[HN Gopher] How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods
___________________________________________________________________
How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods
Author : mykowebhn
Score : 102 points
Date : 2025-10-16 14:39 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| Insanity wrote:
| As a European who moved to Canada and spends a fair amount of
| time in the States, one thing that really surprised me is how
| hard it is to find healthy food options compared to the unhealthy
| ones. Food was a bit of a concern before moving, but I didn't
| know just how frustrating it would be.
|
| Even something as simple as Yogurt is usually insanely sweet /
| sugary compared to European variants. Ingredients that are banned
| in Europe are regularly found in products, and something as
| simple as bread has a ton of preservatives (as the article
| shows).
|
| And I'm vegetarian, I assume for people who eat meat there's the
| additional concern of antibiotics resistance due to the
| antibiotics given to livestock.
| dkga wrote:
| Exactly my impression. And on top of things I need to keep a
| strict gluten-free diet. It's a horrible experience.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >I assume for people who eat meat there's the additional
| concern of antibiotics resistance due to the antibiotics given
| to livestock.
|
| The concern isn't eating meat from an animal treated with
| antibiotics infecting you with resistant bacteria.
|
| The concern is treating animals with antibiotics puts
| evolutionary pressure towards breeding resistant bacteria that
| spill into the ecosystem and eventually get back to us. But not
| through meat consumption, it effects everyone regardless of
| diet.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Specifically: animal waste is sometimes used as fertilizer,
| and sometimes that waste isn't treated properly to eliminate
| pathogens. Sometimes you're eating antibiotic-resistant-
| waste-laden plants, and sometimes those plants are fed to
| animals that humans then eat. Same for aquatic plants/animals
| downstream of animal waste. Even drinking water can be
| contaminated.
|
| Antibiotic resistant bacteria isn't the only harmful
| downstream effect of factory farms of course. Regular-old
| harmful bacteria are in the runoff, as well as super-high
| levels of nutrients that harm waterways, plants and animals.
| Algal blooms, oxygen dead zones, contaminated water table,
| etc.
|
| All because we really like cheap pork, beef and chicken.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Not really no.
|
| I'm not saying eating a bit of cow poop on your lettuce
| _never_ gets anyone sick, but that 's not the mechanism of
| concern.
|
| One: poop is mostly bacteria, by mass. It isn't _infected
| with_ ... _it is_. Some can be "pathogens" but that's what
| the last stage of digestion is, fermentation with mostly a
| wide array of bacteria.
|
| The concern is these gut bacteria developing antibiotic
| resistance and bacterial infections in the animal
| developing resistance. Then infections are spread between
| animals and across species and the waste is reintroduced
| into the environment. Resistant bacteria in the environment
| share. Horizontal gene transfer between species of bacteria
| can lead to these resistance genes being popular and
| everywhere. It's not cow poop infecting you, its the
| genetics getting spread into the environment and eventually
| ending up in a human pathogen.
|
| >animal waste is sometimes used as fertilizer
|
| More or less all industrial farmed animal waste ends up as
| fertilizer. Also a major component of the kinds of soil we
| grow crops in is bacteria, much of which has been through
| the digestive system of an animal. Again I don't know what
| people think soil is. If you want "clean"(?) never been
| poop growth medium for your plants you have to go
| completely artificial. And manure isn't sterilized before
| it goes into fields, it's alive.
| nradov wrote:
| Every grocery store where I've shopped has yogurt with no added
| sugar. It's right there on the shelf, just look at the label.
|
| Antibiotic resistance is a concern but the FDA has made
| progress in that area.
|
| https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/safety-health/antimicr...
|
| The EU bans routine antibiotic use for promoting animal growth
| but antibiotics are still widely used for other purposes.
|
| https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/first-report-eu-wide-sales...
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| The US still used 6.1 million kilograms of medically
| important antibiotics for animal farming in 2023. It was only
| down 2% from the year before.
| https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/antimicrobial-stewardship/fda-
| rep...
| parineum wrote:
| That sounds like a lot but what's the comparison to another
| country adjusted per animal (or weight of meat produced?)?
| benrutter wrote:
| This paper[0] (from a UK activist group but well
| referenced) says:
|
| > US farm antibiotic use is 2.6 times higher than the
| median use in European countries and 60% higher than the
| average use throughout Europe.
|
| [0] https://www.saveourantibiotics.org/media/1830/farm-
| antibioti...
| throwway120385 wrote:
| It's marked as "plain" yogurt. You can still find adulterants
| in it, just not added sugars. For example Trader Joe's "plain
| yogurt" is a mixture of yogurt and buttermilk.
| yesb wrote:
| Plain yogurt is strictly defined by the FDA. It's when you
| have flavored versions that the rules get loose.
|
| For example this contains only milk, cream, bacteria:
| https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/plain-whole-
| mil...
|
| This is basically sugary milk with thickeners added to make
| it vaguely like yogurt:
| https://www.yoplait.com/products/original-single-serve-
| straw...
| nradov wrote:
| I don't understand your comment. Trader Joe's sells plain
| yogurt with no added buttermilk.
|
| https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/greek-whole-
| mil...
|
| Or you can buy essentially the same thing for less at
| Walmart.
|
| https://www.walmart.com/ip/Mountain-High-Low-Fat-Yogurt-
| Vani...
|
| While there are some people who live in "food deserts" with
| very limited options, complaints by most HN users about the
| difficulty of finding healthy food don't align with
| reality.
| technothrasher wrote:
| Even if they did add buttermilk, it would almost
| undoubtedly be cultured buttermilk, which is really
| nothing more than very thin yogurt. So I'm not seeing
| what the issue would be with Trader Joe's adding yogurt
| to yogurt.
| yesb wrote:
| Not sure if they carry it anymore but yogurt marketed as
| "European style" often has buttermilk: https://oatmel.com
| /products/European_Style_Smooth__Creamy_Pl...
|
| But not sure I would consider fermented milk to be an
| "adulterant" in a different fermented milk product...
| secabeen wrote:
| FWIW, Greek Yogurt is not the same as Yogurt, it's a
| different product. Those two items are not "essentially
| the same thing". Also, low/zero-fat yogurts dominate the
| market in the US. Plain Whole-Milk traditional yogurt is
| more available now than it was a decade or two ago, but
| it's still nowhere as common as the high-sugar flavored
| ones.
| yesb wrote:
| It's the same thing with the additional step of straining
| out some whey
| steanne wrote:
| the original is, but in the usa 'greek' yogurt is often
| thickened with additives instead.
| OJFord wrote:
| In Europe it's also Greek (as in, literally from Greece)
| milk, or else labelled 'Greek-style'.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| I am continually astounded that zero fat/low fat yogurt
| is just seen as normal. Ditto for oatmeal with added
| sugar.
| morsch wrote:
| The Walmart thing has pectin in it as a
| stabilizer/thickener, which, benign as it may be,
| qualifies as an adulterant. And it's not permitted in
| plain yogurt in Germany (though usually added in
| fruit/flavored yogurt).
| chimpanzee wrote:
| > While there are some people who live in "food deserts"
| with very limited options, complaints by most HN users
| about the difficulty of finding healthy food don't align
| with reality.
|
| Some... Most...
|
| You've made some broad assumptions here. I've lived in
| various neighbordhoods in one of the largest cities in
| this country and near and far suburbs of the same. Only
| when I've lived in ritzy or trendy areas have I had no
| issue eating healthy (according to my definition of
| healthy), and always at significantly greater financial
| cost.
|
| My guess is either your concerns are less restrictive
| than mine annd others' on this thread. Or you've been
| privileged enough to not have a clear perspective on just
| how large, dispersed and discontinuous, the American
| "food desert" truly is.
| nradov wrote:
| I haven't made any broad assumptions. You can buy healthy
| food like frozen vegetables, raw chicken, ground beef,
| potatoes, beans, rice, apples, olive oil, plain yogurt,
| etc pretty much anywhere. I travel a lot and have seen
| these foods widely available in neighborhoods that are
| not remotely ritzy or trendy. They are usually
| inexpensive, and if you have a little storage space then
| you can stock up when stores have discounts to save even
| more.
|
| There are a small fraction of people who do live in food
| deserts and we ought to help them out. Probably the best
| thing we could do to make many food deserts "bloom" would
| be to fund the police and strictly enforce shoplifting
| laws, especially against organized retail theft gangs.
| Good grocery stores have been driven out of some
| neighborhoods partly by high shrinkage rates (not the
| only problem but a major contributing factor).
| vector_spaces wrote:
| > Every grocery store where I've shopped has yogurt with no
| added sugar. It's right there on the shelf, just look at the
| label.
|
| Large parts of the US are designated as food deserts, where
| one's best option for groceries might be the convenience
| store attached to a gas station. Good luck finding plain
| yogurt with no sugar added there. Your specific experience is
| exactly that.
|
| [1] https://ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/chart-
| deta...
| nradov wrote:
| Food deserts do exist but appear to have no meaningful
| effect on eating habits.
|
| https://news.uchicago.edu/story/food-deserts-not-blame-
| growi...
| vector_spaces wrote:
| You made a claim that plain yogurt is generally available
| in US food markets, attempting to make an inference about
| grocery store selections drawing from your own
| experience. I pointed out that it is not actually
| generally available and noted that your experience does
| not generalize.
|
| I am not sure why you mention eating habits, since this
| is not what is being discussed
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I pointed out that it is not actually generally
| available
|
| Actually, you pointed out that food deserts exist, and
| _asserted_ that that meant that plain yogurt is not
| generally available, the thing you pointed out does not
| support the conclusion drawn from it.
| seemaze wrote:
| Food deserts appear to roughly correlate inversely with
| population density[0]. I don't interpret the existence of
| food deserts as evidence that food choice is not
| 'generally' available. Assuming we are serving people and
| not geographies.
|
| [0]https://vividmaps.com/us-block-level-population-
| density/
| maxerickson wrote:
| People that live near gas stations drive to grocery
| stores for their groceries.
| nradov wrote:
| My claim was 100% accurate and my experience does
| generalize. Plain yogurt with no added sugar is generally
| available at the vast majority of supermarkets throughout
| the country. I have actually seen it in both poor and
| affluent areas all over.
|
| But you don't have to take my word for it. Instead of
| making things up you can literally just go look.
| vector_spaces wrote:
| Wow, 100% accurate? OK, I definitely can't argue with
| that. Nor I suppose can I argue much with overinterpreted
| anecdotes and absolutist analysis from a non-expert about
| a nuanced topic. You should start a Tiktok or a Substack
| or something, you are leaving money on the table.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| While I don't live in a food desert where these kind of
| stores are the only option, I have, in fact, regularly
| found plain yogurt in gas-station convenience stores, the
| even smaller refrigerated-food sections in urban drug
| stores, etc.
|
| Now, fresh produce, except--if you are very lucky--
| extremely expensive (for the quantity), relatively small
| packs of cut carrots and other things people might
| reasonably purchase as snacks, anything usable as a cooking
| fat excepted salted butter, and lots of other things, sure,
| you are going to be SOL, but plain yogurt (both the usually
| watery American kind and strained "Greek" yogurt) seems
| pretty common.
| vector_spaces wrote:
| I have also found plain yogurt in gas station convenience
| stores
|
| My issue was less with the plain yogurt specifically and
| more with the logic of the parent, namely that "X product
| has been available in every grocery store I have shopped
| in" implies that "X product can be found in every grocery
| store"
| kulahan wrote:
| Looking at your source, it seems as though food deserts
| exist almost exclusively when you're very far from
| civilization.
|
| In which case you can just grow the food.
| supportengineer wrote:
| A good example of a food desert would be an inner-city
| neighborhood, the first time I heard this term, they were
| talking specifically about places in Oakland, CA. Which
| ironically is a short train ride away from the Food Mecca
| of the USA.
