Junk food is continuously being exported from US. Here in a medium sized town in The Netherlands, we have multiple MD's, now a KFC, Subway and I must have forgotten some.
I still remember when the first MD opened in 1986 ( around the same time we got MTV ). Now it is US franchises all over the place.
edit: and not only food, drinks too. We used to have domestic 'soda' brands.
Of those 3, McDonalds and Subway aren't that bad I find, whereas KFC is genuinely dire.
If I get a subway I tend to ram it with as many vegetables as possible, at McDonalds I pretty much always £5s worth of burgers inc. a small fries, not healthy but not that bad. I made the mistake of getting a KFC delivered recently and Jesus Christ it was like an Oil Well.
I think McD's uses liquid oil, so not hydrogenated (trans fat). You hydrogenate oil to make it solid at room temperature, as a substitute for animal fats. If you're going to fry in it there's no point in not starting with an oil that is liquid at room temperature.
When I first moved to Europe, I am ashamed to say my first meal was a Subway, because I wanted to give my digestive system something familiar before starting a new life.
There’s no shame in that. I’m from the US and I’ve had McDonalds in both Japan and Switzerland. It can be nice to have something familiar when you’re feeling out of place or homesick.
I don't think 2% is EU-wide, but Ireland-specific. (And not present in all contexts -- sugary bread like milk bread or Subway rolls are considered bread for some legal purposes in Ireland.)
Does that really change the fact that it would be one of my healthiest options for eating out? Have you considered what the other options are? I think you are misconstruing my comment as claiming that you should consider it one of your healthiest options.
I can get a veggie patty with a ton of extra veggies on wheat at Subway. So much better than a McDonald's salad, imo. But I do see the point. Still, I think the typical meal at Subway is healthier than the same at McDonald's. I lost about 90 lbs with subway for lunch as a key part of my diet.
In Ireland the Supreme Court told Subway they had to reclassify their 'bread' as cake due to the sugar content. Regarding the payment of taxes.
When it comes to nutrition -- as a good general rule once you buy fresh good ingredients it's actually quite difficult to make unhealthy food regardless if you add too much fat, salt or sugar to your recipe -- the corollary is if you buy commercial food served ready to eat it's quite difficult to choose something healthy.
Well, as a vegetarian, if I ate a salad every time I wanted a vegetable then I'd pretty much only be eating salads. I'm sure you can commiserate with wanting a variety of foods in your diet which would include sandwiches. But knowing that the bread has so much sugar, I can pick other sandwich places most of the time.
I see the obesity epidemic, notice some brave souls fighting it, but I'm almost sure it'll go from bad to worse. Like many things, humans psyche works against us (or is easily used to trigger us to buy now more more), it isn't meant to deal with an overabundance of bad but delicious foods. As long as it is in the economic interests of the food supply chain to sell more, no awareness campaign no matter how good can stop people from eating the bad stuff that's so readily accessible. Only solution I see is a near ban on the bad stuff, enormous taxes, but I don't see that happening, first because of the industry lobby second because people will see it as too much interference in their lives. In a day and age where individualism and liberatism seem to become core values that's just not gonna happen. So we'll get some awareness campaigns, get some red stickers on a select few products, and in 20 years we'll think every fit person is an athlete.
75+ years of highly designed, increasingly addictive foods +
significant work on cost reduction +
lack of peer pressure
=
more obesity
It would be interesting to see the inflation-corrected per-ounce price of Coca Cola over the last 120 years. Usage appears to be dropping so perhaps there's some hope.
Doesn't obesity preceding the HAES movement prove that HAES couldn't have caused the obesity epidemic?
If you found a 50% increase in lung cancer next to major highways, would your solution be to use peer pressure to encourage everyone to take shallower breaths and then berate people for not succumbing to peer pressure? Of course not because it's obvious to us that the cause is environmental and the correct approach is regulation to reduce the cause of the disease.
Treating obesity as a public health problem rather than a willpower problem is a) obviously a more sane approach and b) contrary to business interests.
I think that's a fair observation although peer pressure certainly could act as a form of closed loop control. The near-linear increase in modern obesity seems to kick off in the mid-1970s.
I'd also want to add the lack of physical activity as people move to doing God's Work by sitting still and tapping on a keyboard with occasional visits to the gym, but I haven't found a decent study showing that over time.
I think there is a broader food education issue in the US beyond nutrition- folks simply dont know what to buy, cook and eat, over the course of a life time. The quick fix is a fad diet which comes with instructions and recipes, but these ultimately dont build long term habits. So much of how we write about food here is focused on anti- anti junk, anti fat, anti carb. I think this hints towards the root of the problem where most people dont know what a good foundation is. What are the top 5 American dishes that arent a just disaster for your body?
Many US grocery stores sell fully-cooked chickens with minimal spicing for about six dollars. These are loss leaders and are often less than half the price of an uncooked chicken.
Grocery stores also tend to bake their own bread, including basic varieties that don't include sugar, for a few dollars a loaf.
Add a can or frozen bag of vegetables and that's a pretty nutritious day's worth of food for relatively little money.
> Many US grocery stores sell fully-cooked chickens with minimal spicing for about six dollars. These are loss leaders and are often less than half the price of an uncooked chicken
An uncooked chicken is about $10-$15? (£7-£10)?
