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Comment by 0xbear | Hacker News Reader

Non-GMO and organic is mostly BS of course, but it's a fact that refined carbs are cheap and plentiful, so the poor consume proportionally more of them. They simply can't afford fruit and meat. This is in part because of the infinite shelf life of processed carbs, and in part because they're heavily subsidized by the government. Also, government dietary guidelines still push people towards relatively high carb diets, and snacking is encouraged from kindergarten and up, causing insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. The point being, the nutritional situation in the US is a clusterfuck, and GMO and organic stuff are kind of orthogonal to rectifying it.

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> They simply can't afford fruit and meat.

Maybe this differs per area, but in most places i know, fruit is significantly cheaper than processed snacks. I can eat 4 apples for the price of one Mars bar.

I've been hearing similar things for a time now, like e.g. poor people eating at McD because it's cheaper to get a caloric and macronutrient-full meal there than to assemble it from fruits and stuffs.

This disagrees with my daily experience in Europe, so I conclude it's a US-specific thing.

> This disagrees with my daily experience in Europe, so I conclude it's a US-specific thing.

It is. Having lived in both places, it's astounding how expensive good food is in the US and how cheap crap food can be. $1 for a single apple or for a McD burger? Tough choice.

Add to that the fact that most of the US poor are time poor as well. Working 3 jobs and/ot commuting 3hrs per day doesn't leave a lot of time to prepare meals.

Agreed. In my midwest small town, the $1 apple isn't even the good apples. Bananas are preposterously cheap though. I'd still rather east two double cheeseburgers or two breakfast burritos than 5-6 bananas.

> I'd still rather east two double cheeseburgers or two breakfast burritos than 5-6 bananas.

Probably healthier to eat two double cheeseburgers than 5-6 bananas too. Bananas are really really really packed with sugar.

14 grams per 100 calories (banana) versus 7 grams per 440 calories (McDonalds double cheeseburger).

Now whether it's healthy to eat 800 calories for breakfast ... eh, probably not. But that's a different problem. Also depends on what you intend to do all day. Physical labor? Eat away. Sit at desk? Maybe try a quarter of a double cheeseburger instead :D

A double cheeseburger may have only 7 grams of "sugar", which is defined by the FDA as a mono- or di-saccharide, but it has 29 grams of carbs, most of which is white flour, which is almost as unhealthy as sugar.

A single banana has 27 grams of carbs. Most of which is pure sugar.

So I dunno. Bananas are not the best example, great after and pre workout, not thaaaat great as something you'd eat all the time.

It's affected by what foods get agricultural subsidies and which ones don't.

It's also much less calorically dense. It's not just snacks though. It's also nearly anything you can buy in a store that's made of wheat or corn. Whole aisles of stuff, packed floor to ceiling. People keep eating it between meals, and they get fat.

> Maybe this differs per area, but AFAICT in most places i know, fruit is significantly cheaper than processed snacks

Fruit is bulkier and spoils faster, this means it takes more storage space and more frequent shopping trips (and/or more refrigerated space.) These have costs.

Further—for basically the same reasons—the corner convenience store that will carry processed snacks often won't carry much, if any, fresh fruit, meaning it takes many who are poor longer shopping trips, as well.

> snacking is encouraged from kindergarten and up, causing insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.

It's not snacking that is causing insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Snacking is good if you eat healthy snacks.

They simply can't afford fruit and meat.

I'm not sure about meat but fruit is definitely affordable. Especially bananas and apples. Bananas are far cheaper than any other food. Yet, people snack on chips/crisps and other refined carbs.

are you considering caloric efficiency?

I love this list, but I doubt it's accurate to more than an factor of 2. http://efficiencyiseverything.com/calorie-per-dollar-list/

Bananas are not a cost effective source of calories, have very little protein, and boast a fairly high glycemic index.

basically, bananas are trash at being fruit.

Valid. Bananas are however very high in potassium, moderately high in Magnesium and dietary fiber.

First of all, this is discussion about people eating too many calories from bad food. Bananas probably beat most of the snacks otherwise discussed.

And protein deficiency? A 70kg male needs something like 55g of protein (WHO figures) unless they exercise. You are not going to go below that unless you fill a substantial chunk of your calorie intake by eating pure fat.

I eat a plant based diet and weigh about 67kg. On 2500kcal I get about 95-110g of protein, and that is without trying. Had I been a meat/milk eater, this number would have been higher.