| parineum wrote:
| If it's a short train ride away, what's the
| qualifications fir food desert?
| vector_spaces wrote:
| It actually says right at the top that overwhelmingly
| they are in urban areas
| kulahan wrote:
| It doesn't, actually. It says _most people_ who are in
| food deserts are in urban areas. The vast majority of
| food deserts, however, are absolutely not in urban areas.
|
| Even if it were true, it still only affects 13 million
| people. There are 330 million in the US, so it's a non-
| issue with regard to our obesity problem.
| vector_spaces wrote:
| OK, point taken re most people vs most food deserts
|
| In any case, I am talking about the availability of items
| in response to the parent's obviously absurd implication
| "every food market I have been to sells X, therefore
| every food market sells X".
|
| I am using food deserts as a counterexample since
| definitionally these are regions where certain items are
| hard to find. I know (hope?) that the person I am
| responding to likely doesn't believe every grocery store
| in the United States carries plain yogurt, but I also
| know that people here often forget that not every place
| enjoys the same level of choice that is enjoyed in places
| like the SF Bay Area
|
| I truly don't understand why you are bringing up obesity,
| this feels very remote to what is being discussed.
| kulahan wrote:
| I'm bringing up obesity because the overarching topic is
| UPFs, which are a primary cause of obesity, which is the
| main reason they are bad.
| mjparrott wrote:
| They exist but are a small minority of the shelf. You have to
| really look for them.
| supportengineer wrote:
| This begs the question - is it reasonable for the consumer
| to put in a little work - reading labels and doing research
| outside of the grocery store?
|
| I find that you do the research once, and then you know
| what to buy next time.
| OJFord wrote:
| I think the point is more that the norm is sugary, and so
| it's necessary to do what you describe to find plain (not
| to say 'normal') yoghurt.
| jmathai wrote:
| The amount of work the consumer puts in is matched by
| food makers. You'll see the deceptive marketing on so
| many foods. "No sugar added" no longer means no added
| sweetening agent. It means that sugar was replaced by
| alternative sweeteners.
|
| It's exhausting being a consumer these days.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Well, the supermarkets know know what the effect of their
| product placement is. If they change it, the customer
| buys different things, on average.
|
| So, we can say it's reasonable for people to do some
| research and pick the yoghurt they consider best, but we
| know most people don't do that. And that supermarkets
| prefer to give the best spots to sugary yoghurts.
|
| What's wrong with doing the research once for the average
| person and then regulating the supermarkets so they give
| those the eye level space? People can still make
| different choices if they want.
| cma wrote:
| It could be the result is people buy more danishes and
| doughnuts from the bakery section for breakfast instead
| of now harder to find sweetened yoghurt.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| If the issue was only about choices adults make about
| their own bodies and there were no externalities from
| those choices, then IMO it would of course be reasonable.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Ridiculous.
| nradov wrote:
| Look? As in open your eyes? It's literally right on the
| front of the package in large letters. You can see exactly
| what you're getting without even squinting at the fine
| print on the back.
| chimpanzee wrote:
| > You can see exactly what you're getting without even
| squinting at the fine print on the back.
|
| So the nutrition facts and ingredients list doesn't
| convey any new information? The designers managed to cram
| all that info into an appealing front facing label? And
| the marketers refrained from soft deceptions and
| convenient omissions, prioritizing truth and clarity over
| sales numbers? Sure.
| nradov wrote:
| Sure, if you want plain yogurt with no added sugar then
| you can find that just by looking at the front label.
| Have you ever been to a supermarket?
| pnutjam wrote:
| half the time, no sugar means sugar substitute. It is
| definitely confusing.
|
| Glad you're hear to tell people they are dumb and they
| should work around systemic problems instead of trying to
| fix the system.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Look for plain yogurt, it never has sugar added. Easy to
| spot too.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| My nearby Kroger has four brands of greek yogurt with no
| sugar added and three brands of plain yogurt with no sugar
| added. Each of these brands sells yogurt of varying fat
| contents in quart and cup containers. This takes up like
| eight feet of width on the shelves.
| SirFatty wrote:
| "...how hard it is to find healthy food options compared to the
| unhealthy ones."
|
| Sure, if you limit your purchases to Dollar General and
| Casey's. If you spent time in an actual grocery store, you'd
| find that your comment isn't true.
| garciasn wrote:
| Depends on the grocery store. If you shop exclusively at
| Target, a company that caters primarily to those who
| 'prepare' as opposed to those who 'cook' you'll find less
| healthy options than actual grocery stores.
| vel0city wrote:
| That depends a lot on the Target. One location around me
| only has a very small produce section for their groceries
| with everything else pretty much being prepackaged
| products. Another location has quite a large produce
| section along with a deli, a butcher counter, and a bakery.
| garciasn wrote:
| I was speaking about SuperTargets, not standard Targets.
|
| And I'm not sure why folks are downvoting this;
| objectively, Target has limited and terrible selection
| compared to standalone grocers.
| vel0city wrote:
| In my travels I've found even the size and quality of the
| produce sections of SuperTargets can be quite variable.
|
| But yes, I do agree their range of choices for fresh food
| products is usually more limited compared to good, actual
| grocers. But that applies to their packaged goods as
| well, they often don't have as many choices of lots of
| things. I might find almost a dozen brands of pasta at an
| actual grocer but only have three or four brands at
| Target. To me it seems the ratio is about the same, its
| just the scale is different.
|
| And to be honest, its the same story for practically all
| the stuff at Target. They don't have the widest supply of
| craft supplies compared to craft stores like Michael's
| and Hobby Lobby. They don't have the widest selection of
| bicycles compared to the bike store. They don't have
| nearly as many toys as what Toys R Us did. The book
| section is smaller than a Barnes & Noble. What else is
| new.
| SirFatty wrote:
| Target (and Wal-Mart) are not grocery stores. Sure they
| have groceries, but a limited select selection compared to
| a proper store.
| atmavatar wrote:
| That's not quite true for Wal-Mart.
|
| There exist Wal-Mart Supercenters which are basically a
| full-blown grocery store combined with a traditional Wal-
| Mart store.
|
| There also exist Wal-Mart Neighborhood Markets which are
| regular grocery stores.
|
| It's not uncommon for some people to refer to all of them
| as simply "Wal-Mart", especially if only one of them
| exists locally.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| The comment is still true regardless of the fact that Whole
| Foods exists. It is genuinely more difficult to find healthy
| food in the US than abroad.
|
| (i'm ignoring the additional fact that the US has many more
| food deserts than abroad. even within rich neighborhoods with
| many expansive grocery stores, those stores have more
| unhealthy options and fewer healthy options than abroad,
| unless it's specifically a "health food store")
| unregistereddev wrote:
| I wholeheartedly disagree. Grocery stores in the US are
| typically much larger than grocery stores abroad. A Kroger,
| Publix, Piggly Wiggly, Schnuck's, or HyVee will typically
| have just as many healthy food options as a grocery store
| abroad. The difference is these US grocery stores also
| stock a much larger variety of unhealthy options.
|
| As someone else in this thread used sweet yogurt as an
| example, it is trivially easy to find unsweetened yogurt in
| nearly any grocery store in the US. The difference is that
| there's also a very large selection of sweet flavored
| yogurt.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> If you spent time in an actual grocery store, you'd find
| that your comment isn't true._
|
| Also as "an European" whatever that means, I only spent a
| couple of months in the US as a tourist, and had no issues
| finding healthy foods from leafy greens, to good meats in
| places like Wholefoods.
|
| If he couldn't find it while actually living there, tells me
| he's not commenting in good faith.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| I mean, Whole Foods targets upper middle class folks,
| you're far away from the average American experience
| Jensson wrote:
| Yeah, when I visited USA I was shocked to find lots of
| larger "grocery stores" didn't even stock the basics. In
| Europe that isn't a thing, everything larger than a
| regular room has fresh vegetables and meat and other
| staples, even in immigrant areas.
|
| Sure it might be possible to find that in USA as well,
| but its so much harder as not every store has it.
| vel0city wrote:
| What kind of "basics" did you find missing in actual
| grocery stores, and what were the actual stores in
| question?
| OJFord wrote:
| Not GP, but I can offer: real cheese (not squares of
| individually wrapped plastic, nor grated and mixed with
| whatever to prevent caking), Walmart.
| vel0city wrote:
| What? Just about every Walmart with a grocery I've been
| to sells blocks of cheese. These are all available at
| _multiple_ Walmarts around me.
|
| https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Block-Sharp-
| Cheddar-C...
|
| https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Low-Moisture-Part-
| Ski...
|
| https://www.walmart.com/ip/Frigo-Parmesan-Cheese-
| Wedge-5-oz-...
|
| https://www.walmart.com/ip/Tillamook-Medium-Cheddar-
| Cheese-B...
|
| https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Swiss-Cheese-
| Block-8-...
|
| https://www.walmart.com/ip/Dutchmark-Smoked-Gouda-
| Cheese-7-o...
|
| https://www.walmart.com/ip/Castello-Gourmet-Creamy-
| Danish-Ha...
|
| https://www.walmart.com/ip/Kerrygold-Grass-Fed-Dubliner-
| Iris...
|
| and on and on and on and on and on...
|
| It might not be right next to the pre-shredded cheese
| (usually those house brand blocks of cheddar and what not
| are), sometimes they're in a fancier part of the deli
| area. But I can't think of a time I've gone to a Walmart
| looking for a block of cheese and _not found any cheese_.
|
| Its not going to be the fanciest varieties, but once
| again the question was for "basics" that don't exist.
| Having cheddar, swiss, parmesean, gouda, etc. is having
| the basics.
| asdff wrote:
| Real cheese is not rare. It is a little pricey though.
| Usually north of $15 a lb.
| vel0city wrote:
| What makes the cheese in the links I provided below not
| "real cheese"? None are >$15/lb, at least around me.
|
| Note, I agree, they're not _fancy_ cheeses, they 're
| quite basic, plain, and common varieties. But how are
| they not _real_ cheeses?
| volkl48 wrote:
| Were you actually visiting what _Americans_ would
| consider a grocery store?
|
| I'm not saying this is specifically the case for you, but
| it is remarkably common for visitors from other parts of
| the world to visit, go into what we consider a
| "convenience store", and then be confused that there's
| basically nothing in terms of actual groceries in there,
| with probably 80%+ of the "consumable" shelving devoted
| to snack/"junk" items.
|
| Those stores are intended pretty much entirely for stuff
| people want while on the go, and the few "groceries" they
| stock are basically aimed at the kind of things a
| drunk/stoned person is craving at 3AM when nothing else
| is open (say, a frozen pizza), or the few things you
| might run out of by surprise in the morning/when about to
| eat and be willing to greatly overpay for being able to
| grab somewhere close by before your meal/schedule is
| ruined. (ex: milk, condiments, maybe eggs).
| vel0city wrote:
| I do wonder if people are stopping into a CVS or
| Walgreens and thinking those are _grocery stores_. In a
| lot of the rest of the world, a small corner market like
| that _would_ be a grocer, but in the US grocers are much
| larger stores.
| supportengineer wrote:
| Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
|
| Please provide some, or retract your claim.
| nradov wrote:
| I thought that Whole Foods targets folks who like their
| food flavored with rat droppings?
|
| https://www.siliconvalley.com/2025/06/26/cupertino-whole-
| foo...
| asdff wrote:
| Leafy greens and cuts of meat are not something exclusive
| to whole foods.
|
| The real issue is people don't cook for themselves and
| seek out premade shelf stable offerings of what their
| grandparents were making from scratch decades ago. It is
| like knowledge has been lost.
| vector_spaces wrote:
| In large swaths of the country, these "non-grocery stores"
| are a lifeline, as they are the only option. In others, you
| don't even have that -- gas station convenience stores might
| be that lifeline instead. [1]
|
| I am familiar with what the grandparent is referring to,
| having spent a decade running purchasing teams in US grocery
| stores. Even in urban areas with many different food retail
| stores, a typical supermarket in the US is a fairly difficult
| place to shop for someone with specific food sensitivities.
