2 ms·

A lot of people decided that LFTB was horrible stuff, based on no real evidence other than the fact that it's cheap. We still have no real evidence that LFTB is

A lot of people decided that LFTB was horrible stuff, based on no real evidence other than the fact that it's cheap. We still have no real evidence that LFTB is materially less nutritious or less safe than conventionally recovered scraps used in minced beef. I'm not convinced that LFTB is sufficiently different to conventional minced beef to warrant specific labelling; we don't expect every ingredient to come with a precise description of how it was processed, despite the very substantial transformations that occur during e.g. flour processing. Classism in food is absolutely endemic. A slightly facile but still important example is this paper from the BMJ in 2012. It analysed the nutritional content of 100 supermarket packaged meals and 100 recipes by popular British TV chefs. It found that the ready-made meals contained significantly fewer calories, less fat and more fibre than the recipes. We judge people for living on a diet of microwaveable meals, but switching to home-cooked meals might actually be a retrograde step in terms of nutrition if they follow the recipes of Jamie Oliver or Nigella Lawson. Something feels intuitively wrong about that conclusion; that feeling is implicit classism. https://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e7607 https://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e7607

rocky1138 8y ago
> we don't expect every ingredient to come with a precise description of how it was processed, despite the very substantial transformations that occur during e.g. flour processing. I expect this, but I've been disappointed at how we are doing so far as a society.
alexandercrohde 8y ago
>> We still have no real evidence that LFTB is materially less nutritious or less safe than conventionally recovered scraps used in minced beef Except you're flipping the burden of proof. Food product experiments aren't default-safe until proven otherwise. Class is a red-herring. Wealthy people eat pesticide-free, grass-fed, organic, bpa-free, healthier, or low-preservative fresh food not to signal, but because they are risk-averse. All food labels should contain exact information on what the product is in these respects, next to the ingredients and nutrition information.
dTal 8y ago
What feels wrong is that "fewer calories, less fat and more fibre" doesn't more nutritious to me - it sounds like cardboard. There's a lot more to nutrition than the (harmful) "fat = bad" meme. In the general case, home-cooked food, made from raw vegetables etc, definitely isn't less healthy than processed food. Nor do I understand the classism argument - cooking food from raw is enormously cheaper. Maybe it's different in America, but in the UK £10 worth of ready meals will feed you for a few meals, while £10 worth of judiciously selected ingredients will feed you for a week.

rocky1138 8y ago

> we don't expect every ingredient to come with a precise description of how it was processed, despite the very substantial transformations that occur during e.g. flour processing. I expect this, but I've been disappointed at how we are doing so far as a society.

alexandercrohde 8y ago

>> We still have no real evidence that LFTB is materially less nutritious or less safe than conventionally recovered scraps used in minced beef Except you're flipping the burden of proof. Food product experiments aren't default-safe until proven otherwise. Class is a red-herring. Wealthy people eat pesticide-free, grass-fed, organic, bpa-free, healthier, or low-preservative fresh food not to signal, but because they are risk-averse. All food labels should contain exact information on what the product is in these respects, next to the ingredients and nutrition information.

dTal 8y ago

What feels wrong is that "fewer calories, less fat and more fibre" doesn't more nutritious to me - it sounds like cardboard. There's a lot more to nutrition than the (harmful) "fat = bad" meme. In the general case, home-cooked food, made from raw vegetables etc, definitely isn't less healthy than processed food. Nor do I understand the classism argument - cooking food from raw is enormously cheaper. Maybe it's different in America, but in the UK £10 worth of ready meals will feed you for a few meals, while £10 worth of judiciously selected ingredients will feed you for a week.