6 ms·

> It's insane to me that so many people need these to get off the processed foods killing them in the US The American diet is insane, full stop. However, I've

> It's insane to me that so many people need these to get off the processed foods killing them in the US The American diet is insane, full stop. However, I've just begun a GLP-1 regimen to address a willpower problem, not a nutritional problem. I'm not quite young anymore and have given lots of other approaches a shot over the years, but have persistently failed to achieve a weight that is not a threat to my health. So far, what being on a GLP-1 gives me is a steady state that most people probably find quite unremarkable: I don't crave a snack, and I don't thirst for alcohol. Both of those desires have had real control over me for a very long time.

anon7000 9mo ago
And crucially, many of those bad foods can be pretty addictive. They’re quite literally engineered so that you want to eat a lot of them and buy more. So it’s not surprising many people struggle to change that habit when the food ecosystem is working against you. Junk food both tastes better and is easier to eat than home-cooking a very healthy meal. You’re not exactly set up for success here.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- bsder 9mo ago
  > They’re quite literally engineered so that you want to eat a lot of them and buy more. Even if it's not intentional, I find that the enshittification seems to run along these lines. The things that finally drove it home for me this year were "peppermint bark" and "ranch dip". I used to buy this stuff or use the premade. This year I worked out how to do them properly myself. People raved about both. But I noticed that they ate far less of them (including myself!). My suspicion is that the difference was that I used actual chocolate and actual buttermilk. I suspect the extra fat made people sated and they quit eating afterward. I'm finding this applicable to more and more foods. I'm no genius chef, but simply using standard ingredients causes people to eat very differently.
  - padjo 9mo ago
    Or they weren’t actually that nice and people were being polite.
    - cbozeman 9mo ago
      For a site chock full of logic-worshippers, we do seem to forget Occam's Razor too frequently.
      - red-iron-pine 9mo ago
        the tech bro demographic is terrible at self reflection or solving problems that involve their own biases very smart people can rationalize themselves into or out of anything position
        majewsky 9mo ago
        That's true of any human. It's just particularly bad for tech bros because they base their entire personality on their supposed hyper-rationalism.
    - pmontra 9mo ago
      Maybe that's the reason but the cook also ate less and should be able to compare the taste.
      - padjo 9mo ago
        Yes because people are famously good a judging their own work accurately
        pmontra 9mo ago
        Well, I can't cook very well but I can assess if I like more what I cook, what I buy at the store, what I have at a restaurant. It's usually restaurant > me > supermarket. Packaged food is the worst.
- GeorgeTirebiter 9mo ago
  I looked at a recent football (US) game, and I could not believe the pictures of the grease bombs they were pushing as 'food'. I literally felt ready to gag when I saw some 'chicken nuggets' or whatever was in the fried outer coating.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
- theshrike79 9mo ago
  Sugar, salt and fat in the perfect combination makes _anything_ tickle an ancient part of your brain, making you crave more of it.
- joshocar 9mo ago
  I also think there is an education gap. People grow up eating processed food and don't learn to cook. People often try to cook, but online recipes are not really teaching you anything and are often far more work than they need to be or turn out bad, so people think or learn that cooking a meal takes a long time, is a lot of work, and doesn't taste as good. Cooking becomes the exception rather than the norm. In reality you can have a piece of salmon, with a veggie and side in ~20m with 2m of prep and 2m of cleanup. An online recipe would have you cooking down a sauce, making a complicated side, and use some random ingredient that you need to buy for that one meal.
  - nottorp 9mo ago
    I guess most online recipes assume you're cooking for "special occasions". I can buy a bag of frozen assorted veggies and a few pieces of frozen salmon in the store across the street, throw them 15 min into a pan and be done. It's mostly what I feed on. Not in the US though.
    - kbelder 9mo ago
      I haven't been in a place in the US where you can't easily do that, and I don't live in a particularly urban environment.
  - atomicnumber3 9mo ago
    I think the main problem with online recipes is that there's a lot of stuff that "cooks" and "people who cook" learn that carries over VERY STRONGLY from dish to dish that is just totally absent from online tutorials. Things like what done (but not dried out) chicken looks like, and how to position chicken in a pan so the thicker parts get more heat, and why your chicken went right from "looks plain" to burned with no maillard reaction. I think foods/culinary courses should be mandatory in high school. I took one as an elective, expecting it to be a blow-off class, but I ended up being shocked by how much I - honor student and all that - didn't know about browning hamburger, much less actual cooking. I ended up taking the subsequent 3 classes in the "foods" line.
    - 9mo ago
- throw8383833jj 9mo ago
  Also, these ultra processed foods set up unrealistic expectations of what "good" food should taste like. years of eating UFP ruins the taste buds. So, once you start eating real foods like whole grains, beans, fruits and vegetables (especially if its cooked without truckloads of oil), you think it doesn't taste good when actually the problem is your ruined taste buds.
- Bombthecat 9mo ago
  I wonder if we will create a Glp for gaming, they are also addicting.( And created to get you addicted) What a world we live in...
  - dwaite 9mo ago
    You mean Opiod Antagonists? They already exist
    - Bombthecat 9mo ago
      Do they get prescribed for gaming addiction?
- mptest 9mo ago
  also remember it's pretty much the only addiction you are compelled to partake in even when "cured". No other addiction are you biologically compelled to do it (that i can think of) but for those with addiction issues and food as one of them it's often the hardest to shake because shaking addiction is easiest done simply by never touching it. Don't have that option with food. Even healthy food can be eaten in excess.
- IG_Semmelweiss 9mo ago
