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"Natural foods" vs "others"
Replies
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More and more companies are now doing this and increasingly these artificial additives are getting pushed to the sidelines of the market. Because consumers are becoming more aware of the importance of what they are eating and demanding it. Why though? I mean, according to this thread, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with any of this stuff in our food. Why then are companies bothering to remove it?
You answer your own question and then ask it. Manufacturers will remove ingredients simply to satisfy consumer demand, even if there is nothing wrong with them.
I think it raises food prices for no good reason.
Exactly...all companies who sell products to the public have to care about is public opinion. It doesn't profit them to argue with the public about what is or what isn't dangerous, all they need to do is survey public opinion and then cater to that whatever it is and no matter how wrong or right it is. Company marketing is not a good litmus test for truthfulness or facts, it is only a good indicator for what that company thinks public opinion is. That doesn't just apply to artificial sweetners, I mean in general.9 -
nutmegoreo wrote: »L1zardQueen wrote: »I was reading this thread yesterday and thinking I should pick up some Doritos. Haven't had them in a long time. And then the "free Friday" offering email from the grocery store came in and it is Doritos!
Think I may need to pick up some tin foil at the store too.
http://www.quirkbooks.com/post/worst-case-wednesday-how-make-effective-tinfoil-hat
Make sure your pets are protected too...
https://www.amazon.com/Archie-McPhee-Foil-Hats-Conspiracy/dp/B07C169XZT/ref=sr_1_25?ie=UTF8&qid=1525548822&sr=8-25&keywords=tinfoil+hat
Those look like cat head sized underwear!
Oh dear lord I just took another look and yes, they seem very versatile.2 -
janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »I think natural or whole foods tend to be healthier than "other food", which I would consider to be refined an highly processed with additives to make the food more shelf stable or appealing (to look at and then eat).
I don't think some "other foods" are horrible for many people to eat. a few doritos won't hurt most people but a few cigarettes don't hurt most people either... but you are probably better off skipping both.
IMO, natural or whole foods are usually better for health than "other foods", so I try to make that the majority of my diet.
For weight management I think it matters less unless you are someone who's weight is affected by poor health that is affected or caused by "other foods".
Are we really better off skipping a few corn chips? I mean, how is this quantified?
If this is your general impression, that's one thing. But as a factual statement, I'm scratching my head to see what this is based on.
I doubt it is quantifiable.
... Actually I doubt that a few cigarettes would have a quantifiable effect either.
But I did say it as part of my opinion. I think Doritos are not a great food choice. A few may not hurt anyone but more may, IMO.
We actually can track changes in the body that are tied to smoking a cigarette, even just one (heart rate, blood pressure, platelet changes, etc). If one doesn't smoke more cigarettes, the body returns to normal. Even then, people who smoke lightly but regularly still have an increased death rate as opposed to those who don't smoke.
Given that we don't have any evidence of a specific impact corn chips have on the body or an increased death rate due to light corn chip consumption, I don't think it's a fair comparison.
I don't know exactly what it means to say something isn't a great food choice without any additional information about how many are being consumed or the overall context of the diet. What does it mean for something not to be a great food choice?
A not great food choice is something that should not be eaten in large amounts or frequently. Usually a food that offers calories and taste but very little else, IMO.
I have tons of foods in my kitchen right now that I would never eat in large amounts. Coconut oil, mentioned just below, is a great example.
Every food I eat regularly has macronutrients in addition to calories. So I'm not sure what you mean by a food that offers calories and taste but very little else. Do you not consider macronutrients to be something a food can offer?
I'm not following your thinking here. Yes, food has macronutrients. What does that have to do with what I said ?
It's sort of like arguing that food has pretty colours so does that not offer something to a person?janejellyroll wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »I think natural or whole foods tend to be healthier than "other food", which I would consider to be refined an highly processed with additives to make the food more shelf stable or appealing (to look at and then eat).
I don't think some "other foods" are horrible for many people to eat. a few doritos won't hurt most people but a few cigarettes don't hurt most people either... but you are probably better off skipping both.
IMO, natural or whole foods are usually better for health than "other foods", so I try to make that the majority of my diet.
For weight management I think it matters less unless you are someone who's weight is affected by poor health that is affected or caused by "other foods".
Are we really better off skipping a few corn chips? I mean, how is this quantified?
If this is your general impression, that's one thing. But as a factual statement, I'm scratching my head to see what this is based on.
I doubt it is quantifiable.
... Actually I doubt that a few cigarettes would have a quantifiable effect either.
But I did say it as part of my opinion. I think Doritos are not a great food choice. A few may not hurt anyone but more may, IMO.
We actually can track changes in the body that are tied to smoking a cigarette, even just one (heart rate, blood pressure, platelet changes, etc). If one doesn't smoke more cigarettes, the body returns to normal. Even then, people who smoke lightly but regularly still have an increased death rate as opposed to those who don't smoke.
Given that we don't have any evidence of a specific impact corn chips have on the body or an increased death rate due to light corn chip consumption, I don't think it's a fair comparison.
I don't know exactly what it means to say something isn't a great food choice without any additional information about how many are being consumed or the overall context of the diet. What does it mean for something not to be a great food choice?
A not great food choice is something that should not be eaten in large amounts or frequently. Usually a food that offers calories and taste but very little else, IMO.
Like coconut oil or heavy whipping cream?
Yes. I don't recommend them in large amounts.
You say you're better off skipping Doritos and even compared them to cigarettes, do you have the same position on coconut oil and heavy whipping cream?
If someone is eating high carb AND high fat, I would say yes, they are probably better off skipping coconut oil and cream.
Otherwise my position is exactly as stated. I don't recommend them in large amounts.