| Hopefully folks here who live in the SF Bay Area appreciate
| that it's a total outlier in both the diversity of stores
| available and the assortment of products sold in a typical
| Bay Area supermarket
|
| [1] https://ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/chart-
| deta...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| For most US supermarkets, shop around the perimeter and
| avoid anything in any of the center aisles. While
| individual floor plans vary, that tends to route you to the
| fresh produce and meats and dairy and avoid most of the
| ultraprocessed packaged stuff.
| supportengineer wrote:
| I give this advice to anyone I meet who just moved here
| from overseas.
| nradov wrote:
| The SF Bay Area is hardly an outlier. There may be more
| specialty grocery stores here, but the large supermarkets
| where most consumers buy most of their food are the same as
| anywhere else. If you compare a Safeway in Mountain View,
| CA to a Publix in Daytona Beach, FL or a Kroger in Toledo,
| OH there isn't much difference in the products available.
| vector_spaces wrote:
| I hope that you recognize that your casual-outsider
| evaluation of the assortments of these stores is deeply
| flawed and not based on actual data. If you think about
| it even just a little bit, you'll recognize that it
| wouldn't make sense for a supermarket in one of the
| highest median income cities in the country to have
| assortment parity with a chain targeting cost conscious
| shoppers. The devil here is in the long-tail, which is
| definitionally less visible to you as a shopper, and in
| fact may not exist at all for certain retailers --
| especially those targeting cost-conscious shoppers.
| BetaDeltaAlpha wrote:
| Safeway is the cost conscious option in Mountain View,
| compare it with the other options (Whole Foods, Nijiya).
| The comparison between Publix and Safeway is apt.
| vector_spaces wrote:
| The "cost conscious" option in a city with one of the
| highest median incomes in the US is very different from a
| cost conscious shopper in a city like Daytona Beach,
| where practically a quarter of the population lives below
| the poverty line!
|
| I will also point out that "cost conscious" is one of
| several shopper profiles that Safeway targets, but
| broadly speaking Safeway targets a more affluent shopper
| (although cost conscious isn't the same as non-affluent).
| The degree to which a particular location services these
| targets varies by area. But no, these stores target
| fundamentally different shoppers and think very
| differently about assortment, at least with regard to the
| long tail
| supportengineer wrote:
| Heh, in Mountain View you also have these choices:
|
| - La Plaza Market
|
| - 99 Ranch
|
| - Grocery Outlet
|
| - Rose Market
|
| - Nob Hill
|
| - Lucky
|
| - Smart & Final
|
| - Walmart
|
| - Target
|
| - India Cash & Carry
|
| - Bharat Bazar
|
| I'm probably leaving out a ton.
| kritr wrote:
| Ironically in SF it seems inversed. Whole Foods is second
| cheapest to Trader Joe's, and Safeway is the most
| expensive.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| I live in Los Altos next to Mountain View and Safeway is
| very expensive compared to every other option except
| Whole Foods. There are a few items they have that are the
| same as others, like bananas so I sometimes walk to the
| closest Safeway to stock up on those but otherwise one
| has to be wary of the pricing.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Safeway in the Bay Area regularly comes up very close to
| the same cost as Whole Foods, unless one regularly uses
| the app and clips the saving coupons for Safeway.
|
| https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Whole-Foods-vs-
| Safeway-W...
|
| Ranch 99 and the little De Martini's produce shop
| undercut Safeway prices on produce in Mountain View. The
| comparable items work out to be less expensive at Trader
| Joe's versus Safeway, too, last time I looked. Produce at
| Costco is regularly less than all of the above but I only
| buy a few produce items that I can freeze for later use
| there. For me the two advantages to Safeway are the
| extended hours of operation and the locations being
| convenient.
| nightski wrote:
| I lived in rural areas a large portion of my life. What
| you are describing is limited to areas with extremely
| small populations. Meaning even my hometown of a few
| thousand has a Walmart (put up when I was a kid in the
| 90s) an Aldi, and two local grocery stores with tons of
| healthy options.
|
| So yeah, there are a lot of towns that fit that criteria
| (less than 1000 residents). But as a portion of U.S.
| population it is not substantial in any way.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i lived in one of those small towns through highschool,
| just a blinking yellow light and a gas station. What we
| did, and everyone did, was drive the 20miles to the large
| town with a Walmart and get groceries there. It only
| takes 20min because there's no lights or traffic in those
| areas so the time commitment is about the same as living
| in a city. My mom made meals from her recipes using basic
| ingredients so it's certainly feasible to eat how you
| want in these areas. Only in the most rare/extreme cases
| are people forced to grocery shop at a gas station.
| vel0city wrote:
| I've got family in the rural Midwest. It would surprise
| me if their town _wasn 't_ a food desert by these
| definitions. You might go grab a thing of milk or sliced
| bread in a pinch at the convenience store, but yeah
| otherwise you just make the short drive into "the city"
| to get food at a regular grocery store.
|
| Or you just ate the food you were growing on your own
| lot, or what your neighbors were growing, or from the
| farmer selling stuff off the highway.
| nradov wrote:
| I hope you recognize that your claims are deeply flawed
| and don't align with the reality that most middle-class
| grocery shoppers experience. Regardless of what you think
| makes "sense", major supermarkets throughout the country
| have rough assortment parity (with minor differences for
| regional consumer preferences). In some cases the long
| tail is actually longer in lower median income cities
| because labor is cheaper and stores are physically larger
| (cheaper real estate). That Publix where I shopped in
| Daytona Beach is _enormous_.
|
| Instead of making things up you can just go look. Many
| supermarkets have online ordering now so you can see
| exactly what they stock at each local store.
| vector_spaces wrote:
| Yes -- I know that my experiences don't align with most
| middle-class grocery shoppers: I worked in the food
| business for a decade where assortment was literally my
| job. There is a lot that casual shoppers like you don't
| notice! That's actually built in.
|
| In any case, I love most of what you have written here.
|
| Online ordering enables larger long tails. In which
| market do you suppose online ordering is more common,
| Daytona Beach or Mountain View?
|
| If you were managing assortment at a Publix in Daytona
| Beach, how would you structure your long tail? Would you
| look to a Safeway in Mountain View as a model to follow?
| supportengineer wrote:
| Safeway has an in-house organic brand, "O Organics". I
| can easily go to Safeway and pick up only organic foods.
| I don't know if that's true for Publix or Kroger.
|
| UPDATE: ChatGPT tells me that at Publix it's called
| "GreenWise Organic" and at Kroger it's called "Simple
| Truth Organic"
| newfriend wrote:
| This just doesn't align with reality; your chart is
| practically meaningless.
|
| Yes, in rural areas you often need to drive further than 1
| mile to get to a grocery store. That doesn't mean that
| normal food doesn't exist for these people.
| GLdRH wrote:
| But it's more than a mile away!
| losvedir wrote:
| Is there a better source for that data? I appreciate that
| you're at least bringing data to the discussion, but
| honestly I kind of don't buy it, having lived all over the
| US from rural farm communities to Manhattan. I think I can
| identify where I live right now on that map, by virtue of
| being right on the border of IL/IN and Lake Michigan, and
| it has a little indication of "food desert", but it
| certainly isn't.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| To be clear, "actual" grocery store for the purposes of
| finding reliably fresh and healthy food includes one of the
| following:
|
| 1. Upscale western grocery stores and markets, ideally
| located within the biggest and most affluent city possible.
| Pikes place market would be a great example of what I'm
| talking about for you seattle folks.
|
| 2. Asian grocery stores, like "H-mart"
|
| 3. Farmers markets, but these are hit and miss, especially in
| smaller communities
|
| Most other grocery stores, including Costco, Trader Joes, etc
| are full of extremely unhealthy trash slop. It's still
| extremely hard to find reliable low sugar options nearly
| anywhere, including at health and "organic" oriented grocery
| stores.
|
| America just sucks for foodies who don't have unlimited time
| to get through the slop.
| dgfitz wrote:
| > America just sucks for foodies who don't have unlimited
| time to get through the slop.
|
| I think by definition, being a "foodie" means you have, and
| enjoy finding, the time to sort the wheat from the chaff.
| Nobody has unlimited time for anything.
|
| "I want to be be a 'foodie' but really I just want to be
| judgy" is a weak argument.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| In America, google rating scores are straight up
| astroturfed to the point where the total number of
| ratings is far more important than their score.
|
| When I travel to Japan, for example, I interpret a bad
| google maps review score for a location as a GOOD thing,
| because the average white tourists palette is
| incompatible with the local cuisine.
|
| I can walk to basically any random place, anywhere in
| Japan, or France, or Singapore and get very high quality
| food that I don't have to worry about being full of
| bullshit. That's not true in America.
| dgfitz wrote:
| As long as you realize this is opinion, sure thing.
| ashtakeaway wrote:
| Being judgy is a uniquely American trait that's become
| popular over the past 20 years.
| dgfitz wrote:
| I thought that, an an American. Then I went to Paris in
| 2013, and realized it was a learned trait!
| asdff wrote:
| Trader joes and costco aren't really the same thing as
| grocery stores. I know this is confusing for foreigners.
| Kroger/publix/vons/ralphs/albertsons/giant eagle are the
| real grocery stores. You can get all sorts of good eats
| there. baguettes and sourdough loafs cooked daily by the in
| house bakery staff. All sorts of cheese sold by the pound.
| All sorts of fruits and vegetables although some are
| seasonal.
| Yizahi wrote:
| The problem is that to a European citizen this is a bit
| unexpected. In Europe, in all countries, you can find roughly
| the same level of "safeness" of food across all tiers of
| stores. Go to a cheapest one and the most expensive one, and
| the yogurt, tomatoes or meat would be approximately the same
| quality and have the same nutritional components. The only
| difference would be that expensive store would additionally
| carry some imported fancy tomatoes or some fancy steak cuts.
| But those steak cuts would be subject to the same standards
| as a cheap chicken meat in the cheap store.
| vel0city wrote:
| Its not just a "tier" of store, its a "genre" of store.
| Stores like Dollar General are not _really_ grocers, they
| just happen to carry some food products. They typically do
| not carry any fresh foods. So its not a matter of their
| tomatoes are somehow worse quality, its that _they do not
| sell tomatoes_. Its not that their meats are worse quality,
| _they do not sell fresh meat_. They practically _only_ sell
| pre-packaged goods. Think about the few isles of junk food
| and small packages of household products (soaps and what
| not) you might find at a gas station, and scale that up
| ~800m^2.
|
| If its not something that is OK to sit on a shelf for a few
| months, you won't find it at a Dollar General.
|
| When it comes to actual fresh foods (which can be found if
| you go to actual grocery stores), those are highly
| regulated. You'll find fancier varieties at fancier grocery
| stores, but in the end a yellow onion at Kroger is about
| the same as a yellow onion in Safeway or Publix or
| Albertsons or HEB or Whole Foods.
| rolisz wrote:
| Romanian here: the tomato quality varies by a lot. All
| stores have crappy "plastic" tasting tomatoes. It's not
| that easy to find really good tomatoes (in summer you can
| find them at local markets, in winter... Fancy imports I
| guess).
| supportengineer wrote:
| Even in the SF Bay Area, we have this problem. The best
| tomatoes are from someone's backyard.
| dgb23 wrote:
| They actually taste like tomatoes.
|
| Unfortunate that they can be a bit difficult to grow.
| Very weather dependent.
| parineum wrote:
| Tomatoes are, imo, the prime example and possibly the
| only one of popular produce, of bland produce in the US.
