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As a vegetarian for well over a decade, I've always said the same thing. Meat isn't nearly as egregiously unhealthy as it's panned if at all. Processed foods, e

As a vegetarian for well over a decade, I've always said the same thing. Meat isn't nearly as egregiously unhealthy as it's panned if at all. Processed foods, excessive simple carbohydrates and sugars are the main evils in the kitchen, but there are a variety of reasons to eat less meat too. There's nuance in all of this. People sympathetic to American consumption patterns will probably see science and explanations like this as some kind of endorsement of their diet. Nutritional science is still in its infancy and we'll be waffling on the specifics for decades to come, especially if food companies have a vested interest in funding studies. Another data point. Just eat minimally processed whole foods as often as possible, diversify your plate and moderate your intake. I think people are too hyper focused on the "super" and "evil" quality of foods and we end up stuck in the margins bike-shedding the minutia.

mark_l_watson 4y ago
I agree with you “Processed foods, excessive simple carbohydrates and sugars are the main evils in the kitchen, but there are a variety of reasons to eat less meat too.” I like to eat red meat two or three times a month: tasty and I think some red meat is healthy for me. I avoid any packaged food except I am too lazy to always make homemade bread. +1 for shopping for fresh vegetables, fruits, berries, whole grains, beans,… Really, the main center parts of grocery stores where everything is in plastic or boxes really needs to be avoided. As a substitute for packaged deserts, making a pancake and berries is pretty good.
- autotune 4y ago
  My breakfast these days is usually a few pieces of bacon and oatmeal. I am happy and still managing to burn off weight with that combo.
  - s0rce 4y ago
    Maybe we have different definitions of bacon but isn't it heavily "processed"? Its cured with nitrates and salt/sugar and smoked.
    - Taywee 4y ago
      Depends on the bacon. You can get uncured bacon without any added nitrates or flavorings at all.
      - s0rce 4y ago
        Isn't that just sliced pork belly? Also, personally, I think if you cook it like bacon its not good, just grey and not flavorful, I just eat traditional bacon infrequently.
      - bboylen 4y ago
        Sorry to burst your bubble but "uncured" bacon is a sham They add celery powder instead of nitrates, so they can claim "nitrate free". However, the celery powder just decomposes into nitrates, achieving the same effect https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-uncured-bacon-illusion-its-actually-cured-and-its-not-better-for-you/2019/04/19/0c89630c-608c-11e9-9ff2-abc984dc9eec_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-uncured-ba...
        anxiously 4y ago
        That's not true-- you can buy uncured bacon. It's simply "uncut pork belly" which many companies turn into bacon. We buy our pork belly direct from a farm and it hasn't been touched with anything.
        bboylen 4y ago
        Oh yeah that of course exists, didn't mean to imply it didn't. Just the "uncured" but still processed bacon that is pretty much just regular bacon
        anxiously 4y ago
        That's fair-- if it's in a package, looks, smells and tastes like bacon it's probably bacon :)
        4y ago
  - 411111111111111 4y ago
    I just wish there was a way to buy meat from animals that hadn’t been systematically tortured for their short life until they were drowned in co2 for easy butchering… the only reason why I try to use as much vegetarian replacement products is because I have moral qualms eating meat from sentient creatures that have been so brutally abused… And even diary is hard to consume after seeing cows from a bio farm getting herded for milking. They’re in serious pain while getting continuously impregnated to maximise milk production… it’s really hard to stomach for me as I’m not morally opposed to milk/meat consumption… but the way these creatures are treated really make it hard.
    - rdevsrex 4y ago
      You can buy direct from farmer who treats the animals well, either individually or with a group of friends and family. You just have to have the freezer space.
    - dahfizz 4y ago
      Buy from a smaller local farm. The meat is higher quality anyway
    - atsuzaki 4y ago
      Shop from local farms, if that's an option for you. All suffering won't be eliminated, of course, but if you want to consume animal products, it's way better IMO to support local farmers who are invested in ethical animal treatment and sustainable practices.
    - eecc 4y ago
      Well, CO2 asphyxiation is so far the most humane approach to butchering. I remember a YouTube of a journalist looking for the most humane technique to administer capital punishment and it turned out that during co2 asphyxia the victim goes light-headed, even laughingly before passing out and away without even realizing. When told about this, Death Sentence advocates were disappointed that the victims wouldn't suffer while the sentence was carried out. (surprising eh!)
      - 4y ago
- SantalBlush 4y ago
  Personally speaking, the main setback of fresh fruits and vegetables isn't the taste or the inconvenience of cooking with them, it's the spoilage. They go bad so quickly that it's a chore to keep them around and make sure they get used in time.
  - Cupertino95014 4y ago
    True. But some keep better than others. Cabbage, for instance, keeps longer than lettuce. Pluots keep, too, much better than peaches. Oranges, tangerines, and grapes keep well. Carrots keep pretty much forever.
  - kevinventullo 4y ago
    Frozen vegetables have been a lifesaver for me. I’m not up on the latest research, but I remember reading at one point that frozen veggies actually retained more of their nutrients than fresh because they are often frozen immediately after being harvested.
  - hunter2_ 4y ago
    Depends. Apples, carrots, citrus last a surprisingly long time in the fridge. Tomatoes prefer room temp. Extra bread always skips the fridge, right to the freezer. Freeze things rapidly, thaw them slowly. Plenty of tricks.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    That is a problem specific to North American/car-centric/suburban cultures, where people buy groceries once or twice a month. In places where the grocery shops are within walking distance and more integrated with your life, you just make groceries more frequently. Consequently, the food you buy is always fresher.
    - dumpsterlid 4y ago
      I really really have a grudge against being born in a country that is so car-centric/surburban. It reduces my quality of life in soooooo many ways.
    - 4y ago
- sgc 4y ago
  The main reason people eat so unhealthily in the US is the price gouging in the vegetable aisle. My wife came home with a small bag of brussel sprouts and some "gourmet" Baklava that weighed a bit less, but not much. Virtually the same price. It is very common for (cardboard tasting) tomatoes, which come from a high-production plant, to cost as much or even more than meat, that comes from a plant-consuming animal and then butchered and constantly refrigerated. the vegetable/meat price ratio in the US means vegetables are comparatively 3-5x+ more expensive than any of the many other places I have lived. They are more like 10x less expensive than meat in in some places I have lived. The same goes for nuts to carbs, etc. And you will feel it immediately in lack of energy and hunger if you don't have protein and the sufficient number of daily calories, while lack of vegetables mainly leads to a more subtle lack of general health.
  - bayofpigs 4y ago
    Shopping yesterday and was shocked to see a single head of cauliflower for $7.99/each.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    Buyer beware. You need to shop. I can go to Whole Foods and pay $10 for a bag of mini-cucumbers. Or I can go to Aldi and pay $3 for the same product picked from the same field and delivered regionally on the same train. The answer people have to that is “I’m too busy and don’t have time to do that”. Grocery stores collect a lot of market intelligence and price to the audience. That’s why a tomato with a wholesale price of $0.50 costs more than a nice steak. Or why they sell pre-chopped carrots and onions to helpless people with money but without skill for $15/lb.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    If you shopped for vegetables like you did for meat (i.e. in the frozen food isle) most of that price difference would evaporate. Fresh vegetables have a lot of handling, refrigeration and shipping timeline requirements that add a lot to the cost.
  - aaronax 4y ago
    If you were to consider that in ye olden days the majority of things in the vegetable aisle would have been simply unavailable out of season, does it seem a bit less like price gouging? Transport is likely the most significant cost. I suppose our food production has generally centralized over time to the regions that can grow these vegetables all year, and almost no vegetables are grown locally. So we end up paying the transportation costs, even during the four weeks in the fall when we could be overwhelmed by cheap locally-grown vegetables. My ability to get broccoli in November in North Dakota is quite remarkable?