  This didn't happen in a vaccum. The tobacco companies like RJR, packed with scientiests researching how to make cigarrettes more addictive, were trojaned into mass food companies like Nabisco [1] It should not be a surprise that there's been a relentless pursuit of addictive food ever since. [1] https://legalclarity.org/inside-the-rjr-nabisco-leveraged-buyout/ https://legalclarity.org/inside-the-rjr-nabisco-leveraged-bu...
- xnx 9mo ago
  > engineered so that you want to eat a lot of them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperpalatable_food https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperpalatable_food
cush 9mo ago
Alcohol is no joke. It can take hold of families and persist for generations. Kudos to you!
- mettamage 9mo ago
  > Alcohol is no joke. I never got this, other than seeing it's hard for others. So in that sense I agree. I've seen the effects on others and how hard it is to quit. That's no joke indeed. I just don't get why I find it quite easy to stop drinking for a year (or longer). While I haven't been able to stop for life, doing those yearly challenges is relatively easy, for me. If I'd be a normal person then that's whatever. But I say this I say this as a person whose whole family consists of alcoholics. Genetically, I have to have an addictive personality. Yet, I find myself I can easily not be addicted by substances. What I find harder: * YouTube (I recently have been able to stave off a social media addiction but YouTube specifically is tougher) * Coffee Maybe I should make a blog post. Throw in my 2 cents. While anecdata is anecdata, if it helps one person it'd be a good thing.
  - ilinx 9mo ago
    I’m a recovering alcoholic. I’m almost positive that the effects of alcohol are wildly different between the two of us. When I drink my brain spits out more reward chemicals than I know what to do with. It makes me feel extremely energetic and creative. It inflates my sense of self-worth and gives me confidence. It’s genuinely more enjoyable than sex. And that’s how it dug its claws in, because almost all of those go away after binge drinking for a while. Then you’re just left with the addiction. And getting sober means having to learn to want whatever is left of your life.
    - accidentallfact 9mo ago
      Definitely. Alcohol just makes me confused and sick, with no upsides to it. I'be been told that I must be drinking incorrectly, and given advice how to drink correctly, but no, no positive experience with it for me. The funny thing is, I actually like the taste of it (it tastes kind of minty to me, while most people claim it tastes bitter) but the effects are pure poison.
riffraff 9mo ago
Congrats and good luck! If I may ask, do you think you will be able to cope with the lack of willpower once you stop taking the drug? I don't want to sound dismissive or argumentative, I'm asking out of pure curiosity, forgive me if I sound negative, I'm rooting for people who try to improve their health.
- lurking_swe 9mo ago
  that’s the dirty secret. once you start this drug you basically need to be on it for life. I mean, you _can_ get off it, but studies show the effects reverse pretty quickly. Crucially, if you decide to get off of the drug, you’ll likely end up in a worse position than you started. Why? Many Ozempic patients lose some bone density. That can be an issue as you age. So if you get off the drug, your food habits revert to baseline, you gain the weight back, AND you have less bone density than when you started. Not a great plan. If you need it, can tolerate the side affects, and can afford it, staying on ozempic for life makes the most sense. I believe the idea is that you can reduce the dose after you’re in a good weight range, and continue taking it as “maintenance”.
  - cthalupa 9mo ago
    > Ozempic reduces your bone density We should be clear here - bone density loss is not something intrinsic to ozempic, it has to do with your rate of weight loss, exercise and dietary habits, etc. It is entirely possible for someone to modify their diet, lift weights, etc., while on ozempic and gain bone mineral density. But if you don't do those things and just lose a bunch of weight really fast, you're going to lose density (and lean muscle mass)
    - lurking_swe 9mo ago
      yes thanks for clarifying.
    - themafia 9mo ago
      Ozempic: Weight loss at a breakneck pace.
DrBazza 9mo ago
The American shopping experience is weird as well. There's a spectrum of supermarkets. Versus the UK, any US supermarket I've ever visited (I lived there for a couple of years) seemed to have far less fresh food, especially vegetables and fruit, but stuff in boxes was piled high. Then again, the UK vs. Spain or France is weird, by the same metric, they have even more fresh food than us in supermarkets, and much less boxed stuff. Geography and having continent sized country probably doesn't help either.
- davidzweig 9mo ago
  And huge selection of frozen meals. These I actually found better than expected.
- alex43578 9mo ago
  Is that accounting for just how much bigger the US supermarkets are? The ones by me, ranging from cheap grocery stores, Walmart/Costco, through premium grocery stores, all have plenty of fresh food available. They absolutely have aisles and aisles of frozen, packaged, etc; but outside of like specialty tropical fruits, there's nothing reasonable you could walk in for and not find fresh or at least frozen w/ minimal processing.
  - suddenlybananas 9mo ago
    Those kinds of gigantic supermarkets do exist in Europe too, you're just not likely to see them as a tourist going around historical city centres.
  - joshocar 9mo ago
    Food quality and options vary significantly with location in the US. In my city I have a Gucci market that gets super fresh veggies and fruit, along with imported cheeses, fish, very fresh meats, and other low processed food, but at a premium price point. There are also 2 other supermarkets to choose from. If you go an hour away there is one supermarket for the area that is "okay." Go to the next State over and the towns have 1/4 the fruit/veggie options and very limited meat options, all at a premium. The veggies are not fresh, no exotic fruits, and you might not find the cut of meat you are looking for.
ChrisRR 9mo ago
> to address a willpower problem, not a nutritional problem I think those are one and the same.
replwoacause 9mo ago
What does are you on that brings you these effects? I take 5mg weekly and find the effects mild but appreciable.
m463 9mo ago
Processed food is easy, tasty (in a shallow way) and more available than the alternatives. I think the real problem is that it's hard to give up "easy" when so many things vie for time and attention in the US.
- xnx 9mo ago
  > Processed food is easy, tasty (in a shallow way) and more available than the alternatives. Fiber is also removed so you can eat faster (less chewing) and don't feel satiated.

