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Curious - what makes pizza a junk food?

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> what makes pizza a junk food? Most pizza in America has sugar in the sauce and dough. The sauce, moreover, tends to be fatty. And the toppings are processed meats, et cetera. If the pizza is prepared in anything but a pizza oven, it's likely also pan fried.
- tootie 5y ago
  Fruit has a lot of sugar too.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > Fruit has a lot of sugar too It does. We are not fruit bats. Eating a diet of just fruit is not healthy. But the fructose in fruits is digested and absorbed differently from the free sugar in processed foods.
    - olau 5y ago
      I once looked up what big apes are eating and found out that they eat very little meat and lots of fruit. Like half of the diet could be figs.
  - aynyc 5y ago
    Eating fruit vs drinking fruit juice is completely different in terms of amount of sugar ingested.
    - RussianCow 5y ago
      And more importantly, in the amount of fiber ingested.
      - aynyc 5y ago
        Yes, absolutely.
  - pengaru 5y ago
    Intact fruit tends to be high in soluble dietary fiber, which binds up a bunch of the sugar in a goop that passes through the small intestine to be consumed by micros in the large intestine. i.e. it makes you fart when you eat enough of it.
  - short_sells_poo 5y ago
    Yes but it also tends to have lots of fiber, unless again it has been engineered to have as little as possible with maximum sugar content. And the usual advice of "everything in moderation" applies to fruit as well. You can certainly eat unhealthy amount of sugar via fruit, but it is much more difficult than via junk food. 100 grams of donuts contains 50 grams of refined sugar. That's close to half a kg of apples (nearly a pound in freedom units). You could certainly eat that many apples, but then you are also eating a lot of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and fiber. And once you ate half a kg of apples, you are literally stuffed.
nate_meurer 5y ago
The phrases junk food and ultra-processed are somewhat vague, but are generally applied to foods consisting of highly refined carbs, sugars, fat. Very high sodium is ubiquitous as well. Add in some processed meat, and that's literally the entire ingredient list of a pepperoni pizza.

> what makes pizza a junk food? Most pizza in America has sugar in the sauce and dough. The sauce, moreover, tends to be fatty. And the toppings are processed meats, et cetera. If the pizza is prepared in anything but a pizza oven, it's likely also pan fried.

tootie 5y ago
Fruit has a lot of sugar too.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Fruit has a lot of sugar too It does. We are not fruit bats. Eating a diet of just fruit is not healthy. But the fructose in fruits is digested and absorbed differently from the free sugar in processed foods.
  - olau 5y ago
    I once looked up what big apes are eating and found out that they eat very little meat and lots of fruit. Like half of the diet could be figs.
- aynyc 5y ago
  Eating fruit vs drinking fruit juice is completely different in terms of amount of sugar ingested.
  - RussianCow 5y ago
    And more importantly, in the amount of fiber ingested.
    - aynyc 5y ago
      Yes, absolutely.
- pengaru 5y ago
  Intact fruit tends to be high in soluble dietary fiber, which binds up a bunch of the sugar in a goop that passes through the small intestine to be consumed by micros in the large intestine. i.e. it makes you fart when you eat enough of it.
- short_sells_poo 5y ago
  Yes but it also tends to have lots of fiber, unless again it has been engineered to have as little as possible with maximum sugar content. And the usual advice of "everything in moderation" applies to fruit as well. You can certainly eat unhealthy amount of sugar via fruit, but it is much more difficult than via junk food. 100 grams of donuts contains 50 grams of refined sugar. That's close to half a kg of apples (nearly a pound in freedom units). You could certainly eat that many apples, but then you are also eating a lot of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and fiber. And once you ate half a kg of apples, you are literally stuffed.

nate_meurer 5y ago

The phrases junk food and ultra-processed are somewhat vague, but are generally applied to foods consisting of highly refined carbs, sugars, fat. Very high sodium is ubiquitous as well. Add in some processed meat, and that's literally the entire ingredient list of a pepperoni pizza.