- personjerry 4y ago
  > Really, the main center parts of grocery stores where everything is in plastic or boxes really needs to be avoided. But that's where things are cheap and convenient! :(
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    Its not cheap at all, in most countries you have markets where you buy corn by weight for $1 a kilo or whatever. UK supermarkets sell one cob cut into two halves, wrapped in plastic for $2
    - bcrosby95 4y ago
      I don't know how prices translate, but where I live in the US you usually get corn in the husk for $1 each. I prefer it in the husk because cooking with it on makes it taste better.
      - bluGill 4y ago
        Here in Iowa we only buy corn in season. Picked the same day, on the husk for $6/dozen. I won't even touch the packaged stuff you sometimes see off season, and given how rarely I see if I don't think many others will either. In season the farmer delivers half her corn to the grocery store and sells the other half from the back of her (happens to be a girl where I live, other places it was a man) truck on the side of the road.
- OJFord 4y ago
  > I avoid any packaged food except I am too lazy to always make homemade bread. Ha, so do I, except if you started forcing me to give in to certain things bread would be one of the last I'd be willing to give up. (Unless I was allowed 'packaged' bread from an actual baker I suppose.) Pre-sliced supermarket bread has to be me the most miserable yet widespread thing in existence, can't stand the stuff any more.
- adrian_b 4y ago
  Until this year I believed that if I would attempt to make bread at home every day I would waste too much time, because I was making bread in a traditional way. However, after some experimentation, I have discovered that it is possible to make bread in a simplified way, which does not need more than 10 minutes of effective work for one bread made of 500 g of wheat floor (including washing the vessels etc.). I bake the bread in a microwave oven, in a lid-covered glass vessel. The right baking time must be determined by experiments, in my oven it is 13 minutes @ 1000 W for the dough made of 500 g of floor. The advantage of the microwave oven is a short baking time and perfect reproducibility. After kneading the dough in a glass bowl for a few minutes, I can put it in the oven and go to do other activities. Now I make at home one bread every day after I wake up, for breakfast. When baked at microwaves, you can use a leavening agent for a more conventional bread, but even the unleavened bread grows enough for my taste. Previously I was tempted from time to time to buy some commercial bread or cakes, but now I no longer care about them, I like more my own bread.
  - CadmiumYellow 4y ago
    Wow, do you have a recipe for this? I would love to try it!
    - adrian_b 4y ago
      There is not much of a recipe, because the point is to be simple enough to be easy to make in less than a quarter of hour, every morning. The simplest bread can be made with nothing else than wheat floor and water, by using the same method as described by Cato the Elder, 2200 years ago (except for using microwaves instead of fire). With the wheat floor that I use (12.1% proteins), I add water that is 75% of the floor mass, e.g. 375 g water for 500 g floor. The dough is kneaded for a few minutes, until it becomes homogeneous and elastic. After kneading, it is possible to bake it immediately. However, in most days I prefer to make a bread with high protein content, in order to not exceed the daily intake of energy that would make me gain weight. For this option, the dough must be left to rest for 30 minutes, to become cohesive, than it can be washed for a few minutes, to remove a large part of the starch, enriching thus the dough in gluten, i.e. protein. I bake the dough in a glass vessel covered by a lid, 13 minutes @ 1000 W in a microwave oven. The exact time will depend on the oven, so it must be determined by experiments. When the baking time is too long, the bread will harden. Pure bread must be eaten immediately after cooling. Unlike the commercial bread with additives, it has poor shelf life. Starting from the simplest bread, there are many options. One is to add a leavening agent, for a softer bread. Now, I prefer the unleavened bread, because when baked in a microwave oven it still grows, maybe 30% of what it might grow with an leavening agent, but it remains more chewy than standard bread. Unless you have untreated teeth problems, this is a good thing, because it causes much more satiety than soft bread in the same quantity. Chewing also keeps your teeth or your dental implants healthy, by stressing the bones. Some people like to add salt to the bread, so that is another option (when that is done, one should take care that the recommended daily intake of salt is 4 to 5 g, so less salt should be added to other food). Various spices or seeds can also be added before baking. Another option is to make it sweet, by adding sugar or raisins. Instead of mixing the sugar uniformly in the dough, I prefer to deposit the sugar on the flat dough, before baking, and then roll the dough and bend the resulting cylinder into a torus when transferring into the baking vessel. This method allows the use of less sugar, while still producing an intense enough sweet sensation, due to the alternation of sweetened and unsweetened layers in the baked bread. In this way, I use 50 g sugar for dough made of 500 g floor, but that should be adjusted depending on the individual taste. On the sugar, before rolling, I deposit e.g. cocoa powder (e.g. 5 g for 50 g sugar), vanilla essence, ground cinnamon, ground cloves etc. The advantage of this kind of simplified cake vs. traditional cakes or commercial cakes, besides the very short time for preparation, which allows doing this before breakfast, every day, is that the chewy bread, optionally with high-protein content, can cause satiety after ingesting a much smaller amount than would be needed when eating traditional cakes.
ravenstine 4y ago
> [...] there are a variety of reasons to eat less meat too. Could you provide some examples?
- angry_moose 4y ago
  As someone going on 5 years vegetarian: Environmental impact (both carbon and water), animal cruelty/welfare in factory farms, high cost of more sustainable/lower cruelty options, general distaste for most of it
- halpmeh 4y ago
  It’s energy intensive
- consp 4y ago
  I would argue carbon footprint (which is huge) or methane emissions.
  - b112 4y ago
    Both are only relevant if you grain feed, instead of allowing animals to graze on grass. For example, let's say we remove cattle from the rolling, rocky hills of Quebec. We let the land go fallow, back to nature. Ok, now endless deer, bison, moose, groundhogs, and endless other critters do a horrible thing. They eat, and they fart. When people complain about meat, and carbon, they are complaining about the worst part of it. Much of the world does not dump fertilizer on land, grow crop, and feed it to cattle. It is very unfair to lump this all together, especially in a thread about people taking extreme positions.
    - s0rce 4y ago
      Is that representative, there are areas in California where grazing was eliminated and they are not overrun with other grazing animals and beautiful meadows and creeks have begun to recover.
    - danielbln 4y ago
      According to the National Council for Animal Protection, over 99% of beef farmed for meat comes from cows that live in horrific factory farm environments. Does the remaining 1% matter all that much in the conversation?
tapanjk 4y ago
> Just eat minimally processed whole foods as often as possible ... Fully agree with your take except for "eat [...] as often as possible" part. For instance, intermittent fasting is effective exactly because of not eating often.
- jjulius 4y ago
  I don't think "often" means "as much as you can during the day", I think it means to try to have that kind of food at each meal/snack as often as you can.
- jasonjmcghee 4y ago
  parent comment very likely meant "[when choosing a meal] eat [...] as often as possible", not recommending eating constantly throughout the day
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Mtinie 4y ago
  I understood the comment to mean, “when given the choice between minimally processed whole foods and highly processed packaged foods, pick the former as often as possible,” not “eat frequently.”
legulere 4y ago
I start to wonder if you can eat with too much variety as well. People tend to eat more when there's more variety (low-carb and potato-only diets work mostly by making you bored of eating).
- kritiko 4y ago
  The slime mold guys are currently testing the hypothesis that the potassium in potatoes is why the potato monodiet works… The mechanism of diets isn’t understood yet - check out Kevin Hall’s metabolic ward study of low fat high carb vs. high fat low carb for some paradoxical results. I’d be happy finding a diet that consistently works for people before understanding how.
