What Is a 'Healthy' Food? The FDA. Wants To Change the Definition. (nytimes.com) 93
The Food and Drug Administration unveiled a new proposal this week that would change the criteria for which packaged foods the agency considers "healthy," in an attempt to modernize its approach to nutrition and reduce the burden of diet-related diseases. From a report: Currently, about 5 percent of all packaged foods are labeled "healthy," according to the agency. The definition, which was set in 1994, allows for food manufacturers to add the word "healthy" to their products, as long as the products have limited amounts of total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium and provide at least 10 percent of the daily value of one or more of the following nutrients: vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, iron, protein or dietary fiber. (Seafood, game meat and raw fruits and vegetables have slightly different criteria.) In 2016, the F.D.A. updated its guidelines to allow for some foods to contain more total fat and to include some that provide at least 10 percent of the daily value of vitamin D or potassium.
Crucially, there is currently no limit on added sugars under the current definition -- an omission that the F.D.A. believes is inconsistent with today's nutrition science. "The old rule was really outdated -- you could create any kind of Frankenstein food that met the nutrient criteria and label it as healthy," said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and professor of nutrition at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy in Boston. "This is a major advance." The proposed rule, which the agency announced to coincide with Wednesday's White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health, introduces a new limit on added sugars -- in general, no more than 2.5 grams per serving, although this can vary depending on the food. It also restricts the amount of sodium to no more than 230 milligrams per serving and provides limits for saturated fat, which can similarly vary depending on the food, the F.D.A. said.
Crucially, there is currently no limit on added sugars under the current definition -- an omission that the F.D.A. believes is inconsistent with today's nutrition science. "The old rule was really outdated -- you could create any kind of Frankenstein food that met the nutrient criteria and label it as healthy," said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and professor of nutrition at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy in Boston. "This is a major advance." The proposed rule, which the agency announced to coincide with Wednesday's White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health, introduces a new limit on added sugars -- in general, no more than 2.5 grams per serving, although this can vary depending on the food. It also restricts the amount of sodium to no more than 230 milligrams per serving and provides limits for saturated fat, which can similarly vary depending on the food, the F.D.A. said.
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Good. Their definition has been out of date for literally decades.
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--
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Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
A few food items are actually healthy. For example, if you tap on an open mussel shell and it closes up, then it's still healthy.
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A really simplified and accurate rule would be: No, over processed packaged food would be "healthy".
Basically if it is sold on the outside perimeters of the store, it is likely to be healthy/healthful.
If it is in the center aisles, is shelf stable at room temperature, it is not.
Beer and frozen veggies, of course...are excluded from the 2nd part there...they are always healthful!!
Especially beer.
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Yup.
A really simplified and accurate rule would be: No, over processed packaged food would be "healthy".
"Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much." -- Michael Pollan
Short, pithy, to the point, and gives guidance without being overly prescriptive.
Thing is, food and nutrition is complicated. Sounds like I can't label table salt as "healthful" because it has too much sodium, even though it's pretty important as an iodine delivery vehicle.
Anyway, you'd hope by now people would understand they need to take any words printed on a food label with, well, a grain of salt. Just because a packet says it's healthful doesn't
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Oooh..for the most part, we get enough iodine in normal diet.
I do not use "table salt" to cook with just because it has iodine and I cannot stand the taste it imparts to my food.
I tend to stick with either Kosher Salt or Pink Sea Salt to avoid the iodine.
But other than that, I'm with you on your post.
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Yup.
A really simplified and accurate rule would be: No, over processed packaged food would be "healthy".
Eh, that definition isn't actually specific enough to be useful to those of us that make food. Is 36-hour sous-vide ultra-processed? Is mayonnaise? Sourdough? What if I add ascorbic acid, wheat bran (packaged and stored), and malted barley? Koji-fermented chicken? Anything Asian recipe that contains MSG as a seasoning? Any other recipe that contains natural MSG (parmesan, fish sauce, soy sauce, anchovies, etc)?
