I must take issue with this line: This statement is simply misleading, and is largely contradicted by the articles it links to as sources. The only way it could be argued as not being a lie would...
I must take issue with this line:
For instance, the CEO of Whole Foods and the CEO of Chipotle both announced they would pass on Beyond and Impossible products, noting that the products are too highly processed.
This statement is simply misleading, and is largely contradicted by the articles it links to as sources. The only way it could be argued as not being a lie would be to argue that it meant the CEO of Whole Foods stated he would personally pass on eating meatless meats. The article the statement links to notes that the CEO is a vegan, feels that meatless meat is better than meat and could serve as a transition for people, but doesn't like them by comparison to his own diet because he feels they are too processed. This view fits in with the elitism argument in the article, but the way it is stated is very misleading: Whole Foods itself sells quite a bit of meatless meat.
I swear people will find any reason to get angry at a product. This article does a good job at pointing out just some of the reasons these arguments are pointless. In fact, the majority of the...
I swear people will find any reason to get angry at a product. This article does a good job at pointing out just some of the reasons these arguments are pointless. In fact, the majority of the arguments that people are trying to put out against meatless meat are nutrition based, and I find it particularly annoying how much everyone thinks they are an expert at nutrition. The reality is that we know very little about nutrition and how it affects humans in general and most of these arguments don't even reflect the science adequately.
I think the article rather clearly states that some of the nutrition concerns are not pointless (eg, "Impossible Whopper might help save the planet, but it’s still high calorie, greasy, and...
This article does a good job at pointing out just some of the reasons these arguments are pointless. In fact, the majority of the arguments that people are trying to put out against meatless meat are nutrition based,
I think the article rather clearly states that some of the nutrition concerns are not pointless (eg, "Impossible Whopper might help save the planet, but it’s still high calorie, greasy, and probably not a good idea to eat everyday.") The author also points out that he has written about this previously.
It is true that there are many things we don't know about nutrition, but that should not prevent us from discussing it, and does not mean that nothing is known. It's generally accepted that current plant-based meats, and particularly the foods in which they are used, are not necessarily healthier than their animal meat equivalents. This is, to some extent, by design, and future meatless meats will probably be even closer to meat nutritionally.
Older non-meat alternatives have tended to have significantly different nutritional properties than meat, and this presents some confusion for people who have not followed these recent trends. If people believe that meatless meats make foods much healthier, and, for example, eat far more burgers as a result, or view them as nutritionally being like vegetables, then that would be nutritionally problematic, and it is reasonable to point out that the goal of the products is not to be healthier.
The article makes the distinction here, between these concerns and the ambiguous concern that the products are too "processed" and therefore inherently bad.
I'm glad you pointed out this specific quote, because it's a perfect example of how dumb these arguments are: The impossible whopper is intended as a replacement or substitution for a whopper....
Impossible Whopper might help save the planet, but it’s still high calorie, greasy, and probably not a good idea to eat everyday.
I'm glad you pointed out this specific quote, because it's a perfect example of how dumb these arguments are:
The impossible whopper is intended as a replacement or substitution for a whopper. Whoppers are also 'high calorie, greasy, and probably not a good idea to eat everyday.'
High calorie is not necessarily a bad thing. Even if you ignore the fact that there are people who need significantly more than 2000 calories a day, the caloric content is hardly ever the issue with a food - the issue is eating too many calories and gaining fat. This can be offset by eating less, strategically eating high calorie foods, increasing exercise, or many other methods.
Greasy just means something has a lot of fat. Fat is an essential nutrient. There are recommended daily minimums because mental health will deteriorate without enough dietary fat (the myelin sheath around neurons is composed of fat and will degrade without enough of it). If you want to take a dig at it's fat content, the place to start would be the amount of saturated fat (which happens to be very similar to an 80/20 patty, a little bit more for the impossible burger and a little bit less for the beyond burger), but that's not the issue being brought up here. What's being brought up here is the cultural idea that fat is bad which was a misplaced idea which got pushed through the American political system as a way to sell more grains and took decades to even begin to reverse this "fat is bad" idea.
should not prevent us from discussing it, and does not mean that nothing is known
You're absolutely right, but the discussions around what we know should be scientific in nature and they often are not.
