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OtherworldlyInvader posted:I'm not calling you out on a pedantic grammatical error (If there is one there I don't even see it), I'm pointing out that what you said was factually inaccurate, and I'm doing that because I think these inaccuracies are causing you to draw invalid conclusions from them. If I understand the changes you wish you had made to your statement correctly, the statement is still wrong and more importantly it is still wrong for exactly the same reason I already outlined. The reason I intended to write "nutritious" rather than "nutritional" is because, in conventional English, "nutritious" has a slightly different usage than the more technical one that you're deploying here, and is typically defined as: "providing nourishment, especially to a high degree; nourishing; healthful" and in "a good, nutritious meal". Which, in the context of my original statement, was intended to be understood as "food that makes a good tradeoff between calories and micro / macro nutrients". Also you seem to be writing from the perspective that the only reason to monitor your food intake is to lose weight, but that's only one of many reasons to control your eating habits. There are very good health based reasons to want to ensure a proper intake of vitamins, minerals, fiber, protein, etc. quote:And yes, people routinely engage in magical thinking when it comes to diet and nutrition. Lets say I have a couple of roasts, a head of lettuce, a few tomatoes, a bag of flour, some cheese and a nicely equipped kitchen. I mix up a batch of dough and bake a loaf of sandwich bread, then put a roast in the oven and run it through a slicer, then slice my tomato, lettuce & cheese and produce a nice roast beef sandwich. Now (using the same proportion of ingredients) I use the same batch of dough and bake some buns, then run the other roast through a meat grinder, cook the ground beef as a patty in a pan on the stove top, and put it all together with the sliced tomato, lettuce & cheese and produce a juicy cheeseburger. Now put the roast beef sandwich and the cheeseburger in front of a statistically significant population of people, and ask each of them which food is healthier than the other. I guarantee you a significant portion of those people will tell you the roast beef sandwich is healthier than the cheeseburger. Magical thinking at work, the same ingredients in the same proportion now have a different nutritional value in the minds of people due to nutritionally inconsequential differences in preparation method. I didn't ask whether people engage in magical thinking regarding food because they obviously do and that's hardly controversial. I asked whether you think it's "magical thinking" that people link the heavy consumption of so called "junk food" with poorer long term health. Now your point about people misunderstand the difference (or rather lack of difference) between a roast beef sandwich and a cheeseburger is well taken but it doesn't actually demonstrate that 'junk food' is a useless category or that heavy consumption of junk food goes against the recommendations of basically every medical expert. quote:Another example of irrational thinking when it comes to diet is the often mentioned "fruits&vegetables". Fruits and vegetables are quite nutritionally different from each other, and there are also very significant differences within each group. Broccoli is not nutritionally equivalent to a potato, and an apple is not nutritionally equivalent to a tomato. Despite this, most people (and even many government nutrition guidelines) treat them as equivalents, which is not conducive to eating a healthy diet. Well, first of all, most food guides will specify that you should eat green and or cruciferous vegetables, and they also tend to emphasize that you should eat a variety of different types of fruit and vegetables. So I don't believe the charge you're making here is fair at all, and if you actually spent a moment looking over those food guides I think you would know that. The health guides I've linked to provide perfectly common sense and more than adequate guidelines for the average shopper attending the average grocery store. Your sandwich vs. burger example is a good one and I know people who have made that kind of fallacious reasoning. Your objection here to the recommendation to consume a lot of fruits and vegetables doesn't even remotely line up with the way anyone I've ever met thinks though, and there's no way to read any food guide I've ever seen and conclude that you can get away with nothing but tomatoes and potatoes. quote:As for the letter to the Lancet, its a letter written to make a rhetorical point, not lay out medially or scientifically sound nutrition facts. Their main point, that rising food costs are causing people to eat less healthy food, may have an element of truth but it also omits a bunch of really important points. That's fine for the letter's intended purpose (a political call to action about an issue), but not fine for a detailed discussion on the topic. About the cheapest meal you can buy is rice and dried beans, which is also a very nutritionally sound basis for a diet. The fact that people are eating lots of take out, chips, and tv dinners instead indicates there are far more factors impacting their decision on what to eat than price alone, because cheaper and healthier options exist which people aren't taking. Additionally, while food prices may have risen over the last few years, they are still generally low by historic rates. "Why are lots of people eating unhealthy diets" is a complex question, and the answer is a hell of a lot more complex than "because food prices went up". All that the reference to the Lancet was meant to establish is what the general medical consensus on food is. It isn't supposed to be the final world on anything, it's supposed to be a jumping off point for a more substantive conversation on nutrition. This is also why I've augmented that letter by referring to and quoting from several different guides put out by the UK and US government on guidelines for healthy eating. If you want to make intelligent and specific criticisms of those guidelines then I will hear you out with an open mind. What I find so remarkable about this thread is that they seem to be reenacting previous arguments they got into with no concern for the actual content of what I'm saying, leading to people repeatedly making counter arguments against the straw man claim that home cooked or fresh meals are inherently healthier, or people freaking out because "junk food" is a colloquialism rather than a technical term.
