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Comment by voytec | Hacker News Reader

> However much I'd like to alter my diet to be more healthy, including flavored nuts or bread as ultraprocessed means I have nearly zero chance avoiding a sizable portion of what academic scientists label as ultraprocessed.

How so? I eat organic veggies, organic meat, nothing with added sugars, from time to time I drink a glass of organic wine. It's absolutely not difficult to avoid anything "ultra-processed" (I dislike this term which is ehnancing something not strictly defined) or even store-bought "processed".

In fact, the only, in any way, "processed" food I eat are things I make myself: veggies baked with turkey, chicken and beef, blended, portioned and frozen. No preservatives other than fat and reasonably small amounts of salt (and with sodium, I also ingest potassium). Eating healthy is fairly easy (although more expensive) and avoiding shitty food is really not hard to achieve.

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That's commendable. It's "simple" as in not complicated and easy to understand. It's "difficult" as in it requires an incredible amount of discipline, and potentially time, compared to the alternative.

And as parent pointed out, more expensive.

You can easily double or triple your food costs if you're getting most of your calories from organic veggies and non-grain-fed animals.

You don‘t have to do that. You can buy cheap meat and cheap vegetables. That way you will still eat much healthier than eating ultra-processed stuff, and probably even save money.

> It's "difficult" as in it requires an incredible amount of discipline

Maybe at the beginning of this lifestyle it was somewhat difficult and there was some fight inside me (hard not to buy sweets at the store counter etc) but it fairly quickly turned into subconscious, almost mechanical way of doing things.

It's similar to addiction detox: when I ditched smoking (after 20+ years), it was hard at the beginning, there was this feeling of lacking something "important" but it diminished over time. There's no way I'd even consider smoking a cigarette or eating sugary and fatty sweets after few years. I stopped being compatible with those things.

Quitting smoking is something most smokers fail at, so not a great thing to generalize. Also I consider smoking far easier these days as a much smaller number of people do it and there is more social friction.

We are in the 1960s smoking phase of bad diets. It is hard to escape terrible junk foods at just about any place that serves anything edible.

> potentially time

I believe that time and energy are what many Americans are running in too short of supply on to transition to more wholesome diets. Most have so much on their plates to deal with already that the idea of thinking about additional things they technically don't have to is unappealing, even if it's at the cost of their own health. It's why ultraprocessed foods became so common in the first place.

It's just another microcosm of a culture that's obsessed with productivity and has little resembling proper work-life balance.

>even if it's at the cost of their own health. It's why ultraprocessed foods became so common in the first place.

Agreed.. A thought pattern I've tried to adopt is "Best time to fix your health is today rather than when you've had a heart attack or diagnosed with type-2 diabetes"

Too many people are getting health related diseases (because of diet/exercise)

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