Older non-meat alternatives have tended to have significantly different nutritional properties than meat, and this presents some confusion for people who have not followed these recent trends. If people believe that meatless meats make foods much healthier, and, for example, eat far more burgers as a result, or view them as nutritionally being like vegetables, then that would be nutritionally problematic, and it is reasonable to point out that the goal of the products is not to be healthier.
The whole idea that previous meatless meats are healthier than meats is entirely unfounded and symptomatic of how little people actually understand nutritional science.
In fact, the very idea of grouping all meats together as a single entity and comparing it to a non meat identity is absurd. There is a huge difference in the nutritional profile when comparing one meat to another meat, even when both meats come from the same animal (different cuts).
The article makes the distinction here, between these concerns and the ambiguous concern that the products are too "processed" and therefore inherently bad.
It does, and I would have liked to see it go into more details on what we know about processed meats, as there are specific additives such as nitrites which are common in processed meat which we know to be harmful which are not present in the impossible and beyond meatless meats.
The main problem I had when I tried the meatless whopper was that I could taste the "liquid smoke" that they used to make it taste "char broiled". It tasted something like lighter fluid to be...
The main problem I had when I tried the meatless whopper was that I could taste the "liquid smoke" that they used to make it taste "char broiled". It tasted something like lighter fluid to be honest, it just very petroleum based solvent taste to it. I'm not sure that this flavor additive isn't also put in to the regular whopper though.
Suddenly becoming a nutrition expert is the most obnoxious thing whenever veganism or vegetarianism are mentioned. The majority of people I have met who argue against vegetarianism with the "you...
Suddenly becoming a nutrition expert is the most obnoxious thing whenever veganism or vegetarianism are mentioned. The majority of people I have met who argue against vegetarianism with the "you wont get enough protein" line or any other variant will shovel anything that tastes good into their mouths
I recently caught a cold - as I have dozens of times throughout my life - except now that I am a vegetarian, my mother brought up that it might be related to my food intake. You can get sick from...
I recently caught a cold - as I have dozens of times throughout my life - except now that I am a vegetarian, my mother brought up that it might be related to my food intake. You can get sick from not eating chicken? Or something?
I thought you were going in another direction with this when I started reading your comment. Likewise for preachy vegans and vegetarians—they eat a sufficient amount of vegetables for the first...
I thought you were going in another direction with this when I started reading your comment.
Likewise for preachy vegans and vegetarians—they eat a sufficient amount of vegetables for the first time in their lives and they seem to know everything about nutrition.
Oh, I can not agree more. There are maybe and handful of people I've met in my life who are obsessed enough about diet and health for me to understand their concerns for minor nutritional problems...
Oh, I can not agree more. There are maybe and handful of people I've met in my life who are obsessed enough about diet and health for me to understand their concerns for minor nutritional problems behind a vegetarian/vegan diet. Like you said, most people have pretty unhealthy diets, so the sudden concern for protein intake and micronutrients is very disingenuous.
I'm so ready for lab-grown meat, I'm weirdly looking forward to it. Including the public backlash. It will be fun, no least because how obvious a development it is, long term.
I'm so ready for lab-grown meat, I'm weirdly looking forward to it. Including the public backlash. It will be fun, no least because how obvious a development it is, long term.
This article raises some good points, and some terrible points. I agree that it is stupid to suddenly deem meatless burgers bad because they are mainstream, and I agree that it is probably for...
This article raises some good points, and some terrible points. I agree that it is stupid to suddenly deem meatless burgers bad because they are mainstream, and I agree that it is probably for elitist reasons.
But some of their points are just ridiculous. For example, trying to argue that wine and yoghurt are processed food. I can make yoghurt in my kitchen. They might be technically correct, but the common usage of “processed food” refers to industrial tertiary processed food. This is just sloppy journalism, the distinction is pretty well known.
There’s a lot wrong with our food system and there’s nothing wrong with saying so. But opposing all mass-market, mass-produced food is elitist and classist — and in this particular case, it’s silly, too.
