3 ms·

I really think we need to come up with separate words for "Healthy because it isn't very fattening" and "Healthy because it's nutritious and doesn't contain

I really think we need to come up with separate words for "Healthy because it isn't very fattening" and "Healthy because it's nutritious and doesn't contain stuff that damages your body" The amount of confusion this generates is enormous, and leads to things like people eating peanut butter to lose weight, or eating synthetic junk because it has low calories. Cookies are unhealthy because they are very fattening. But if you are normal weight, it's not that big of a deal. Sausage is unhealthy because it contains nitrates. Overweight or underweight it's not good to consume.

smallmancontrov 3y ago
These definitions are surprisingly tricky because there is an adversarial process at play: any slack will be ruthlessly exploited by those looking to pretend that their pizza is healthy because they ground the flour themselves (or whatever).
- jareklupinski 3y ago
  > pizza is healthy because they ground the flour themselves with the amount of energy you expend grinding the flour, you may just end up with a pizza that has net negative calories
  - tmottabr 3y ago
    you know electric motors as a thing nowadays right? grounding you own flour is as complex as flicking a switch and letting the machine do the work for you.
    - jareklupinski 3y ago
      > flicking a switch and letting the machine do the work for you nah that's not how you get the "human factor" into the dough you have to roll up your sleeves and put the work in using your own motors, otherwise it's just "store-bought"
    - marssaxman 3y ago
      Electric motors were a thing when I was a kid, but we used to mill wheat by hand anyway! We had a crank mill in the garage, and when my mother wanted to bake bread she'd send one of us kids out to make some flour.
grvdrm 3y ago
Well said. The example that popped into my head was this: Impossible Burger is "healthier" than regular beef burger. Health aside, these sorts of conclusions (I'm guilty too) say nothing about how processed or not something is. My anecdotal take: an Impossible burger is processed food.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Put another way, health is very multi-dimensional. I'm quite confident that an Impossible Burger is healthier along some dimensions, and a beef burger healthier along others. Food marketers are experts at exploiting this: if a food is unhealthier in 397 different ways but healthier in 1, then guess what gets highlighted on the packaging....
  - grvdrm 3y ago
    > I'm quite confident that an Impossible Burger is healthier along some dimensions, and a beef burger healthier along others. Agree! And I was quite deliberate in not making that point in my statement.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  I would say impossible burger is at very far end of ultraprocessing. Hamburger could be simply just processed. It really comes to what those terms mean, but impossible burgers are more processed than hamburgers. And likely don't solve other issues of burgers.
  - grvdrm 3y ago
    Right. I wasn't making a point about environmental impacts, for example. I know some folks see that as the main differentiator (that I understand). My point was just to draw a distinction between what seems more "processed" vs not - knowing that the terms aren't well-defined.
xeckr 3y ago
>"Healthy because it isn't very fattening" Every single food item can be "fattening", so categorizing them as such is inaccurate. You can eat cookies and lose fat if you're in a net caloric deficit, and you can gain fat from celery if it puts you in a surplus.
- AstralStorm 3y ago
  Probably not from celery unless it's heavily processed already, at which point you should call it a celery soup, cream of celery or something. Otherwise the thing takes more energy to process than it provides.
  - xeckr 3y ago
    I'm talking about literal, unprocessed celery sticks. I understand that the notion that the digestion of celery burns more energy than it provides is a myth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative-calorie_food https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative-calorie_food
    - silverquiet 3y ago
      If celery was all you ate, I doubt it would be possible to gain weight. It's so calorie-poor that it's hard to imagine being able to eat enough to surpass your basal metabolic needs.
      - xeckr 3y ago
        I agree. My argument is that if your calories from food equal your energy expenditure over a given time period, and then you eat a single celery stalk, then the energy from the celery will "fatten" you (and/or contribute to muscle protein synthesis if you exercise). Conversely, if you ate nothing but cookies, but the total energy of those cookies was below what your body expended, then your body will necessarily make up for it by dipping into your fat reserves. Hence why labelling foods as "fattening" or "not fattening" is inaccurate.
somenameforme 3y ago
I think this is ignoring the fundamental issues with weight and health. Each day you naturally burn a set amount of calories dependent upon a number of factors - largest being your activity level and your current weight. If you go over what your body burns, you will gain weight. If you stay under it, you will lose weight. It's that simple. Of course nutrition is critical in this. You need a set amount of vitamins, proteins/amino acids, and so on, to keep your body functioning optimally. Eating a cookie provides basically nothing in terms of nutrition and sends your a pretty good chunk of the way towards your daily 'limit' of consumption. So it means if you eat a cookie you're going to need to be that much more nutritionally conscious on a smaller limit of max calories, to remain healthy. Paradoxically, this is even more true for fit individuals than fat. Even when you're doing nothing, your body is constantly burning calories to keep things going. Fat individual's bodies have to work far harder during this process, and so they passively burn far more calories than fit individuals. This is why an obese person could, in general, start losing weight by "just" eating 3000 calories a day. By contrast, eating 3000 calories a day would see a fit person's weight start rapidly increasing. So a fit person has a far smaller limit to squeeze in all their nutrients. It leads to the paradoxical outcome that that cookie is relatively worse for you if you're fit than if you're fat!