  - CadmiumYellow 4y ago
    Kevin Hall also did a fascinating study on ultra-processed vs less processed foods which found that people ate more and gained more weight on ultra-processed foods even when the two diets were identical in macronutrient composition! I would guess that the main reason dramatically different diets show similar levels of effectiveness is that all of them involve drastically limiting intake of ultra-processed foods. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7946062/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7946062/
SapporoChris 4y ago
There has to be somewhere in the spectrum a company that processes food and it ends up being superior. In fact, I bet it's more prevalent than you expect. I did a few searches. Turns out there are benefits to food processing. Inactivation of toxins seems like a big plus to me. Improved nutrition, seems good. Yes, many processed foods are of nutritionally poor value, but please don't label all processed food as being bad.
- eduction 4y ago
  This is a great point. "Processed food" is an incredibly broad category that is being somewhat demonized at the moment (not saying any comments here do this). According to this Mayo Clinic quotation of USDA, processed food includes anything dried, frozen, canned, or mixed. https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/processed-foods-what-you-should-know https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speak... I don't think (and am guessing most would agree) canned tomatoes are particularly harmful food, nor are frozen blueberries or fish, nor are dried raisins when I'm putting them in oats. It's a spectrum. With my kids, dried mangoes make me slightly guilty because I know they are pretty high in sugar, albeit natural sugar. Most people would be more wary of frozen chicken nuggets. Some more specificity around what makes processed foods harmful, from the science and science comms communities, would be helpful.
  - victor106 4y ago
    Using the word “canned” is meaningless. Canned sardines/mackerel is super healthy and minimally processed. Just like canned beans, canned tomatoes, canned corn..etc
- docandrew 4y ago
  Depends on the food - something like acorns, for example, they are inedible for humans in their whole form, but hulling, grinding the nuts, and rinsing them of tannins makes a tasty nutritious flour. The word “processed” is kind of a lazy heuristic - butchering, cooking, hulling, mixing, those are all ways of processing that are healthy and effective. Creating something like a Twinkie is a whole different ballgame and looks more like a triumph of chemical engineering and material science than anything related to baking or cooking.
greyhair 4y ago
> Just eat minimally processed whole foods as often as possible, diversify your plate and moderate your intake. If you highly diversify your diet, if any one thing is 'bad' for you, you are by your actions, reducing your exposure to it. As far as processed foods, there are different forms of 'processing'. For example, canned vegetables are pretty minimally processed. Cured sausages are more highly processed, and nacho cheese doritos are really highly processed.
bergenty 4y ago
It doesn’t get less processed than a fresh red meat steak.
rubicon33 4y ago
I’ve found a simple rule of thumb that works for me: Nature has a way of limiting how much of a certain substance you can consume. By simply eating less processed foods, you’re eating more in line with what the human body expects historically. Take oils for example. It requires immense pressure and processing, only available in the Industrial Age, to produce the quantitates of certain oils. We consume way more oil than ever expected. Sugar is in the same boat. Ground wheat is kinda too… The more processing the worse it is for you, as a general rule of thumb. So yea, eat Whole Foods when you can!
- beebmam 4y ago
  > Nature has a way of limiting how much of a certain substance you can consume. Is your belief that "Nature" is an actor which can (intentionally or unintentionally) limit human consumption? Or are you saying something more like: "there's a physical limit to how much air a human can breathe in a day"?
  - yellowpencil 4y ago
    Not op - think it’s more along the lines of “humans evolved with nature as a constraint” and industrialization has the ability to remove that constraint.
  - leereeves 4y ago
    I think it's a figurative way of saying that our tastes developed in a natural environment where the things we crave (mainly sugar and fat) were limited and packaged in healthier forms (fruits, nuts, meat).
- aardvarkr 4y ago
  Oil wasn’t as hard to come by as you’d expect. Think of butter, animal fat, olive oil, seed oils, etc. It’s nowhere near as hard to make as you seem to think. The first recorded history of deep frying is from 2500 BCE. Wheat too was in our diets long ago with the first recorded use in 32,000 BCE. Sugar was 8,000 BCE.
fowkswe 4y ago
Michael Pollan said it best: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
heather45879 4y ago
Unfortunately food is religion to many folks. They will die defending their precious food choices. The problem with articles like this is that it’s designed to be an echo chamber of denialism. The key to being healthy is good diet. Good diet means good ingredients. Most animals are treated like crap and fed crap too—save for a few small-scale producers. If you want to eat meat do yourself (and everyone having to hear these discussions) a favor: visit a high quality Kobe cattle ranch and see how they treat the animals. Then visit a large-scale farm (tip: you might need top-secret clearance) which provides the majority of beef products to the USA. Compare the difference… Garbage in = garbage out.
- km3r 4y ago
  Is there any research to back up that treating cattle better improves the nutrition of beef?
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    It's well known that cattle kept inside ends up with much lower Vitamin D content in milk & meat. Not sure about other nutrients.
  - WillPostForFood 4y ago
    There is research to support it. It makes sense as well. If your human diet affects your health/nutrition/body composition, animal diet should affect their health/nutrition/body composition. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/14423473.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/14423473.pdf
    - gruez 4y ago
      Not the person you replied to, but I think "animal's diet affects their nutrition" is pretty obvious. For instance, the "omega 3" eggs you see at the supermarket are produced by feeding the chicken a high omega 3 diet. That itself isn't really interesting. The real question is whether going through all that trouble is worth it. In other words, is it better/more cost effective to buy the higher quality animal products at the supermarket (eg. omega 3 eggs) or buy the regular stuff and pop a multivitamin? For omega 3 eggs at least, the answer is the latter. I'd be interested in seeing how it works out for beef.
orangepurple 4y ago
Besides the obvious problem of WHAT should I eat there is the problem of HOW MUCH should I eat. And in general we eat too much volume wise AND at inappropriate times relative to our circadian rhythm. CLOCK genes exist! And eating changes your genetic expression.
lolinder 4y ago
You're obviously right that processed foods are far worse, but the study the article cites[0] doesn't say what the article says it does, not at all. The article deliberately misconstrues the phrase "weak evidence" to mean that the authors are attacking the past studies, when in fact they're just saying more research needs to be done. Here's the opening paragraph of the Discussion section: > We evaluated the relationship between unprocessed red meat consumption and six selected disease outcomes following implementation of a meta-analytic approach. We found that unprocessed red meat intake had weak evidence of an association with increased risk of colorectal cancer, breast cancer, IHD and type 2 diabetes and no evidence of an association with ischemic stroke and hemorrhagic stroke. In other words, given all the data available on red meat intake and risk of a subsequent outcome, we estimate that consuming unprocessed red meat across an average range of exposure levels increases the risk of subsequent colorectal cancer, breast cancer, IHD and type 2 diabetes at least slightly compared to eating no red meat (by at least 6%, 3%, 1% and 1%, respectively). [0] Full text here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01968-z#Sec2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01968-z#Sec2
- notSupplied 4y ago
  Sadly, news articles always grossly exaggerate research results. "We found weak evidence of ..." becomes "New study ABSOLUTELY DESTROYS the myth that..."
  - themitigating 4y ago
    "The new study is climbing the ropes, oh my God what is he going to do, ohh he just jumped on the old studies, oh the humanity "
- cogman10 4y ago