It is elitist and classist to look down on people because of mass market and mass produced food without considering social/geographic context. But that doesn’t make opposing that kind of food inherently classist and elitist.
Imo this is clearly a US argument, because nowhere floods their market with so much bad food, and then markets normal food as upmarket, as aggressively as the US does. It was a huge frustration for me when I was there that I couldn’t find decent food without feeling like I was a food wanker. (Also, most of the poorest people in the poorest countries just eat local fresh food, while imported processed products are viewed as a luxury item.).
Imo it is classist that bad food is made so cheap and accessible in the US, when good food is inaccessible to so many (eg. food deserts are a serious issue).
So yes, the author is right in that it’s dumb to get selectively critical about a meatless burger which provides a slightly better option in a fast food setting, but that doesn’t mean that all criticism of all fast food/processed food is meaningless.
I'm no food expert, but I think the author is saying (well, quoting some people saying) that "processed food" has no clear meaning that's relevant for nutrition. The system can certainly be...
I'm no food expert, but I think the author is saying (well, quoting some people saying) that "processed food" has no clear meaning that's relevant for nutrition. The system can certainly be criticized, but to do that we would need to figure out what's actually wrong with it.
But that might require a better understanding of what "good food" actually is than most of us have. Our knowledge of this is corrupted by unclear science, marketing, and myths.
It seems like the first step to knowledge is admitting what we don't know and being curious about figuring it out?
Here in the US, a big problem is that our government has failed to give it's people good health advice. This is because they publish guidelines with blatently false information in it, which is...
Here in the US, a big problem is that our government has failed to give it's people good health advice. This is because they publish guidelines with blatently false information in it, which is because agricultural groups have basically bribed their way into those recommendations. As a result, you may have heard about the "food pyramid", which recommends 6-11 servings of bread and grain products per day(!) and 2-3 servings of dairy. Thankfully they stopped using that and are now recommending "My Plate", but it's still very imbalanced and tells you to drink milk. Compare it with Harvard's Healthy Eating Plate, which is not influenced by business.
Harvard actually has an excellent resource on personal nutrition called The Nutrition Source, which I will recommend to anyone confused by all of the misinformation going around. If you don't know where to start, I would recommend starting at the "What should I eat?" section.
Those don't look bad, but they are just one source of nutrition advice of many, many out there. Before taking any nutrition advice, there's the question of why you should believe this one rather...
Those don't look bad, but they are just one source of nutrition advice of many, many out there. Before taking any nutrition advice, there's the question of why you should believe this one rather than someone else?
It's like diet, exercise, or self-help books. Many of them sound pretty great, but they can't all be right.
The reason why I recommended this particular source is because unlike most diet books out there, this one actually names sources for their advice. Furthermore it presents it's findings...
The reason why I recommended this particular source is because unlike most diet books out there, this one actually names sources for their advice. Furthermore it presents it's findings independently of any personally held theories or independent research. In other words, it gives advice like a real nutritionist would have instead of selling you on a "specialized" diet. It largely avoids weight loss and suggests what a healthy diet aught to look like - one that will help you avoid long-term health issues.
That being said, consulting an actual nutritionist is always going to give you the best advice because they can cater it to you.
I agree that there is a lot that we don't know, and I agree that processed food is not, as a rule, bad. But here is what we do know: diets mostly consisting of "unprocessed" (and I mean industrial...
I agree that there is a lot that we don't know, and I agree that processed food is not, as a rule, bad.
But here is what we do know: diets mostly consisting of "unprocessed" (and I mean industrial tertiary processing) are always healthier than diets with processed food. We can not engineer food via processing that is as healthy as unprocessed food. We don't need to know why it is bad to see the negative impact it has.
So generally speaking, avoiding processed food is a sensible step for health. I take issue with the author trying to argue against that, and implying that fresh food is elitist, and further confusing the argument by labelling yoghurt as a processed food.
The burgers don't need to be healthy to be good. They are burgers - was anyone actually expecting them to be healthy?
Depending on what you mean by "healthy", that statement is not true. Let's take your standard loaf of commercially baked bread as an example. That should fit the description of an ultra-processed...
We can not engineer food via processing that is as healthy as unprocessed food.