And don't think this doesn't affect you just because you don't cook on the wild side. Food manufac
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If YOU are making, it isn't meeting the definition of processed foods I'd mentioned.
I'm talking about overly pre-processed by companies selling it shelf stable.
If you're cooking, you're taking raw ingredients and making something with them..sous-vide, etc...
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I really wonder about that. I don't know what techniques those companies use, and how they are different than what I've done at home. I've used sulfites, "flavor enhancer", high heat, nitrates, and emulsifiers. That said, emulsifiers and nitrates are the only ones I'm nervous about, and I don't use them anymore.
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"ultra processed" is really just short hand for if the food uses too many chemicals, often preservatives, that makes the food last longer or taste better, but the chemicals itself isn't good for the body. Although the physical composition of food (ground meat, chicken paste, etc) can have nutrit
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Thank you for that. I'd like to believe it but I don't think I can. For one thing it doesn't explain why people eat more calories when given processed foods than when given minimally processed foods [cell.com] (this is a well studied phenomenon). If anything, it's about the taste, the particle size, the texture. this article [washingtonpost.com] says it could be the lack of fiber or the speed of eating. I think it's that, and the taste. Another article about the same study: https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]. This one says it could be the
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Re: Good (Score:1)
Sugar by itself is not harmful, the major problem is the damage of insulin secretion organ. Sugar becomes poison only after that organ is damaged. And that is bloody half of the bloody population now!
But we do overeat sugar a lot, so yes, step in the right direction
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
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There will be no consensus, because the premise that "healthy" is a meaningful label to have on a food package is flawed to start with.
A healthy diet is about balance. Sanity. It's about habits and context. Any food with this "healthy" label is not going to be healthy if you stuff your face with it, for example. But if it's labelled as healthy, maybe you feel better about it. This kind of label is only useful in facilitating overconsumption. Nothing else.
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The FDA's "definition" has been intentionally wrong, geared towards industry lobbyist profits, since the FDA's inception.
The FDA has consistently steered people away from healthy food, towards grains, starches/sugars, and plant-based solvent oils, and away from healthy fats and proteins.
This is the first time we've seen an exception to the rule, from what I have seen.
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Good. Their definition has been out of date for literally decades.
Don't worry, they'll still be able to label complete garbage as "healthy" under this new definition
Think: Packing peanuts are low fat, low sugar, low sodium, etc. Just add some flavorings and you're good to go.
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Who cares? (Score:1, Interesting)
Is there any evidence whatsoever that labelling a food "healthy" affects consumption?
Besides, which foods you eat is a lot less important than how much.
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I don't know if using the word "healthy" affects buying habits as I believe most people are numb to marketing buzzwords. When I read "healthy" on a label my mind usually echoes "bullshit".
The nutrition content labels do affect our food purchases since we have problems with gluten/soy/dairy and salt. We also like to keep sugar to a minimum.
Better product labeling is a definite plus for us. Buzzwords not so much.
I do prefer blue labels over yellow and orange.
"Healthy" depends on the context (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with a single catch-all term like "healthy" is that the very concept depends on the context of who is eating the food. Are you a low-income individual with food insecurity? Well then getting a Chipotle burrito might be considered healthy since it would contain a day's worth of proteins, dairy, carbs and grains. But to an obese individual, that same burrito could be extremely unhealthy.
If you going to run a marathon tomorrow, then a salad that is mostly iceberg lettuce can't be healthy: It would have almost no nutritional value. But to an obese individual, eating that same salad could be healthy if it replaces a fat-heavy meal.
If we are being honest, whatever changes the FDA proposes to processed food packaging will almost certainly have zero impact on the dietary habits of people. Just like how putting calories on menus or fast-food displays also has had no impact.
Re: "Healthy" depends on the context (Score:1, Interesting)
But it does stroke the egos of people who gravitate to government and hold the conceit that whenever something good happens, it's their doing, and whenever something bad happens, they alone can fix it.
