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Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

So things with scientific names are "ultra processed", and things with common names are not? That's just childish fear mongering.

Everything is a chemical. Salt is sodium chloride. Ingredients should be assessed individually and scientifically for their safety. Not just scary name equals unsafe. That's childish.

The war on monosodium glutamate is based racism and not science. It's as safe as table salt. There is no real science showing that it's anything but delicious.

Dextrose is just a simple sugar. It's essentially glucose chemically. Nothing to worry about. Your body produces glucose itself. You are not ultra processed because of that fact.

High fructose corn syrup is just fructose, another simple sugar [1], and there's no real science to back up all the fear mongering around it. It's no worse for you than any other sugar. All things in moderation.

1. https://skeptoid.com/episodes/157

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Their idea is to point out curing agents, flavor enhancers and similar stuff you would not need if using fresh food made from high quality ingredients - basically if you see food with these ingredients, chances are high that corners were cut along the path for whatever reason.

And colorants/"food dyes" are even worse. A bunch of them are under strong suspicion of being carcinogenic, and often are used to mask the ingredients being cured for longer shelf lives or being of sub-par quality.

> war on monosodium glutamate is based racism and not science. It's as safe as table salt

Depending on production method, I believe MSG can be a Nova Group 2 (processed culinary ingredient) product.

The high fructose corn syrup used for most packaged foods is 42% fructose, with the remainder being glucose.

The name comes from the additional step of converting some portion of the glucose to fructose after converting starch to glucose.

sure, it's all nature. and then wonder why you get 50% of the population morbidly obese...

you are being skeptical in a very silly way, sorry to say. if you don't see the industry incentives to use trash in your food instead of normal ingredients, you are missing the point in a very unproductive way.

Yours argument is coming from just a place of science denialism. Industry powers do not negate simple science.

Come to me with scientific evidence and not fear mongering, and then we can talk on an equal field.

Isn't the overwhelmingly obese American population scientific evidence enough?

Not really, the same ingredients are widely used in other countries which do not suffer from the same problems as Americans.

Is it any more evidence for ultra processing being the problem than the last N food panics? Obesity was high when the story was "high fat foods are the problem" too.

The population is obese because they eat too many calories and they will not stop. Arbitrarily banning foods because they are not "normal" doesn't prevent this. Butter is OK, cream is OK, sugar is OK. When sugar takes a slightly different form it's "not normal" so banning it will make everyone thin again.

Except a lot of evidence suggests that the foods we eat nowadays cause more weight gain than before industrialization.

Two people can eat the same number of calories, but if one of them is slamming UPFs they will gain more weight.

Additionally, UPFs do not satiate hunger like more natural foods. Meaning people can eat more UPFs than more natural foods before feeling full.

There are absolutely industrial ingredients we should be banning in the US that other countries have rightfully banned.

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