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Comment by monopoliessuck | Hacker News Reader

As a vegetarian for well over a decade, I've always said the same thing. Meat isn't nearly as egregiously unhealthy as it's panned if at all. Processed foods, excessive simple carbohydrates and sugars are the main evils in the kitchen, but there are a variety of reasons to eat less meat too.

There's nuance in all of this. People sympathetic to American consumption patterns will probably see science and explanations like this as some kind of endorsement of their diet. Nutritional science is still in its infancy and we'll be waffling on the specifics for decades to come, especially if food companies have a vested interest in funding studies.

Another data point. Just eat minimally processed whole foods as often as possible, diversify your plate and moderate your intake. I think people are too hyper focused on the "super" and "evil" quality of foods and we end up stuck in the margins bike-shedding the minutia.

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You're obviously right that processed foods are far worse, but the study the article cites[0] doesn't say what the article says it does, not at all. The article deliberately misconstrues the phrase "weak evidence" to mean that the authors are attacking the past studies, when in fact they're just saying more research needs to be done. Here's the opening paragraph of the Discussion section:

> We evaluated the relationship between unprocessed red meat consumption and six selected disease outcomes following implementation of a meta-analytic approach. We found that unprocessed red meat intake had weak evidence of an association with increased risk of colorectal cancer, breast cancer, IHD and type 2 diabetes and no evidence of an association with ischemic stroke and hemorrhagic stroke. In other words, given all the data available on red meat intake and risk of a subsequent outcome, we estimate that consuming unprocessed red meat across an average range of exposure levels increases the risk of subsequent colorectal cancer, breast cancer, IHD and type 2 diabetes at least slightly compared to eating no red meat (by at least 6%, 3%, 1% and 1%, respectively).

[0] Full text here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01968-z#Sec2

Sadly, news articles always grossly exaggerate research results.

"We found weak evidence of ..." becomes "New study ABSOLUTELY DESTROYS the myth that..."

"The new study is climbing the ropes, oh my God what is he going to do, ohh he just jumped on the old studies, oh the humanity "

> You're obviously right that processed foods are far worse

I see this claim semi frequently online. So I'll just ask.

What is meant by "processed"? What does it mean to be "worse" (Worse than meat? Regular foods?) What is meant by "whole foods"? And finally, what's the evidence for these assertions?

Is black tea a processed food? How about coffee grounds? When does something cross the rubric of processed vs unprocessed?

To me, it's not obvious that "processed is bad" particularly because I don't know what "processed" means.

As a side, how do fortified foods fit in with processed foods? Iodine in salt, for example, has been a huge public health success. Goiters have practically been eliminated as a result.

The claim about processed foods has usually become very much accepted because of the failure to correlate any other aspect of food convincingly with the obesity epidemic. That is, there are populations much less obese than others eating all variants of macronutrient distributions (high fat, high carbohydrate, high meat, etc - you can find a low obesity population eating like that somewhere in the world). Processed foods are more or less the only remaining food-based explanation.

This seems a bit like a non-sequitur to my comment.

Even if I accept that "Processed foods are more or less the only remaining food-based explanation." My questions really boil down to "what are processed foods" and "What's the evidence they are bad"?

It's quite hard to study this stuff but here's an example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7946062/

The study includes an appendix with photos of all the meals - it's very interesting!

The evidence suggests that various qualities of ultra-processed foods drive overconsumption. There is also speculation that the calories in ultra-processed foods are more bioavailable than those in less processed foods because ultra-processed foods are easier to digest due to their low fiber content, though I don't have any evidence for than on hand (will update if I find it).

I agree, that was an interesting read.

Definitely send more studies if you find them. This one seems to suggest the main problem with ultraprocessed foods is they are easier to over eat (they taste better? Are less filling?) but it doesn't really show that they are necessarily bad.

Seems to jive with how food works for me. I've been counting calories as of late and it's definitely easy to down a bag of doritos or drink a bottle of soda

One thing I found super interesting was that the participants in that study rated both diets equally tasty, which points to some other reason why one diet was easier to overeat than the other! My guess would be that the ultra-processed diet is simultaneously more calorie dense and less satiating. It's true that that's not inherently bad, per se, but if we can prove that those factors cause weight gain and related health issues then I'd be pretty comfortable calling ultra-processed foods bad.

Have you heard of Stephan Guyenet? His book The Hungry Brain is a good read on the neuroscience of obesity. He proposes that eating highly palatable calorie-dense foods changes the brain in various ways that ultimately drive us to consume more of those foods and to have difficulty changing our eating behavior. Unfortunately his suggestion is to eat an intentionally bland diet, which is obviously unappealing, but my anecdotal experience is that highly palatable but less processed foods (e.g. a wheel of brie) are far more satiating than similar but ultra-processed foods (e.g. queso made from velveeta).

I'm not sold on the idea that we need to eat bland foods, or only foods familiar to our hunter-gatherer ancestors, or only plant products...it seems to me that we only need to go back 50 years or so to before the dramatic rise in obesity started, which points toward avoiding ultra-processed foods. I hope we get more studies on this eventually!

I was trying to answer the question "why do people think processed foods are bad, and in what way?". My answer was "because processed foods are the only remaining strictly diet-based possibility for a cause of obesity". That is, if we were to ascribe obesity exclusively to a particular diet choice, the only plausible diet choice is "processed foods" - all the others we've tried have clear counter-examples.

Note that I'm not saying we should do this - I believe obesity is much more likely caused by a wide array of lifestyle factors that no study to date accurately controls for (including diet, exercise, stress, environmental factors, mental status, medication etc), not a single dietary style.

Now, "processed foods" is indeed a very vague term, and people tend to include/exclude different foods based on their pet theory of what may lead to the link "observed" in the previous paragraph.

For example, some people strongly believe that glycemic spikes are strongly coupled with diabetes and obesity, and they would include things like fruit juices (as opposed to eating whole fruits) into this category, as well as high glycemic index foods such as bread (in both cases, even home-made ones).

Other people believe that certain additives are likely to have undocumented side-effects, so they will tend to only include foods with synthetic additives, such as preservatives and food colouring, but exclude traditional highly processed foods such as bread or butter as long as they are home-made without additives.

Yet other groups believe the correlation is related to palatability and/or satiety, so they will consider processed foods to be any foods which contain high ratios of palatable substances (like fat, sugar, salt, MSG, other flavour enhancers) to less palatable macro-nutrients. These people would probably include home-made fruit juice or ramen into the processed foods category, but may exclude things like pickles.

This sort of gets to the heart of the problem I have with "processed foods are bad". It doesn't feel meaningful because of how vague it is. If I point at butter and ask "is this processed food" the answer is yes or no depending on the person I'm talking to. That makes it hard to trust the claim "processed food causes obesity". Well, maybe it does? Maybe it doesn't? Pickles don't likely cause obesity (they are very low calorie), so it feels unfair to lump them in the same category as cake, for example.

If it's unreasonable to pin down what is processed, it seems unreasonable to make a claim about the effects of processing.

In a way everything we eat is processed and processing is not necessarily harmful. To take your example of butter, organic butter may be completely different than mass produced butter regarding it's health implications. And this applies to nearly all food. Mass produced tomatoes will be poor in micro-nutrients and contaminated by pesticides. Et cetera.

Our understanding of nutrition and health isn't keeping up in pace with innovations in the food industry. And due to the scale and depth of it I think it's unavoidable that many small bad things will sum up over time leading to health problems without a clear root cause.

Reasons why "processed" food might be bad for health:

- skewed omega-3/omega-6 ratio

- micro-nutrients depletion

Also it's just not economical or environmentally sustainable to feed everyone with "real food". At least not without radical change and trade-offs in other areas.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2015/11/03/repo...

> Processed meat – meat that has been transformed through salting, curing, fermentation, smoking, or other processes to enhance flavor or improve preservation

> Red meat – unprocessed mammalian muscle meat such as beef, veal, pork, lamb, mutton, horse and goat meat

> Consumption of processed meat was classified as carcinogenic and red meat as probably carcinogenic after the IARC Working Group – comprised of 22 scientists from ten countries – evaluated over 800 studies. Conclusions were primarily based on the evidence for colorectal cancer. Data also showed positive associations between processed meat consumption and stomach cancer, and between red meat consumption and pancreatic and prostate cancer.

When they talk about causing cancer they're talking about two things: the quality of the evidence, and then the strength of the effect.

For processed red meat the evidence is very strong: processed red meat does cause colorectal cancer.

But how much cancer does it cause? It doesn't appear to cause much cancer. If you have a genetic predisposition to colorectal cancer, or if you want to be very cautious, you might want to think about avoiding processed red meat. But otherwise, well, the small increase in risk might be worth it for the benefits you get from eating food you enjoy.