The truth is less satisfying: the only person looking out for what's best for you is you. And possibly your mommy. Any regime created by government to remove your opportunities to hurt yourself by poor decisionmaking will either be circumvented by predators who have a vested interest in making you feed more hu
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I can remember a time when I was less educated on the topic and would accept labels of 'healthy' food at face value enough though it was packed full of sugars and other negative impacting additives.
In short, I needed study ingredients a bit and learn what I was consuming. Does that mean I eat better? Not in the slightest, but if I had some level of reference again that rejected some outright terrible food options, I would probably be a bit more determined to make better food choices when in a pinch and tr
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> The problem with a single catch-all term like "healthy" is that the very concept depends on the context of who is eating the food. Are you a low-income individual with food insecurity? Well then getting a Chipotle burrito might be considered healthy since it would contain a day's worth of proteins, dairy, carbs and grains. But to an obese individual, that same burrito could be extremely unhealthy.
They could be bypassing a lot of those issues by only rating as "healthy" a standardized serving, while als
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Food safety history (Score:5, Informative)
The book, "The Poison Squad" by Deborah Blum is a fascinating story of the lack of food safety at the end of the nineteenth century. Dr. Harvey Wiley was named chief chemist at the agriculture department and for more than two decades campaigned for safety in food ingredients & honesty in food labeling. Jars of honey on the store shelf which contained no honey at all; bottles labeled "Whiskey" which contained no whiskey; milk laced with formaldehyde; arsenic, lead, and other metal compounds used as food coloring; all of these were common and violated no law or regulation here in the U.S. ...anyway, a very good book for anyone interested.
Re:Food safety history (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps some of it is true, although much of it was related to the limited scientific knowledge at the time and clearly not all of the products had this issue. They still have products with arsenic and other metal compounds in make-up, there are still issues with production of many products. The question is whether it is because or despite the FDA.
Besides that, in a purely anarchic society, there is still product liability. The biggest problem with the FDA is that is sets a standard for "allowable" contamination which does away completely with product liability and gives it the sheen of using modern scientific standards even though most of it is still politically driven. Look at the recent baby food debacle, FDA knew about and permitted the contaminated baby food to be produced, they did so because the administration was experiencing criticism due to its poor economic policy and they didn't want to exacerbate it.
For example, FDA allows a significant percentage of mouse droppings and insects in most of your food. This is a big handout to big corporations who use this to skirt by the regulations at sub-par health inspection ratings, while most smaller companies like mom-and-pop bakeries today would immediately fold if the health inspector didn't give them an A+ rating.
Re:Food safety history (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, FDA allows a significant percentage of mouse droppings and insects in most of your food. This is a big handout to big corporations who use this to skirt by the regulations at sub-par health inspection ratings, while most smaller companies like mom-and-pop bakeries today would immediately fold if the health inspector didn't give them an A+ rating.
Here is your problem with the idea that no mouse droppings be allowed in food for consumption by humans. Let alone that it's some sort of conspiracy to let corporations poison us.
We all gonna starve to death. Because it is simply impossible to have agricultural food with 0 mouse droppings, or insects and their various materials in it. Maybe with hydroponics, but nothing grown in a field will ever be free of that stuff you are afraid of.
A mouse turd in an entire silo? Burn it, Starve to death later.
It's like how a reservoir was drained because someone urinated in it https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]
Meanwhile, fish shit in it, birds fly over, and shit in it, but a person goes peepee in it and you flush 38 million gallons of water.
We simply cannot remove all the gross stuff in our food and water supplies.
Re: Food safety history (Score:2)
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I once read that by eradicating TB by a large margin, our bodies gave way to allergens that never before bothered us. We somehow weakened ourselves by eradication of too many things.
Kinda where Peanut allergies came from.
My kid got a huge rash when we first took him to our horse barn. Our pediatrician told us to be certain to keep taking him there. Sure enough, after two more times, he never got a rash again. Let the kids play in the dirt.
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Actually I'm more concerned about the long-term pernicious effects of plasticizers than eating a few bugs. People are looking into it but the types of harm that play out over a lifetime and are pervasive are very difficult to pin down.