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Mar 27, 2016 02:02
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PT6A posted:Why not? I eat all those things occasionally, and I'm in good health and not overweight. We need to focus on why people are eating those things in such amounts, or with such frequency, that it becomes unhealthy. Yes you eat then occasionally. I occasionally eat lovely food too, and I don't feel unhealthy. How's about this. When I say something is "bad" for you, I mean that on a spectrum of "rarely eat" to "eat frequently if you want", it would sit near "rarely eat". Broccoli would go on the other side of the spectrum- maybe eating broccoli ask the time of bad for you I'm not sure- but hey it's not absolutely good or bad, just at a different part of the frequency spectrum. I think saying that frequently eating broccoli is better for you than frequently eating big macs is something we can agree on.
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Mar 27, 2016 15:27
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Count Roland posted:Yes you eat then occasionally. I occasionally eat lovely food too, and I don't feel unhealthy. Actually mostly chips, I think apart from the sauce big macs aren't that terrible.
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Mar 27, 2016 15:29
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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PT6A posted:Why not? I eat all those things occasionally, and I'm in good health and not overweight. We need to focus on why people are eating those things in such amounts, or with such frequency, that it becomes unhealthy. "I'm poor and tired and I was never provided with healthy life management skills because my parents were also poor and tired, but when I eat McDonald's I feel okay for a while"
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Mar 27, 2016 16:48
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Magic Hate Ball posted:"I'm poor and tired and I was never provided with healthy life management skills because my parents were also poor and tired, but when I eat McDonald's I feel okay for a while" Pretty much this.
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Mar 27, 2016 21:35
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The last time I checked there wasn't any correlation between obesity and education or income levels.
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Mar 27, 2016 21:49
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shrike82 posted:The last time I checked there wasn't any correlation between obesity and education or income levels. In America I'm pretty sure the poor are more likely to be overweight but then America is just a fat nation in general so that doesn't say a lot.
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Mar 27, 2016 22:10
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http://frac.org/initiatives/hunger-and-obesity/are-low-income-people-at-greater-risk-for-overweight-or-obesity/quote:While all segments of the U.S. population are affected by obesity, one of the common myths that exists is that all or virtually all low-income people are far more likely to be obese. In this generalization, two facts commonly are overlooked: (1) the relationship between income and weight can vary by gender, race-ethnicity, or age and (2) disparities by income seem to be weakening with time.
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Mar 27, 2016 22:13
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shrike82 posted:http://frac.org/initiatives/hunger-and-obesity/are-low-income-people-at-greater-risk-for-overweight-or-obesity/ Which is to say, yes, there's a correlation between poverty and obesity.
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Mar 27, 2016 22:15
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Narratives like the poor blue-collar worker pigging out on fast food due to poor impulse control strike me as educated people being patronizing more than anything else.
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Mar 27, 2016 22:15
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OwlFancier posted:Which is to say, yes, there's a correlation between poverty and obesity. Whoops from the same page. Couldn't wait to get your poor people are natural fatties rocks off eh. quote:However, this relationship between obesity and poverty “appears to no longer exist” as more recent NHANES data (2003 to 2006) suggest no difference in obesity rates between the two groups. In addition, rates of obesity increased by 62 percent among the poor and by 155 percent among the non-poor from 1971 to 2006.
