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Gahmah posted:You're arguments sound similar to "why don't poors just get better jobs" Helsing. What similarities do you see exactly? In the mid to long term I think the best way to improve health outcomes would be higher wages, shorter working hours and communities that aren't oriented around car ownership. In the short term I think some kind of mandatory home economics class in high school probably wouldn't be the worst thing but I tend to view health problems as being more of a byproduct of economic forces rather than individual ignorance.
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Mar 28, 2016 23:35
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This, but instead of having it taught by some frumpy old bag that reeks of cigarettes in a lovely high school "kitchen", make it a one week cooking boot-camp at a professional culinary school run by an actual chef. That's the lion's share of how I learned to cook, and why I'm more adventurous when it comes to making new dishes than my parents. EDIT: I don't have fond memories of my Jr. High home-ec teacher.
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Mar 28, 2016 23:41
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Helsing posted:Do you have any familiarity with these debates at all? The definition of "Processed food" isn't exactly obscure and the fact you're acting like it's some kind of ambiguous or airy word is making me suspect that you don't have even a passing familiarity with basic nutritional guidelines. You also don't appear to know what a "contradiction" actually is (you're accusing him of being redundant, not contradictory, but that's a whole other issue). quote:You don't appear to have anything of interest to say about the actual science of nutrition and frankly even your language games are subpar. quote:Well, first of all, I really admire your willingness to stake out a position that amounts to: "we're stuck in a veil of radical ignorance and can't really make any strong or binding statement about nutrition". I'll point out that nobody else has been honest enough to say anything like that. Instead twodot and Discendo Vox are implicitly presenting themselves as higher authorities than actual medical professionals and I find that quite silly. If they were simply saying "you know the science of nutrition is in it's infancy and we just can't know much about healthy eating" then I'd have more respect for them, even if I didn't entirely agree. What I find ridiculous is that they're doing this very typical form of nerd-arguing where you take on an authoritative tone and hope the other person will be intimidated enough to stop arguing, even though there's very little substantive argument to support any of your points. quote:And one thing that the data seems to repeatedly reveal, and which I don't think any serious experts dispute, is that you should be very diligent about what kind of additives are contained in the processed food that you purchase. If the processed food in question is just a bag of chopped and frozen veggies for a stir fry or pasteurized milk then you're fine but if you're buying canned food or microwavable meals or various types of meat then you should really pay attention to what is on the label. In other words: because of everything we know about how food companies make and sell food, anything processed should make you stop for a moment and examine the label. This is totally reasonable and sound advice.
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Mar 28, 2016 23:55
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Helsing posted:What similarities do you see exactly? It was presented without, well the part you just followed up with. I agree with you, and can now cook regularly since I work an office job for only 8 hours a day. Classes would be good, as cooking, like math, can make a great many people anxious. Cooking bulk or even just a variety of meals takes a lot of practice and took me several months to adjust to in scheduling my routine around it such that I could stick to it along with personal fitness. When I was making less money and had less time, it was more difficult to plan out and purchase recipes, compared to say grabbing some packaged good that were easy to plan out how long they would last me from paycheck to paycheck. Now that I have practice with it it's very manageable, but I had the cash and time to blow on it only very recently, I can see how certain habits would get ingrained from more demanding periods in one's life.
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Mar 28, 2016 23:57
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A large part of this seems to be definition versus practical. I think everyone gets at this point that "processing" isn't inherently bad but it still may be the case that "processed foods" are on average worse for health. If so, guidelines suggesting you should reduce processed foods are in-fact, somewhat useful (or insert whatever else term is being argued here with "processed"). I think most people also get that not everything at Whole Foods is better and you don't have to pay $11 for unpasteurized or whatever milk to eat healthy. I feel like if these two things are acknowledged half this food debate could end. As a further aside though I take exception with anyone who's pushing cooking too hard. Not everyone enjoys it. Personally I can't be bothered. I'll spend time making a cocktail but when it comes to food I can barely be bothered to spread butter on bread before just eating it to end that hunger thing and get back to whatever more important thing I was doing (perhaps something that isn't made, destroyed and forgotten all in the same evening).
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Mar 29, 2016 00:09
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asdf32 posted:A large part of this seems to be definition versus practical. I think everyone gets at this point that "processing" isn't inherently bad but it still may be the case that "processed foods" are on average worse for health. If so, guidelines suggesting you should reduce processed foods are in-fact, somewhat useful (or insert whatever else term is being argued here with "processed"). Oh my God thank you, this. It's a rule of thumb for consumers, because typically prepared foods like microwave dinners, bags of chips, fast food, etc have a lot of sugar and salt added along with fats that make them calorically dense so that it's easy to eat too many calories without feeling full. Nothing about the definition of "processing" requires it to be that way, but since it typically is, and shoppers typically don't have time to intensively research every food, it's a useful and uncomplicated rule people can use to improve their habits and get better outcomes with a minimum of extra work. Even something as simple as throwing a salad together as an appetizer before your microwave pizza dinner makes it more likely one will eat more ideal portions and calories. But no let's spend 5 pages on pointless semantic arguments that slicing that tomato for your salad is processing.