I don't understand the US combination of terrible animal welfare standards, terrible food hygiene standards, and high cost.
The US actually has fantastic food hygiene standards. I know it's a meme with some UK/EU folks to clutch their pearls over the chlorinated chicken wash but it is in fact based on solid science. It's a different approach but not invalid.
Prices vary by location, but generally you can expect to get uncooked chicken here for under $2/lb. I live in a largish city and typically pay under $1.5/lb.
I agree about the animal welfare standards, but that is most definitely not unique to us. In fact, I'm acquainted with one of the key people in popularizing intensive confinement livestock practices in the midwest US: they're German and brought techniques from there to Kansas. Likewise I've seen first hand what cattle barns are like in Italy, and it is not good.
Assuming you have access to a kitchen, you can feed yourself very well at minimal cost in the US. I loathe our fast food culture, but do not underestimate just how solid the US supermarket system is.
Oh grocery store deli chickens. I've made meals out of those things more times than i can count. Gotta admit, i've always wondered about the odd pricing compared to uncooked chicken. I usually go for sandwhiches or a chicken salad myself though.
How then would you educate people. The problem really seems to stem from the fact that authorities have recommended an extremely unhealthy low-fat diet for so long.
The carbs at the bottom of the food pyramid are killing us.
> The problem really seems to stem from the fact that authorities have recommended an extremely unhealthy low-fat diet for so long.
I imagine that might have some contribution, but my personal experience suggests that the government's bad advice is not to blame for the food choices I make.
Fair, but I as a kid (like 10) had no idea what was and wasn't good. I gobbled pretzels, breads, and the like hoping that eating low fat would make me less fat. I thought I was doing what should be healthy.
That and the fact that the government and other authorities like the American Heart Association claim that whole grains are heart healthy to the point that their labels and or claims of heart healthiness are put on boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios...
I wonder what % of the population would have to be obese for this to be considered a serious problem. Right now we are at about half, are we talking 70%, 90%, 95%?
I am often reminded of the movie Wall-E, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we are headed there on some level.
The population is growing more obese. Got that. We are headed toward AI computers to do things for us. Got that. We are launching more satellites into space. Got that.
Wall-E may end up being prophetic.
The thing I'm interested in more is turning people to something better without arguing (which doesn't work).
Obesity causes suffering. It seems like if we could communicate that effectively, something would change. But that doesn't account for how addictive modern junk food is. Just like everyone knows smoking meth leads to suffering, people still do it.
Our food supply is poisonous and highly addictive. We need to take drastic measures in the name of public-health and national security... just like with climate change.
I went from 290 lbs to 190 lbs over the last year.
I totally knew that I was eating garbage, but I thought I was young, so I thought I could just switch to being healthy a few years later. I thought focusing on career was more productive at my age.
So I start feeling weird after eating carbs and one blood test later I found out I was on my way to having type 2 diabetes before 30.
Losing weight was hard as fuck, it was like my body was completely wired to bad eating and sedentary habits. I often felt like and addict and felt stupid. Like, why couldn't I just exercise and eat less shit?
Maybe just like cigarettes, the best approach to junk food is never starting.
I guess if I had tested my pressure / blood sugar more often I could have realized how bad things were earlier? So that's an idea.
I love Bittman's work and this is an interesting overview of what I'm sure is a great book, but I can't help but be hung up on this line:
it is perhaps not surprising that the largest municipal water treatment plant in the world is required to allow the people of Des Moines to drink the tap water.
That seems nuts to me so I did a quick search and almost instantly figured out that the author's statement is totally inaccurate. All of the world's largest municipal water treatment plants are in major cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Moscow, and Shanghai. What the author meant was Des Moines is home of one of, if not the largest nitrate removal facilities in the world. Which to me is even more damning than having a huge municipal water treatment plant for a small city.
I get the intention, and maybe the author understood the difference but just didn't want to waste words explaining it, but I think they could incorporate something on nitrate pollution ruining their rivers alongside the 'world's largest' comment.
Regenerative ag with animals and produce on one farm seems to me to be the healthiest and most sustainable path forward.
Mono anything is terrible for consumption and production externalities.
Wheat and other grains that require fortification with vitamins and minerals just to not kill the consumer are terrible and shouldn't be eaten by anyone.
Also saturated and animal fats are good for you. Chemically expressed vegetable trans-fats are not.
Wheat does not require "fortification with vitamins and minerals just to not kill the consumer."
Wheat is a viable staple, up until recently a luxury staple, that forms the basis for a healthy diet when eaten alongside a modest amount of vegetables. For those with gluten intolerances, and also for those without, rice accomplishes the same.
Given the percentage of wheat that makes up the diets of certain demographics in the US, and the lack of vegetables that go along with it, micronutrient deficient diets are predominant and fortification has been seen as a public health necessity.
For those who eat healthy, calorie appropriate, nutrient dense diets... fortification isn't necessary, but that doesn't seem to be the public health version of the world many people operate in.
Which isn't actually that bad, but when you consider the glycemic index is near sugar, and if you ate a diet in the proportions of carbs/fat/protein that this food has, you would have the recommended us low fat diet that has only increased obesity over the last fifty years.