  > You're obviously right that processed foods are far worse I see this claim semi frequently online. So I'll just ask. What is meant by "processed"? What does it mean to be "worse" (Worse than meat? Regular foods?) What is meant by "whole foods"? And finally, what's the evidence for these assertions? Is black tea a processed food? How about coffee grounds? When does something cross the rubric of processed vs unprocessed? To me, it's not obvious that "processed is bad" particularly because I don't know what "processed" means. As a side, how do fortified foods fit in with processed foods? Iodine in salt, for example, has been a huge public health success. Goiters have practically been eliminated as a result.
diob 4y ago
I'm not a vegetarian either, but like you I prefer straight forward foods. Breakfast for me is eggs, avo, toast, some light veggies (spinach, other leafy stuff). Tasty, probably alright for me. I'm not good at the diversify part though . . . I tend to eat this every day :)
- monopoliessuck 4y ago
  I'm unsure by your wording, but I am a vegetarian in case that's what you mean by "either" - over a decade and still ongoing. Not very important, but I just wanted to clarify. Your breakfast sounds tasty. I don't blame you for having it often. :+1:
cactus2093 4y ago
"Processed Foods" is another vague, exaggerated boogeyman though. For one thing I don't think most people would even agree on what foods count as processed and are bad. Some people are talking about everything except fresh vegetables, some people are talking about specifically industrially-processed food but would say the exact same recipe followed at home (minus a couple of preservatives) is perfectly fine, some people are specifically against fast food but might think canned foods are fine. Large blood sugar spikes after a meal are what is bad for you, but this a more nuanced equation of things like glycemic load of the food (which is as much a factor of quantity eaten as it is glycemic index), genetics, and level of exercise. It's not as simple as just saying all processed food is always bad, for instance after a hard workout simple carbohydrates are not just ok but actively good for you, and ideally most people should be doing a hard workout multiple times per week. Some other components of processed food like excessive salt can be bad, as is the fact that they often push out more micronutrient-rich foods from your diet. But it kind of strikes me as the abstinence-only approach to dietary advice. People love the taste of processed foods, I think we'd do better to encourage eating responsibly overall than insisting on avoiding processed foods altogether. And it's possible to be very healthy while eating a significant amount of processed foods.
- anm89 4y ago
  I disagree on this point all though I think the term is vague. If I grill a steak and then chop it up into pieces i have "processed" it. This isn't what anyone is talking about when they say processed foods though. If I chop up several different types of meat, add several different colorants, fillers, perservatives and whatever else, turn it all into a slurry and then reconsistute it into a spam loaf, I think there are a lot of good reasons to believe this is ineherently unhealthy, the most simple being that its really easy to dump in a bunch of sugar and extra fats.
  - cactus2093 4y ago
    If you want to claim that coloring or preservatives are bad, then just make that claim instead of the more vague "processed foods".
mritchie712 4y ago
> diversify The conventional wisdom says you should have variety in your diet, but it's unclear to me why that's "good" and I've never seen research on it.
- taurusnoises 4y ago
  And yet, from the position of my armchair and the handful of books on my shelf, history has shown that a monodiet (relative to the modern, diversified western diet, at least) is not only sustainable, but has been the backbone of the human diet for thousands of years.
- raarts 4y ago
  I think common wisdom says this is the best way to get all the vitamins and minerals your body needs.
hawski 4y ago
I lately wonder about Japanese or Italian cuisine. Those nations are around the top for longevity of life - at least some specific parts of the population. If the diet has a significant part in this I have a silly theory: they make their food relatively simple and quick, but very tasty. I would even say that Japanese cuisine is for making vegetables delicious for example. I do recognize I probably don't know nearly enough.
- mr_johnson22 4y ago
  Maybe the secret is fish-based diets.
angarg12 4y ago
After living in England for a while, this year we finally moved to the US. Although I have never been too athletic, I've put on 5-7 KG since we moved, and I can't shed them off. We are mostly eating the same as before, and in fact I'm more active than I was over there. There isn't much point to this comment other than the flabbergasting anecdote of how eating roughly the same diet in different countries can have markedly different effect in your health.
- jstarfish 4y ago
  Diet can have different effect across different states in the US too. California doesn't (seem to) use the same types of lard and oils that you'd find in Georgia, judging by cholesterol issues that self-resolved without change in diet or exercise.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Eating cholesterol has very little impact on the cholesterol levels in your body. https://peterattiamd.com/the-straight-dope-on-cholesterol-part-i/ https://peterattiamd.com/the-straight-dope-on-cholesterol-pa...
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  I find that portions are generally bigger in the US. Especially if you're not in California easy to eat the same stuff but just have a bigger plate.
- CadmiumYellow 4y ago
  Look carefully at the ingredients list on any packaged foods you're buying. Many things contain sugar in the US when the equivalent product in Europe does not. A particularly insidious example is pre-made broth/stock: nearly every single product on the shelves at my local grocery store contains unnecessary sugar. Same goes for canned beans and salad dressings. Doing your due diligence when buying packaged foods is an unfortunate necessity if you live in the US and want to stay healthy. God, I miss grocery shopping in France!!
- kennend3 4y ago
nkrisc 4y ago
> Just eat minimally processed whole foods as often as possible, diversify your plate and moderate your intake. I think this is really the most important thing anyone can do. Not directed at you at all or at anything you said, but I dislike the term "vegetarian" in general. It suggests a binary diet: either you eat meat, or you don't. Someone who never eats meat and someone who eats meat once a month have essentially the same diet. It makes little sense to distinguish one as vegetarian and one as not. The pervasive idea that you could eat no meat for years and that somehow taking a bit of meat makes you "not vegetarian" anymore is kind of ridiculous. I won't get into it but the concept of "sobriety" often falls into the same trap. That's not to say there's anything wrong with choosing to not eat any meat products (or not drink any alcohol), it's got nothing to do with the choices people make for themselves, simply how we discuss it. I think the terms "vegetarian" and "vegan" are only useful as descriptors of food: whether it contains meat or any animal products at all. But categorizing people as "vegetarian" or "vegan" is absurd and counter-productive.
- sweetheart 4y ago
  Veganism is a moral philosophy, so it really _only_ makes sense to use that term when referring to people. "Vegan" food is short-hand for "plant-based" food. Food does not subscribe to moral ideals, only people do. It's unfortunate that the difference between those terms has been so muddied with time, but it's an important distinction.
bacan 4y ago
What is "processed foods"? Isn't bread a heavily processed food? Is somehow making it at home magically healthier than it being made in a factory? What about whole wheat bread from a factory vs white bread at home? Which one is healthier? Or are you trying to say that bread is somehow unhealthy? Even though it is staple eaten by literally everyone across the world in someway, shape or form. Terms like this destroy the credibility of "food research" and I find it hard to trust any dietary guidance. Specially after the whole fat & sugar debacle
- trebor 4y ago
  Compare a hand-made loaf of bread to one from the grocery store. Count the number of ingredients. The hand-made loaf is usually made from flour, with water, oil, and leavening. If you buy unprocessed flour that makes 4 or 5 ingredients as a base. A store bought, whole wheat loaf of bread contains roughly 16 ingredients. The home-made loaf doesn't contain preservatives because it won't need to sit on a shelf for a prolonged period. The home-made loaf can use higher quality/purity ingredients than you will find in the grocery store in the USA. White bread is worse. Not all bread is made the same. Not all bread ingredients are the same. Those individual ingredients can be processed as well. The more processing on the ingredients and end product, the more "processed" a food is. I'm not even touching "highly processed" or "ultra-processed" foods in this short post.