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Mar 29, 2016 06:24
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Helsing posted:In the short term I think some kind of mandatory home economics class in high school probably wouldn't be the worst thing but I tend to view health problems as being more of a byproduct of economic forces rather than individual ignorance. I think this would help a lot (do any schools still do home ec?), and don't underestimate the number of people who are completely unprepared when it comes to cooking. Most of my friends growing up were in families where the vegetable side dish at dinner, if there was one, was something like boiled broccoli with slices of American cheese on top, or tater tots with slices of American cheese on top, or boiled peas with slices of American cheese on top. When you don't know how to boil an egg, just going to Arby's for dinner seems really appealing.
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Mar 29, 2016 06:37
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Magic Hate Ball posted:I think this would help a lot (do any schools still do home ec?), and don't underestimate the number of people who are completely unprepared when it comes to cooking. Most of my friends growing up were in families where the vegetable side dish at dinner, if there was one, was something like boiled broccoli with slices of American cheese on top, or tater tots with slices of American cheese on top, or boiled peas with slices of American cheese on top. When you don't know how to boil an egg, just going to Arby's for dinner seems really appealing. The actual mechanics of cooking aren't that difficult (otherwise a lot more people would've starved to death historically). Like sticking stuff into a pot of water and keeping it warm for a few hours isn't quite caveman level, but it's pretty close. If anything is the limiting factor it's probably lack of time and lack of available resources (primarily equipment, though ingredients too). Lack of information is also possible but these days you can type "How to cook ____" and get a million different step by step instructions.
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Mar 29, 2016 06:48
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Helsing posted:Well, first of all, I really admire your willingness to stake out a position that amounts to: "we're stuck in a veil of radical ignorance and can't really make any strong or binding statement about nutrition". I'll point out that nobody else has been honest enough to say anything like that. Instead twodot and Discendo Vox are implicitly presenting themselves as higher authorities than actual medical professionals and I find that quite silly. If they were simply saying "you know the science of nutrition is in it's infancy and we just can't know much about healthy eating" then I'd have more respect for them, even if I didn't entirely agree. What I find ridiculous is that they're doing this very typical form of nerd-arguing where you take on an authoritative tone and hope the other person will be intimidated enough to stop arguing, even though there's very little substantive argument to support any of your points. praise from caesar.  it should really be the default position when it comes to behavior. I sympathize with dvox and twodot here and may be giving more benefit of the doubt than is owed on the tone, because personally, I have to admit that I don't know how to make the case (in general) for "radical ignorance" without coming off like I know what's really what. which is the opposite of the point you're trying to make with radical ignorance, and you can't go all out without turning the discussion into a technical methodology debate or saying mean things like "you're not competent to evaluate that" (= "it would take an excessive and prohibitive amount of time for me to articulate this to you/I would have to reveal my real credentials/etc"). i guess if I were dvox I would go and find any of the vast number of medical critiques of "junk food" and "processed food" terminology, but ultimately, debate can only move forward when we start with what we actually know, not what we think we know or wish we knew. Helsing posted:I think you can levy some intelligent criticisms against nutrition science. Just look at the changing opinions on the value of fibre or the recent reversal on dietary cholesterol or certain forms of dietary fat. These all give us reasons to be cautious. this is a very dangerous rabbit hole that I absolutely will not follow you down, and really handwaves away the criticism against you in some sense. making inferences based on invalid or incomplete data is, in my mind, certainly worse than making decisions based on no data at all. (i can't remember how controversial this is to non-statisticians, but take my word or don't, I guess.) of course, you're not really looking at the data in the sense of the actual empirical observations here, anyway. you're looking at very vague, very weak inferences about individual behavior, based on extrapolations from the nutrition or mean outcome data. that's a different beast. assuming I won't give you that current nutrition science is fundamentally reliable and accurate for purposes of making inferences about individual behavior, I don't see what there is for me to go on here. when the available data you're presenting me with is essentially anecdotal (garbage in -> garbage out, you can have a billion observations and still only have anecdotal evidence, etc), then it is rational to ignore it and irrational to include it. what Discendo Vox is trying to do, from where i'm standing, is essentially saying that your appeal to authority isn't cutting it; show, don't tell, that "junk food" is a meaningful term. show, don't tell, how it helps inform eating behavior. and I'm hoping you'll realize that it doesn't, and give up the game of piling up more of the same bad evidence. (or, better yet, convince me you're right.) Helsing posted:I feel like the more one actually looks at the specific and detailed advice on offer, the harder it is to object. Are you really going to dispute that 11 grain bread is overall healthier than wonder bread? Do you really think it's bad advice to eat a lot of fresh fruit and green vegetables, when this food is known to be both satiating and filled with micro-nutrients? we could start to really get into the nettles of studies suggesting this and that, but it would be a technical quagmire that most posters aren't competent to engage in, and we'd just end up at radical ignorance anyway. except we'd actually get bored long before that, because you'd never run out of studies, obviously. why don't you pick the single best set of publications or other support you can find to support the terms you're using, and then dvox/twodot can pick it apart, and then we can get this over with? I personally think you have to do a lot better than "it was used in a peer reviewed paper, ergo, qed," though. generally speaking, the impact of the replication crisis in the life and social sciences on general discourse is a really interesting issue that comes up in a lot of threads. well, because I bring it up, sometimes, but still. so much discourse on the internet implicitly relies on the assumption that peer reviewed studies are solid enough to be actionable. that is very, very wrong. i've been trying to write a thread on this for like two years, but I am a bad thread-writer and I just don't have time to curate one anyway, so I mostly end up sniping a little here and there. Zodium fucked around with this message at 10:42 on Mar 29, 2016 |