> Regenerative ag with animals and produce on one farm seems to me to be the healthiest and most sustainable path forward.
What's the evidence for that being healthier? Moreover, what's the health improvement relative to the cost? SV engineers might be willing to pay 3x more for something that's 5% healthier, but not a single parent household making minimum wage.
>Also saturated and animal fats are good for you. Chemically expressed vegetable trans-fats are not.
This seems to be contradicted by the available scientific evidence.
>The effect of saturated fat on heart disease has been extensively studied.[23] There are strong, consistent, and graded relationships between saturated fat intake, blood cholesterol levels, and the epidemic of cardiovascular disease.[8] The relationships are accepted as causal.[24][25]
>Many health authorities such as the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics,[26] the British Dietetic Association,[27] American Heart Association,[8] the World Heart Federation,[28] the British National Health Service,[29] among others,[30][31] advise that saturated fat is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The World Health Organization in May 2015 recommends switching from saturated to unsaturated fats.[32]
>There is moderate-quality evidence that reducing the proportion of saturated fat in the diet, and replacing it with unsaturated fats or carbohydrates over a period of at least two years, leads to a reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease.[23]
If you actually read the referenced studies from an evidence-based medicine standpoint they're pretty weak. They're mostly just observational with unreliable subject reported data. They haven't fully controlled for all confounding factors such as the healthy subject effect. And effect sizes are small.
I'm not claiming that saturated fats are necessarily healthy. Just that it's premature to label them as unhealthy. They're probably like almost every other food: fine in moderation but problematic when eaten to excess.
>If you actually read the referenced studies from an evidence-based medicine standpoint they're pretty weak. They're mostly just observational with unreliable subject reported data. They haven't fully controlled for all confounding factors such as the healthy subject effect. And effect sizes are small.
The book I linked "The Big Fat Surprise" is a breakdown of the bad science that has been the mainstream dogma for years. One good example is the seven countries study:
> The major flaw with this study is that Ancel Keys had access to data from 22 countries but discarded the 15 countries that did not fit the hypotheses he tried to prove.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Seven_Countries_Study
Nutrition science has been basically captured since the 60s.
The timing of these authorities recommending a low fat diet, coincides with an upward trend of obesity related diseases.
> What's the evidence for that being healthier?
Grass fed beef for instance contains more Omega fatty acids, and vitamins. Mixed farming replenishes minerals in the ground--thus producing foods with more nutrients in them. Food grown this way also tends to need less chemical input and is often grown organically as the soil is healtier--and thus the plants are healthier. All of this and more is in the second book I linked "Deep Nutrition."
>The book I linked "The Big Fat Surprise" is a breakdown of the bad science that has been the mainstream dogma for years. One good example is the seven countries study:
>Grass fed beef for instance contains more Omega fatty acids, and vitamins. [...] All of this and more is in the second book I linked "Deep Nutrition."
source? I'm not going to pay $14 and read through 512 pages just to verify a citation, and I somewhat doubt that the book is where groundbreaking research is being published.
Plant fat sources like peanuts, avocados, olive oil, etc. have a lot of fat, and this includes a lot of saturated fat. In the idea that it exists in lower portion?
Is the problem really saturated fat itself, or the type of saturated fat... meaning, is the category of saturated fat just too broad to intelligently discuss it with these categories?
natural fats generally aren't a problem unless they are eaten to the point of being way too many calories. that's hard to do when eating whole foods, because of all the other stuff that it comes with.
I see no problem with the fats you've mentioned, and I also think animals fats are fine as well. People used to cook with lard and tallow. McDonalds fries were originally cooked in tallow. People didn't die of obesity related diseases in the sixties and seventies like they do today, and we've only moved further from these healthy fats.
I'm completely sold on the sugar argument. It's a home-run. Sugar is the new smoking. Our food environment makes it difficult to minimize sugar, but it's an extremely straightforward rule, and you will join an rapidly increasing number of people who are on the crusade.
I asked the question about fat, because I accept that chronic disease in developed nations does have other components.
Exercise is similar to sugar, in that it's quite difficult to work into our lives, but it's a simple and obviously worthwhile rule.
With fat, on the other hand, it feels like people are all over the place. Nonetheless, there are bad fats. I don't know what "bad fats" are scientifically, but I'm pretty sure potato chips have them.
"Plant fat sources" is too vague to be useful, because they are partitioned in several classes with very different fat composition:
1. A few "Plant fat sources" consist mostly of saturated fat, e.g. cocoa butter
2. Some "Plant fat sources" have a fatty acid content consisting mostly of oleic acid (mono-unsaturated), e.g. olive oil, cashew nuts, almonds, hazelnuts, pistachio
3. Some "Plant fat sources" have a fatty acid content consisting mostly of linoleic acid (poly-unsaturated), e.g. sunflower oil and most other cheap vegetable oils, many seeds
4. A few "Plant fat sources" have a fatty acid content consisting also mostly of poly-unsaturated fatty acids, but with a large proportion of alpha-linolenic acid, e.g. walnuts, flaxseed and a few others.