Re:Food safety history (Score:4, Interesting)
In the physical world we inhabit, there's a little of everything in everything. If the limits on mouse droppings and insects parts were too high, it would be making people ill.
Actually I'm more concerned about the long-term pernicious effects of plasticizers than eating a few bugs. People are looking into it but the types of harm that play out over a lifetime and are pervasive are very difficult to pin down.
This guy gets it!
We are inundated by endocrine disrupters, and a lot of harm has already been done. Notice how quickly Bisphenol-A was banned? When that happens, you know it is an issue like benzene, or tetraethyl lead. (yeah the lead should have been banned earlier)
And here is where I lose people. Phytoestrogen overload. This overload coupled with the endocrine disrupters is going to make an unholy mess of humans exposed to all of that.
Re:Food safety history (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps some of it is true, although much of it was related to the limited scientific knowledge at the time and clearly not all of the products had this issue.
This is a rather disingenuous thing to say. It is historically well-established that food adulteration was common before it was outlawed -- bread contained plaster; milk contained lead etc. This was not due to some kind of lack of scientific understanding that mistook plaster for flour or gypsum for sugar.
Now it *is* true that as our detection technology gets better we can detect *miniscule* levels of contamination, but that was not what was going on back then. What was going on back then wasn't accidental *trace* contamination (mouse droppings detectable through some really sensitive lab test). It was intentional *bulk replacement* of expensive ingredients like flour with inexpensive ones like plaster. Conflating these two things is misleading.
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Perhaps some of it is true, although much of it was related to the limited scientific knowledge at the time...
Yeah, you have to remember context. In1890, the germ theory of disease had only just beat out the miasma theory (and many doctors still didn't buy it). We didn't understand how toxic heavy metals like arsenic and lead were. I'm surprised people didn't sprinkle cyanide on their food for some tomfool reason.
Compared to that, someone believing a Goop vaginal candle is a good idea is pretty tame stuff.
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Your examples sound like common-law fraud - law which certainly already existed at the time.
Offering for sale "honey" with no honey, "whiskey" with no whiskey definitely would have been fraudulent and illegal even at the time, without any special laws or regulations. Common law did not (and does not) permit lying to people to part them from their money.
"Milk" that's not suitable for human consumption, I don't know. I think there was probably even then an implied warrantee of fitness for purpose, but I'm not
Re:Food safety history (Score:4, Informative)
> even then an implied warrantee of fitness for purpose, but I'm not sure.
Speaking of milk, here's the event that "...led to the passage of the first food safety laws in the form of milk regulations in 1862"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swill_milk_scandal
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The book, "The Poison Squad" by Deborah Blum is a fascinating story of the lack of food safety at the end of the nineteenth century.
Sounds like an interesting book. Does it dig into why some companies thought they could and should do this? I mean, some cases (replacing honey with sugar syrup) make sense: it probably was cheaper and Ma Kettle ain't gonna know the difference. Others, like formaldehyde in milk, I shake my head at. What was the thinking behind this? Was is it intended to be a preservative? And if it was, was it actually worse than drinking spoiled milk? For all I know it actually was healthier than the alternative. Or maybe
- no limit on added sugars ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sugar is the wrong word. The enemy is carbohydrates for many people. Isolating a single carbohydrate of many is non-productive. CARBS are bad and kill many people. Sugar is only one carb.
Nobody seems to understand that when you open your mouth for a slice of bread or a spoon of breakfast cereal, your tongue immediately begins to convert that starch into sugar. Right there, before you can even chew or swallow it. Potatoes, rice, corn, oats are all mostly carbohydrate. Bananas and many fruits and all fruit juices are loaded with carbohydrates. These foods have been manipulated for thousands of years to produce more carb and relatively less fiber and nutrients. Some people believe that honey or maple syrup are somehow different from sugar so they can eat all they want. Some people want to scream and cover their ears when they hear that their favorite foods are destroying their bodies and their brains.
Isolating sugar as the 'bad guy' is like saying Colt 45 pistols are responsible for all gun deaths.