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Mar 29, 2016 10:38
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Zodium posted:generally speaking, the impact of the replication crisis in the life and social sciences on general discourse is a really interesting issue that comes up in a lot of threads. well, because I bring it up, sometimes, but still. so much discourse on the internet implicitly relies on the assumption that peer reviewed studies are solid enough to be actionable. that is very, very wrong. i've been trying to write a thread on this for like two years, but I am a bad thread-writer and I just don't have time to curate one anyway, so I mostly end up sniping a little here and there. Hopefully people will finally understand that SIGNIFICANCE!!! PUBLISH!!!11!!11!1!!!! is not gospel truth, especially without there being additional studies in support.
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Mar 29, 2016 11:52
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Helsing, Zodium is telling you why you're deeply wrong nicely, others are doing it more harshly. Whichever way it's presented to you, it's still wrong. Nutritional science is not at a level where we can draw a ton of inferences from it. The past decade or so has mostly been learning that our old, confident, highly moralistic views were wrong, and that we can't make a lot of the connections we thought. It wouldn't matter if the snack food you had available to everyone to eat in your vending machines was natural-as-gently caress nuts or cups of black bean soup, the only thing that we can confidently say matters is calorie consumption. For example, the bans on sodas in various forms is silly because most people switch to drinking milk, which is super-high calorie, or fruit juice, which is super high calorie and fructose so actually just as bad for developing type II. Individual-level behavior policing looks like the low-hanging fruit of public health but it's actually really, really hard to address in many areas, especially those areas most associated with class, stress, and pleasure. If you want to go after that low-hanging fruit, it is dumb as a box of rocks to go after 'nutrition' when we don't have solid science. What you should do is promote activity, exercise, walking places, because that both has extremely solid science backing it up, and small gains and improvements still have a massive effect. If you do want to go after food, then there is one meaningful metric: calorie content, and pretty much only two ways to get people to reduce that: portion size reduction and frequency of eating reduction, both of which are mostly cultural values and not individual, anyway. It is sad, but true, that people with your moralistic views tend to derail any policy-level discussion--though OP poisoned the well in this case by assuming that individual-level waste was a good target. As far as food waste goes, 'processed foods' (which by your mix of definitions are just preserved foods) are less-wasted than fresh foods, for relatively obviously reasons (i.e. they're preserved). Communal cooking, biodigesters, refrigeration units, an improved distribution network, all of these would be cool things to talk about. I like biodigesters quite a lot myself, because they keep things on-site and reinforce the idea that 'waste' doesn't exist, that anything we're throwing out can be repurposed. You can put them in buildings, too, where in urban areas they are a lot more good than recommending individual composting because that requires an entire transportation system to be added, and it's really easy to contaminate compost in a way that makes using it unhealthy, too. blowfish posted:Hopefully people will finally understand that SIGNIFICANCE!!! PUBLISH!!!11!!11!1!!!! is not gospel truth, especially without there being additional studies in support. In Public Health anyway there is a big, big push to look at effect size instead, but that to me, while an improvement, is going to lead to some problems too. And yeah we need to publish negative results with the same enthusiasm but that's a big cultural shift. I actually think that China could do the world a huge service by slowing down their attempts to do envelope-pushing research (where they have a ridiculously bad rate of success and a lot of fraud) and just attempting to replicate experiments and disproving a lot of poo poo that is accepted because one paper had an alpha of .0001. Zodium posted:
That would be a good thread if done well; I worry about that sort of thing in the public consciousness being hijacked into "Turns out science might be wrong about everything!" But the amount of wasted time and effort in science, both hard and soft, working off of assumptions that turn out to have been based in papers citing papers all the way back to one poorly operationalizing paper from the 70s sucks. Obdicut fucked around with this message at 12:07 on Mar 29, 2016 |
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Mar 29, 2016 12:03
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Obdicut posted:That would be a good thread if done well; I worry about that sort of thing in the public consciousness being hijacked into "Turns out science might be wrong about everything!" But the amount of wasted time and effort in science, both hard and soft, working off of assumptions that turn out to have been based in papers citing papers all the way back to one poorly operationalizing paper from the 70s sucks. And it's not just in the social sciences. For example, one heavily cited older key freshwater ecology paper about organisms compensating for drift in rivers by actively moving upriver contains some dumb let's-extrapolate-from-n=1 poo poo along the lines of "I observed one shrimp moving for 30 minutes".
