To think peoples attitude to food is bizarre

[lastqueenofscotland]

It just seems to be on one extreme or the other!
All this "clean eating" which I think limits huge amounts of food groups. No carb/no sugar/no fat fads. Using things that should supplement a healthy diet (shakes/smoothies etc) as meals. Phobias of wheat, people offering dietary advice with no qualifications to do so other than they have found a few of their OWN issues were sorted out by a change. Totally loss if understanding of what healthy is... Colleague today saying she was having a healthy lunch (handful if carrot sticks!). All this guilt around eating various things that are FINE.
It is doing my head in! (Can you tell everyone in my office is dieting?!)

Bread and cheese aren't just proper food, they are staple diet and essential in our house!

I've never been entirely clear on this; but what, precisely, qualifies as "processed food"? I mean, surely unless you've just dug it from the ground and shoved it in your mouth, pretty much all food is processed in some way?

I also was wondering about processed food, and this probably shows my ignorance.

I boil lots of potatoes, carrots and broccoli and we eat quite a bit of cucumber, tomatoes and fruit. Eggs. So this is the unprocessed part?

White rice, mince?

Other than that ham, pasta, humus, cheese, bread, butter, tinned sweet corn, frozen precut onions, frozen fish fingers, breakfast cereals, vegetable pizza, mince and canned tomatoes as a pasta base feature heavily.

So would a nonprocessed diet be quite restricted? Or just foods we don't currently eat? Or do people have more time and effort than me and make better nonprocessed meals?

"Unprocessed" tends to have just one ingredient i.e. rice or apples.

It's really not rocket science to know that things like ready meals and biscuits contain all manner of ingredients you wouldn't use at home.

there are degree's of processing, many foods are indigestible without some cooking, potatoes, rice, meat.

Humans have much smaller guts than other primates which use a smaller amount of energy.
Early in our evolotionary history we developed the technology to break down foods before we ate them, the energy saved by doing this means we have been able to evolve larger more energy hungry brains.

Now we have much more extensive methods of processing the food that we eat.
EG
Removal of dietary fibre is a significant part of processing, without it the gut microbiome is compromised, as are many other aspects of our physiology.

Frying food cause various harmful chemicals to form.

Making food highly palatable by finely manipulating the texture, adding sugar and salt and flavourings creates food addiction and severely compromises our ability to regulate food intake in line with actual energy needs.

perhaps it would be more helpful to talk about manufactured foods?

Then again some processing such as in traditional fermented food increases the health benefits of the food.
EG, sauerkraut, yeast used in bread making helps to change or neutralise some substances in grains which can be problematic.

yogurt= milk processed to make it more digestible and include some gut friendly microbes
ice cream = milk processed in a way that makes it extemely more-ish highly palatable and easy to consume far more calories in the form of ice cream than you would in the form of plain yogurt

or you can contrast plain unleavened bread with chocolate biscuits, the former is very bland and not exactly tempting, you'd probably only want to eat it if you were actually hungry.

The latter seems very desirable even if you're not hungry, biscuits are still based on wheat but much more has been done to it added to it

Yes, a ready meal may have some ingredients you wouldn't use at home, but I don't think any actual digestible food should be demonised or described as un-natural. Moderation is a wonderful thing, and after all foods are just a mixture of chemicals and compounds, such as:

Ethanol
Propyl acetate
2-Methylpropyl acetate
Propanol
n-Butyl acetate
2-Methylpropanol
2-Methylbutyl acetate
n-Butyl propanoate
n-Butanol
n-Pentyl acetate
2-Methylbut-3-enyl acetate
2-Methylbutanol
3-Methylbut-3-enyl acetate
3-Methylbut-3-enol
3-Methylbut-2-enyl acetate
n-Pentanol
n-Hexyl acetate
E-Hex-3-enyl acetate
Z-Hex-3-enyl acetate
Hex-4-enyl acetate
E-Hex-2-enyl acetate
n-Hexanol
Z-Hex-3-enol
E-Hex-2-enol
n-Hexyl-2-methylbutanoate
n-Heptanol
Camphor
n-Octanol
n-Oct-2-enol
1 -Methoxy-4-(2-propenyl)-benzene

This is an apple, by the way.

But if apple was in something, it would be just listed as apple wouldn't it. If they process something to the degree that the individual chemicals have to be listed, wouldn't that mean that you aren't necessarily getting the vitamins and fibre that make eating an apple worthwhile?

I'm suspicious of processed food that contains lots of sugars, fillers and cheap fats for example - surely it is better to just eat 'normal' food?

It's all very complicated, but there seems to be a definite link between the increase in health problems such as obesity and diabetes and increased consumption of rubbishy processed food. But I know that correlation does not necessarily equal causation - aaagh.

What I also find bizarre is the opposition to normal fresh healthy food. On the guardian anti diabetes article diet, people are saying that things like lentildhal, fish and vegetables, vegetable omelette, smoked salmon occasionally, are too difficult, complicated, expensive and aspirational .

kitty obviously all things can be reduced to their chemical constituents, thats neither here nor there, would you say that arsenic is no worse than salt water because they are both made of atoms?

I dont understand what point you are trying to make with your apple analysis?

