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These meat substitutes are UPF and that’s what you should care about more than nutritional content.

by deanc 1y ago

Snild 1y ago
"UPF"?
- RealityVoid 1y ago
  "Ultra Processed Food" - I suspect? I disagree, IMO. It feels like a oversimplification, it's a sometimes useful rule of thumb that works in some cases, but not in others. Definitely not the end all be all of nutrition.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
PaulRobinson 1y ago
OK, we need to pick something apart here, because I see this a lot and it's annoying. UPF is not inherently bad. Some UPFs (Pasta, wholemeal bread, baked beans, probiotic yoghurts, wheat biscuit cereals), are actually good for you. The problem is that UPFs come from manufacturers who are trying to get you to buy more of their product, by playing tricks with the brain's response to it. There are food labs where people are having their brain scanned while they sip different soda formulations, tobacco companies buying food companies to apply their research methodologies, and people figuring out packaging noises and shapes in order to make your old/slow brain excited at the crap you're about to eat (the pringles can is hard to use on purpose, for example). This is all symptomatic of a global food industry that needs you to buy more food, so needs you to consume more food, regardless of nutritional impact. I recommend reading Chris van Tulleken's book and watching (if you can) the documentaries he made on the subject. Yes, the Brazilian paper that started all this said "UPF is harming the health of the nation", but the root cause was not UPF processes, it was food industry processes that often require them to produce UPF. It isn't the UP that makes the F bad, it's that some profitable but bad F needs UP to be viable. It is therefore perfectly possible for meat substitutes to be UPF and healthy, just as some other UPFs are healthy. In fact, arguably they need to be both to survive.
- deanc 1y ago
  These meat substitutes use the bad kind on the NOVA scale. Gums and binders. I am current reading the book you mentioned which is why I made this comment.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Some UPFs (Pasta, wholemeal bread, baked beans, probiotic yoghurts, wheat biscuit cereals), are actually good for you But the less processed the better. And eating something else is probably better still.
  - rainforest 1y ago
    Does it worry you at all that meat is ultimately made of whatever food the animal eats and processed into a litany of chemicals? I feel the UPF "debate" is just an appeal to nature, and calorie/nutrient density should be what we fixate on.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > Does it worry you at all that meat is ultimately made of whatever food the animal eats and processed into a litany of chemicals? As much as the same can be said about plants.
    - hombre_fatal 1y ago
      I think the UPF debate just comes down to "things I want to be healthy are not UPF, and things I want to be unhealthy I call UPF." It's why the debate rarely exits the semantic stage into the empirical stage of argument where we look at the human health outcome data on supposedly scary chemicals. Meanwhile, we also have data on not-so-processed foods that are bad for us, and the level of processing did nothing to spare us the negative health impact.
- p1dda 1y ago
  [flagged]
ck45 1y ago
Many (most?) plant based meat substitutes contain methyl cellulose. There are studies like [1] that seem to connect it to intestinal inflammation. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5410598/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5410598/

These meat substitutes are UPF and that’s what you should care about more than nutritional content.

by deanc 1y ago

These meat substitutes are UPF and that’s what you should care about more than nutritional content.

Snild 1y ago

"UPF"?

RealityVoid 1y ago
"Ultra Processed Food" - I suspect? I disagree, IMO. It feels like a oversimplification, it's a sometimes useful rule of thumb that works in some cases, but not in others. Definitely not the end all be all of nutrition.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

PaulRobinson 1y ago

OK, we need to pick something apart here, because I see this a lot and it's annoying. UPF is not inherently bad. Some UPFs (Pasta, wholemeal bread, baked beans, probiotic yoghurts, wheat biscuit cereals), are actually good for you. The problem is that UPFs come from manufacturers who are trying to get you to buy more of their product, by playing tricks with the brain's response to it. There are food labs where people are having their brain scanned while they sip different soda formulations, tobacco companies buying food companies to apply their research methodologies, and people figuring out packaging noises and shapes in order to make your old/slow brain excited at the crap you're about to eat (the pringles can is hard to use on purpose, for example). This is all symptomatic of a global food industry that needs you to buy more food, so needs you to consume more food, regardless of nutritional impact. I recommend reading Chris van Tulleken's book and watching (if you can) the documentaries he made on the subject. Yes, the Brazilian paper that started all this said "UPF is harming the health of the nation", but the root cause was not UPF processes, it was food industry processes that often require them to produce UPF. It isn't the UP that makes the F bad, it's that some profitable but bad F needs UP to be viable. It is therefore perfectly possible for meat substitutes to be UPF and healthy, just as some other UPFs are healthy. In fact, arguably they need to be both to survive.

deanc 1y ago
These meat substitutes use the bad kind on the NOVA scale. Gums and binders. I am current reading the book you mentioned which is why I made this comment.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> Some UPFs (Pasta, wholemeal bread, baked beans, probiotic yoghurts, wheat biscuit cereals), are actually good for you But the less processed the better. And eating something else is probably better still.
- rainforest 1y ago
  Does it worry you at all that meat is ultimately made of whatever food the animal eats and processed into a litany of chemicals? I feel the UPF "debate" is just an appeal to nature, and calorie/nutrient density should be what we fixate on.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > Does it worry you at all that meat is ultimately made of whatever food the animal eats and processed into a litany of chemicals? As much as the same can be said about plants.
  - hombre_fatal 1y ago
    I think the UPF debate just comes down to "things I want to be healthy are not UPF, and things I want to be unhealthy I call UPF." It's why the debate rarely exits the semantic stage into the empirical stage of argument where we look at the human health outcome data on supposedly scary chemicals. Meanwhile, we also have data on not-so-processed foods that are bad for us, and the level of processing did nothing to spare us the negative health impact.
p1dda 1y ago
[flagged]

ck45 1y ago

Many (most?) plant based meat substitutes contain methyl cellulose. There are studies like [1] that seem to connect it to intestinal inflammation. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5410598/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5410598/