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Mar 27, 2016 22:16
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At work (butcher for a regional supermarket) anything we pull that is about to go past sell by we freeze and food bank. Most trim from cutting gets ground up the next day. We also have a delivery every other day so we keep our cooler and freezer light. The only time we run into a "over order" issue is when the warehouse does a force out and dumps extra cases of something we didn't order on us. And usually force outs are short dated. I know the discussion has moved on a little from stores, so I apologize for bringing this back up. But at least some retailers do it right, yeah?
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Mar 27, 2016 22:24
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Income and weight are related, but the relationship is a complicated one.Pew Research posted:Obesity varies considerably depending on gender, race, ethnicity and socioeconomic factors. In 2010, CDC researchers (using data from 2005-08) found that among black and Mexican-American men, obesity increased with income: 44.5% and 40.8% of those men are obese, respectively, at the highest income level, compared with 28.5% and 29.9% at the lowest level. Beyond that, though, the researchers found little correlation between obesity prevalence among men and either income or education.
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Mar 28, 2016 05:54
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Count Roland posted:Yes you eat then occasionally. I occasionally eat lovely food too, and I don't feel unhealthy. You think fries are bad for you and broccolli is good for you but actually I think you'll find that if you eat nothing but broccoli you'll sicken and die of protein deficiencies, take that science. -this thread
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Mar 28, 2016 07:59
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Helsing posted:If you go through the rest of that guide it regularly uses terms like "whole fruits", "whole grains", "processed meats", etc. and makes the same common sense warnings about how processed foods tend to be higher in additives such as sodium. helsing you are my favoritest D&D poster and I got no dog in this race until somebody trips the stats alarm, but you are way out of your field and way out of your league on this issue. and uncharacteristically oblivious to that fact.  you're not making a meaningful argument, and you're not listening when discendo vox and others (rightly, in my view) tell you that, with no further argument needed beyond stating it is nonsense. if you want to have a productive argument about nutrition (with which food waste is intrinsically linked), you really need to excise the colloquialisms and reliance on single papers/official guidelines. open letters are always loving garbage, in every field, and those guidelines are at best loose rules of thumbs--if they came with a quantified uncertainty estimate, it would certainly (HEH) be in medium to high double digits. the relationship between nutrition science, eating behavior and food distribution is an extremely complex issue and there's just no dealing with it at the level you want to deal with it here. there's no positive case to be made along the lines you are trying to/want here. I guess get your minimum daily fat and protein based on your bodyweight. get your minimum daily caloric intake to maintain that weight. get your daily recommended dosage of vitamins. get health check-ups by your doctor and reduce sodium if it becomes a problem.
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Mar 28, 2016 09:58
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Whenever the topic comes up, I always want to ask one question - how about a bit of a return to communal kitchens? You sacrifice flexibility (may not always get what you like) for efficiency (cooking for a hundred people is more efficient and easier to eliminate waste from than cooking for one, less time is spent overall preparing the food, it's easier to make the food up to health standards). I mean, imagine a food chain with just the simplest food - meat bits/ fish, seafood/ legumes/ eggs as protein choices, rice/ pasta/ potatoes as carb choices, different vegetables. Hot soups where there's winter. Cake or something of the day for dessert. I think that, plus different seasonings, would cover basically 80% of what I eat, day to day. That piece of wild boar that's been sitting in a marinade for three days? Definitely an exception. And I imagine for most busy people it's similar.
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Mar 28, 2016 10:08
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Zodium posted:helsing you are my favoritest D&D poster and I got no dog in this race until somebody trips the stats alarm, but you are way out of your field and way out of your league on this issue. and uncharacteristically oblivious to that fact. Problem with talking about nutrition is that it's so easy to lapse into arguments that are basically "i eat like this and am healthy so why can't everyone do this".
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Mar 28, 2016 10:21
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meristem posted:Whenever the topic comes up, I always want to ask one question - how about a bit of a return to communal kitchens? You sacrifice flexibility (may not always get what you like) for efficiency (cooking for a hundred people is more efficient and easier to eliminate waste from than cooking for one, less time is spent overall preparing the food, it's easier to make the food up to health standards). 
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Mar 28, 2016 10:29
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shrike82 posted:Problem with talking about nutrition is that it's so easy to lapse into arguments that are basically "i eat like this and am healthy so why can't everyone do this". if people would honestly start from that position instead of trying to badly do parallel construction around those beliefs, based on what they think nutrition science says, the world would be a happier and healthier place.
