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You replied to me, but your questions and comments seem directed at GP? And actually your protein intake is closer to the low end. You could safely and probably

by croon 9y ago

You replied to me, but your questions and comments seem directed at GP? And actually your protein intake is closer to the low end. You could safely and probably beneficially go up to 1.3-1.6g/kg [1] [2]. It's as important to muscle gain as it is to fat loss. Athletes actually require less since they're better at utilizing intake. You don't seem to be disagreeing with anything I wrote, but just a comment on your last paragraph: > Going back, what's common sense is to eat natural foods rather than avoid them. Processed stuff is the real danger, including meal replacement with powders. I think avoiding something "processed" is a terribly blunt tool, which will likely end up not serving you. What does processed even mean? I usually buy pre-washed potatoes because I'm lazy, those are processed. As is my cheese, as is my chili sauce, my peeled nuts, and most if not all my spices. I don't think we're there yet with Soylent and similar meal replacements, but I don't doubt that we in the future will have meal replacements with much better macros, better taste and fun texture, as well as lab grown meats and meat substitutes that taste better. Processed doesn't mean inherently bad, and there's nothing definitive saying that processed through photosynthesis is better than on a molecular level processed through a series of tubes in the other kind of plant. The only thing making "processed" foods bad are businesses cutting corners on cost with the only goal of delivering something palatable, not something healthy. That isn't a process problem, but a market problem. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26797090 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26797090 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22150425 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22150425

mancerayder 9y ago
Processed food has a common parlance. I mean, you could try to expand the definition to include 'pre-washed' vegetables, but that would be a waste of a definition. Processed food in day-to-day parlance means 'highly processed', in the extreme being things that have been reconstituted and then items like preservatives and salt added like potato chips, protein powders with lots of ingredients, and so forth - in contrast to foods like vegetables or meats (or potatoes) that weren't pulverized and re-mixed into new foods with new chemicals. The most striking example of terrible, processed foods are cereals [ not the scientific word, the common parlance word ] : take corn or wheat, mash it to shreds, add huge amount of corn syrup and pretty colors, you have a food which you re-define (remember definitions have context) as 'cereal'. Apologies for replying to the wrong parent, though!
- croon 9y ago
  That's fair, and I'm not usually one to try to dilute a words meaning, but if processed indeed means to redefine a natural food item in the way you describe, what's to say you can't do that in a way that keeps it as healthy (or even more healthy) while making it either more approachable in ease of cooking or just tastier. The issue with processing in your example is mainly the corn syrup and coloring (if not using natural coloring like carotene etc), as well as to a lesser extent shredding of the corn or wheat which leads to a higher glycemic index. But as we've made cheese puffs out of corn and varying degrees of terrible chemicals, we now have chips made from quinoa, beans, lentils etc, which I'm not saying are great, but better. If I could have a snickers with 0 calories and no carcinogens, or pringles made out of broccoli, you can bet your ass I would pop that package without stopping. So again, even with our agreed definition of processed, it might in 95% of cases right now mean "bad food", but it doesn't have to.
  - mancerayder 9y ago
    So again, even with our agreed definition of processed, it might in 95% of cases right now mean "bad food", but it doesn't have to. Fine, it doesn't have to. And if we have the technology to send someone's car into space, we can surely create something processed and perfect in terms of glycemic index, macronutrient balance, and so forth. But as a general rule, almost all that stuff has flaws. For example, even the organic quinoa chips (and puffs which I'm very guilty of inhaling a bagfull of) has a lot more sodium than you really need. That and I'd argue, in the case of certain concentrated items like whey protein chips, it's kind of unclear what side effects we might discover one day (as we did with refined sugars and obesity and diabetes and such). That said, I'm risking it. Lest I be accused of hypocrisy for occasionally eating the healthy processed stuff you describe, I'd argue that for the general (ignorant, at least in the US) public, 'avoid processed' is a good rule of thumb.

by croon 9y ago

mancerayder 9y ago

Processed food has a common parlance. I mean, you could try to expand the definition to include 'pre-washed' vegetables, but that would be a waste of a definition. Processed food in day-to-day parlance means 'highly processed', in the extreme being things that have been reconstituted and then items like preservatives and salt added like potato chips, protein powders with lots of ingredients, and so forth - in contrast to foods like vegetables or meats (or potatoes) that weren't pulverized and re-mixed into new foods with new chemicals. The most striking example of terrible, processed foods are cereals [ not the scientific word, the common parlance word ] : take corn or wheat, mash it to shreds, add huge amount of corn syrup and pretty colors, you have a food which you re-define (remember definitions have context) as 'cereal'. Apologies for replying to the wrong parent, though!

croon 9y ago
That's fair, and I'm not usually one to try to dilute a words meaning, but if processed indeed means to redefine a natural food item in the way you describe, what's to say you can't do that in a way that keeps it as healthy (or even more healthy) while making it either more approachable in ease of cooking or just tastier. The issue with processing in your example is mainly the corn syrup and coloring (if not using natural coloring like carotene etc), as well as to a lesser extent shredding of the corn or wheat which leads to a higher glycemic index. But as we've made cheese puffs out of corn and varying degrees of terrible chemicals, we now have chips made from quinoa, beans, lentils etc, which I'm not saying are great, but better. If I could have a snickers with 0 calories and no carcinogens, or pringles made out of broccoli, you can bet your ass I would pop that package without stopping. So again, even with our agreed definition of processed, it might in 95% of cases right now mean "bad food", but it doesn't have to.
- mancerayder 9y ago
  So again, even with our agreed definition of processed, it might in 95% of cases right now mean "bad food", but it doesn't have to. Fine, it doesn't have to. And if we have the technology to send someone's car into space, we can surely create something processed and perfect in terms of glycemic index, macronutrient balance, and so forth. But as a general rule, almost all that stuff has flaws. For example, even the organic quinoa chips (and puffs which I'm very guilty of inhaling a bagfull of) has a lot more sodium than you really need. That and I'd argue, in the case of certain concentrated items like whey protein chips, it's kind of unclear what side effects we might discover one day (as we did with refined sugars and obesity and diabetes and such). That said, I'm risking it. Lest I be accused of hypocrisy for occasionally eating the healthy processed stuff you describe, I'd argue that for the general (ignorant, at least in the US) public, 'avoid processed' is a good rule of thumb.