The rules for a healthy diet are simple:
1. Most of the fatty food eaten should belong to the second class from above, i.e. plant fat sources with mostly oleic acid
The reason is that this corresponds to the normal composition of the human body fat, so it can be used with maximum efficiency as an energy source or for cellular membranes, without requiring expensive transformations in the liver.
2. Any fat sources from the other classes may be eaten, but in smaller quantities.
3. The vegetable fat sources must be supplemented every day with a small quantity of fat containing long-chain omega-3 fatty acids (DHA & EPA). The cheapest and most convenient way is to use cod liver oil or another kind of fish oil.
Rich vegans can pay 7 or 8 times more for a similar oil extracted from certain algae (algae is the commercially used word; it is not the most appropriate but there exist no more appropriate non-scientific names for those uni-cellular organisms).
4. Heating fatty food should be avoided, because, unlike with proteins or carbohydrates, heating does not have any useful effect but it only degrades the fat, especially the non-saturated fats.
Best would be to not add any kind of vegetable oil while cooking but to mix oil with the food only after cooking and cooling.
Fat that is heated should be of the saturated kind, e.g. butter or lard.
Are there any authoritative, proven books on nutrition? A 1-2-3 step programme to eating healthy?
No, people are expected to get an intuition themselves. I think that's a great issue. Biology class teaches carbs, protein, and fats but not how to apply that knowledge. The Internet is full of anecdotes, paid meal plans by has-beens, and homeopathy.
the-dude | 4 years ago
Junk food is continuously being exported from US. Here in a medium sized town in The Netherlands, we have multiple MD's, now a KFC, Subway and I must have forgotten some.
I still remember when the first MD opened in 1986 ( around the same time we got MTV ). Now it is US franchises all over the place.
edit: and not only food, drinks too. We used to have domestic 'soda' brands.
mhh__ | 4 years ago
Of those 3, McDonalds and Subway aren't that bad I find, whereas KFC is genuinely dire.
If I get a subway I tend to ram it with as many vegetables as possible, at McDonalds I pretty much always £5s worth of burgers inc. a small fries, not healthy but not that bad. I made the mistake of getting a KFC delivered recently and Jesus Christ it was like an Oil Well.
switch007 | 4 years ago
McDonald’s is pure oil - maybe they hide it better? The smell of oil carries for a mile at least past any McDonald’s.
reedjosh | 4 years ago
And unfortunately it's chemically expressed trans-fat oil.
We'd all be better off if they went back to the traditional use of tallow.
reducesuffering | 4 years ago
You're about 13 years behind. McD's (or almost any US franchise) doesn't use trans fat oils anymore.
kindall | 4 years ago
I think McD's uses liquid oil, so not hydrogenated (trans fat). You hydrogenate oil to make it solid at room temperature, as a substitute for animal fats. If you're going to fry in it there's no point in not starting with an oil that is liquid at room temperature.
the-dude | 4 years ago
The smell coming out of the Subway franchises here is wonky. Will not eat.
webkike | 4 years ago
KFC is only good in Japan for some reason.
rwultsch | 4 years ago
And Taiwan.
DangitBobby | 4 years ago
It's funny to me that you see Subway as junk food because I see it as one of my healthiest options.
mensetmanusman | 4 years ago
When I first moved to Europe, I am ashamed to say my first meal was a Subway, because I wanted to give my digestive system something familiar before starting a new life.
AuryGlenz | 4 years ago
There’s no shame in that. I’m from the US and I’ve had McDonalds in both Japan and Switzerland. It can be nice to have something familiar when you’re feeling out of place or homesick.
the-dude | 4 years ago
It's funny you see it that way:
Subway rolls ruled too sugary to be bread in Ireland https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54370056
Subway 'bread' contains 10% sugar, the EU limit is 2%.
caturopath | 4 years ago
I don't think 2% is EU-wide, but Ireland-specific. (And not present in all contexts -- sugary bread like milk bread or Subway rolls are considered bread for some legal purposes in Ireland.)
DangitBobby | 4 years ago
Does that really change the fact that it would be one of my healthiest options for eating out? Have you considered what the other options are? I think you are misconstruing my comment as claiming that you should consider it one of your healthiest options.
waihtis | 4 years ago
I think the whole discussion is misplaced as you can eat at Subway without eating the bread; but equally you can have a salad at McDonalds.
DangitBobby | 4 years ago
I can get a veggie patty with a ton of extra veggies on wheat at Subway. So much better than a McDonald's salad, imo. But I do see the point. Still, I think the typical meal at Subway is healthier than the same at McDonald's. I lost about 90 lbs with subway for lunch as a key part of my diet.
waihtis | 4 years ago
Yeah, I guess walking hungry into a McDonalds is more risky in terms of restraint vs Subway..
stinos | 4 years ago
Do you mean healthiest amongst the others named, or that you don't have acces to fresh vegetables and the likes?
DangitBobby | 4 years ago
I mean specifically if I want to not have to cook something. Even among sit-down or carry out places near me.
s_dev | 4 years ago
In Ireland the Supreme Court told Subway they had to reclassify their 'bread' as cake due to the sugar content. Regarding the payment of taxes.