Depending on what you mean by "healthy", that statement is not true.
Let's take your standard loaf of commercially baked bread as an example. That should fit the description of an ultra-processed food because of all the additives. But did you know that many of these loaves add in extra vitamins? You can also purchase bread with seeds and nuts, giving heart-healthy monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Or you can even purchase loaves that have additional bran and other fiber sources added to make them less calorie-dense.
It has not been proven that artificially added vitamins have any health benefits. Also, having more vitamins is not automatically healthy - it’s only healthy if you’re not getting enough vitamins...
It has not been proven that artificially added vitamins have any health benefits. Also, having more vitamins is not automatically healthy - it’s only healthy if you’re not getting enough vitamins elsware. Once you get the required amount of vitamins your body just ignores any extra you eat.
Also, less-processed breads can also contain seeds so idk why that would be a comparison factor. And wholemeal bread (aka less processed bread) is naturally very high in fibre. Over processing bread just to re-add fibre seems needlessly wasteful.
And then, all in all, you need to prove that the health benefits of all those “health” additives (which you can easily get from unprocessed foods anyway) outweighs the health costs from the not-so-great additives.
Like I said, it depends on what you mean by healthy. But honestly, you are moving the goalposts here a bit. Sure, you can get the health benefits from other foods, but the point is that we have...
Like I said, it depends on what you mean by healthy.
But honestly, you are moving the goalposts here a bit. Sure, you can get the health benefits from other foods, but the point is that we have come up with a superior bread. As far as I am aware, the only health risks of consuming commercial breads like this are the same risks as less processed breads (i.e. high in simple carbohydrates). So you get all the pros and no cons.
I want to point out that when I mention that you are moving the goalposts, I don't mean to say that you are being malicious in any way. The biggest problem with public health is that people drastically oversimplify what "healthy" means. We are complex machines, and therefore health is fundamentally multifaceted. Foods are not fundamentally healthy or unhealthy - it is our relationship to those foods that affects your health. A Twinkie every once in a while won't hurt you. A Twinkie every day will.
Ok I was kind of in a hurry for my last post so I didn't go into it, but less processed bread (ie wholegrain bread) is better for many reasons - for one, they don't have simple carbohydrates at...
As far as I am aware, the only health risks of consuming commercial breads like this are the same risks as less processed breads (i.e. high in simple carbohydrates)
Ok I was kind of in a hurry for my last post so I didn't go into it, but less processed bread (ie wholegrain bread) is better for many reasons - for one, they don't have simple carbohydrates at all - they have complex carbohydrates. White bread has been processed more, so that nutritious parts of the grain are removed. It is favoured by industry because they can then re-sell the other parts of the grain. Wholegrain breads are naturally rich in vitamins and minerals.
Industrial breads also tend to contain a lot more sugar, oil, and salt to help preserve the bread for longer so it can be transported. Then they add some vitamin or whatever so they can put on the label that it's healthy. The health advice is pretty universal on this - there are a range of health benefits associated with whole grain bread (https://theconversation.com/multigrain-wholegrain-wholemeal-whats-the-difference-and-which-bread-is-best-89538).
Yes health is complicated, but being healthy doesn't have to be difficult. The fact is, traditional diets all over the world are more-or-less healthy - from vegetarian diets in Asia, to Inuit diets that are 90% animal protein, to Mediterranean diets high in oil - no one is experiencing heart disease and diabetes the way western countries do.
Being healthy is easy. We are complex machines, but we are omnivores who are very adaptable. So long as we get some of each of the major food groups, we will generally be fine if we stick to foods that have not been processed too much and exercise.
I'm not trying to shame anyone from enjoying unhealthy food every now and then - my stance from the start has been that the processed burgers are unhealthy but it's ok to be unhealthy sometimes. But I don't see why we need to call twinkies healthy just because they are ok to have occasionally. It's ok to have some unhealthy foods, but lets not kid ourselves over if they are healthy or not.
I just had a crash while looking something up and lost my whole long comment I was writing, so here is the short version. First, you misunderstand what I was talking about bread. When I was...
I just had a crash while looking something up and lost my whole long comment I was writing, so here is the short version.