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Mar 28, 2016 10:37
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In NYC a lot of people with well-paying stressful jobs *never* cook because for a single person living in an expensive area, it's often cheaper to eat out every meal, and there are enough healthy restaurants that it isn't going to kill you either. Supermarkets there are expensive and restaurant food is cheap.
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Mar 28, 2016 11:56
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meristem posted:Whenever the topic comes up, I always want to ask one question - how about a bit of a return to communal kitchens? You sacrifice flexibility (may not always get what you like) for efficiency (cooking for a hundred people is more efficient and easier to eliminate waste from than cooking for one, less time is spent overall preparing the food, it's easier to make the food up to health standards). It would definitely reduce food waste, but I don't know if that's a decent enough tradeoff for letting cooking skills wither. Also the unstated assumption people have is that "if we wasted less food, we could give that food to poor people". There's no guarantee of that happening.
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Mar 28, 2016 14:51
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computer parts posted:Also the unstated assumption people have is that "if we wasted less food, we could give that food to poor people". There's no guarantee of that happening. This. If it were profitable to sell extra food to poor people or starving third worlders, there would already be companies lining up to do so.
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Mar 28, 2016 14:59
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blowfish posted:This. If it were profitable to sell extra food to poor people or starving third worlders, there would already be companies lining up to do so. Giving excess food to poor countries is also extremely bad for their food security long-term, since it will drive local food producers out of business and make those countries wholly dependent on continued foreign aid. To be fair, though, most people in the thread were talking about giving food to food-insecure people in our own respective countries.
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Mar 28, 2016 15:41
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Food Bank stuff is state level, yeah? Sort of like how subsides for retailers that food bank are also state level. Is this something that can be kicked up to federal level?
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Mar 28, 2016 19:03
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Added USDA study to the OP. Good god, I go away from a weekend and things go to poo poo. blowfish posted:This. If it were profitable to sell extra food to poor people or starving third worlders, there would already be companies lining up to do so. A lot of extra food is given to poor people (or agencies that distribute it to poor people, anyway) already, by a variety of organizations. For instance, over 4000 organizations participate in the USDA's U.S. Food Waste Challenge. Below is a partial list. quote:5280 Produce, Denver, CO
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Mar 28, 2016 19:06
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Sorus posted:Food Bank stuff is state level, yeah? Sort of like how subsides for retailers that food bank are also state level. Is this something that can be kicked up to federal level? There are national, regional, state, and local level food banks and pantries. It's a pretty complex ecosystem and the Federal government is involved. Here are some things the USDA has been doing. Amusingly, they misquote their own study.
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Mar 28, 2016 19:10
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wateroverfire posted:Below is a partial list. Holy gently caress, did you actually need to copy/paste a giant fuckoff list instead of just putting a link there?
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Mar 28, 2016 19:16
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WampaLord posted:Holy gently caress, did you actually need to copy/paste a giant fuckoff list instead of just putting a link there? It illustrates a point, so yes!
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Mar 28, 2016 19:17
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Zodium posted:helsing you are my favoritest D&D poster and I got no dog in this race until somebody trips the stats alarm, but you are way out of your field and way out of your league on this issue. and uncharacteristically oblivious to that fact. Well, first of all thanks for the compliment. One of the reasons I like posting here is because I can test out arguments and have people tell me what an idiot I am from a position of relative anonymity, which is quite freeing in a way. At times aggressively arguing a point is the best way to get a reality check on whether you're right or whether you're just saying things that, if you weren't an anonymous person on the internet, would mark you out as some kind of doofus. I'd rather have my bozo erruptions on the internet, so here we are. But that having been said, it's far from clear to me that that's what is happening here. So if you can actually help explicate what you think I've gotten wrong here I'd appreciate it. So far though I don't think I've staked out any unreasonable positions. I also don't think I'm relying so much on any individual paper as I am relying on the broad scientific consensus about health -- or maybe, more accurately, the way that this scientific consensus is presented to the public. That's obviously not a guarantee that I'm right but I think it at least puts the burden of proof on you, Discendo Vox, etc. to explain your own positions and to articulate an alternative position. Here's a proposed definition for 'junk food' ripped straight from wikipedia. I don't see what's wrong with it as a starting point for discussing nutrition but I'm genuinely curious to hear your objections: Obviously you couldn't use this definition to formulate an actual policy response. But if we're discussing how to maintain a healthy diet then the advice "limit your intake of junk food", using this definition of junk food, then I don't see why that's bad or remotely controversial advice to give. If anything the real objection here would seem to be that the term junk food is so tautological that you might as well just say "avoid unhealthy foods". But again, "avoid eating unhealthy food" isn't bad advice, it's just advice that needs to be complemented by more specific instructions or nutritional guidelines. I also do not understand why people are so upset at the idea that someone might recommend that a grocery shopper "eat a variety of fresh foods and vegetables (in particular green cruciferous vegetables), try to make at least half the grains you consume whole grains, and try to limit your intake of processed meats" is such terrible advice? Even the guidelines posted by Discendo Vox linked to a food eating guide with exactly that advice. What, specifically, is wrong with it?
