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A category of food that had escaped me as highly processed was food at specific kinds of restaurants. David Kessler has an eye opening chapter "A visit to Chili

A category of food that had escaped me as highly processed was food at specific kinds of restaurants. David Kessler has an eye opening chapter "A visit to Chili's" in his book, The End of Overeating. Everything they serve at chili's, even seemingly innocuous things like a chicken breast meal have been made or modified to make them hyper-palatable, easy to chew, swallow, and overeat. For non-American's, chili's is a sit down chain restaurant where you order off a menu. Other comparable restaurants are Applebee's, and TGI Fridays. https://www.chilis.com/ https://www.chilis.com/

grawprog 7y ago
I'm curious as to how fast food being highly processed escaped you. It's fairly obvious just by the texture and taste of most food at those places that it's highly processed into some form far from what it originally was. If you take a bite into just about any chicken Burger, nugget, strip, boneless wing, whatever, from any fast food place and inside is just a formless, whitish pinkish mush. That's not what chicken's supposed to look like. It's also something that's been repeatedly said in media and other places since at least I was a kid in the 90's. Most things in fast food places come premade and frozen from some factory somewhere and usually just fried up either in oil or on a 'grill'. Almost nothing is actually prepared in those places. Though, if you're in Canada, A&W serves real eggs and Bacon and stuff for breakfast and their onion rings are actually cut and prepared in store(though the batter and breading aren't). Everything else though came preprepared.
- colordrops 7y ago
  I didn't notice either until my 30s. The reason for me is that I grew up on highly processed and packaged foods, and places like Chilis seemed to serve more "whole" foods in comparison to a lot of the junk I was eating. It wasn't until I did a lot of reading and cooking that I understood the difference.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- heymijo 7y ago
  > I'm curious as to how fast food being highly processed escaped you. I'll read this as a genuine question and you not just calling me out for being an idiot. I of course, saw A&W/McDonald's/Wendy's as highly processed junk. 1) But a Chili's or an Applebee's where I can order a chicken entree that looks like chicken, that I can get with a side of vegetables, that comes on a real plate, with real silverware--I guess my mind put that in a different category with expectations that it was more like 'real' food. 2) I hadn't seen how the "sausage was made" so to speak. Yes, I know food is processed, frozen, prepared off site, but the book I referenced peeled back so many curtains on just what that looks like, even for that seemingly benign chicken breast I talked about in my first point. Here's one excerpt pulled from a sea of them: The uncooked chicken had been in a marinade that combined orange juice, tequila, triple sec, sweet-and-sour mix, and artificial color, thereby including sugar, two kinds of oil, and salt. It was shipped frozen in twenty-five-pound bags, each containing about fifty pieces of meat, plus whey protein concentrate and modified tapioca starch. Nick Nickelson, a chief scientist at the Dallas-based Standard Meat, a supplier to Chili’s, said that the chicken and marinade were tumbled together in a piece of equipment that resembled a cement mixer. “It pulls the marinade into the muscle,” said Nickelson, breaking down the cellular structure of the meat and tenderizing it in the process. Another common way to get marinade into meat is through needle injection. Hundreds of needles are used to pierce the meat, tearing up the connective tissue. “It’s been prechewed,” said Billy Rosenthal, former president of Standard Meat. For all that, very little in the appearance or flavor of Chili’s food suggests how much sugar, fat, or salt it contains, or how easily it goes down.
  - grawprog 7y ago
    It was a genuine question, sorry if it came off as insulting. I dunno, I've been learning to cook my own food since I was a kid, so I've got a pretty good idea of what meat and other food should look and taste like, to the point where most processed food doesn't really look or taste like 'real food' to me and I don't even look at it as food. Even those bottom tier just above fastfood style restaurants. I've always thought people realized this but just didn't really care. It's just never really came to mind there are people who just never realized.
Smithalicious 7y ago
> have been made or modified to make them hyper-palatable, easy to chew, swallow Isn't this just a very scary way of saying "delicious"?
SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
And that's why you gotta look up the nutritional information if you want to make good choices. A salad isn't just a salad at a restaurant.
agota 7y ago
The book sounds really interesting, thank you for mentioning it!

grawprog 7y ago

I'm curious as to how fast food being highly processed escaped you. It's fairly obvious just by the texture and taste of most food at those places that it's highly processed into some form far from what it originally was. If you take a bite into just about any chicken Burger, nugget, strip, boneless wing, whatever, from any fast food place and inside is just a formless, whitish pinkish mush. That's not what chicken's supposed to look like. It's also something that's been repeatedly said in media and other places since at least I was a kid in the 90's. Most things in fast food places come premade and frozen from some factory somewhere and usually just fried up either in oil or on a 'grill'. Almost nothing is actually prepared in those places. Though, if you're in Canada, A&W serves real eggs and Bacon and stuff for breakfast and their onion rings are actually cut and prepared in store(though the batter and breading aren't). Everything else though came preprepared.

colordrops 7y ago
I didn't notice either until my 30s. The reason for me is that I grew up on highly processed and packaged foods, and places like Chilis seemed to serve more "whole" foods in comparison to a lot of the junk I was eating. It wasn't until I did a lot of reading and cooking that I understood the difference.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
heymijo 7y ago
> I'm curious as to how fast food being highly processed escaped you. I'll read this as a genuine question and you not just calling me out for being an idiot. I of course, saw A&W/McDonald's/Wendy's as highly processed junk. 1) But a Chili's or an Applebee's where I can order a chicken entree that looks like chicken, that I can get with a side of vegetables, that comes on a real plate, with real silverware--I guess my mind put that in a different category with expectations that it was more like 'real' food. 2) I hadn't seen how the "sausage was made" so to speak. Yes, I know food is processed, frozen, prepared off site, but the book I referenced peeled back so many curtains on just what that looks like, even for that seemingly benign chicken breast I talked about in my first point. Here's one excerpt pulled from a sea of them: The uncooked chicken had been in a marinade that combined orange juice, tequila, triple sec, sweet-and-sour mix, and artificial color, thereby including sugar, two kinds of oil, and salt. It was shipped frozen in twenty-five-pound bags, each containing about fifty pieces of meat, plus whey protein concentrate and modified tapioca starch. Nick Nickelson, a chief scientist at the Dallas-based Standard Meat, a supplier to Chili’s, said that the chicken and marinade were tumbled together in a piece of equipment that resembled a cement mixer. “It pulls the marinade into the muscle,” said Nickelson, breaking down the cellular structure of the meat and tenderizing it in the process. Another common way to get marinade into meat is through needle injection. Hundreds of needles are used to pierce the meat, tearing up the connective tissue. “It’s been prechewed,” said Billy Rosenthal, former president of Standard Meat. For all that, very little in the appearance or flavor of Chili’s food suggests how much sugar, fat, or salt it contains, or how easily it goes down.
- grawprog 7y ago
  It was a genuine question, sorry if it came off as insulting. I dunno, I've been learning to cook my own food since I was a kid, so I've got a pretty good idea of what meat and other food should look and taste like, to the point where most processed food doesn't really look or taste like 'real food' to me and I don't even look at it as food. Even those bottom tier just above fastfood style restaurants. I've always thought people realized this but just didn't really care. It's just never really came to mind there are people who just never realized.

Smithalicious 7y ago

> have been made or modified to make them hyper-palatable, easy to chew, swallow Isn't this just a very scary way of saying "delicious"?

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago

And that's why you gotta look up the nutritional information if you want to make good choices. A salad isn't just a salad at a restaurant.

agota 7y ago

The book sounds really interesting, thank you for mentioning it!