First, you misunderstand what I was talking about bread. When I was talking about bread with bran, I was referring to whole wheat bread. There are even commercial breads that have additional fiber added to them, making them significantly "more healthy" than less processed homemade loaves.
Any food that does not poison you is healthy. The problem is that we eat so much of certain foods is that they become like poison. We westerners consume too much simple carbohydrates - specifically in the form of sugars - and that leads us to be fat and diabetic (and I think it also gives us heart problems, but I am not 100% on that). Outright banning food because they are "unhealthy" is reductive and unhelpful. After all, you can have a snack food diet with daily Twinkies and still lose weight.
Who is talking about banning unhealthy food? That is the opposite of what I said. Also, losing weight does not equal health. You can be starving to death and lose weight as well.
Who is talking about banning unhealthy food? That is the opposite of what I said.
Also, losing weight does not equal health. You can be starving to death and lose weight as well.
How do you know that "unprocessed" food is healthier? It seems like that depends on what it is? Maybe yogurt is better for you than organic free-range steak?
How do you know that "unprocessed" food is healthier? It seems like that depends on what it is? Maybe yogurt is better for you than organic free-range steak?
Neither of those things would commonly be considered a processed food. I'm referring to what this link calls 'ultra-processed food' : https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/processed-foods/
Well, okay, but to pick another example, I don't know whether Soylent or Ensure are more or less healthy than a salad, and I'm not sure anyone else knows either? It seems like it would require...
Well, okay, but to pick another example, I don't know whether Soylent or Ensure are more or less healthy than a salad, and I'm not sure anyone else knows either? It seems like it would require extensive scientific research, and a lot of nutrition studies turn out to be wrong.
I don't really think it's useful to ask if x is 'healthier' than y, because we need a whole variety of different things to be healthy. I think it's better to look at general dietary habits over...
I don't really think it's useful to ask if x is 'healthier' than y, because we need a whole variety of different things to be healthy. I think it's better to look at general dietary habits over time.
There are a lot of different ways to scientifically look for associations between products and health related disease. I think a big problem with food science journalism is that they report on the results of every individual study as though it is fact - when in reality, that is not what any kind of science is. Science is slowly building an understanding by doing different kinds of experiments in different contexts, to slowly establish knowledge.
Here are some things we do know : countries that eat less processed foods have less diet related illness, and as processed foods become more common in a society, so does diet related illnesses. People who eat traditional diets do not have as much diabetes or obesity. The association is clear, and it has been repeated in many different contexts. There have also been controlled studies done to prove causation.
Even if the exact mechanism isn't yet known, it is clear that processed foods are suspect and unprocessed foods are not - so the best conservative strategy is to just not eat (many) processed foods. Processed foods, as the newer introduction - should be considered unhealthy until proven otherwise. Instead of asking ourselves if we can prove that processed foods are unhealthy, we should be assuming that they are unhealthy until it is proven otherwise.
I must take issue with this line:
This statement is simply misleading, and is largely contradicted by the articles it links to as sources. The only way it could be argued as not being a lie would be to argue that it meant the CEO of Whole Foods stated he would personally pass on eating meatless meats. The article the statement links to notes that the CEO is a vegan, feels that meatless meat is better than meat and could serve as a transition for people, but doesn't like them by comparison to his own diet because he feels they are too processed. This view fits in with the elitism argument in the article, but the way it is stated is very misleading: Whole Foods itself sells quite a bit of meatless meat.
I swear people will find any reason to get angry at a product. This article does a good job at pointing out just some of the reasons these arguments are pointless. In fact, the majority of the arguments that people are trying to put out against meatless meat are nutrition based, and I find it particularly annoying how much everyone thinks they are an expert at nutrition. The reality is that we know very little about nutrition and how it affects humans in general and most of these arguments don't even reflect the science adequately.
I think the article rather clearly states that some of the nutrition concerns are not pointless (eg, "Impossible Whopper might help save the planet, but it’s still high calorie, greasy, and probably not a good idea to eat everyday.") The author also points out that he has written about this previously.