You said a not great food choice was a food that offered calories and taste and not much else. I was saying I didn't understand the "not much else" in the context of all foods having macronutrients.
If coconut oil and heavy whipping cream depend on the overall context of the diet to understand why people should include them or eliminate them, why don't Doritos? Why are coconut oil and heavy whipping cream okay for some people, but Doritos are -- across the board -- a not great food choice?
I'm trying to understand what difference you see -- if any -- between coconut oil/heavy whipping cream and Doritos.
Both contain a macronutrient that some people can overdo depending on the overall context of their diet. Both are rich in macronutrients but don't contain a lot of micronutrients. Both are calorie-dense, so people who are watching calories will have to be mindful of portions.
The part of my argument that you moved away from was the naturally occurring, whole foods tend to be healthier than highly processed foods with a disturbingly long shelf life.
Although coconut cream and whipping cream are caloricly dense and can be over eaten - well, any food can be over eaten - they are foods that have been eaten for a long time. They were not invented to appeal to our taste and make money.
They do have a lot of calories so people may need to watch their intake- meaning they should not eat too much, iMO. But these naturally occurring foods ( or fats ) is something humans naturally eat. Invented foods are more questionable. Not all horrible but many, like Doritos, are less ideal than more naturally occurring foods ( and I do mean foods and not naturally occurring toxins).
You know me, I like my fats, but I will not touch trans fats - another invented food that we know is not great.
Foods are not all black and white. Good vs evil. There is a lot of grey. Doritos are in the the grey. IMO, they are towards the end of the spectrum of foods that do not offer anything positive to overall health beyond calories but may not harm the health of most people. Not a great food.
Cream is a mediocre food, iMO. Some nutrition but I limit it because it doesn't completely agree with me.
Coconut cream is toward the healthier end of grey for me. Low in carbs and the mct in it is helpful to my health goals.
YMMV17 -
Just because a food preserves well, does that make it necessarily bad? Salt, sugar, and vinegar were the top preservative agents until refrigeration became readily available.
So this would include all the pickles, jams, and jellies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg10 -
Just because a food preserves well, does that make it necessarily bad? Salt, sugar, and vinegar were the top preservative agents until refrigeration became readily available.
So this would include all the pickles, jams, and jellies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg
Preserving food within reason ( a few months) is different than the disturbingly long shelf life.
An opened bag of Doritos compared to an open jar of pickles or some salted meat? My guess is the the meat an pickles will go bad first. Do Doritos even go bad? I have never seen it. Then again, in my house, a bag of Doritos will disappear faster
than salted meat or a jar of pickles. I've seen mouldy ham and pickle before.9 -
Just because a food preserves well, does that make it necessarily bad? Salt, sugar, and vinegar were the top preservative agents until refrigeration became readily available.
So this would include all the pickles, jams, and jellies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg
Preserving food within reason ( a few months) is different than the disturbingly long shelf life.
An opened bag of Doritos compared to an open jar of pickles or some salted meat? My guess is the the meat an pickles will go bad first. Do Doritos even go bad? I have never seen it. Then again, in my house, a bag of Doritos will disappear faster
than salted meat or a jar of pickles. I've seen mouldy ham and pickle before.
The doritos have very little (if any) moisture content, unlike the ham and pickles. That would have a big impact on the time they'd take (or not take) to go bad9 -
Just because a food preserves well, does that make it necessarily bad? Salt, sugar, and vinegar were the top preservative agents until refrigeration became readily available.
So this would include all the pickles, jams, and jellies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg
Preserving food within reason ( a few months) is different than the disturbingly long shelf life.
An opened bag of Doritos compared to an open jar of pickles or some salted meat? My guess is the the meat an pickles will go bad first. Do Doritos even go bad? I have never seen it. Then again, in my house, a bag of Doritos will disappear faster
than salted meat or a jar of pickles. I've seen mouldy ham and pickle before.
Real pickles (traditional fermented or salt brine) last a really, really long time without refrigeration - months, easily. So do traditional salt meats. Foods like this are how humans got through long ocean voyages in the sail era.
The modem versions are not designed to last outside refrigeration. They don't, despite "artificial" preservatives in some (not just salt).
Doritos will get rancid or stale after days to short weeks, unless tightly sealed. (A friend told me.
) They'll still be safe to eat, but no longer "hyperpalatable".
I'm thinking no one read the century egg link.
And I don't really see how any of this "how long it lasts" stuff has any bearing on the main point. Every once in a while, it seems archeologists or someone finds some hundreds of years old food still well preserved enough to be safely eaten (grain, oil, wine), maybe in a shipwreck or somesuch, though I don't have a cite. I doubt it's "artificial".
So what?11 -
As it happens, I bought some Doritos yesterday. They expire on June 19th of this year.13
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When or if food goes bad has to do with salinity, acidity, moisture content and whether or not the appropriate mix of nutrients are present for bacterial growth.
Bacteria aren't going to grow in something without moisture, like on a piece of dried fruit, or on something with just one nutrient source like a cup of sugar water. High salt high acidity will prevent growth as well which is why something vinegary like mustard or salty like a piece of jerky will probably will never go bad. Take a piece of bread and it will grow mold....dry it out completely so there is zero moisture content and it wont.