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Mar 29, 2016 12:56
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Obdicut posted:It is sad, but true, that people with your moralistic views tend to derail any policy-level discussion--though OP poisoned the well in this case by assuming that individual-level waste was a good target. FWIW I have no part in the nutrition derail - that was not the purpose of posting this thread. I was tired of posters railing against corporations for WASTING ARE FOOD when a) the statistics suggest the supply chain is pretty efficient and b) there are numerous efforts to reduce or redirect waste at every step in the chain, so I thought "let's put the facts together and maybe people will shut up about it."
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Mar 29, 2016 13:15
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wateroverfire posted:FWIW I have no part in the nutrition derail - that was not the purpose of posting this thread. Focusing on individual-level behavior seems to make sense because if you get someone to successfully change it has a huge effect, but in the actual, real world, it is very difficult to enact a campaign that gets people to change behavior, especially if it is highly culturally bound up, like food and eating are. So if you want to talk about affecting the individual you need to talk about affecting the culture. Most of the food waste at the individual level comes from it being wasted before its used or leftovers, and the only real way to culturally affect that would be more communal living and eating. So, addressing the supply chain is still what makes the most sense, because it's by far the easiest target.
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Mar 29, 2016 13:27
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Obdicut posted:Focusing on individual-level behavior seems to make sense because if you get someone to successfully change it has a huge effect, but in the actual, real world, it is very difficult to enact a campaign that gets people to change behavior, especially if it is highly culturally bound up, like food and eating are. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't address the supply chain, so we agree! I'm just pointing out that there is consciousness at all levels of the supply chain that waste is a thing, and that steps are being taken by private and public actors in their own interest to either reduce or redirect it, and that consumer waste is by far a bigger factor. I think we can address more than one thing at a time.
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Mar 29, 2016 15:07
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wateroverfire posted:I'm not arguing that we shouldn't address the supply chain, so we agree! "Steps are being taken" is a really silly phrase to throw in there. What steps? How fast are they being taken? What are the obstacles. That consumer waste is a bigger problem, again, doesn't mean that it's up to individual behavior. it means we need to adjust population-level stuff, because super-obviously people on their own aren't going to do it. Your focus on consumer-end is like saying that we need to fight cigarette smoking on the level of the individual smoker. So when you say: quote:Big stores are just not that big a part of the problem, comparatively. Which makes sense if you think about it, because they have every incentive to reduce the wastage eating into their profits. However, they're easy targets for scapegoating and the easiest source of waste to regulate. You are loving up. Big stores are a big part of the problem, even comparatively--something being 10% of the total problem is still a big problem. And they are a much bigger part of the accessible problem, for precisely the reason they state: they have incentive already. If you make it more costly for them to waste, there will be less waste. If you give them a small amount to do--like build storage or a biodigester--they will resist it only somewhat because it is a benefit as well as a cost. They are subject to policy and regulation in a way individual behavior is not. So when you say that it's appropriate to talk about the level of the individual, that may be true for defining the problem, but it really isn't for defining the solution. blowfish posted:And it's not just in the social sciences. For example, one heavily cited older key freshwater ecology paper about organisms compensating for drift in rivers by actively moving upriver contains some dumb let's-extrapolate-from-n=1 poo poo along the lines of "I observed one shrimp moving for 30 minutes". And it's not just complex stuff like ecology, materials science even finds this to be true especially for obscure molecules nobody much uses. It's actually I think a bigger problem in a way in the hard sciences because they're not on the lookout nearly as much for their own bias. Obdicut fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Mar 29, 2016 |
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Mar 29, 2016 15:35
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Obdicut posted:"Steps are being taken" is a really silly phrase to throw in there. What steps? How fast are they being taken? What are the obstacles. Read the thread and the articles linked in the thread, and many of your questions will be answered. Obdicut posted:That consumer waste is a bigger problem, again, doesn't mean that it's up to individual behavior. it means we need to adjust population-level stuff, because super-obviously people on their own aren't going to do it. Ok. Let's talk about adjusting population level incentives. That seems fine and useful. edit: Ironicly, one way to reduce food waste at the consumer level would simply be to make food more expensive. Eventually, households looking to economize would pay more attention to using everything they paid for. wateroverfire fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Mar 29, 2016 |
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Mar 29, 2016 17:19
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wateroverfire posted:Read the thread and the articles linked in the thread, and many of your questions will be answered. I did, they weren't. quote:Ok. Let's talk about adjusting population level incentives. That seems fine and useful. Not really, for reasons I already stated: The population level stuff is working against culture. For example, one way to reduce food waste would be a lot more communal eating. Say, all apartment buildings, all workplaces have a communal lunch or dinner. This would be seen as essentially anti-American and violating people's rights to go and eat whatever the gently caress they wanted, and would fail overall. You could try to train people broadly in food preservation techniques, but a lot of people will just say 'gently caress it'. The garbage tax is the only suggestion so far that would have an effect and that is really obviously gameable and not really workable. Again, the easiest thing to do is to focus on the waste at the distribution level. You seem really badly to not want to talk about that because you feel that corporations get overly criticized or something, but if you actually want to address food waste that'd be the best place to do it. quote:Ironicly, one way to reduce food waste at the consumer level would simply be to make food more expensive. Eventually, households looking to economize would pay more attention to using everything they paid for. This isn't true, and I have no clue why you think it is. What are you basing this on, other than hopefulness? Individual food waste hasn't gone down with food price increases, so what are you talking about?
