Hacker News Reader

Comment by joe-collins | Hacker News Reader

A "processed" food is simply one that has any amount of added salt, sugar, or fat. Many snacks include seed oils, I'm sure, but "nearly all" processed foods certainly do not.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/processed-foods...

View on HN

sure if that's a technicality you want to call out. What I meant is -- go down the grocery store snack aisles. Look at the chips, popcorns, cookies, etc. Anything in a brightly colored box in those snack aisles. 100% of the things I'm talking about have seed oils in them.

I don't feel that it's a technicality when the distinction is between a single aisle in the grocery store and a vast swath of foods. Bread is processed, some yogurts and cheeses (although fermentation alone might only qualify as "minimally processed"), many canned foods which add only salt to otherwise unprocessed foods (vegetables, beans, fish, chicken, etc).

By all means, focus your ire on snack foods. Or seed oils. Or whatever the latest trend says is unhealthy.

My point, every time this comes up, is that "processed" is uselessly vague, unless you really do believe that adding any amount of salt/sugar/fat is harmful to human health. I believe that many people using the term do not actually know its definition and merely use it as shorthand for some nebulous set of foods they believe are "too artificial", without seriously considering which aspects of those foods should qualify them for inclusion.

Fair points. I think the term "processed" does have colloquial value and doesn't usually refer to things like yogurt/cheese/canned beans/etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com