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> The point I'm trying to get across is that, insofar as a Beyond burger is bad, it's because of some specific ingredients or processes. It's not substantive to

> The point I'm trying to get across is that, insofar as a Beyond burger is bad, it's because of some specific ingredients or processes. It's not substantive to just post the ingredients, or make nebulous allusions to them being gross or un-nutritious. But your point is not right though! When you cook at home you put in the stuff you want to eat, that tastes good and nourishes you, and that's the point of food. But the ingredients in highly processed foods are not there to feed you, or even to make the products tasty. They're there to accommodate the production process (eg emulsifiers), to increase the product's transportability and shelf life (preservatives), to make the product more appealing to the senses (colorings, flavorings etc) and, more worryingly, to hook you with huge amounts of salt, fats and sugar, that you don't find in base ingredients like potatoes or beans. These added ingredients replace and crowd out the actual food you need and want to eat. That's the point, yes? The Harvard article I quoted above says it clearly: "Not all but some of these foods tend to be low in fiber and nutrients". That's because they must be high in ingredients that are not "fiber and nutrients" and are there to improve the ability of the product to be sold, but not to nourish you. Because the primary goal of such over-processed foods is not to feed you, but to sell well. Am I getting my point across? Whether fake meats are nutritious or healthy is not the industry's concerns. So it will not optimise for those properties. The industry's concern is to sell its stuff. So it will optimise for that. And if that ends up feeding its consumers unhealthy shit, so be it. That's the same industry that's been selling over-procssed, unhealthy, environmentally damaging junk food made of meat for years. It's now doing the same thing with plants. Nothing has changed.

phonypc 5y ago
No, I don't see the point you're trying to get across. To keep using the Beyond burger example; you imply emulsifiers are no good. Is sunflower lecithin problematic? Methylcellulose is kind of another one here, but it's literally insoluble fiber, something you imply is problematic for a food to be missing. The only ingredients that might be present as preservatives I can see are salt and vinegar/lemon juice. Are they problematic in the amounts used? Is beet juice a problematic colourant? Now, if we were talking the emulsifiers being PGEs, sodium benzoate as a preservative and red #40 for colour, then maybe there would be a better case for not eating Beyond burgers. Or maybe canola oil simply isn't what you consider to be healthy. Point is, the problem is what specifically is present or missing. Not whether it fits into some ill-defined notion of processed.
- cheese_goddess 5y ago
  > Is beet juice a problematic colourant? "Problematic colourant"? Of course it's problematic. Because it's a colorant. For food! Why do you need to add color to food? > Point is, the problem is what specifically is present or missing. Not whether it fits into some ill-defined notion of processed. But this is what the standard you don't like is doing. It's classifying food according to what is present or missing. In particular, nutrients that you need to have in your food and stuff you don't need to. Is it the fact that it's a general classification rather than a case-by-case analysis that is bothering you? Would you prefer it if there was a long list of foods with an annotation "processed", "ultra-processed" etc with a small discussion of what's in them that shouldn't be in there and what's not in that should?
  - phonypc 5y ago
    Problematic as in negative health consequences. If there aren't undesired consequences, what is the problem? I like to add turmeric powder to my rice for the sole purpose of colouring it. Is that some travesty? Is my rice now ultra-processed? >But this is what the standard you don't like is doing. It's classifying food according to what is present or missing. No, that's explicitly not what it's doing. It tries to classify things by level of processing. The fact that the examples given often don't fit their criteria only serves to make it look more ridiculous.

phonypc 5y ago

No, I don't see the point you're trying to get across. To keep using the Beyond burger example; you imply emulsifiers are no good. Is sunflower lecithin problematic? Methylcellulose is kind of another one here, but it's literally insoluble fiber, something you imply is problematic for a food to be missing. The only ingredients that might be present as preservatives I can see are salt and vinegar/lemon juice. Are they problematic in the amounts used? Is beet juice a problematic colourant? Now, if we were talking the emulsifiers being PGEs, sodium benzoate as a preservative and red #40 for colour, then maybe there would be a better case for not eating Beyond burgers. Or maybe canola oil simply isn't what you consider to be healthy. Point is, the problem is what specifically is present or missing. Not whether it fits into some ill-defined notion of processed.

cheese_goddess 5y ago
> Is beet juice a problematic colourant? "Problematic colourant"? Of course it's problematic. Because it's a colorant. For food! Why do you need to add color to food? > Point is, the problem is what specifically is present or missing. Not whether it fits into some ill-defined notion of processed. But this is what the standard you don't like is doing. It's classifying food according to what is present or missing. In particular, nutrients that you need to have in your food and stuff you don't need to. Is it the fact that it's a general classification rather than a case-by-case analysis that is bothering you? Would you prefer it if there was a long list of foods with an annotation "processed", "ultra-processed" etc with a small discussion of what's in them that shouldn't be in there and what's not in that should?
- phonypc 5y ago
  Problematic as in negative health consequences. If there aren't undesired consequences, what is the problem? I like to add turmeric powder to my rice for the sole purpose of colouring it. Is that some travesty? Is my rice now ultra-processed? >But this is what the standard you don't like is doing. It's classifying food according to what is present or missing. No, that's explicitly not what it's doing. It tries to classify things by level of processing. The fact that the examples given often don't fit their criteria only serves to make it look more ridiculous.