|
| I think it's a combination of having them year-round
| (they are picked before they ripen for shipping) and the
| emphasis on color/look being very high. A good tomato
| tastes much better than most store bought to the point I
| didn't know I liked tomatoes until I had a garden grown
| one. Now I eat store bought as well but it's not the
| same.
|
| I don't find most other fruits/veggies to suffer nearly
| as much from that though.
| pirates wrote:
| Really? I grow blueberries, strawberries, several
| cultivars of hot/sweet peppers, zucchini, yellow squash,
| tomatoes, garlic, bush beans, and several different
| herbs, and without fail ALL of them taste way better than
| the store bought version. That isn't to say the store
| versions are always bad, but you know the home grown ones
| every single time.
| tptacek wrote:
| I mean, in most of the US, they're an extremely seasonal
| product. If you go to Pete's (a commodity big-box grocery
| chain in Chicago) in August, you'll get very good
| tomatoes. There's basically nowhere you're going to go to
| get very good fresh tomatoes (maybe cherry tomatoes) in
| April.
| dgb23 wrote:
| My wife doesn't let me buy tomatoes in winter. And even
| summer tomatoes are bland in comparison to the ones one
| would get in a mediterran region or the ones she grows in
| our garden. It's not even the same ballpark.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> But those steak cuts would be subject to the same
| standards as a cheap chicken meat in the cheap store._
|
| Speaking also as an European, not they would not. There's a
| pretty big difference in the quality of the meant across
| the board between shops and brands(suppliers) of meat
| depending how the animals were raised, fed and cared for.
|
| Here in Austria there's been plenty of scandals covering
| the poor conditions of animals in meat factories (living in
| feces, infections with puss, etc) yet the meat cuts receive
| the AMA seal of approval. I also did some work for the farm
| tech sector and the conditions of animals in some (most) EU
| countries I saw were indeed as appalling as those in the
| stories. It almost made me go vegan.
|
| Sure, it's all(probably) technically safe to eat due to all
| the antibiotics they pump in those animals, just like in
| the US, but quality varies a lot.
|
| And like sibling said, there's also a big difference
| between the quality of fruits and vegetables you find in
| supermarkets depending on where they come from and the
| conditions under which they were farmed.
|
| That's why I dislike these over generalist _" In Europe
| it's like this and that"_ blanket statements. No it isn't,
| it's just one point on the graph, but in reality it varies
| A LOT, it's a friggin continent ffs.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I've lived in various American cities and in all of them there
| is some place that sells real food, but often it's not the
| obvious one with the bright sign and the galaxy-scale parking
| lot.
| asdff wrote:
| You don't think a place like Kroger sells real food? Come on.
| Enough with the tired hyperbole.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| My weekly routine now consists of going to local farmer's
| market and buying stuff from farms I trust. Going to local
| butchers to get grass fed, naturally raised meats. Then off to
| the local grocery store to get whatever else I need that week
| for the stuff I prepare at home.
|
| If you want to eat healthy, you certainly can, but takes quite
| a bit of effort and some additional cost. Processed and
| ultraprocessed food has just made us lazy - like eating at fast
| food restaurants became easier than going home and preparing
| something from scratch.
|
| COVID and the huge surge in prices that have yet to come down
| essentially forced my hand to find a better, healthier way to
| eat. It sucks, but at the end of the day, I know myself and my
| family are eating healthier regardless of the effort it takes.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I don't know why farmers markets are given such a benefit of
| trust. They are largely unregulated and uninspected. And
| you'll pay $8 for a head of lettuce.
| gruez wrote:
| >My weekly routine now consists of going to local farmer's
| market and buying stuff from farms I trust. Going to local
| butchers to get grass fed, naturally raised meats. Then off
| to the local grocery store to get whatever else I need that
| week for the stuff I prepare at home.
|
| >If you want to eat healthy, you certainly can, but takes
| quite a bit of effort and some additional cost.
|
| It does, but you really don't need to go to farmers markets
| and buy grass fed beef from a dedicated butcher to "eat
| healthy". You can get 95-100% of the benefits of your routine
| by going to a regular supermarket and buying non-
| ultraprocessed foods.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| just as a datapoint: we learn to carefully (compulsively
| perhaps) read labels stateside, for all the reasons you
| mention.
|
| i.e., these same revelations and frustrations are shared by a
| huge swath of people born in the States (probably Canada too),
| and it is indeed a pain in the neck being continually paranoid
| about what nutritional rubbish is included in ingredient lists.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Food labels in the US and Canada suck as well compared to the
| UK and Australia. How big is a serve, who's percent daily
| value? Those numbers just aren't useful.
|
| Here in Australia we have a column for grams per 100g by
| weight. It makes it much easier to compare foods.
| hvb2 wrote:
| Units in the US make comparisons hard... Same problem in
| recipes...
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| You could just have percentage per weight. ie. This
| product is 30% sugar.
|
| Instead you have than x% of your recommended daily
| amount, if you are an average size American, eating an
| average size serving according to the FDA. How are you
| supposed to do anything with that.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| that sounds actually useful!
| Simulacra wrote:
| My conspiracy theory is at healthier foods are deliberately
| made more expensive, to push people into the cheaper ultra
| processed foods. It's kind of like cigarettes, push them into
| the more addictive, cheaper products to hook them.
| gruez wrote:
| No need to invoke conspiracies here when the ultraprocessing
| makes food last longer, more delicious, and allows
| manufacturers to skimp on more expensive ingredients (eg.
| "ice cream" that use thickeners rather than actual cream).
| Guid_NewGuid wrote:
| It's exactly like cigarettes because it is the same
| companies. https://lsa.umich.edu/psych/news-events/all-
| news/faculty-new...
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Its more a matter of whats subsidized. All that corn grown
| thanks to the corn and soy bills passed to support midwestern
| farmers are used for things such as plumping up
| cows/pigs/etc, used for a inefficient form of fuel
| (biodiesel, E85), and finally pumped into all the foods as
| HFCS among other things. The farmers can keep growing
| unproductive crops and stay in business (so politicians won't
| be hearing from them), the government can ensure the farmland
| processes will be available during wartime and they can check
| off their requirements of ensuring all citizens have a
| minimal required number of "calories".
|
| Its a symptom of same thing that is messing up the US in all
| other areas. Poor governance caused by layers of people all
| along the stack taking their cut and not caring about the
| overall picture.
| wenc wrote:
| As a Canadian living in the US, I'd say your sentiment depends
| on where you live and what you're willing to pay.
|
| In the Seattle area there are overpriced grocery stores like
| PCC and Met Market that sell healthy food at a premium.
|
| There is also Whole Foods.
|
| Even normal grocery stores like Safeway and Kroger have a ton
| of healthy foods -- you just have to read the label.
|
| The one thing you have to know if that American grocery stores
| are giant -- they carry way more SKUs than the average European
| grocery store. It's on the shopper to find what they want. It's
| usually there.
| hvb2 wrote:
| > they carry way more SKUs
|
| Not compared to France :) you can buy a dishwasher a tv and
| stuff for your car all in the same supermarket...
|
| Don't ask me why, just stating a fact
| spogbiper wrote:
| this sounds like a "super" walmart or target in the US.
| everything from garden furniture to broccoli to laptops
| wenc wrote:
| Those are the larger format stores in France. In the US
| they are called Fred Meyer, Meijer, etc.
| Atomic_Torrfisk wrote:
| The quality of food (and price) of grocery stores in France
| make grocery stores in Norway feel like a cruel joke. I
| visited a carrefour(?) in France and I swear the fruit and
| vegetables were so fresh they looked like wax stage food...
| honestly it was a highlight of my trip and selection of
| cheese made me feel a little unkultured.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| I buy unsweetened yogurt then sweeten it myself with a very
| small amount of actual syrup from a tree (yes, there is fake
| syrup).
| orochimaaru wrote:
| Just get plain unsweetened full fat yogurt. Every store has
| that. Yeah - the sweetened/flavored variety are more but the
| basic unsweetened is also easily available.
|
| Bread is a bit of a shit show. Stick to something like
| sourdough for 0 adde sugars.
|
| Hormones are banned for meat and poultry. I'm not sure how
| antibiotics are treated. Fwiw - with vegetarian food you also
| run the risk of pesticide contamination.
|
| Either way, my point is that there's a lot of options but do
| your research before you hit the store and in general try to
| limit highly processed food
| portaouflop wrote:
| In my experience the store has 10000 different kinds of
| sweetened yoghurt and exactly one that is "real" yogurt -
| often doesn't have full fat yogurt at all.
|
| Completely impossible to get normal bread unless you go to
| some hipster store that charges an insane amount for it.
|
| It's just really really hard to get decent food in America,
| which is crazy because the land is so rich in resources and
| nature.
| orochimaaru wrote:
| Depends on where you shop. But I think even Walmart has
| organic options these days.
| volkl48 wrote:
| Loaves of fresh bread are generally in the bakery section
| of the grocery store. If you're looking for a loaf of bread
| (often unsliced) that was baked that morning, has a much
| shorter ingredients list that's often solely the basic
| traditional ones, doesn't necessarily have any sugar added,
| and will not keep for anywhere near as long, that's where
| it is. I'm not promising it'll live up to your standards,
| of course.
|
| The bread aisle is pretty much for sliced sandwich bread (+
| buns + similar things) that has preservatives to last for
| at least a week, and was usually not baked on site.
|
| ------
|
| I think the secondary point to note is that you're also
| just running into cultural differences: Americans don't
| really eat that much bread. And it's not a staple of meals
| besides 2 slices if you want a sandwich for lunch.
|
| Hard data is shaky but most sources I can find put American
| per-capita bread consumption at a small fraction of the
| consumption of somewhere like France.
|
| Having far fewer standalone bakeries and far less "good
| bread" is not so much that people are eating a bunch of
| worse bread instead - no one's serving sandwich bread with
| dinner, they're often just not eating that much bread at
| all.
| asdff wrote:
| If you are into yogurt just make your own. I do it with an
| instapot. Started my batch with a scoop of chobani. I use
| whole milk and a scoop from the last batch to seed the next
| batch. Materials cost I'm probably paying maybe $1 for 32oz
| of yogurt.
| asdff wrote:
| It isn't hard if you buy the actual raw ingredients and cook
| for yourself. Produce is fine. Cuts of meat are fine. You can
| get plain old beans just fine for your vegetarian needs.
|
| It is just people in this country have forgotten how to cook.
| Grandmother made her own mayonnaise. Mom bought kraft. To you
| making mayonnaise is a black art since mom never did it, so you
| also buy kraft. Extend that to most other food products.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| They're cheap, easy to find and easy to prepare.
|
| With grocery prices going up, what little progress has been made
| might get reversed, unfortunately. Making America healthy again
| means making non-ultraprocessed groceries available to everyone &
| cheaper, and ensuring that working families have time to cook.
| Pressuring Coke to create a new product with sugar is not going
| to move the needle.
| pchristensen wrote:
| Don't forget non-perishable. If you're already having a hard
| time affording groceries, it really hurts to throw away wilted
| veggies or moldy fruit.
| nradov wrote:
| Canned and frozen vegetables are also non-perishable. While
| some extremely poor people lack a working freezer or storage
| space, most consumers can easily use these options.
| kulahan wrote:
| Absolutely nothing I've seen anywhere justifies the idea
| that _access_ to food is the problem. In most cultures, you
| don 't need cooking classes because the food is ingrained
| into their culture, and recipes are passed down. Americans
| have a much weaker link to their heritage. You might know a
| few dishes, but in my experience, absolutely nobody knows
| how to cook.
|
| By cook, I don't mean "can add one box of prepared goods to
| another box of prepared goods with a can of prepared goods
| on the side", I mean buying meat, veggies, fruit, and
| grains and cooking a dish from home, mostly from scratch.
|
| edit: 13 million Americans are in food deserts. If the
| problem were that small, it'd be similar in size to people
| who are addicted to substances other than alcohol. This is
| affecting _almost everyone_. There MUST be another,
| _bigger_ solution.
