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Comment by tchaffee | Hacker News Reader

I have also noticed myself and my partner gain weight when we live in the US. I'll make it a little more concerning: I mostly don't eat processed foods. I buy the raw ingredients and cook myself.

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Do you often cook with ingredients like canned beans or canned diced tomatoes or premade stock? Do you buy any kind of grocery store bread, including the "fresh" stuff from the bakery section? All of these things usually contain added sugar in the US, sometimes in shockingly huge amounts. I think people from other countries don't know to look out for sugar in these kinds of processed but not ultra-processed food items because such things don't usually contain sugar (because it's totally unnecessary). So even if you're mostly cooking with raw ingredients you could be getting way more sugar in your diet than you did wherever you lived before.

Nope. I never buy anything without reading ingredients and yes the US is really bad about adding sugar to stuff. Even some meat which is absurd.

But when I say I cook from scratch I mean it. If I want beans I buy a bag of dried beans. I will sometimes buy canned Marzano tomatoes from Italy, ingredients: tomatoes.

Hmm...must be something else in the environment then. I lost weight effortlessly while living in Europe but I always assumed that was due to being cut off from processed foods and food items with unnecessary additives. It's nearly impossible for me to maintain an equally healthy diet here in the US because it's simply too annoying and it's also much easier to give into the temptation to eat junk food. I'm too lazy for things like dried beans though, I always prefer canned (as long as I can get the ones that are just beans, water and salt).

Beans are literally dump some in water overnight and then cook the next day. It must be 5m of labor total.

I don't usually plan what I'm cooking that far in advance so it's not practical for me personally and there's really not much difference between dried beans and canned unless you're buying the ones with sugar or you have a medical reason to avoid sodium

Of course do what works best for you. I avoid cans because a family member used to work in a plant making cans. Industrial chemicals are involved.

And then there are the millions of cats with hyperthyroidism that has been connected to canned cat food.

And you think industrial chemicals aren't involved in producing the packaging dried beans come in?

As opposed to canned beans they aren't sitting in liquid interacting with their packaging. So you can wash the dried beans before you use them.

And I generally buy in bulk at the outdoor market so relatively few beans even come in contact with the packaging.

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