Re: - no limit on added sugars ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of the problem is that the words and terms have been deliberately manipulated to confuse the issue. Just like the oil industry used the term "ethyl gasoline" to avoid saying the word "lead". Nowadays people say "sugar", but we have no idea what sugar they are talking about. And they say "carbohydrates" but we have no idea what carbohydrate they are talking about. Ethanol (and even methanol!) are carbohydrates...these alcohols are nothing like rice or potatoes.
You are 100% correct that all starch is broken down into GLUCOSE. Glucose is one particular sugar, it's literally what your body and brain run on; there's no possible way to say that it's bad for you (unless you eat too much of it and get fat or diabetes). Your liver will literally synthesize glucose if you don't eat it. People in Japan live on mostly starch, and lots of people have lived on mostly potatoes. But starch is not sugar...starch is GLUCOSE. By the way, actual glucose isn't very sweet. That's why the stuff they have you drink for your diabetes tests tastes like shit. You can buy pure glucose (literally pure blood sugar!) in the baking aisle in the form of "corn sugar" (completely different than corn syrup, wow that's not confusing or anything right?), also known as dextrose. Nobody buys it for baking though, because glucose isn't very sweet.
SUGAR (table sugar) is a mixture of glucose and FRUCTOSE. FRUCTOSE is another particular sugar, different than glucose, that cannot be metabolized by your body directly. Your body cannot run on it. If you eat it, it will not raise your blood sugar or cause an insulin response. It has to be processed by your liver through complicated metabolic pathways, kicking off all kinds of byproducts, one of which is lipogenesis (creation of fat). These metabolic pathways are very similar to those for ethanol, which is another carbohydrate which your body can technically metabolize, but with all kinds of unhealthy side effects. Eating sugar and drinking alcohol are strikingly similar in their effects. You get a beer belly, hangovers, and fatty liver from both. The only difference is that sugar is worse because you can drink 5 40oz big gulps in a row without getting drunk under the table. Fructose and ethanol are both borderline poison that your body has a way to break down but clearly your body is not equipped to ingest large amounts of them for energy as a part of your diet. Here's the hook though...fructose is sweet. That's why table sugar is sweet, and why we use it as a sweetener. I don't know if you can buy pure fructose...
High-fructose corn syrup is even more confusing. Because even though fructose is what is bad for you, high-fructose corn syrup may in fact be better for you. The reason is that regular corn syrup has low fructose content. It's high in glucose, which means it's not very sweet. So if you try to use regular corn syrup to sweeten foods, which did happen (because Big Ag reasons), you have to add a fuck-ton of it to make the food sweet, which cranks up the calories and the insulin response. So the industry invented high-fructose corn syrup, which is higher in fructose, which is very similar to table sugar, we can say it's basically identical. So between two equally-sweet food items, one made with regular corn syrup and one made with high-fructose corn syrup, probably the HFCS one will be healthier for you. You are going to get about the same amount of (sweet, poisonous) fructose in both, but the one will come with a bunch of (not that sweet, real food) glucose too, which will probably be worse for you unless you are starving.
About "carbohydrates", I really think carbohydrates should not be a nutritional category, if it includes both starches and sugars together. Ethanol is literally a carbohydrate, but nobody calls it that, because they recognize that it's pseudo-poison, not a "real" nutrient. Howev
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Eskimos are healthier than Americans even though they eat 90% fat (no sugar). Japanese people are healthier than Americans even though they eat 90% starch (but still not much sugar). E
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They are all selectively bred to contain as much sugar as possible. If you have ever seen un-cultivated wild apples, bananas, or other fruits, you would realize they are 90% fiber and seeds and about 10% sugar.
I wonder about this every time I see veggies or seeds advertising just how sweet the crop is.
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If it's on the shelves, somebody is buying it. And, bakeries use glucose in more ways than you'd expect because it doesn't dry out in the oven, making for moister baked goods that don't dry out. As an example, commercial coconut macaroons are made with glucose, which is why they stay soft, sometimes for months.
