Junk – Mark Bittman’s History of Why We Eat Bad Food
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it is perhaps not surprising that the largest municipal water treatment plant in the world is required to allow the people of Des Moines to drink the tap water.
That seems nuts to me so I did a quick search and almost instantly figured out that the author's statement is totally inaccurate. All of the world's largest municipal water treatment plants are in major cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Moscow, and Shanghai. What the author meant was Des Moines is home of one of, if not the largest nitrate removal facilities in the world. Which to me is even more damning than having a huge municipal water treatment plant for a small city.
I get the intention, and maybe the author understood the difference but just didn't want to waste words explaining it, but I think they could incorporate something on nitrate pollution ruining their rivers alongside the 'world's largest' comment.
From the Des Moines Register: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2017/05/25/wate...
75+ years of highly designed, increasingly addictive foods + significant work on cost reduction + lack of peer pressure = more obesity
It would be interesting to see the inflation-corrected per-ounce price of Coca Cola over the last 120 years. Usage appears to be dropping so perhaps there's some hope.
back in the 90's there was no mainstream HAES movement, or concern about "fat shaming" or any of the other Twitter nonsense
If you found a 50% increase in lung cancer next to major highways, would your solution be to use peer pressure to encourage everyone to take shallower breaths and then berate people for not succumbing to peer pressure? Of course not because it's obvious to us that the cause is environmental and the correct approach is regulation to reduce the cause of the disease.
Treating obesity as a public health problem rather than a willpower problem is a) obviously a more sane approach and b) contrary to business interests.
I'd also want to add the lack of physical activity as people move to doing God's Work by sitting still and tapping on a keyboard with occasional visits to the gym, but I haven't found a decent study showing that over time.
Grocery stores also tend to bake their own bread, including basic varieties that don't include sugar, for a few dollars a loaf.
Add a can or frozen bag of vegetables and that's a pretty nutritious day's worth of food for relatively little money.
An uncooked chicken is about $10-$15? (£7-£10)?
I don't understand the US combination of terrible animal welfare standards, terrible food hygiene standards, and high cost.
In the UK a fresh whole uncooked chicken is £3.50 ($5). https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/292276232
Bit cheaper if you want a smaller chicken: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/304404069
Bit more if you want higher welfare chicken: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/256278098
We can get over £10 if we pick an expensive shop, and then pick one of their most expensive chickens: https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/duchy-organic-free-ra...
Prices vary by location, but generally you can expect to get uncooked chicken here for under $2/lb. I live in a largish city and typically pay under $1.5/lb.
I agree about the animal welfare standards, but that is most definitely not unique to us. In fact, I'm acquainted with one of the key people in popularizing intensive confinement livestock practices in the midwest US: they're German and brought techniques from there to Kansas. Likewise I've seen first hand what cattle barns are like in Italy, and it is not good.
Assuming you have access to a kitchen, you can feed yourself very well at minimal cost in the US. I loathe our fast food culture, but do not underestimate just how solid the US supermarket system is.
The carbs at the bottom of the food pyramid are killing us.
I imagine that might have some contribution, but my personal experience suggests that the government's bad advice is not to blame for the food choices I make.
That and the fact that the government and other authorities like the American Heart Association claim that whole grains are heart healthy to the point that their labels and or claims of heart healthiness are put on boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios...
I still remember when the first MD opened in 1986 ( around the same time we got MTV ). Now it is US franchises all over the place.
edit: and not only food, drinks too. We used to have domestic 'soda' brands.
If I get a subway I tend to ram it with as many vegetables as possible, at McDonalds I pretty much always £5s worth of burgers inc. a small fries, not healthy but not that bad. I made the mistake of getting a KFC delivered recently and Jesus Christ it was like an Oil Well.
We'd all be better off if they went back to the traditional use of tallow.
Subway rolls ruled too sugary to be bread in Ireland https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54370056
Subway 'bread' contains 10% sugar, the EU limit is 2%.
When it comes to nutrition -- as a good general rule once you buy fresh good ingredients it's actually quite difficult to make unhealthy food regardless if you add too much fat, salt or sugar to your recipe -- the corollary is if you buy commercial food served ready to eat it's quite difficult to choose something healthy.
it's a low bar in the USA
USA NUMBER 1 !!! (in childhood type-2 diabetes)
https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glyce...
HIGH-CARBOHYDRATE FOODS
White wheat bread* 75 ± 2
Whole wheat/whole meal bread 74 ± 2
Specialty grain bread 53 ± 2
SUGARS
Fructose 15 ± 4
Sucrose 65 ± 4
Glucose 103 ± 3
Honey 61 ± 3
I am often reminded of the movie Wall-E, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we are headed there on some level.
Wall-E may end up being prophetic.
The thing I'm interested in more is turning people to something better without arguing (which doesn't work).