Every time processed foods come up online someone makes this argument. I will assume you're being genuine but a lot of times it's done in an annoying "gotcha" way and it drives me crazy. Regardless, the NOVA classification system is helpful for talking about this topic: https://regulatory.mxns.com/en/ultra-processed-foods-nova-cl...

When people use the term "processed foods" colloquially they are generally referring to NOVA group 4, ultra-processed foods. It seems that that group is implicated in worse health outcomes and it is also that group that has proliferated the most significantly over the past 40 years in tandem with rising rates of obesity and poor health outcomes.

Wasn't really trying to gotcha. Just trying to get a good understanding on what's actually meant when someone says "processed foods are bad".

The term is quiet loose.

And I'd agree, that category does generally seem to be an issue. Though, I have to wonder if it's more a problem that that category typically has foods with an absurd amount of calories that are easy to consume.

I think they go hand in hand to a degree. There aren't many "non-processed" (picked off a tree, animal products, etc.) foods which are as calorie dense as processed foods. Having access to something like twinkies or a powerbar makes it way easier to consume lots of calories.

Exactly. Ultra-processed foods are a supernormal stimulus that drives an exaggerated response in humans, e.g. overeating.

The easiest way to understand unprocessed food is "nothing bad added, nothing good taken away".

For instance, pure peanut butter is unprocessed. While it runs through a mechanism to change it from peanuts to peanut butter, there is no oil added, nor are any of the healthful nutrients of peanut butter extracted. Opposite to this is peanut butter like JIF which is processed - the mix is diluted with sugar and vegetable oil to make the same amount of food for cheaper.

Same with tofu - it starts as soybeans and is ran through a mechanism to turn it into the blocks of tofu we see in stores, but we do not add sugar or oils to change the contents of that block, nor do we remove nutrients from the soybean (this may not be 100% accurate, but generally speaking, nutrients are not removed in this). However, many vegan meat products put a lot of unhealthy additions into the mix, thus making it processed.

Generally we put a curdling agent into tofu, so it usually has more of either calcium or magnesium than unprocessed soybeans.

the easiest way to understand processed is has it been changed at all since being harvested? peanut butter and tofu are both processed. raw peanuts and legumes are not. cooked legumes are also technically processed. does not mean that it's always bad per se but that is the definition.

Is low-fat milk processed or unprocessed?

For "processed red meat" people mean red meat that has been preserved by smoking, salting, curing, or by adding preservatives.

While you might mean the NOVA classification, the vast majority of people have never heard of that, much less read it. As such the original question still stands because most people have no idea that any definition exists, and in any case if what they mean happens to fit that, well that is just coincidence.

> What is meant by "processed"?

In the case of meat I think it's usually referring to added nitrates as a result of processing, which is linked to health problems [0].

> To me, it's not obvious that "processed is bad" particularly because I don't know what "processed" means.

Yeah I think your point is valid - "whole" is a bit like "natural". Too broad and undefined. We're supposed to think one is good and one is bad because marketing of "whole" and "natural" is trying to create that impression. No-one says "chemical" in their marketing, like no-one says "processed". You only advertise as "natural" or "whole".

[0] WebMD, but there's loads of articles about it https://www.webmd.com/diet/foods-high-in-nitrates

I agree with the criticism and hate when this term gets used, for the same reason. Most people just use "processed" to mean "bad" without thinking about it.

I think the closest you can get to a "real" definition is food that has added ingredients, usually oils or preservatives, not found in traditional cooking. Usually these are added more for reasons of shelf-life or in order to cram in extra taste, or both.

Weak evidence of a risk increase from 4.3% to 4.6% of colorectal cancer? Okay, if that's where we end on red meat's cancer risk, I think I'll take it.

> by at least 6%, 3%, 1% and 1%

But this is very, very weak evidence.

edit: of course I have to assume something about the structure of the data to say it's very weak evidence. It may be very strong evidence of a very weak effect.

-----

edit 2: Also, how is this, the last "takeaway," listed in bold, large font directly beneath the headline, some sort of exaggeration or mischaracterization?

> They only found weak evidence that unprocessed red meat consumption is linked to colorectal cancer, breast cancer, type 2 diabetes, and ischemic heart disease, and no link at all between eating red meat and stroke.

>just saying more research needs to be done

Right, because the results of the previous studies amount to evidence that is too weak to conclude that red meat is inherently unhealthy to consume. I'm not sure how your comment contradicts this.

"Weak evidence" is a term of art, not a pejorative. The original article frames this study as an attack on prior studies and vindication of red meat. My point is that this is extremely dishonest, and the authors of the study do not intend to convey that at all. They instead say that the evidence is there, but it's not yet strong enough for them to recommend any policy actions.

> The available evidence suggests that eating no unprocessed red meat may minimize the risk of disease incidence and mortality compared to consuming any, but there is insufficient evidence to make stronger or more conclusive recommendations. More rigorous, well-powered research is needed to better understand and quantify the relationship between unprocessed red meat intake and chronic disease.

"Processed Foods" is another vague, exaggerated boogeyman though.

For one thing I don't think most people would even agree on what foods count as processed and are bad. Some people are talking about everything except fresh vegetables, some people are talking about specifically industrially-processed food but would say the exact same recipe followed at home (minus a couple of preservatives) is perfectly fine, some people are specifically against fast food but might think canned foods are fine.

Large blood sugar spikes after a meal are what is bad for you, but this a more nuanced equation of things like glycemic load of the food (which is as much a factor of quantity eaten as it is glycemic index), genetics, and level of exercise. It's not as simple as just saying all processed food is always bad, for instance after a hard workout simple carbohydrates are not just ok but actively good for you, and ideally most people should be doing a hard workout multiple times per week. Some other components of processed food like excessive salt can be bad, as is the fact that they often push out more micronutrient-rich foods from your diet.

But it kind of strikes me as the abstinence-only approach to dietary advice. People love the taste of processed foods, I think we'd do better to encourage eating responsibly overall than insisting on avoiding processed foods altogether. And it's possible to be very healthy while eating a significant amount of processed foods.

I disagree on this point all though I think the term is vague.

If I grill a steak and then chop it up into pieces i have "processed" it. This isn't what anyone is talking about when they say processed foods though.

If I chop up several different types of meat, add several different colorants, fillers, perservatives and whatever else, turn it all into a slurry and then reconsistute it into a spam loaf, I think there are a lot of good reasons to believe this is ineherently unhealthy, the most simple being that its really easy to dump in a bunch of sugar and extra fats.

If you want to claim that coloring or preservatives are bad, then just make that claim instead of the more vague "processed foods".

The NOVA system covers this.

> Group 1 - Unprocessed or minimally processed foods (fruit, vegetables, eggs, meat, milk, etc.) Group 2 - Foods processed in the kitchen with the aim of extending their shelf life. In practice, these are ingredients to be used in the kitchen such as fats, aromatic herbs, etc. to be kept in jars or in the refrigerator to be able to use them later. Group 3 - Processed foods. These are the foods obtained by combining foods of groups 1 and 2 to obtain the many food products for domestic use (bread, jams, etc.) made up of a few ingredients Group 4 - Ultra-processed foods. They are the ones that use many ingredients including food additives that improve palatability, processed raw materials (hydrogenated fats, modified starches, etc.) and ingredients that are rarely used in home cooking such as soy protein or mechanically separated meat. These foods are mainly of industrial origin and are characterized by a good pleasantness and the fact that they can be stored for a long time.

Nobody really knows for certain what things do to the body even in isolation. For one example, see Yellow #5 [1]. It's associated with all sorts of nasty stuff, but actually proving a causal relationship is not really possible. So some countries ban it, some require special scary labeling for products with it, and in other countries it's A-OK.

And processed foods aren't in isolation. You're mixing up all sorts of stuff which can viably result in chemical and other changes which will vary by product, producer, and even time. Trying to pin all of that down is not really possible.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartrazine#Potential_health_ef...

It's meant as a rule of thumb. That level of precision is unnecessary.

Generally speaking, industrially-processed foods are going to be overall less healthy than less-processed alternatives. There are a multitude of reasons this may be so, and between them there's enormous variance in both the size of and our confidence in those effects, not to mention between specific products.

Being overly specific just invites pointless quibbling over those details. Of course, not being specific just started this pointless quibble, so damned if you do damned if you don't.

I'm specifically not making that claim. (I also don't disagree with that claim) I'm making the claim that those activities are indicative of a constellation of activities that as a whole are categorically unhealthy.

Because doing that is an invite to the field of weak/conflicting evidence because food science just don't have this level of granularity yet. Though I believe to be undeniably that the replacement of ultra-processed cheap foods with real food is beneficial. I'm too lazy to research it for the sake of an argument but I can support it at least on a personal/anecdotal level. It's not scientific but as a rule of thumb if you don't know how it was made better to not eat it.

Which particular part of this process is unhealthy, though? And how unhealthy is it?