On the guardian anti diabetes article diet, people are saying that things like lentildhal, fish and vegetables, vegetable omelette, smoked salmon occasionally, are too difficult, complicated, expensive and aspirational

really?
oh well
The information is out there, it is very easy to educate yourself, if people still insist on eating food that destroys their health, well, ultimately it's their funeral innit

Just looked at what clean eating is. We eat like that, always have done. I'm obese though.

I think the easy way to look at whether a food is 'good' for you as an individual is how easy you find it to over indulge on. i.e broadly speaking do you want to stop eating it before or after you reach the correct calorie/ nutritional level for yourself.
People generally tend to over indulge on combination foods and those which are quickly ate. Even manufactured food like white pasta and bread, sugar etc is fine in the correct quantities.
So eg pasta and cheese. If you eat plain pasta followed by a lump of cheese, chances are you'll eat far less than pasta served in creamy cheese sauce. I get that plain pasta isn't that tasty unless you're my odd dd but the quantity you eat of that, or plain pure potato etc is at least indicative of how much of that type of food you need, as opposed to how much you're eating because of either the combination on your plate or the way it's been processed/ manufactured.
I'm not saying it's a foolproof rule, we all have different tastes and if you've trained yourself to overeat feeling full will take too much whatever the food. But as a rough guide it does. Few people would consume the same calories/ fat/ carbs/ protein etc, if allowed to eat as much apples and cheese mixed together versus Hagen daz. Or lean chicken and plain rice versus chicken korma and chips. Or even sausages and plain jacket potato versus battered fish and bought chips.

I think the point I was trying to make is that a lot of things are said about 'good' and 'bad' foods, frequently to justify the sort of over-specific diets referred to in the OP. I get tired of yoghurt ads lauding a product for 'only' having 5 ingredients, for example when that is patently nonsense. Chemical-free is another pointless phrase used, and the automatic assumption that additives and E-numbers = bad. There is too much baggage attached to food these days, usually by someone trying to sell something.

Also someone upthread had stated that no-one needed to defend processed food, as if it was automatically evil. Processed is a very broad term.

Maybe it's just the language I have an issue with, not the points being made re healthy eating. I'll bugger off back to Pedants' Corner

?For sure sticking to a bland plain diet would put paid to overeating for many people Lurked

BUT, no one wants plain food, do they, we all demand the right to have tasty pleasurable food, no one wants to feel deprived of food reward.
Those who are low carb / low cal / gluten free etc etc are always chewing the fat about how to make their restrictive diets feel less...restricted ?

thus defeating the object!

I'm not suggesting its a permanent ideal diet suzzanne but at least done short term it might get people thinking about why they're actually eating and what they actually need. I can and do pig out on shit sometimes, and day to day my diet contains loads of supposedly bad food like white bread, cheese, potatoes and butter, white pasta etc. The reason I'm thin and remain so though is cos I eat shit knowing I'm eating it purely for taste, and eat the supposedly bad food knowing I need it. Yes I've obviously got a finely tuned 'full' switch, but I think people who struggle would do better trying to find their own full switch than blindly following silly fad diets or even good ones that don't suit them.

Don't forget taste buds change based on what you're used to eating - for example I've reduced the amount of added sugar and salt I eat in the past six months and most ice creams now taste way too sweet to me and things like crisps taste way too salty. In the past I ate them quite happily. I don't find natural yoghurt or steamed broccoli plain these days.

yanbu, i agree!

Lurking, not disagreeing with you!
plain boring food is the ideal in many ways
But humans have a hard time sticking with it when surrounded by so much delicious and tempting food.

Agree with Stripey that it is possible to change your tastes, although people may vary, some are possibility inherently more attracted to highly palatable food? ?

steamed broccoli on its own
plain yoghurt yep
but the broccoli is hardcore

Agreed suzzanne. I wonder with the taste though how much is nature vs nurture. If dd and I were into over eating, it would be cramming down too much of the stuff that forms our healthy diet. So homemade burgers with trimmings over mcdonalds, bakery pasty without the 4 mile round bike ride to buy it, too much cheese over ice cream etc. Even at 18 mnths dd would choose savoury over sweet. Friends ds brought up the same only doesn't over indulge daily on sweets, chocolate, cake etc because he doesn't like the after feeling versus savoury. And I've known loads more with a clearly natural taste for one or the other.
So while I don't doubt some people are born with more of a sweet tooth, I suspect plenty are not but its learnt taste. And of those born sweet toothed the majority could easily have learnt to prefer the satisfaction of healthy over sweet, if not the taste, if brought up that way.

I wonder with the taste though how much is nature vs nurture
I guess an interaction of the two Lurking ?

I've heard/read that young children tend to be averse to bitter tastes and this tends to drop off as they get older.

Also that there are 'supertasters' for whom flavour is more intense (Or something like that?)

I find it pretty easy to lose my sweet tooth, but just as easy to gain it again :o

I know with the bitter taste and toddlers it's linked in to survival in that poisonous plants taste bitter like green veg, and it drops off as you get to an age where you can use other methods to discern between them. I think that only explains most toddlers preferring strawberries to asparagus though!
I do enjoy sweet stuff, as does dd. I just don't activate it much, cos if I'm not hungry (like now) biscuits or similar just don't appeal. And if I'm hungry then I want actual satisfying food. Which sounds handy but I exercise the same attitude to plain unadulterated veg and fruit, I like it but unlike sweet stuff add it in on purpose as otherwise I don't just think of including it.