It is true that there are many things we don't know about nutrition, but that should not prevent us from discussing it, and does not mean that nothing is known. It's generally accepted that current plant-based meats, and particularly the foods in which they are used, are not necessarily healthier than their animal meat equivalents. This is, to some extent, by design, and future meatless meats will probably be even closer to meat nutritionally.
Older non-meat alternatives have tended to have significantly different nutritional properties than meat, and this presents some confusion for people who have not followed these recent trends. If people believe that meatless meats make foods much healthier, and, for example, eat far more burgers as a result, or view them as nutritionally being like vegetables, then that would be nutritionally problematic, and it is reasonable to point out that the goal of the products is not to be healthier.
The article makes the distinction here, between these concerns and the ambiguous concern that the products are too "processed" and therefore inherently bad.
I'm glad you pointed out this specific quote, because it's a perfect example of how dumb these arguments are:
You're absolutely right, but the discussions around what we know should be scientific in nature and they often are not.
The whole idea that previous meatless meats are healthier than meats is entirely unfounded and symptomatic of how little people actually understand nutritional science.
In fact, the very idea of grouping all meats together as a single entity and comparing it to a non meat identity is absurd. There is a huge difference in the nutritional profile when comparing one meat to another meat, even when both meats come from the same animal (different cuts).
It does, and I would have liked to see it go into more details on what we know about processed meats, as there are specific additives such as nitrites which are common in processed meat which we know to be harmful which are not present in the impossible and beyond meatless meats.
The main problem I had when I tried the meatless whopper was that I could taste the "liquid smoke" that they used to make it taste "char broiled". It tasted something like lighter fluid to be honest, it just very petroleum based solvent taste to it. I'm not sure that this flavor additive isn't also put in to the regular whopper though.
Suddenly becoming a nutrition expert is the most obnoxious thing whenever veganism or vegetarianism are mentioned. The majority of people I have met who argue against vegetarianism with the "you wont get enough protein" line or any other variant will shovel anything that tastes good into their mouths
I recently caught a cold - as I have dozens of times throughout my life - except now that I am a vegetarian, my mother brought up that it might be related to my food intake. You can get sick from not eating chicken? Or something?
It is very frustrating.
I thought you were going in another direction with this when I started reading your comment.
Likewise for preachy vegans and vegetarians—they eat a sufficient amount of vegetables for the first time in their lives and they seem to know everything about nutrition.
Oh, I can not agree more. There are maybe and handful of people I've met in my life who are obsessed enough about diet and health for me to understand their concerns for minor nutritional problems behind a vegetarian/vegan diet. Like you said, most people have pretty unhealthy diets, so the sudden concern for protein intake and micronutrients is very disingenuous.
Unfortunately the nutrition arguments probably stem from the same "HOW DARE SOMEONE LIKE SOMETHING I DON'T LIKE" emotions.
I'm so ready for lab-grown meat, I'm weirdly looking forward to it. Including the public backlash. It will be fun, no least because how obvious a development it is, long term.
This article raises some good points, and some terrible points. I agree that it is stupid to suddenly deem meatless burgers bad because they are mainstream, and I agree that it is probably for elitist reasons.
But some of their points are just ridiculous. For example, trying to argue that wine and yoghurt are processed food. I can make yoghurt in my kitchen. They might be technically correct, but the common usage of “processed food” refers to industrial tertiary processed food. This is just sloppy journalism, the distinction is pretty well known.
It is elitist and classist to look down on people because of mass market and mass produced food without considering social/geographic context. But that doesn’t make opposing that kind of food inherently classist and elitist.
Imo this is clearly a US argument, because nowhere floods their market with so much bad food, and then markets normal food as upmarket, as aggressively as the US does. It was a huge frustration for me when I was there that I couldn’t find decent food without feeling like I was a food wanker. (Also, most of the poorest people in the poorest countries just eat local fresh food, while imported processed products are viewed as a luxury item.).
Imo it is classist that bad food is made so cheap and accessible in the US, when good food is inaccessible to so many (eg. food deserts are a serious issue).
So yes, the author is right in that it’s dumb to get selectively critical about a meatless burger which provides a slightly better option in a fast food setting, but that doesn’t mean that all criticism of all fast food/processed food is meaningless.
