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Yup, and it's no surprise that we've resorted to interpreting price as a signal of healthiness/quality. What's the alternative? To spend your entire life resea

Yup, and it's no surprise that we've resorted to interpreting price as a signal of healthiness/quality. What's the alternative? To spend your entire life researching which nutrients justify a higher price and which are just marketing gimmicks? Then spend even more time figuring out if "enriched" foods are sufficient or if there's no substitute for the real deal? Then research suppliers for individual brands and see if their production process is up to snuff? Then you get into the whole organic debate, the GMO debate, and other things like fresh vs. frozen. Did you know that most vegetables are just as healthy frozen but broccoli is better fresh? And who knows the best way to prepare each vegetable to maximize the bioavailability of each nutrient? I know I can't keep track of it all... and that's without taking into account the ever-changing science of nutrition. The real failure here is our food labeling system. It's not our fault that we have to rely on an unreliable signal (price) as an indicator of a product's nutritional value.

jdietrich 10y ago
Eat food. Mainly plants. Not too much. It is ludicrously simple. You don't have to keep track of anything, you don't have to research anything. We would prefer to believe that nutrition is immensely complex, for the same reason that those "One Weird Tip For a Flat Belly" banner ads work. We know the blindingly obvious truth, but we don't like it very much. Pretending that nutrition is difficult is a cognitive defence against eating the things that all of us know to be healthy - fresh vegetables and whole grains. It gives us an excuse for eating foods that are obviously enormously salty, fatty and sugary. In essence, we are addicts in denial. We are hooked on foods that we know to be bad for us. We are hooked on excessively large portions. We are hooked on fat, hooked on salt, hooked on sugar. We will invent any fiction we need to avoid facing the reality of that addiction.
- gthtjtkt 10y ago
  Nobody said picking out healthy foods is hard. Anyone can point to some fruits, vegetables, rice, and boneless/skinless chicken breasts and say "those are healthy". But this isn't about that. This is about comparing the relative nutritional value of foods that aren't as easy to categorize. Like trainers always say, the best workout plan is the one you'll do, and the same is true of diet. Most people won't be happy very long eating "Mainly plants. Not too much." They will inevitably deviate from that diet. That doesn't mean they'll have to eat unhealthy foods, but they will need a way to judge the relative nutritional value of foods that aren't "mainly plants" in order to make good choices. At that point, nutrition does become fairly complex.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    Most cultures have a default regional/national cuisine that is time-tested, well-adapted to the local flora and fauna, and is reasonably healthy. That means most of the complexity gets elided -- just eat and cook however all your neighbors/family eat, and you'll be fine, because other people have done all the hard work of figuring out what works well. The most striking thing about America is how absent traditional food culture is -- how it's been progressively supplanted by industrialized food to the point where people are afraid to cook. One way to fix this is to pick a reasonably close cuisine and just implement it. E.g. decide that you really like to eat Italian, buy an (authentic) Italian home cooking recipe book. It will be more expensive, because we're not in Italy, but the combinations will probably be healthy.
- humanrebar 10y ago
  There are some logistics involved if you buy fresh food, to cook what you have before it spoils. If you're already running an attention deficit (single parent, multiple kids, multiple jobs, health problems, ailing parents, dirty house), then "oh, just buy raw roughage and plan/improvise yummy meals!" really isn't a winning suggestion. So that parent goes to KFC and gets a family meal. On sale. The "it's cheaper to eat fresh" people don't really address that use case. Historically, the mother would be the homemaker, probably live in a multi-generational home (or neighborhood), and have many children so there would help with food prep and chores. Most people were in agriculture, so many fresh ingredients were literally right there. Also, homes used to be simpler and less immaculate.

jdietrich 10y ago

Eat food. Mainly plants. Not too much. It is ludicrously simple. You don't have to keep track of anything, you don't have to research anything. We would prefer to believe that nutrition is immensely complex, for the same reason that those "One Weird Tip For a Flat Belly" banner ads work. We know the blindingly obvious truth, but we don't like it very much. Pretending that nutrition is difficult is a cognitive defence against eating the things that all of us know to be healthy - fresh vegetables and whole grains. It gives us an excuse for eating foods that are obviously enormously salty, fatty and sugary. In essence, we are addicts in denial. We are hooked on foods that we know to be bad for us. We are hooked on excessively large portions. We are hooked on fat, hooked on salt, hooked on sugar. We will invent any fiction we need to avoid facing the reality of that addiction.

gthtjtkt 10y ago
Nobody said picking out healthy foods is hard. Anyone can point to some fruits, vegetables, rice, and boneless/skinless chicken breasts and say "those are healthy". But this isn't about that. This is about comparing the relative nutritional value of foods that aren't as easy to categorize. Like trainers always say, the best workout plan is the one you'll do, and the same is true of diet. Most people won't be happy very long eating "Mainly plants. Not too much." They will inevitably deviate from that diet. That doesn't mean they'll have to eat unhealthy foods, but they will need a way to judge the relative nutritional value of foods that aren't "mainly plants" in order to make good choices. At that point, nutrition does become fairly complex.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  Most cultures have a default regional/national cuisine that is time-tested, well-adapted to the local flora and fauna, and is reasonably healthy. That means most of the complexity gets elided -- just eat and cook however all your neighbors/family eat, and you'll be fine, because other people have done all the hard work of figuring out what works well. The most striking thing about America is how absent traditional food culture is -- how it's been progressively supplanted by industrialized food to the point where people are afraid to cook. One way to fix this is to pick a reasonably close cuisine and just implement it. E.g. decide that you really like to eat Italian, buy an (authentic) Italian home cooking recipe book. It will be more expensive, because we're not in Italy, but the combinations will probably be healthy.
humanrebar 10y ago
There are some logistics involved if you buy fresh food, to cook what you have before it spoils. If you're already running an attention deficit (single parent, multiple kids, multiple jobs, health problems, ailing parents, dirty house), then "oh, just buy raw roughage and plan/improvise yummy meals!" really isn't a winning suggestion. So that parent goes to KFC and gets a family meal. On sale. The "it's cheaper to eat fresh" people don't really address that use case. Historically, the mother would be the homemaker, probably live in a multi-generational home (or neighborhood), and have many children so there would help with food prep and chores. Most people were in agriculture, so many fresh ingredients were literally right there. Also, homes used to be simpler and less immaculate.