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Comment by andrewksl | Hacker News Reader

What evolutionary advantage would plants have to be healthy for humans when eaten as a whole food? Even agriculture, the start of which is a mere blip on an evolutionary time scale, would be enough to destroy any symbiotic relationship (which, AFAIK has never been tested let alone proven). Agriculture tends to select for flavor/taste and not long term health benefits.

Also, are tahini and miso paste not processed foods? Does heating food not modify a food's chemical makeup?

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Peoples ancestors have been heating food for 1.9 million years https://www.livescience.com/15688-man-cooking-homo-erectus.h... so we've adapted to it by now, though theirs evidence that smoking or charing food contains carcinogens.

There is a scale of processed foods from minimally processed to ultra processed https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/02/ultra-proces... less processing is best.

Those are just examples of condiments used in very small amounts to give the food a better taste. Thaini is blended sesame seeds, miso is fermented soy and rice.

They have been made for thousands of years and are an example of minimally processed tasty condiments with high nutritional value, but 95% of the caloric value of the meal is the veggies not the condiments.

Pea protein extract is in comparison a much more heavily processed food.

Heating does impact the bioavailability (ease of absorption) of the nutrition in food, for some things it increases it while for others it decreases the nutrition.

We have evolved to eat cooked food for about 2 million years, our gut and teeth/jaw is adapted to cooked food.

Grains are also OK, but veggies and fruit are even better, the best cooking method is steaming to avoid forming carcinogenic compounds, that can be produced also by roasting in dry heat.

Well, tahini is just blended sesame seeds and miso paste is just fermented soybeans and rice. Hardly what I would call processed in a modern sense.

Would you consider these more or less processed than butter, yoghurt, cheese, peanut butter, pickles, or chocolate? Why?

The same or similar. Well, chocolate is probably more. The point OP is trying to make is that yogurt has most of the stuff found in milk( different yogurts vary of course). But e.g. eating greek yogurt is way better than whey isolate.

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