Doritos don't go bad in the same way that bananna chips don't go bad. It isn't due to one being "natural" and one not. If you took Doritos and ground them up and mixed them into a cup of water and left that wet mess on a counter I'm pretty sure it would end up "going bad"...unless the salt content is too high in which case it wouldn't no matter how "natural" the ingredients are. "Preservatives" are just things that prevent bacterial growth and preservatives can be something chemical-sounding like hydroxybenzoate or something not like dedication or addition of salt.15 -
Genuine question: do those of you who don't care about artificial additives in food also don't care about the source of the ingredients? As in, where your meat, produce etc comes from, whether it's organic, if seafood is imported and farm-raised etc? Again this is something that is very standard where I live, everyone tries to get the best ingredients they can afford and as local/seasonal as possible, I don't buy all organic but always organic meats and dairy at least for the kids (my husband eats a lot of chicken so I'll often get large packages of conventional chicken breasts for him otherwise we'd go broke lol); wild-caught fish and seafood as there are concerns about farm-raised, and we try to mostly avoid imported seafood when possible (which is most grocery store frozen seafood) since I read it is all produced in Asia with very little regulations and heavy metals and other contaminants have been found in large doses. I will get some shrimp every once in a while if I get a craving but I try to limit. In the summer, I try to buy produce local and from farmer's markets if possible.
Curious, do all of you consider all that 'woo' too?? No one cares? As I said, caring about this stuff is very normal around where I live so reading how no one cares on here seems strange. Do you all also use traditional cleaning supplies? Again, everyone I know has pretty much switched to either homemade solutions such as vinegar or natural-based cleaners to avoid the extra chemicals. Also all BS?21 -
nettiklive wrote: »Genuine question: do those of you who don't care about artificial additives in food also don't care about the source of the ingredients? As in, where your meat, produce etc comes from, whether it's organic, if seafood is imported and farm-raised etc? Again this is something that is very standard where I live, everyone tries to get the best ingredients they can afford and as local/seasonal as possible, I don't buy all organic but always organic meats and dairy at least for the kids (my husband eats a lot of chicken so I'll often get large packages of conventional chicken breasts for him otherwise we'd go broke lol); wild-caught fish and seafood as there are concerns about farm-raised, and we try to mostly avoid imported seafood when possible (which is most grocery store frozen seafood) since I read it is all produced in Asia with very little regulations and heavy metals and other contaminants have been found in large doses. I will get some shrimp every once in a while if I get a craving but I try to limit. In the summer, I try to buy produce local and from farmer's markets if possible.
Curious, do all of you consider all that 'woo' too?? No one cares? As I said, caring about this stuff is very normal around where I live so reading how no one cares on here seems strange. Do you all also use traditional cleaning supplies? Again, everyone I know has pretty much switched to either homemade solutions such as vinegar or natural-based cleaners to avoid the extra chemicals. Also all BS?
Doesn't your imported food tell you where it is imported from? Around here, salmon is either from Alaska or the nordic countries, tilapia from Mexico or Chile...And anything caught on our shoreline is almost guaranteed to be contaminated. There are signs at all the fishing piers of what not to eat. Evidently, healthy old men can consume all the heavy metals the want, according to these signs.
So, I try to go with facts, rather than hearsay and trendy rules.
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nettiklive wrote: »Genuine question: do those of you who don't care about artificial additives in food also don't care about the source of the ingredients? As in, where your meat, produce etc comes from, whether it's organic, if seafood is imported and farm-raised etc? Again this is something that is very standard where I live, everyone tries to get the best ingredients they can afford and as local/seasonal as possible, I don't buy all organic but always organic meats and dairy at least for the kids (my husband eats a lot of chicken so I'll often get large packages of conventional chicken breasts for him otherwise we'd go broke lol); wild-caught fish and seafood as there are concerns about farm-raised, and we try to mostly avoid imported seafood when possible (which is most grocery store frozen seafood) since I read it is all produced in Asia with very little regulations and heavy metals and other contaminants have been found in large doses. I will get some shrimp every once in a while if I get a craving but I try to limit. In the summer, I try to buy produce local and from farmer's markets if possible.
Curious, do all of you consider all that 'woo' too?? No one cares? As I said, caring about this stuff is very normal around where I live so reading how no one cares on here seems strange. Do you all also use traditional cleaning supplies? Again, everyone I know has pretty much switched to either homemade solutions such as vinegar or natural-based cleaners to avoid the extra chemicals. Also all BS?
I don't know where you live. Where I live (center of the palm in Michigan), the big grocery chains are full of people who're buying conventional produce from all over the world, and lots of mass-market cleaning supplies.
Are there people who think as you do? Sure. Could I surround myself with mainly those people? Probably.
I enjoy having a diversity of friends from varying economic groups, ethnic backgrounds, political outlooks, and more. Therefore, I tend to refrain from cross-examining about their food or cleaning product choices, unless those directly come up in conversation. If the subject comes up, I state my personal practices and reasoning, but avoid suggesting theirs are wrong. Perhaps this is not the way to change the world, but in my world it's a way to respect people and not assume my way is the best or only way. I'm certainly not going to argue a point without decent science on my side.
So, I have no idea what "everyone" around me does, because it's not a frequent or interesting conversation topic.
I've mentioned my food preferences in a previous post, and explained my reasoning. I won't repeat that here. I tend to clean with mild things (water, baking soda, salt, vinegar) most of the time, unless and until that doesn't work for some reason, then I sometimes use mass-market cleaning products.
As a vegetarian, I could go all "How could you possibly eat commercially-produced meat, when doing so requires bucketloads more protein than you get as output - do you care?" or "How can you eat fish, what with the over-fishing of our oceans and the destruction of habitat caused by commercial fisheries - is that just BS?" but I don't. And I won't, because I don't feel that way about it.
Here's my view: As an economically comfortable first-world modern human, I'm (a) very fortunate personally, and (b) inherently and unavoidably a small bundle of global environmental and economic harm. I can't fix that harm thing. I think good people make some choices that reduce the harms they create, and that - since it can't be completely avoided - it makes sense for people to choose the forms of harm reduction that are most achievable within their lifestyle and values.
