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Comment by macNchz | Hacker News Reader

There is a spectrum of processing, from minimal chopping or boiling that you might do at home, to more involved processes that significantly transform the food, which changes how your body processes it.

Meal replacement shakes like Huel would be considered “ultra processed” because they contain various industrially produced ingredients (artificial sweeteners, gums, extracts etc).

The evidence seems to suggest that less processed are healthier, particularly when it comes to these ultra-processed items, not just boiling/frying/cutting etc.

Personally I see these meal shakes being marketed as healthy/for athletes and think of how everyone 50 years ago though margarine was so much healthier than butter.

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Fair point about the gums. But my Huel Unflavoured and Unsweetened powder does not have any artificial sweetener in it. It’s not very palatable on its own, but half a banana and a little peanut butter and it’s great.

I don’t pretend huel is perfect, but it’s definitely a meal. I feel good after eating it. Also, I alway have time at work to eat it, even if it’s only 7 minutes (which is quite often), and time to make it in the morning.

For me, huel is definitely better than the meals it replaced, and the other things that I could make/consume with the time and budget available.

Because people want to eat unprocessed bread? /s

Well there’s bread (flour, water, yeast, salt) and there’s bread (Enriched Wheat Flour (Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Sugar, Yeast, Contains 2% Or Less Of: Soybean Oil, Salt, Monoglycerides, Calcium Propionate And Sorbic Acid To Extend Freshness, Malted Barley Flour, Whey, Soy Lecithin, Datem, Wheat Gluten).

My point is that you should worry about specific ingredients, and specific types of processing. What do you think is bad here?

I don't know much about enriching ingredients in the US, but where it's done, it's to prevent diseases you can get from missing them, or which can cause other health problems. Folic acid, which is in your list, is well known as a recommended supplement for pregnant women, since it dramatically reduces incidence of spina bifida in newborns. Niacin is better known as vitamin B, and it's a similar story.

How do we determine which specific ingredients to worry about? I can’t keep up with all of the various additives in highly processed products–it’s simpler to reduce the number of ultra processed products I buy.

In this case the enriched flour in the commercial bread presumably isn’t concerning, but I would prefer bread without added sugar and all of the various preservatives and emulsifiers.

Research is ongoing but shows some potential impact re emulsifiers and their impact on the gut: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9331555/

And some indication that one of the preservatives can have behavioral effects in kids: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12173999/

Well, hopefully we can keep up with the help of some uncorrupted public health experts who can read the studies, commission studies and meta-studies etc.

It helps that other countries have them too. It's hard to corrupt the entire world. I wouldn't worry (yet) about individual studies claiming some possible interaction, especially if they bunch up manky things (say, aim to study all emulsifiers at once, or all processing at once).

I would worry if, say, an additive was banned in many countries. And there's much that we know is bad, which is permitted for cultural reasons, and which therefore many people assume can't be that bad (smoked food in particular).

You realize you need "sugar" for the yeast so that the bread can rise, right? This isn't the middle ages and people like fluffy bread.

Bread will rise just fine without sugar! There are plenty of commercial loaves sold with no sugar, and I’ve been making bread for like 15 years and have only ever used sugar to make something like brioche.

https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/45587/how-did-pe...

Um. I’ve ground wheat with rocks and cooked it over a fire. I can promise you it won’t rise. Your super-processed flour that you buy in the store has all the magic in it to work though.

Ever made wheat milk? It tastes sweet because wheat naturally contains water soluble sugars. They are more than enough to make the bread rise. The problem with your medieval bakery experience probably rested with too coarse grinding, too little hydrolize, not enough yeast and probably a combination of them.

Nah. Malted barley contains enzymes which break down the starches into sugars for the yeast to eat. This is brewing 101 type stuff.

I’m talking about wheat. But now I want to go read Bronze Rank Brewer again…

They do, to a certain extent. It's called whole wheat.

people eat plain wheat seeds?

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