If the problem is the food coloring, then we need to go out and say so. If the problem is the high fat content, we shouldn't pretend that home cooking with lots of oils (which oils?) isn't any healthier than processed food. Is the spoon of sugar I add to my home-made stir-fry sauce the problem, or is it the fact that I am frying it, or the fact that I serve it next to a plate full of rice?

Avoiding processed foods is more about avoiding the unknown than avoiding something specific. I would say more analogous to rolling your own tobacco vs buying a pre-packaged cigarette. At least you know what's in there for the most part.

Can you prove there isn't a teapot floating around saturn?

I don't view there to be a burden of proof that I should eat something unless someone can present data that that specific thing is unhealthy

I can use inference to decide there is a reasonable probability that something is unhealthy without some arbitrary burden of specific proof

Certainly more specificity would be useful and I hope we get there someday. But that doesn't mean we should ignore the imperfect information we have in the meantime.

In this case, the link between processed foods (Nova groups 3 and especially 4) seems strong enough to warrant minimizing them in my diet even though the evidence for the specific ingredients or mechanisms is weaker.

My understanding is that it is the absorption which is the problem.

The example I was given was eating raw sweetcorn. Infamously, you can be sure a certain amount will pass through you undigested.

If you grind it up first and make bread out of the flour you will absorb far more.

Secondly breaking things down robs them of flavour and texture.

To compensate manufacturers add a load of now easily absorbed salt, sugar and fat.

None of that is good depending on what your goals are.

> I think we'd do better to encourage eating responsibly overall than insisting on avoiding processed foods altogether. And it's possible to be very healthy while eating a significant amount of processed foods

Interesting. I am curious what your definition of "responsible eating" is?

To a very good approximation, it is simply not eating too many total calories. If you want to go one extra step, then also not eating too much sugar.

Some people might find that they have a hard time not over-eating with processed foods, and maybe for them their preferred diet is just to avoid all processed foods. But it's useful to treat that as a means to an end, rather than saying that avoiding processed foods always needs to be the end goal.

Michael Pollen's definition seems reasonable - eat less, mostly plants.

After living in England for a while, this year we finally moved to the US. Although I have never been too athletic, I've put on 5-7 KG since we moved, and I can't shed them off. We are mostly eating the same as before, and in fact I'm more active than I was over there.

There isn't much point to this comment other than the flabbergasting anecdote of how eating roughly the same diet in different countries can have markedly different effect in your health.

Diet can have different effect across different states in the US too. California doesn't (seem to) use the same types of lard and oils that you'd find in Georgia, judging by cholesterol issues that self-resolved without change in diet or exercise.

Eating cholesterol has very little impact on the cholesterol levels in your body.

https://peterattiamd.com/the-straight-dope-on-cholesterol-pa...

I find that portions are generally bigger in the US. Especially if you're not in California easy to eat the same stuff but just have a bigger plate.

Look carefully at the ingredients list on any packaged foods you're buying. Many things contain sugar in the US when the equivalent product in Europe does not. A particularly insidious example is pre-made broth/stock: nearly every single product on the shelves at my local grocery store contains unnecessary sugar. Same goes for canned beans and salad dressings. Doing your due diligence when buying packaged foods is an unfortunate necessity if you live in the US and want to stay healthy. God, I miss grocery shopping in France!!

As the other guy said watch your SUGAR intake.

Because of corn subsidies the nation is awash in cheap corn. This is turned into "HFCS" and put everywhere.

Google "surprising sources of hidden sugar" - you might be surprised to find foods that you are not expecting sugar are buried with it in the US.

I agree with you “Processed foods, excessive simple carbohydrates and sugars are the main evils in the kitchen, but there are a variety of reasons to eat less meat too.”

I like to eat red meat two or three times a month: tasty and I think some red meat is healthy for me.

I avoid any packaged food except I am too lazy to always make homemade bread. +1 for shopping for fresh vegetables, fruits, berries, whole grains, beans,…

Really, the main center parts of grocery stores where everything is in plastic or boxes really needs to be avoided.

As a substitute for packaged deserts, making a pancake and berries is pretty good.

My breakfast these days is usually a few pieces of bacon and oatmeal. I am happy and still managing to burn off weight with that combo.

Maybe we have different definitions of bacon but isn't it heavily "processed"? Its cured with nitrates and salt/sugar and smoked.

Depends on the bacon. You can get uncured bacon without any added nitrates or flavorings at all.

Sorry to burst your bubble but "uncured" bacon is a sham

They add celery powder instead of nitrates, so they can claim "nitrate free". However, the celery powder just decomposes into nitrates, achieving the same effect

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-uncured-ba...

That's not true-- you can buy uncured bacon. It's simply "uncut pork belly" which many companies turn into bacon.

We buy our pork belly direct from a farm and it hasn't been touched with anything.

Oh yeah that of course exists, didn't mean to imply it didn't.

Just the "uncured" but still processed bacon that is pretty much just regular bacon

That's fair-- if it's in a package, looks, smells and tastes like bacon it's probably bacon :)

“No added nitrates” usually means celery extract. (Ie nitrates)

Uncut pork belly isn’t bacon. Both are delicious, but definitely not the same thing.

Isn't that just sliced pork belly? Also, personally, I think if you cook it like bacon its not good, just grey and not flavorful, I just eat traditional bacon infrequently.

If it's not cured, then isn't it just raw pork?

The point of bacon is that it’s cured. Otherwise it’s pork belly.

I just wish there was a way to buy meat from animals that hadn’t been systematically tortured for their short life until they were drowned in co2 for easy butchering… the only reason why I try to use as much vegetarian replacement products is because I have moral qualms eating meat from sentient creatures that have been so brutally abused…

And even diary is hard to consume after seeing cows from a bio farm getting herded for milking. They’re in serious pain while getting continuously impregnated to maximise milk production… it’s really hard to stomach for me as I’m not morally opposed to milk/meat consumption… but the way these creatures are treated really make it hard.

You can buy direct from farmer who treats the animals well, either individually or with a group of friends and family. You just have to have the freezer space.

Buy from a smaller local farm. The meat is higher quality anyway

Shop from local farms, if that's an option for you. All suffering won't be eliminated, of course, but if you want to consume animal products, it's way better IMO to support local farmers who are invested in ethical animal treatment and sustainable practices.

Well, CO2 asphyxiation is so far the most humane approach to butchering.

I remember a YouTube of a journalist looking for the most humane technique to administer capital punishment and it turned out that during co2 asphyxia the victim goes light-headed, even laughingly before passing out and away without even realizing. When told about this, Death Sentence advocates were disappointed that the victims wouldn't suffer while the sentence was carried out. (surprising eh!)

Nitrogen asphyxiation is even better, and atmospheric nitrogen is extremely abundant and super cheap.

CO2 asphyxiation is not kind. The effect of elevated CO2 blood levels is to make you panic that you are suffocating; you struggle for breath. Nitrogen gas is much kinder; you don't know that you are suffocating, you just pass out. (So be extra-vigilant around tanks of N2).

not sure what your definition of humane is but mine certainly isnt this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7hAELEBjX4

I think there are some operations that are trying to do this well. Granted, I'm probably pretty susceptible to their marketing efforts, but I find White Oak Pastures Farm in GA a really exciting example of an establishment that is pushing back against industrial farming practices. https://whiteoakpastures.com/

The prices reflect this, of course, and I think the economics of more people adjusting their household budgets to eat in an affordable but also environmentally-sustainable way is really pivotal to seeing major change on this front in the future. They also claim to be carbon negative which is really interesting: https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/blog/carbon-negative-grass.... https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/hubfs/WOP-LCA-Quantis-2019....

There untortured grass-fed meat delivery companies out there for example, ButcherBox. Their site is glitchy, but the products are good, I've had them for a while, and now trying some other ones. There are many choices with good delivery now.

There are lots of great ranchers and butchers out there who raise their livestock humanely. You’ll probably want a big deep freezer but search for a “half beef” or “whole cow” sales and you’ll likely find a ranch near you that can give you ethical meat, and probably at a better price since you’re buying in bulk. (Many ranches will do smaller steak/burger sales too)

The cool thing is that a lot of these operations partner with butchers who can cut to order, so you get exactly the thickness of steaks you like, certain roasts, Korean-style ribs if you want them, soup bones, shanks, etc. all exactly how you like them.

Grass-fed beef is a superfood!

Exactly. And animals that are treated well start out at 3x the price, and when the tortured animal meat prices are already breaking the bank for most people.

I don't think it's possible to buy any kind of food that has been treated in a way you can feel morally comfortable with at the majority of traditional grocery stores. Whether it's chocolate being created from cocoa beans farmed with slave labor in other countries, apples getting picked by undocumented workers making less than minimum wage on farms, or frozen foods getting packaged at factories with questionable working conditions. Unless you straight up build your own garden and farm off the grid and do everything yourself your only option is to either feel morally queezy 24/7 or live your best life and maybe donate a couple hundred each month to organizations like The Humane Society that work to improve conditions for you.