Speaking only for myself, I don't find black and white thinking about it to be helpful to me; I bear too much first-world responsibility to be judgemental about others' choices (and it doesn't help with my goal of surrounding myself with diverse people); worrying routinely about small amounts of weird stuff in my food hurts my happiness more than it helps my health; and I believe that statements of the form "everyone I know does X" tend to be false (including the observation that people who don't do X will keep their mouths shut when they perceive themselves to be out of step with social norms in groups they otherwise want to socialize with).
Others are welcome to feel differently.22 -
nettiklive wrote: »Genuine question: do those of you who don't care about artificial additives in food also don't care about the source of the ingredients? As in, where your meat, produce etc comes from, whether it's organic, if seafood is imported and farm-raised etc? Again this is something that is very standard where I live, everyone tries to get the best ingredients they can afford and as local/seasonal as possible, I don't buy all organic but always organic meats and dairy at least for the kids (my husband eats a lot of chicken so I'll often get large packages of conventional chicken breasts for him otherwise we'd go broke lol); wild-caught fish and seafood as there are concerns about farm-raised, and we try to mostly avoid imported seafood when possible (which is most grocery store frozen seafood) since I read it is all produced in Asia with very little regulations and heavy metals and other contaminants have been found in large doses. I will get some shrimp every once in a while if I get a craving but I try to limit. In the summer, I try to buy produce local and from farmer's markets if possible.
Curious, do all of you consider all that 'woo' too?? No one cares? As I said, caring about this stuff is very normal around where I live so reading how no one cares on here seems strange. Do you all also use traditional cleaning supplies? Again, everyone I know has pretty much switched to either homemade solutions such as vinegar or natural-based cleaners to avoid the extra chemicals. Also all BS?
I don't know where you live. Where I live (center of the palm in Michigan), the big grocery chains are full of people who're buying conventional produce from all over the world, and lots of mass-market cleaning supplies.
Are there people who think as you do? Sure. Could I surround myself with mainly those people? Probably.
I enjoy having a diversity of friends from varying economic groups, ethnic backgrounds, political outlooks, and more. Therefore, I tend to refrain from cross-examining about their food or cleaning product choices, unless those directly come up in conversation. If the subject comes up, I state my personal practices and reasoning, but avoid suggesting theirs are wrong. Perhaps this is not the way to change the world, but in my world it's a way to respect people and not assume my way is the best or only way. I'm certainly not going to argue a point without decent science on my side.
So, I have no idea what "everyone" around me does, because it's not a frequent or interesting conversation topic.
I've mentioned my food preferences in a previous post, and explained my reasoning. I won't repeat that here. I tend to clean with mild things (water, baking soda, salt, vinegar) most of the time, unless and until that doesn't work for some reason, then I sometimes use mass-market cleaning products.
As a vegetarian, I could go all "How could you possibly eat commercially-produced meat, when doing so requires bucketloads more protein than you get as output - do you care?" or "How can you eat fish, what with the over-fishing of our oceans and the destruction of habitat caused by commercial fisheries - is that just BS?" but I don't. And I won't, because I don't feel that way about it.
Here's my view: As an economically comfortable first-world modern human, I'm (a) very fortunate personally, and (b) inherently and unavoidably a small bundle of global environmental and economic harm. I can't fix that harm thing. I think good people make some choices that reduce the harms they create, and that - since it can't be completely avoided - it makes sense for people to choose the forms of harm reduction that are most achievable within their lifestyle and values.
Speaking only for myself, I don't find black and white thinking about it to be helpful to me; I bear too much first-world responsibility to be judgemental about others' choices (and it doesn't help with my goal of surrounding myself with diverse people); worrying routinely about small amounts of weird stuff in my food hurts my happiness more than it helps my health; and I believe that statements of the form "everyone I know does X" tend to be false (including the observation that people who don't do X will keep their mouths shut when they perceive themselves to be out of step with social norms in groups they otherwise want to socialize with).
Others are welcome to feel differently.
Just to note, I don't 'cross-examine' anyone about their habits either, it just so happens that as mostly moms of young kids, these topics come up in chit chat often.
The way others eat doesn't concern me in the least. It was just so normal to me to see people avoid junk food additives, try to make good choices with ingredients etc, that I just assumed it was 'normal' and typical for people active on a health and nutrition forum, of all places, and was very surprised to be proven wrong and be blasted for stating the opinion that some foods are inherently better choices than others. Oh well. I live in the PNW if that tells you anything; I've lived up and down the coast from Canada to California and have encountered the same philosophy. I can see how it may be different in other parts of the country.11 -
nettiklive wrote: »
The way others eat doesn't concern me in the least. It was just so normal to me to see people avoid junk food additives, try to make good choices with ingredients etc, that I just assumed it was 'normal' and typical for people active on a health and nutrition forum, of all places, and was very surprised to be proven wrong and be blasted for stating the opinion that some foods are inherently better choices than others. Oh well. I live in the PNW if that tells you anything; I've lived up and down the coast from Canada to California and have encountered the same philosophy. I can see how it may be different in other parts of the country.
It is the way you equate junk food, additives, and in a previous post, supposedly contaminated food that suggest that you aren't concerned with making good choices, so much as popular choices.