smallmancontrov 3y ago

These definitions are surprisingly tricky because there is an adversarial process at play: any slack will be ruthlessly exploited by those looking to pretend that their pizza is healthy because they ground the flour themselves (or whatever).

jareklupinski 3y ago
> pizza is healthy because they ground the flour themselves with the amount of energy you expend grinding the flour, you may just end up with a pizza that has net negative calories
- tmottabr 3y ago
  you know electric motors as a thing nowadays right? grounding you own flour is as complex as flicking a switch and letting the machine do the work for you.
  - jareklupinski 3y ago
    > flicking a switch and letting the machine do the work for you nah that's not how you get the "human factor" into the dough you have to roll up your sleeves and put the work in using your own motors, otherwise it's just "store-bought"
  - marssaxman 3y ago
    Electric motors were a thing when I was a kid, but we used to mill wheat by hand anyway! We had a crank mill in the garage, and when my mother wanted to bake bread she'd send one of us kids out to make some flour.

grvdrm 3y ago

Well said. The example that popped into my head was this: Impossible Burger is "healthier" than regular beef burger. Health aside, these sorts of conclusions (I'm guilty too) say nothing about how processed or not something is. My anecdotal take: an Impossible burger is processed food.

bryanlarsen 3y ago
Put another way, health is very multi-dimensional. I'm quite confident that an Impossible Burger is healthier along some dimensions, and a beef burger healthier along others. Food marketers are experts at exploiting this: if a food is unhealthier in 397 different ways but healthier in 1, then guess what gets highlighted on the packaging....
- grvdrm 3y ago
  > I'm quite confident that an Impossible Burger is healthier along some dimensions, and a beef burger healthier along others. Agree! And I was quite deliberate in not making that point in my statement.
Ekaros 3y ago
I would say impossible burger is at very far end of ultraprocessing. Hamburger could be simply just processed. It really comes to what those terms mean, but impossible burgers are more processed than hamburgers. And likely don't solve other issues of burgers.
- grvdrm 3y ago
  Right. I wasn't making a point about environmental impacts, for example. I know some folks see that as the main differentiator (that I understand). My point was just to draw a distinction between what seems more "processed" vs not - knowing that the terms aren't well-defined.

xeckr 3y ago

>"Healthy because it isn't very fattening" Every single food item can be "fattening", so categorizing them as such is inaccurate. You can eat cookies and lose fat if you're in a net caloric deficit, and you can gain fat from celery if it puts you in a surplus.

AstralStorm 3y ago
Probably not from celery unless it's heavily processed already, at which point you should call it a celery soup, cream of celery or something. Otherwise the thing takes more energy to process than it provides.
- xeckr 3y ago
  I'm talking about literal, unprocessed celery sticks. I understand that the notion that the digestion of celery burns more energy than it provides is a myth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative-calorie_food https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative-calorie_food
  - silverquiet 3y ago
    If celery was all you ate, I doubt it would be possible to gain weight. It's so calorie-poor that it's hard to imagine being able to eat enough to surpass your basal metabolic needs.
    - xeckr 3y ago
      I agree. My argument is that if your calories from food equal your energy expenditure over a given time period, and then you eat a single celery stalk, then the energy from the celery will "fatten" you (and/or contribute to muscle protein synthesis if you exercise). Conversely, if you ate nothing but cookies, but the total energy of those cookies was below what your body expended, then your body will necessarily make up for it by dipping into your fat reserves. Hence why labelling foods as "fattening" or "not fattening" is inaccurate.

somenameforme 3y ago

I think this is ignoring the fundamental issues with weight and health. Each day you naturally burn a set amount of calories dependent upon a number of factors - largest being your activity level and your current weight. If you go over what your body burns, you will gain weight. If you stay under it, you will lose weight. It's that simple. Of course nutrition is critical in this. You need a set amount of vitamins, proteins/amino acids, and so on, to keep your body functioning optimally. Eating a cookie provides basically nothing in terms of nutrition and sends your a pretty good chunk of the way towards your daily 'limit' of consumption. So it means if you eat a cookie you're going to need to be that much more nutritionally conscious on a smaller limit of max calories, to remain healthy. Paradoxically, this is even more true for fit individuals than fat. Even when you're doing nothing, your body is constantly burning calories to keep things going. Fat individual's bodies have to work far harder during this process, and so they passively burn far more calories than fit individuals. This is why an obese person could, in general, start losing weight by "just" eating 3000 calories a day. By contrast, eating 3000 calories a day would see a fit person's weight start rapidly increasing. So a fit person has a far smaller limit to squeeze in all their nutrients. It leads to the paradoxical outcome that that cookie is relatively worse for you if you're fit than if you're fat!