I think you hit it on the head with "the majority of traditional grocery stores." For me those just aren't the place to shop for animal products like meat and dairy. Hit the specialty places for that, pay the premium, and eat less of it. Maybe this one study debunks all the rest of the data out there about red meat, maybe not, but it's a healthy lifestyle that works for me; I only pay to eat meat once or twice a month as a result.

There's one other source of good meat: hunting. I suck at that but I have friends and associates who hunt and they are often trying to get rid of extra meat. Always happy to help with that :)

How about I isolate the red meat and dairy products I purchase to local farmers markets once a week and we'll call it even?

Do you have a 4H program in your area? Those animals are treated like pets. I buy a quarter cow once a year. Higher quality and cheaper than the Grocer.

Luckily my neighbor raises free-range animals. So my family has that in the freezer.

But short of moving to the midwest and making friends with your neighboring farmers, I don't know what to tell you.

You can buy boar and moose from hunters.

> I just wish there was a way to buy meat from animals that hadn’t been systematically tortured for their short life

A good portion of the meat I consume comes off my own land, mostly as venison although a little bit of turkey too. It tastes better than farmed meat, it's cheaper, it helps keep the animals from overpopulating, and the animal didn't live a miserable life of torture before it was harvested.

But I get that not everybody lives in an area where that is practical.

Personally speaking, the main setback of fresh fruits and vegetables isn't the taste or the inconvenience of cooking with them, it's the spoilage. They go bad so quickly that it's a chore to keep them around and make sure they get used in time.

Frozen vegetables have been a lifesaver for me. I’m not up on the latest research, but I remember reading at one point that frozen veggies actually retained more of their nutrients than fresh because they are often frozen immediately after being harvested.

Depends. Apples, carrots, citrus last a surprisingly long time in the fridge. Tomatoes prefer room temp. Extra bread always skips the fridge, right to the freezer. Freeze things rapidly, thaw them slowly. Plenty of tricks.

True. But some keep better than others.

Cabbage, for instance, keeps longer than lettuce. Pluots keep, too, much better than peaches. Oranges, tangerines, and grapes keep well. Carrots keep pretty much forever.

That is a problem specific to North American/car-centric/suburban cultures, where people buy groceries once or twice a month.

In places where the grocery shops are within walking distance and more integrated with your life, you just make groceries more frequently. Consequently, the food you buy is always fresher.

I really really have a grudge against being born in a country that is so car-centric/surburban. It reduces my quality of life in soooooo many ways.

Didn't even think of that

There's so many things linked to poorer outcomes when associated with car dominate design

Going against what was just said, but there's no shame in buying frozen vegetables, especially peas and corn. They're quite nutritious and easy to store.

Fresh vegetables can stay good too if you buy the right kinds. I've found that asian leafy green vegetables like yu choy or gai lan keep a lot better. The leaves may turn a little yellow but they don't end up a slimy mess in a day. Cabbage is the western equivalent that keeps forever.

I live on my own; I find it hard to use up veggies before they go off. It was easier when I was in a couple. (It's hard, or at least embarrassing, to buy two carrots and one large spud).

Frozen vegetables are good. Some canned vegetables retain their flavor and nutrition as well. Some canned veggies are just a hot mess (I am looking at you, canned asparagus). Canned beets are fine. Canned corn is fine in most recipes.

The beauty of canned goods is that you don't expend energy to store them.

The beauty of frozen veggies (and some frozen fruits, blueberries for example) is that they keep and work well for small quantities. I ate a lot of frozen veggies when I was single.

The problem with frozen vegetables is that they very easily loose texture. If you fry them they will in practice boil instead of being fried. The only thing that works in my experience is to throw them in boiling water and then just let the water boil again and finished. Or use them directly in a stew or soup or something like that.

A lot of this can be solved by cooking your extras into something that freezes well using one of the basic techniques. Soups, stews, casseroles etc. can use up almost any random vegetables you have lying around, no formal recipe required, just keeping around a few basics like oil, butter, flour for thickening/dumplings, and your favorite spices.

I recently had a pile of potatoes sitting around for reasons unclear, now I've got several portions of an amazing potato chowder sitting in the freezer, ready to nuke in minutes when I want them. I had a spare onion and carrot lying around so those went in too, worked out great, no planning or recipe required aside from keeping basic cooking staples on hand.

Alternatively most raw vegetables (and fruits!) can be pickled. While you do have to get the proportions roughly correct, making refrigerator pickles is as simple as throwing extra sliced veggies into a jar with water, vinegar and salt (herbs and spices optional to your preference). The acidity keeps them from going bad.

Fruits can be turned into freezer preserves almost as easily. Almost any combination you have lying around can be mashed and cooked down on the stove as much or as little as you want with some sugar, pectin is optional. They'll last for months in the freezer, weeks in the fridge.

People think I'm a cooking genius when they see all this random stuff in my fridge but it's all so easy, the truth is I just don't like waste.

I went through this for years and was always felt so discouraged and guilty. I didn't have the repertoire or financial pressure to use the "leftovers". It changed completely for me when I decided to stop buying cuts like packaged chicken breasts and started buying whole chickens and making stocks and sauces. Now when I look in the fridge at the end of the week and see old, sad vegetables I get excited because I'm going to turn them into delicious stock. I feel so much better because my food waste has reduced by an order of magnitude, the food is tastier, the house smells great, and cooking this way is compatible with local, sustainable agriculture (I'm looking for a poultry operation in my area). But I have to acknowledge, it's a lot easier because I work from home.

The main reason people eat so unhealthily in the US is the price gouging in the vegetable aisle.

My wife came home with a small bag of brussel sprouts and some "gourmet" Baklava that weighed a bit less, but not much. Virtually the same price.

It is very common for (cardboard tasting) tomatoes, which come from a high-production plant, to cost as much or even more than meat, that comes from a plant-consuming animal and then butchered and constantly refrigerated. the vegetable/meat price ratio in the US means vegetables are comparatively 3-5x+ more expensive than any of the many other places I have lived. They are more like 10x less expensive than meat in in some places I have lived. The same goes for nuts to carbs, etc. And you will feel it immediately in lack of energy and hunger if you don't have protein and the sufficient number of daily calories, while lack of vegetables mainly leads to a more subtle lack of general health.

Shopping yesterday and was shocked to see a single head of cauliflower for $7.99/each.

Buyer beware. You need to shop.

I can go to Whole Foods and pay $10 for a bag of mini-cucumbers. Or I can go to Aldi and pay $3 for the same product picked from the same field and delivered regionally on the same train.

The answer people have to that is “I’m too busy and don’t have time to do that”. Grocery stores collect a lot of market intelligence and price to the audience. That’s why a tomato with a wholesale price of $0.50 costs more than a nice steak. Or why they sell pre-chopped carrots and onions to helpless people with money but without skill for $15/lb.

If you shopped for vegetables like you did for meat (i.e. in the frozen food isle) most of that price difference would evaporate.

Fresh vegetables have a lot of handling, refrigeration and shipping timeline requirements that add a lot to the cost.

If you were to consider that in ye olden days the majority of things in the vegetable aisle would have been simply unavailable out of season, does it seem a bit less like price gouging? Transport is likely the most significant cost.

I suppose our food production has generally centralized over time to the regions that can grow these vegetables all year, and almost no vegetables are grown locally. So we end up paying the transportation costs, even during the four weeks in the fall when we could be overwhelmed by cheap locally-grown vegetables.

My ability to get broccoli in November in North Dakota is quite remarkable?

That's an interesting point. I live in Southern California, in Los Angeles. I'm maybe a 50 minute drive from Oxnard where a large portion of our vegetables are grown. (If I recall, more vegetables in the US come from Ventura County than any other place in the world.) They don't have to be shipped very far and a lot more stuff is in season here than in other parts of the country. Just checking the things the person above mentioned on my local Ralph's (Kroger's), I see the cheapest ground beef = $5.99/lb. and brussels sprouts are $2.99/lb. for loose sprouts. That seems like a high price ratio to me, but I certainly don't know all of the logistics.

My ability to get broccoli in November in North Dakota is quite remarkable?

Oh, it is remarkable, but this is an honest question, do you really care?

I mean, I could get fresh tomatoes year round, but they're garbage outside of summer. When we buy things in season, they tend to be cheaper and taste better. Right now in my area, apples are plentiful and cheap! I really wish my supermarket would do some curation of products and only put the best stuff out for sale. I honestly don't care that I wouldn't be able to buy any (expensive, bland) fresh tomatoes right now. That's why we have cans...

No. Veggies are much less expensive in many other countries with similar selections available. Something is different in the US.

Might be corn subsidies in the US.

The true cost of meat and processed foods is obscured by corn subsidies.