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Mar 29, 2016 17:37
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Obdicut posted:I did, they weren't. Yeah, they were. For instance, there was a big gently caress-off list of participants in the USDA's US Food Waste Challenge pasted into the thread so that people had to loving read it, among other things. In the first article linked in the OP there is an interview with the executive director of a national food bank in which she runs down some of the challenges. There's a link to the USDA website where they specifically run down what they've done, what they're doing, and what they're committed to doing.
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Mar 29, 2016 18:36
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Zodium posted:praise from caesar. I would be very happy to read such a criticism so if anyone wants to post one from a decent source that'd be great. For one thing it would demonstrate that there's an actual controversy here. I mean, actually read through twodots posts in this thread again and tell me you can do it without reflexively rolling your eyes a bunch of times. The guy has zero interest in nutrition but feels that he's qualified to evaluate how doctors are using words like "processed" because he "knows English". Whether or not processed is a decent term to use the idea that somebody who doesn't even pretend to have any interest in the substantive underlying debate wants to come in and police the use of language is beyond silly. You can't judge how an expert uses a term without at least making some effort to understand the field in which the expert operates. Experts aren't beyond reproach, but if you are going to reproach them then I think you need to at least do a bit of homework first. quote:this is a very dangerous rabbit hole that I absolutely will not follow you down, and really handwaves away the criticism against you in some sense. making inferences based on invalid or incomplete data is, in my mind, certainly worse than making decisions based on no data at all. (i can't remember how controversial this is to non-statisticians, but take my word or don't, I guess.) of course, you're not really looking at the data in the sense of the actual empirical observations here, anyway. you're looking at very vague, very weak inferences about individual behavior, based on extrapolations from the nutrition or mean outcome data. that's a different beast. Honestly the use of the term "junk food" just seems to come down to personal taste. At this point I don't think anyone really disputes that in basic way most people understand what the term "junk food" refers to. How comfortable you are using a casual term like that in a discussion on health just seems to irreducibly come back to your feelings about using language. I think it's a perfectly comprehensible and useful word. I feel like some of the objections to it are almost like if somebody were to challenge you on the use of the term "global warming" by pointing out that in some places the globe is actually getting colder. That having been said, I also don't see any way for one side or the other to reach any kind of closure on this argument, and I don't really think it's a significant enough debate to keep it alive any longer. The place I will draw a line is on this more basic issue of nutritional guidelines. Nutritional science has room for improvement but the way some of ya'll are writing it's almost as though you think that we aren't in a position to make any statements beyond "count your calories". I think that's insane. Scientific research over the last couple decades has improved our knowledge of nutrition and while there is definitely a crisis right now in scientific testing where individual studies can't be reproduced, but there are some observations that have been overwhelmingly confirmed again and again. No one really disputes the importance of getting certain micro-nutrients in adequate supplies (hell, people understood that lack of vitamins lead to scurvy long before we actually knew what vitamins were). The scientific consensus on the importance of omega 3s or the danger of trans-fats is pretty well established at this point. This idea that nutrition science is so under developed that we just can't say anything about it other than "count your calories" is ridiculous. Counting calories isn't even very good advice outside of a narrow and specific focus on weight: if you were trying to plan what you're gonna feed your kid over the next week and you just completely ignored any scientific advice on nutrition other than "count the calories", then you're being outright negligent. quote:we could start to really get into the nettles of studies suggesting this and that, but it would be a technical quagmire that most posters aren't competent to engage in, and we'd just end up at radical ignorance anyway. except we'd actually get bored long before that, because you'd never run out of studies, obviously. why don't you pick the single best set of publications or other support you can find to support the terms you're using, and then dvox/twodot can pick it apart, and then we can get this over with? I personally think you have to do a lot better than "it was used in a peer reviewed paper, ergo, qed," though. So far as I can tell basically everyone discussing public health and giving any kind of advice of guidance to consumers uses the term "processed foods" for the reasons that Vital Signs and asdf laid out perfectly adequately the other day.