Our food supply is poisonous and highly addictive. We need to take drastic measures in the name of public-health and national security... just like with climate change.
My anedote:
I went from 290 lbs to 190 lbs over the last year.
I totally knew that I was eating garbage, but I thought I was young, so I thought I could just switch to being healthy a few years later. I thought focusing on career was more productive at my age.
So I start feeling weird after eating carbs and one blood test later I found out I was on my way to having type 2 diabetes before 30.
Losing weight was hard as fuck, it was like my body was completely wired to bad eating and sedentary habits. I often felt like and addict and felt stupid. Like, why couldn't I just exercise and eat less shit?
Maybe just like cigarettes, the best approach to junk food is never starting.
I guess if I had tested my pressure / blood sugar more often I could have realized how bad things were earlier? So that's an idea.
Mono anything is terrible for consumption and production externalities.
Wheat and other grains that require fortification with vitamins and minerals just to not kill the consumer are terrible and shouldn't be eaten by anyone.
Also saturated and animal fats are good for you. Chemically expressed vegetable trans-fats are not.
https://thebigfatsurprise.com/
https://drcate.com/deep-nutrition-why-your-genes-need-tradit...
What's the evidence for that being healthier? Moreover, what's the health improvement relative to the cost? SV engineers might be willing to pay 3x more for something that's 5% healthier, but not a single parent household making minimum wage.
>Also saturated and animal fats are good for you. Chemically expressed vegetable trans-fats are not.
This seems to be contradicted by the available scientific evidence.
>The effect of saturated fat on heart disease has been extensively studied.[23] There are strong, consistent, and graded relationships between saturated fat intake, blood cholesterol levels, and the epidemic of cardiovascular disease.[8] The relationships are accepted as causal.[24][25]
>Many health authorities such as the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics,[26] the British Dietetic Association,[27] American Heart Association,[8] the World Heart Federation,[28] the British National Health Service,[29] among others,[30][31] advise that saturated fat is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The World Health Organization in May 2015 recommends switching from saturated to unsaturated fats.[32]
>There is moderate-quality evidence that reducing the proportion of saturated fat in the diet, and replacing it with unsaturated fats or carbohydrates over a period of at least two years, leads to a reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease.[23]
The book I linked "The Big Fat Surprise" is a breakdown of the bad science that has been the mainstream dogma for years. One good example is the seven countries study:
> The major flaw with this study is that Ancel Keys had access to data from 22 countries but discarded the 15 countries that did not fit the hypotheses he tried to prove. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Seven_Countries_Study
Nutrition science has been basically captured since the 60s.
This story regarding the sugar lobby's influence on recommended diet was on hacker news just a few weeks ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16202171
> Many health authorities
The timing of these authorities recommending a low fat diet, coincides with an upward trend of obesity related diseases.
> What's the evidence for that being healthier?
Grass fed beef for instance contains more Omega fatty acids, and vitamins. Mixed farming replenishes minerals in the ground--thus producing foods with more nutrients in them. Food grown this way also tends to need less chemical input and is often grown organically as the soil is healtier--and thus the plants are healthier. All of this and more is in the second book I linked "Deep Nutrition."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat
>The book I linked "The Big Fat Surprise" is a breakdown of the bad science that has been the mainstream dogma for years. One good example is the seven countries study:
And what about the Cochrane RCT? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27211025
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Seven_Countries_Study
Are you seriously linking to the comment section of a wikipedia article?
>Nutrition science has been basically captured since the 60s.
Nutritional science is captured, so we should just trust the opposite of what they advocate?
>The timing of these authorities recommending a low fat diet, coincides with an upward trend of obesity related diseases.
>Grass fed beef for instance contains more Omega fatty acids, and vitamins. [...] All of this and more is in the second book I linked "Deep Nutrition."
source? I'm not going to pay $14 and read through 512 pages just to verify a citation, and I somewhat doubt that the book is where groundbreaking research is being published.
Is the problem really saturated fat itself, or the type of saturated fat... meaning, is the category of saturated fat just too broad to intelligently discuss it with these categories?
1. A few "Plant fat sources" consist mostly of saturated fat, e.g. cocoa butter
2. Some "Plant fat sources" have a fatty acid content consisting mostly of oleic acid (mono-unsaturated), e.g. olive oil, cashew nuts, almonds, hazelnuts, pistachio
3. Some "Plant fat sources" have a fatty acid content consisting mostly of linoleic acid (poly-unsaturated), e.g. sunflower oil and most other cheap vegetable oils, many seeds
4. A few "Plant fat sources" have a fatty acid content consisting also mostly of poly-unsaturated fatty acids, but with a large proportion of alpha-linolenic acid, e.g. walnuts, flaxseed and a few others.
