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Comment by cdcarter | Hacker News Reader

Not to parrot Michael Pollan too much, but I think I'll stick to eating food. His latest book provides plenty of skepticism on whether eating animal protein actually leads to cancer, obesity, type II, &c... or if it is perhaps due to an overly reductive food culture in the West.

What nutritionists are saying is good for us is changing ever decade. I'm going to stick to eating minimally processed food in moderation.

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Vegetables are food. And even better still, they have zero cholesterol and basically provide much the same benefits without the bad side effects. Say what you want about the flip-flopping nature of nutrition trends, there is very little scientific data that shows that milk, cheese and red meat don't cause heart disease and other health concerns. Broccoli tends not to.

Oh I completely agree. Vegetables are great food. Whole grains are great sources of yummy carbs. And meats in moderation are likely Just Fine. Broccoli is food, highly processed soy injected with omega-3s and corn is a food-product, not food.

Fair enough. I'm not saying eating anything vegetarian, no matter how processed, is good for you. Just clarifying that, in my opinion, avoiding meat if you can is healthier.

There's very little evidence that it does. You just have to look at the recent article on salt (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4069613) to see that conventional wisdom is often flawed. Similar cases were made for eating cholesterol (it has no effect on blood cholesterol) and fibre (doesn't prevent bowel cancer).

There is strong evidence that eating a "western diet", high in calories and processed food, will cause obesity, cancer, diabetes, etc. but there's a lot of disagreement as to what that root cause is.

Vegetables are real food. Fake meat is not.

Yum, fake chicken strips: "Water, Soy Protein Isolate, Pea Protein Isolate, Amaranth, Chicken Flavor (Maltodextrin, Yeast Extract, Natural Flavoring), Soy Fiber, Carrot Fiber, Canola Oil, Dipotassium Phosphate, Titanium Dioxide, White Vinegar" (http://beyondmeat.com/products/)

I'll stick with Pollan's 5 ingredient rule as well.

I think they're working on a version that's just "Water, Soy Protein Isolate, Pea Protein Isolate, Dipotassium Phosphate, and Titanium Dioxide", so you and Pollan can eat that.

Pollan's rule is (at least as Bittman quotes it) five recognizable or pronounceable ingredients.

That makes more sense!

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