21–30 of 112 posts
All food is just macros, in the end. You can become obese eating healthy food, as many can attest. Plenty of overweight or obese vegans due to too much nuts or tofu.
Say you revert to home cooked meals. Not the worst thing in the world & unlikely to cause harm...
A trajectory question: have we have definitive answer to why the US now has so many obese people when before 70s not so many (or I just got the wrong impression from poor sampling of videos)? It's not like the US didn't have enough supply of food or people didn't have access to cars. The US was wealthy then and still wealthy now.
IMO the problem is the definition. According to wikipedia UPF is "an industrially formulated edible substance derived from natural food or synthesized from other organic compounds. The resulting products are designed to be highly profitable, convenient, and hyperpalatable, often through food additives such as preservatives, colourings, and flavourings." The Wikipedia features a photo of fruit loops breakfast cereal b…
It is a confusing definition. I wouldn’t consider most bread and pasta to be ultra processed but simply processed (except the bread that lasts for weeks). Ultra processed in my mind is when you take the source materials down to constitute parts and then Frankenstein a new food item out of it. Like Pringles. And then a traditional actual sliced potato chip is processed food because it’s a deep fried sliced potato. The…
That's why I think the nutrition value is the right way to look at it. The lentil pasta I've seen usually still has all its protein and fiber content like whole wheat pasta, but semolina pasta and white bread are made by first removing the bran and germ from the wheat which removes a lot of the nutritional value. That's why I'm arguing that white bread and pasta are ultra processed, whereas other foods like whole wheat and lentil pasta are highly processed, but not UPF.
IMO removing the bran and germ and milling it is taking the materials down to constituent parts and Frankensteining a new food item out of it. It's not as extreme as getting down to basic chemistry but it's still ultra processing.
The (sliced) potato chip is an interesting outlier. I don't think they're particularly processed but they're not very healthy to begin with. Focusing on UPF to the exclusion of nutrition value is a trap though.
All food is just macros, in the end. You can become obese eating healthy food, as many can attest. Plenty of overweight or obese vegans due to too much nuts or tofu.
Peanut Butter Twix -- the apotheosis of ultra-processed calorie-dense junk food -- isn't even close, at 536 calories per 100g.
One can easily gain lots of weight by eating too many nuts -- and it takes fewer of 'em than one might think.
A trajectory question: have we have definitive answer to why the US now has so many obese people when before 70s not so many (or I just got the wrong impression from poor sampling of videos)? It's not like the US didn't have enough supply of food or people didn't have access to cars. The US was wealthy then and still wealthy now.
https://ourworldindata.org/obesity#obesity-varies-widely-wor...
I don't think we've figured out exactly what's causing it. The simplest explanation is an abundance of easy, cheap calories. Some think it's some unknown/unstudied environmental factor like PFAS. There are various other theories. It's another unsolved billion dollar question.
We still don’t understand how amino acids are able to perform such complex functions. We have zero understanding of how the same exact cell in every sense can evolve into different organs in the human body. We don’t even know how we fall asleep, or the complete role of serotonin and melatonin on sleep and mood - their interactivity (which influences which).
So who knows how the amino acids or whatever are the constituents of the foods we consume interact in our body. It’s definitely not a black and white answer. Depends on what exactly are we talking about and the physiology of the individual that likely influences it.
Note I am also not talking about weight or weight loss. I am talking about being healthy, generally in the "lives longer and lives better" deconstruction of "healthy".
IMO the problem is the definition. According to wikipedia UPF is "an industrially formulated edible substance derived from natural food or synthesized from other organic compounds. The resulting products are designed to be highly profitable, convenient, and hyperpalatable, often through food additives such as preservatives, colourings, and flavourings." The Wikipedia features a photo of fruit loops breakfast cereal b…
These days we have agro-tech out the wazoo and can, potentially, feed billions with fresh crops reliably and relatively cheaply, so the processed stuff doesn't have the advantages it once had and numerous disadvantages.