anon7000 9mo ago

And crucially, many of those bad foods can be pretty addictive. They’re quite literally engineered so that you want to eat a lot of them and buy more. So it’s not surprising many people struggle to change that habit when the food ecosystem is working against you. Junk food both tastes better and is easier to eat than home-cooking a very healthy meal. You’re not exactly set up for success here.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
bsder 9mo ago
> They’re quite literally engineered so that you want to eat a lot of them and buy more. Even if it's not intentional, I find that the enshittification seems to run along these lines. The things that finally drove it home for me this year were "peppermint bark" and "ranch dip". I used to buy this stuff or use the premade. This year I worked out how to do them properly myself. People raved about both. But I noticed that they ate far less of them (including myself!). My suspicion is that the difference was that I used actual chocolate and actual buttermilk. I suspect the extra fat made people sated and they quit eating afterward. I'm finding this applicable to more and more foods. I'm no genius chef, but simply using standard ingredients causes people to eat very differently.
- padjo 9mo ago
  Or they weren’t actually that nice and people were being polite.
  - cbozeman 9mo ago
    For a site chock full of logic-worshippers, we do seem to forget Occam's Razor too frequently.
    - red-iron-pine 9mo ago
      the tech bro demographic is terrible at self reflection or solving problems that involve their own biases very smart people can rationalize themselves into or out of anything position
      - majewsky 9mo ago
        That's true of any human. It's just particularly bad for tech bros because they base their entire personality on their supposed hyper-rationalism.
  - pmontra 9mo ago
    Maybe that's the reason but the cook also ate less and should be able to compare the taste.
    - padjo 9mo ago
      Yes because people are famously good a judging their own work accurately
      - pmontra 9mo ago
        Well, I can't cook very well but I can assess if I like more what I cook, what I buy at the store, what I have at a restaurant. It's usually restaurant > me > supermarket. Packaged food is the worst.
GeorgeTirebiter 9mo ago
I looked at a recent football (US) game, and I could not believe the pictures of the grease bombs they were pushing as 'food'. I literally felt ready to gag when I saw some 'chicken nuggets' or whatever was in the fried outer coating.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
theshrike79 9mo ago
Sugar, salt and fat in the perfect combination makes _anything_ tickle an ancient part of your brain, making you crave more of it.
joshocar 9mo ago
I also think there is an education gap. People grow up eating processed food and don't learn to cook. People often try to cook, but online recipes are not really teaching you anything and are often far more work than they need to be or turn out bad, so people think or learn that cooking a meal takes a long time, is a lot of work, and doesn't taste as good. Cooking becomes the exception rather than the norm. In reality you can have a piece of salmon, with a veggie and side in ~20m with 2m of prep and 2m of cleanup. An online recipe would have you cooking down a sauce, making a complicated side, and use some random ingredient that you need to buy for that one meal.
- nottorp 9mo ago
  I guess most online recipes assume you're cooking for "special occasions". I can buy a bag of frozen assorted veggies and a few pieces of frozen salmon in the store across the street, throw them 15 min into a pan and be done. It's mostly what I feed on. Not in the US though.
  - kbelder 9mo ago
    I haven't been in a place in the US where you can't easily do that, and I don't live in a particularly urban environment.
- atomicnumber3 9mo ago
