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This article is a big nothing burger. Of course a foundation with the goal to "drive the transition to more healthful plant-based diets for human and planetary
by DarkNova6 3y ago
This article is a big nothing burger. Of course a foundation with the goal to "drive the transition to more healthful plant-based diets for human and planetary health. "[0] is against labeling highly-processed plant based food as "highly processed".
Quote:
> In an era of urgency to move populations towards more environmentally and nutritionally beneficial plant-based diets, making a simple switch to soya meat replacements and milk alternatives is a realistic and easy dietary change for most consumers to achieve
As far as I'm concerned, almost all highly-processed food "alternatives" consist of abundantly cheap ingredients (mostly based on soy, rice or corn), sold at a price of labor intense organic products. I think this is just profit driven greenwashing, nothing more.
[0] https://www.alprofoundation.org/about https://www.alprofoundation.org/about
- kar1181 3y agoUltra processed is the end result of mckinsification of our food chain.
- olalonde 3y agoWhat is mckinsification?
- uoaei 3y agoIs it so hard to infer? McKinsey, consulting firm famous worldwide for its ruthless "optimization" of all industries often at the expense of consumers in favor of realizing short-term gains that look good to C-suite and shareholders, causes shifts in business practices both directly in its involvement as well as indirectly by inspiring copycat competitive tactics.
- xenocratus 3y agoYes, it is hard to infer for someone who's never heard of McKinsey. Assuming everyone MUST've heard is in poor taste. As far as I'm aware, there's no curriculum necessary for users of this site.
- thuuuomas 3y agoIt’s poor taste to expect every passing reference to be scoped to your specific minimum of background knowledge.
- jacooper 3y agoI though he/she meant MacDonalds
- olalonde 3y agoI guessed it had something to do with the consulting firm but as I couldn't figure out what they had to do with the popularity of ultra-processed food, I thought it might have referred to something else.
- Ensorceled 3y agoI’ve heard of McKinsey, despise them and the term still made no sense completely out of the blue and out of context. Maybe McKinseyfication would have been better…
- JoshuaRogers 3y agoHadn't heard of McKinsey. Genuinely thought it was a weird way to reference President McKinley in the same way you might hear "Reaganomics". I was waiting to hear how a long dead president was responsible for the food chain issues. :P Edit: Added missing word.
- numpad0 3y agoFirst time heard of this and got the intention, but funny it's just the nerd's favorite McKinsey and not the whole industry, where there are about -1 other names & firms.
- paganel 3y ago> making a simple switch to soya meat replacements and milk alternatives is a realistic and easy dietary change for most consumers to achieve Pardon my French, but I don’t know what the author of that article finds “easy” in that. Soy milk tastes like s*t, as does soy meat, in fact one of the main reasons we, Romanians, deposed Ceausescu back in the day was because his technocrats had tried to impose on us to eat soy-based salami, all in the name of “rational eating”. In fact, one of the main complaints made against the returning diaspora after Ceausescu had already fallen was that said diaspora hadn’t really known the hardships of dictatorship, literally those guys were told that “you didn’t eat soy-based salami”. Which is to say that I find all this present discussion about “rationalizing” our eating habits as highly dystopic, more dystopic still when seeing the discourse that goes against all this non-sense getting labeled as conspiratorial and thrown to the margins.
- dtgriscom 3y agoYes, "easy dietary change" is very subjective, so is "soy milk tastes like s*t". Both are overgeneralizations.
- throwuwu 3y agoThose who have experienced it see it for what it is.
- verall 3y agoSoy only tastes like shit if you don't know wtf to do with it. Plenty of great food made with tofu but I doubt that soy salami is any good.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoThe entire game is silly, starting with considering "highly-processed" to be synonymous to "bad"/"unhealthy". There's lots of money behind pushing that meme too.
- ejb999 3y agopossibly, but I suspect there is a whole lot more money pushing the 'processed foods can be good for you' meme.
- kuerbel 3y agoAll the scientific evidence points to the fact that ultra-processed foods are unhealthy. There is much more money to be made in pushing the opposite view. But of course, those little mom and pop shops like Nestlé, Unilever et al don't have the money to do this, right?
- TeMPOraL 3y agoYou realize that Nestlé and Unilever play both ends, owning both high and low-processed food brands, both factory and organic produce? The same way pharma companies are the ones making homeopathic "remedies". Food processing isn't evil, it's to a large degree a necessity. The alternative to processed food isn't everyone eating the mythical, health and happiness-granting fresh produce - it's population dropping to levels from early 20th century, and most people working on a farm. Food processing is what allows for both variety and for most of us to live far from where the food is grown. It does come with health costs, but you need to evaluate those in context of health impact of everything developed in the last 100 years, all of which depends on having most people doing something other than working the land. Or better yet, let's focus on specific processes, categories of food products, and corporations, instead of making a blanket "processed = bad" judgement.
- close04 3y agoWhen we’re talking about food quality then processed usually means bad, ultra processed is ultra bad [0]. What you’re thinking of are other externalities which may make the low quality acceptable compared to the alternative. Processed food is bad food. Bad food is better than no food. “Your money or your life” makes it look like losing all your money is good because it kept you alive. [0] Worked in the food industry at some point. I’ve seen how the sausage is made literally and figuratively.