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Comment by cameldrv | Hacker News Reader

> Myself the truly distasteful part is the use of neotame (a follow-on to aspartame) on animal feed, to get animals to eat feed that they normally would not; for instance, if the feed is rancid or otherwise in a condition/taste that normal animal instincts, would have the animal reject the food...

True for human food as well. Maybe it’s not rancid, but food science can make terrible ingredients taste great. Take Doritos. It’s just cornmeal (animal feed) plus a ton of artificial flavoring that is incredibly well dialed in to make them delicious and even addictive.

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I think it's disingenuous to say that cornmeal is just animal feed. Polenta has been a thing for a long time.

Since you don't even have to add the flavors to make corn meal taste good. Look at Fritos - corn + oil + salt.

Yeah that's like saying "sandwiches are just ground up wheat, plus a ton of delicious filling to make them taste good"

Most bread you get from a supermarket (even outside the US) is highly processed garbage, as are many common sandwich fillings (mayo, salami, margarine). The typical sandwich is probably up there with many of the other least healthy things you could eat, so yeah, ground up wheat with filling to make it taste good is probably fair.

I'm so tired of people using "processed" as a negative attribute.

First of all, it implies that industrial processes are less healthy than manual processes. But in my opinion, it makes no difference if sodium nitrate is added in a meat processing plant, or by an artisanal butcher on locally sourced hand made organic bacon. The health effects are going to be the same.

Secondly, it implies that there is something bad about "processing" in general, whatever is meant by that. But I think that most people would agree that pasteurizing milk is a good thing for our health, even though it is a form of "processing".

I don’t see how that’s the case except for a fear of “processing”. I plug two slices of commercial whole wheat store bought bread into Cronometer and it has an impressive mineral breakdown and 14% of the day's nutrient needs.

Lack of bioavailability analysis and links between processed meat and cancer are fears... of the established scientific community.

Sure. This thread is talking about bread. Processed wheat products like bread and seitan are nutrient dense foods usually caught in the social media meme diet crossfire.

Bread is ultra processed.

Yes, so is chocolate and tofu. Why should I care unless it's bad for me?

Using processing as an end-all heuristic loses sight of the characteristic that the heuristic is trying to approximate.

Bioavailability isn't the while story: some foods can be too bioavailable (and not great for you when consuming too much) such as sugars which can cause your body to form inappropriate hormonal signals and disrupt normal satiety. (Looking at you, fructose!) Additionally, there are literally thousands of antinutrients, toxins, carcinogens, and endocrine disruptors that simply aren't accounted for in normal nutritional analyses.

To make things even worse, on the other side of your last sentence, a lot of so called toxins and antinutrients are just orthorexic memes: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7600777/ ("Is There Such a Thing as “Anti-Nutrients”? A Narrative Review of Perceived Problematic Plant Compounds")

And an example of a nutrient that can be too bioavailable for some people is heme-iron, yet if you were to follow nutrition influencers online you might think that heme-iron was essential. A young man doesn't necessary want it. Yet anemic women might.

Very confusing space to navigate which I think is one of the main reasons we tend to get sucked into diet camps, all of them promising to cut through the BS while coming to vastly different conclusions.

Mayo is processed garbage?? Please explain. It’s whipped egg with lemon and oil, maybe some salt.

Helmans also uses Calcium Disodium EDTA for shelf life.

Im not saying its bad, or being processed is bad, but its manufactured at scale with additional ingredients to make it shelf stable. Its not the same thing you make at home. Frankly I think thats fine.

> Helmans also uses Calcium Disodium EDTA for shelf life.

Maybe it has helped remove built up lead from long term exposure before unleaded gasoline was mandated.

Being processed is definitely bad on average, if only due to foods having lower fiber content and higher salt content.

It may depend on the brands, but one big brand of mayo here in France (Amora) has all kinds of weird crap, apart from "whipped egg with lemon and oil".

It has rapeseed oil, which to me seems dubious since it requires special processing to make it non-toxic.

It only has 5.1% eggs (according to the label).

It also has "flavorings", thickeners and coloring agents.

So yeah, it's nothing like the homemade mayo I make, which only has olive oil, a bunch of eggs, mustard, and indeed some salt. Mine doesn't need any sort of coloring and is thick enough.

Source on rapeseed on being toxic, please.

The rapeseed oil isn't considered toxic anymore, since they take steps to remove the erucic acid from it, by growing canola bred to contain very little of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed_oil#Erucic_acid

While it says it's "generally considered safe", I prefer not to take any chances, just like I prefer to avoid plastic containers for my food, especially if hot (even though some plastics are "microwave safe").