Re: - no limit on added sugars ? (Score:2)
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Re: - no limit on added sugars ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sugar is the wrong word. The enemy is carbohydrates for many people. Isolating a single carbohydrate of many is non-productive. CARBS are bad and kill many people. Sugar is only one carb.
Sorry but lumping all carbs together in the same way is just plain stupid. There's a reason to go after sugar specifically:
a) it's addictive
b) because it's desirable it is *added* to food which doesn't need to have it
c) by itself it offers very little nutritional value.
If you're trying to tell us that the health impacts of eating potatoes are the same as eating a spoon of sugar then I highly suggest you read a book (literally any book) on the topic to correct your understanding.
There's nothing wrong with eating carbs, they have been part of our diet since the beginning and are part of any healthy meal. There is however plenty wrong with cramming our food full of refined sugar loading it with senseless carbs that provide nothing other than and addiction to consume more of it.
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Sugar is the wrong word. The enemy is carbohydrates for many people. Isolating a single carbohydrate of many is non-productive. CARBS are bad and kill many people. Sugar is only one carb.
Sorry but lumping all carbs together in the same way is just plain stupid. There's a reason to go after sugar specifically:
a) it's addictive
b) because it's desirable it is *added* to food which doesn't need to have it
c) by itself it offers very little nutritional value.
If you're trying to tell us that the health impacts of eating potatoes are the same as eating a spoon of sugar then I highly suggest you read a book (literally any book) on the topic to correct your understanding.
There's nothing wrong with eating carbs, they have been part of our diet since the beginning and are part of any healthy meal. There is however plenty wrong with cramming our food full of refined sugar loading it with senseless carbs that provide nothing other than and addiction to consume more of it.
That's the problem with fad diets... which paleo (low carb) is the god price of, it tries to boil down a giant grey area into DO and DO NOT, trying claim they have the easy way out.
Nothing we eat is inherently and absolutely evil, not even the great satans of fat and sugar. We actually need a little of both in our diets (even type 2 diabetics, who can go hypoglycaemic if their blood sugar gets to low, which can be an issue on VLCDs) just not too much of them. My point is, that things like fat and sugar
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For those who are confused and think that 'sugar' is somehow unique among carbohydrates, I invite you to read the best selling book 'Grain Brain' and others similar. Note the specific reference to brain damage which is becoming a growing area of research.
For those who believe that sugar is the only addictive carbohydrate--rest in peace. Your death from deliberate ignorance isn't far off. Look at the size of the bread aisle in your supermarket, and the bakery and breakfast cereal aisle. That's a lot of expen
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No one is confusing any of those things. We are pointing out there's a very important distinction between eating food which contain carbs among a diverse set of other nutrients, and eating food which have sugar added only for the purpose of making said meal more addictive (very often a meal which isn't very nutritious in the first place).
Nicotine isn't bad for you, but there's a reason it is fundamentally at the foundation of anti-smoking campaigns.
Please don't loose sight of what we're talking about here.
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What's wrong with a fast food meal? People like to associate that with unhealthy eating. Lemme tell you, I used to love that shit. And it isn't too bad; let's have a look.
Hamburger, fries, cola; oh and the trimmings- ketchup, pickle, mustard. Don't forget the bun, and maybe today you want a strawberry malted milk instead of coke. What's bad & what's good about this meal?
Hamburger bad- loaded with fat, hormones, and unknown stuff, right? Actually the meat & fat might not be the best, but they are ess
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Sugar is the wrong word. The enemy is carbohydrates for many people. Isolating a single carbohydrate of many is non-productive. CARBS are bad and kill many people. Sugar is only one carb.
Yes, 100% correct. Those "healthy" grains and complex carbohydrates are exactly one digestive step away from table sugar.
Salt is still bad? (Score:2)
Interesting they are still limiting salt to 230 milligrams per serving. I thought the experts were beginning to agree that salt isn't quite as bad for you as it has been made out to be in the 90's and 00's.
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Interesting they are still limiting salt to 230 milligrams per serving. I thought the experts were beginning to agree that salt isn't quite as bad for you as it has been made out to be in the 90's and 00's.
