California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

So do you think the whole understanding of oxidative stress, antioxidants, etc is all crank panic vibes? I thought that that was pretty widely accepted. I realize that the idea that some oils oxidize easier than others and have less antioxidants and thus might cause more oxidative stress is often ignored or dismissed outright without being looked at.

And, what is it then that makes potato chips junk food compared to a baked potato with butter? The potato? The oil? The salt? The frying? The fact that the oil was fried in many times over and not fresh? A combination of these - but which specifically?

You said:

> if you'd picked a slightly different set of CVD-correlated biomarkers you would have got exactly the opposite result.

So the evidence I’m looking for is empirics showing CVD correlated biomarkers that suggest a beneficial effect from consuming levels of sodium above recommended levels. Without that evidence then I don’t see why we should believe they would have got the opposite result if they picked other CVD biomarkers.

> but this does not suggest it's the long term cause of blood pressures going up from a normal 120 to a chronic 160 or 200 as we're seeing in tons of people

I’m not claiming that salt is the single cause of hypertension, but that doesn’t mean that the kind of reductions you see from salt reduction aren’t meaningful or contribute to those very high figures. It’s easy to dismiss 5mmHg as insignificant, but we generally see a 5mmHg reduction in sysBP translate to a ~10% reduction in CVD events. Considering how prevalent CVD is, that’s a pretty large effect size.

Chronic diseases are often overdetermined and stack - people have a poor diet which means they consume too much salt, they’re overweight and obesity, have T2DM or prediabetes, sedentary lifestyle, etc etc. The fact that we can’t point to a single one of these and say “this is the thing causing your 160/100 BP doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to fix the individual factors. So sure, salt reduction seems to offer 5-6mmHg reduction, exercise 4-8, hypertensive drugs 10. But put them all together and that’s a massive change.

> Anyway, I don't have time at the moment to look through the 11 studies cited in that meta analysis, but if you pick the one or two that give the strongest evidence for salt causing CVD I'd look at them.

It’s just three trials (or four depending on how you count TOHP I & II). I think I’ve met my burden in terms of showing there’s evidence of high salt intake having adverse effects, I have no interest in forcing you to read them. Just trying to provide evidence if that’s something you’re seeking.

> I'm genuinely trying to figure this out myself as best I can, because I know way too many people close to me dealing with early stage CVD and diabetes.

I’m sorry to hear that. We certainly seem to be struggling with chronic lifestyle-related disease these days, though with GLP-1 RAs I’m a lot more optimistic than I was a few years ago.

> And a lot of them say they're working on it by avoiding meat and dairy and eggs and salt, and instead of that they end up eating more refined oils and refined flour and sugar.

Yeah depending on the composition of what they’re eating that doesn’t sound great. IMO Replacing butter with refined oils and whole grain flours/carbs - sure, solid move. Replacing meat with plant proteins is also a worthwhile step, and eggs don’t seem to be great for health in many respects. But fermented dairy seems to be a positive as far as CVD risk goes, so ethics aside, seems like a backwards step if they replacing yoghurt and cheese with sugar and white flour!

> I'm not saying we need to eat tons of salt, maybe it does have a minor effect, just that it's not the real culprit.

I’m very wary of trying to find “the culprit” for public health problems. It’s so rarely the case that a disease has a single aetiology, and in my experience the people who’ll tell you “it was the sugar all along”, “it was the seed oils all along”, “it was the glyphosate all along” have a book to sell. The reality is probably closer to it being a combination of several things. Not as sexy though, no publisher or influencer is interested in that view!

That’s a lot of words to say you’re scared of black people

“Refusing to eat” is such an absurd phrase. It says more about your impatience than it says about them.

They’re rejecting WHAT you offer WHEN you offer. They’re not refusing to eat. If you simply allow them to say no, they get hungry and come back (usually within an hour). Ask them what they want from the available healthy options and feed them that.

In fact you can set this up ahead of time. “Child what are your five favorite foods? Great two of those are special occasions only, pick two more. Great. That’s your list. Here’s the deal. At meal time you can pick one of those five. I promise to make it, if you promise to eat it.” This gives them a feeling of control and gives you an easy answer.

This actually makes your life easier because you can plan ahead and always have that whitelist available. And it’s less complicated because their pallets are simpler.

There is a whole branch of child psychology devoted to this question. They’re not refusing to eat. They’re simply not interested in the thing you offered.

I was at a friend’s recently. He prepared a lovely meal. Fresh caught salmon and great sides. His daughter didn’t eat a single bite. I was slightly offended. I overheard the fight later “dad, I hate fish, you know that” (actually quite reasonable) his reply was “it’s not a very fishy taste” (a tenuous argument). She was hungry before bed and did eat. The whole mess could have been avoided by not trying to feed her something she hates. I then watched for the rest of the weekend. Every time she was offered something she liked she ate it no problem.

This does of course assume that nobody else is undermining you by offering them junk when they get hungry after refusing a meal.

Salt is Group 2, isn't it? (Salt is present unless you make a low sodium guacamole or it's a recipe I've never seen)

Salt is the Group 2 ingredient that I was mentioning. Nova calls out adding salt or sugar to Group 1 makes it Group 3, and specifically calls out Group 1 does not contain added salt.

"Minimally processed foods, that together with unprocessed foods make up NOVA group 1, are unprocessed foods altered by industrial processes such as removal of inedible or unwanted parts, drying, crushing, grinding, fractioning, roasting, boiling, pasteurization, refrigeration, freezing, placing in containers, vacuum packaging or non-alcoholic fermentation. None of these processes add salt, sugar, oils or fats, or other food substances to the original food." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10260459/