I don't know if price gouging is the right phrase in this context. Products with processed stuff, including sugar & cheese, can be cheaper because it tends to be subsidized. I don't think supermarkets are gouging any more on veggies than anything else.

The government really could focus on subsidizing healthier food options and stop subsidizing taco bell's crunch wrap things, pizza hut's stuffed crust pizza or various colas.

people eat unhealthily because they are lazy and fat/sugar are addictive.

In season fruits and vegetables are inexpensive. You can easily find vegetables that are under $2/pound. Eating half a pound of vegetables a day (most people dont) is a dollar a day.

carrots are typically $1/pound, green peppers $2/pound, cabbage .67/pound, peas .35/pound, green beans $2/pound, broccoli 2/pound

beef is expensive, but chicken and sometimes pork are less expensive.

What people do is irrelevant, because they don't eat enough, and that is my complaint. My family is recommended to eat about 10-12 cups of vegetables (not fruits and vegetables) per day as per [1]. There is always significant waste with vegetables as well, unless we want to act like buying fresh vegetables and preparing them is a luxury reserved for the rich. That is far more than half a pound per person. We shop at 5-7 different stores every week (thanks to our location we can do this), to find the best values on various items. We don't do farmers markets, whole foods, or anything that is not very average and typical. Our evening salad, which is not fancy but not meager, covers about half this requirement, and costs us about $15. If somebody wants to claim salad is a luxury and people should just eat cabbage, I hope you learn to have a more dignified worldview. Also, I have not seen such low prices around here for quite some time, outside of limited sales that you cannot rely on for more than a portion of your purchases.

[1] https://www.myplate.gov/eat-healthy/vegetables

> Really, the main center parts of grocery stores where everything is in plastic or boxes really needs to be avoided.

But that's where things are cheap and convenient! :(

Its not cheap at all, in most countries you have markets where you buy corn by weight for $1 a kilo or whatever.

UK supermarkets sell one cob cut into two halves, wrapped in plastic for $2

I don't know how prices translate, but where I live in the US you usually get corn in the husk for $1 each. I prefer it in the husk because cooking with it on makes it taste better.

Here in Iowa we only buy corn in season. Picked the same day, on the husk for $6/dozen. I won't even touch the packaged stuff you sometimes see off season, and given how rarely I see if I don't think many others will either. In season the farmer delivers half her corn to the grocery store and sells the other half from the back of her (happens to be a girl where I live, other places it was a man) truck on the side of the road.

> I avoid any packaged food except I am too lazy to always make homemade bread.

Ha, so do I, except if you started forcing me to give in to certain things bread would be one of the last I'd be willing to give up. (Unless I was allowed 'packaged' bread from an actual baker I suppose.)

Pre-sliced supermarket bread has to be me the most miserable yet widespread thing in existence, can't stand the stuff any more.

Until this year I believed that if I would attempt to make bread at home every day I would waste too much time, because I was making bread in a traditional way.

However, after some experimentation, I have discovered that it is possible to make bread in a simplified way, which does not need more than 10 minutes of effective work for one bread made of 500 g of wheat floor (including washing the vessels etc.).

I bake the bread in a microwave oven, in a lid-covered glass vessel. The right baking time must be determined by experiments, in my oven it is 13 minutes @ 1000 W for the dough made of 500 g of floor.

The advantage of the microwave oven is a short baking time and perfect reproducibility. After kneading the dough in a glass bowl for a few minutes, I can put it in the oven and go to do other activities. Now I make at home one bread every day after I wake up, for breakfast.

When baked at microwaves, you can use a leavening agent for a more conventional bread, but even the unleavened bread grows enough for my taste.

Previously I was tempted from time to time to buy some commercial bread or cakes, but now I no longer care about them, I like more my own bread.

Wow, do you have a recipe for this? I would love to try it!

There is not much of a recipe, because the point is to be simple enough to be easy to make in less than a quarter of hour, every morning.

The simplest bread can be made with nothing else than wheat floor and water, by using the same method as described by Cato the Elder, 2200 years ago (except for using microwaves instead of fire).

With the wheat floor that I use (12.1% proteins), I add water that is 75% of the floor mass, e.g. 375 g water for 500 g floor.

The dough is kneaded for a few minutes, until it becomes homogeneous and elastic.

After kneading, it is possible to bake it immediately. However, in most days I prefer to make a bread with high protein content, in order to not exceed the daily intake of energy that would make me gain weight. For this option, the dough must be left to rest for 30 minutes, to become cohesive, than it can be washed for a few minutes, to remove a large part of the starch, enriching thus the dough in gluten, i.e. protein.

I bake the dough in a glass vessel covered by a lid, 13 minutes @ 1000 W in a microwave oven. The exact time will depend on the oven, so it must be determined by experiments. When the baking time is too long, the bread will harden.

Pure bread must be eaten immediately after cooling. Unlike the commercial bread with additives, it has poor shelf life.

Starting from the simplest bread, there are many options. One is to add a leavening agent, for a softer bread. Now, I prefer the unleavened bread, because when baked in a microwave oven it still grows, maybe 30% of what it might grow with an leavening agent, but it remains more chewy than standard bread. Unless you have untreated teeth problems, this is a good thing, because it causes much more satiety than soft bread in the same quantity. Chewing also keeps your teeth or your dental implants healthy, by stressing the bones.

Some people like to add salt to the bread, so that is another option (when that is done, one should take care that the recommended daily intake of salt is 4 to 5 g, so less salt should be added to other food). Various spices or seeds can also be added before baking.

Another option is to make it sweet, by adding sugar or raisins. Instead of mixing the sugar uniformly in the dough, I prefer to deposit the sugar on the flat dough, before baking, and then roll the dough and bend the resulting cylinder into a torus when transferring into the baking vessel. This method allows the use of less sugar, while still producing an intense enough sweet sensation, due to the alternation of sweetened and unsweetened layers in the baked bread. In this way, I use 50 g sugar for dough made of 500 g floor, but that should be adjusted depending on the individual taste. On the sugar, before rolling, I deposit e.g. cocoa powder (e.g. 5 g for 50 g sugar), vanilla essence, ground cinnamon, ground cloves etc. The advantage of this kind of simplified cake vs. traditional cakes or commercial cakes, besides the very short time for preparation, which allows doing this before breakfast, every day, is that the chewy bread, optionally with high-protein content, can cause satiety after ingesting a much smaller amount than would be needed when eating traditional cakes.

There has to be somewhere in the spectrum a company that processes food and it ends up being superior. In fact, I bet it's more prevalent than you expect.

I did a few searches. Turns out there are benefits to food processing. Inactivation of toxins seems like a big plus to me. Improved nutrition, seems good.

Yes, many processed foods are of nutritionally poor value, but please don't label all processed food as being bad.

This is a great point. "Processed food" is an incredibly broad category that is being somewhat demonized at the moment (not saying any comments here do this).

According to this Mayo Clinic quotation of USDA, processed food includes anything dried, frozen, canned, or mixed. https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speak...

I don't think (and am guessing most would agree) canned tomatoes are particularly harmful food, nor are frozen blueberries or fish, nor are dried raisins when I'm putting them in oats.

It's a spectrum. With my kids, dried mangoes make me slightly guilty because I know they are pretty high in sugar, albeit natural sugar. Most people would be more wary of frozen chicken nuggets. Some more specificity around what makes processed foods harmful, from the science and science comms communities, would be helpful.

Using the word “canned” is meaningless.

Canned sardines/mackerel is super healthy and minimally processed. Just like canned beans, canned tomatoes, canned corn..etc

Depends on the food - something like acorns, for example, they are inedible for humans in their whole form, but hulling, grinding the nuts, and rinsing them of tannins makes a tasty nutritious flour.

The word “processed” is kind of a lazy heuristic - butchering, cooking, hulling, mixing, those are all ways of processing that are healthy and effective.

Creating something like a Twinkie is a whole different ballgame and looks more like a triumph of chemical engineering and material science than anything related to baking or cooking.

I've heard the term "Ultra processed foods" used for twinkie like foods.

Unfortunately, "plant-based meat substitute" is, canonically, ultra-processed food.

Why unfortunate? Plant-based meat substitutes are exactly as unhealthy as one would assume from them being ultra-processed. They are made to taste good in the same way (adding lots of fats, sugars, salt, etc.).

Perhaps there are ultra-processed foods that are not unhealthy, but that does not include "Impossible Meat".

It is unfortunate because we cannot in good conscience ask people to switch from barely-processed meat to ultra-processed meat substitutes, despite the meat industry's heavy contribution to looming climate disaster.

Many of us have switched to things other than meat, but that choice seems beyond most people.

Another alternative is what is called "lab-grown meat", which is not a meat substitute, per se, but is actual meat that might be a lot less harmful to produce. Where it sits on the "processed" spectrum is hard to assess. Obviously it is, in one sense, 100% processed, but details matter.