| hvb2 wrote:
| As Gordon Ramsay put it: "Most people don't cook, they
| heat their food"
| t-writescode wrote:
| Look up food deserts. Access is absolutely a problem.
| kulahan wrote:
| I know - the extreme majority of them are in rural areas
| where you'd have to drive a couple hours to get to a
| grocery store. My MIL lives in one.
|
| Guess how they get most food? All that super-cheap rural
| land.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Are you suggesting that impoverished people with low
| income jobs and extreme hours should spend some of their
| missing time ... farming?
| nradov wrote:
| It's an observation, not a suggestion. That's literally
| how many low-income (not impoverished) people live in
| rural areas. They grow (and hunt) some food at home but
| not enough to be self-sufficient, and also have a regular
| job. Sometimes those jobs involve working long hours at
| peak times. This is a pretty normal lifestyle.
| kulahan wrote:
| Yes. A garden is a healthy and productive way to spend
| your free time. If you have land, _EVERYONE_ should be
| growing some food.
|
| What are you suggesting they do instead? Scroll tiktok?
|
| >and extreme hours
|
| This is not the problem in rural communities.
| t-writescode wrote:
| The most famously true thing about rural areas is that
| they're all exactly the same and the people in them
| experience identical struggles.
| delichon wrote:
| If you're having a hard time affording groceries, failing to
| plan ahead and instead throwing away food is a luxury you
| can't afford. (A blender and an affection for green smoothies
| is a good solution.) But that's still cheaper than paying for
| the health problems downstream of ultraprocessed food.
| Unfortunately my source for both claims is personal
| experience.
|
| I'd like to have an app that estimates the cost of groceries,
| including the long term health effects of regular
| consumption, and interpreting early death as a cost rather
| than savings. For me I think ribeye would end up being
| cheaper than Doritos.
| gruez wrote:
| >I'd like to have an app that estimates the cost of
| groceries, including the long term health effects of
| regular consumption, and interpreting early death as a cost
| rather than savings. For me I think ribeye would end up
| being cheaper than Doritos.
|
| Someone who bothers to input everything they eat into an
| app (basically calorie counting) probably already has
| enough intuitive sense of what's "healthy" that they don't
| need an app that they should eat beef rather than doritos.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >But that's still cheaper than paying for the health
| problems downstream of ultraprocessed food.
|
| It is unrealistic to expect the vast majority of humans to
| prioritize the long term in every single decision they
| make, especially if they have a dim view of the long term.
|
| It is logical to want to enjoy life in the present, even if
| it will hurt in the long term, if you are being brought
| down by other aspects, such as stress about income
| volatility and belief in low probabilities of upward
| movement, etc.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Being poor is expensive.
|
| Just like $50 shoes that last 6 months and $200 shoes that
| last 10 years, when you're poor, you often have to chose
| the less expensive, short-term option because the more
| expensive, far far better option is literally out of reach.
| nradov wrote:
| I'm always skeptical when someone posts that little
| nugget about shoes. Maybe it used to be true but I don't
| think it still applies in the era of high-quality mass
| manufacturing. I have worn shoes that cost $50 to well
| over $200 and if anything the more expensive shoes tend
| to fall apart faster.
|
| Walmart has plenty of shoes and work boots for about $50
| that will last more than 6 months unless you really abuse
| them. They don't look great but they're functional and
| reasonably durable.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| For anyone who doesn't know, the literal words are from a
| book, but its meaning is metaphorical and isn't limited
| to boots. The point is still that it's expensive to be
| poor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
|
| Just taking a second to think about this, since we're in
| the context of groceries, here's another example: the
| bigger box of cereal will be cheaper per pound and last
| longer, but you have to pay more up front for it. Another
| example closer to the boots metaphor is comparing the
| longevity of cheap, used cars vs new cars.
|
| Even outside of consumer goods, poor people are not able
| to hire accounts to find, um, ways to minimize your tax
| bill, or have the money for investments or even savings
| etc. Even middle class people who may be able to afford a
| mortgage that is less than their rent might take a while
| to save up for a down payment (and hopefully the housing
| market hasn't gotten too much worse in the mean time).
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Perhaps this is a function of "easy to find". Food deserts
| are a problem with regards to a lot of families only having
| little access to fresh foods. When you have to drive 30 min
| to the IGA, maybe you overbuy compared driving the 5 min to
| shop at the dollar general. The consolidation of big
| supermarket chains contributes to the creation of food
| deserts.
| smileysteve wrote:
| Now if Coke was pressured to add 1g of fiber to products, we
| could be talking.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| You can make America far more healthy by doing the following:
|
| 1. Mandating lower amounts of sugar, and significantly
| switching to zero calorie non glycemic sweeteners.
|
| 2. Removing plastic packaging and eliminating sources of
| microplastics and other endocrine disruption contamination of
| our food supply/
|
| 3. Banning most of the stuff that the European food agencies
| ban
|
| 4. Getting GLP-1's in the hands of every overweight person in
| America.
|
| It's that easy, but "Make America Healthy Again" was made by a
| guy who had a worm eat his brain.
| kulahan wrote:
| I couldn't possibly disagree with your last point harder.
| What's with people and blindly trusting that the pharma
| companies found a holy grail medicine and didn't rush it to
| market _well_ before the necessary research is in?
|
| Even more than that, dosing hundreds of millions of Americans
| for life is one insanely expensive and ridiculous solution.
|
| Side note, is there good research on the effects of
| microplastics on the body? I'm holding out adding that to my
| plate of concerns until this is the case, and last I heard we
| were pretty in-the-dark on the topic.
| colingauvin wrote:
| If you're worried about the possible, unknown side effects
| of GLP1s, check out the inevitable, well-known side effects
| of being morbidly overweight.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| You don't need to start with GLP1s. You can start with
| smaller portions. Folks need to learn how to eat, not
| another drug.
| kulahan wrote:
| Thankfully, this is not a binary problem where those are
| the only two options :)
| worik wrote:
| > switching to zero calorie non glycemic sweeteners.
|
| I find it odd that people can think these are not bad for
| you. Telling your body you're eating sugar, then not eating
| sugar must do terrible things
|
| Just from first principles
| mjparrott wrote:
| Many times the ultra processed crap is more expensive. Don't
| forget "convenient to buy" in addition to "convenient to cook".
| For example, a cliff bar bought from a corner store could be
| $3, and is basically a candy bar. A company I like is called
| Farmer's Fridge, and they basically have vending machines in
| convenient places with fresh made healthy foods like salads.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I love what Farmers Fridge is doing, I wish their prices were
| cheaper but Im glad that they exist and I hope they continue
| to grow.
| asdff wrote:
| Imo it isn't an availability issue. Polling my friends who are
| not poor of course but very few of them actually cook. They
| have the means to, the time to, and they still don't because
| they don't know how to cook. Greatest generation was still
| cooking at home and they were far from wealthy especially at
| the end of their lives living on fixed income and still making
| meals for all the relatives. It is just like we have
| collectively forgotten how to cook. Not just cook but to make
| the sort of intermediary ingredients you use to make many other
| meals too.
| Herring wrote:
| For convenience, my rice cooker has been a godsend. I'm basically
| making homemade chipotle bowls every day.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Rice cooker is great. I also use my Instant Pot a ton.
| Incredibly convenient and an invaluable time saver.
| apparent wrote:
| We use our IP to make yogurt (discussed in depth above). Easy
| to make and when strained, better than any store bought Greek
| yogurt.
|
| Also decent for sous vide. I use a big glass jar instead of
| plastic bags, which are a health concern.
| Herring wrote:
| Have you tried making kefir? It's much easier and likely
| better if you're going for probiotics.
| johnrob wrote:
| If you don't have one, try an Instant Pot which can pressure
| cook (in addition to rice cooker features). Dry beans can be
| ready to eat in an hour.
| dswalter wrote:
| Instant Pot Garbanzo beans/chickpeas with a tiny bit of salt
| are a favorite in my home. Creamy, savory, and delicious!
| Cannellini beans are also lovely.
| lokar wrote:
| Fancy (Asian) rice cookers use pressure
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Similarly, get a sous vide setup with vacuum sealer. Buy
| chicken breast and dump it into a bag with a bunch of
| seasoning. Because sous vide heats it just above bug-killing
| temperature and will not burn the meat, you can leave it in
| for an indeterminate amount of time (on the scale of hours,
| not days) and take it out when desired.
| bwv848 wrote:
| Funny I recently ditched my rice cooker and got a clay pot, in
| response to the rising food price at restaurants. While I am
| chasing a perfect clay pot rice with golden crispy but not
| greasy and burnt bottom and fluffy center, I found out cooking
| rice on gas is not as complicated as we imagine. Soak the rice
| for a while, cook on high heat till water is evaporated on the
| top, dial down to low flame, put on toppings, closed the lid
| simmer for a while, then let the residual heat of the clay pot
| to finish the job. The result is perfectly serviceable, of
| course extra care would elevate the dish a lot. Also you can
| use a bowl and steam the rice, with toppings if you like.
| linhns wrote:
| Take care of it, don't scratch it too much while cleaning
| otherwise the non-stick can leak out. Then it becomes a serious
| health issue.
| Herring wrote:
| Yeah thankfully I went with ceramic, not nonstick.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| I do homemade Cava bowls in it! Less salt, fewer pesticides,
| and fewer preservatives than the actual thing.
|
| Lately I've been using more microwave rice just because it's
| less cooking and cleanup, but still good overall.
| supportengineer wrote:
| You can make quinoa in a rice cooker also, turns out great.
| worik wrote:
| Meh
|
| I used to cook a lot of rice and have always used a simple pot
|
| Very easy....
| asdff wrote:
| I don't get the rice cooker hype. Its so easy to make rice in
| the pot already. Cup of rice. Cup and a half of water. Pinch of
| salt. Bring to boil then set to simmer. Put lid on. 15 min
| timer. Perfect rice.
|
| The way people talk about making rice online and having to seek
| out a rice cooker makes me wonder what they are even doing when
| they fail at making rice.
| Herring wrote:
| When Jobs came out with the iPhone were you like "I don't get
| it just use a phone and a mp3 player perfect"
| ArchOversight wrote:
| https://archive.is/eWcpP
| benjaminclauss wrote:
| Is it just me or is this super unreadable?
| fusslo wrote:
| yeah, I think it's one of those annoyingly over stylized
| articles that animates/loads as you scroll and Archive
| doesn't preserve the javascript (or whatever) to make it look
| & work right
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Due to the paywall I couldn't get beyond the first image claiming
| convenience. I've no idea what the rest says so I'll speak
| disconnected from the content and just to the concept.
|
| People assume ultra processed came about due to demand side
| factors but it's actually more about supply side supply chain
| management and the scale in size of the US. By processing the
| food into more constructed ingredients they always enter a state
| where they're easy to package and distribute across vast
| distances in that state. They can then be combined into food that
| is palatable through additives. Indeed the process disrupts the
| natural structure and content of the food - but that was
| necessary to feed everyone at a reasonable price a variety of
| foods grown across a vast distance at a reasonable price.
|
| Obviously this led to demand because the food was more complete
| and varied than was generally available at the fresh grocer.
| Convenience was a side effect as well that was well capitalized.
|
| These arguments actually hold until pretty recently. Even in my
| lifetime grocery stores growing up were pretty stark affairs with
| a few expensive fresh products that you splurged on for a special
| dinner like thanksgiving. Daily food was basically processed
| rations with a fancy box. It's only in my adulthood, and the
| lifetime of the millennials, that there was really much
| optionality as supply chains globally and fresh food distribution
| with widely available refrigerated trucking with ethylene gas
| storage proliferated, free trade opened, etc.
|
| Before all this, in my parents generation, the other option for
| ultra processed foods was malnutrition and wide spread rickets.
