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As a vegetarian for well over a decade, I've always said the same thing. Meat isn't nearly as egregiously unhealthy as it's panned if at all. Processed foods, e
by monopoliessuck 4y ago
As a vegetarian for well over a decade, I've always said the same thing. Meat isn't nearly as egregiously unhealthy as it's panned if at all. Processed foods, excessive simple carbohydrates and sugars are the main evils in the kitchen, but there are a variety of reasons to eat less meat too.
There's nuance in all of this. People sympathetic to American consumption patterns will probably see science and explanations like this as some kind of endorsement of their diet. Nutritional science is still in its infancy and we'll be waffling on the specifics for decades to come, especially if food companies have a vested interest in funding studies.
Another data point. Just eat minimally processed whole foods as often as possible, diversify your plate and moderate your intake. I think people are too hyper focused on the "super" and "evil" quality of foods and we end up stuck in the margins bike-shedding the minutia.
- legulere 4y agoI start to wonder if you can eat with too much variety as well. People tend to eat more when there's more variety (low-carb and potato-only diets work mostly by making you bored of eating).
- kritiko 4y agoThe slime mold guys are currently testing the hypothesis that the potassium in potatoes is why the potato monodiet works… The mechanism of diets isn’t understood yet - check out Kevin Hall’s metabolic ward study of low fat high carb vs. high fat low carb for some paradoxical results. I’d be happy finding a diet that consistently works for people before understanding how.
- CadmiumYellow 4y agoKevin Hall also did a fascinating study on ultra-processed vs less processed foods which found that people ate more and gained more weight on ultra-processed foods even when the two diets were identical in macronutrient composition! I would guess that the main reason dramatically different diets show similar levels of effectiveness is that all of them involve drastically limiting intake of ultra-processed foods. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7946062/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7946062/
- tapanjk 4y ago> Just eat minimally processed whole foods as often as possible ... Fully agree with your take except for "eat [...] as often as possible" part. For instance, intermittent fasting is effective exactly because of not eating often.
- jjulius 4y agoI don't think "often" means "as much as you can during the day", I think it means to try to have that kind of food at each meal/snack as often as you can.
- jasonjmcghee 4y agoparent comment very likely meant "[when choosing a meal] eat [...] as often as possible", not recommending eating constantly throughout the day
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- Mtinie 4y agoI understood the comment to mean, “when given the choice between minimally processed whole foods and highly processed packaged foods, pick the former as often as possible,” not “eat frequently.”
- mark_l_watson 4y agoI agree with you “Processed foods, excessive simple carbohydrates and sugars are the main evils in the kitchen, but there are a variety of reasons to eat less meat too.” I like to eat red meat two or three times a month: tasty and I think some red meat is healthy for me. I avoid any packaged food except I am too lazy to always make homemade bread. +1 for shopping for fresh vegetables, fruits, berries, whole grains, beans,… Really, the main center parts of grocery stores where everything is in plastic or boxes really needs to be avoided. As a substitute for packaged deserts, making a pancake and berries is pretty good.
- autotune 4y agoMy breakfast these days is usually a few pieces of bacon and oatmeal. I am happy and still managing to burn off weight with that combo.
- s0rce 4y agoMaybe we have different definitions of bacon but isn't it heavily "processed"? Its cured with nitrates and salt/sugar and smoked.
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- Taywee 4y agoDepends on the bacon. You can get uncured bacon without any added nitrates or flavorings at all.
- bboylen 4y agoSorry to burst your bubble but "uncured" bacon is a sham They add celery powder instead of nitrates, so they can claim "nitrate free". However, the celery powder just decomposes into nitrates, achieving the same effect https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-uncured-bacon-illusion-its-actually-cured-and-its-not-better-for-you/2019/04/19/0c89630c-608c-11e9-9ff2-abc984dc9eec_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-uncured-ba...
- ravenstine 4y ago> [...] there are a variety of reasons to eat less meat too. Could you provide some examples?
