisonous because we were not evolved to consume them. That's just 1 of many reasons factory made foods are bad.
> we're not adapted to a lot of things but that doesn't make it good or bad or problematic
These things would be good for you in spite of the fact that you're not adapted to it.
There are far more many things that you are not adapted to that would kill you. Your list is hilariously arguable (VR might actually be bad for you lol). My list would consist of basic inarguable things like, fish can breathe underwater naked, humans cannot, and my list would be inexhaustibly long.
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> I highly doubt these extra sweetened breakfast cereals are a net positive for health. You can't really evaluate this outside of a metabolic context. That goes for a lot of things, but you're a lot more likely to burn the sugar more or less immediately early in the morning, particularly before a workout. Sugar is a necessary nutrient (i.e. healthy by any sane meaning of the word, if such a meaning exists) and we've…
Sugar is absolutely not "a necessary nutrient" and we haven't gone far enough in demonizing it. Literally every study, from rats to humans and from obesity to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral health to chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar is harmful. Modern Americans eat unprecedented amounts of refined sugar compared to any point in history. Sugar should be consumed in moderation akin to alcohol, no…
Most of the body's natural way of generating energy involves turning macronutrients into glucose and later into ATP. sucrose and fructose just so happen to have very short and very fast routes to conversion.
That fast path is what I think makes sugar particularly problematic (as well as honey and a whole lot of other "natural" sweeteners that are just repackaged *oses). That big jolt of energy which the body ends up converting to fat since it has nothing to do with it is (probably) where most of the problem lay.
From the article: > Even if the results show conclusively that processing, and not just nutrients, leads to poor health, policymakers will face another difficulty: the definition of upfs remains woolly. The Nova classification has no tolerance at all for artificial ingredients. The mere presence of a chemical additive classifies a food as a upf, regardless of the amount. This can lead to confusing health outcomes—a r…
Univariable classifications are usually not helpful, and this seems to just confirm it. In the same way "sugar free" or "fat free" make little sense
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The history of nutritional advice studies is extremely noisy and full of questionable, later reversed discoveries that have been p-hacked into existence. I think people are right to be very, very wary of rejecting the null hypothesis about anything without extremely solid clear evidence.
I don't disagree at all, but is there anything ambiguous about the health benefits of avoiding UPFs as defined by the Nova classification system? It seems the criticism I was responding to was more about the classification system being too strict, rather than lacking clear evidence of health benefits.
Here's a reminder of the Nova UPF classification:
> Industrially manufactured food products made up of several ingredients (formulations) including sugar, oils, fats and salt (generally in combination and in higher amounts than in processed foods) and food substances of no or rare culinary use (such as high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, modified starches and protein isolates). Group 1 foods are absent or represent a small proportion of the ingredients in the formulation. Processes enabling the manufacture of ultra-processed foods include industrial techniques such as extrusion, moulding and pre-frying; application of additives including those whose function is to make the final product palatable or hyperpalatable such as flavours, colourants, non-sugar sweeteners and emulsifiers; and sophisticated packaging, usually with synthetic materials. Processes and ingredients here are designed to create highly profitable (low-cost ingredients, long shelf-life, emphatic branding), convenient (ready-to-(h)eat or to drink), tasteful alternatives to all other Nova food groups and to freshly prepared dishes and meals. Ultra-processed foods are operationally distinguishable from processed foods by the presence of food substances of no culinary use (varieties of sugars such as fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, 'fruit juice concentrates', invert sugar, maltodextrin, dextrose and lactose; modified starches; modified oils such as hydrogenated or interesterified oils; and protein sources such as hydrolysed proteins, soya protein isolate, gluten, casein, whey protein and 'mechanically separated meat') or of additives with cosmetic functions (flavours, flavour enhancers, colours, emulsifiers, emulsifying salts, sweeteners, thickeners and anti-foaming, bulking, carbonating, foaming, gelling and glazing agents) in their list of ingredients.
A few items that stick out like a sore thumb to me regarding healthiness:
* How could sophisicated packaging, usually with synthetic materials impact health?
* How does making something highly profitably necessarily impact health?
* Nova's definition of something with 'no culinary use' is extremely biased in my view. How do specific sugars (each with specific properties that are useful) have no culinary use? How are protein mixes not culinarily useful?
* Nova's definition of 'cosmetic function' is also just.. stupid in my view. Flavors are cosmetic? Emulsifiers are cosmetic? By this definition, adding MSG to a food makes it UPF.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
Avoiding manufactured food is absurd to a level I didn't think needed explanation. Even from a logistics POV we're 8 billion on this planet, concentrated in cities. Everyone following that philosophy would bring a food chain collapse.
Why do we need these kinds of sensationalist names for things? Why is it so important that they be "ultra-processed" foods? Can't they just be "overprocessed" or perhaps use some other more neutral term? It's like the 90s when everything had to be "EXTREME!!"
Olive oil, steel cut oats, and dried beans, are processed. It's to differentiate from things like Coca-Cola or TV dinners.
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I don't disagree at all, but is there anything ambiguous about the health benefits of avoiding UPFs as defined by the Nova classification system? It seems the criticism I was responding to was more about the classification system being too strict, rather than lacking clear evidence of health benefits.
Nova does not make any judgment on the healthiness of foods, to my knowledge. The problem is that people take the extremely broad classification of UPFs by Nova, infer health detriments, and then cast judgment on the overly broad UPF classification as if everything in that category is equally as bad. Here's a reminder of the Nova UPF classification: > Industrially manufactured food products made up of several ingredi…