  I think the main problem with online recipes is that there's a lot of stuff that "cooks" and "people who cook" learn that carries over VERY STRONGLY from dish to dish that is just totally absent from online tutorials. Things like what done (but not dried out) chicken looks like, and how to position chicken in a pan so the thicker parts get more heat, and why your chicken went right from "looks plain" to burned with no maillard reaction. I think foods/culinary courses should be mandatory in high school. I took one as an elective, expecting it to be a blow-off class, but I ended up being shocked by how much I - honor student and all that - didn't know about browning hamburger, much less actual cooking. I ended up taking the subsequent 3 classes in the "foods" line.
  - 9mo ago
throw8383833jj 9mo ago
Also, these ultra processed foods set up unrealistic expectations of what "good" food should taste like. years of eating UFP ruins the taste buds. So, once you start eating real foods like whole grains, beans, fruits and vegetables (especially if its cooked without truckloads of oil), you think it doesn't taste good when actually the problem is your ruined taste buds.
Bombthecat 9mo ago
I wonder if we will create a Glp for gaming, they are also addicting.( And created to get you addicted) What a world we live in...
- dwaite 9mo ago
  You mean Opiod Antagonists? They already exist
  - Bombthecat 9mo ago
    Do they get prescribed for gaming addiction?
mptest 9mo ago
also remember it's pretty much the only addiction you are compelled to partake in even when "cured". No other addiction are you biologically compelled to do it (that i can think of) but for those with addiction issues and food as one of them it's often the hardest to shake because shaking addiction is easiest done simply by never touching it. Don't have that option with food. Even healthy food can be eaten in excess.
IG_Semmelweiss 9mo ago
This didn't happen in a vaccum. The tobacco companies like RJR, packed with scientiests researching how to make cigarrettes more addictive, were trojaned into mass food companies like Nabisco [1] It should not be a surprise that there's been a relentless pursuit of addictive food ever since. [1] https://legalclarity.org/inside-the-rjr-nabisco-leveraged-buyout/ https://legalclarity.org/inside-the-rjr-nabisco-leveraged-bu...
xnx 9mo ago
> engineered so that you want to eat a lot of them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperpalatable_food https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperpalatable_food

cush 9mo ago

Alcohol is no joke. It can take hold of families and persist for generations. Kudos to you!

mettamage 9mo ago
> Alcohol is no joke. I never got this, other than seeing it's hard for others. So in that sense I agree. I've seen the effects on others and how hard it is to quit. That's no joke indeed. I just don't get why I find it quite easy to stop drinking for a year (or longer). While I haven't been able to stop for life, doing those yearly challenges is relatively easy, for me. If I'd be a normal person then that's whatever. But I say this I say this as a person whose whole family consists of alcoholics. Genetically, I have to have an addictive personality. Yet, I find myself I can easily not be addicted by substances. What I find harder: * YouTube (I recently have been able to stave off a social media addiction but YouTube specifically is tougher) * Coffee Maybe I should make a blog post. Throw in my 2 cents. While anecdata is anecdata, if it helps one person it'd be a good thing.
- ilinx 9mo ago
  I’m a recovering alcoholic. I’m almost positive that the effects of alcohol are wildly different between the two of us. When I drink my brain spits out more reward chemicals than I know what to do with. It makes me feel extremely energetic and creative. It inflates my sense of self-worth and gives me confidence. It’s genuinely more enjoyable than sex. And that’s how it dug its claws in, because almost all of those go away after binge drinking for a while. Then you’re just left with the addiction. And getting sober means having to learn to want whatever is left of your life.
  - accidentallfact 9mo ago
    Definitely. Alcohol just makes me confused and sick, with no upsides to it. I'be been told that I must be drinking incorrectly, and given advice how to drink correctly, but no, no positive experience with it for me. The funny thing is, I actually like the taste of it (it tastes kind of minty to me, while most people claim it tastes bitter) but the effects are pure poison.

