4 ms·

"Sometimes I'll cook a dish with a lot of steps at home; am I supposed to assume that the 10-step food I cook at home is less healthy than the 2-step?" If your

"Sometimes I'll cook a dish with a lot of steps at home; am I supposed to assume that the 10-step food I cook at home is less healthy than the 2-step?" If your kitchen looks like a kitchen and not a chemistry lab or oil refinery and you're starting with things that are identifiably food, you're probably good to go either way. And while I'm no expert on the full cycle of meat production in he US, animals are routinely grazed on land that is unfit for modern, large-scale row cropping. I'm not saying that's the only way to turn soil and sunlight into plants, but it does seem to be the predominant one. It isn't clear cut to me that taking that land out of productive agricultural use and shifting the need to yet more industrial agriculture is a huge win. If somebody has done that math, I'd be very interested in seeing a source. And to be clear, I'm more than prepared to believe that it's a net win. It's pretty well established that cows create a lot of methane and that all the progress with seaweed-based supplements is dubiously applicable to free ranging livestock.

TheCoelacanth 5y ago
It depends how many of those 10 steps involve cramming the food full of extra sugar, fat and salt. With industrially processed food, that's almost inevitably a big part of the processing. Industrially processed food wouldn't have to be so unhealthy, but it is consistently enough to make it a pretty accurate heuristic for how healthy food is.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
> If your kitchen looks like a kitchen and not a chemistry lab or oil refinery and you're starting with things that are identifiably food, you're probably good to go either way. Well, the flip side is that if your kitchen looked like a chemistry lab, you'd be able to make better food. The difference between cooking and chemical process engineering is that the latter actually cares about quality of outcome. There's a lot to be concerned about with what the food manufacturers are optimizing their products for, but reducing it to "processed = unhealthy" or "chemical sounding names in ingredient list = bad" is just like saying that the only real art is finger painting, everything else is not art.

TheCoelacanth 5y ago

It depends how many of those 10 steps involve cramming the food full of extra sugar, fat and salt. With industrially processed food, that's almost inevitably a big part of the processing. Industrially processed food wouldn't have to be so unhealthy, but it is consistently enough to make it a pretty accurate heuristic for how healthy food is.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

> If your kitchen looks like a kitchen and not a chemistry lab or oil refinery and you're starting with things that are identifiably food, you're probably good to go either way. Well, the flip side is that if your kitchen looked like a chemistry lab, you'd be able to make better food. The difference between cooking and chemical process engineering is that the latter actually cares about quality of outcome. There's a lot to be concerned about with what the food manufacturers are optimizing their products for, but reducing it to "processed = unhealthy" or "chemical sounding names in ingredient list = bad" is just like saying that the only real art is finger painting, everything else is not art.