The salt thing has always been weird. I remember years ago at the place my father worked, they removed the salt tablets from the foundry part of the building because salt is bad for people. Told the workers to avoid salt
And as you might expect, the workers got pretty messed up until someone who wasn't stupid had the dispensers reinstalled.
Same with athletes. We'd sweat off at least 10 pounds of water during game, and if I didn't grab a bag of ships before drinking water, I'd get pretty queasy. Still
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That's not even the half of it. They don't include things like sucralose as sugar, so it's entirely possible for neurotoxins to be in these foods, for the foods to be obscenely sweet and still be "healthy".
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Even if salt isn't unhealthy for you directly, it is a highly addictive substance added in high quantities in order to trick your body into increased desire for the food you are eating. Even without considering it's nutrition directly, it's addition to food is unhealthy as you tend to scoff more of it down.
It's one of the cornerstones of the obesity epidemic: low nutritional value food, loaded with carbs, with added salt and sugar to get you to buy more.
Eating low carb (Score:2)
Still wrong (Score:3)
It's clear the FDA is still just the marketing department for the junk food industry. There needs to be aggressive annual financial audits of all FDA management ,and their families, to uncover and prosecute all of the bribery in the industry. Massive amounts of carbohydrates and toxic processed oils are the main problem. Foods containing trans fats are still allowed to game the serving size and show "Trans fat 0g." Dietary cholesterol does not effect blood serum cholesterol - the cholesterol in your blood is produced by your body and is not the cause of disease (it's a symptom of other problems). Toxic seed oils that cause inflammation shouldn't even be allowed. People are eating crap that shouldn't even be classified as "food" and then wondering why their health is destroyed.
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It's clear the FDA is still just the marketing department for the junk food industry. There needs to be aggressive annual financial audits of all FDA management ,and their families, to uncover and prosecute all of the bribery in the industry. Massive amounts of carbohydrates and toxic processed oils are the main problem. Foods containing trans fats are still allowed to game the serving size and show "Trans fat 0g." Dietary cholesterol does not effect blood serum cholesterol - the cholesterol in your blood is produced by your body and is not the cause of disease (it's a symptom of other problems). Toxic seed oils that cause inflammation shouldn't even be allowed. People are eating crap that shouldn't even be classified as "food" and then wondering why their health is destroyed.
We all need to become breatharians! 8^/
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No, midevil peasants ate remarkably better than we do today: more animal fats and proteins, vegetables as a regular part of their diets.
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Refined sugar, hydrogenated cotton seed oil, canola oil, palm oil, refined and bleached wheat flour - none of these things were a normal part of the human diet until mid last century. Medieval peasants had natural non-toxic food, just not enough of it.
Nice but... (Score:3)
don't trust the FDA. See this article for more info: https://today.uconn.edu/2021/0... [uconn.edu]
Nearly half of the FDA budget comes from 'user fees' paid to them by companies they are supposed to be regulating. The food industry in America is boarder line criminal with what they are allowed to put in and still call it 'food'. Just like everything else, it's all about the money.
my new product is delicious, tastes like pork (Score:2)
Brawndo has Electrolytes (Score:2)
Healthy food? (Score:2)
As far as I can tell, it's any food that allows one to feel superior to the riff-raff.
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Most food is actually not healthy at all, most of it is dead long before you eat it.
I mostly follow the book How Not to Die (Score:4, Interesting)
There's also What the Health on Netflix.
Science/evidence based, result is whole-food veganism. Mediterranean without the fish.
I'm not 100% strict, but don't cheat much (my cheats are quality food, no junk). It's not bad, and I like oatmeal, bean burritos, and smoothies. I don't like vegetables, but they "smoothie" well (with added protein powder).
If it's not a whole grain and it's shelf stable, it's not healthy (processed). FOOD goes bad.
My take: We're vegetarians by evolution (gut length, canine teeth never elongated), but capable omnivores. Flesh and animal products are inherently bad for us.