| It was when we tried to draft for WWII and the majority of rural
| young men were so malnourished as to be unfit for war that things
| really changed.
|
| To sit today and compare the options of fresh food available and
| wonder how we got here ignores the reality of how we got here.
| But we are here so indeed, eat fresh and be happy we have free
| trade!
| Milpotel wrote:
| That's a bit too naive considering how bad food became during
| the last decade. Formerly perfectly fine products now have
| artificial ingredients to increase profits.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| How is it naive? You were literally unable to eat the foods
| because they rotted in delivery and refrigeration was so
| expensive it made fresh foods unaffordable to the consumer.
| Even then they were not edible because they were not ripened
| due to the lack of ethylene.
|
| I'm not discussing the last decade, in fact in the last
| decade the availability of fresh food is absurdly better vs
| say 1930-1995 or so. The article also starts in 1950.
|
| We are at a point where we can turn the tide, but the
| prevalence of fresh food in the store is counter balanced by
| the fact affordability is decreasing as inflation,
| restrictions on free trade, and stagnation of lower income
| takes the fresh foods away as an option. Add into it cultural
| inertia of 70 years of processed food prevalence as a staple
| food, you end up in this situation.
| otterley wrote:
| The article's story begins in 1886.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I can only see the beginning due to the paywall and weird
| article layout interfering with archive, and the start is
| an image of a person holding a 1950's TV dinner. If it
| then moves in narrative into the 1886's, it started in
| the 1950's.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Gift link:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/16/well/eat/ultr...
| stuffn wrote:
| I grew up with a lot of ultra-processed foods and these days have
| found several places where I can get good quality food. I am
| fortunate to live in an area with a decent farmer's market
| "community" and some bespoke shops. Generally, I've found that
| mixing farmers market with ethnic markets (for meat) seems to
| provide significantly better quality than your average chain.
|
| I suppose that the article hits on it a bit but a lot of the
| popular brands were great depression era hits. Most of us grew up
| on various forms of slop: hamburger helper, velveeta mac n
| cheese, spam, etc. The common link between everything I ate was
| it was easy, and allowed you to significantly stretch the meat in
| a dish. These days, now that we can afford more, it's most likely
| a matter of simplicity and brand affiliation. When you have 2/3
| of an average store stuffed with ultraprocessed crap and even in
| the remaining 1/3 you have to be careful it's pretty easy to eat
| poorly. A perfect example would be "wheat" or "rye" bread which
| is basically the same as white bread with a little extra added.
| Though, these days, many even major supermarket chains offer
| reasonably high quality bread.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I just opened up www dot amazon dot com and filled my cart with
| $50 worth of food that will be delivered to my door in a few
| hours: rice, potatoes, farro, beans, peppers, ginger, onions,
| garlic frozen peas, frozen carrots, plain low-fat yogurt, chicken
| thighs, and good bread. I don't want to hear anyone telling me
| that American capitalism has robbed us of real food. If anything,
| American capitalism has heaped upon us the cheapest and most
| convenient selection of food imaginable, but some people just
| can't stop shoveling down Flamin' Hot Froot Loops.
| brazukadev wrote:
| > I don't want to hear anyone telling me that American
| capitalism has robbed us of real food
|
| they didn't rob it, they hid it and put zillions of billboards
| selling their ultra-proccessed ultra-palatable anything with a
| huge profit margin.
| vel0city wrote:
| Almost every grocery store I've been to in the US has either
| the produce or bakery section right at the front door.
| mjparrott wrote:
| If you make a system that has 1,000 nudges towards Fruit Loops
| and hides the healthy thing, then it isn't just an individual
| choice. Nudges include advertising, availability, addictive
| ingredients, misleading marketing claims, food engineering,
| etc. I recommend reading this to get an understanding of how
| much effort goes into making people make the wrong choices:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinar...
| humptybumpty wrote:
| Maybe pricing has something to do with it?
|
| Total 27,00EUR ($31.57)
|
| 1kg potatos, 0,99EUR
|
| 3pcs bell peppers, 1,03EUR (x)
|
| 1pcs ginger, 0,90EUR (x)
|
| 1kg onions, 1,59EUR
|
| 100g garlic, 1,45EUR (x)
|
| 500g carrots, 0,89EUR
|
| 500g frozen peas, 1,09EUR
|
| 1 can white beans, 1,09EUR (x)
|
| fresh fancy bread, 3,69EUR
|
| 400g chicken thighs, 4,99EUR
|
| 1l plain low-fat yogurt, 2,55EUR
|
| 1kg rice, 3,79EUR (x)
|
| 650g "farro", 2,95EUR
|
| (x) imported, not local
|
| Typical prices in Finland, which is considered to be expensive
| European country.
|
| Could maybe go down to 20+EUR with cheapest options.
| jeffbee wrote:
| My prices weren't very different from those, but my
| quantities were higher: 5lb (2.25kg) potatoes, 4lb (1.8kg)
| dried beans, 15lb (6.8kg) of rice, yogurt 1kg by weight not
| sure of volume, etc.
| portaouflop wrote:
| Sad that you have to buy this stuff online. I can go downstairs
| to a grocery store and just buy it from real humans, not lining
| bezos pockets.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I don't have to buy it online. I live in Berkeley, California
| where, if anything, we have a totally unsustainable flood of
| food outlets that keep going out of business because the
| competition is too great. I only point to Amazon because it's
| a website, anyone can order from it even if their local
| grocers are bozos.
| arp242 wrote:
| > some people just can't stop shoveling down Flamin' Hot Froot
| Loops.
|
| If over a third if the country has serious problems with this
| then it seems to me there is a systemic problem, and you can't
| _only_ chuck it to individual failure.
|
| Doesn't mean there is _no_ individual responsibility at all -
| but there 's a reason obesity rates have risen so sharply and
| why there are quite big differences between countries of
| comparable levels of development.
|
| I don't think anyone claimed that it's impossible to eat
| healthy food - certainly the article didn't.
| asdff wrote:
| Explain to me how socal works then. For $12 you can get a
| massive burrito. A plate of excellent tacos. A decent amount
| of sushi. All sorts of sandwiches. Pupusa. Kebab. Salads.
| Ramen. Bahn mi. All from local businesses making real food
| made to order in maybe 10 mins.
|
| And yet, mcdonalds still does tidy business in this
| environment despite everyone saying mcdonalds is more
| expensive than ever.
|
| Explain to me how that doesn't reflect widespread individual
| failure? Why does mcdonalds even exist in this market where
| you can eat amazing food from around the world in about the
| same time for about the same price? It isn't like these
| people are devoid of choice or limited by price. They are
| actively choosing mcdonalds over other options that are
| objectively better. I mean its like smoking cigarettes still
| despite all the information out there.
| Simulacra wrote:
| Relevant
|
| _" The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food"_
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinar...
| tptacek wrote:
| This all has very big "uncured bacon" energy to me (if you didn't
| already know: there's no such thing; vendors of uncured bacon
| performatively drive the same chemical nitrite reaction using
| vegetable extracts). For example: yogurt becomes a UPF simply by
| dint of adding carrageenan, which is on the order of calling
| dashi a UPF because of the kombu.
|
| It's not that there isn't a very legitimate issue underneath all
| this: packaged, hyperpalatable, low-nutritional-density low-
| satiety foods are probably a major driver of health problems.
| It's just that "UPF" isn't the right metric for isolating those
| foods, and with the wrong metrics you end up in a similar place
| as California does with the Prop 65 warnings.
|
| We went through a similar thing with "pink slime"
| (transglutaminase preservation techniques).
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-a9VDIbZCU
| supportengineer wrote:
| I only get the bacon that says "No nitrates, no nitrites"
| tptacek wrote:
| If you're talking about American-style bacon, and it tastes
| like bacon, there's no such thing. They're just exploiting
| labeling rules by selecting very specific nitrite sources.
| Nitrites are what give bacon (and ham) its flavor.
|
| <strike>This is before we get to the whole premise of
| avoiding nitrates. Would you eat a beet? That's a serving of
| industrial bacon's worth of nitrates right there.</strike>
|
| _Later_
|
| (Actually, super bad example, since the concern is
| nitrosamines which are formed in the presence of proteins.
| The point about the illegitimacy of nitrite-free bacon
| stands!)
| supportengineer wrote:
| I fucking hate beets.
|
| For bacon, what do you think of these?
|
| Applegate:
|
| https://www.raleys.com/product/10400628/applegate-
| naturals-h...
|
| Coleman:
|
| https://www.raleys.com/product/103101180/coleman-natural-
| bac...
| joshyeager wrote:
| The Coleman bacon doesn't list ingredients. But the
| Applegate bacon lists celery powder because that is a
| source of nitrates. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celery_powder
| supportengineer wrote:
| The Coleman one is the one I usually get these days, I
| used to get the Applegate.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't know much about either brand but there are good
| reasons to buy fancy bacon instead of Smithfield and
| Hormel, just because of the quality and ethics of the
| livestock inputs. But nitrites aren't one of those
| reasons.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| Found an image of coleman bacon ingredients list, celery
| powder is on it as well.
| tptacek wrote:
| Applegate is notoriously celery-extract-cured. Same
| chemical endpoints in your body as industrially produced
| nitrite powder.
|
| There's a really easy way to tell: does it taste like
| American bacon? Then: nitrites.
| Figs wrote:
| Celery powder / extract / etc. _are_ nitrites.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Counterpoint: I fucking love beets. (and bacon. but not
| together. yuck)
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| A burger with the lot here in Australia will have beets
| and bacon. And an egg, probably pineapple too. Lettuce,
| tomato, cheese. hmm.. I know what I want for lunch today.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| I could understand the beetroot when I was Down Under,
| but the pineapple just had me go "?" similarly to when I
| was served eggs, pasta, and mushrooms for breakfast.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| I just learned to pickle canned beets to have in salads,
| and they work really well as a salad add in.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > Nitrites are what give bacon (and ham) its flavor.
|
| Are you _sure_ about that?
|
| Because it's the first time _ever_ I stumbled upon this
| argument.
|
| The explanation I heard is that there are legit bacterial
| food safety concerns (salmonella and listeria, IIRC) that
| justify using nitrites even if they are by themself
| harmful, the benefit/risk ratio is simply favorable to
| nitrites.
| tptacek wrote:
| Pretty sure. I make bacon and dabble with salumi. It's
| _definitely_ not strictly a food safety issue. I
| sometimes put a pinch of pink salt in with my duck confit
| cure, and it comes out _distinctively_ hammier. Nitric
| oxide interacts with myoglobin in ways that alter your
| taste perception; sort of the way I understand
| miracleberries make things taste sweeter (by cutting off
| your perception of bitterness), nitrites do to the
| metallic flavor compounds in meat.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| It's both. Curing is a preservative technique _and_ it
| gives bacon and ham the flavor people enjoy. Like a lot
| of food preservation techniques (jam, etc) curing was
| most likely developed for preservation first, and then
| people came to enjoy the flavor it gave.
| Freedumbs wrote:
| This is partially true. The use celery extract or whatever
| they can get away with legally. Smoking is what gives bacon
| the flavor. Buy your cut of meat, season, and smoke it with
| a very low temp for long time, you have bacon. No nitrates.
| tptacek wrote:
| No you won't. You'll have smoked pork. Nitrite curing is
| the difference between ham and pork, and is part of the
| source of American bacon's flavor. You can make or buy
| unsmoked bacon; it will still taste like bacon.
|
| It is weird to me that people try to make an issue out of
| this, because it's not like the flavor change in cured
| meat is hard to miss. Just buy some pink salt! Corned
| beef tastes like corn beef _because of nitrites_.
| UmGuys wrote:
| This is false, buy some pork belly and smoke it. I've
| done it.