- consp 4y agoI would argue carbon footprint (which is huge) or methane emissions.
- b112 4y agoBoth are only relevant if you grain feed, instead of allowing animals to graze on grass. For example, let's say we remove cattle from the rolling, rocky hills of Quebec. We let the land go fallow, back to nature. Ok, now endless deer, bison, moose, groundhogs, and endless other critters do a horrible thing. They eat, and they fart. When people complain about meat, and carbon, they are complaining about the worst part of it. Much of the world does not dump fertilizer on land, grow crop, and feed it to cattle. It is very unfair to lump this all together, especially in a thread about people taking extreme positions.
- s0rce 4y agoIs that representative, there are areas in California where grazing was eliminated and they are not overrun with other grazing animals and beautiful meadows and creeks have begun to recover.
- barbazoo 4y ago> only relevant if you grain feed, instead of allowing animals to graze on grass. What's the percentage of grass fed vs grain? From a shallow search it seems like it's low single digits yet I see this argument come up a lot. Do you have different numbers perhaps?
- danielbln 4y agoAccording to the National Council for Animal Protection, over 99% of beef farmed for meat comes from cows that live in horrific factory farm environments. Does the remaining 1% matter all that much in the conversation?
- SapporoChris 4y agoThere has to be somewhere in the spectrum a company that processes food and it ends up being superior. In fact, I bet it's more prevalent than you expect. I did a few searches. Turns out there are benefits to food processing. Inactivation of toxins seems like a big plus to me. Improved nutrition, seems good. Yes, many processed foods are of nutritionally poor value, but please don't label all processed food as being bad.
- eduction 4y agoThis is a great point. "Processed food" is an incredibly broad category that is being somewhat demonized at the moment (not saying any comments here do this). According to this Mayo Clinic quotation of USDA, processed food includes anything dried, frozen, canned, or mixed. https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/processed-foods-what-you-should-know https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speak... I don't think (and am guessing most would agree) canned tomatoes are particularly harmful food, nor are frozen blueberries or fish, nor are dried raisins when I'm putting them in oats. It's a spectrum. With my kids, dried mangoes make me slightly guilty because I know they are pretty high in sugar, albeit natural sugar. Most people would be more wary of frozen chicken nuggets. Some more specificity around what makes processed foods harmful, from the science and science comms communities, would be helpful.
- victor106 4y agoUsing the word “canned” is meaningless. Canned sardines/mackerel is super healthy and minimally processed. Just like canned beans, canned tomatoes, canned corn..etc
- docandrew 4y agoDepends on the food - something like acorns, for example, they are inedible for humans in their whole form, but hulling, grinding the nuts, and rinsing them of tannins makes a tasty nutritious flour. The word “processed” is kind of a lazy heuristic - butchering, cooking, hulling, mixing, those are all ways of processing that are healthy and effective. Creating something like a Twinkie is a whole different ballgame and looks more like a triumph of chemical engineering and material science than anything related to baking or cooking.
- greyhair 4y ago> Just eat minimally processed whole foods as often as possible, diversify your plate and moderate your intake. If you highly diversify your diet, if any one thing is 'bad' for you, you are by your actions, reducing your exposure to it. As far as processed foods, there are different forms of 'processing'. For example, canned vegetables are pretty minimally processed. Cured sausages are more highly processed, and nacho cheese doritos are really highly processed.
- bergenty 4y agoIt doesn’t get less processed than a fresh red meat steak.
- rubicon33 4y agoI’ve found a simple rule of thumb that works for me: Nature has a way of limiting how much of a certain substance you can consume. By simply eating less processed foods, you’re eating more in line with what the human body expects historically. Take oils for example. It requires immense pressure and processing, only available in the Industrial Age, to produce the quantitates of certain oils. We consume way more oil than ever expected. Sugar is in the same boat. Ground wheat is kinda too… The more processing the worse it is for you, as a general rule of thumb. So yea, eat Whole Foods when you can!