mark_l_watson 4y ago

I agree with you “Processed foods, excessive simple carbohydrates and sugars are the main evils in the kitchen, but there are a variety of reasons to eat less meat too.” I like to eat red meat two or three times a month: tasty and I think some red meat is healthy for me. I avoid any packaged food except I am too lazy to always make homemade bread. +1 for shopping for fresh vegetables, fruits, berries, whole grains, beans,… Really, the main center parts of grocery stores where everything is in plastic or boxes really needs to be avoided. As a substitute for packaged deserts, making a pancake and berries is pretty good.

autotune 4y ago
My breakfast these days is usually a few pieces of bacon and oatmeal. I am happy and still managing to burn off weight with that combo.
- s0rce 4y ago
  Maybe we have different definitions of bacon but isn't it heavily "processed"? Its cured with nitrates and salt/sugar and smoked.
  - Taywee 4y ago
    Depends on the bacon. You can get uncured bacon without any added nitrates or flavorings at all.
    - s0rce 4y ago
      Isn't that just sliced pork belly? Also, personally, I think if you cook it like bacon its not good, just grey and not flavorful, I just eat traditional bacon infrequently.
    - bboylen 4y ago
      Sorry to burst your bubble but "uncured" bacon is a sham They add celery powder instead of nitrates, so they can claim "nitrate free". However, the celery powder just decomposes into nitrates, achieving the same effect https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-uncured-bacon-illusion-its-actually-cured-and-its-not-better-for-you/2019/04/19/0c89630c-608c-11e9-9ff2-abc984dc9eec_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-uncured-ba...
      - anxiously 4y ago
        That's not true-- you can buy uncured bacon. It's simply "uncut pork belly" which many companies turn into bacon. We buy our pork belly direct from a farm and it hasn't been touched with anything.
        bboylen 4y ago
        Oh yeah that of course exists, didn't mean to imply it didn't. Just the "uncured" but still processed bacon that is pretty much just regular bacon
        anxiously 4y ago
        That's fair-- if it's in a package, looks, smells and tastes like bacon it's probably bacon :)
        4y ago
- 411111111111111 4y ago
  I just wish there was a way to buy meat from animals that hadn’t been systematically tortured for their short life until they were drowned in co2 for easy butchering… the only reason why I try to use as much vegetarian replacement products is because I have moral qualms eating meat from sentient creatures that have been so brutally abused… And even diary is hard to consume after seeing cows from a bio farm getting herded for milking. They’re in serious pain while getting continuously impregnated to maximise milk production… it’s really hard to stomach for me as I’m not morally opposed to milk/meat consumption… but the way these creatures are treated really make it hard.
  - rdevsrex 4y ago
    You can buy direct from farmer who treats the animals well, either individually or with a group of friends and family. You just have to have the freezer space.
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    Buy from a smaller local farm. The meat is higher quality anyway
  - atsuzaki 4y ago
    Shop from local farms, if that's an option for you. All suffering won't be eliminated, of course, but if you want to consume animal products, it's way better IMO to support local farmers who are invested in ethical animal treatment and sustainable practices.
  - eecc 4y ago
    Well, CO2 asphyxiation is so far the most humane approach to butchering. I remember a YouTube of a journalist looking for the most humane technique to administer capital punishment and it turned out that during co2 asphyxia the victim goes light-headed, even laughingly before passing out and away without even realizing. When told about this, Death Sentence advocates were disappointed that the victims wouldn't suffer while the sentence was carried out. (surprising eh!)
    - 4y ago
SantalBlush 4y ago
Personally speaking, the main setback of fresh fruits and vegetables isn't the taste or the inconvenience of cooking with them, it's the spoilage. They go bad so quickly that it's a chore to keep them around and make sure they get used in time.
- Cupertino95014 4y ago
  True. But some keep better than others. Cabbage, for instance, keeps longer than lettuce. Pluots keep, too, much better than peaches. Oranges, tangerines, and grapes keep well. Carrots keep pretty much forever.
- kevinventullo 4y ago
  Frozen vegetables have been a lifesaver for me. I’m not up on the latest research, but I remember reading at one point that frozen veggies actually retained more of their nutrients than fresh because they are often frozen immediately after being harvested.
- hunter2_ 4y ago
  Depends. Apples, carrots, citrus last a surprisingly long time in the fridge. Tomatoes prefer room temp. Extra bread always skips the fridge, right to the freezer. Freeze things rapidly, thaw them slowly. Plenty of tricks.
- rglullis 4y ago
  That is a problem specific to North American/car-centric/suburban cultures, where people buy groceries once or twice a month. In places where the grocery shops are within walking distance and more integrated with your life, you just make groceries more frequently. Consequently, the food you buy is always fresher.
  - dumpsterlid 4y ago
    I really really have a grudge against being born in a country that is so car-centric/surburban. It reduces my quality of life in soooooo many ways.
  - 4y ago
sgc 4y ago
The main reason people eat so unhealthily in the US is the price gouging in the vegetable aisle. My wife came home with a small bag of brussel sprouts and some "gourmet" Baklava that weighed a bit less, but not much. Virtually the same price. It is very common for (cardboard tasting) tomatoes, which come from a high-production plant, to cost as much or even more than meat, that comes from a plant-consuming animal and then butchered and constantly refrigerated. the vegetable/meat price ratio in the US means vegetables are comparatively 3-5x+ more expensive than any of the many other places I have lived. They are more like 10x less expensive than meat in in some places I have lived. The same goes for nuts to carbs, etc. And you will feel it immediately in lack of energy and hunger if you don't have protein and the sufficient number of daily calories, while lack of vegetables mainly leads to a more subtle lack of general health.
- bayofpigs 4y ago
  Shopping yesterday and was shocked to see a single head of cauliflower for $7.99/each.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Buyer beware. You need to shop. I can go to Whole Foods and pay $10 for a bag of mini-cucumbers. Or I can go to Aldi and pay $3 for the same product picked from the same field and delivered regionally on the same train. The answer people have to that is “I’m too busy and don’t have time to do that”. Grocery stores collect a lot of market intelligence and price to the audience. That’s why a tomato with a wholesale price of $0.50 costs more than a nice steak. Or why they sell pre-chopped carrots and onions to helpless people with money but without skill for $15/lb.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  If you shopped for vegetables like you did for meat (i.e. in the frozen food isle) most of that price difference would evaporate. Fresh vegetables have a lot of handling, refrigeration and shipping timeline requirements that add a lot to the cost.
- aaronax 4y ago
  If you were to consider that in ye olden days the majority of things in the vegetable aisle would have been simply unavailable out of season, does it seem a bit less like price gouging? Transport is likely the most significant cost. I suppose our food production has generally centralized over time to the regions that can grow these vegetables all year, and almost no vegetables are grown locally. So we end up paying the transportation costs, even during the four weeks in the fall when we could be overwhelmed by cheap locally-grown vegetables. My ability to get broccoli in November in North Dakota is quite remarkable?
personjerry 4y ago
> Really, the main center parts of grocery stores where everything is in plastic or boxes really needs to be avoided. But that's where things are cheap and convenient! :(
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  Its not cheap at all, in most countries you have markets where you buy corn by weight for $1 a kilo or whatever. UK supermarkets sell one cob cut into two halves, wrapped in plastic for $2
  - bcrosby95 4y ago
    I don't know how prices translate, but where I live in the US you usually get corn in the husk for $1 each. I prefer it in the husk because cooking with it on makes it taste better.
    - bluGill 4y ago
      Here in Iowa we only buy corn in season. Picked the same day, on the husk for $6/dozen. I won't even touch the packaged stuff you sometimes see off season, and given how rarely I see if I don't think many others will either. In season the farmer delivers half her corn to the grocery store and sells the other half from the back of her (happens to be a girl where I live, other places it was a man) truck on the side of the road.
OJFord 4y ago
> I avoid any packaged food except I am too lazy to always make homemade bread. Ha, so do I, except if you started forcing me to give in to certain things bread would be one of the last I'd be willing to give up. (Unless I was allowed 'packaged' bread from an actual baker I suppose.) Pre-sliced supermarket bread has to be me the most miserable yet widespread thing in existence, can't stand the stuff any more.
adrian_b 4y ago
Until this year I believed that if I would attempt to make bread at home every day I would waste too much time, because I was making bread in a traditional way. However, after some experimentation, I have discovered that it is possible to make bread in a simplified way, which does not need more than 10 minutes of effective work for one bread made of 500 g of wheat floor (including washing the vessels etc.). I bake the bread in a microwave oven, in a lid-covered glass vessel. The right baking time must be determined by experiments, in my oven it is 13 minutes @ 1000 W for the dough made of 500 g of floor. The advantage of the microwave oven is a short baking time and perfect reproducibility. After kneading the dough in a glass bowl for a few minutes, I can put it in the oven and go to do other activities. Now I make at home one bread every day after I wake up, for breakfast. When baked at microwaves, you can use a leavening agent for a more conventional bread, but even the unleavened bread grows enough for my taste. Previously I was tempted from time to time to buy some commercial bread or cakes, but now I no longer care about them, I like more my own bread.
- CadmiumYellow 4y ago
  Wow, do you have a recipe for this? I would love to try it!
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    There is not much of a recipe, because the point is to be simple enough to be easy to make in less than a quarter of hour, every morning. The simplest bread can be made with nothing else than wheat floor and water, by using the same method as described by Cato the Elder, 2200 years ago (except for using microwaves instead of fire). With the wheat floor that I use (12.1% proteins), I add water that is 75% of the floor mass, e.g. 375 g water for 500 g floor. The dough is kneaded for a few minutes, until it becomes homogeneous and elastic. After kneading, it is possible to bake it immediately. However, in most days I prefer to make a bread with high protein content, in order to not exceed the daily intake of energy that would make me gain weight. For this option, the dough must be left to rest for 30 minutes, to become cohesive, than it can be washed for a few minutes, to remove a large part of the starch, enriching thus the dough in gluten, i.e. protein. I bake the dough in a glass vessel covered by a lid, 13 minutes @ 1000 W in a microwave oven. The exact time will depend on the oven, so it must be determined by experiments. When the baking time is too long, the bread will harden. Pure bread must be eaten immediately after cooling. Unlike the commercial bread with additives, it has poor shelf life. Starting from the simplest bread, there are many options. One is to add a leavening agent, for a softer bread. Now, I prefer the unleavened bread, because when baked in a microwave oven it still grows, maybe 30% of what it might grow with an leavening agent, but it remains more chewy than standard bread. Unless you have untreated teeth problems, this is a good thing, because it causes much more satiety than soft bread in the same quantity. Chewing also keeps your teeth or your dental implants healthy, by stressing the bones. Some people like to add salt to the bread, so that is another option (when that is done, one should take care that the recommended daily intake of salt is 4 to 5 g, so less salt should be added to other food). Various spices or seeds can also be added before baking. Another option is to make it sweet, by adding sugar or raisins. Instead of mixing the sugar uniformly in the dough, I prefer to deposit the sugar on the flat dough, before baking, and then roll the dough and bend the resulting cylinder into a torus when transferring into the baking vessel. This method allows the use of less sugar, while still producing an intense enough sweet sensation, due to the alternation of sweetened and unsweetened layers in the baked bread. In this way, I use 50 g sugar for dough made of 500 g floor, but that should be adjusted depending on the individual taste. On the sugar, before rolling, I deposit e.g. cocoa powder (e.g. 5 g for 50 g sugar), vanilla essence, ground cinnamon, ground cloves etc. The advantage of this kind of simplified cake vs. traditional cakes or commercial cakes, besides the very short time for preparation, which allows doing this before breakfast, every day, is that the chewy bread, optionally with high-protein content, can cause satiety after ingesting a much smaller amount than would be needed when eating traditional cakes.