[/url] Processed foods is a simple but useful way to indicate any kind of food that has been altered from its original natural state. Because of the way that the modern food industry works it's important to give extra scrutiny to processed foods, and as a general rule of thumb. Eating fresh fruits and vegetables is thus one of the most reliable but simple ways to 1) efficiently receive important micro and macro nutrients that your body requires and to 2) do so in a calorie efficient manner and 3) avoid excess amounts of several unhealthy additive that are commonly found in many of the most popular processed food items sold at grocery stores. The amount of pedantic objections and complaining that this incredibly basic and common sense advice, supported by a huge amount of medical science and advocated for by top doctors at the world's most respect health organizations such as Harvard, is simply insane. Obdicut posted:Helsing, Zodium is telling you why you're deeply wrong nicely, others are doing it more harshly. Whichever way it's presented to you, it's still wrong. You say that the only thing that matters is calories and then immediately contradict yourself by drawing a link between fructose and diabetes. Maybe that should be a hint that calories aren't the only thing to pay attention to when evaluating food. Sugar, salt, fat, fibre, protein, vitamins, not to mention the glycemic index, are also relevant. To use an extreme example: you are already perfectly aware that somebody who stayed within their weight maintaining calorie count for each day but got these calories exclusively from Coca Cola would be a loving health disaster. Or to use a historical example: tell those generations of sailors whose bodies were literally falling apart from scurvy that vitamins are irrelevant as long as they count their calories. quote:Individual-level behavior policing looks like the low-hanging fruit of public health but it's actually really, really hard to address in many areas, especially those areas most associated with class, stress, and pleasure. If you want to go after that low-hanging fruit, it is dumb as a box of rocks to go after 'nutrition' when we don't have solid science. What you should do is promote activity, exercise, walking places, because that both has extremely solid science backing it up, and small gains and improvements still have a massive effect. If you do want to go after food, then there is one meaningful metric: calorie content, and pretty much only two ways to get people to reduce that: portion size reduction and frequency of eating reduction, both of which are mostly cultural values and not individual, anyway. Ok, so what I'm getting here is that you haven't paid attention to the debate so far. You're coming in to sternly lecture without having done enough homework to understand what is actually being argued about, and I guess you've missed the posts that emphasize that this is a social health issue and not a matter of individual behaviour.
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Mar 29, 2016 18:51
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Helsing posted:No one really disputes the importance of getting certain micro-nutrients in adequate supplies (hell, people understood that lack of vitamins lead to scurvy long before we actually knew what vitamins were). The scientific consensus on the importance of omega 3s or the danger of trans-fats is pretty well established at this point. This idea that nutrition science is so under developed that we just can't say anything about it other than "count your calories" is ridiculous. Counting calories isn't even very good advice outside of a narrow and specific focus on weight: if you were trying to plan what you're gonna feed your kid over the next week and you just completely ignored any scientific advice on nutrition other than "count the calories", then you're being outright negligent. Well, I suppose if you were determined to be purposefully ignorant about nutrition, this would be the case, but if you just made sure your kid ate a variety of different stuff to eat and roughly the right amount of calories, you'd be fine. It's incredibly hard to get scurvy or any other vitamin deficiencies these days, frankly. I can't even fathom how someone could stand to have so little variation in their diet as to get a vitamin deficiency in this day and age. Just eat enough different stuff and you'll have all your bases covered, even if some of those things are big macs and fries.
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Mar 29, 2016 18:59
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I'm not suggesting vitamin deficiency is a realistic threat for people living in North America, just that following this whole "only calories matter" thing to its logical conclusion would be devastating for health. A healthy diet necessitates more than just keeping your calories at maintenance level.
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Mar 29, 2016 19:06
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Helsing posted:Processed foods is a simple but useful way to indicate any kind of food that has been altered from its original natural state. Because of the way that the modern food industry works it's important to give extra scrutiny to processed foods, and as a general rule of thumb. Helsing posted:Notice all those horribly unscientific statements like [...] "Eat less red and processed meat". Also the only way you can know that any random tomato is just a tomato and hasn't been processed in some way is to scrutinize it. Doesn't this just reduce down to "scrutinize all food"? twodot fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Mar 29, 2016 |
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Mar 29, 2016 19:56
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twodot posted:If you think this is a good definition for processed, please explain to me what you think an unprocessed meat is. (edit: Also please note this definition contradicts the definition your guide provided) There's no contradiction, I've explained my definitions at some length, "scrutinize all food" is indeed one of the implications of the warning against processed food (though again, the purpose is to provide consumers with a heuristic for doing their shopping) and I'm not going to waste any more time debating someone who thinks that being an English speaker is somehow an excuse to make sweeping judgement on debates (judgement massively contradicted by top experts in the field) without having any knowledge whatsoever of what is actually being discussed.
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Mar 29, 2016 20:21
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Helsing posted:There's no contradiction, I've explained my definitions at some length, "scrutinize all food" is indeed one of the implications of the warning against processed food (though again, the purpose is to provide consumers with a heuristic for doing their shopping) and I'm not going to waste any more time debating someone who thinks that being an English speaker is somehow an excuse to make sweeping judgement on debates (judgement massively contradicted by top experts in the field) without having any knowledge whatsoever of what is actually being discussed.