- beebmam 4y ago> Nature has a way of limiting how much of a certain substance you can consume. Is your belief that "Nature" is an actor which can (intentionally or unintentionally) limit human consumption? Or are you saying something more like: "there's a physical limit to how much air a human can breathe in a day"?
- yellowpencil 4y agoNot op - think it’s more along the lines of “humans evolved with nature as a constraint” and industrialization has the ability to remove that constraint.
- leereeves 4y agoI think it's a figurative way of saying that our tastes developed in a natural environment where the things we crave (mainly sugar and fat) were limited and packaged in healthier forms (fruits, nuts, meat).
- aardvarkr 4y agoOil wasn’t as hard to come by as you’d expect. Think of butter, animal fat, olive oil, seed oils, etc. It’s nowhere near as hard to make as you seem to think. The first recorded history of deep frying is from 2500 BCE. Wheat too was in our diets long ago with the first recorded use in 32,000 BCE. Sugar was 8,000 BCE.
- fowkswe 4y agoMichael Pollan said it best: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
- heather45879 4y agoUnfortunately food is religion to many folks. They will die defending their precious food choices. The problem with articles like this is that it’s designed to be an echo chamber of denialism. The key to being healthy is good diet. Good diet means good ingredients. Most animals are treated like crap and fed crap too—save for a few small-scale producers. If you want to eat meat do yourself (and everyone having to hear these discussions) a favor: visit a high quality Kobe cattle ranch and see how they treat the animals. Then visit a large-scale farm (tip: you might need top-secret clearance) which provides the majority of beef products to the USA. Compare the difference… Garbage in = garbage out.
- km3r 4y agoIs there any research to back up that treating cattle better improves the nutrition of beef?
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y agoIt's well known that cattle kept inside ends up with much lower Vitamin D content in milk & meat. Not sure about other nutrients.
- WillPostForFood 4y agoThere is research to support it. It makes sense as well. If your human diet affects your health/nutrition/body composition, animal diet should affect their health/nutrition/body composition. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/14423473.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/14423473.pdf
- gruez 4y agoNot the person you replied to, but I think "animal's diet affects their nutrition" is pretty obvious. For instance, the "omega 3" eggs you see at the supermarket are produced by feeding the chicken a high omega 3 diet. That itself isn't really interesting. The real question is whether going through all that trouble is worth it. In other words, is it better/more cost effective to buy the higher quality animal products at the supermarket (eg. omega 3 eggs) or buy the regular stuff and pop a multivitamin? For omega 3 eggs at least, the answer is the latter. I'd be interested in seeing how it works out for beef.
- orangepurple 4y agoBesides the obvious problem of WHAT should I eat there is the problem of HOW MUCH should I eat. And in general we eat too much volume wise AND at inappropriate times relative to our circadian rhythm. CLOCK genes exist! And eating changes your genetic expression.
- lolinder 4y agoYou're obviously right that processed foods are far worse, but the study the article cites[0] doesn't say what the article says it does, not at all. The article deliberately misconstrues the phrase "weak evidence" to mean that the authors are attacking the past studies, when in fact they're just saying more research needs to be done. Here's the opening paragraph of the Discussion section: > We evaluated the relationship between unprocessed red meat consumption and six selected disease outcomes following implementation of a meta-analytic approach. We found that unprocessed red meat intake had weak evidence of an association with increased risk of colorectal cancer, breast cancer, IHD and type 2 diabetes and no evidence of an association with ischemic stroke and hemorrhagic stroke. In other words, given all the data available on red meat intake and risk of a subsequent outcome, we estimate that consuming unprocessed red meat across an average range of exposure levels increases the risk of subsequent colorectal cancer, breast cancer, IHD and type 2 diabetes at least slightly compared to eating no red meat (by at least 6%, 3%, 1% and 1%, respectively). [0] Full text here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01968-z#Sec2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01968-z#Sec2
- notSupplied 4y agoSadly, news articles always grossly exaggerate research results. "We found weak evidence of ..." becomes "New study ABSOLUTELY DESTROYS the myth that..."