riffraff 9mo ago

Congrats and good luck! If I may ask, do you think you will be able to cope with the lack of willpower once you stop taking the drug? I don't want to sound dismissive or argumentative, I'm asking out of pure curiosity, forgive me if I sound negative, I'm rooting for people who try to improve their health.

lurking_swe 9mo ago
that’s the dirty secret. once you start this drug you basically need to be on it for life. I mean, you _can_ get off it, but studies show the effects reverse pretty quickly. Crucially, if you decide to get off of the drug, you’ll likely end up in a worse position than you started. Why? Many Ozempic patients lose some bone density. That can be an issue as you age. So if you get off the drug, your food habits revert to baseline, you gain the weight back, AND you have less bone density than when you started. Not a great plan. If you need it, can tolerate the side affects, and can afford it, staying on ozempic for life makes the most sense. I believe the idea is that you can reduce the dose after you’re in a good weight range, and continue taking it as “maintenance”.
- cthalupa 9mo ago
  > Ozempic reduces your bone density We should be clear here - bone density loss is not something intrinsic to ozempic, it has to do with your rate of weight loss, exercise and dietary habits, etc. It is entirely possible for someone to modify their diet, lift weights, etc., while on ozempic and gain bone mineral density. But if you don't do those things and just lose a bunch of weight really fast, you're going to lose density (and lean muscle mass)
  - lurking_swe 9mo ago
    yes thanks for clarifying.
  - themafia 9mo ago
    Ozempic: Weight loss at a breakneck pace.

DrBazza 9mo ago

The American shopping experience is weird as well. There's a spectrum of supermarkets. Versus the UK, any US supermarket I've ever visited (I lived there for a couple of years) seemed to have far less fresh food, especially vegetables and fruit, but stuff in boxes was piled high. Then again, the UK vs. Spain or France is weird, by the same metric, they have even more fresh food than us in supermarkets, and much less boxed stuff. Geography and having continent sized country probably doesn't help either.

davidzweig 9mo ago
And huge selection of frozen meals. These I actually found better than expected.
alex43578 9mo ago
Is that accounting for just how much bigger the US supermarkets are? The ones by me, ranging from cheap grocery stores, Walmart/Costco, through premium grocery stores, all have plenty of fresh food available. They absolutely have aisles and aisles of frozen, packaged, etc; but outside of like specialty tropical fruits, there's nothing reasonable you could walk in for and not find fresh or at least frozen w/ minimal processing.
- suddenlybananas 9mo ago
  Those kinds of gigantic supermarkets do exist in Europe too, you're just not likely to see them as a tourist going around historical city centres.
- joshocar 9mo ago
  Food quality and options vary significantly with location in the US. In my city I have a Gucci market that gets super fresh veggies and fruit, along with imported cheeses, fish, very fresh meats, and other low processed food, but at a premium price point. There are also 2 other supermarkets to choose from. If you go an hour away there is one supermarket for the area that is "okay." Go to the next State over and the towns have 1/4 the fruit/veggie options and very limited meat options, all at a premium. The veggies are not fresh, no exotic fruits, and you might not find the cut of meat you are looking for.

ChrisRR 9mo ago

> to address a willpower problem, not a nutritional problem I think those are one and the same.

replwoacause 9mo ago

What does are you on that brings you these effects? I take 5mg weekly and find the effects mild but appreciable.

m463 9mo ago

Processed food is easy, tasty (in a shallow way) and more available than the alternatives. I think the real problem is that it's hard to give up "easy" when so many things vie for time and attention in the US.

xnx 9mo ago
> Processed food is easy, tasty (in a shallow way) and more available than the alternatives. Fiber is also removed so you can eat faster (less chewing) and don't feel satiated.