6 ms·

In general, I agree with a lot of what you're saying here about eating more vegetables and way less sugar being the way to go health-wise, but I do want to resp

by shawxe 6y ago

In general, I agree with a lot of what you're saying here about eating more vegetables and way less sugar being the way to go health-wise, but I do want to respond to some specific things you've said. > You can find really good junk food everywhere, or pay a really high price to eat in high-level Italian restaurants for example, but it is very difficult to eat standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-added, except in Asian restaurants Restaurants are typically not where I go to eat healthy food anywhere in the world, although I do think you have a pointed that American restaurants are often relatively junk food oriented. > ban every processed food, sauce, appetizer.... There is nothing inherently wrong with "processed" food; it is entirely possible to use industrial processes to make a perfectly healthy and wholesome food product. Take for example, (this is by no means an endorsement) Larabar [1]. They make snack bars that typically contain 2-3 ingredients that are all just dried fruit. Should they be banned as "processed" food because of how they are made? > If you would not eat a spoon of every single ingredient of some food, don't eat it This is a ridiculous statement and is one of the main reasons why I'm commenting. I wouldn't eat a spoonful of yeast, should I not eat bread? I wouldn't eat a spoonful of salt, should I not eat... anything? > It looks like this is hard to do in the USA: you don't easily find, for example, yogurt without sugar added. I've never lived in an area in the United States where I've ever had any problem finding anything like this. [1] https://www.larabar.com/ https://www.larabar.com/

