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Thanks. Noteworthy: Since we don’t actually know anything about nutrition, it’s impossible to know whether the new engineered food products are unhealthy.

• Certhas 3y ago
  That's just a rhetorical slight of hand though: "We don't understand how the body metabolizes what it ingests, and what is healthy and what isn't! Every theory is wrong and has been overthrown! Therefore it's impossible to say whether eating this arsenic pill will be bad for you!" My impression is that there is pretty solid evidence that eating highly processed foods correlates with worse health outcomes.
  • tsimionescu 3y ago
    > My impression is that there is pretty solid evidence that eating highly processed foods correlates with worse health outcomes. That is the conclusion of the Nutrition piece as well. But, crucially, it's important to recognize that we don't really know why that is, and we don't know many of the particulars. To take just two examples: - Even our distant hominid ancestors had discovered fire and were using it to heat food, so it seems very unlikely that eating raw food would be significantly better for us than eating cooked food (by evolutionary arguments) - Cutting food is often not even considered processing, and yet it's something which has a clear negative effect on our teeth at the very least (and is a much much more recent innovation than cooking) So yeah, don't eat a Mars bar or a Chicken McNugget if you can at all help it - and gods help you if you like Spam. But beyond the worst of these foods, the story is actually quite unclear. Edit: the specific quote about the exact point you're making: > One of the trial new messages being tested by the nutrition establishment is “avoid processed food,” which has the big advantage (for their future credibility) that no one is likely to adopt it. Cooking has become an unacceptable hassle.[9] > [9] Disclosure: I do avoid processed food, and most of what I eat I cook from scratch. This is not advice.
    • mirko22 3y ago
      It’s not cos it’s processed but cos it is usually low on fat high on sugar. Not everything that is processed is poisonous, and most “fresh” food today is full of chemicals or lacking in nutrients, so most food you would eat is not that healthy.
    • whatscooking 3y ago
      We do know why. Hyper processed foods are stimulants the same way that drugs are and can be equally addictive. We’re getting a whole food like beets and purifying it into a single substance, sugar. That is no different than how cocaine is purified from its respective plants, forming an addictive substance.
      • tsimionescu 3y ago
        There is no evidence that this is specific to highly processed foods, as opposed to any delicious food. It is true that highly processed foods tend to be more delicious food their price than other foods, but that's about it.
        • whatscooking 3y ago
          What food do you have in mind that is delicious but not ultra processed? I don’t think any whole food gets even close to competing with foods such as pizza, French fries and ice cream. I think the addictive component is one aspect of it, but I also personally believe the body has a internal mechanism that keeps track of its micronutrient and macronutrient deficiencies and induces cravings to obtain those nutrients, regulated by the memory of past foods in the microbiome, so that also can trigger overeating.
          • alanfranz 3y ago
            Is home-baked pizza considered ultra-processed?
            • tsimionescu 3y ago