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Mar 28, 2016 19:31
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wateroverfire posted:Added USDA study to the OP. That's all charity, not for-profit.
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Mar 28, 2016 19:51
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Helsing posted:Here's a proposed definition for 'junk food' ripped straight from wikipedia. I don't see what's wrong with it as a starting point for discussing nutrition but I'm genuinely curious to hear your objections: quote:Obviously you couldn't use this definition to formulate an actual policy response. quote:But if we're discussing how to maintain a healthy diet then the advice "limit your intake of junk food", using this definition of junk food, then I don't see why that's bad or remotely controversial advice to give. [...] But again, "avoid eating unhealthy food" isn't bad advice, it's just advice that needs to be complemented by more specific instructions or nutritional guidelines. quote:I also do not understand why people are so upset at the idea that someone might recommend that a grocery shopper "eat a variety of fresh foods and vegetables (in particular green cruciferous vegetables), try to make at least half the grains you consume whole grains, and try to limit your intake of processed meats" is such terrible advice? Even the guidelines posted by Discendo Vox linked to a food eating guide with exactly that advice. What, specifically, is wrong with it? twodot fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Mar 28, 2016 |
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Mar 28, 2016 20:15
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The vagueness of the "junk food" category is a reason not to use it for formulating government policy, not a reason not to use it in casual conversation when you're talking about nutrition. And the health related reason for being cautious about processed foods, which has been explained to the point of tedium by now, is that processed foods are vastly more likely to contain high levels of sugar, sodium, trans-fats, etc. Why are you even bothering to post in this thread if you're not going to try and reply to the actual arguments being made there? You haven't even tried to refute that argument. If you want to dispute that processed food items in the grocery store are the main source of sugar, unhealthy fats, sodium, etc. then go ahead and actually make that argument instead of just repeating the completely irrelevant fact that processed food isn't inherently less healthy just by virtue of having been processed. And maybe you can at least explain why so many doctors and nutritionists are using "processed food" or "processed meats" as a heuristic for evaluating health if, as you claim, it's so utterly worthless a category that only a charlatan would apparently try to use it. twodot posted:How did you end up in a place where you thought saying "avoid eating unhealthy food" is a good idea? Because every single actual food guide then gives some actual examples of junk food. So yes, I would say that warning consumers against "eating unhealthy foods, such as the following" is a good starting point. quote:I'd wager your average shopper isn't capable of evaluating that ratio anyways. It's not that this is bad advice necessarily, people following this advice will probably end up ok, it's just advice that displays a fundamental ignorance about what words mean. This is almost as dumb as the argument that that advising people to eat fresh vegetables might be interpreted as saying that they can exclusively eat potato and remain healthy. By the time someone has gotten to the point of actually following a food guide I am pretty sure that they can take the additional step of distinguishing between steel cut oats and wonder bread. I would also like to know why you, some random internet poster on the Something Awful forums who hasn't presented any obvious qualifications, are so comfortable declaring that food guides put together by actual health organizations and medical professionals are displaying "a fundamental ignorance about what words mean". Like, you're not just saying "oh this is a bit simplistic" you're actually apparently claiming that these food guides must have been prepared by people who are vastly less qualified than you are. That's a pretty serious claim that might require some actual positive proof.