21 -
nettiklive wrote: »nettiklive wrote: »Genuine question: do those of you who don't care about artificial additives in food also don't care about the source of the ingredients? As in, where your meat, produce etc comes from, whether it's organic, if seafood is imported and farm-raised etc? Again this is something that is very standard where I live, everyone tries to get the best ingredients they can afford and as local/seasonal as possible, I don't buy all organic but always organic meats and dairy at least for the kids (my husband eats a lot of chicken so I'll often get large packages of conventional chicken breasts for him otherwise we'd go broke lol); wild-caught fish and seafood as there are concerns about farm-raised, and we try to mostly avoid imported seafood when possible (which is most grocery store frozen seafood) since I read it is all produced in Asia with very little regulations and heavy metals and other contaminants have been found in large doses. I will get some shrimp every once in a while if I get a craving but I try to limit. In the summer, I try to buy produce local and from farmer's markets if possible.
Curious, do all of you consider all that 'woo' too?? No one cares? As I said, caring about this stuff is very normal around where I live so reading how no one cares on here seems strange. Do you all also use traditional cleaning supplies? Again, everyone I know has pretty much switched to either homemade solutions such as vinegar or natural-based cleaners to avoid the extra chemicals. Also all BS?
I don't know where you live. Where I live (center of the palm in Michigan), the big grocery chains are full of people who're buying conventional produce from all over the world, and lots of mass-market cleaning supplies.
Are there people who think as you do? Sure. Could I surround myself with mainly those people? Probably.
I enjoy having a diversity of friends from varying economic groups, ethnic backgrounds, political outlooks, and more. Therefore, I tend to refrain from cross-examining about their food or cleaning product choices, unless those directly come up in conversation. If the subject comes up, I state my personal practices and reasoning, but avoid suggesting theirs are wrong. Perhaps this is not the way to change the world, but in my world it's a way to respect people and not assume my way is the best or only way. I'm certainly not going to argue a point without decent science on my side.
So, I have no idea what "everyone" around me does, because it's not a frequent or interesting conversation topic.
I've mentioned my food preferences in a previous post, and explained my reasoning. I won't repeat that here. I tend to clean with mild things (water, baking soda, salt, vinegar) most of the time, unless and until that doesn't work for some reason, then I sometimes use mass-market cleaning products.
As a vegetarian, I could go all "How could you possibly eat commercially-produced meat, when doing so requires bucketloads more protein than you get as output - do you care?" or "How can you eat fish, what with the over-fishing of our oceans and the destruction of habitat caused by commercial fisheries - is that just BS?" but I don't. And I won't, because I don't feel that way about it.
Here's my view: As an economically comfortable first-world modern human, I'm (a) very fortunate personally, and (b) inherently and unavoidably a small bundle of global environmental and economic harm. I can't fix that harm thing. I think good people make some choices that reduce the harms they create, and that - since it can't be completely avoided - it makes sense for people to choose the forms of harm reduction that are most achievable within their lifestyle and values.
Speaking only for myself, I don't find black and white thinking about it to be helpful to me; I bear too much first-world responsibility to be judgemental about others' choices (and it doesn't help with my goal of surrounding myself with diverse people); worrying routinely about small amounts of weird stuff in my food hurts my happiness more than it helps my health; and I believe that statements of the form "everyone I know does X" tend to be false (including the observation that people who don't do X will keep their mouths shut when they perceive themselves to be out of step with social norms in groups they otherwise want to socialize with).
Others are welcome to feel differently.
Just to note, I don't 'cross-examine' anyone about their habits either, it just so happens that as mostly moms of young kids, these topics come up in chit chat often.
The way others eat doesn't concern me in the least. It was just so normal to me to see people avoid junk food additives, try to make good choices with ingredients etc, that I just assumed it was 'normal' and typical for people active on a health and nutrition forum, of all places, and was very surprised to be proven wrong and be blasted for stating the opinion that some foods are inherently better choices than others. Oh well. I live in the PNW if that tells you anything; I've lived up and down the coast from Canada to California and have encountered the same philosophy. I can see how it may be different in other parts of the country.
OK, now I'm curious. I've never been to the PNW. Where you live, do the large retail stores not stock a wide range of conventional non-organic produce and meats, imported products from regions with lax regulation, or mass-marketed chemical cleaning products?
I've visited CA (so limited experience there), spent longer time periods in AZ and NV, and visited grocery stores and Walmarts all across the North to South dimension of the East side of the country. and found those kinds of products ubiquitous, the aisles that stock them busy, and most shopping carts in the check-out holding some of those things. Is it different where you live?
I'm not baiting you; I'm sincerely curious, because it's so outside my experience.
edited: missing word.5 -
nettiklive wrote: »Genuine question: do those of you who don't care about artificial additives in food also don't care about the source of the ingredients? As in, where your meat, produce etc comes from, whether it's organic, if seafood is imported and farm-raised etc? Again this is something that is very standard where I live, everyone tries to get the best ingredients they can afford and as local/seasonal as possible, I don't buy all organic but always organic meats and dairy at least for the kids (my husband eats a lot of chicken so I'll often get large packages of conventional chicken breasts for him otherwise we'd go broke lol); wild-caught fish and seafood as there are concerns about farm-raised, and we try to mostly avoid imported seafood when possible (which is most grocery store frozen seafood) since I read it is all produced in Asia with very little regulations and heavy metals and other contaminants have been found in large doses. I will get some shrimp every once in a while if I get a craving but I try to limit. In the summer, I try to buy produce local and from farmer's markets if possible.
Curious, do all of you consider all that 'woo' too?? No one cares? As I said, caring about this stuff is very normal around where I live so reading how no one cares on here seems strange. Do you all also use traditional cleaning supplies? Again, everyone I know has pretty much switched to either homemade solutions such as vinegar or natural-based cleaners to avoid the extra chemicals. Also all BS?