My personal favorite oversimplification is you shouldn't eat what the average person would try and stop a zookeeper from feeding to a monkey.

Some bread made from acorn flower, cooked butchered meat or hulled rice would be fine, but giving them a Twinkie or Mountain Dew seems like the kind of thing that might lose them their job.

That’s funny, but not a bad rule of thumb!

The problem is that I've read "If you give a mouse a cookie" to my daughter so many times that I would naturally assume that giving a twinkie to a monkey would result in a bedtime-story length chain of humorous events.

I'd say many of these terms are way too vaguely defined and used. What exactly counts as "packaged" food? What's "processed" food?

If I process cabbage into Sauerkraut or Kimchi, does that count as bad, because it's "processed"? What if it's processed by some company? What if they process it differently?

Case in point, Sauerkraut. If I make that at home, the bacteria stay alive the whole time. They still multiply in my fridge right now and keep the Sauerkraut OK to eat if a bit mushy after being left in there for too long coz I don't eat it often enough. If I buy Sauerkraut in a glass it's dead. Sure, they also used bacteria to actually make the Sauerkraut. And then they killed off all of the good bacteria by pasteurization to be able to stick it on a shelf w/ a long best before date and to guarantee the texture and color. Not to mention the extra "ingredients" they put in there.

No, if you process something minimally like Kimchi it is not bad. In fact fermented foods are generally seen as good for you. Yogurt, cheese as well.

So Kimchi is considered minimally processed. Flour has various processing levels to make bread. Enriched white is strictly worse than others.

Cookies with hydrogenated palm oil would be bad. Any oils beyond cold pressed extra virgin olive oil are supposedly bad.

Now the preservatives in store bought kimchi could theoretically be a bigger issue.. I don't know how many folks have studied them. I imagine they just pass through us but probably influence the microbiome etc...

Canned foods are worse than fresh or frozen.

Generally when people talk about the negatives of processed food, they mean either:

1. Something that was originally nutritious, but had some part removed due to processing. Sometimes they attempt to add vitamins back into it, like enriched flour, but the issue is that we don’t know what else might be missing, or how changing the structure affects the body (faster absorbing carbs for example)

2. Foods that are sanitized heavily. Obviously it’s in the name of safety, but there could be benefits to eating a little dirt sometimes (ie there’s tons of vitamin B12 in dirt, but who knows what else we could be missing)

3. Foods that have lots of artificial or derived chemicals. Many are probably fine but it’s hard to know how certain things affect our gut microbiome.

There’s so much we still don’t understand about our bodies, especially our gut and it’s bacteria. That’s why nutrition science changes constantly. “Fat is bad, no wait it’s good” etc.

It’s not entirely scientific, but I strongly recommend reading In Defense Of Food. It’s thought-provoking and hits heavily on the many inconsistencies in our primitive understanding of nutrition. The author also calls out interesting points about “whole unprocessed foods” and why nutrition science is hard (eg too many variables)

> I'd say many of these terms are way too vaguely defined and used. What exactly counts as "packaged" food? What's "processed" food?

Do you think this is some sort of a smart or incisive observation?

I am sorry if I come off as rude, but I have grown weary of people making such asinine comments, quibbling about terms and their definitions, when they clearly know what the parent comment is talking about.

It does come off as rude, yes. We see right here in all the threads the difference in opinion of what constitutes "processed" or "packaged". A lot of misunderstandings in the world stem from people using the same terms to mean slightly different things. So in fact I think it's very important to state this explicitly. It helps in business communication as well, when you're the third party and see that two people are saying the same thing with different words or using the same word to mean different things and they just keep arguing.

I think most people know what processed food is when they see it. Asking what the definition of processed food is, is talking past the point.

This is just a excuse to be intellectually lazy. You just offload the definition to "you just know" and make it impossible to refute since it targets arbitrary definition.

Exactly!

And there's a case in point right in one the answers to my reply:

    So Kimchi is considered minimally processed

Minimally processed vs. processed. What does this actually mean to everyone? Who draws the line where?

As with the Sauerkraut example, home made Kimchi is minimally processed I would agree. Commercial Kimchi, like commercial Sauerkraut I would probably count as just "processed", not good for you. But agileAlligator may not see even commercial Kimchi/Sauerkraut as processed and he draws the line at "processed cheese", so that weird vegetable oil with "natural" color in it.

agileAlligator says

    Asking what the definition of processed food is, is talking past the point.

and I bet my other two questions above he'd see the same way. But he's not seeing that I'm not asking a direct question. I am not expecting any answers to those questions. I'm not asking for an actual definition. I'm "asking" so that people may ponder these and think back to previous conversations or look at some of the back and forth in these threads and recognize that people are talking past each other.

I think the term is imprecise and there should be a distinction between:

- cheese, pickled herring, charcuterie and such which can be part of a healthy diet

- pre-made (supermarket) meals or junk food (a vulgar term but unfortunately fitting) which typically aren't part of a healthy diet

a company that processes food and it ends up being superior

To be glib, any process that makes normally undigestible things edible to humans would qualify for that. Cooked rice is superior to raw rice, fermented cabbage is superior to raw cabbage, and glazed onions are superior to raw onions.

That's usually not the type of processing people refer to when they use the term "processed foods". It usually refers to a type of processing where the original ingredients are no longer individually recognizable, and where the end result contains much more additives (sugar, salt, fats) than were in the original product(s).

“Processed” is a bullshit word”.

When you see “natural”, “processed” or “toxin” in reference to a food, health or cosmetic product, pretend the word isn’t there. At best, it means nothing, at worst it is a manipulation designed to part your money from you or a fake cure.

More like a complex concept who can't be reduced to white and black. Sausages are processed, but there's a big difference between chorizo and Oscar Mayer. Powdered milk is processed, but yogurt and cheeses are too. Even cooking is significant processing that actually makes food safer and more nutritious.

It’s a concept in a conversation like this, but deliberately misused in marketing.

Perdue sells raw, butchered chicken breasts by the pound with 5% water as “minimally processed”, for example.

Popular wisdom is hopelessly confused on what "processed" means. Cheese, yogurt, tofu, nixtamal are all subjected to intensive processes using industrial chemicals which radically alter their flavor and texture. But it feels almost trolly to suggest that they're processed foods in the same way that a Twinkie is. Certainly it seems ridiculous to suggest they're less processed than frozen french fries - but they are! Many brands of fries are just potato, oil, salt, coloring, with the only processing steps being cutting, frying, freezing.

I think most people understand it to mean something more like "stuffed full of oil or sugar".

Nixtamal, I had no idea what it was so I looked it up. Then I learned I knew what it was but still had no idea what it was.

https://www.epicurious.com/ingredients/what-is-nixtamal-arti...

Thank you!

My rule of thumb is to think about the processes and whether I could do them in my kitchen or not. Things like 'boil' or 'grate' are recognizable processes that I don't worry about. Thinks like 'hydrogenated' are indicators that some serious modification of the underlying ingredients has taken place.

The term 'hyper-processed' is used to refer to foods that bare very little resemblance to recognizable ingredients straight from the farm.

> Just eat minimally processed whole foods as often as possible, diversify your plate and moderate your intake.

If you highly diversify your diet, if any one thing is 'bad' for you, you are by your actions, reducing your exposure to it.

As far as processed foods, there are different forms of 'processing'. For example, canned vegetables are pretty minimally processed. Cured sausages are more highly processed, and nacho cheese doritos are really highly processed.

Unfortunately food is religion to many folks. They will die defending their precious food choices.

The problem with articles like this is that it’s designed to be an echo chamber of denialism.

The key to being healthy is good diet. Good diet means good ingredients. Most animals are treated like crap and fed crap too—save for a few small-scale producers.

If you want to eat meat do yourself (and everyone having to hear these discussions) a favor: visit a high quality Kobe cattle ranch and see how they treat the animals.

Then visit a large-scale farm (tip: you might need top-secret clearance) which provides the majority of beef products to the USA.

Compare the difference…

Garbage in = garbage out.

Is there any research to back up that treating cattle better improves the nutrition of beef?

It's well known that cattle kept inside ends up with much lower Vitamin D content in milk & meat.

Not sure about other nutrients.

There is research to support it. It makes sense as well. If your human diet affects your health/nutrition/body composition, animal diet should affect their health/nutrition/body composition.

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/14423473.pdf

Not the person you replied to, but I think "animal's diet affects their nutrition" is pretty obvious. For instance, the "omega 3" eggs you see at the supermarket are produced by feeding the chicken a high omega 3 diet. That itself isn't really interesting. The real question is whether going through all that trouble is worth it. In other words, is it better/more cost effective to buy the higher quality animal products at the supermarket (eg. omega 3 eggs) or buy the regular stuff and pop a multivitamin? For omega 3 eggs at least, the answer is the latter. I'd be interested in seeing how it works out for beef.