When it comes to nutrition -- as a good general rule once you buy fresh good ingredients it's actually quite difficult to make unhealthy food regardless if you add too much fat, salt or sugar to your recipe -- the corollary is if you buy commercial food served ready to eat it's quite difficult to choose something healthy.
overcast | 4 years ago
Healthy?! It's fast food, with (sometimes) vegetables.
metalliqaz | 4 years ago
but not deep fried.
it's a low bar in the USA
USA NUMBER 1 !!! (in childhood type-2 diabetes)
nradov | 4 years ago
Type 2 diabetes is generally caused more by excessive sugar than deep-fried food.
reedjosh | 4 years ago
Yes, and the sugar content of the wheat bread mentioned is extremely high. Further, wheat's glycemic index isn't too far off from sugar.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glyce...
HIGH-CARBOHYDRATE FOODS
White wheat bread* 75 ± 2
Whole wheat/whole meal bread 74 ± 2
Specialty grain bread 53 ± 2
SUGARS
Fructose 15 ± 4
Sucrose 65 ± 4
Glucose 103 ± 3
Honey 61 ± 3
DangitBobby | 4 years ago
The subs I order are all vegetables on wheat.
overcast | 4 years ago
That bread is basically candy. Just make yourself a salad if veggies is what you want.
DangitBobby | 4 years ago
Well, as a vegetarian, if I ate a salad every time I wanted a vegetable then I'd pretty much only be eating salads. I'm sure you can commiserate with wanting a variety of foods in your diet which would include sandwiches. But knowing that the bread has so much sugar, I can pick other sandwich places most of the time.
overcast | 4 years ago
Ethiopian and Indian are great options.
MintsJohn | 4 years ago
I see the obesity epidemic, notice some brave souls fighting it, but I'm almost sure it'll go from bad to worse. Like many things, humans psyche works against us (or is easily used to trigger us to buy now more more), it isn't meant to deal with an overabundance of bad but delicious foods. As long as it is in the economic interests of the food supply chain to sell more, no awareness campaign no matter how good can stop people from eating the bad stuff that's so readily accessible. Only solution I see is a near ban on the bad stuff, enormous taxes, but I don't see that happening, first because of the industry lobby second because people will see it as too much interference in their lives. In a day and age where individualism and liberatism seem to become core values that's just not gonna happen. So we'll get some awareness campaigns, get some red stickers on a select few products, and in 20 years we'll think every fit person is an athlete.
kingsuper20 | 4 years ago
The equation seems pretty simple to me.
75+ years of highly designed, increasingly addictive foods + significant work on cost reduction + lack of peer pressure = more obesity
It would be interesting to see the inflation-corrected per-ounce price of Coca Cola over the last 120 years. Usage appears to be dropping so perhaps there's some hope.
metalliqaz | 4 years ago
the lack of peer pressure came after >50% of the population was fat
back in the 90's there was no mainstream HAES movement, or concern about "fat shaming" or any of the other Twitter nonsense
shalmanese | 4 years ago
Doesn't obesity preceding the HAES movement prove that HAES couldn't have caused the obesity epidemic?
If you found a 50% increase in lung cancer next to major highways, would your solution be to use peer pressure to encourage everyone to take shallower breaths and then berate people for not succumbing to peer pressure? Of course not because it's obvious to us that the cause is environmental and the correct approach is regulation to reduce the cause of the disease.
Treating obesity as a public health problem rather than a willpower problem is a) obviously a more sane approach and b) contrary to business interests.
kingsuper20 | 4 years ago
I think that's a fair observation although peer pressure certainly could act as a form of closed loop control. The near-linear increase in modern obesity seems to kick off in the mid-1970s.
I'd also want to add the lack of physical activity as people move to doing God's Work by sitting still and tapping on a keyboard with occasional visits to the gym, but I haven't found a decent study showing that over time.
alphameese | 4 years ago
Fat shaming has been proven fairly consistently to not help, and in fact can itself lead to further binge eating.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6565398/
jasontsui | 4 years ago
I think there is a broader food education issue in the US beyond nutrition- folks simply dont know what to buy, cook and eat, over the course of a life time. The quick fix is a fad diet which comes with instructions and recipes, but these ultimately dont build long term habits. So much of how we write about food here is focused on anti- anti junk, anti fat, anti carb. I think this hints towards the root of the problem where most people dont know what a good foundation is. What are the top 5 American dishes that arent a just disaster for your body?
i_am_proteus | 4 years ago
Many US grocery stores sell fully-cooked chickens with minimal spicing for about six dollars. These are loss leaders and are often less than half the price of an uncooked chicken.
Grocery stores also tend to bake their own bread, including basic varieties that don't include sugar, for a few dollars a loaf.
Add a can or frozen bag of vegetables and that's a pretty nutritious day's worth of food for relatively little money.
DanBC | 4 years ago
> Many US grocery stores sell fully-cooked chickens with minimal spicing for about six dollars. These are loss leaders and are often less than half the price of an uncooked chicken
An uncooked chicken is about $10-$15? (£7-£10)?
I don't understand the US combination of terrible animal welfare standards, terrible food hygiene standards, and high cost.