Where I live--Italy, people are very educated about food and where it comes from. Many Italian foods are protected from the origin. We have many programs that talk about food, show where, and how, it's produced and interview the producers. This from the farmers to the factories that process foods. I personally look closely at cost (there are 5 of us), and taste. For example, there are apples with no taste at all. This is true of other foods also. I cook everyday and try to put tasty meals on the table. There is suspicion focused on foods produced elsewhere, but bananas, for example, are not grown here, so if you like bananas you have to bite the bullet.7 -
concordancia wrote: »nettiklive wrote: »
The way others eat doesn't concern me in the least. It was just so normal to me to see people avoid junk food additives, try to make good choices with ingredients etc, that I just assumed it was 'normal' and typical for people active on a health and nutrition forum, of all places, and was very surprised to be proven wrong and be blasted for stating the opinion that some foods are inherently better choices than others. Oh well. I live in the PNW if that tells you anything; I've lived up and down the coast from Canada to California and have encountered the same philosophy. I can see how it may be different in other parts of the country.
It is the way you equate junk food, additives, and in a previous post, supposedly contaminated food that suggest that you aren't concerned with making good choices, so much as popular choices.
Not to mention missing the point that just because some people have said they don’t fear certain food additives or go out of their way to avoid “unnatural” foods (to go back to the OP) doesn’t mean that people are sitting around eating exclusively Doritos!
I’m not sure why it’s so hard to grasp that saying that these foods are ok in moderation doesn’t mean that people are eating them in excess or to the exclusion of other “natural” or “whole” foods, that we don’t care about nutrition and quality ingredients.
And lastly implying that those of us who eat these foods sometimes are making “bad choices” since it’s so commonplace with these “real life” friends to focus on “good choices” and it’s just astonishing that others don’t live this way as well.15 -
Just because a food preserves well, does that make it necessarily bad? Salt, sugar, and vinegar were the top preservative agents until refrigeration became readily available.
So this would include all the pickles, jams, and jellies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg
Preserving food within reason ( a few months) is different than the disturbingly long shelf life.
An opened bag of Doritos compared to an open jar of pickles or some salted meat? My guess is the the meat an pickles will go bad first. Do Doritos even go bad? I have never seen it. Then again, in my house, a bag of Doritos will disappear faster
than salted meat or a jar of pickles. I've seen mouldy ham and pickle before.
Real pickles (traditional fermented or salt brine) last a really, really long time without refrigeration - months, easily. So do traditional salt meats. Foods like this are how humans got through long ocean voyages in the sail era.
The modem versions are not designed to last outside refrigeration. They don't, despite "artificial" preservatives in some (not just salt).
Doritos will get rancid or stale after days to short weeks, unless tightly sealed. (A friend told me. ) They'll still be safe to eat, but no longer "hyperpalatable".
I'm thinking no one read the century egg link.
And I don't really see how any of this "how long it lasts" stuff has any bearing on the main point. Every once in a while, it seems archeologists or someone finds some hundreds of years old food still well preserved enough to be safely eaten (grain, oil, wine), maybe in a shipwreck or somesuch, though I don't have a cite. I doubt it's "artificial".
So what?
Darn. I have a long reply and lost it.
So what? Well, essentially, I am not trying to prove you wrong, just stating my own opinion. I believe you responded to my posted opinion.
I believe that highly processed and refined foods (which generally have a longer shelf life than whole foods)are not the best foods for best health. They are not great foods, IMO. They are not evil. They do not need to be avoided for life. They will not kill you (unless really unlucky). You are not a bad person if you eat them.
I had bacon for breakfast - a processed food. Studies show that regular consumption of it may raise my risk of colon cancer from 5-6%. If I just had eggs or a salmon fillet, it probably would have benefited my overall health more than bacon would. I know this but I still choose to eat it.
Likewise, foods like Doritos will generally not improve the health of someone more than whole foods like a steak or salad would, if we look past the need for calories. Will eating them a few times a month hurt you? Probably not. Would your overall health be better off if you never ate them? Probably. If you ate them frequently and in large amounts would it negatively affect your health in time? Probably. IMO
IMO, some foods are better for your health than others. That's all.
11 -
Just because a food preserves well, does that make it necessarily bad? Salt, sugar, and vinegar were the top preservative agents until refrigeration became readily available.
So this would include all the pickles, jams, and jellies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg
Preserving food within reason ( a few months) is different than the disturbingly long shelf life.
An opened bag of Doritos compared to an open jar of pickles or some salted meat? My guess is the the meat an pickles will go bad first. Do Doritos even go bad? I have never seen it. Then again, in my house, a bag of Doritos will disappear faster
than salted meat or a jar of pickles. I've seen mouldy ham and pickle before.
Real pickles (traditional fermented or salt brine) last a really, really long time without refrigeration - months, easily. So do traditional salt meats. Foods like this are how humans got through long ocean voyages in the sail era.
The modem versions are not designed to last outside refrigeration. They don't, despite "artificial" preservatives in some (not just salt).
Doritos will get rancid or stale after days to short weeks, unless tightly sealed. (A friend told me. ) They'll still be safe to eat, but no longer "hyperpalatable".
I'm thinking no one read the century egg link.
And I don't really see how any of this "how long it lasts" stuff has any bearing on the main point. Every once in a while, it seems archeologists or someone finds some hundreds of years old food still well preserved enough to be safely eaten (grain, oil, wine), maybe in a shipwreck or somesuch, though I don't have a cite. I doubt it's "artificial".
So what?
Darn. I have a long reply and lost it.
So what? Well, essentially, I am not trying to prove you wrong, just stating my own opinion. I believe you responded to my posted opinion.