I'm no food expert, but I think the author is saying (well, quoting some people saying) that "processed food" has no clear meaning that's relevant for nutrition. The system can certainly be criticized, but to do that we would need to figure out what's actually wrong with it.
But that might require a better understanding of what "good food" actually is than most of us have. Our knowledge of this is corrupted by unclear science, marketing, and myths.
It seems like the first step to knowledge is admitting what we don't know and being curious about figuring it out?
Here in the US, a big problem is that our government has failed to give it's people good health advice. This is because they publish guidelines with blatently false information in it, which is because agricultural groups have basically bribed their way into those recommendations. As a result, you may have heard about the "food pyramid", which recommends 6-11 servings of bread and grain products per day(!) and 2-3 servings of dairy. Thankfully they stopped using that and are now recommending "My Plate", but it's still very imbalanced and tells you to drink milk. Compare it with Harvard's Healthy Eating Plate, which is not influenced by business.
Harvard actually has an excellent resource on personal nutrition called The Nutrition Source, which I will recommend to anyone confused by all of the misinformation going around. If you don't know where to start, I would recommend starting at the "What should I eat?" section.
Those don't look bad, but they are just one source of nutrition advice of many, many out there. Before taking any nutrition advice, there's the question of why you should believe this one rather than someone else?
It's like diet, exercise, or self-help books. Many of them sound pretty great, but they can't all be right.
The reason why I recommended this particular source is because unlike most diet books out there, this one actually names sources for their advice. Furthermore it presents it's findings independently of any personally held theories or independent research. In other words, it gives advice like a real nutritionist would have instead of selling you on a "specialized" diet. It largely avoids weight loss and suggests what a healthy diet aught to look like - one that will help you avoid long-term health issues.
That being said, consulting an actual nutritionist is always going to give you the best advice because they can cater it to you.
I agree that there is a lot that we don't know, and I agree that processed food is not, as a rule, bad.
But here is what we do know: diets mostly consisting of "unprocessed" (and I mean industrial tertiary processing) are always healthier than diets with processed food. We can not engineer food via processing that is as healthy as unprocessed food. We don't need to know why it is bad to see the negative impact it has.
So generally speaking, avoiding processed food is a sensible step for health. I take issue with the author trying to argue against that, and implying that fresh food is elitist, and further confusing the argument by labelling yoghurt as a processed food.
The burgers don't need to be healthy to be good. They are burgers - was anyone actually expecting them to be healthy?
Depending on what you mean by "healthy", that statement is not true.
Let's take your standard loaf of commercially baked bread as an example. That should fit the description of an ultra-processed food because of all the additives. But did you know that many of these loaves add in extra vitamins? You can also purchase bread with seeds and nuts, giving heart-healthy monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Or you can even purchase loaves that have additional bran and other fiber sources added to make them less calorie-dense.
It has not been proven that artificially added vitamins have any health benefits. Also, having more vitamins is not automatically healthy - it’s only healthy if you’re not getting enough vitamins elsware. Once you get the required amount of vitamins your body just ignores any extra you eat.
Also, less-processed breads can also contain seeds so idk why that would be a comparison factor. And wholemeal bread (aka less processed bread) is naturally very high in fibre. Over processing bread just to re-add fibre seems needlessly wasteful.
And then, all in all, you need to prove that the health benefits of all those “health” additives (which you can easily get from unprocessed foods anyway) outweighs the health costs from the not-so-great additives.
Like I said, it depends on what you mean by healthy.
But honestly, you are moving the goalposts here a bit. Sure, you can get the health benefits from other foods, but the point is that we have come up with a superior bread. As far as I am aware, the only health risks of consuming commercial breads like this are the same risks as less processed breads (i.e. high in simple carbohydrates). So you get all the pros and no cons.
I want to point out that when I mention that you are moving the goalposts, I don't mean to say that you are being malicious in any way. The biggest problem with public health is that people drastically oversimplify what "healthy" means. We are complex machines, and therefore health is fundamentally multifaceted. Foods are not fundamentally healthy or unhealthy - it is our relationship to those foods that affects your health. A Twinkie every once in a while won't hurt you. A Twinkie every day will.