In the UK a fresh whole uncooked chicken is £3.50 ($5). https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/292276232
Bit cheaper if you want a smaller chicken: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/304404069
Bit more if you want higher welfare chicken: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/256278098
We can get over £10 if we pick an expensive shop, and then pick one of their most expensive chickens: https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/duchy-organic-free-ra...
jasonwatkinspdx | 4 years ago
The US actually has fantastic food hygiene standards. I know it's a meme with some UK/EU folks to clutch their pearls over the chlorinated chicken wash but it is in fact based on solid science. It's a different approach but not invalid.
Prices vary by location, but generally you can expect to get uncooked chicken here for under $2/lb. I live in a largish city and typically pay under $1.5/lb.
I agree about the animal welfare standards, but that is most definitely not unique to us. In fact, I'm acquainted with one of the key people in popularizing intensive confinement livestock practices in the midwest US: they're German and brought techniques from there to Kansas. Likewise I've seen first hand what cattle barns are like in Italy, and it is not good.
Assuming you have access to a kitchen, you can feed yourself very well at minimal cost in the US. I loathe our fast food culture, but do not underestimate just how solid the US supermarket system is.
grawprog | 4 years ago
Oh grocery store deli chickens. I've made meals out of those things more times than i can count. Gotta admit, i've always wondered about the odd pricing compared to uncooked chicken. I usually go for sandwhiches or a chicken salad myself though.
reedjosh | 4 years ago
How then would you educate people. The problem really seems to stem from the fact that authorities have recommended an extremely unhealthy low-fat diet for so long.
The carbs at the bottom of the food pyramid are killing us.
https://thebigfatsurprise.com/
wyldfire | 4 years ago
> The problem really seems to stem from the fact that authorities have recommended an extremely unhealthy low-fat diet for so long.
I imagine that might have some contribution, but my personal experience suggests that the government's bad advice is not to blame for the food choices I make.
reedjosh | 4 years ago
Fair, but I as a kid (like 10) had no idea what was and wasn't good. I gobbled pretzels, breads, and the like hoping that eating low fat would make me less fat. I thought I was doing what should be healthy.
That and the fact that the government and other authorities like the American Heart Association claim that whole grains are heart healthy to the point that their labels and or claims of heart healthiness are put on boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios...
mensetmanusman | 4 years ago
I wonder what % of the population would have to be obese for this to be considered a serious problem. Right now we are at about half, are we talking 70%, 90%, 95%?
I am often reminded of the movie Wall-E, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we are headed there on some level.
mfer | 4 years ago
The population is growing more obese. Got that. We are headed toward AI computers to do things for us. Got that. We are launching more satellites into space. Got that.
Wall-E may end up being prophetic.
The thing I'm interested in more is turning people to something better without arguing (which doesn't work).
metalliqaz | 4 years ago
Obesity causes suffering. It seems like if we could communicate that effectively, something would change. But that doesn't account for how addictive modern junk food is. Just like everyone knows smoking meth leads to suffering, people still do it.
Our food supply is poisonous and highly addictive. We need to take drastic measures in the name of public-health and national security... just like with climate change.
carlosf | 4 years ago
> without arguing (which doesn't work)
My anedote:
I went from 290 lbs to 190 lbs over the last year.
I totally knew that I was eating garbage, but I thought I was young, so I thought I could just switch to being healthy a few years later. I thought focusing on career was more productive at my age.
So I start feeling weird after eating carbs and one blood test later I found out I was on my way to having type 2 diabetes before 30.
Losing weight was hard as fuck, it was like my body was completely wired to bad eating and sedentary habits. I often felt like and addict and felt stupid. Like, why couldn't I just exercise and eat less shit?
Maybe just like cigarettes, the best approach to junk food is never starting.
I guess if I had tested my pressure / blood sugar more often I could have realized how bad things were earlier? So that's an idea.
VivaCascadia | 4 years ago
I love Bittman's work and this is an interesting overview of what I'm sure is a great book, but I can't help but be hung up on this line:
it is perhaps not surprising that the largest municipal water treatment plant in the world is required to allow the people of Des Moines to drink the tap water.
That seems nuts to me so I did a quick search and almost instantly figured out that the author's statement is totally inaccurate. All of the world's largest municipal water treatment plants are in major cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Moscow, and Shanghai. What the author meant was Des Moines is home of one of, if not the largest nitrate removal facilities in the world. Which to me is even more damning than having a huge municipal water treatment plant for a small city.
I get the intention, and maybe the author understood the difference but just didn't want to waste words explaining it, but I think they could incorporate something on nitrate pollution ruining their rivers alongside the 'world's largest' comment.
From the Des Moines Register: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2017/05/25/wate...
reedjosh | 4 years ago
Regenerative ag with animals and produce on one farm seems to me to be the healthiest and most sustainable path forward.
Mono anything is terrible for consumption and production externalities.
Wheat and other grains that require fortification with vitamins and minerals just to not kill the consumer are terrible and shouldn't be eaten by anyone.
Also saturated and animal fats are good for you. Chemically expressed vegetable trans-fats are not.
https://thebigfatsurprise.com/
https://drcate.com/deep-nutrition-why-your-genes-need-tradit...
i_am_proteus | 4 years ago
Wheat does not require "fortification with vitamins and minerals just to not kill the consumer."