- themitigating 4y ago"The new study is climbing the ropes, oh my God what is he going to do, ohh he just jumped on the old studies, oh the humanity "
- cogman10 4y ago> You're obviously right that processed foods are far worse I see this claim semi frequently online. So I'll just ask. What is meant by "processed"? What does it mean to be "worse" (Worse than meat? Regular foods?) What is meant by "whole foods"? And finally, what's the evidence for these assertions? Is black tea a processed food? How about coffee grounds? When does something cross the rubric of processed vs unprocessed? To me, it's not obvious that "processed is bad" particularly because I don't know what "processed" means. As a side, how do fortified foods fit in with processed foods? Iodine in salt, for example, has been a huge public health success. Goiters have practically been eliminated as a result.
- diob 4y agoI'm not a vegetarian either, but like you I prefer straight forward foods. Breakfast for me is eggs, avo, toast, some light veggies (spinach, other leafy stuff). Tasty, probably alright for me. I'm not good at the diversify part though . . . I tend to eat this every day :)
- monopoliessuck 4y agoI'm unsure by your wording, but I am a vegetarian in case that's what you mean by "either" - over a decade and still ongoing. Not very important, but I just wanted to clarify. Your breakfast sounds tasty. I don't blame you for having it often. :+1:
- hawski 4y agoI lately wonder about Japanese or Italian cuisine. Those nations are around the top for longevity of life - at least some specific parts of the population. If the diet has a significant part in this I have a silly theory: they make their food relatively simple and quick, but very tasty. I would even say that Japanese cuisine is for making vegetables delicious for example. I do recognize I probably don't know nearly enough.
- mr_johnson22 4y agoMaybe the secret is fish-based diets.
- cactus2093 4y ago"Processed Foods" is another vague, exaggerated boogeyman though. For one thing I don't think most people would even agree on what foods count as processed and are bad. Some people are talking about everything except fresh vegetables, some people are talking about specifically industrially-processed food but would say the exact same recipe followed at home (minus a couple of preservatives) is perfectly fine, some people are specifically against fast food but might think canned foods are fine. Large blood sugar spikes after a meal are what is bad for you, but this a more nuanced equation of things like glycemic load of the food (which is as much a factor of quantity eaten as it is glycemic index), genetics, and level of exercise. It's not as simple as just saying all processed food is always bad, for instance after a hard workout simple carbohydrates are not just ok but actively good for you, and ideally most people should be doing a hard workout multiple times per week. Some other components of processed food like excessive salt can be bad, as is the fact that they often push out more micronutrient-rich foods from your diet. But it kind of strikes me as the abstinence-only approach to dietary advice. People love the taste of processed foods, I think we'd do better to encourage eating responsibly overall than insisting on avoiding processed foods altogether. And it's possible to be very healthy while eating a significant amount of processed foods.
- anm89 4y agoI disagree on this point all though I think the term is vague. If I grill a steak and then chop it up into pieces i have "processed" it. This isn't what anyone is talking about when they say processed foods though. If I chop up several different types of meat, add several different colorants, fillers, perservatives and whatever else, turn it all into a slurry and then reconsistute it into a spam loaf, I think there are a lot of good reasons to believe this is ineherently unhealthy, the most simple being that its really easy to dump in a bunch of sugar and extra fats.
- cactus2093 4y agoIf you want to claim that coloring or preservatives are bad, then just make that claim instead of the more vague "processed foods".
- mritchie712 4y ago> diversify The conventional wisdom says you should have variety in your diet, but it's unclear to me why that's "good" and I've never seen research on it.
- taurusnoises 4y agoAnd yet, from the position of my armchair and the handful of books on my shelf, history has shown that a monodiet (relative to the modern, diversified western diet, at least) is not only sustainable, but has been the backbone of the human diet for thousands of years.
- raarts 4y agoI think common wisdom says this is the best way to get all the vitamins and minerals your body needs.