Ok I was kind of in a hurry for my last post so I didn't go into it, but less processed bread (ie wholegrain bread) is better for many reasons - for one, they don't have simple carbohydrates at all - they have complex carbohydrates. White bread has been processed more, so that nutritious parts of the grain are removed. It is favoured by industry because they can then re-sell the other parts of the grain. Wholegrain breads are naturally rich in vitamins and minerals.
Industrial breads also tend to contain a lot more sugar, oil, and salt to help preserve the bread for longer so it can be transported. Then they add some vitamin or whatever so they can put on the label that it's healthy. The health advice is pretty universal on this - there are a range of health benefits associated with whole grain bread (https://theconversation.com/multigrain-wholegrain-wholemeal-whats-the-difference-and-which-bread-is-best-89538).
Yes health is complicated, but being healthy doesn't have to be difficult. The fact is, traditional diets all over the world are more-or-less healthy - from vegetarian diets in Asia, to Inuit diets that are 90% animal protein, to Mediterranean diets high in oil - no one is experiencing heart disease and diabetes the way western countries do.
Being healthy is easy. We are complex machines, but we are omnivores who are very adaptable. So long as we get some of each of the major food groups, we will generally be fine if we stick to foods that have not been processed too much and exercise.
I'm not trying to shame anyone from enjoying unhealthy food every now and then - my stance from the start has been that the processed burgers are unhealthy but it's ok to be unhealthy sometimes. But I don't see why we need to call twinkies healthy just because they are ok to have occasionally. It's ok to have some unhealthy foods, but lets not kid ourselves over if they are healthy or not.
I just had a crash while looking something up and lost my whole long comment I was writing, so here is the short version.
First, you misunderstand what I was talking about bread. When I was talking about bread with bran, I was referring to whole wheat bread. There are even commercial breads that have additional fiber added to them, making them significantly "more healthy" than less processed homemade loaves.
Any food that does not poison you is healthy. The problem is that we eat so much of certain foods is that they become like poison. We westerners consume too much simple carbohydrates - specifically in the form of sugars - and that leads us to be fat and diabetic (and I think it also gives us heart problems, but I am not 100% on that). Outright banning food because they are "unhealthy" is reductive and unhelpful. After all, you can have a snack food diet with daily Twinkies and still lose weight.
Who is talking about banning unhealthy food? That is the opposite of what I said.
Also, losing weight does not equal health. You can be starving to death and lose weight as well.
How do you know that "unprocessed" food is healthier? It seems like that depends on what it is? Maybe yogurt is better for you than organic free-range steak?
Neither of those things would commonly be considered a processed food. I'm referring to what this link calls 'ultra-processed food' : https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/processed-foods/
Well, okay, but to pick another example, I don't know whether Soylent or Ensure are more or less healthy than a salad, and I'm not sure anyone else knows either? It seems like it would require extensive scientific research, and a lot of nutrition studies turn out to be wrong.
I don't really think it's useful to ask if x is 'healthier' than y, because we need a whole variety of different things to be healthy. I think it's better to look at general dietary habits over time.
There are a lot of different ways to scientifically look for associations between products and health related disease. I think a big problem with food science journalism is that they report on the results of every individual study as though it is fact - when in reality, that is not what any kind of science is. Science is slowly building an understanding by doing different kinds of experiments in different contexts, to slowly establish knowledge.
Here are some things we do know : countries that eat less processed foods have less diet related illness, and as processed foods become more common in a society, so does diet related illnesses. People who eat traditional diets do not have as much diabetes or obesity. The association is clear, and it has been repeated in many different contexts. There have also been controlled studies done to prove causation.
Even if the exact mechanism isn't yet known, it is clear that processed foods are suspect and unprocessed foods are not - so the best conservative strategy is to just not eat (many) processed foods. Processed foods, as the newer introduction - should be considered unhealthy until proven otherwise. Instead of asking ourselves if we can prove that processed foods are unhealthy, we should be assuming that they are unhealthy until it is proven otherwise.
Here are some specific studies:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29642958
https://www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l1949
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-finds-heavily-processed-foods-cause-overeating-weight-gain