jfim 6y ago
> There is nothing inherently wrong with "processed" food There's a distinction between processed and ultra-processed (or highly processed). For example, canned fish is processed (added salt and oil), while a frozen TV dinner is ultra-processed (many ingredients added, some of which you probably don't have in your kitchen). Processed food is fine assuming you're aware of what's in it, how it's processed, and make sure you're not overeating any of it.
- shawxe 6y ago
  > There's a distinction between processed and ultra-processed (or highly processed). For example, canned fish is processed (added salt and oil), while a frozen TV dinner is ultra-processed (many ingredients added, some of which you probably don't have in your kitchen). Sure, but OP said ban all processed food. That's what I'm responding to, not "ban all ultra-processed food." That said, I do find your categorization to be troubling. Just because something is a frozen dinner doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad for you. Whether or not something is good or bad for you is based entirely on its chemical composition; it has absolutely nothing to do with how it has been put together or what form factor its being distributed in. It may sound like I'm being pedantic, but I think these kinds of short cuts are actually genuinely harmful. I've known many people who have thought "cheeseburgers from McDonald's are unhealthy not because cheeseburgers are unhealthy but because they are processed" and then gone right ahead and made themselves cheeseburgers that have three to four times the calories, fat, and salt of the McDonald's counterpart. Does that make McDonald's a healthy option? Absolutely not. But why is McDonald's unhealthy? It's because the food they serve is unhealthy. It's not that the food that is served at McDonald's is unhealthy because McDonald's is unhealthy. > Processed food is fine assuming you're aware of what's in it, how it's processed, and make sure you're not overeating any of it. s/Processed// If people want to eat healthier, they need to pay attention to the ingredients in the things they're eating. If we're going to regulate something, we need to regulate the ingredients that go into things people eat. Using buzz words like "processed" and "ultra-processed" with definitions that are, at best, not well understood by the general population just leads to people working around personal/social rules/regulations. Just because your t-bone steak is local organic grass-fed whatever does not make it good for you. That food is just not healthy, even if it is the only ingredient. We did not evolve eating food like that with any kind of regularity. If you want to be healthy, you need to just not eat it.
  - andai 6y ago
    So, this mean that McDonalds is as healthy as the burgers I make at home? I was under the impression that their food is loaded with sugar and strange additives.
    - antepodius 6y ago
      And that's what makes them bad. I've always thought 'processed' was a pretty vague marketing term. A lot like people talking about 'chemicals'.
    - antepodius 6y ago
      And that's what makes them bad. I've always thought 'processed' was a pretty vague marketing term. A lot like people talking about 'chemicals'. Yeah, modern food is terrible.
    - frosted-flakes 6y ago
      > So, this mean that McDonalds is as healthy as the burgers I make at home? Sure, as long as you use similar ingredients. > I was under the impression that their food is loaded with sugar and strange additives. It's not. The beef patty really is just beef. The bun is white bread, just like you can buy at the grocery store. And the condiments are self-evident. It's just that that they've nailed the production process so precisely that what you get tastes almost exactly the same, every time. A lot of people have this warped, black and white view of "healthy" and "unhealthy", but the reality is that it's a spectrum, and you can get reasonably healthy food at McDonalds but eat like crap at home.
      - cbsks 6y ago
        McDonalds lists the ingredients in their foods here: https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/about-our-food/nutrition-calculator.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/about-our-food/nutrition-... Their hamburger doesn't look any different than what I would make at home. I don't have any grocery store bought buns in front of me, but I assume it would have similar ingredients. The pickles are not the most natural, but once again, it's not much different than what I would buy in a grocery store. The biggest difference for me personally is that I would usually make a salad or another vegetable along with homemade burgers and fries, but it wouldn't even cross my mind to order that at McDonald's. I suppose I bring that on myself. Regular Bun: Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Sugar, Yeast, Soybean Oil, Contains 2% or Less: Salt, Wheat Gluten, Potato Flour, May Contain One or More Dough Conditioners (DATEM, Ascorbic Acid, Mono and Diglycerides, Enzymes), Vinegar. 100% Beef Patty: 100% Pure Usda Inspected Beef; No Fillers, No Extenders. Prepared With Grill Seasoning (salt, Black Pepper). Ketchup: Tomato Concentrate from Red Ripe Tomatoes, Distilled Vinegar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Water, Salt, Natural Flavors. Pickle Slices: Cucumbers, Water, Distilled Vinegar, Salt, Calcium Chloride, Alum, Potassium Sorbate (Preservative), Natural Flavors, Polysorbate 80, Extractives of Turmeric (Color). Onions: Onions. Mustard: Distilled Vinegar, Water, Mustard Seed, Salt, Turmeric, Paprika, Spice Extractive.