They must be cooked - no other meat eating species requires that, and fire is necessary for us to be capable meat eaters. But, problems from animal sourced foods don't present until later in life (as cancer and such per the book). This is fine evolutionarily (lifespan around 40 keeps humans flowing), but if you want to live a long healthy life, whole plants is what I would recommend (per the book).
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The cooking argument sounds convincing and it does have a significant effect on us but not the way or reasons you put forth. We must cook most of our vegetables too, did you not notice? Ever try eating a raw potato? What actually happen
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Overconsumption ends up being the primary issue. Although health trends in Asia correlate poorly with increased beef intake.
It would seem, for optimal health, veganism is the best route. It's about how far we go from there and how it impacts us. Problem is that researching this is difficult given the time scales (which decreases accuracy).
Here's a bit more thought, including a reference to lactose intolerance (evolution perspective regarding timing of fire and meat tolerance)
https://slashdot.org/comments [slashdot.org]
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They must be cooked - no other meat eating species requires that, and fire is necessary for us to be capable meat eaters.
Humans and their ancestors have been using fire for about 2 million years, that's quite enough for evolution to do its work. Modern humans have evolved to eat cooked food.
Also, almost every single culture we know of consumed meat and other animal products, so there is no historical or evolutionary basis for veganism's extreme position.
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I don't deny that we are capable omnivores, and millions of years is the time frame. But way back we started as vegetarians. Pre-fire raw meat wouldn't work (probably far worse that today given adaptations for cooked meat over timen).
Let's talk evolutionarily lineage for a moment. I"ll just use "species" to represent modern homo-sapiens and direct ancestors, whatever they may be. "Animal" is anything else with flesh or other byproducts we may consume.
A long time ago, on Earth, not far away:
1. Species w
Why bother with "healthy"? That's just dumb. (Score:3)
Just google "superfood" and eat whatever floats into the zeitgeist. You'll live forever.
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Just stay away from that "ultraprocessed" stuff, whatever that means!
READ THE LABEL (Score:1)
No such thing as "healthy" or "unhealthy" foods (Score:1)
There are only healthy or unhealthy *diets.*
FDA still wrong about carbs and saturated fats (Score:1)
Politics, Not Science (Score:3)
There are few topics more emotionally charged than food. This is one of the things that make food so attractive to politicians. Zealots abound in all directions. The government for the last 50 years has told everyone to eat a high-carb diet that has brought an epidemic of diabetes, obesity and heart disease. The vegans claim that we all should live like ruminant animals even though we have digestive tracts more similar to that of a lion than to that of a dairy cow. All the government advisory boards are filled with representatives from the food industry who are unwilling to say that all the crispy, greasy stuff in crinkly bags is not good for you.
I won't be taking advice from the government on what I should eat. I know how to read and I know how my body reacts to different foods. Look around you at the world and you can see how good the government is at managing things. Don't turn your body over to them.
Food Neutrality (Score:2)
It could get worse. Maybe this is a hoax or a fringe element but I've been surprised by what inane equity theories can rise up.
Look up "food neutrality" with respect to LA schools.
Otherwise, I think the boring "moderation in everything" is the safest bet unless you know of underlying conditions that should be addressed.
Nothing is healthy (Score:1)
Doesn't matter what they settle on, the entire food supply is inundated with salt for absolutely no reason. You can barely even buy meat that hasn't had a salt water solution shot all up into it. Have you tried to cook chicken in a skillet? You can't get anything but a boil from it due to all the injected water. The only thing left is frozen vegetables because our fresh grown in state vegetables where I live seem to be getting shipped somewhere else and what we have shipped back in is trash.
FDA = Fake (Score:2)
FDA nutrition and ingredient statements are fake. For example, nutritional quantities need have ZERO decimal places. This allows small serving sizes to claim zero bad stuff when actually it might be say 5% bad stuff by weight.
In addition, ingredients do not have to be listed with percentage by weight. Pakistan for example requires that.
In addition, FDA allows rounding 0.5gm to 0gm.
Often "natural flavors" ingredients are highly processed. But this does distinguish them from supernatural ingredients, like