ravenstine 4y ago

> [...] there are a variety of reasons to eat less meat too. Could you provide some examples?

angry_moose 4y ago
As someone going on 5 years vegetarian: Environmental impact (both carbon and water), animal cruelty/welfare in factory farms, high cost of more sustainable/lower cruelty options, general distaste for most of it
halpmeh 4y ago
It’s energy intensive
consp 4y ago
I would argue carbon footprint (which is huge) or methane emissions.
- b112 4y ago
  Both are only relevant if you grain feed, instead of allowing animals to graze on grass. For example, let's say we remove cattle from the rolling, rocky hills of Quebec. We let the land go fallow, back to nature. Ok, now endless deer, bison, moose, groundhogs, and endless other critters do a horrible thing. They eat, and they fart. When people complain about meat, and carbon, they are complaining about the worst part of it. Much of the world does not dump fertilizer on land, grow crop, and feed it to cattle. It is very unfair to lump this all together, especially in a thread about people taking extreme positions.
  - s0rce 4y ago
    Is that representative, there are areas in California where grazing was eliminated and they are not overrun with other grazing animals and beautiful meadows and creeks have begun to recover.
  - danielbln 4y ago
    According to the National Council for Animal Protection, over 99% of beef farmed for meat comes from cows that live in horrific factory farm environments. Does the remaining 1% matter all that much in the conversation?

tapanjk 4y ago

> Just eat minimally processed whole foods as often as possible ... Fully agree with your take except for "eat [...] as often as possible" part. For instance, intermittent fasting is effective exactly because of not eating often.

jjulius 4y ago
I don't think "often" means "as much as you can during the day", I think it means to try to have that kind of food at each meal/snack as often as you can.
jasonjmcghee 4y ago
parent comment very likely meant "[when choosing a meal] eat [...] as often as possible", not recommending eating constantly throughout the day
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Mtinie 4y ago
I understood the comment to mean, “when given the choice between minimally processed whole foods and highly processed packaged foods, pick the former as often as possible,” not “eat frequently.”

legulere 4y ago

I start to wonder if you can eat with too much variety as well. People tend to eat more when there's more variety (low-carb and potato-only diets work mostly by making you bored of eating).