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Mar 29, 2016 20:33
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computer parts posted:The actual mechanics of cooking aren't that difficult (otherwise a lot more people would've starved to death historically). Like sticking stuff into a pot of water and keeping it warm for a few hours isn't quite caveman level, but it's pretty close. Both are factors but I've met a loooot of people who completely shut down when confronted with any kind of cooking because it's something they've never done. This is partially because I've lived with a lot of college-aged people from families that don't do much cooking but it's like there's this mental block there. I'd love to see high school cooking classes that tackle basic things like rice ratios, or basic, no-sweat things (stir fry, basic sauteed vegetables, whatever) that people can take with them as resources and build on so they don't clam up around raw ingredients.
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Mar 29, 2016 20:46
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twodot posted:I don't understand how you can conclude I'm making a sweeping judgement. I'm specifically saying certain words aren't useful. Your definition of "processed" is so overly broad that you're just suggesting people think more about their food. That's not bad advice, but it's just as effective as your earlier advice that people eat less unhealthy food. Your insistence on using underspecified terminology is leading you to uninteresting conclusions. You've acknowledged that humans can do a thing that leads to creating food you think is bad, why aren't you talking about that thing rather than using a term that covers that thing and also safely produced milk? Because, for most consumers, the vast majority of their intake of sugar, trans-fats, sodium, etc. comes from processed foods which is why nutritional guides almost universally use 'processed food' as a category for pedagogical purposes (even though they also immediately qualify this advice by explaining situations where processing doesn't matter, such as buying chopped and frozen vegetables or pasteurized milk). It gives people a framework for understanding healthy eating and then after they've spent more time learning on their own they can move beyond that simple heuristic and develop a more sophisticated view of nutrition. Like with most educational programs you start with a simplified but helpful guide to action and then build upon it, gradually adding additional nuance and context as appropriate. I'm really not going to waste any more time with this. You're claiming that because you speak English you're perfectly qualified to attack the language used by an expert in epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. It's a testament to my own idiocy and stubbornness that I've indulged your ridiculousness for this long.
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Mar 29, 2016 20:46
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I think we can all imagine what "processed food" is. If someone is described to you as "a beautiful blonde" do you immediately request her exact measurements, focus group surveys, and the pantone colour for her hair in order to precisely quantify whether this is accurate or not? I guess another way of saying it would be "food with more than one ingredient."
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Mar 29, 2016 21:05
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Helsing posted:Because, for most consumers, the vast majority of their intake of sugar, trans-fats, sodium, etc. comes from processed foods which is why nutritional guides almost universally use 'processed food' as a category for pedagogical purposes (even though they also immediately qualify this advice by explaining situations where processing doesn't matter, such as buying chopped and frozen vegetables or pasteurized milk). It gives people a framework for understanding healthy eating and then after they've spent more time learning on their own they can move beyond that simple heuristic and develop a more sophisticated view of nutrition. Like with most educational programs you start with a simplified but helpful guide to action and then build upon it, gradually adding additional nuance and context as appropriate. quote:I'm really not going to waste any more time with this. You're claiming that because you speak English you're perfectly qualified to attack the language used by an expert in epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. It's a testament to my own idiocy and stubbornness that I've indulged your ridiculousness for this long. edit: BarbarianElephant posted:I think we can all imagine what "processed food" is. If someone is described to you as "a beautiful blonde" do you immediately request her exact measurements, focus group surveys, and the pantone colour for her hair in order to precisely quantify whether this is accurate or not? twodot fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Mar 29, 2016 |
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Mar 29, 2016 21:06
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BarbarianElephant posted:I guess another way of saying it would be "food with more than one ingredient." No more buying bread of any kind at the store; got it! This whole discussion is so, so very stupid. And you can just forget about using hot sauce, mustard, Worcestershire, or anything else in your cooking too -- things with more than one ingredient are the tool of the devil, I tells ya! And don't even get me started about the nefarious evils of cooking with wine or beer -- both substances which are created from extensive processing of multiple ingredients. PT6A fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Mar 29, 2016 |
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Mar 29, 2016 21:13
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The "only calories matter" argument is stupid as gently caress when there's poo poo like Wonderbread for sale. E: VVV Yes, I'm talking about the added sugar they put into it, and into countless other "processed" foods. WampaLord fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Mar 29, 2016 |
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Mar 29, 2016 21:17
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WampaLord posted:The "only calories matter" argument is stupid as gently caress when there's poo poo like Wonderbread for sale. Why? It may not have as many nutrients as a whole-grain bread (and it tastes like bland garbage, but that's a matter of taste) but it's not bad for you. You only suffer from it's lack of nutrients if you aren't eating other things with nutrients. It's not bad for you, it's just easier to have a bad diet when Wonderbread is included on a regular basis. It's no worse for you than pasta -- even homemade "unprocessed" pasta! It's no worse for you than a lovely French baguette either, in all likelihood. I guess there's the added sugar they put in, which is pretty disgusting.
