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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

#271

Post by tptacek »

tedunangst wrote: post #269
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:…

Are you confusing pink slime and meat glue?

No, "pink slime" refers to processed meat trim that is packaged and made palatable with meat glue.

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#272

Post by tptacek »

Amezarak wrote: post #268
tptacek wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point with this line of reasoning you fall into the precautionary principle and the naturalist fallacy. I'm fine with people being squicked out by food additives that are products of petroleum chemistry, like benzaldehyde. You can get carrageenan simply by rehydrating and simmering seaweed and then filtering it through cheesecloth. Whatever else is going on with carrageenan-stabilized yogurt, the carrageenan…

> At some point with this line of reasoning you fall into the precautionary principle Is there something wrong with the precautionary principle? It would be one thing if the supposed benefit was something really incredible, like extending lifespan or curing cancer. Then maybe we should be less cautious. But we're talking about adding something to your ice cream to make it look nice for longer. > it's about people eat…

If you believe that about the naturalistic fallacy, you should be fine with carrageenan-stabilized yogurt; the carrageenan is arguably more "natural" than the yogurt.

But all this just shows to go you: this whole "UPF" thing is a sort of motte and bailey deal. We all broadly agree that packaged hyperpalatable low-satiety foods (along with liquid calories) are a danger to human health; that's the motte. The bailey is all this stuff about how we need to rid the food chain of stabilizers and glutamates and nitrates and preservatives because "bizarre lab concoctions" endanger people.

The right food classification scheme wouldn't have this problem, and wouldn't be a way for people to smuggle in proscriptions against sodium citrate or transglutaminase while coming up with "UPF-free" logos for cane-sugar-sweetened beverages.

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#273

Post by t-writescode »

kulahan wrote: post #264
t-writescode wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that impoverished people with low income jobs and extreme hours should spend some of their missing time … farming?

Yes. A garden is a healthy and productive way to spend your free time. If you have land, EVERYONE should be growing some food. What are you suggesting they do instead? Scroll tiktok? >and extreme hours This is not the problem in rural communities.

The most famously true thing about rural areas is that they’re all exactly the same and the people in them experience identical struggles.

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#274

Post by nradov »

Scarblac wrote: post #200
nradov wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparable how? If I compare one meaningless number to another meaningless number on the same scale then I can see which one is larger, but I won't learn anything scientifically valuable or practically useful.

Meaningless how? A lot of significant effects were found, it can't be entirely meaningless.

Which statistically significant casual effects have been found?

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#275

Post by Amezarak »

tptacek wrote: post #272
Amezarak wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At some point with this line of reasoning you fall into the precautionary principle Is there something wrong with the precautionary principle? It would be one thing if the supposed benefit was something really incredible, like extending lifespan or curing cancer. Then maybe we should be less cautious. But we're talking about adding something to your ice cream to make it look nice for longer. > it's about people eat…

If you believe that about the naturalistic fallacy, you should be fine with carrageenan-stabilized yogurt; the carrageenan is arguably more "natural" than the yogurt. But all this just shows to go you: this whole "UPF" thing is a sort of motte and bailey deal. We all broadly agree that packaged hyperpalatable low-satiety foods (along with liquid calories) are a danger to human health; that's the motte. The bailey is…

> The bailey is all this stuff about how we need to rid the food chain of stabilizers and glutamates and nitrates and preservatives because "bizarre lab concoctions" endanger people.

In my case, I'm arguing that doing away with these things, regardless of any health effects they may have, has the effect of eliminating the entire class of foods you have a problem with.

> "UPF-free" logos for cane-sugar-sweetened beverages.

I'm not arguing that people should drink coke (which is full of all kinds of stuff besides HFCS I doubt people should be consuming), but the obesity epidemic is not well-correlated to soft drink consumption. The latter has been in decline since around the mid-90s.

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#276

Post by fnordpiglet »

otterley wrote: post #232
fnordpiglet wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it naive? You were literally unable to eat the foods because they rotted in delivery and refrigeration was so expensive it made fresh foods unaffordable to the consumer. Even then they were not edible because they were not ripened due to the lack of ethylene. I’m not discussing the last decade, in fact in the last decade the availability of fresh food is absurdly better vs say 1930-1995 or so. The article also…

The article's story begins in 1886.

