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Comment by dalore | Hacker News Reader

Of course a huge steak would help, that is real food, not like the pizza and soda. Steak is healthy don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

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That feels pretty dogmatic. I get soda not being "real food", but I think the only way you can disqualify all pizza is by running down an anti-carb rabbit-hole.

You can define real food as non processed food with minimal (usual one) ingredient. Pizza is usually made from processed flour.

So would then whole wheat flour fit the bill?

Whole wheat flour is processed (milled).

In that case I'm a bit confused where the processed line ends - is cooling and letting a piece of meat hang 14 days processing then? Where does processing begin and "food preparation" end?

Sure but when people say "processed foods" they usually mean foods that are "HIGHLY" processed such that everything that is good about them is removed. i.e. the complex carbs and fiber that are found in whole wheat vs your run of the mill all purpose white flour.

I mean you might as well define "more real" as "less processed" at this point because the ingredient is absurd -- steak has fewer ingredients than pizza.

The problem I have when people argue against "processed" foods is that most of thing things that people argue as "processing" is just normal cooking and preserving made to sound scary.

And the research is there that we absorb calories and nutrients differently depending on how and how much we cook things but that should be the discussion.

> And the research is there that we absorb calories and nutrients differently depending on how and how much we cook things but that should be the discussion.

Steak has significantly more available nutrients and calories if you cook it well done. I don't want to live in a world where we define food only on that axis.

Well yeah, but let's compare apples to apples here. A "processed" Salisbury steak you buy in the frozen section likely isn't all that different than what you would end up with if you made it yourself but the homemade one doesn't get labeled as processed like it probably ought to.

You're absolutely right that the actual nutritional content matters and there's a lot of low-nutrition food out there but the term processed just irks me because it doesn't at all capture what's actually wrong with certain types of food.

I absolutely agree with you - let's quantify why it's bad - "processed" food is a meaningless term. It has a bunch of implications (salt, sugar, scary chemicals), but those are the bad guys, a food can be processed without those, or unprocessed with them.

How is anyway a frozen steak classified as processed?

Processed food, as explained, would be the industrial processing of bleaching the flour etc.

Also the seed oils which are used is highly processed.

Yes you can make a non processed pizza. Use real ingredients.

Yes the term processed is irksome, so use real food. Real food is easy to identify. It's food we good eat and make easily before the industrial age.

You just went around in a circle - my initial question was why pizza wasn't a real food and you turned to processed as "You can define real food as non processed food with minimal (usual one) ingredient".

What makes a real food if it's not defined by processing? Minimal ingredients list? Marshmallow is just sugar, water and gelatin. The only way you could then consider that "not real food" is by appealing to the processing of the sugar again.

The Dr Furman diet mostly eliminates processed foods. It radically changed my life, seriously. Only eating salads (only with simple home made dressings), beans, some brown rice, small amount of dense whole wheat pita bread, raw unsalted nuts, some lean meat, lots of green veggies, some fruit.

I don’t recommend this diet to other people though because the first three weeks or so of this detoxing diet is really rough. It was like my body was fightly back, pissed off at me.

Then, when I came through the other side, my levels of inflammation were drastically reduced, I was sleeping great, and my mood and energy level were great! I felt twenty years younger.

However, the first three weeks or so of getting used to the diet were awful which is why I hesitate to recommend it to other people.

EDIT: by processed foods, I am referring to packaged foods, not how they are cooked.

The evidence on red meat is conflicting to say the least. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2019/09/30/flaw...

Not very conflicting at all. Harvard nutrition is known for it's conflicting ties to industry like Monsanto. They even have a fellowship. Once you see it in that, light it's safe to ignore most of the noise coming from Harvard.

The recent red meat study was a very rigorous one (as they knew people would try unpick it).

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