Wheat is a viable staple, up until recently a luxury staple, that forms the basis for a healthy diet when eaten alongside a modest amount of vegetables. For those with gluten intolerances, and also for those without, rice accomplishes the same.
browningstreet | 4 years ago
Given the percentage of wheat that makes up the diets of certain demographics in the US, and the lack of vegetables that go along with it, micronutrient deficient diets are predominant and fortification has been seen as a public health necessity.
For those who eat healthy, calorie appropriate, nutrient dense diets... fortification isn't necessary, but that doesn't seem to be the public health version of the world many people operate in.
i_am_proteus | 4 years ago
This does not mean that wheat "should not be eaten."
reedjosh | 4 years ago
Wheat should be seen as in the same category as sugar and alcohol--not a part of a healthy diet.
It does not provide a needed nutrient. Carbohydrates in this form are terrible for blood sugar and don't provide any nutrients on their own.
i_am_proteus | 4 years ago
You appear to be conflating "wheat" with "carbohydrates." Wheat contains many necessary nutrients, including, importantly, protein.
This article about staple crops provides additional details: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staple_food
reedjosh | 4 years ago
In its truly whole form it provides:
Total Fat2.24g3%
Saturated Fat0.386g2%
Trans Fat-
Polyunsaturated Fat0.935g
Monounsaturated Fat0.278g
Cholesterol0mg0%
Sodium6mg0%
Total Carbohydrate87.08g32%
Dietary Fiber14.6g52%
Sugars0.49g
Protein16.44g
Calcium41mg3%
Iron4.66mg26%
Potassium486mg10%
Which isn't actually that bad, but when you consider the glycemic index is near sugar, and if you ate a diet in the proportions of carbs/fat/protein that this food has, you would have the recommended us low fat diet that has only increased obesity over the last fifty years.
https://www.fatsecret.com/calories-nutrition/generic/flour-w...
https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glyce...
On top of this most people consume wheat as bread--a highly refined version that is likely to have less fiber, protein, fat, and micronutrients.
The protein in wheat is not complete either.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S16712...
Now consider an egg:
Calories 74
% Daily Values*
Total Fat4.97g6%
Saturated Fat1.55g8%
Trans Fat-
Polyunsaturated Fat0.682g
Monounsaturated Fat1.905g
Cholesterol212mg71%
Sodium70mg3%
Total Carbohydrate0.38g0%
Dietary Fiber0g0%
Sugars0.38g
Protein6.29g
Calcium26mg2%
Iron0.92mg5%
Potassium67mg1%
Vitamin A70mcg8%
All that in 74 calories, and a complete protein.
[Deleted] | 4 years ago
gruez | 4 years ago
> Regenerative ag with animals and produce on one farm seems to me to be the healthiest and most sustainable path forward.
What's the evidence for that being healthier? Moreover, what's the health improvement relative to the cost? SV engineers might be willing to pay 3x more for something that's 5% healthier, but not a single parent household making minimum wage.
>Also saturated and animal fats are good for you. Chemically expressed vegetable trans-fats are not.
This seems to be contradicted by the available scientific evidence.
>The effect of saturated fat on heart disease has been extensively studied.[23] There are strong, consistent, and graded relationships between saturated fat intake, blood cholesterol levels, and the epidemic of cardiovascular disease.[8] The relationships are accepted as causal.[24][25]
>Many health authorities such as the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics,[26] the British Dietetic Association,[27] American Heart Association,[8] the World Heart Federation,[28] the British National Health Service,[29] among others,[30][31] advise that saturated fat is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The World Health Organization in May 2015 recommends switching from saturated to unsaturated fats.[32]
>There is moderate-quality evidence that reducing the proportion of saturated fat in the diet, and replacing it with unsaturated fats or carbohydrates over a period of at least two years, leads to a reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease.[23]
nradov | 4 years ago
If you actually read the referenced studies from an evidence-based medicine standpoint they're pretty weak. They're mostly just observational with unreliable subject reported data. They haven't fully controlled for all confounding factors such as the healthy subject effect. And effect sizes are small.
I'm not claiming that saturated fats are necessarily healthy. Just that it's premature to label them as unhealthy. They're probably like almost every other food: fine in moderation but problematic when eaten to excess.
gruez | 4 years ago
>If you actually read the referenced studies from an evidence-based medicine standpoint they're pretty weak. They're mostly just observational with unreliable subject reported data. They haven't fully controlled for all confounding factors such as the healthy subject effect. And effect sizes are small.
The first citation (23) links to https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32827219/, which analyzed 15 randomized controlled trials. The effect size is 17% reduction in "combined cardiovascular events". Considering that "heart disease" is the top cause of death in the US (https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_dea...), that seems like a big effect size.
reedjosh | 4 years ago
I'm not seeing links to the numbered evidence.
The book I linked "The Big Fat Surprise" is a breakdown of the bad science that has been the mainstream dogma for years. One good example is the seven countries study:
> The major flaw with this study is that Ancel Keys had access to data from 22 countries but discarded the 15 countries that did not fit the hypotheses he tried to prove. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Seven_Countries_Study
Nutrition science has been basically captured since the 60s.
This story regarding the sugar lobby's influence on recommended diet was on hacker news just a few weeks ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16202171
> Many health authorities
The timing of these authorities recommending a low fat diet, coincides with an upward trend of obesity related diseases.