I believe that highly processed and refined foods (which generally have a longer shelf life than whole foods)are not the best foods for best health. They are not great foods, IMO. They are not evil. They do not need to be avoided for life. They will not kill you (unless really unlucky). You are not a bad person if you eat them.
I had bacon for breakfast - a processed food. Studies show that regular consumption of it may raise my risk of colon cancer from 5-6%. If I just had eggs or a salmon fillet, it probably would have benefited my overall health more than bacon would. I know this but I still choose to eat it.
Likewise, foods like Doritos will generally not improve the health of someone more than whole foods like a steak or salad would, if we look past the need for calories. Will eating them a few times a month hurt you? Probably not. Would your overall health be better off if you never ate them? Probably. If you ate them frequently and in large amounts would it negatively affect your health in time? Probably. IMO
IMO, some foods are better for your health than others. That's all.
I think I was not clear. The "so what" was meant as "what does how long a food keeps have to do with the overall point". I don't think that "edible things that keep a long time" and "edible things that are nutrient dense and contribute well to a healthy diet" have any relevant relationship to one another. There's overlap in the Venn diagram, but it's pretty meaningless.
Some things that keep a long time have "artificial" preservatives (as I understand that term to be in use here - it's a little fuzzy to me). Some things that keep a long time have "natural" preservatives (dehydration, salt, vinegar - though maybe those aren't "natural" in terms of this discussion?). Some edible things just inherently keep a long time because of their nature.
I don't think how long something will remain edible without refrigeration has much to do with how nutritionally valuable it is.
I quoted your post simply because it was the most recent in a multi-post sub-thread about food preservation - nothing particularly personal intended.
ETA: I see someone else's post on the subthread intervenes between yours and mine. Apologies - I guess I let the page get stale before replying.4 -
nettiklive wrote: »
Promotion of artificially-laden junk molded together from modified corn starch, cheap grease, sugar, salt, and neon coloring,
What are you referring to here? Kraft macaroni and cheese?
I didn’t think Kraft was that bad other than the bright color.
A google search says
The bright color comes from Annatto which is a seed from the South American achiote tree. Paprika and turmeric are also used to color foods as well.
It seems as long as you aren’t allergic to it, it seems pretty safe and natural.
3 -
Just because a food preserves well, does that make it necessarily bad? Salt, sugar, and vinegar were the top preservative agents until refrigeration became readily available.
So this would include all the pickles, jams, and jellies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg
Preserving food within reason ( a few months) is different than the disturbingly long shelf life.
An opened bag of Doritos compared to an open jar of pickles or some salted meat? My guess is the the meat an pickles will go bad first. Do Doritos even go bad? I have never seen it. Then again, in my house, a bag of Doritos will disappear faster
than salted meat or a jar of pickles. I've seen mouldy ham and pickle before.
Real pickles (traditional fermented or salt brine) last a really, really long time without refrigeration - months, easily. So do traditional salt meats. Foods like this are how humans got through long ocean voyages in the sail era.
The modem versions are not designed to last outside refrigeration. They don't, despite "artificial" preservatives in some (not just salt).
Doritos will get rancid or stale after days to short weeks, unless tightly sealed. (A friend told me. ) They'll still be safe to eat, but no longer "hyperpalatable".
I'm thinking no one read the century egg link.
And I don't really see how any of this "how long it lasts" stuff has any bearing on the main point. Every once in a while, it seems archeologists or someone finds some hundreds of years old food still well preserved enough to be safely eaten (grain, oil, wine), maybe in a shipwreck or somesuch, though I don't have a cite. I doubt it's "artificial".
So what?
Darn. I have a long reply and lost it.
So what? Well, essentially, I am not trying to prove you wrong, just stating my own opinion. I believe you responded to my posted opinion.
I believe that highly processed and refined foods (which generally have a longer shelf life than whole foods)are not the best foods for best health. They are not great foods, IMO. They are not evil. They do not need to be avoided for life. They will not kill you (unless really unlucky). You are not a bad person if you eat them.
I had bacon for breakfast - a processed food. Studies show that regular consumption of it may raise my risk of colon cancer from 5-6%. If I just had eggs or a salmon fillet, it probably would have benefited my overall health more than bacon would. I know this but I still choose to eat it.
Likewise, foods like Doritos will generally not improve the health of someone more than whole foods like a steak or salad would, if we look past the need for calories. Will eating them a few times a month hurt you? Probably not. Would your overall health be better off if you never ate them? Probably. If you ate them frequently and in large amounts would it negatively affect your health in time? Probably. IMO
IMO, some foods are better for your health than others. That's all.
I think I was not clear. The "so what" was meant as "what does how long a food keeps have to do with the overall point". I don't think that "edible things that keep a long time" and "edible things that are nutrient dense and contribute well to a healthy diet" have any relevant relationship to one another. There's overlap in the Venn diagram, but it's pretty meaningless.
Some things that keep a long time have "artificial" preservatives (as I understand that term to be in use here - it's a little fuzzy to me). Some things that keep a long time have "natural" preservatives (dehydration, salt, vinegar - though maybe those aren't "natural" in terms of this discussion?). Some edible things just inherently keep a long time because of their nature.
I don't think how long something will remain edible without refrigeration has much to do with how nutritionally valuable it is.
I quoted your post simply because it was the most recent in a multi-post sub-thread about food preservation - nothing particularly personal intended.
Nothing taken personally.I believe that highly processed and refined foods (which generally have a longer shelf life than whole foods) are not the best foods for best health.
I don't think the preservatives are always a negative thing. Shelf life came into it for me because refined and highly processed foods, that I think should be eaten in limited quantities or avoided for best health through nutrition, tend to have a longer shelf life.