gdebel 6y ago
I can eat a spoon of salt, or yeast. It is not particularly good but I know what it is, and I know the toxic dose. I won't eat a spoon of sodium benzoate or E324 or I don't know which food additive, I can't buy it in a food store, it is not "food" by itself. So I don't eat it :-)
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Sodium benzoate is limited in concentration by the FDA to about 0.1% (by weight), so there is certainly not a spoon of sodium benzoate in your food.
- shawxe 6y ago
  I'm not sure a big spoon of salt will make you any less sick than a big spoon of sodium benzoate, but that's fair. I definitely agree that people should avoid eating things they do not understand; I think most of my disagreement with your original post is semantic, but I do still appreciate it. :-)
Xenograph 6y ago
Your Larabar example is way off base: 1. The number of ingredients in something does not directly indicate how (un)healthy it is. The fact that Larabar contains 2-3 ingredients says nothing about its nutritional value. 2. In fact, many people would not consider Larabar to be a "processed" food to begin with because it literally is just 2-3 fruits and nuts mashed together. You could make something very similar in your own kitchen. The way you're speaking makes it sound like "processed" food is anything that is cooked or combined in some way. That is not how people use the word IME. 3. Have you looked at the sugar content of Larabar? It's not low, nor would I consider it healthy or wholesome. They likely chose dates specifically because of their extremely high sugar content so that they could pretend they are healthy while actually including unhealthy amounts of sugar in their product under the guise of dates.
- m0zg 6y ago
  Likewise, HFCS has about the same blend of sugars as honey, yet it is considered unhealthy and honey is considered healthy somehow. I'd like someone to explain how that works.
  - rsanek 6y ago
    FWIW, I don't think honey is considered healthy. In any nutrition recommendation I'm familiar with, it is considered a part of added/free sugars, aka something to limit.
  - manmal 6y ago
    Maybe, if HFCS were consumed in equal amounts as honey, it would also be considered healthy. Hormesis is a strange thing - too much of a good thing will turn it into a bad thing.
  - dreamcompiler 6y ago
    Honey is only considered "healthy" by people who know nothing about nutrition but who think "natural" is automatically good [0]. Honey is no better for you than HFCS, but no worse either (except in infants because honey often contains botulism spores that infants cannot fight [1].) [0] https://www.glycemic-index.org/high-fructose-corn-syrup-vs-sugar.html https://www.glycemic-index.org/high-fructose-corn-syrup-vs-s... [1] https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/honey-pacifiers-suspected-texas-infant-botulism-cases https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-informatio...
rsanek 6y ago
> There is nothing inherently wrong with "processed" food I don't know if I'd go as far as to say "wrong" but certainly the less processing a food has, the better, primarily because you get to retain more of the fiber content (and so the food is more filling).
selimthegrim 6y ago
In New Orleans I have had trouble finding it (non-Greek yogurt without sugar) at local chains and places like Save-a-Lot.
127 6y ago
>There is nothing inherently wrong with "processed" food; it is entirely possible to use industrial processes to make a perfectly healthy and wholesome food product. Given how profit in the food industry and addiction is so closely tied together, I don't see how this is possible.
miku86 6y ago
As a doctor, your primary job is to make sick people healthy, not to make healthy people more healthy. This is why you want to have a high compliance, meaning that the sick person does what the doctor recommends. This is mostly caused due technical or behavioral complexity. You can increase compliance by reducing complexity. At the same time, the accuracy decreases. Example: High Accuracy / High Complexity: "Do not eat frugugle, fergerio, flululu and fnyvoo." Why low compliance? Because the behavioral complexity is very high, especially for sick people: 1. Find the food ingredients list. 2. Loop over the ingredients list and compare the current item with the "do not eat"-list. 3. Make a decision for every ingredient, if this is in the list ("frugugle" is on the list, but one ingredient is "fruguglelase", what's my decision?) Lower Accuracy / Lower Complexity: "Do not eat products with more than 3 ingredients." Why higher compliance? Because the behavioral complexity is lower: 1. Find the food ingredients list. 2. Count the amount of ingredients. 3. Make a decision after reading max. 3 ingredients. IMHO it's easier to start with the second approach, because you make progress faster, and keep the momentum going.
- lordlic 6y ago
  This whole argument strikes me as very silly. If I want to eat healthy foods badly enough to change my diet and check the ingredients every time I buy something, I'm not going to want to oversimplify it to the point of near meaninglessness by adopting a rule like "3 ingredients or fewer." I'm perfectly capable of learning what ingredients to avoid. And if I'm sick, and there are clinical details that are important to my treatment, then I'm absolutely not going to be satisfied with a low-accuracy simplification.