> What's the evidence for that being healthier?
Grass fed beef for instance contains more Omega fatty acids, and vitamins. Mixed farming replenishes minerals in the ground--thus producing foods with more nutrients in them. Food grown this way also tends to need less chemical input and is often grown organically as the soil is healtier--and thus the plants are healthier. All of this and more is in the second book I linked "Deep Nutrition."
gruez | 4 years ago
> I'm not seeing links to the numbered evidence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat
>The book I linked "The Big Fat Surprise" is a breakdown of the bad science that has been the mainstream dogma for years. One good example is the seven countries study:
And what about the Cochrane RCT? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27211025
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Seven_Countries_Study
Are you seriously linking to the comment section of a wikipedia article?
>Nutrition science has been basically captured since the 60s.
Nutritional science is captured, so we should just trust the opposite of what they advocate?
>The timing of these authorities recommending a low fat diet, coincides with an upward trend of obesity related diseases.
https://xkcd.com/925/
>Grass fed beef for instance contains more Omega fatty acids, and vitamins. [...] All of this and more is in the second book I linked "Deep Nutrition."
source? I'm not going to pay $14 and read through 512 pages just to verify a citation, and I somewhat doubt that the book is where groundbreaking research is being published.
AlanSE | 4 years ago
Plant fat sources like peanuts, avocados, olive oil, etc. have a lot of fat, and this includes a lot of saturated fat. In the idea that it exists in lower portion?
Is the problem really saturated fat itself, or the type of saturated fat... meaning, is the category of saturated fat just too broad to intelligently discuss it with these categories?
metalliqaz | 4 years ago
natural fats generally aren't a problem unless they are eaten to the point of being way too many calories. that's hard to do when eating whole foods, because of all the other stuff that it comes with.
reedjosh | 4 years ago
And the satiating nature of fat.
reedjosh | 4 years ago
I see no problem with the fats you've mentioned, and I also think animals fats are fine as well. People used to cook with lard and tallow. McDonalds fries were originally cooked in tallow. People didn't die of obesity related diseases in the sixties and seventies like they do today, and we've only moved further from these healthy fats.
kwhitefoot | 4 years ago
> People didn't die of obesity related diseases in the sixties and seventies like they do today,
They also didn't eat huge portions or drink quite such vast quantities of sugary drinks.
AlanSE | 4 years ago
I'm completely sold on the sugar argument. It's a home-run. Sugar is the new smoking. Our food environment makes it difficult to minimize sugar, but it's an extremely straightforward rule, and you will join an rapidly increasing number of people who are on the crusade.
I asked the question about fat, because I accept that chronic disease in developed nations does have other components.
Exercise is similar to sugar, in that it's quite difficult to work into our lives, but it's a simple and obviously worthwhile rule.
With fat, on the other hand, it feels like people are all over the place. Nonetheless, there are bad fats. I don't know what "bad fats" are scientifically, but I'm pretty sure potato chips have them.
adrian_b | 4 years ago
"Plant fat sources" is too vague to be useful, because they are partitioned in several classes with very different fat composition:
1. A few "Plant fat sources" consist mostly of saturated fat, e.g. cocoa butter
2. Some "Plant fat sources" have a fatty acid content consisting mostly of oleic acid (mono-unsaturated), e.g. olive oil, cashew nuts, almonds, hazelnuts, pistachio
3. Some "Plant fat sources" have a fatty acid content consisting mostly of linoleic acid (poly-unsaturated), e.g. sunflower oil and most other cheap vegetable oils, many seeds
4. A few "Plant fat sources" have a fatty acid content consisting also mostly of poly-unsaturated fatty acids, but with a large proportion of alpha-linolenic acid, e.g. walnuts, flaxseed and a few others.
The rules for a healthy diet are simple:
1. Most of the fatty food eaten should belong to the second class from above, i.e. plant fat sources with mostly oleic acid
The reason is that this corresponds to the normal composition of the human body fat, so it can be used with maximum efficiency as an energy source or for cellular membranes, without requiring expensive transformations in the liver.
2. Any fat sources from the other classes may be eaten, but in smaller quantities.
3. The vegetable fat sources must be supplemented every day with a small quantity of fat containing long-chain omega-3 fatty acids (DHA & EPA). The cheapest and most convenient way is to use cod liver oil or another kind of fish oil.
Rich vegans can pay 7 or 8 times more for a similar oil extracted from certain algae (algae is the commercially used word; it is not the most appropriate but there exist no more appropriate non-scientific names for those uni-cellular organisms).
4. Heating fatty food should be avoided, because, unlike with proteins or carbohydrates, heating does not have any useful effect but it only degrades the fat, especially the non-saturated fats.
Best would be to not add any kind of vegetable oil while cooking but to mix oil with the food only after cooking and cooling.
Fat that is heated should be of the saturated kind, e.g. butter or lard.
Bancakes | 4 years ago
Are there any authoritative, proven books on nutrition? A 1-2-3 step programme to eating healthy?
No, people are expected to get an intuition themselves. I think that's a great issue. Biology class teaches carbs, protein, and fats but not how to apply that knowledge. The Internet is full of anecdotes, paid meal plans by has-beens, and homeopathy.
Anyone have good reads to share?