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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

#91

Post by yesb »

secabeen wrote: post #79
nradov wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your comment. Trader Joe's sells plain yogurt with no added buttermilk. https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/greek-whole-mil... Or you can buy essentially the same thing for less at Walmart. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Mountain-High-Low-Fat-Yogurt-Vani... While there are some people who live in "food deserts" with very limited options, complaints by most HN users about the difficulty of find…

FWIW, Greek Yogurt is not the same as Yogurt, it's a different product. Those two items are not "essentially the same thing". Also, low/zero-fat yogurts dominate the market in the US. Plain Whole-Milk traditional yogurt is more available now than it was a decade or two ago, but it's still nowhere as common as the high-sugar flavored ones.

It's the same thing with the additional step of straining out some whey

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#92

Post by hvb2 »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #85
jjtheblunt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just as a datapoint: we learn to carefully (compulsively perhaps) read labels stateside, for all the reasons you mention. i.e., these same revelations and frustrations are shared by a huge swath of people born in the States (probably Canada too), and it is indeed a pain in the neck being continually paranoid about what nutritional rubbish is included in ingredient lists.

Food labels in the US and Canada suck as well compared to the UK and Australia. How big is a serve, who's percent daily value? Those numbers just aren't useful. Here in Australia we have a column for grams per 100g by weight. It makes it much easier to compare foods.

Units in the US make comparisons hard... Same problem in recipes...

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#93

Post by tptacek »

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: packaged, hyperpalatable, low-nutritional-density low-satiety foods are probably a major driver of health problems. It's just that "UPF" isn't the right metric for isolating those foods, and with the wrong metrics you end up in a similar place as California does with the Prop 65 warnings.

We went through a similar thing with "pink slime" (transglutaminase preservation techniques).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-a9VDIbZCU

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#94

Post by arrozconcosas »

A really nice brand of healthy foods that are trustworthy and less processed is Primal Kitchen. I have zero affiliation with them, just is a brand I trust. Its so hard to shop for things that are healthy. For example, their Ketchup is just Tomato, Vinegar, Salt, Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, and Spices. No sweetener substitutes needed. https://www.primalkitchen.com/products/organic-unsweetened-k...

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#95

Post by hvb2 »

kulahan wrote: post #84
nradov wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canned and frozen vegetables are also non-perishable. While some extremely poor people lack a working freezer or storage space, most consumers can easily use these options.

Absolutely nothing I've seen anywhere justifies the idea that access to food is the problem. In most cultures, you don't need cooking classes because the food is ingrained into their culture, and recipes are passed down. Americans have a much weaker link to their heritage. You might know a few dishes, but in my experience, absolutely nobody knows how to cook. By cook, I don't mean "can add one box of prepared goods t…

As Gordon Ramsay put it: "Most people don't cook, they heat their food"

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#96

Post by chasd00 »

nightski wrote: post #76
vector_spaces wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope that you recognize that your casual-outsider evaluation of the assortments of these stores is deeply flawed and not based on actual data. If you think about it even just a little bit, you'll recognize that it wouldn't make sense for a supermarket in one of the highest median income cities in the country to have assortment parity with a chain targeting cost conscious shoppers. The devil here is in the long-tail…

I lived in rural areas a large portion of my life. What you are describing is limited to areas with extremely small populations. Meaning even my hometown of a few thousand has a Walmart (put up when I was a kid in the 90s) an Aldi, and two local grocery stores with tons of healthy options. So yeah, there are a lot of towns that fit that criteria (less than 1000 residents). But as a portion of U.S. population it is no…

i lived in one of those small towns through highschool, just a blinking yellow light and a gas station. What we did, and everyone did, was drive the 20miles to the large town with a Walmart and get groceries there. It only takes 20min because there's no lights or traffic in those areas so the time commitment is about the same as living in a city. My mom made meals from her recipes using basic ingredients so it's certainly feasible to eat how you want in these areas. Only in the most rare/extreme cases are people forced to grocery shop at a gas station.

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#97

Post by rolisz »

Yizahi wrote: post #38
SirFatty wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...how hard it is to find healthy food options compared to the unhealthy ones." Sure, if you limit your purchases to Dollar General and Casey's. If you spent time in an actual grocery store, you'd find that your comment isn't true.

The problem is that to a European citizen this is a bit unexpected. In Europe, in all countries, you can find roughly the same level of "safeness" of food across all tiers of stores. Go to a cheapest one and the most expensive one, and the yogurt, tomatoes or meat would be approximately the same quality and have the same nutritional components. The only difference would be that expensive store would additionally carr…

Romanian here: the tomato quality varies by a lot. All stores have crappy "plastic" tasting tomatoes. It's not that easy to find really good tomatoes (in summer you can find them at local markets, in winter... Fancy imports I guess).

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#98

Post by [deleted] »

Yizahi wrote: post #38
SirFatty wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...how hard it is to find healthy food options compared to the unhealthy ones." Sure, if you limit your purchases to Dollar General and Casey's. If you spent time in an actual grocery store, you'd find that your comment isn't true.

The problem is that to a European citizen this is a bit unexpected. In Europe, in all countries, you can find roughly the same level of "safeness" of food across all tiers of stores. Go to a cheapest one and the most expensive one, and the yogurt, tomatoes or meat would be approximately the same quality and have the same nutritional components. The only difference would be that expensive store would additionally carr…

[deleted]

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#99

Post by arrozconcosas »

dfxm12 wrote: post #4

They're cheap, easy to find and easy to prepare. With grocery prices going up, what little progress has been made might get reversed, unfortunately. Making America healthy again means making non-ultraprocessed groceries available to everyone & cheaper, and ensuring that working families have time to cook. Pressuring Coke to create a new product with sugar is not going to move the needle.

Many times the ultra processed crap is more expensive. Don't forget "convenient to buy" in addition to "convenient to cook". For example, a cliff bar bought from a corner store could be $3, and is basically a candy bar. A company I like is called Farmer's Fridge, and they basically have vending machines in convenient places with fresh made healthy foods like salads.

Re: How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

#100

Post by thinkingtoilet »

Insanity wrote: post #2

As a European who moved to Canada and spends a fair amount of time in the States, one thing that really surprised me is how hard it is to find healthy food options compared to the unhealthy ones. Food was a bit of a concern before moving, but I didn't know just how frustrating it would be. Even something as simple as Yogurt is usually insanely sweet / sugary compared to European variants. Ingredients that are banned…

I buy unsweetened yogurt then sweeten it myself with a very small amount of actual syrup from a tree (yes, there is fake syrup).
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