There are some measurable differences in certain vitamins, fat content,and amino acid profiles, but I do not believe the differences have a causal link to overall human health i.e. longer lifespan, improved health markers, etc. At least nothing significant in the literature.

> Just eat minimally processed whole foods as often as possible ...

Fully agree with your take except for "eat [...] as often as possible" part. For instance, intermittent fasting is effective exactly because of not eating often.

I don't think "often" means "as much as you can during the day", I think it means to try to have that kind of food at each meal/snack as often as you can.

parent comment very likely meant "[when choosing a meal] eat [...] as often as possible", not recommending eating constantly throughout the day

I understood the comment to mean, “when given the choice between minimally processed whole foods and highly processed packaged foods, pick the former as often as possible,” not “eat frequently.”

> Just eat minimally processed whole foods as often as possible, diversify your plate and moderate your intake.

I think this is really the most important thing anyone can do. Not directed at you at all or at anything you said, but I dislike the term "vegetarian" in general. It suggests a binary diet: either you eat meat, or you don't. Someone who never eats meat and someone who eats meat once a month have essentially the same diet. It makes little sense to distinguish one as vegetarian and one as not. The pervasive idea that you could eat no meat for years and that somehow taking a bit of meat makes you "not vegetarian" anymore is kind of ridiculous. I won't get into it but the concept of "sobriety" often falls into the same trap.

That's not to say there's anything wrong with choosing to not eat any meat products (or not drink any alcohol), it's got nothing to do with the choices people make for themselves, simply how we discuss it.

I think the terms "vegetarian" and "vegan" are only useful as descriptors of food: whether it contains meat or any animal products at all. But categorizing people as "vegetarian" or "vegan" is absurd and counter-productive.

Veganism is a moral philosophy, so it really _only_ makes sense to use that term when referring to people. "Vegan" food is short-hand for "plant-based" food. Food does not subscribe to moral ideals, only people do. It's unfortunate that the difference between those terms has been so muddied with time, but it's an important distinction.

Michael Pollan said it best: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

I'm not a vegetarian either, but like you I prefer straight forward foods.

Breakfast for me is eggs, avo, toast, some light veggies (spinach, other leafy stuff). Tasty, probably alright for me.

I'm not good at the diversify part though . . . I tend to eat this every day :)

I'm unsure by your wording, but I am a vegetarian in case that's what you mean by "either" - over a decade and still ongoing. Not very important, but I just wanted to clarify.

Your breakfast sounds tasty. I don't blame you for having it often. :+1:

> [...] there are a variety of reasons to eat less meat too.

Could you provide some examples?

It’s energy intensive

I would argue carbon footprint (which is huge) or methane emissions.

Both are only relevant if you grain feed, instead of allowing animals to graze on grass.

For example, let's say we remove cattle from the rolling, rocky hills of Quebec. We let the land go fallow, back to nature.

Ok, now endless deer, bison, moose, groundhogs, and endless other critters do a horrible thing. They eat, and they fart.

When people complain about meat, and carbon, they are complaining about the worst part of it.

Much of the world does not dump fertilizer on land, grow crop, and feed it to cattle.

It is very unfair to lump this all together, especially in a thread about people taking extreme positions.

Is that representative, there are areas in California where grazing was eliminated and they are not overrun with other grazing animals and beautiful meadows and creeks have begun to recover.

According to the National Council for Animal Protection, over 99% of beef farmed for meat comes from cows that live in horrific factory farm environments.

Does the remaining 1% matter all that much in the conversation?

Would you expect the National Council for Animal Protection to give you an unbiased figure?

I struggle with the concept of feedlot farming being morally acceptable at all. However, I've been on a number of beef farms in the UK and it's just not representative of how British beef is raised.

does the national council for animal protection sound like they do independent research?

That number is probably true for the USA only. GP specifically said:

> Much of the world does not dump fertilizer on land, grow crop, and feed it to cattle.

> only relevant if you grain feed, instead of allowing animals to graze on grass.

What's the percentage of grass fed vs grain? From a shallow search it seems like it's low single digits yet I see this argument come up a lot. Do you have different numbers perhaps?

> Both are only relevant if you grain feed, instead of allowing animals to graze on grass.

Plot twist: the average US/EU diet can't be sustained on free range only meat/animal products.

In the US grass fed beef represent 4% of beef sold, and that's with a very loose definition of "grass fed"

https://agfundernews.com/grass-fed-beef-survey-story

Environmental impact of meat production is one major one, but it depends on what meat we're talking about. Beef and similar are absolutely terrible from an environmental perspective. It takes significantly more water and space to produce comparable quantities of beef to other meat sources, or plants. Chicken and Turkey are usually better on that score.

It's also helpful to note that slaughterhouses have broad, measured psychological impacts on the community. They are often pushed to butcher at unsafe speeds and the killing of animals for an entire work day has a negative impact on the mental health of the workers. The installation of a new slaughterhouse has been associated with increased crime, domestic violence, and drug abuse in the community, and isn't replicated in new factories for manufacturing, lumber processing, paper mills or other similarly sized factories.

Do you have some links for that?

The Psychological Impact of Slaughterhouse Employment: A Systematic Literature Review - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15248380211030...

Animal Cruelty, Domestic Violence, and Social Disorganization in a Suburban Setting - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01639625.2018.14...

As line speeds increase, meatpacking workers are in ever more danger - https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/09/18/line-speeds-increase-mea...

How safe are the workers who process our food? - https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2017/article/how-safe-are-the-w...

Killing for a Living: Psychological and Physiological Effects of Alienation of Food Production on Slaughterhouse Workers - https://core.ac.uk/outputs/54847380

The Slaughterhouse, Social Disorganization, and Violent Crime in Rural Communities - https://brill.com/view/journals/soan/23/6/article-p594_4.xml

American Slaughterhouses and the Need for Speed: An Examination of the Meatpacking-Methamphetamine Hypothesis - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/108602661769703...

Additionally, Upton Sinclair who wrote The Jungle, which is largely attributed with launching public pressure to create federal reforms for more sanitary meat packing, originally created this to highlight how it fucked up the workers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle

The root cause of the "environmental impact" is not meat itself, it's the number of people.

Like for most environmental issues it all boils down to 8 billion human beings and counting on this planet.

Sure, but for any given number of people there are significantly more efficient ways to feed them than meat products.

Maybe so, but if we only focus on "efficiency" we're going to end up living in dystopian nightmare, a very efficient one. Specifically regarding food, eating is not something purely functional for humans who are not seeking maximal efficiency but also enjoyment.

But won't focusing on population control have a similar dystopian outcome?

Why would it?

In Western countries population is already naturally dropping. What's needed first and foremost is a culture shift so that we stop seeing that as a negative. In any case, we have no choice because population cannot keep growing indefinitely in a finite space (which is what would lead to an actual dystopian outcome and we are getting there just looking at the state of the environment).

The very fact that you replied what you replied just now after I mentioned population levels shows how the public has been conditioned.

Compare: "In Western countries vegetarianism is already naturally rising" ... "What's needed first and foremost is a culture shift so that we stop seeing meat as a necessity" ... "We have no choice because livestock supply can't keep growing in a finite space" ... "The very fact that you commented as soon as you saw an anti-meat sentiment shows how the public has been conditioned" etc.

I see. You have a nice day!

Same thing for fossil fuels, CFCs, and leaded gasoline, right? Turns out they were fine all along.

That's true on the current margin in the US but only on the current margin. Creating one more pound of beef than we currently do does require a lot of farmed soy and other crops and ends up very inefficient. But there's also a lot of grazing land in the US that can't be used for intensive agriculture and provides a lot environmentally "free" (minus methane emissions) meat. From an environmental standpoint we want to halve or so the amount of beef we consume, not eliminate it entirely.

And other countries than the US are operating on differnet margins.

As someone going on 5 years vegetarian:

Environmental impact (both carbon and water), animal cruelty/welfare in factory farms, high cost of more sustainable/lower cruelty options, general distaste for most of it

Environmental impact has been mentioned a few times but personally (!) I have reduced (not yet eliminated) my meat consumption mostly due to the fact that my short term unnecessary enjoyment is not justified in the face of the insane cruelty connected to mass animal farming. There is plenty of well-established documentation about this industry you can find online and subjectively I find it psychopathic.

I personally cannot consume meat from mass production anymore with a good conscience after hearing pigs scream in pain as their cage entered into the CO2 cloud used to kill them. The CO2 forms acid when coming into contact with their eyes, nose, lungs and mouths. You can kinda get a tiny hint of that feeling when you drink too much carbonated soda and burp up CO2 throw your nose by accident.

