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Yeah, as a Boring Technology Club [1] sort of developer, I've grown steadily more suspicious of engineered foods, which includes both highly processed foods and

Yeah, as a Boring Technology Club [1] sort of developer, I've grown steadily more suspicious of engineered foods, which includes both highly processed foods and artificial sweetners. We just don't have a very good understanding of the bodily mechanisms, especially once we start looking at things like the gut ecosystem. I'm definitely not telling anybody what to eat, but the more attention I pay to this, the more careful I get. The food industry has many competing motivations, but my long term health is pretty far down the list. [1] https://boringtechnology.club/ https://boringtechnology.club/

jjeaff 4y ago
Less of a worry than artificial sweeteners and the like, but I think still a concern is that almost all the fruits and vegetables we eat today are "engineered". When I buy a box of blackberries, they are perfectly black, sweet, juicy and delicious. Modern breeds of apples like Cosmic Crisp are juicy orbs of sugar. Neither of these are natural. They have been selectively cultivated for generations and I wonder how the nutritional value compares to their natural, wild counterparts. Even today's brussel sprout has been cultivated to remove much of the sulfur that made it bitter in the past. Heck, pretty much all the vegetables in the grocery store today are completely engineered by humans. Broccoli and Brussel sprouts are human "engineered" from the same ancestor. Not even considering the pesticides, herbicides, and GMOs, I worry that we are going to have no options except for these delicious flavor and sugar bombs that may not contain enough nutrients to keep us healthy. I hope I am wrong and we have actually managed to out maneuver mother nature by creating more delicious versions of cultivar that are still healthy. I just have this nagging feeling when eating a delicious, juicy fist sized strawberry out of season that it's a bit too good to be true.
- wpietri 4y ago
  A totally valid question. It seems like a race between our evolutionary adaptation to our changing diet and our ability to change our diet to be a hyperstimulus to our tastes. Based on no evidence at all, I figure simple plant breeding was much more limited in rate of change so it's reasonable to suspect that our bodies kept up, or at least weren't very far behind. But with modern tech, who knows!
jiggawatts 4y ago
Something insightful I got from a Netflix food show was the quote: “Eat whatever you want, but cook it yourself.” When you go shopping, do you pick up a bunch of chemical flavour enhancers known only by their E numbers? No, you buy raw vegetables, fruits, and meats and dump combinations into a pan or pot. That’s my “trick” to eating healthy. Don’t eat anything that comes in an cardboard box and was manufactured in a factory.
- lo_zamoyski 4y ago
  Sound advice. Furthermore, the effort of obtaining and preparing food could dampen any mindless, gluttonous impulses. The threshold to satisfying the promptings of the appetite is higher, and over time, will cause such promptings to atrophy as a result of repeated denial. As the saying goes, appetite comes with eating.
  - tracker1 4y ago
    My SO can't seem to make a meal for less than 6, when it's usually the two of us, and may only have leftovers once, leading to a lot of waste, which irks me. Sometimes I'll eat more or less, depending on how I feel. It's also hard in that I'm a social eater, and although some foods are more problematic than others for me, she doesn't have issue with them. Example, legumes... I don't feel well, general muscle aches the next day, when I have them. I grew up with PB almost every day of my life until isolating the problem about 8 years or so ago. I still like the stuff, living in the southwest, beans are a typical side. I also still have it, it's just I live with the effect, or after a few days am more inclined to stop having it. Self control isn't always the easiest thing living and being around others.

jjeaff 4y ago

Less of a worry than artificial sweeteners and the like, but I think still a concern is that almost all the fruits and vegetables we eat today are "engineered". When I buy a box of blackberries, they are perfectly black, sweet, juicy and delicious. Modern breeds of apples like Cosmic Crisp are juicy orbs of sugar. Neither of these are natural. They have been selectively cultivated for generations and I wonder how the nutritional value compares to their natural, wild counterparts. Even today's brussel sprout has been cultivated to remove much of the sulfur that made it bitter in the past. Heck, pretty much all the vegetables in the grocery store today are completely engineered by humans. Broccoli and Brussel sprouts are human "engineered" from the same ancestor. Not even considering the pesticides, herbicides, and GMOs, I worry that we are going to have no options except for these delicious flavor and sugar bombs that may not contain enough nutrients to keep us healthy. I hope I am wrong and we have actually managed to out maneuver mother nature by creating more delicious versions of cultivar that are still healthy. I just have this nagging feeling when eating a delicious, juicy fist sized strawberry out of season that it's a bit too good to be true.

wpietri 4y ago
A totally valid question. It seems like a race between our evolutionary adaptation to our changing diet and our ability to change our diet to be a hyperstimulus to our tastes. Based on no evidence at all, I figure simple plant breeding was much more limited in rate of change so it's reasonable to suspect that our bodies kept up, or at least weren't very far behind. But with modern tech, who knows!

jiggawatts 4y ago

Something insightful I got from a Netflix food show was the quote: “Eat whatever you want, but cook it yourself.” When you go shopping, do you pick up a bunch of chemical flavour enhancers known only by their E numbers? No, you buy raw vegetables, fruits, and meats and dump combinations into a pan or pot. That’s my “trick” to eating healthy. Don’t eat anything that comes in an cardboard box and was manufactured in a factory.

lo_zamoyski 4y ago
Sound advice. Furthermore, the effort of obtaining and preparing food could dampen any mindless, gluttonous impulses. The threshold to satisfying the promptings of the appetite is higher, and over time, will cause such promptings to atrophy as a result of repeated denial. As the saying goes, appetite comes with eating.
- tracker1 4y ago
  My SO can't seem to make a meal for less than 6, when it's usually the two of us, and may only have leftovers once, leading to a lot of waste, which irks me. Sometimes I'll eat more or less, depending on how I feel. It's also hard in that I'm a social eater, and although some foods are more problematic than others for me, she doesn't have issue with them. Example, legumes... I don't feel well, general muscle aches the next day, when I have them. I grew up with PB almost every day of my life until isolating the problem about 8 years or so ago. I still like the stuff, living in the southwest, beans are a typical side. I also still have it, it's just I live with the effect, or after a few days am more inclined to stop having it. Self control isn't always the easiest thing living and being around others.