- angarg12 4y agoAfter living in England for a while, this year we finally moved to the US. Although I have never been too athletic, I've put on 5-7 KG since we moved, and I can't shed them off. We are mostly eating the same as before, and in fact I'm more active than I was over there. There isn't much point to this comment other than the flabbergasting anecdote of how eating roughly the same diet in different countries can have markedly different effect in your health.
- jstarfish 4y agoDiet can have different effect across different states in the US too. California doesn't (seem to) use the same types of lard and oils that you'd find in Georgia, judging by cholesterol issues that self-resolved without change in diet or exercise.
- nradov 4y agoEating cholesterol has very little impact on the cholesterol levels in your body. https://peterattiamd.com/the-straight-dope-on-cholesterol-part-i/ https://peterattiamd.com/the-straight-dope-on-cholesterol-pa...
- HDThoreaun 4y agoI find that portions are generally bigger in the US. Especially if you're not in California easy to eat the same stuff but just have a bigger plate.
- CadmiumYellow 4y agoLook carefully at the ingredients list on any packaged foods you're buying. Many things contain sugar in the US when the equivalent product in Europe does not. A particularly insidious example is pre-made broth/stock: nearly every single product on the shelves at my local grocery store contains unnecessary sugar. Same goes for canned beans and salad dressings. Doing your due diligence when buying packaged foods is an unfortunate necessity if you live in the US and want to stay healthy. God, I miss grocery shopping in France!!
- kennend3 4y ago
- nkrisc 4y ago> Just eat minimally processed whole foods as often as possible, diversify your plate and moderate your intake. I think this is really the most important thing anyone can do. Not directed at you at all or at anything you said, but I dislike the term "vegetarian" in general. It suggests a binary diet: either you eat meat, or you don't. Someone who never eats meat and someone who eats meat once a month have essentially the same diet. It makes little sense to distinguish one as vegetarian and one as not. The pervasive idea that you could eat no meat for years and that somehow taking a bit of meat makes you "not vegetarian" anymore is kind of ridiculous. I won't get into it but the concept of "sobriety" often falls into the same trap. That's not to say there's anything wrong with choosing to not eat any meat products (or not drink any alcohol), it's got nothing to do with the choices people make for themselves, simply how we discuss it. I think the terms "vegetarian" and "vegan" are only useful as descriptors of food: whether it contains meat or any animal products at all. But categorizing people as "vegetarian" or "vegan" is absurd and counter-productive.
- sweetheart 4y agoVeganism is a moral philosophy, so it really _only_ makes sense to use that term when referring to people. "Vegan" food is short-hand for "plant-based" food. Food does not subscribe to moral ideals, only people do. It's unfortunate that the difference between those terms has been so muddied with time, but it's an important distinction.
- bacan 4y agoWhat is "processed foods"? Isn't bread a heavily processed food? Is somehow making it at home magically healthier than it being made in a factory? What about whole wheat bread from a factory vs white bread at home? Which one is healthier? Or are you trying to say that bread is somehow unhealthy? Even though it is staple eaten by literally everyone across the world in someway, shape or form. Terms like this destroy the credibility of "food research" and I find it hard to trust any dietary guidance. Specially after the whole fat & sugar debacle
- trebor 4y agoCompare a hand-made loaf of bread to one from the grocery store. Count the number of ingredients. The hand-made loaf is usually made from flour, with water, oil, and leavening. If you buy unprocessed flour that makes 4 or 5 ingredients as a base. A store bought, whole wheat loaf of bread contains roughly 16 ingredients. The home-made loaf doesn't contain preservatives because it won't need to sit on a shelf for a prolonged period. The home-made loaf can use higher quality/purity ingredients than you will find in the grocery store in the USA. White bread is worse. Not all bread is made the same. Not all bread ingredients are the same. Those individual ingredients can be processed as well. The more processing on the ingredients and end product, the more "processed" a food is. I'm not even touching "highly processed" or "ultra-processed" foods in this short post.