kritiko 4y ago
The slime mold guys are currently testing the hypothesis that the potassium in potatoes is why the potato monodiet works… The mechanism of diets isn’t understood yet - check out Kevin Hall’s metabolic ward study of low fat high carb vs. high fat low carb for some paradoxical results. I’d be happy finding a diet that consistently works for people before understanding how.
- CadmiumYellow 4y ago
  Kevin Hall also did a fascinating study on ultra-processed vs less processed foods which found that people ate more and gained more weight on ultra-processed foods even when the two diets were identical in macronutrient composition! I would guess that the main reason dramatically different diets show similar levels of effectiveness is that all of them involve drastically limiting intake of ultra-processed foods. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7946062/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7946062/

SapporoChris 4y ago

There has to be somewhere in the spectrum a company that processes food and it ends up being superior. In fact, I bet it's more prevalent than you expect. I did a few searches. Turns out there are benefits to food processing. Inactivation of toxins seems like a big plus to me. Improved nutrition, seems good. Yes, many processed foods are of nutritionally poor value, but please don't label all processed food as being bad.

eduction 4y ago
This is a great point. "Processed food" is an incredibly broad category that is being somewhat demonized at the moment (not saying any comments here do this). According to this Mayo Clinic quotation of USDA, processed food includes anything dried, frozen, canned, or mixed. https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/processed-foods-what-you-should-know https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speak... I don't think (and am guessing most would agree) canned tomatoes are particularly harmful food, nor are frozen blueberries or fish, nor are dried raisins when I'm putting them in oats. It's a spectrum. With my kids, dried mangoes make me slightly guilty because I know they are pretty high in sugar, albeit natural sugar. Most people would be more wary of frozen chicken nuggets. Some more specificity around what makes processed foods harmful, from the science and science comms communities, would be helpful.
- victor106 4y ago
  Using the word “canned” is meaningless. Canned sardines/mackerel is super healthy and minimally processed. Just like canned beans, canned tomatoes, canned corn..etc
docandrew 4y ago
Depends on the food - something like acorns, for example, they are inedible for humans in their whole form, but hulling, grinding the nuts, and rinsing them of tannins makes a tasty nutritious flour. The word “processed” is kind of a lazy heuristic - butchering, cooking, hulling, mixing, those are all ways of processing that are healthy and effective. Creating something like a Twinkie is a whole different ballgame and looks more like a triumph of chemical engineering and material science than anything related to baking or cooking.

greyhair 4y ago

> Just eat minimally processed whole foods as often as possible, diversify your plate and moderate your intake. If you highly diversify your diet, if any one thing is 'bad' for you, you are by your actions, reducing your exposure to it. As far as processed foods, there are different forms of 'processing'. For example, canned vegetables are pretty minimally processed. Cured sausages are more highly processed, and nacho cheese doritos are really highly processed.

bergenty 4y ago

It doesn’t get less processed than a fresh red meat steak.

rubicon33 4y ago

I’ve found a simple rule of thumb that works for me: Nature has a way of limiting how much of a certain substance you can consume. By simply eating less processed foods, you’re eating more in line with what the human body expects historically. Take oils for example. It requires immense pressure and processing, only available in the Industrial Age, to produce the quantitates of certain oils. We consume way more oil than ever expected. Sugar is in the same boat. Ground wheat is kinda too… The more processing the worse it is for you, as a general rule of thumb. So yea, eat Whole Foods when you can!

beebmam 4y ago
> Nature has a way of limiting how much of a certain substance you can consume. Is your belief that "Nature" is an actor which can (intentionally or unintentionally) limit human consumption? Or are you saying something more like: "there's a physical limit to how much air a human can breathe in a day"?
- yellowpencil 4y ago
  Not op - think it’s more along the lines of “humans evolved with nature as a constraint” and industrialization has the ability to remove that constraint.
- leereeves 4y ago
  I think it's a figurative way of saying that our tastes developed in a natural environment where the things we crave (mainly sugar and fat) were limited and packaged in healthier forms (fruits, nuts, meat).
aardvarkr 4y ago
Oil wasn’t as hard to come by as you’d expect. Think of butter, animal fat, olive oil, seed oils, etc. It’s nowhere near as hard to make as you seem to think. The first recorded history of deep frying is from 2500 BCE. Wheat too was in our diets long ago with the first recorded use in 32,000 BCE. Sugar was 8,000 BCE.

fowkswe 4y ago

Michael Pollan said it best: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

heather45879 4y ago

Unfortunately food is religion to many folks. They will die defending their precious food choices. The problem with articles like this is that it’s designed to be an echo chamber of denialism. The key to being healthy is good diet. Good diet means good ingredients. Most animals are treated like crap and fed crap too—save for a few small-scale producers. If you want to eat meat do yourself (and everyone having to hear these discussions) a favor: visit a high quality Kobe cattle ranch and see how they treat the animals. Then visit a large-scale farm (tip: you might need top-secret clearance) which provides the majority of beef products to the USA. Compare the difference… Garbage in = garbage out.

km3r 4y ago
Is there any research to back up that treating cattle better improves the nutrition of beef?
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  It's well known that cattle kept inside ends up with much lower Vitamin D content in milk & meat. Not sure about other nutrients.
- WillPostForFood 4y ago
  There is research to support it. It makes sense as well. If your human diet affects your health/nutrition/body composition, animal diet should affect their health/nutrition/body composition. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/14423473.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/14423473.pdf
  - gruez 4y ago
    Not the person you replied to, but I think "animal's diet affects their nutrition" is pretty obvious. For instance, the "omega 3" eggs you see at the supermarket are produced by feeding the chicken a high omega 3 diet. That itself isn't really interesting. The real question is whether going through all that trouble is worth it. In other words, is it better/more cost effective to buy the higher quality animal products at the supermarket (eg. omega 3 eggs) or buy the regular stuff and pop a multivitamin? For omega 3 eggs at least, the answer is the latter. I'd be interested in seeing how it works out for beef.

orangepurple 4y ago

Besides the obvious problem of WHAT should I eat there is the problem of HOW MUCH should I eat. And in general we eat too much volume wise AND at inappropriate times relative to our circadian rhythm. CLOCK genes exist! And eating changes your genetic expression.

lolinder 4y ago

You're obviously right that processed foods are far worse, but the study the article cites[0] doesn't say what the article says it does, not at all. The article deliberately misconstrues the phrase "weak evidence" to mean that the authors are attacking the past studies, when in fact they're just saying more research needs to be done. Here's the opening paragraph of the Discussion section: > We evaluated the relationship between unprocessed red meat consumption and six selected disease outcomes following implementation of a meta-analytic approach. We found that unprocessed red meat intake had weak evidence of an association with increased risk of colorectal cancer, breast cancer, IHD and type 2 diabetes and no evidence of an association with ischemic stroke and hemorrhagic stroke. In other words, given all the data available on red meat intake and risk of a subsequent outcome, we estimate that consuming unprocessed red meat across an average range of exposure levels increases the risk of subsequent colorectal cancer, breast cancer, IHD and type 2 diabetes at least slightly compared to eating no red meat (by at least 6%, 3%, 1% and 1%, respectively). [0] Full text here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01968-z#Sec2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01968-z#Sec2

notSupplied 4y ago
Sadly, news articles always grossly exaggerate research results. "We found weak evidence of ..." becomes "New study ABSOLUTELY DESTROYS the myth that..."
- themitigating 4y ago
  "The new study is climbing the ropes, oh my God what is he going to do, ohh he just jumped on the old studies, oh the humanity "
cogman10 4y ago
> You're obviously right that processed foods are far worse I see this claim semi frequently online. So I'll just ask. What is meant by "processed"? What does it mean to be "worse" (Worse than meat? Regular foods?) What is meant by "whole foods"? And finally, what's the evidence for these assertions? Is black tea a processed food? How about coffee grounds? When does something cross the rubric of processed vs unprocessed? To me, it's not obvious that "processed is bad" particularly because I don't know what "processed" means. As a side, how do fortified foods fit in with processed foods? Iodine in salt, for example, has been a huge public health success. Goiters have practically been eliminated as a result.

