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Comment by Beaver117 | Hacker News Reader

Yet another useless study clouding peoples minds. Stop eating ultra processed foods, meat is okay, rice is okay, most bread from the store isnt (look at the ingredients). Potatoes are possibly the most nutritious vegetable provided you dont deep fry them in seed oil. Stay away from cheap oils like canola, corn, soybean, safflower. Stick to olive oil, coconut oil, tallow, lard, ghee, etc BUT KEEP IT LIMITED.

No need to go on a restrictive keto or carnivore diet, it does have some benefits yes but you're missing out on variety.

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what is the difference between a processed food and an unprocessed food? what degree of processing makes a food ultra-processed? what ingredients should I be looking for and why? what is so nutritious about potatoes, and why does frying change anything? what is special about seed oil?

"I know it when I see it"

Just be aware of whats in your food. I don't look for specific ingredients just learn what the makeup of your food is and decide if you should be eating that. Awareness is 80% of the battle.

Boiled/roasted potatoes are really satiating for their calories. But most people associate potatoes with a lot of fat, like french fries or mashed potatoes which make them very high calorie.

Deep frying anything I think should be a special occasion, you shouldn't be having deep fried food every day or even week, it adds a lot of useless calories. Stir frying is healthier

Seed oils (modern oils like canola, invented in 1974) are suspicious. There is a lot of conspiracy theories out there and not a lot of data, but I try to stay away from it. After all we've been using olive oil for thousands of years, no need to stop.

Generally speaking, I think of processed foods as anything padded with sugar, salt and/or fat. Food which comes from a factory, not a farm. Processed foods are digested quickly which has issues. They have a high caloric density with low nutrients due to the sugar,salt+fat.

Think candy, chips, soda, bread, cured meats and things in bags. Low in nutrition, high in calories.

One rule of thumb is to be wary of anything not sold on the perimiter of a grocery store.

"Processed" is a slightly confusing shorthand for "has undergone processes which either damaged its nutritional properties or added a ton of unhealthy shit for the sake of becoming more appealing and/or easier to preserve and consume".

A chopped apricot or a smoked salmon are in a literal sense processed food, but nobody is referring to that kind of processes. Rather, they're referring to the processes that turn an apricot into a Sachertorte, or a salmon into spreadable salmon-flavoured cheese. Dehydrating, extensive cooking, adding massive amounts of salt/sugar/fats - processes that destroy vitamins and other nutritionally important characteristics and mix the original food with large quantities of unhealthy ingredients.

> spreadable salmon-flavoured cheese

Sounds like cheese to me.

It's a combination where both parts play a key role. Much like a jam needs both fruit and sugar, or a bar of chocolate needs both cocoa powder and cocoa butter; neither component is a small addition, and neither can be omitted.

Coconut oil is not a healthy choice because of its colossal content of saturated fats [1]. It's fine for use in cosmetics.

Olive oil is great fresh, as a part of sauces, dressings, etc, but care should be taken not to burn it when frying things [2].

Deep-fried stuff is a traditional part of many cuisines of Eastern Asia [3], where people often live pretty long [4], are usually less overweight, and experience less heart diseases than in the US. Quite possibly it's not the most nutritional choice, but often the safest for street food in hot climates. Likely other parts of East Asian diets, like abundance of fresh vegetables, somehow offset whatever detrimental effects deep-fried food items may have, in a way they don't in a typical US diet, especially at lower income levels.

Interestingly, canola oil is officially considered somehow beneficial for health [5].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_oil#Health_concerns

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_oil#Culinary_use

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_frying#Asia

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_Japan#High_life_expec...

[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed_oil#Nutrition_and_hea...

Potatoes are a brilliant food. They're filling, contain an appropriate amount of calories, a lot of nutrients and a lot of potassium which helps balance out all that salt we're eating.

https://www.healthcanal.com/nutrition/potato-diet

Do you have any studies to support your recommendations?

No, I learned these myself through trial and error

I sincerely hope you spent time on a 100% ghee diet to justify saying you figured this out through trial and error.

I certainly did. Can't say anything bad about it. Although now I don't use it much, I don't use much oil/fat at all.

I think you're mistaking me, I mean 100% ghee. Only ghee.

instead of saying something you think is ridiculous and then accusing others of misunderstanding you, why not just say what you actually mean?

> I sincerely hope you spent time on a 100% ghee diet

I thought I did.

If you mean using ghee as the only source of fat, yes I did that. But using ghee as my only source of calories, why would anyone do that?

Why is rice ok? It is processed, high carb, low fiber. Good if you are starving, tastes good, but seems like it should be skipped as much as a typical junk food.

Unless you think there's something wrong with eating carbs (there isn't,) there's nothing particularly bad about rice. In fact, it's a great source of calories and carbs.

"Typical junk food," on the other hand, usually contains a lot more calories (and sugar/carbs and fat), sprinkled with various things that make them super-appealing. It's not impossible, but not incredibly appealing to overeat rice. Overeating a bag of Doritos on the other hand is very easy.

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