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Mar 29, 2016 21:22
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PT6A posted:No more buying bread of any kind at the store; got it! Bread is definitely processed food. I make my own sometimes, and I use a lot less ingredients than store bread! (It also goes stale by night-time.) Bread isn't super-healthy for you - a lot of diets are at heart very convoluted ways of saying "no bread." It's high calorie, high carb, and high salt.
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Mar 29, 2016 21:45
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Helsing posted:Because, for most consumers, the vast majority of their intake of sugar, trans-fats, sodium, etc. comes from processed foods which is why nutritional guides almost universally use 'processed food' as a category for pedagogical purposes (even though they also immediately qualify this advice by explaining situations where processing doesn't matter, such as buying chopped and frozen vegetables or pasteurized milk). It gives people a framework for understanding healthy eating and then after they've spent more time learning on their own they can move beyond that simple heuristic and develop a more sophisticated view of nutrition. Like with most educational programs you start with a simplified but helpful guide to action and then build upon it, gradually adding additional nuance and context as appropriate. Again, there isn't any good research about high sodium intake that's population-applicable. Likewise, 'sugar' isn't a problem. Trans-fats are the only thing you listed there that are definitively bad. Those nutritional guides are of very, very dubious efficacy. The video you cited has the key word 'may' in it. WampaLord posted:The "only calories matter" argument is stupid as gently caress when there's poo poo like Wonderbread for sale. You realize that by any sane definition a fresh-baked sourdough loaf is 'processed' too, right?
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Mar 29, 2016 21:49
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Obdicut posted:Again, there isn't any good research about high sodium intake that's population-applicable. Likewise, 'sugar' isn't a problem. Trans-fats are the only thing you listed there that are definitively bad. Those nutritional guides are of very, very dubious efficacy. The video you cited has the key word 'may' in it. The over consumption of sugar is one of the biggest problems we have and explains much of America's obesity epidemic. And no, unless you're going to sperg out and say that baking a loaf of bread is processing it. I am not the one claiming "unprocessed" means "one ingredient."
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Mar 29, 2016 22:05
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WampaLord posted:The over consumption of sugar is one of the biggest problems we have and explains much of America's obesity epidemic. Neither of these is true, though. it's the overconsumption of calories combined with a lack of activity. People actually consumed more calories in the 70s but were in far better shape because they were way more active. Sugar calories are not worse than other calories in any solid way. What definition of 'processed' makes wonderbread processed but the sourdough loaf not?
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Mar 29, 2016 22:13
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Obdicut posted:Neither of these is true, though. it's the overconsumption of calories combined with a lack of activity. People actually consumed more calories in the 70s but were in far better shape because they were way more active. Sugar calories are not worse than other calories in any solid way. Tell that line about sugar calories to a diabetic. How about the part where they add high fructose corn syrup to it? Why does a sugar substitute need to be in bread? 
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Mar 29, 2016 22:19
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I feel like I'm debating a martian who has never actually eaten human food or been in a grocery store. You do understand part of why doctors recommend fresh fruits and vegetables is because in addition to having a good calorie to nutrition trade off, they also promote a sense of satiety? Whereas sugar is the opposite: many food items with added sugar will actually make you hungrier despite being full of calories. Also I can't even begin to comprehend the level of idiocy that claims only calories matter. The logical conclusion of that position is that you could eat or not eat literally anything you wanted and as long as you watched your calories it wouldn't matter whether you were getting protein, fibre, vitamins, etc. Is that seriously the position you are defending? Obdicut posted:Again, there isn't any good research about high sodium intake that's population-applicable. Likewise, 'sugar' isn't a problem. Trans-fats are the only thing you listed there that are definitively bad. Those nutritional guides are of very, very dubious efficacy. The video you cited has the key word 'may' in it. The video showed a strong association between eating large amounts of processed meats and the risk of diabetes or heart disease. There's no ambiguity there. The exact relationship of the association is where the "may" comes up, there's no question that an association exists. More importantly, the video is exhibit A in the massive pile of evidence showing that people who actually know what they are talking about regularly use the term "processed" when advising consumers about food and nutrition, which was the original point of contention in this debate.
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Mar 29, 2016 22:27
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WampaLord posted:Tell that line about sugar calories to a diabetic. Ok. I'll happily tell a diabetic that if they eat non sugary foods that keep their blood sugar level high that they will experience the same consequences from it. Sugar is bad because it is calorific and digests super quickly: so is white flour. If they eat the same calories in complex carbohydrates it will still be super bad for them. I'm also more concerned about pew diabetic people, and again, it is just about having far too much blood sugar, which can come from any calorie source. Ok so what about adding that syrup makes it processed? what about that is "processed" but milled flour isn't?
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Mar 29, 2016 22:29
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Obdicut posted:'sugar' isn't a problem. Obdicut posted:Sugar is bad because it is calorific and digests super quickly
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Mar 29, 2016 22:41
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