diob 4y ago

I'm not a vegetarian either, but like you I prefer straight forward foods. Breakfast for me is eggs, avo, toast, some light veggies (spinach, other leafy stuff). Tasty, probably alright for me. I'm not good at the diversify part though . . . I tend to eat this every day :)

monopoliessuck 4y ago
I'm unsure by your wording, but I am a vegetarian in case that's what you mean by "either" - over a decade and still ongoing. Not very important, but I just wanted to clarify. Your breakfast sounds tasty. I don't blame you for having it often. :+1:

cactus2093 4y ago

"Processed Foods" is another vague, exaggerated boogeyman though. For one thing I don't think most people would even agree on what foods count as processed and are bad. Some people are talking about everything except fresh vegetables, some people are talking about specifically industrially-processed food but would say the exact same recipe followed at home (minus a couple of preservatives) is perfectly fine, some people are specifically against fast food but might think canned foods are fine. Large blood sugar spikes after a meal are what is bad for you, but this a more nuanced equation of things like glycemic load of the food (which is as much a factor of quantity eaten as it is glycemic index), genetics, and level of exercise. It's not as simple as just saying all processed food is always bad, for instance after a hard workout simple carbohydrates are not just ok but actively good for you, and ideally most people should be doing a hard workout multiple times per week. Some other components of processed food like excessive salt can be bad, as is the fact that they often push out more micronutrient-rich foods from your diet. But it kind of strikes me as the abstinence-only approach to dietary advice. People love the taste of processed foods, I think we'd do better to encourage eating responsibly overall than insisting on avoiding processed foods altogether. And it's possible to be very healthy while eating a significant amount of processed foods.

anm89 4y ago
I disagree on this point all though I think the term is vague. If I grill a steak and then chop it up into pieces i have "processed" it. This isn't what anyone is talking about when they say processed foods though. If I chop up several different types of meat, add several different colorants, fillers, perservatives and whatever else, turn it all into a slurry and then reconsistute it into a spam loaf, I think there are a lot of good reasons to believe this is ineherently unhealthy, the most simple being that its really easy to dump in a bunch of sugar and extra fats.
- cactus2093 4y ago
  If you want to claim that coloring or preservatives are bad, then just make that claim instead of the more vague "processed foods".

mritchie712 4y ago

> diversify The conventional wisdom says you should have variety in your diet, but it's unclear to me why that's "good" and I've never seen research on it.

taurusnoises 4y ago
And yet, from the position of my armchair and the handful of books on my shelf, history has shown that a monodiet (relative to the modern, diversified western diet, at least) is not only sustainable, but has been the backbone of the human diet for thousands of years.
raarts 4y ago
I think common wisdom says this is the best way to get all the vitamins and minerals your body needs.

hawski 4y ago

I lately wonder about Japanese or Italian cuisine. Those nations are around the top for longevity of life - at least some specific parts of the population. If the diet has a significant part in this I have a silly theory: they make their food relatively simple and quick, but very tasty. I would even say that Japanese cuisine is for making vegetables delicious for example. I do recognize I probably don't know nearly enough.

mr_johnson22 4y ago
Maybe the secret is fish-based diets.

angarg12 4y ago

After living in England for a while, this year we finally moved to the US. Although I have never been too athletic, I've put on 5-7 KG since we moved, and I can't shed them off. We are mostly eating the same as before, and in fact I'm more active than I was over there. There isn't much point to this comment other than the flabbergasting anecdote of how eating roughly the same diet in different countries can have markedly different effect in your health.

jstarfish 4y ago
Diet can have different effect across different states in the US too. California doesn't (seem to) use the same types of lard and oils that you'd find in Georgia, judging by cholesterol issues that self-resolved without change in diet or exercise.
- nradov 4y ago
  Eating cholesterol has very little impact on the cholesterol levels in your body. https://peterattiamd.com/the-straight-dope-on-cholesterol-part-i/ https://peterattiamd.com/the-straight-dope-on-cholesterol-pa...
HDThoreaun 4y ago
I find that portions are generally bigger in the US. Especially if you're not in California easy to eat the same stuff but just have a bigger plate.
CadmiumYellow 4y ago
Look carefully at the ingredients list on any packaged foods you're buying. Many things contain sugar in the US when the equivalent product in Europe does not. A particularly insidious example is pre-made broth/stock: nearly every single product on the shelves at my local grocery store contains unnecessary sugar. Same goes for canned beans and salad dressings. Doing your due diligence when buying packaged foods is an unfortunate necessity if you live in the US and want to stay healthy. God, I miss grocery shopping in France!!
kennend3 4y ago

nkrisc 4y ago

> Just eat minimally processed whole foods as often as possible, diversify your plate and moderate your intake. I think this is really the most important thing anyone can do. Not directed at you at all or at anything you said, but I dislike the term "vegetarian" in general. It suggests a binary diet: either you eat meat, or you don't. Someone who never eats meat and someone who eats meat once a month have essentially the same diet. It makes little sense to distinguish one as vegetarian and one as not. The pervasive idea that you could eat no meat for years and that somehow taking a bit of meat makes you "not vegetarian" anymore is kind of ridiculous. I won't get into it but the concept of "sobriety" often falls into the same trap. That's not to say there's anything wrong with choosing to not eat any meat products (or not drink any alcohol), it's got nothing to do with the choices people make for themselves, simply how we discuss it. I think the terms "vegetarian" and "vegan" are only useful as descriptors of food: whether it contains meat or any animal products at all. But categorizing people as "vegetarian" or "vegan" is absurd and counter-productive.

sweetheart 4y ago
Veganism is a moral philosophy, so it really _only_ makes sense to use that term when referring to people. "Vegan" food is short-hand for "plant-based" food. Food does not subscribe to moral ideals, only people do. It's unfortunate that the difference between those terms has been so muddied with time, but it's an important distinction.

bacan 4y ago

What is "processed foods"? Isn't bread a heavily processed food? Is somehow making it at home magically healthier than it being made in a factory? What about whole wheat bread from a factory vs white bread at home? Which one is healthier? Or are you trying to say that bread is somehow unhealthy? Even though it is staple eaten by literally everyone across the world in someway, shape or form. Terms like this destroy the credibility of "food research" and I find it hard to trust any dietary guidance. Specially after the whole fat & sugar debacle

trebor 4y ago
Compare a hand-made loaf of bread to one from the grocery store. Count the number of ingredients. The hand-made loaf is usually made from flour, with water, oil, and leavening. If you buy unprocessed flour that makes 4 or 5 ingredients as a base. A store bought, whole wheat loaf of bread contains roughly 16 ingredients. The home-made loaf doesn't contain preservatives because it won't need to sit on a shelf for a prolonged period. The home-made loaf can use higher quality/purity ingredients than you will find in the grocery store in the USA. White bread is worse. Not all bread is made the same. Not all bread ingredients are the same. Those individual ingredients can be processed as well. The more processing on the ingredients and end product, the more "processed" a food is. I'm not even touching "highly processed" or "ultra-processed" foods in this short post.