Nutritional myths masquerading as fact.

Latatian

Could be organic, and is most likely also gluten-free Mellor. Cooked with 100% sunflower oil!


Edit: Also, no GMO. Never mind that usually the product making this claim is something for which there is no GMO equivalent currently on the market. Shhh about that part. Wouldn't want to detract from the marketing.

laoch na mona

suitable for vegetarians

Trained Monkey

Mellor wrote: »

A burger with 100% natural ingredients, or a burger with preservatives, flavours, colours, etc are both equally contributing to the obesity problem. The additives are not the issue, it's the bad food choice.


.

So a burger with 100% steak mince, organic onions, a free range egg and a handful of flour to bind it isn't a better choice than low quality meat washed in ammonia stuffed with a heap of e numbers, preservatives, artificial flavourings etc?

Both options are a bad food choice?

Latatian

Both options will make you equally fat if they've the same calories. Not different in terms of the obesity problem.

Look at the sweets made with '100% fruit juice' i.e. pure sugar.

Clearlier

Mellor wrote: »

The vast majority of additives are there for economic reasons, like shelflife, or aesthetics (as a result of shelflife). But yes there are flavouring that change the taste of food. It's much easier to add artifical smoke flavour, then to prepare something in a smoker on a large scale, for example.
But that's not going to an efect on how obesogenic the food is.

A burger with 100% natural ingredients, or a burger with preservatives, flavours, colours, etc are both equally contributing to the obesity problem. The additives are not the issue, it's the bad food choice.
Additives do however, make the bad choices more accessible to everyone. That is the major problem with modern industrial food. However, that aspect is lost on most people who are vilifying additives.

Just to be clear I'll repeat that I'm not villifying additives nor am I stating that they themselves cause obesity. I'm simply stating that they have played a significant role in creating the obesogenic environment that we live in today. I can't see how this is a controversial statement. It's really onbly a little stronger than stating that the environment that we live is obesogenic and that environment includes additives.

Do you really think that the food environment would remain similarly obesogenic if additives and chemicals were removed from food? That's not saying that additives cause obesity, it's saying that they've helped to enable it.

Mellor wrote: »

But that slogan has been banned for a number of years. It's about as relevant now as doctors recommending smoking 50 years ago.
No sensible adult thinks smoking is healthy.
Ditto, no sensible adult thinks a Mars is healthy.

Is it really banned? An article here about it being revived in 2008.

In any case my point obviously wasn't about that one particular ad. It was an anecdote illustrating the impact that advertising can have. I'm not that aware of contemporary food advertising - if you can tell me that food adverts are no longer aimed at children then that would be an improvement.

Mellor wrote: »

People in general have a terrible sense of what is healthy. However, It's in the opposite direction to what you refer to.
Nobody thinks a fast food burger is healthy. Nobody.
A lot of people are fooled by natural, additive free, low fat, no added sugar. Etc These are the labels that mislead people, and a lot of it is down to overemphasis on the bad additives.

I'm thinking of a food. It's 100% natural, additive free, no added sugar, no added flavours or colours. Sounds like a perfectly healthy right. Well, its a large bag of chips.

I think that you need a little more nuance in your understanding of what's going on. Of course nobody thinks that a fast food burger is healthy but there will be wide variations in people's understanding of how unhealthy it is. Food isn't divided into healthy/unhealthy. It falls somewhere along the healthy/unhealthy spectrum. Too much of anything is bad for you - even water. To make it slightly more complicated where a particular food falls on the healthy/unhealthy range changes from person to person and even for a single person from one occasion to another. In other words you can't really pin down how good or bad a particular food is for you to consume. What the big food companies do with their advertising is to nudge your understanding of how healthy a food is towards to healthier end of the spectrum by promoting the things that you mentioned - 0% fat etc.

To get back to my original point I agree that additives are safe to consume, I agree that they do not cause obesity in and of themselves. I think that it's a mistake to dismiss their role in the creation of the obesogenic environment that we have today.

Clearlier

Latatian wrote: »

Both options will make you equally fat if they've the same calories. Not different in terms of the obesity problem.

Look at the sweets made with '100% fruit juice' i.e. pure sugar.

A quick thought experiment:

What if you invented an additive that made it much harder to digest food and that the body had to work harder to digest it, i.e. expend more calories to digest it. Would both options then make you equally fat?