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Mar 28, 2016 21:36
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Helsing posted:By the time someone has gotten to the point of actually following a food guide I am pretty sure that they can take the additional step of distinguishing between steel cut oats and wonder bread. This basically sums up why 90% of food advice just doesn't work.
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Mar 28, 2016 21:46
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Helsing posted:And the health related reason for being cautious about processed foods, which has been explained to the point of tedium by now, is that processed foods are vastly more likely to contain high levels of sugar, sodium, trans-fats, etc. Why are you even bothering to post in this thread if you're not going to try and reply to the actual arguments being made there? You haven't even tried to refute that argument. quote:And maybe you can at least explain why so many doctors and nutritionists are using "processed food" or "processed meats" as a heuristic for evaluating health if, as you claim, it's so utterly worthless a category that only a charlatan would apparently try to use it. quote:Because every single actual food guide then gives some actual examples of junk food. So yes, I would say that warning consumers against "eating unhealthy foods, such as the following" is a good starting point. quote:This is almost as dumb as the argument that that advising people to eat fresh vegetables might be interpreted as saying that they can exclusively eat potato and remain healthy. By the time someone has gotten to the point of actually following a food guide I am pretty sure that they can take the additional step of distinguishing between steel cut oats and wonder bread. quote:I would also like to know why you, some random internet poster on the Something Awful forums who hasn't presented any obvious qualifications, are so comfortable declaring that food guides put together by actual health organizations and medical professionals are displaying "a fundamental ignorance about what words mean". Like, you're not just saying "oh this is a bit simplistic" you're actually apparently claiming that these food guides must have been prepared by people who are vastly less qualified than you are. That's a pretty serious claim that might require some actual positive proof.
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Mar 28, 2016 21:51
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You're not in an argument not with me but with what appears to be the received nutritional wisdom of almost the entire medical establishment. I've presented multiple different nutritional guidelines that use the term processed food. Your quarrel is now with a large number of doctors and health professionals. Go quote from their studies and then critique them and explain why your own perspective is superior. I'm not someone who thinks that a layperson should never argue with an expert, because even experts can be wrong. But when the expert consensus is against you it becomes your job to explain why you know better than them, and until you put at least a tiny bit of effort into doing that I'm going to start treating you like some crank who claims that the scientific consensus on global warming is totally wrong because you say it is for reasons you don't feel like revealing.
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Mar 28, 2016 22:05
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Helsing posted:You're not in an argument not with me but with what appears to be the received nutritional wisdom of almost the entire medical establishment. I've presented multiple different nutritional guidelines that use the term processed food. Your quarrel is now with a large number of doctors and health professionals. Go quote from their studies and then critique them and explain why your own perspective is superior. quote:Processed meats and processed poultry (e.g., sausages, luncheon meats, bacon, and beef jerky) are products preserved by smoking, curing, salting, and/or the addition of chemical preservatives. If you think processed is a good word to use, you should have a good definition available, I can't prove the negative that there are no good definitions whatsoever, just observe I've yet to see one. edit: For fun, contrast that definition with my top search result for processed food: quote:More generally, virtually every food that has a label is processed. Virtually every food that comes in a box, bag, jar, or can is processed. twodot fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Mar 28, 2016 |
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Mar 28, 2016 22:31
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Helsing posted:Well, first of all thanks for the compliment. One of the reasons I like posting here is because I can test out arguments and have people tell me what an idiot I am from a position of relative anonymity, which is quite freeing in a way. At times aggressively arguing a point is the best way to get a reality check on whether you're right or whether you're just saying things that, if you weren't an anonymous person on the internet, would mark you out as some kind of doofus. I'd rather have my bozo erruptions on the internet, so here we are. But that having been said, it's far from clear to me that that's what is happening here. your positions aren't unreasonable as such, but they aren't sound (or useful) either, and I think that's the critique that's being levied. your mistake, and I'm really just speculating here, is that you seem to think the science itself is reasonably solid, so it's probably okay to abstract away a bit with terms like "junk food." that's not the case. your average nutrition science argument is an inferential piece of garbage that barely manages to hold a causal chain together long enough to get published. there's just no room for further abstraction, and your attempts force you to make a case that is essentially