I can only see the beginning due to the paywall and weird article layout interfering with archive, and the start is an image of a person holding a 1950’s TV dinner. If it then moves in narrative into the 1886’s, it started in the 1950’s.

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#277

Post by tptacek »

Amezarak wrote: post #275
tptacek wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe that about the naturalistic fallacy, you should be fine with carrageenan-stabilized yogurt; the carrageenan is arguably more "natural" than the yogurt. But all this just shows to go you: this whole "UPF" thing is a sort of motte and bailey deal. We all broadly agree that packaged hyperpalatable low-satiety foods (along with liquid calories) are a danger to human health; that's the motte. The bailey is…

> The bailey is all this stuff about how we need to rid the food chain of stabilizers and glutamates and nitrates and preservatives because "bizarre lab concoctions" endanger people. In my case, I'm arguing that doing away with these things, regardless of any health effects they may have, has the effect of eliminating the entire class of foods you have a problem with. > "UPF-free" logos for cane-sugar-sweetened bever…

My point is that you're arguing for something far outside of the mainstream, but the "UPF" framing makes it hard to tell; it sounds at first like you're saying we should stop subsidizing Takis (fair enough!) but in reality you're also saying all the yogurt needs to be reformulated (not gonna happen). I'm not trying to engage with your theory of health; I'm trying to establish that the UPF thing has Prop 65 vibes.

The Prop 65 people make a lot of the same arguments you are --- most especially that we should more formally adopt the precautionary principle. Which is why you get cancer warning labels on bags of organic sweet potato sticks. And so nobody takes those labels seriously anymore.

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#278

Post by UmGuys »

tptacek wrote: post #266
Freedumbs wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is partially true. The use celery extract or whatever they can get away with legally. Smoking is what gives bacon the flavor. Buy your cut of meat, season, and smoke it with a very low temp for long time, you have bacon. No nitrates.

No you won't. You'll have smoked pork. Nitrite curing is the difference between ham and pork, and is part of the source of American bacon's flavor. You can make or buy unsmoked bacon; it will still taste like bacon. It is weird to me that people try to make an issue out of this, because it's not like the flavor change in cured meat is hard to miss. Just buy some pink salt! Corned beef tastes like corn beef because of…

This is false, buy some pork belly and smoke it. I've done it.

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#279

Post by tptacek »

UmGuys wrote: post #278
tptacek wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you won't. You'll have smoked pork. Nitrite curing is the difference between ham and pork, and is part of the source of American bacon's flavor. You can make or buy unsmoked bacon; it will still taste like bacon. It is weird to me that people try to make an issue out of this, because it's not like the flavor change in cured meat is hard to miss. Just buy some pink salt! Corned beef tastes like corn beef because of…

This is false, buy some pork belly and smoke it. I've done it.

If there is a thing a reasonable person can do with pork belly, I have done it. I think you have the higher evidentiary burden here, regardless of our respective experience. You can check Ruhlman's Charcuterie and Salumi books, you can check AskCulinary, you can check the food Stack Exchange, you can just notice that literally every packaged bacon product, whether or not it claims to be cured, is in fact cured (usually with celery powder), or, of course, you can just take some sliced pork belly and make a 5% pink salt/salt mix and throw it in a zip in your fridge overnight and see.

I get that you like smoked pork belly. I do too. I don't even object to you calling it "bacon". All sorts of things that aren't American bacon are called bacon. But nitrites are absolutely part of the distinctive flavor of American bacon.

The whole thing is silly, because we can just point to ham and corned beef, two products where the debate doesn't even make sense; we only see it with bacon, and we only see it because vendors lie about whether their products are cured.

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#280

Post by UncleMeat »

arrozconcosas wrote: post #90
nradov wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every grocery store where I've shopped has yogurt with no added sugar. It's right there on the shelf, just look at the label. Antibiotic resistance is a concern but the FDA has made progress in that area. https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/safety-health/antimicr... The EU bans routine antibiotic use for promoting animal growth but antibiotics are still widely used for other purposes. https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/n…

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

My nearby Kroger has four brands of greek yogurt with no sugar added and three brands of plain yogurt with no sugar added. Each of these brands sells yogurt of varying fat contents in quart and cup containers. This takes up like eight feet of width on the shelves.
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