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Comment by zer8k | Hacker News Reader

This is arguing semantics really. When people say "processed" they don't mean run through a blender, or mashed in a bowl, etc. They mean food that is processed industrially with a bunch of (usually unnecessary) chemicals added to stabilize or enrich the food. Oreos are a processed food. Cake you make at home from whole ingredients is not processed. You are correct technically (the best kind of correct) but in every day speech they are different.

Your greater point I agree with though. People who drink vegetable smoothies don't realize all that delicious sugar those vegetables have is now streamlined because they destroyed the fiber. But hey! It's healthy!

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Which ingredient in Oreos make them different than a home made cake?

https://www.mondelezinternationalfoodservice.com/Product/Pro...

Like the flour you use to make a cake has been altered from its whole state more than a little bit. So has the sugar. And of course, both ingredients are used in Oreos, for roughly the same reasons you'd use them at home.

I suppose most people don't cook with palm oil and soy lecithin.

Not going to bother with reformatting (on my phone):

PALM OIL, SOYBEAN AND/OR CANOLA OIL…HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP…SOY LECITHIN…ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR

Yeah, vegetable oil and corn syrup are common ingredients in home baking. So are artificial flavors (for example artificial vanilla).

Soy lecithin isn't, but it isn't a significant nutritional component or particularly questionable (it's a vegetable extract used as an emulsifier).

I mostly do cookies, quick breads, and cakes, but I don't think I've ever used corn syrup in my baking (not even for frosting) and definitely not high fructose corn syrup!

Your other points seem sound, and are things that I would not be surprised to find in homemade cake (except maybe the lecithin; what use does a cake have for an emulsifier?)

I’ve used high-fructose corn syrup in making marshmallows, it’s just corn sugar

The original point discussed was this:

> They mean food that is processed industrially with a bunch of (usually unnecessary) chemicals added to stabilize or enrich the food. Oreos are a processed food. Cake you make at home from whole ingredients is not processed.

The ingredients I listed aren't whole ingredients - which I would take to be e.g. flour, eggs, milk, butter, etc. If you're cooking with high-fructose corn syrup then you're not cooking with whole ingredients.

This is "flour is a whole ingredient because I say so".

The properties of flour are in fact quite different than the properties of whole wheat. And of course there is then a continuum, from whole wheat flour to white flour to bleached white flour.

I grew up with a countertop electric flour mill...I'm fully aware there's a continuum. And whole wheat flour is a far cry from heavily processed high fructose corn syrup.

Grocery store corn syrup you might use for baking is just corn syrup, not high-fructose corn syrup.

Corn syrup is made by converting starches to glucose. HFCS is made by converting some of that glucose to fructose.

There might be some significant nutritional impact from that, but it's more or less a similar process to make it (with an additional reaction to convert some of the glucose to fructose).

Regarding cakes and emulsifiers, could it be part of the industrial process to ensure the large volume of liquid ingredients are properly mixed before adding to the dry ingredients? In a small bowl it isn't hard to get the oil and eggs distributed but I can see it getting more difficult at scale.

Corn Syrup, while I hate the ingredient, is EXTREMELY common in home baking especially if you want to do confectionaries.

oreos have titanium dioxide as coloring.

high fructose corn syrup, palm oil, vanillin

<< Vanillin – natural or synthetic? – secrets of science 99 % of vanillin flavor is produced synthetically (petrochemical origin) or biotechnologically (e.g. from ferulic acid, eugenol).>>

Oreos aren't bad because they're processed, they're bad because they're 40% sugar

> People who drink vegetable smoothies … destroyed the fiber

Do you have a source on this? Because I did a quick check, and at a glance it seems this is not true (and in fact blending can actually release fibers for some fruits) [1].

My understanding has always been that blending doesn’t make fruits/vegetables less healthy than their whole counterparts.

[1] https://nutritiondaily.com/does-blending-destroy-fiber-nutri...

Blending and juicing are different things. Juicers typically remove the fiber which is then discarded as a waste product.

It's very possible that blending is still worse than eating whole though because the juice is now immediately available in the gut without the whole food needing to be slowly broken down even if you also still consume the fiber. Rate of absorption makes a huge difference in nutrition. Obviously the real secret is chewing as little as possible and instead swallowing large chunks.

> Blending and juicing are different things. Juicers typically remove the fiber which is then discarded as a waste product.

Yeah, I get that. And makes sense. But I keep seeing (even in this thread) that blending is almost/just as bad.

> It's very possible that blending is still worse than eating whole though because the juice is now immediately available in the gut without the whole food needing to be slowly broken down even if you also still consume the fiber. Rate of absorption makes a huge difference in nutrition. Obviously the real secret is chewing as little as possible and instead swallowing large chunks.

In theory, but is there anything to back this up? Because it seems like there isn’t much in the way of science or studies. But yet I see plenty of claims of it.

I guess I conflated juicing with blending. Seems to be an old wives tale.

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