from Hacker News

America’s packaged food supply is ultra-processed

by xbeta on 7/29/19, 6:00 AM with 74 comments

  • by TheAlchemist on 7/29/19, 10:19 AM

    It's really simple - good food is food prepared by yourself from raw ingredients (some exceptions for pasta, bread etc - use whole grain). If you do that, you will be good - it's really hard to eat bad with food you prepare yourself. On the contrary, it's extremely hard to eat well with eating processed food.

    I've traveled recently to US and the amount of shit food available was amazing. I've seen several small grocery shops without a single fresh veggie available. What a contrast with France (where I live) !

  • by chmod775 on 7/29/19, 10:27 AM

    What is "ultra processed" food? According to [1] it is stuff like:

        Soft drinks
    Packaged bread and buns
    Chips
    Candy
    Store-bought ice cream
    Boxed cake mix
    Instant noodles
    Infant formula
    Breakfast cereal
    Energy bars
    Flavored yogurt
    Chicken nuggets
    Fast food burgers
    Hot dogs
    Some of these make sense... other don't. But clearly the actual degree of processing required to obtain a given food item isn't the main factor to label it "ultra processed".

    You're gonna tell me my muesli energy bar is "ultra-processed"? It's literally just a bunch of grain sticking together.

    Besides, those qualifiers are really weird: linking the category of an item to the place it was purchased instead of its actual ingredients (Fast food burgers, store-bought ice cream, packaged bread and buns)?

    This smells like bullshit, clickbait, and health-craze pseudoscience.

    [1]: https://www.cookinglight.com/eating-smart/nutrition-101/what...

  • by open-source-ux on 7/29/19, 8:12 AM

    Related: statistics on consumption of 'ultra-processed' foods across 19 European Countries (from Feb 2018)

    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/02/ultra-proces...

    The countries consuming the most ultra-processed foods are UK, Germany, Ireland and Belgium.

  • by hairytrog on 7/29/19, 6:39 AM

    Would be interesting to see the fractions by mass rather than number of products. The latter could just be that we have many many varieties of chips and soda and only a few varieties of flour.

  • by lota-putty on 7/29/19, 8:04 AM

    Consequence of food choices purely based on taste, looks & colours?

    Edit: Forcing poor towards unhealthy food choices.

  • by FerretFred on 7/29/19, 1:23 PM

    As a UK home baker I was surprised to see that the majority of US bread recipes i found seem to need sugar as a substantial ingredient (see https://www.thebrewerandthebaker.com/archives/17796) . Bearing in mind that bread basically consists of flour, water and usually yeast, the need for sugar is puzzling, especially as it doesn't really add to the flavour.

  • by swarnie_ on 7/29/19, 12:13 PM

    What did you guys managed to do to bread?

    Every time i go to America' toast / sandwiches are inedible because it tastes closer to what i call cake.