The rules for a healthy diet are simple:
1. Most of the fatty food eaten should belong to the second class from above, i.e. plant fat sources with mostly oleic acid
The reason is that this corresponds to the normal composition of the human body fat, so it can be used with maximum efficiency as an energy source or for cellular membranes, without requiring expensive transformations in the liver.
2. Any fat sources from the other classes may be eaten, but in smaller quantities.
3. The vegetable fat sources must be supplemented every day with a small quantity of fat containing long-chain omega-3 fatty acids (DHA & EPA). The cheapest and most convenient way is to use cod liver oil or another kind of fish oil.
Rich vegans can pay 7 or 8 times more for a similar oil extracted from certain algae (algae is the commercially used word; it is not the most appropriate but there exist no more appropriate non-scientific names for those uni-cellular organisms).
4. Heating fatty food should be avoided, because, unlike with proteins or carbohydrates, heating does not have any useful effect but it only degrades the fat, especially the non-saturated fats.
Best would be to not add any kind of vegetable oil while cooking but to mix oil with the food only after cooking and cooling.
Fat that is heated should be of the saturated kind, e.g. butter or lard.
They also didn't eat huge portions or drink quite such vast quantities of sugary drinks.
I asked the question about fat, because I accept that chronic disease in developed nations does have other components.
Exercise is similar to sugar, in that it's quite difficult to work into our lives, but it's a simple and obviously worthwhile rule.
With fat, on the other hand, it feels like people are all over the place. Nonetheless, there are bad fats. I don't know what "bad fats" are scientifically, but I'm pretty sure potato chips have them.
The other thing that bothered me was that quantity in many restaurants similar places seemed to be regarded as more important than quality.
I went into a grocery store once while out riding a bicycle to get some water. I picked a bottle that seemed to be water but which turned out to be sickly sweet even though it had no sugar.
Don't get me wrong, some of the best food I have ever eaten was in US restaurants.
I think the only solution is to bring up children without junk food. But I have no idea how that can be achieved.
I had my family with me once and we visited a colleague's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Our host's wife was rather taken aback when my three children asked for water instead of soda, and all three of them found the food far too sweet.
Mind you things are changing here too, when we moved here over thirty years ago one never saw a seriously overweight person. Now it is moderately common.
I'm not claiming that saturated fats are necessarily healthy. Just that it's premature to label them as unhealthy. They're probably like almost every other food: fine in moderation but problematic when eaten to excess.
The first citation (23) links to https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32827219/, which analyzed 15 randomized controlled trials. The effect size is 17% reduction in "combined cardiovascular events". Considering that "heart disease" is the top cause of death in the US (https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_dea...), that seems like a big effect size.
Wheat is a viable staple, up until recently a luxury staple, that forms the basis for a healthy diet when eaten alongside a modest amount of vegetables. For those with gluten intolerances, and also for those without, rice accomplishes the same.
For those who eat healthy, calorie appropriate, nutrient dense diets... fortification isn't necessary, but that doesn't seem to be the public health version of the world many people operate in.
It does not provide a needed nutrient. Carbohydrates in this form are terrible for blood sugar and don't provide any nutrients on their own.
This article about staple crops provides additional details: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staple_food
Total Fat2.24g3%
Saturated Fat0.386g2%
Trans Fat-
Polyunsaturated Fat0.935g
Monounsaturated Fat0.278g
Cholesterol0mg0%
Sodium6mg0%
Total Carbohydrate87.08g32%
Dietary Fiber14.6g52%
Sugars0.49g
Protein16.44g
Calcium41mg3%
Iron4.66mg26%
Potassium486mg10%
Which isn't actually that bad, but when you consider the glycemic index is near sugar, and if you ate a diet in the proportions of carbs/fat/protein that this food has, you would have the recommended us low fat diet that has only increased obesity over the last fifty years.
https://www.fatsecret.com/calories-nutrition/generic/flour-w...
https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glyce...
On top of this most people consume wheat as bread--a highly refined version that is likely to have less fiber, protein, fat, and micronutrients.
The protein in wheat is not complete either.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S16712...
Now consider an egg:
Calories 74
% Daily Values*
Total Fat4.97g6%
Saturated Fat1.55g8%
Trans Fat-
Polyunsaturated Fat0.682g
Monounsaturated Fat1.905g
Cholesterol212mg71%
Sodium70mg3%
Total Carbohydrate0.38g0%
Dietary Fiber0g0%
Sugars0.38g
Protein6.29g
Calcium26mg2%
Iron0.92mg5%
Potassium67mg1%
Vitamin A70mcg8%
All that in 74 calories, and a complete protein.
No, people are expected to get an intuition themselves. I think that's a great issue. Biology class teaches carbs, protein, and fats but not how to apply that knowledge. The Internet is full of anecdotes, paid meal plans by has-beens, and homeopathy.
Anyone have good reads to share?