by shawxe 6y ago

jfim 6y ago

> There is nothing inherently wrong with "processed" food There's a distinction between processed and ultra-processed (or highly processed). For example, canned fish is processed (added salt and oil), while a frozen TV dinner is ultra-processed (many ingredients added, some of which you probably don't have in your kitchen). Processed food is fine assuming you're aware of what's in it, how it's processed, and make sure you're not overeating any of it.

shawxe 6y ago
> There's a distinction between processed and ultra-processed (or highly processed). For example, canned fish is processed (added salt and oil), while a frozen TV dinner is ultra-processed (many ingredients added, some of which you probably don't have in your kitchen). Sure, but OP said ban all processed food. That's what I'm responding to, not "ban all ultra-processed food." That said, I do find your categorization to be troubling. Just because something is a frozen dinner doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad for you. Whether or not something is good or bad for you is based entirely on its chemical composition; it has absolutely nothing to do with how it has been put together or what form factor its being distributed in. It may sound like I'm being pedantic, but I think these kinds of short cuts are actually genuinely harmful. I've known many people who have thought "cheeseburgers from McDonald's are unhealthy not because cheeseburgers are unhealthy but because they are processed" and then gone right ahead and made themselves cheeseburgers that have three to four times the calories, fat, and salt of the McDonald's counterpart. Does that make McDonald's a healthy option? Absolutely not. But why is McDonald's unhealthy? It's because the food they serve is unhealthy. It's not that the food that is served at McDonald's is unhealthy because McDonald's is unhealthy. > Processed food is fine assuming you're aware of what's in it, how it's processed, and make sure you're not overeating any of it. s/Processed// If people want to eat healthier, they need to pay attention to the ingredients in the things they're eating. If we're going to regulate something, we need to regulate the ingredients that go into things people eat. Using buzz words like "processed" and "ultra-processed" with definitions that are, at best, not well understood by the general population just leads to people working around personal/social rules/regulations. Just because your t-bone steak is local organic grass-fed whatever does not make it good for you. That food is just not healthy, even if it is the only ingredient. We did not evolve eating food like that with any kind of regularity. If you want to be healthy, you need to just not eat it.
- andai 6y ago
  So, this mean that McDonalds is as healthy as the burgers I make at home? I was under the impression that their food is loaded with sugar and strange additives.
  - antepodius 6y ago
    And that's what makes them bad. I've always thought 'processed' was a pretty vague marketing term. A lot like people talking about 'chemicals'.
  - antepodius 6y ago
    And that's what makes them bad. I've always thought 'processed' was a pretty vague marketing term. A lot like people talking about 'chemicals'. Yeah, modern food is terrible.
  - frosted-flakes 6y ago
    > So, this mean that McDonalds is as healthy as the burgers I make at home? Sure, as long as you use similar ingredients. > I was under the impression that their food is loaded with sugar and strange additives. It's not. The beef patty really is just beef. The bun is white bread, just like you can buy at the grocery store. And the condiments are self-evident. It's just that that they've nailed the production process so precisely that what you get tastes almost exactly the same, every time. A lot of people have this warped, black and white view of "healthy" and "unhealthy", but the reality is that it's a spectrum, and you can get reasonably healthy food at McDonalds but eat like crap at home.
    - cbsks 6y ago
      McDonalds lists the ingredients in their foods here: https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/about-our-food/nutrition-calculator.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/about-our-food/nutrition-... Their hamburger doesn't look any different than what I would make at home. I don't have any grocery store bought buns in front of me, but I assume it would have similar ingredients. The pickles are not the most natural, but once again, it's not much different than what I would buy in a grocery store. The biggest difference for me personally is that I would usually make a salad or another vegetable along with homemade burgers and fries, but it wouldn't even cross my mind to order that at McDonald's. I suppose I bring that on myself. Regular Bun: Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Sugar, Yeast, Soybean Oil, Contains 2% or Less: Salt, Wheat Gluten, Potato Flour, May Contain One or More Dough Conditioners (DATEM, Ascorbic Acid, Mono and Diglycerides, Enzymes), Vinegar. 100% Beef Patty: 100% Pure Usda Inspected Beef; No Fillers, No Extenders. Prepared With Grill Seasoning (salt, Black Pepper). Ketchup: Tomato Concentrate from Red Ripe Tomatoes, Distilled Vinegar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Water, Salt, Natural Flavors. Pickle Slices: Cucumbers, Water, Distilled Vinegar, Salt, Calcium Chloride, Alum, Potassium Sorbate (Preservative), Natural Flavors, Polysorbate 80, Extractives of Turmeric (Color). Onions: Onions. Mustard: Distilled Vinegar, Water, Mustard Seed, Salt, Turmeric, Paprika, Spice Extractive.

gdebel 6y ago

I can eat a spoon of salt, or yeast. It is not particularly good but I know what it is, and I know the toxic dose. I won't eat a spoon of sodium benzoate or E324 or I don't know which food additive, I can't buy it in a food store, it is not "food" by itself. So I don't eat it :-)

saagarjha 6y ago
Sodium benzoate is limited in concentration by the FDA to about 0.1% (by weight), so there is certainly not a spoon of sodium benzoate in your food.
shawxe 6y ago
I'm not sure a big spoon of salt will make you any less sick than a big spoon of sodium benzoate, but that's fair. I definitely agree that people should avoid eating things they do not understand; I think most of my disagreement with your original post is semantic, but I do still appreciate it. :-)