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I realize wikipedia isn't the greates of sources. Here are two more

NIH https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9962393/

Says it doesn't seem to be toxic in low quantities, but should be investigated more. To me, that means "rather avoid if possible".

European Food Safety Authority says roughly the same:

https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/4593

Mayo is mostly oil. Usually the cheapest oil the manufacturer can source. That oil is highly refined, which usually involves dissolving ground up seeds in some solvent like hexane, then some high heat process to extract and de-odor the oil. Given that seed oils usually comprises polyunsaturated oils which due to their multiple double bonds are more reactive, the chemical processes probably tend to create more undesirable by products.

I mean, unless you prefer to drink the cheapest cooking oil you can find in your supermarket, you might want to avoid the mayo as well. (disclaimer: I occasionally drink EVOO directly)

For a while it was loaded with trans fat and artificial flavors.

These days, it’s actually listed as compatible with heart healthy diets (the oil is typically a “good fat”, and the eggs raise cholesterol levels data is weak at best)

Not quite--I assume sandwich fillings are food. Doritos are coated w flavor powder.

> flavor powder

Which seems to qualify as food, as well. Cheese, whey, milk, buttermilk, onion powder, MSG, etc. Nothing too scary on the list.

Fair point!

Mexico also consumes millions of tortillas every day made of exactly that.

Not all maize are created equal.

And it's awesome, especially fried!

Who needs food science when you've got hot liquid fat?

Or HP sauce.

Honestly I see it as a feature if we can move product that’s otherwise garbage, as long as it’s not dangerous. Reminds me of “omg do you know what’s in hotdogs?!” Hotdogs are a success story.

Tricking people's bodies into consuming garbage is a feature? For whom?

For people, if the "garbage" still has positive nutritional value that would otherwise be wasted due to taste.

What is an example of the good garbage that would otherwise be wasted? It seems like nutrient deficient junk food is the main beneficiary of these appetizing agents.

Globally, we produce a huge surplus of calories but a deficit of micronutrients, fruits, and vegetables. The appetizing agents are mostly convincing people to eat more of the former, beyond what they need.

> What is an example of the good garbage that would otherwise be wasted? It seems like nutrient deficient junk food is the main beneficiary of these appetizing agents.

Most of a cow, honestly.

From a 1,300 lbs steer you'll get something like 600-650 pounds of usable meat (maybe a little more, depending on the breed). About a third of that resulting meat will be ground meat that'll best be used in burgers, sausages, hotdogs, and stuff like vienna sausages - which I would consider junk food. The rest of the carcass will be rendered into tallow, boiled down to produce gelatin for candy and jellies or bone broth for other dishes, and otherwise processed for human or animal consumption.

It's not as extreme as the junk food you're thinking of but ever since industrialization the amount of effort put into making food from slaughterhouse waste is incredible.

> burgers, sausages, hotdogs, and stuff like vienna sausages - which I would consider junk food

Heretic!

Harmless garbage, mind you

Nitrate laden meat consumption is heavily correlated with colon cancer, no?

Yes.

Also, “sodium nitrate free” and “uncured” meat typically contains celery salt, which is chemically identical to sodium nitrate, except that the maximum safety levels don’t apply, so sometimes it has more nitrate in it than would otherwise be legal.

The misleading “uncured” and “sodium nitrate free” language on labels is mandated by labeling standards in the US, so keep that in mind when directing your rage.

Cornmeal is just corn flour but with courser grinding? But glutamate and stuff, sure. Doritos have the same "fake" feel as Pringles according to my taste.

I eat tortilla chips of all kinds outside of the dorito sphere, dont need anything besides a little salt, let alone engineered powders

Doritos really are an amazing case. They are tortilla chips. It took me so long to realize this because that delicious dust is so transformational. It it’s literally a tortilla chip underneath that salt, msg, and spices. For the longest time I assumed it was some other novel type of chip.

Can't you buy plain Doritos where you live? In Australia, you can buy "Original Salted" Doritos, which is just oil, corn and salt: regular old Tortilla chips.

Generally not, at least in the US. When we buy plain tortilla chips here, it's usually Mexican. Given the lack of a Mexico on the border of Australia, I can understand why you might not get the same variety of tortilla chips.

Is there price parity vs flavored Doritos?

Usually, exactly the same price. Though the plain ones are often on special, as I guess they're less popular.

Not from Doritos.

Dortitos is a tidal wave of glutamate. Not just the added MSG but the cheese extracts that add even more.

MSG is right up there with aspartame of vilified ingredients with zero evidence to back up the claims. My own mother claims to get terrible headaches from MSG, but she loves tomatoes. And nuts. And peas. And mushrooms. Turns out the headaches are dependent on knowing the food has MSG.

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