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Comment by oytis | Hacker News Reader

Logistics is logistics, the expeeience should be pretty transferrable, especially if no cold chain is involved. So good for them I guess?

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I'm only going by the abstract but this bit stuck out to me:

> Regulation of the multiple addictive products that tobacco companies have disseminated to markets globally may be needed to protect public health.

That seems less about logistics and more about manipulating the content of food, perhaps to encourage some low-level of dependence. People eventually came to expect this from tobacco products, I think many would be surprised to see this kind of thing from Oreos or potato chips.

Yes it seems like the authors of this article are implying this is bad? I mean ultra-processed is a meaningless term but generally processed food lasts longer, is less perishable, often cheaper, etc.

It's absolutely not a meaningless term, it's a classification in the Nova standard:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification

And regarding health risks, please ask your doctor about your consumption. You may be surprised.

Yeah, it kinda made me laugh too. I'm glad you could pull something out. I'd never heard of that Nova classification system. I'll have to read some more on it. The whole doctor thing, the more processed the food is, the less work your body has to do, which means the more available the calories are, which generally means the worse it is for you.

And usually the fats have to be processed because fat is generally not shelf-stable.

Nova is itself something that has changed a bunch over time and combines a ton of different concepts.

It is meaningless to the general population. No term is meaningless to an individual or small groups of people, obviously. That goes without saying.

Ignorance of a concept does not make it meaningless.

Truer words have never been spoken. Now set forth unto the world and transcend your ignorance to learn is meant by "meaningless". The discussion taking place will make more sense to you when you return.

By that logic all sorts of technical and scientific terms would be "meaningless".

Seems like playing semantics, to not say disingenuous, using "meaningless" to mean "unknown", when the former clearly has a negative connotation.

Most technical and scientific terms absolutely are meaningless outside of related technical and scientific communities. All terms have at least one person who sees it as meaningful else it could not fundamentally exist as a term, but clearly the context is about trying use it in contexts where the audience is the general population. There is no shared understanding of what it means in that setting, thus it is meaningless (to that audience).

> ultra-processed is a meaningless

You'd find plenty of definitions if you looked for them

> generally processed food lasts longer, is less perishable, often cheaper, etc.

Go ahead and list the negatives too lmao... what do you think the additives meant to prevent living organism from developing on the food do in your gut for example ?

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11901572/

Ultra processed food benefit companies more than they benefit you

> You'd find plenty of definitions

Exactly. Terms that are meaningful have one generally accepted definition. When everyone and their brother are coming up with their own pet definitions, that is when a term is considered meaningless.

Oh there is a very well defined and accepted definition in science, but for some reasons geniuses on this forum, and online in general, like to pull their best "ackchyually" broscience definitions.

btw feel free to open a dictionary and discover that a lot of words have multiple definitions, it doesn't mean they're meaningless...

"Meaningless" doesn't mean everyone fails to find meaning, it means that there is no general consensus on what it means. As you pointed out before, everyone holds their own pet definition. It means something to most everyone, but there isn't a shared understanding of what it means across the general population.

While it is true that words often have multiple meanings while remaining meaningful, they do not have multiple meanings within the same context as is the case here. I am surprised that wasn't obvious to you. Hey, on the bright side, at least you got to learn something new today.

> everyone holds their own pet definition.

I guess climate change doesn't exist either then. If by everyone you mean everyone except science, then sure, but that's why we have the scientific consensus...

"Climate change" may very well be meaningless. It was, after all, adopted for use in public messaging due to its predecessor, "global warming", never transcending meaninglessness, so there is precedent for the general population failing to find convergence in a shared understanding. If they couldn't grasp the intent beyond "global warming", it is equally likely they haven't been able to grasp the intent behind "climate change".

But it is a term that definitely exists. We can find it used often in the literature. Hell, we can find one of those instances in your very own comment... How on earth did you reach the conclusion that it doesn't exist? You didn't give that one any thought at all, did you?

> Oh there is a very well defined and accepted definition in science

What is this singular, well-defined, and widely accepted definition in science for "ultra-processed food"?

Are glazed donuts ultra-processed foods?

> You'd find plenty of definitions if you looked for them

Having a greater number of competing definitions does not generally make a term more meaningful. (Take "art" for example.)

Who says they're competing?

Then it just has one definition, rather than plenty. You could have said that it's defined in many places. If you want to say that's what you meant, I won't argue semantics.

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