Xenograph 6y ago

Your Larabar example is way off base: 1. The number of ingredients in something does not directly indicate how (un)healthy it is. The fact that Larabar contains 2-3 ingredients says nothing about its nutritional value. 2. In fact, many people would not consider Larabar to be a "processed" food to begin with because it literally is just 2-3 fruits and nuts mashed together. You could make something very similar in your own kitchen. The way you're speaking makes it sound like "processed" food is anything that is cooked or combined in some way. That is not how people use the word IME. 3. Have you looked at the sugar content of Larabar? It's not low, nor would I consider it healthy or wholesome. They likely chose dates specifically because of their extremely high sugar content so that they could pretend they are healthy while actually including unhealthy amounts of sugar in their product under the guise of dates.

m0zg 6y ago
Likewise, HFCS has about the same blend of sugars as honey, yet it is considered unhealthy and honey is considered healthy somehow. I'd like someone to explain how that works.
- rsanek 6y ago
  FWIW, I don't think honey is considered healthy. In any nutrition recommendation I'm familiar with, it is considered a part of added/free sugars, aka something to limit.
- manmal 6y ago
  Maybe, if HFCS were consumed in equal amounts as honey, it would also be considered healthy. Hormesis is a strange thing - too much of a good thing will turn it into a bad thing.
- dreamcompiler 6y ago
  Honey is only considered "healthy" by people who know nothing about nutrition but who think "natural" is automatically good [0]. Honey is no better for you than HFCS, but no worse either (except in infants because honey often contains botulism spores that infants cannot fight [1].) [0] https://www.glycemic-index.org/high-fructose-corn-syrup-vs-sugar.html https://www.glycemic-index.org/high-fructose-corn-syrup-vs-s... [1] https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/honey-pacifiers-suspected-texas-infant-botulism-cases https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-informatio...

rsanek 6y ago

> There is nothing inherently wrong with "processed" food I don't know if I'd go as far as to say "wrong" but certainly the less processing a food has, the better, primarily because you get to retain more of the fiber content (and so the food is more filling).

selimthegrim 6y ago

In New Orleans I have had trouble finding it (non-Greek yogurt without sugar) at local chains and places like Save-a-Lot.

127 6y ago

>There is nothing inherently wrong with "processed" food; it is entirely possible to use industrial processes to make a perfectly healthy and wholesome food product. Given how profit in the food industry and addiction is so closely tied together, I don't see how this is possible.

miku86 6y ago

As a doctor, your primary job is to make sick people healthy, not to make healthy people more healthy. This is why you want to have a high compliance, meaning that the sick person does what the doctor recommends. This is mostly caused due technical or behavioral complexity. You can increase compliance by reducing complexity. At the same time, the accuracy decreases. Example: High Accuracy / High Complexity: "Do not eat frugugle, fergerio, flululu and fnyvoo." Why low compliance? Because the behavioral complexity is very high, especially for sick people: 1. Find the food ingredients list. 2. Loop over the ingredients list and compare the current item with the "do not eat"-list. 3. Make a decision for every ingredient, if this is in the list ("frugugle" is on the list, but one ingredient is "fruguglelase", what's my decision?) Lower Accuracy / Lower Complexity: "Do not eat products with more than 3 ingredients." Why higher compliance? Because the behavioral complexity is lower: 1. Find the food ingredients list. 2. Count the amount of ingredients. 3. Make a decision after reading max. 3 ingredients. IMHO it's easier to start with the second approach, because you make progress faster, and keep the momentum going.

lordlic 6y ago
This whole argument strikes me as very silly. If I want to eat healthy foods badly enough to change my diet and check the ingredients every time I buy something, I'm not going to want to oversimplify it to the point of near meaninglessness by adopting a rule like "3 ingredients or fewer." I'm perfectly capable of learning what ingredients to avoid. And if I'm sick, and there are clinical details that are important to my treatment, then I'm absolutely not going to be satisfied with a low-accuracy simplification.