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Comment by wodenokoto | Hacker News Reader

Why am I allowed to process food in my own home, but not buy food already processed?

This is a common misconception. For example frozen vegetables from the supermarket have higher nutrient contents then from the farmers market because they get deep frozen so shortly after harvest.

Personally I don't buy into articles like this. The one and only tip I can personally give to eat healthy and well is "learn to cook yourself". No matter how high quality the restaurant where you are getting your food, you will be able to do it better at home for yourself.

For example frozen vegetables from the supermarket have higher nutrient contents then from the farmers market because they get deep frozen so shortly after harvest.

To a statistically significant degree?

Well to be specific it highly depends what we are looking at. As a simple example let's take Vitamin C in green beans.

One study I found mentions that after one week refrigerated beans lost 77% of their vitamin C versus blanched and then frozen beans lost 28%.

So in the case of Vitamin C it's highly significant. There are some nutrients though that will be better off never being frozen.

It's not as black and white as one can say "X is better then Y".

There are too many moving parts to give a simple answer to that question. It depends on the particular vegetable and particular nutrient, how ripe the fresh vegetable was picked and how long it has been since it was picked and how the vegetable in question is prepared prior to eating.

But the real take away is that frozen vegetables are basically never less healthy than fresh.

That vastly over-estimates my food-processing skills. Restaurants can do better than me, to a high statistical probability.

But I believe in you!

Because when you process the foods yourself you can control the processing and what you add. When you buy already processed, you generally can't. The corollary to this is that when you do buy pre-processed food, do so from people whom you trust to use essentially the same processing steps you would use if processing the food yourself.

One reason is it takes time and resources to process food at home, limiting what you can eat. I don't have time to bake cakes more often than about once a week, thus limiting my intake of cakes. (The malt loaf I made two weeks ago -- excellent!)

A second reason is that processed foods are engineered to have addictive qualities -- lots of sugar, engineered "mouth feel". At home, you can limit the amount of sugar and salt, and you probably wouldn't be able to do the complex food science behind getting the right "crunch".

BTW I think it's a reasonable question - don't know why you were voted down.

Because you do not have an industrial process at home.

Industrialization does not fit well with food production. Because price optimization through division of fixed costs leads to standardized high volume products. But it is diversity that is healthy, tastes good and is natural.

The two are not the same. "Food already processed" means making a product which will survive weeks or months on a shelf, in a plastic wrapper and can be microwaved in 2min and chucked on a plate. It involves substituting ingredients for cost and allergy purposes. This does not typically need to happen when you cook a meal at home.

Sheesh, not all premade food is made to last weeks or months on a shelf! Grocery stores around here have plenty of variation, from cans that last years to meals made during the night that can only be sold the next day (and are kept refrigerated).

And even allergies, that depends. Some simply come with a warning, instead of banning the ingredients wholesale.

I'm pretty sure my grandma makes food since before I was born that "survives weeks and months on a shelf and can be microwaved in 2 minutes and chucked on a plate" and none of the ingredients inside are not sourced from her garden.

Because industrially processed usually means something like "Split into base components, down to very basic chemicals, put back together in specific ratios"

It's like making synthetic foods, but by first taking the components out of natural foods so you can call them natural.

This is science fiction, we can't and aren't doing this.

where do we get doritos

Doritotrees?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIp_zhBIZ7s

That probably depends a lot on how you define "base components". I agree, splitting into molecules is science fiction. But I don't doubt that for milk, for instance, they separate it completely into fat, lactose, water, and other stuff. Then assemble them back together.

It's the easiest way to get 0%, 0.5%, 1%, 1.5%, 2% etc milk. I don't think you could do it without starting all of them from 0% milk. Especially considering you have to compensate the lack of taste from fat with extra lactose. And you can't use "added sugars" without raising major red flags with consumers.

So you use lactose. Because it's already in milk. And you don't have to say you've added it.

Source: my friend who studied food science.

This still is complete fabrication.

"I don't think you could do it without starting all of them from 0% milk" is not a valid basis for facts. I don't want to come across like a meanie, but no one cares whatever facts you make up in your mind using (pseudo) common sense. Milk production is very well documented and regulated.

Fairlife promotes that they do this:

http://fairlife.com/

I doubt it is cheaper than a measure and blend process would be, so I doubt the majority of milk is so heavily processed.

It could certainly be that some milk is being separated down to constituents and ingredients added back to other milk, but that would be to top off a blend, not the default process (because separation obviously costs more than doing nothing).

I think orange juice is the classic example.

But orange juice isn't healthy before or after processing, so the point is lost.

I am sorry but we can and we are doing this.

I encourage you to read "Swallow This: Serving Up the Food Industry's Darkest Secrets" by Joanna Blythman. Most food if not every food that comes in a cardboard box has been assembled from parts, often from various parts of the globe. Vitamins and antioxidants are added to every processed food, iron is added to breakfast cereals, flavourings are used to change your perception of the food, caramel is added to meat to give it a nice brown color, "natural" extracts are in fact extracted using solvents, of which traces can be left in the food, and there is no need to put it on any label, because solvents are processing aids.

It's really much worse than you think unfortunately.

Adding addictives is different from wholesale assembling foodstuff from basic chemicals, as was described by Swizec.

This, it is important to stay accurate on these topics and not succumb to mainstream media fear mongering.

This is actually where "natural flavors" comes from. They break natural products down to base chemicals, then combine those chemicals to produce flavors, scents and aromas.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-differ...

Yes, we do extract chemicals from all kinds of things. That still does not mean it is done with your tomato.

Which is why I was talking about natural vs artificial flavors in foods, and not basic vegetables. Not sure how my comment could have been interpreted as support for the previous poster's assertion that a hamburger was made from a stew of chemicals...

I wasn't contradicting you, tried to emphasize. Sorry english is not my first language :D

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