Latatian

Clearlier- there has been some research done on 'usable' calories, things like 'does chopping your food smaller make a difference to how many calories you absorb from it'. It seems to be a small contribution but even small changes can sometimes make differences. Can't seem to locate the research at the moment. Cooking does seem to increase the usable calories in a food. At the end of the day, though, the calories you are getting from that food is the important factor in obesity.

There are also drugs that prevent or delay absorption of fat, so that that source of calories just goes straight through you. Not a pleasant thought.

Hell, if that additive was added then the "low quality meat washed in ammonia stuffed with a heap of e numbers, preservatives, artificial flavourings etc" would be a less obesogenic choice if it had that additive. I was trying to make the point that it is important to distinguish between 'obesogenic' and 'healthy' and 'natural' and make sure not to confuse terms. They often get conflated. I know people who can't understand why they eat 'so healthy' and gain weight or how I can include unhealthy foods in my diet and not gain weight.

If you removed chemicals from food you don't get any more food, all food is chemicals. And what is an 'additive' specifically? Is the same chemical any healthier when it's advertised as a plant extract vs a scary chemical name even though it's the exact same thing ('natural' flavourings etc)? Like 'celery extract' in processed meats. What about e numbers- is a vitamin scarier when it's called an e number or a vitamin?

I think individual chemicals, and overall foods and diets, should be assessed in and of themselves as to their own (a) health or danger and (b) potential to contribute to the obesogenic environment. I don't like when people assume natural= safe or healthy- and you're not doing this, I'm just bringing it into the discussion since it's a common thing with additives.

Mellor

Clearlier wrote: »

Just to be clear I'll repeat that I'm not villifying additives nor am I stating that they themselves cause obesity. I'm simply stating that they have played a significant role in creating the obesogenic environment that we live in today.

Did you not see how my post agree with that. I specifically said that additives make the bad choice accessible for everyone.

Do you really think that the food environment would remain similarly obesogenic if additives and chemicals were removed from food? That's not saying that additives cause obesity, it's saying that they've helped to enable it.

I didn't say anything remotely like that tbh?

I'm saying that additives don't make a particular food stuff any worse. The bad options exist with or without them. And people can't blame their poor food choices on additives.

Is it really banned? An article here about it being revived in 2008.

I think they removed it before any one thought to challenge them on the misleading nature of it. The 2008 slogan wasn't misleading, not in a way they would be liable. They get the assoaition with the old slogan, but they don;t say anything that could get them in hot water.

I think that you need a little more nuance in your understanding of what's going on. Of course nobody thinks that a fast food burger is healthy but there will be wide variations in people's understanding of how unhealthy it is. Food isn't divided into healthy/unhealthy. It falls somewhere along the healthy/unhealthy spectrum. Too much of anything is bad for you - even water. To make it slightly more complicated where a particular food falls on the healthy/unhealthy range changes from person to person and even for a single person from one occasion to another.

I'm well aware how the healthy/unhealthy spectrum of food works. But that's anyway for the condescending reply.

In other words you can't really pin down how good or bad a particular food is for you to consume. What the big food companies do with their advertising is to nudge your understanding of how healthy a food is towards to healthier end of the spectrum by promoting the things that you mentioned - 0% fat etc.

I disagree. With a little education, its quite easy to pin down what you should should be eating based on your activity, goals, etc. But education is key.
If people are getting their understanding of of how healthy a food is from advertising, that's never going to end well. if they fall for the marketing labels, that's their own mistake. I'm not saying its necessarily their fault though, as the offical line of healthy food from the likes of SafeFood (see above) is utterly woeful.

To get back to my original point I agree that additives are safe to consume, I agree that they do not cause obesity in and of themselves. I think that it's a mistake to dismiss their role in the creation of the obesogenic environment that we have today.

As above, I didn't dismiss that in the slightest. Again, I specifically said that additives make the bad choices accessible for everyone.

If they made all food additives legal tomorrow. Fast food industry would be crushed. Frozen food, microwave meals, pot noodles, junk food would all be off the shelves. Almost everything in a packet would be gone.

But I don't think this would see people forced to eat healthily. I think you just have millions of people who don't have a clue how to feed them selves with fresh food only. They struggle along for a few months, and by that stage, somebody would have started selling additive free fast food and junk and we'd be back to where we are now.

joeprivate

Mellor wrote: »

I'm thinking of a food. It's 100% natural, additive free, no added sugar, no added flavours or colours. Sounds like a perfectly healthy right. Well, its a large bag of chips.