| tptacek wrote:
| If there is a thing a reasonable person can do with pork
| belly, I have done it. I think you have the higher
| evidentiary burden here, regardless of our respective
| experience. You can check Ruhlman's Charcuterie and
| Salumi books, you can check AskCulinary, you can check
| the food Stack Exchange, you can just notice that
| literally every packaged bacon product, whether or not it
| claims to be cured, is in fact cured (usually with celery
| powder), or, of course, you can just take some sliced
| pork belly and make a 5% pink salt/salt mix and throw it
| in a zip in your fridge overnight and see.
|
| I get that you like smoked pork belly. I do too. I don't
| even object to you calling it "bacon". All sorts of
| things that aren't American bacon are called bacon. But
| nitrites are absolutely part of the distinctive flavor of
| American bacon.
|
| The whole thing is silly, because we can just point to
| ham and corned beef, two products where the debate
| doesn't even make sense; we only see it with bacon, and
| we only see it because vendors lie about whether their
| products are cured.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| That means they use celery powder as the source of nitrates,
| not that it has no nitrates.
| bsder wrote:
| You're still getting the industrial levels of
| nitrates/nitrites. They just stuff it in as an extract from
| celery.
|
| The problem isn't the curing, per se. In old school hand
| curing, almost all the nitrate/nitrite has reacted and is
| gone by the time you buy the meat.
|
| The problem is the industrialization of the process. In order
| to not have to inspect the cured meat (as that would take
| people--the horror!), industry injects a _massive_ amount of
| curing agents such that even when the meat is "cured" there
| is still a ton of it left in the meat itself.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I suppose it would not be bacon without curing. But I suppose
| uncured bacon would be thinly cut pork belly...
|
| For curing you really need only salt(or nitrite or sugar).
| Nitrates do have benefits in longer processes.
| tptacek wrote:
| You can go to any Asian grocer and get thin-sliced pork belly
| and cook it up yourself to see the difference. It is not
| subtle. For American bacon flavor, you need nitrites
| (nitrates are a slow-release source of nitrites).
| badc0ffee wrote:
| Also you need to smoke it.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _which is on the order of calling dashi a UPF because of the
| kombu_
|
| when you use a comparison like this, you choose an example that
| people will understand so they can then, by analogy, extend
| that understanding to the point you are trying to make...
|
| like the kombu in the dashi, you say? dash-it-all, that's a
| combunation I hadn't considered!
| tptacek wrote:
| If you don't do a lot of cooking, just think "this is a
| definition that suggests virtually all traditional Japanese
| cooking is UPF".
| Affric wrote:
| Yeah to go to Japanese cuisine with words we don't use
| otherwise in English is quite funny.
| BirdieNZ wrote:
| I found it a helpful analogy. Cooking almost any Japanese
| food will quickly introduce you to dashi and kombu, and I
| didn't know what carrageenan was.
| benrutter wrote:
| > It's just that "UPF" isn't the right metric for isolating
| those foods
|
| I've heard this criticism a fair bit, and I sort of agree. The
| only thing is, what is the right metric? And if we don't have
| one, and know these foods are causing harm, should we just use
| UPF as a term anyway?
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't know, it's a hard problem, but I think there's good
| public policy evidence that when you do these things wrong
| (as with Prop 65 cancer warnings and nitrates) you lose all
| the benefits the labeling tries to provide.
| Scarblac wrote:
| The thing is that, although the list used (the "Nova
| classification") is obviously somewhat arbitrary, the fact
| that everybody uses it makes research results comparable to
| each other.
| nradov wrote:
| Comparable how? If I compare one meaningless number to
| another meaningless number on the same scale then I can see
| which one is larger, but I won't learn anything
| scientifically valuable or practically useful.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Meaningless how? A lot of significant effects were found,
| it can't be entirely meaningless.
| nradov wrote:
| Which statistically significant casual effects have been
| found?
| tptacek wrote:
| Correlation != causation. Your correlation can identify a
| hugely important effect without pinpointing its
| mechanism. In this case: I think it's very likely that
| ultraprocessing has not-very-much to do with food health,
| but UPF foods _tend_ to be hyperpalatable and low-
| satiety, which almost certainly _does_. The
| ultraprocessing isn 't what's making the foot
| hyperpalatable or low-satiety (the macronutrient mix and
| sweetening is).
|
| The previous comment was pointing out that there's an
| agreed-on definition of what "ultra-processing" means.
| There is. But there is no such agreement on mechanistic
| effects of ultra-processing.
| nradov wrote:
| There is perhaps some rough correlation but as soon as you
| define an objective metric then consumer packaged foods
| companies will figure out a way to game the metric by
| engineering foods to get good scores and be highly palatable
| while still not being very healthy. Another way of thinking
| about it might be ultra-formulated versus ultra-processed:
| what matters is the contents rather than how you got there.
|
| https://peterattiamd.com/davidallison3/
| secstate wrote:
| Honestly, UPF feels like a food industry plant word to make
| legislation a hot mess full of holes.
|
| Just regulate added sugar and saturated/trans fats and be
| done with it.
| neilfrndes wrote:
| The book Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken really
| opened my eyes about UPF. I highly recommend it. Here is a
| video of him delivering a lecture at the royal institution
| about the topic: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j1oOoYnCfJs
|
| I don't think adding kombu to dashi would count as UPF
| according to the book's definition.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't know that it does, but I do know that carrageenan
| does, and they're both just seaweed extracts.
|
| _Later_
|
| This video is really frustrating. The first half of it is
| making relatively banal arguments about the importance of
| food to health. He's setting up an argument that I think
| basically everybody agrees with (hyperpalatable packaged food
| are a major driver of illness). But then he gets to UPFs,
| says the definition is totally agreed on, and then says
| they're _all_ made by investor-driven large corporations.
|
| That's just straightforwardly false. I made a mac & cheese
| out of some stored roasted cauliflower (never put a raw
| cauliflower in your fridge). To melt the aged cheddar I used,
| I added a half teaspoon of sodium citrate (a miracle
| ingredient). My cauli-mac is now a UPF. No giant corporation
| made it.
|
| My argument isn't that packaged food isn't exactly as much of
| a problem as the UPF people say it is. My argument is that
| "UPF" is not the right axis on which to determine which foods
| are and aren't healthy.
| Amezarak wrote:
| I think it's misleading to suggest a substance is okay
| because it's "just" an extract. Normal foods contain lots
| of substances that when extracted, are obviously bad if
| concentrated and consumed in larger quantities than would
| be had during normal consumption of whatever the source is.
|
| Additionally, even if that substance is perfectly safe, the
| extraction process may effectively increase (as a %) the
| amount of byproducts. For example - and this is totally
| made up - suppose ice cream normally contained 1ppm
| microplastics, but adding carrageenan increased that to
| 10ppm because of the microplastics in seawater and the
| failure of the extraction process to remove them. Or even
| things that are "good" in their normal dosages might be
| "bad" at higher doses found in extracts.
|
| In general, I would suggest it's a good heuristic to avoid
| foods containing ingredients added for stability,
| preservation, or color. Maybe it's fine but the benefit vs
| just eating fresh food that doesn't need it is basically
| nil even in that case. Carrageenan would fall into this
| category. (It seems like there is some research suggesting
| carrageenan is not great for you but I'm not an expert: I'd
| not heard that and avoid it simply because it's not
| anything I would add to a food I made.)
| tptacek wrote:
| At some point with this line of reasoning you fall into
| the precautionary principle and the naturalist fallacy.
| I'm fine with people being squicked out by food additives
| that are products of petroleum chemistry, like
| benzaldehyde. You can get carrageenan simply by
| rehydrating and simmering seaweed and then filtering it
| through cheesecloth.
|
| Whatever else is going on with carrageenan-stabilized
| yogurt, the carrageenan itself isn't doing anything to
| drive the health problems this speaker is talking about.
|
| This is actually I think a really good illustration of
| the problem. There is absolutely a (primarily message-
| board-driven) literature of concerns about specific
| variants of carrageenan. But those concerns --- which I
| don't think are well-founded --- have nothing to do with
| the wave of concern about "UPFs" generally. The UPF thing
| isn't about IBD (some think kappa carrageenan exacerbates
| intestinal inflammation with susceptible people) --- it's
| about people eating hyperpalatable low-satiety packaged
| food, which are obesogenic. Getting rid of carrageenan
| does precisely nothing to address that problem; getting
| rid of _cane sugar_ , which is not a UPF ingredient,
| absolutely does.
| Amezarak wrote:
| > At some point with this line of reasoning you fall into
| the precautionary principle
|
| Is there something wrong with the precautionary
| principle? It would be one thing if the supposed benefit
| was something really incredible, like extending lifespan
| or curing cancer. Then maybe we should be less cautious.
| But we're talking about adding something to your ice
| cream to make it look nice for longer.
|
| > it's about people eating hyperpalatable low-satiety
| packaged food, which are obesogenic. Getting rid of
| carrageenan does precisely nothing to address that
| problem; getting rid of cane sugar, which is not a UPF
| ingredient, absolutely does.
|
| I'm not advocating anyone eat tons of sugar, but sugar
| consumption and the obesity epidemic are not very well
| correlated. I would agree that we should eliminate
| "hyperpalatable low-satiety packaged food", but if you
| were to hypothetically ban basically all non-salt/sugar
| preservatives, stability agents, flavor enhancers, colors
| etc. then you almost eliminate this entire product
| category, because it's no longer practical to produce and
| sell, easy to consume, or as marketable. Even banning
| corn syrup in packaged food (as a UPF ingredient) would
| be a positive move because forcing its replacement by
| cane sugar (regardless of whatever alleged health problem
| HFCS s may or may not have) would mean that such products
| become less economically viable, because its more
| expensive and less stable.
|
| > the naturalist fallacy.
|
| The naturalistic "fallacy" is approximately true for
| diets. We are animals that evolved in a way that
| optimized for the consumption of various foods in our
| environments. We're some of the most wildly complex
| chemical systems in the world, and we have remarkably
| broadly adapted digestive systems with a pretty good
| tolerance, so you can get away with throwing a lot of
| stuff down the pipe without anything bad happening. But
| that's exactly why "eat the same foods people always have
| and not bizarre lab concoctions" is a useful heuristic
| for health. It's entirely possible that various additives
| are perfectly fine or even pro-health, but it's not the
| way to bet as a general principle, and it's impractical
| to conduct meaningful long-term nutritional studies to
| find out with any real assurance.
| tptacek wrote:
| If you believe that about the naturalistic fallacy, you
| should be fine with carrageenan-stabilized yogurt; the
| carrageenan is arguably more "natural" than the yogurt.
|
| But all this just shows to go you: this whole "UPF" thing
| is a sort of motte and bailey deal. We all broadly agree
| that packaged hyperpalatable low-satiety foods (along
| with liquid calories) are a danger to human health;
| that's the motte. The bailey is all this stuff about how
| we need to rid the food chain of stabilizers and
| glutamates and nitrates and preservatives because
| "bizarre lab concoctions" endanger people.
|
| The right food classification scheme wouldn't have this
| problem, and wouldn't be a way for people to smuggle in
| proscriptions against sodium citrate or transglutaminase
| while coming up with "UPF-free" logos for cane-sugar-
| sweetened beverages.
| Amezarak wrote:
| > The bailey is all this stuff about how we need to rid
| the food chain of stabilizers and glutamates and nitrates
| and preservatives because "bizarre lab concoctions"
| endanger people.
|
| In my case, I'm arguing that doing away with these
| things, regardless of any health effects they may have,
| has the _effect_ of eliminating the entire class of foods
| you have a problem with.
|
| > "UPF-free" logos for cane-sugar-sweetened beverages.
|
| I'm not arguing that people should drink coke (which is
| full of all kinds of stuff besides HFCS I doubt people
| should be consuming), but the obesity epidemic is not
| well-correlated to soft drink consumption. The latter has
| been in decline since around the mid-90s.