Protein intake is generally a problems if you are either starving or very serious about building LOTS ofta muscle.

>Non-GMO and organic is mostly BS of course<

Can you expand on this?

snacking is bad? I thought it was good for your metabolism.

If you mean nut, walnut, or apricot as snack: it's good. But Snickers is definitely not.

What makes the fructose in your (selected for top sweetness over hundreds of generations) apricot so different from the fructose in the sucrose of your Snickers bar?

The difference has more to do with fiber, fats, and vitamin s

Vitamin S? You mean steroids?

It's very difficult for a person eating normally to not get enough of their daily vitamin intake, so please specify the type.

Not really. Most Americans are Vitamin D deficient, and about half are Magnesium deficient.

The fiber and polyphenols in the whole fruit modulate the uptake of fructose in the gut.

Except that it has been selected over centuries for minimal fiber content.

Quick Google search: apricots and Snickers both have 2% fiber content.

Try eating 2500 calories (1 pack) of Oreos vs 2500 calories of apricots (150 medium).

I could easily mow down a whole pack of oreos and a quart of milk (500 more calories). I have done so many times. I might do it tonight. I dunno about 150-180 apricots. That is only 200% of daily recommended fiber intake tho.

That's by weight, and apricots are mostly water. By macronutrient content, apricots are about 15% fiber.

What ultimately matters is the glycemic index. An apricot has a GI of 34, whereas a Snickers bar is ~70.

The point I was trying to make is that apricots and Snickers have both been engineered (both by humans and nature) to contain maximum sugar levels with minimum fiber content (plus to be grown as quickly as possible). There are other fruits which have a higher GI level (grapes). We need to step away from the food dogmas and understand that an apricot is heavy in fructose, low in glucose, doesn't have many good lipids and because of intense farming probably does not have much iron and magnesium. It is probably better than a Snickers bar, but that doesn't suddenly make it 'good', or 'clean', or whatever.

(Just for the record, I never eat snacks like Snickers, haven't been to a McDonalds for over a decade, grow my own food, regularly eat nuts and work out thrice a week. I focus on balance in my food, with the right intake at the right moment. So, eating sugar isn't that bad, but your body needs to be able to use that energy directly.)

They have different glycemic indices. A bar of snickers or similar will likely have a higher glycemic index relative to that of a fruit, meaning that it has a higher impact on the blood glucose.

In addition to what others have said, I suspect part of the difference is that "all things being equal" the snickers bar and apricot may not be so far apart, but in real life "all things are not equal" and the person that eats a snicker instead of an apricot statistically makes many more decisions in a similar vein.

Aha, that's an interesting position and one I completely agree with. It points to the core of the matter:

It lifts the individual food-items towards a more socioeconomic, structuralistic philosophy of society. Eating the Snickers bar is communicating "I do not care about my food-choices". It is about carelessness and sloth, a stigmatic act.

And even though there is a kernel of truth in your argument, it introduces more dogma into the whole food situation.

Snickers will contain high fructose corn syrup with different metabolism properties, and will likely contain more total sugar (plus other gunk) than the equivalent snack of (non-dried) apricots would.

Fun fact: HFCS that you'll find in drinks has nearly the same proportion of fructose and glucose as honey. Yet one is considered "good" by most people, and the other is universally considered bad. News flash: they're both bad unless consumed in very limited amounts.

> What makes the fructose in your (selected for top sweetness over hundreds of generations) apricot so different from the fructose in the sucrose of your Snickers bar?

The quantity of it per unit volume or mass of the apricot, which affects satiety and the total quantity you are likely to eat of it, as well as other ingredients consumed alongside the sugars. For instance, a 44g snickers bar has 20g of sugars and 0.8g fiber; 165g of sliced apricot has only 15g of sugars and 3.3g of fiber; so less than a quarter of the sugar density by mass, with in the ballpark of the same fiber density, or about a four times higher fiber-to-sugar ratio for the apricot.

Snickers never seem to satisfy me anyway.

Look up intermittent fasting

Not really:

https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/perils-snacking-hormo...

Context really matters. With acid reflux, snacking is good.

Context always matters, but the question was about metabolism. Acid reflux is a completely different matter.

"Non-GMO and organic is mostly BS of course"

Sources ? I got hundreds of studies proving the exact opposite if you want

Hey, if you've got hundreds of studies why don't you start? Give us your favourites.

Hundreds of thousands.

Good to hear. Just the top few will do.

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