Potato are a healthy food but not if you soak them in a processed oil or lard.
I would class potatoes as a healthy food and they have a low calories density, at less than 1 calorie per gram compared to sunflower oil which they are soaked in at 9 calories per gram.
The longest lived people from the Okinawa island get 70% to 80% of their calories from potatoes, eating approx 1Kg per day so eating plenty of potatoes may extend your life but not if they are soaked in oil.

Mellor

joeprivate wrote: »

Potato are a healthy food but not if you soak them in a processed oil or lard.
I would class potatoes as a healthy food and they have a low calories density, at less than 1 calorie per gram compared to sunflower oil which they are soaked in at 9 calories per gram.
The longest lived people from the Okinawa island get 70% to 80% of their calories from potatoes, eating approx 1Kg per day so eating plenty of potatoes may extend your life but not if they are soaked in oil.

I never said potatoes where inherently unhealthy. I was describing a 1kg bag of chips specifically. All those pseudo-health labels apply, I'm pointing out the nonsense of them

gctest50

joeprivate wrote: »

Potato are a healthy food but not if you soak them in a processed oil or lard.
I would class potatoes as a healthy food and they have a low calories density, at less than 1 calorie per gram compared to sunflower oil which they are soaked in at 9 calories per gram.
The longest lived people from the Okinawa island get 70% to 80% of their calories from potatoes, eating approx 1Kg per day so eating plenty of potatoes may extend your life but not if they are soaked in oil.

purple sweet potatoes them




lunch kinda craic :

just making a pot of kerr pinks or whatever into wallpaper paste in a pot on it's own isn't magically going to help no matter how much you wish it will

_Tombstone_

10 Scientific Papers That Can Transform Your Understanding of Health & Medicine

http://darwinian-medicine.com/10-scientific-papers-that-can-transform-your-understanding-of-health-medicine/

Ziphius

_Tombstone_ wrote: »

10 Scientific Papers That Can Transform Your Understanding of Health & Medicine

http://darwinian-medicine.com/10-scientific-papers-that-can-transform-your-understanding-of-health-medicine/

These are nutritional myths (masquerading as facts)?

NiallBoo

Mellor wrote: »

If they made all food additives illegal tomorrow. Fast food industry would be crushed. Frozen food, microwave meals, pot noodles, junk food would all be off the shelves. Almost everything in a packet would be gone

There would still be a market so there would still be people selling.

It would all just get slightly more expensive as producers would have to allow for much shorter shelf-lives.

Mellor

NiallBoo wrote: »

There would still be a market so there would still be people selling.

It would all just get slightly more expensive as producers would have to allow for much shorter shelf-lives.

In the next sentences that's essentially what I said. Not sure why you deleted that part.

But I don't think this would see people forced to eat healthily. I think you just have millions of people who don't have a clue how to feed them selves with fresh food only. They struggle along for a few months, and by that stage, somebody would have started selling additive free fast food and junk and we'd be back to where we are now.

Gamebred

The American Heart Association recently released a report advising against the use of coconut oil.

The Dietary Fats and Cardiovascular Disease advisory reviewed existing data on saturated fat, showing coconut oil increased LDL ("bad") cholesterol in seven out of seven controlled trials. Researchers didn't see a difference between coconut oil and other oils high in saturated fat, like butter, beef fat and palm oil. In fact, 82% of the fat in coconut oil is saturated, according to the data — far beyond butter (63%), beef fat (50%) and pork lard (39%).

"Because coconut oil increases LDL cholesterol, a cause of CVD [cardiovascular disease], and has no known offsetting favorable effects, we advise against the use of coconut oil," the American Heart Association said in the Dietary Fats and Cardiovascular Disease advisory.

Frank Sacks, lead author on the report, said he has no idea why people think coconut oil is healthy. It's almost 100% fat.



What is the experts view on Coconut oil? plenty of conflicting reports on how healthy it is? is it still the best to use when frying chicken ect?

Mellor

Is the basis of their opinion the fact it's saturated fat, going off old and obsolete info. Or are they going off new information, a study, etc.
If the former, I wouldn't pay it much heed.

ford2600

If you are going to use a fat for cooking, it is difficult to recommend anything other than a saturated fat; way more stable under heat. Coconut is one of the better ones for that.

The worst oil/fat to use is poly(many)unsaturated fat as it is the opposite in terms of stability.

Steam your veg and add the fat after works too