| tptacek wrote:
| My point is that you're arguing for something far outside
| of the mainstream, but the "UPF" framing makes it hard to
| tell; it sounds at first like you're saying we should
| stop subsidizing Takis (fair enough!) but in reality
| you're also saying all the yogurt needs to be
| reformulated (not gonna happen). I'm not trying to engage
| with your theory of health; I'm trying to establish that
| the UPF thing has Prop 65 vibes.
|
| The Prop 65 people make a lot of the same arguments you
| are --- most especially that we should more formally
| adopt the precautionary principle. Which is why you get
| cancer warning labels on bags of organic sweet potato
| sticks. And so _nobody takes those labels seriously
| anymore_.
| asdff wrote:
| Why does yogurt need carrageenan though? The bacteria already
| solidifies the milk.
| tptacek wrote:
| Some yogurt formulations will separate without it.
| asdff wrote:
| Yeah you get whey sure. Not an issue either dump it out or
| stir it.
| fcpk wrote:
| carrageenan has however been shown to induce radical microbiome
| changes in those consuming it.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Are you confusing pink slime and meat glue?
| tptacek wrote:
| No, "pink slime" refers to processed meat trim that is
| packaged and made palatable with meat glue.
| mjparrott wrote:
| A really nice brand of healthy foods that are trustworthy and
| less processed is Primal Kitchen. I have zero affiliation with
| them, just is a brand I trust. Its so hard to shop for things
| that are healthy. For example, their Ketchup is just Tomato,
| Vinegar, Salt, Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, and Spices. No
| sweetener substitutes needed.
| https://www.primalkitchen.com/products/organic-unsweetened-k...
| hypertexthero wrote:
| In case it's useful, some healthy recipes by two people who've
| traveled around the world in a small boat:
|
| https://grimgrains.com/site/home.html
| talkingtab wrote:
| People in the US are so trained by the food industry, that they
| do not know what good food is. Yogurt for example. Here is an
| experiment you can do at home if you want to disbelieve my
| statement.
|
| Step #1 Make good yogurt and eat it.
|
| 1. Go buy a quart of milk, full fat. 2. Buy some yogurt culture.
| Bulgarian preferred. 3. Follow the directions. You need to keep
| the temp at around 110F, warm water bath, heating pad, hot water
| bottles, put it in a cooler, whatever.
|
| This is one of the best foods there is.
|
| Step 2. Go to your grocery store or stores and try to find some
| yogurt that is as good.
|
| You can repeat these steps for other foods. Coffee - roast your
| own. Cheese. Just go to a gourmet cheese store. Get something
| that does not come in a plastic bag.
|
| Or go to Europe and try real croissants. Everyone in Paris can
| get real croissants almost anywhere every day. And not to mention
| real bread - again the plastic bag.
|
| We are so used to what is available here that we have come
| believe it is "food" when really it is just adulterated to have a
| long shelf life. Sorry, but really just try it.
| duped wrote:
| I mean there are things you can reasonably do better than the
| grocery store but something things are unrealistic. Like "just
| go to a gourmet cheese store" is not something you can do in
| most of the country.
|
| I live in one of the largest metro areas with quite a few
| Michelin star and recommended eateries, lovely food culture,
| and we love our dairy. I think there are _two_ dedicated cheese
| mongers you can walk into in the entire area, neither are
| particularly accessible.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I think dedicated cheese mongers are a lot more accessible
| than you are envisioning based on your experience. I live in
| Denver, which is a large city but by no means one of the
| largest in the country. We have no Michelin star restaurants
| that I know of, we don't have a dairy industry or anything
| like that. We still have multiple dedicated cheese stores in
| the area that one can get to. It's not _that_ niche to enjoy
| good cheese.
| duped wrote:
| I wouldn't call it niche I just don't think "gourmet cheese
| store" is accessible to the average American. You can buy
| plenty good cheese at the supermarket.
| kulahan wrote:
| Denver absolutely has michelin star restaurants right now.
| It's a food mecca.
|
| edit: https://guide.michelin.com/us/en/colorado/denver_1261
| 491/res...
| talkingtab wrote:
| The suggestion was just to try good cheese so you know what
| it is. $35 a pound is a bit pricey for cheese. Another option
| is to make your own. It is a skill, not a recipe, but most
| mistakes are extremely edible and tasty.
|
| The biggest obstacle is that you need a cheese cave to age
| the cheese. This can be a small dorm refrigerator with
| something like an inkbird temperature controller.
|
| I do know one family that makes cheese and then just eat it
| without the aging. Store it in the refrigerator. They think
| it is much better than store bought.
| asdff wrote:
| If you live in a metro city then your regular old
| kroger/vons/ralphs whatever will have cheese monger tier
| cheese cut from wheels and sold by the pound. Hard, soft,
| moldy, sheep, goat, all of that stuff is pretty widely
| proliferated in this country. Maybe not if you lived hyper
| rurally but in a city of at least 100,000 this should
| certainly be possible.
| kulahan wrote:
| In the Northeast corner of the US, there are tons and tons of
| bakeries. I was really bummed when I moved away and discovered
| most of the country just eats crappy bread.
|
| Still, almost every grocery store I've been to (even the lower-
| cost ones in my region, like King Soopers) has a fresh bakery
| area. It's such a profitable product to sell, it really makes
| no sense not to add it if you have any space at all to spare.
| Even Target has one.
|
| I'm cheap, so I go like 30 minutes before closing time and get
| the bread for like 80% off because it _doesn 't_ have the
| shelf-stabilization stuff, so it _will_ go bad in a couple
| days.
| 12345hn6789 wrote:
| Finding full fat, no sugar added yogurt is quite easy, and
| completely subjectively up to taste. You may make your own
| yogurt yes. But perhaps the flavor difference you are
| experiencing is due to the intensive labor you spent time to
| produce said yogurt.
|
| - https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/product/painterland-
| sisters...
|
| - https://www.hy-vee.com/aisles-
| online/p/2284457/Siggis-4-Milk...
|
| - https://www.jewelosco.com/shop/search-
| results.html?q=yogurt&...
|
| - https://www.marianos.com/p/dannon-gluten-free-whole-milk-
| non...
|
| As for roasting beans, that is an immensely deep rabbit hole
| that will #1- not give you better results than specialty
| roasters and #2- cost you much more than specialty roasters.
| Not to mention you will have a tough time getting high quality
| beans unroasted.
|
| Edit: also all of these grocery stores I listed I can guarantee
| have fresh bread made daily to buy. Not "white bread", but
| "real" "European" bread.
| asdff wrote:
| Intensive labor? It is one of the easiest things to do. Here
| is my process step by step:
|
| 1) 32oz of whole milk into a pot, set burner to 6, set a 7
| min timer (whats optimal for my burners), walk away.
|
| 2) Come back, check temp with thermometer, should be between
| 180deg-190degf. Shut off burner. Set 10 min timer. Go do
| something else.
|
| 3) Come back, put burner on low simmer, set 20 min timer, do
| something else.
|
| 4) Come back, shut off burner, crack lid of pot open, do
| something else for about a half hour.
|
| 5) Come back, check temp, should be around 110degf now. If
| not wait. If it is, add last scoop from last batch of yogurt
| to pot.
|
| 6) Pour into mason jar. Put in instapot. Put in 1 cup water
| into instapot. Hit yogurt button. Get yogurt in 12 hours.
|
| This is like less than 5 mins of actual hands on work.
| Probably the easiest thing you can do in the kitchen beyond
| like making spaghetti. I started my initial batch with one of
| those premium yogurts so I stole their cultures.
| ruralfam wrote:
| Not sure this is a good post, but might be so taking the risk. I
| am snacking right now on some UPF - my 10% vice. However, my 90%
| is pretty good. One NOT-UPF staple is steel cut oats that are
| slow cooked. Very easy, healthy and likely as NOT-UPF as you can
| get. Recipie: 3 cups steel cut oats (I use Bob's Red Mill
| Organic), 1+ Qt water, 1 Qt Skim Milk, 1+ Teaspon salt. Combine
| everything into a suitable pot. Slow cook at 150F for six hours.
| Stir occasionally. Explore ways to eat. E.g. warm in microwave
| with some blueberries, and a bit of brown sugar. Stores in the
| Fridge for a long time. HTH, NSC (+ means "a bit more than")
| grvdrm wrote:
| Right there with you but in way less time w pressure cooker.
| Havoc wrote:
| Currently trying to track down a something I'm sensitive/allergic
| to and this is where I started - a wide but pretty bland whole
| foods diet.
|
| Theory being that the issue is one of the billion
| colourants/flavourants/preservatives & cooking from scratch cuts
| most of them.
|
| Too early to confidently tell (4 days in)...but the vibes sure
| feel promising
| morgango wrote:
| That was incredibly difficult to read. Text would be nice.
| robinsoncrusue wrote:
| My ancestors are from Asia. Over there, a saying goes something
| like this if I can translate it without the color of the
| language: "Give a man a solid breakfast and he will not make
| noise around the kitchen rest of the day". Even less colorful way
| to say it is if you want to be healthy, start with a healthy
| breakfast.
|
| As much as there are all the science around low carb diet and
| optimizing calories, macros and what not, I think there are some
| wisdom to it in the long game view.
|
| Someone that had a good nutritious breakfast (you will notice
| every major culture has its variant of breakfast akin to "English
| breakfast"), would have less difficulty resisting food with empty
| calories and doing frequent snacking. Contrary, if you had
| packaged "cereal" with questionable ingredients and nutrition
| density, no wonder by 11 you will feel the need to snack. And
| then if you happen to have a lunch in one of the typical take out
| restaurants optimized for cost at the expense of quality, a 3pm
| snacking is more likely than not.
|
| By the end of the day, you had racked up calories intake with
| bunch of empty calories from those snacking episodes that could
| be entirely prevented with a solid dense breakfast.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| The American version "Breakfast is the most important meal of
| the day" started as a breakfast cereal marketing line, not an
| endorsement for eating an "English breakfast".
|
| I will take the science over old wives tales and marketing bs
| any day. Even if the science is as poorly done as most
| nutrition science is.
| jerlam wrote:
| I always thought the emphasis on breakfast originated in
| cultures or times where it would be followed by a long day of
| manual labor.
|
| This also ignores that most European countries emphasize
| breakfast even less than Americans, and that the British
| (home of the English breakfast) have a lower life expectancy
| than most of their western European peers (but not as low as
| Americans).
| pessimizer wrote:
| Why is someone so determined to force this "ultraprocessed foods"
| meme? Is it just so they can get a government definition of
| "ultraprocessed foods" that somehow doesn't include foods that
| are 1/3 teflon by weight?
|
| There are plenty of _specific processes_ that are extremely
| questionable and probably dangerous. Europe bans a lot of them,
| or to be fair almost everybody bans them but the US. But somehow,
| when the references to food additives and processes get
| _specific,_ outlets like the NYT start using phrases that include
| "right-wing," "corners of the internet," "rant," "outburst,"
| "conspiracy theories," "...but the science actually says...,"
| "the consensus," "...that the vast majority of scientists agree
| to be safe..." etc...
|
| Also, dangerous additives and processes are an entirely different
| question than talking about people eating fatty, sugary, salty
| foods because they like them. They're on the verge of turning
| "ultraprocessed foods" into a moral crusade against the tastes of
| the lumpen, which their upper-middle class audience loves because
| it allows them to feel superior (and deserving.)
|
| Also, preservatives are good. They make food cheaper and make it
| last longer. I want _dangerous_ preservatives banned.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Women got jobs
| sizzle wrote:
| For anyone having gastrointestinal issues from processed foods in
| America, I implore you to take a trip to the EU and experience
| the lack of digestive issues their foods have on your gut.
|
| It really changed my relationship with food knowing that it's not
| my gut malfunctioning but stems from what I'm putting in me.
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