meaningless. I don't think you can shift the burden of evidence on to Discendo Vox because there is no burden of evidence to shift (that I can see) without turning this into a straight methodological argument that you're not competent to have with him anyway. if you're happy with the "received nutritional wisdom of almost the entire medical establishment," then I can't stop you, but in my view (and I would guess Discendo Vox's view), we just don't, in any way shape or form, have good enough scientific answers to these questions about how to construct policy or guidelines about what people should eat. how much, maybe. wanting answers very badly will not make them appear, which is why open letters and guidelines tend to be garbage: they present the "best" argument, but rarely note that the best argument is often just the tallest dwarf in the room. twodot seems ok too I guess, but you can't really trust a man with no avatar Zodium fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Mar 28, 2016 |
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Mar 28, 2016 22:54
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twodot posted:Ok from your guide: Do you have any familiarity with these debates at all? The definition of "Processed food" isn't exactly obscure and the fact you're acting like it's some kind of ambiguous or airy word is making me suspect that you don't have even a passing familiarity with basic nutritional guidelines. You also don't appear to know what a "contradiction" actually is (you're accusing him of being redundant, not contradictory, but that's a whole other issue). I'm starting to think you probably never even thought about any of these issues prior to starting that pedantic little derail about junk food, and now you're flailing around for someway to make your original argument tenable by trying to play word games. You don't appear to have anything of interest to say about the actual science of nutrition and frankly even your language games are subpar. Zodium posted:your positions aren't unreasonable as such, but they aren't sound (or useful) either, and I think that's the critique that's being levied. your mistake, and I'm really just speculating here, is that you seem to think the science itself is reasonably solid, so it's probably okay to abstract away a bit with terms like "junk food." Well, first of all, I really admire your willingness to stake out a position that amounts to: "we're stuck in a veil of radical ignorance and can't really make any strong or binding statement about nutrition". I'll point out that nobody else has been honest enough to say anything like that. Instead twodot and Discendo Vox are implicitly presenting themselves as higher authorities than actual medical professionals and I find that quite silly. If they were simply saying "you know the science of nutrition is in it's infancy and we just can't know much about healthy eating" then I'd have more respect for them, even if I didn't entirely agree. What I find ridiculous is that they're doing this very typical form of nerd-arguing where you take on an authoritative tone and hope the other person will be intimidated enough to stop arguing, even though there's very little substantive argument to support any of your points. I think you can levy some intelligent criticisms against nutrition science. Just look at the changing opinions on the value of fibre or the recent reversal on dietary cholesterol or certain forms of dietary fat. These all give us reasons to be cautious. However, the fact we should be cautious is not an excuse to ignore the available data. And one thing that the data seems to repeatedly reveal, and which I don't think any serious experts dispute, is that you should be very diligent about what kind of additives are contained in the processed food that you purchase. If the processed food in question is just a bag of chopped and frozen veggies for a stir fry or pasteurized milk then you're fine but if you're buying canned food or microwavable meals or various types of meat then you should really pay attention to what is on the label. In other words: because of everything we know about how food companies make and sell food, anything processed should make you stop for a moment and examine the label. This is totally reasonable and sound advice. I feel like the more one actually looks at the specific and detailed advice on offer, the harder it is to object. Are you really going to dispute that 11 grain bread is overall healthier than wonder bread? Do you really think it's bad advice to eat a lot of fresh fruit and green vegetables, when this food is known to be both satiating and filled with micro-nutrients? I guess we could start to really get into the nettles of studies suggesting a link between the consumption of processed meats and heart disease. Here's a woman who specializes in epidemiology at Harvard discussing a meta-study that showed a strong link between eating "processed meats" (her words) and heart attacks, strokes and diabetes. They found a huge difference between consuming processed and unprocessed red meats when it came to your risk from those health problems.
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Mar 28, 2016 23:27
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You're arguments sound similar to "why don't poors just get better jobs" Helsing. I know if I was still working my 11 hours shifts at domino's I'd be more riled up by your claim of just cook gooder. Anyways, what is reasonable way to change the amount of food going to consumers? Legislation on portions or something?
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Mar 28, 2016 23:29
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Honestly, it looks more and more like the best nutrition advice is "eat a variety of stuff, and make sure you're hitting your calorie target." Barring people with special dietary needs, of course.
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Mar 28, 2016 23:30
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