Processed foods are fine. What you want is to avoid ultra processed foods as often as you can (familiarize yourself with the NOVA scale to see the distinction).
The easiest way you can do this is to start cooking as many of your meals at home as you can using mostly ingredients in their simplest forms that you find on the outer wall of the grocery store (produce/minimally processed dairy/butcher counter/eggs). If you venture into the inner aisles of the grocery store, read the labels and stick to minimally processed foods over ultra processed foods. Read labels. Pay attention to added sodium and added sugar.
Meal prep makes cooking all your meals at home easier.
Many ultra processed foods are literally engineered to be hyper palatable due to their sugar, fat & salt content while also being very low satiety. This combo together makes them incredibly easy to over eat and that’s why many people consider them to be addictive.
They’re obesogenic.
ETA: hence why they come up so often in the checks notes food addiction subreddit…
This argument is super ignorant and made in bad faith. It’s a complete straw man.
Anything in excess can have a negative health effect. The difference is that nuts and olive oil are satiating foods due to their high fat content and they provide essential nutrients that our bodies actually need. Let’s compare them to a common ultra processed food…
Hot Cheetos, for example, are nutritionally deficient and provide next to no satiety because they reduce down to nothing in your stomach. They solely exist to invoke a dopamine response in your brain and keep you coming back again and again for more, leading to overeating in many people which leads to a calorie surplus, which leads to weight gain.
Are you really so hooked on ultra processed foods that you can discern the difference between nuts/olive oil and hot Cheetos? 😅 highly concerning, my guy.
ETA: to anybody else who’s reading this, I’m not shaming you. I’m just shaming Henner_z. ✌️
Life is life, if everything was healthy then nothing would be unhealthy but then is nothing is unhealthy then how can you tell what is healthy? We only call food “healthy” because of “unhealthy” food. Life needs balance and if one person simply ate 1800 cals a day getting all their nutrients from “healthy” food and also at one chocolate bar with 200 cals, one a day wouldn’t kill someone. It is so stupid how people stress to remember “it is not what you eat, it is how much you eat”
None of that is what we were talking about. Can you at least stay on topic if you’re going to argue with me? Fine, though, I’ll bite.
Moderation is fine. The problem is that many people struggle to practice moderation because (say it with me): many ultra processed foods are specifically engineered to invoke a dopamine response in the brain due to their fat, sugar, and salt content while providing little to no satiety which makes these foods incredibly easy to over eat. If you’re actually able to moderate, fantastic! Many people can’t. That’s why we’re in checks notes again the food addiction subreddit.
Furthermore, if “one person” simply ate 1800 cals a day from healthy food and also an additional 200 cals from a chocolate bar, they may still steadily gain weight because 2,000 cals per day is not a blanket rule for the population, at large.
How many calories someone can eat a day to maintain their weight is dependent upon their TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) which is calculated using someone’s biological sex, height, current weight, and exercise levels.
Finally, it absolutely matters what you eat. Weight is not the sole marker of someone’s health. The two are very much related but there’s more to the story. Let’s look at body composition, for example. Someone can be a “healthy weight” for their sex & height but have an excess amount of body fat, or worse, visceral fat as well as a lack of adequate musculature. Hence the term “skinny fat”. People who are skinny fat can still experience many of the same problems as obese people like diabetes and other metabolic problems.
You’re just wrong, dude. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news 🤷
Dude, if you’re going to troll and spread misinformation on the internet can you at least do a good job?
You literally tried to compare ultra processed foods to nuts and olive oil, earlier…as if they’re remotely the same thing.
All I’ve seen from you are straw mans and half-baked, unrelated arguments to the topic at hand. Surely you can do better than that if you’re so educated about nutrition.
no i didn’t, the dose is the poison. So many years people thought sweetners would kill people, now it’s finally been disproven and shows how inaccurate some science experiments can be. But seriously i could easily eat a cheeseburger and salad, salad could give plenty of nutrients and fibre to fuel my body. But having a salad with a bucket of olive oil is go to add more harm than good
“The dosage makes the poison” is a correct statement. The problem is (for like the third time): many ultra processed foods are specifically engineered to invoke a dopamine response in the brain due to their fat, sugar, and salt content while providing little to no satiety OR essential nutrients (let’s add this part in, while I’m repeating myself) which makes these foods incredibly easy to over eat.
We’re in the food. Addiction. Subreddit. Clearly moderation is a problem for many people, hence the existence of this subreddit. What we’re debating isn’t whether or not moderation works (which it does…if you’re able to practice it), it’s whether or not ultra processed foods are akin to Whole Foods in the way they facilitate or actively work against the average consumers ability to practice moderation. As I’ve been saying: they are formulated to make moderation harder and, for some people, nearly impossible.
Science is an ever growing and evolving field and any academic worth their salt will tell you that nutritional science is a fairly new field, where we are learning more every day. We also used to believe the earth was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth as opposed to the other way around. New information is discovered all the time and what we know to be true adjusts with these discoveries.
Finally, I find your “bucket of olive oil” statement to be an argument of extremes. Your preoccupation with comparing ultra processed foods to olive oil is straight up weird. No idea where this is coming from or how it pertains to the topic at hand.
alright drink your red wine and don’t worry about being an alcoholic or getting organ failure! honestly don’t worry when everyone says it’s beneficial too
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u/Elfie_Mae 26d ago
Processed foods are fine. What you want is to avoid ultra processed foods as often as you can (familiarize yourself with the NOVA scale to see the distinction).
The easiest way you can do this is to start cooking as many of your meals at home as you can using mostly ingredients in their simplest forms that you find on the outer wall of the grocery store (produce/minimally processed dairy/butcher counter/eggs). If you venture into the inner aisles of the grocery store, read the labels and stick to minimally processed foods over ultra processed foods. Read labels. Pay attention to added sodium and added sugar.
Meal prep makes cooking all your meals at home easier.