I hope it doesn't sound patronizing but that's MY reason to avoid meat, even more so than the terrible environmental impact. If you have ever spent time with pigs on a farm, they are eerily similar to dogs in some ways, so intelligent and funny. We would never subject dogs to the crazy amount of torture and violence just to eat them for 5 minutes out of no necessity at all and I believe it takes cognitive dissonance and plain ignorance to then just torture pigs for years and then kill them. Most of them never get to see the sun or run across a field of grass in the spring. Just death, disease, oozing wounds and death by acid-suffocation.

Yes - you raise some good points.

It's not really about health. In this day and age you can be healthy with or without consuming animal products.

It's really about cruelty towards sentient beings and is the biosphere destruction really worth having a strip of bacon or a steak?

Are culinary pleasures more important than not inflicting all this cruelty and damage?

Pigs pass the mirror test and can be compared to small 2-3 year children when it comes to intelligence.

Cows are such gentle and curious animals.

And yet we treat animals as inanimate objects.

As Carl Sagan said 'They are too much like us'

If we ever achieve a Star Trek like society - those future humans will look back at this time the same way we look back at the times when slavery was fully accepted by society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWbgZQxd6J4

This one did it for me.

I have no problem with eating meat in principle, but it's hard/expensive to find ethically raised/killed meat

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33643838

It really depends on what you want to maximize in your life, health and environment. Not everyone will agree, but here are some things to chew on.

* Animal products require an inordinate amount of water to produce compared to plant-based products.

* Animal breeding and grazing at scale creates a bunch of environmental issues.

  - Methane production

  - Dust bowl effect due to over-grazing

  - Manure runoff and associated effects

  - Crazy abuse and proliferation of antibiotics and the resulting antibiotic resistant bacteria

* Ocean dredging for seafood is horribly destructive to marine environments.

* Fish, due to other human-origin environmental issues, are loaded with methyl-mercury and arsenic. This trend is only getting worse.

* Animals have brains and the associated emotion, pain and fear responses to trauma.

* Outside of chickens, most animals we like to eat are higher order mammals that are arguably more susceptible to the kinds of pain and distress we feel ourselves.

* Animal rights standards for slaughterhouses, especially in the US, are abysmal.

* Food and food handling standards for meat, especially in the US, are abysmal.

* Meat production creates a lot of secondary waste products that wouldn't be market competitive if they weren't subsidized by super-high meat production. Used as fillers in all kinds of things from pet food to cosmetics.

  - eg. Animal tallow, gelatin, organ meat, animal bone-meal

  - some of these are inherently useful, but as meat consumption rises to meet demand, so do these byproducts' supply and they show up all over as they now compete with vegetable based options.

* Risks of parasites, improper cooking, spoilage, etc.

* Nutritional benefits exist, but there are nutritional issues with red meat, organ meat and associated fats as well.

* A lot of food "certifications" are industry-managed and opaque to consumers, pushing a lot of negative externalities under the rug and making these things worse, not better.

  - "Grass-fed" is a "best-effort" thing and most companies that claim this are still only seasonally feeding their animals grass while also supplementing with diets molasses.

  - Free-range, prairie raised, farm-fresh, cage-free... What this means depends largely on who you ask.

  - etc. etc.

There are more bullets I'm sure too, I'll stop listing though. Hope this helps.

Just given the above, animal foods aren't required for adequate human sustenance and yet there are a lot of issues with them.

There are of course nutritional benefits to consuming meat and negative externalities from modern agricultural practices, but I think animal production has high costs for its benefits.

It doesn't have to be an all or nothing either. Everyone reducing their meat consumption by a little has an outsized impact compared to some zealots doing so. No one benefits if we treat this as some kind of morality food fight or religious crusade.

Not all countries have standards for handling meat. Have you ever been to a developing nation? I spent 4 years living and traveling all over Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos by motorbike.

"Street food" sounds awesome until you realize that you have no idea where the meat you're eating came from, how it was raised, handled, prepared. It is cheap for a reason. It could have easily been the stuff you saw by the side of the road sitting out in the sun with flies all over it. Ever been to a wet market?

I was once in a super remote town in northern Vietnam staying at a small hotel. They were having a festival of some sort and someone had left a 300+ lbs pig in the parking lot sitting there in the sun. Alive, barely. It was so abused, it could barely lift its head. That was going to be the delight of the festival.

How do you even know the meat is the meat they say it is? I've seen my share of dog/cat restaurants. Other than those being generally more expensive... who knows... maybe they ran out of pig that day (swine flu was in full effect when I was there).

Certainly, veggies also have their share of issues... sprayed with who knows what sorts of chemicals smuggled in from China... grown next to polluted rivers... in polluted air.

Now, back in the US, we have it so good here...

Feedlots aren’t pretty, but there are many places in the world with much much less agricultural oversight or concern for animal welfare than the US.

I’ve found a simple rule of thumb that works for me:

Nature has a way of limiting how much of a certain substance you can consume. By simply eating less processed foods, you’re eating more in line with what the human body expects historically.

Take oils for example. It requires immense pressure and processing, only available in the Industrial Age, to produce the quantitates of certain oils. We consume way more oil than ever expected. Sugar is in the same boat. Ground wheat is kinda too…

The more processing the worse it is for you, as a general rule of thumb. So yea, eat Whole Foods when you can!

> Nature has a way of limiting how much of a certain substance you can consume.

Is your belief that "Nature" is an actor which can (intentionally or unintentionally) limit human consumption? Or are you saying something more like: "there's a physical limit to how much air a human can breathe in a day"?

Not op - think it’s more along the lines of “humans evolved with nature as a constraint” and industrialization has the ability to remove that constraint.

I think it's a figurative way of saying that our tastes developed in a natural environment where the things we crave (mainly sugar and fat) were limited and packaged in healthier forms (fruits, nuts, meat).

Oil wasn’t as hard to come by as you’d expect. Think of butter, animal fat, olive oil, seed oils, etc. It’s nowhere near as hard to make as you seem to think. The first recorded history of deep frying is from 2500 BCE.

Wheat too was in our diets long ago with the first recorded use in 32,000 BCE. Sugar was 8,000 BCE.

What is "processed foods"? Isn't bread a heavily processed food? Is somehow making it at home magically healthier than it being made in a factory? What about whole wheat bread from a factory vs white bread at home? Which one is healthier?

Or are you trying to say that bread is somehow unhealthy? Even though it is staple eaten by literally everyone across the world in someway, shape or form.

Terms like this destroy the credibility of "food research" and I find it hard to trust any dietary guidance. Specially after the whole fat & sugar debacle

Compare a hand-made loaf of bread to one from the grocery store. Count the number of ingredients. The hand-made loaf is usually made from flour, with water, oil, and leavening. If you buy unprocessed flour that makes 4 or 5 ingredients as a base. A store bought, whole wheat loaf of bread contains roughly 16 ingredients. The home-made loaf doesn't contain preservatives because it won't need to sit on a shelf for a prolonged period. The home-made loaf can use higher quality/purity ingredients than you will find in the grocery store in the USA. White bread is worse.

Not all bread is made the same. Not all bread ingredients are the same. Those individual ingredients can be processed as well. The more processing on the ingredients and end product, the more "processed" a food is. I'm not even touching "highly processed" or "ultra-processed" foods in this short post.

I start to wonder if you can eat with too much variety as well. People tend to eat more when there's more variety (low-carb and potato-only diets work mostly by making you bored of eating).

The slime mold guys are currently testing the hypothesis that the potassium in potatoes is why the potato monodiet works…

The mechanism of diets isn’t understood yet - check out Kevin Hall’s metabolic ward study of low fat high carb vs. high fat low carb for some paradoxical results.

I’d be happy finding a diet that consistently works for people before understanding how.

Kevin Hall also did a fascinating study on ultra-processed vs less processed foods which found that people ate more and gained more weight on ultra-processed foods even when the two diets were identical in macronutrient composition! I would guess that the main reason dramatically different diets show similar levels of effectiveness is that all of them involve drastically limiting intake of ultra-processed foods.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7946062/

I lately wonder about Japanese or Italian cuisine. Those nations are around the top for longevity of life - at least some specific parts of the population. If the diet has a significant part in this I have a silly theory: they make their food relatively simple and quick, but very tasty. I would even say that Japanese cuisine is for making vegetables delicious for example.

I do recognize I probably don't know nearly enough.

Maybe the secret is fish-based diets.

Besides the obvious problem of WHAT should I eat there is the problem of HOW MUCH should I eat. And in general we eat too much volume wise AND at inappropriate times relative to our circadian rhythm. CLOCK genes exist! And eating changes your genetic expression.

> diversify

The conventional wisdom says you should have variety in your diet, but it's unclear to me why that's "good" and I've never seen research on it.

And yet, from the position of my armchair and the handful of books on my shelf, history has shown that a monodiet (relative to the modern, diversified western diet, at least) is not only sustainable, but has been the backbone of the human diet for thousands of years.

I think common wisdom says this is the best way to get all the vitamins and minerals your body needs.

It doesn’t get less processed than a fresh red meat steak.

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