4 ms·

If it were, why wouldn't it promote longevity

• _cenw 2y ago
  isn't the US full of unhealthy food that is "fortified with vitamins" to distract from the fact that it is unhealthy?
  • UberFly 2y ago
    Like what exactly?
    • The_Colonel 2y ago
      Vitamin Water.
    • coldtea 2y ago
      Like all kinds of industrial produced crap that it's better to not consume, with a health-washing badge about how they "contain vitamins" - from corn-flakes and energy drinks to "wonder bread", "Mentos gum with vitamins" and others.
      • eru 2y ago
        Flour is produced industrially (and pre-industrially, in any case, it's heavily processed). Do you include that in your 'industrially produced crap'?
        • coldtea 2y ago
          Flour is not that good for your diet to begin with, regardless of being produced industrially or not. The kind of crap supermarket breads popular in the US, doubly so. But, to answer you question no, I make the common sense distinction, between food stuff produced at industrial scale, and "industrial produced crap", like things that involve preservatives, food additives, sweeteners, artificial coloring, hefty does of corn syrup, lab chemicals, and other such crap, which can range from the plain shitty ("wonder bread") to the spectaturaly shitty (sodas, gum, doritos, skittles, and on and on). In other words, I don't fall for thought-stopping arguments like "Ackchyually, just so you know, water is a chemical too, so what's so bad with industrial food-stuff designed in a food chemistry lab vs grass-fed meat, fish, veggies, and fruits?"
          • alt227 2y ago
            Unfortunately a vast section of the population are are classed poor or in poverty, and so cant afford anything better than wonder bread. This is why fortified foods were introduced in the first place. Its not a conspiracy to make you think that chemically created foods are as good as naturally produced unprocessed foods, its so that people who cant afford or dont have access to healthy natural food dont get deseases like rickets, spinal conditions, or other growth mutations which are common from malnutrition. I feel like your argument has its heart in the right place, but is incredibly uninformed.
            • coldtea 2y ago
              >Unfortunately a vast section of the population are are classed poor or in poverty, and so cant afford anything better than wonder bread. I don't think that's the case. Both because poor people, in countries with lower wages and higher cost of living, still buy regular bread, and also because in the US that shit is also consumed by not-so-poor and middle class families too. >Its not a conspiracy to make you think that chemically created foods are as good as naturally produced unprocessed foods, its so that people who cant afford or dont have access to healthy natural food dont get deseases like rickets, spinal conditions, or other growth mutations which are common from malnutrition. I doubt this as well, since the "with vitamins" badges are also on food that's way beyond necessary spending, from gum to expensive "high end" "healthy" cereal, all the way to power drinks that cost as much as a Starbucks latte. I'm not talking about official state sponsored/mandated programs to add some beneficial substances to food stuff for the general population (which of course is good).
              • eru 2y ago
                > I doubt this as well, since the "with vitamins" badges are also on food that's way beyond necessary spending, from gum to expensive cereal, all the way to power drinks that cost as much as a Starbucks latte. Well, I guess that's just basic marketing? Vitamins are approximately free to add, and some people are more likely to buy stuff that makes vitamin health claims, while approximately no one dislikes vitamins enough to stop buying a product because of vitamins in it.
  • alt227 2y ago
    All flour in the western world is fortified with vitamins, which is mandated by governements. This then filters through the entire food chain so pretty much any thing you eat has fortified ingredients in. There is nothing bad about it, it is there to replace the natural vitamins and minerals removed in the milling process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_fortification#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_fortification#United_King...
    • alias_neo 2y ago
      > All flour in the western world is fortified with vitamins All white/highly milled flour; there is no requirement for wholemeal flour to be fortified as nothing is being lost. I found this out recently from the place I buy my wholemeal bread flour as they had a notice about the requirement, and that it doesn't apply to the wholemeal varieties they sell.
• reedf1 2y ago
  You hold the implicit assumption that for something to be efficacious it must correlate with longevity. But it is possible for something to increase your day-to-day experience and quality of life without a meaningful affect on how long you live.
  • eru 2y ago
    A good example might be Crohn's disease: not having Crohn's disease barely affects your life expectancy, but your quality of life is vastly improved.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• rightbyte 2y ago
  People that feel their health getting worse might try to compensate with multivitamines? Also, the degenerate case of having a bad vitamine defficiency and also not taking vitamine pills might be too rare to show in the statistics. I mean about a third of the subjects take pills. How many does not take pills and would benefit greatly from it? Only those would move the needle.
• lwhi 2y ago
  Perhaps the sample group didn't have a deficiency to start with.