Long shelf life and being highly processed and refined tend to occur together although there are exceptions like some grains or oils and was pointed out up thread. Uncooked quinoa might last just as long as (for example) Doritos but it may contribute to best health more than Doritos would.
I agree that how long a food remains edible is not always the best indicator of its nutritional value, but it can be an indicator, IMO.0 -
nettiklive wrote: »nettiklive wrote: »Genuine question: do those of you who don't care about artificial additives in food also don't care about the source of the ingredients? As in, where your meat, produce etc comes from, whether it's organic, if seafood is imported and farm-raised etc? Again this is something that is very standard where I live, everyone tries to get the best ingredients they can afford and as local/seasonal as possible, I don't buy all organic but always organic meats and dairy at least for the kids (my husband eats a lot of chicken so I'll often get large packages of conventional chicken breasts for him otherwise we'd go broke lol); wild-caught fish and seafood as there are concerns about farm-raised, and we try to mostly avoid imported seafood when possible (which is most grocery store frozen seafood) since I read it is all produced in Asia with very little regulations and heavy metals and other contaminants have been found in large doses. I will get some shrimp every once in a while if I get a craving but I try to limit. In the summer, I try to buy produce local and from farmer's markets if possible.
Curious, do all of you consider all that 'woo' too?? No one cares? As I said, caring about this stuff is very normal around where I live so reading how no one cares on here seems strange. Do you all also use traditional cleaning supplies? Again, everyone I know has pretty much switched to either homemade solutions such as vinegar or natural-based cleaners to avoid the extra chemicals. Also all BS?
I don't know where you live. Where I live (center of the palm in Michigan), the big grocery chains are full of people who're buying conventional produce from all over the world, and lots of mass-market cleaning supplies.
Are there people who think as you do? Sure. Could I surround myself with mainly those people? Probably.
I enjoy having a diversity of friends from varying economic groups, ethnic backgrounds, political outlooks, and more. Therefore, I tend to refrain from cross-examining about their food or cleaning product choices, unless those directly come up in conversation. If the subject comes up, I state my personal practices and reasoning, but avoid suggesting theirs are wrong. Perhaps this is not the way to change the world, but in my world it's a way to respect people and not assume my way is the best or only way. I'm certainly not going to argue a point without decent science on my side.
So, I have no idea what "everyone" around me does, because it's not a frequent or interesting conversation topic.
I've mentioned my food preferences in a previous post, and explained my reasoning. I won't repeat that here. I tend to clean with mild things (water, baking soda, salt, vinegar) most of the time, unless and until that doesn't work for some reason, then I sometimes use mass-market cleaning products.
As a vegetarian, I could go all "How could you possibly eat commercially-produced meat, when doing so requires bucketloads more protein than you get as output - do you care?" or "How can you eat fish, what with the over-fishing of our oceans and the destruction of habitat caused by commercial fisheries - is that just BS?" but I don't. And I won't, because I don't feel that way about it.
Here's my view: As an economically comfortable first-world modern human, I'm (a) very fortunate personally, and (b) inherently and unavoidably a small bundle of global environmental and economic harm. I can't fix that harm thing. I think good people make some choices that reduce the harms they create, and that - since it can't be completely avoided - it makes sense for people to choose the forms of harm reduction that are most achievable within their lifestyle and values.
Speaking only for myself, I don't find black and white thinking about it to be helpful to me; I bear too much first-world responsibility to be judgemental about others' choices (and it doesn't help with my goal of surrounding myself with diverse people); worrying routinely about small amounts of weird stuff in my food hurts my happiness more than it helps my health; and I believe that statements of the form "everyone I know does X" tend to be false (including the observation that people who don't do X will keep their mouths shut when they perceive themselves to be out of step with social norms in groups they otherwise want to socialize with).
Others are welcome to feel differently.
Just to note, I don't 'cross-examine' anyone about their habits either, it just so happens that as mostly moms of young kids, these topics come up in chit chat often.
The way others eat doesn't concern me in the least. It was just so normal to me to see people avoid junk food additives, try to make good choices with ingredients etc, that I just assumed it was 'normal' and typical for people active on a health and nutrition forum, of all places, and was very surprised to be proven wrong and be blasted for stating the opinion that some foods are inherently better choices than others. Oh well. I live in the PNW if that tells you anything; I've lived up and down the coast from Canada to California and have encountered the same philosophy. I can see how it may be different in other parts of the country.
And no, not all people in the PNW think this way.
I buy most of our fish off the boat twice a year to stock our freezer because we prefer the taste and we're lucky enough to be able to do so. We have a farm share from mid-Spring until late-Fall because we like the vegetables and enjoy them. I also go to the farmer's market regularly during the summer.
We also buy plenty of boxed meals and sides, TV dinners, etc., etc. and I never give it a second thought. I rarely buy organic unless it's actually cheaper.
I use a lot of baking soda for cleaning because it's cheap and works well. I also use regular commercial products.
I know very few people who go to the extremes you appear to, most people try to eat a well-rounded diet of food they enjoy and get some exercise.18 -
nettiklive wrote: »nettiklive wrote: »Genuine question: do those of you who don't care about artificial additives in food also don't care about the source of the ingredients? As in, where your meat, produce etc comes from, whether it's organic, if seafood is imported and farm-raised etc? Again this is something that is very standard where I live, everyone tries to get the best ingredients they can afford and as local/seasonal as possible, I don't buy all organic but always organic meats and dairy at least for the kids (my husband eats a lot of chicken so I'll often get large packages of conventional chicken breasts for him otherwise we'd go broke lol); wild-caught fish and seafood as there are concerns about farm-raised, and we try to mostly avoid imported seafood when possible (which is most grocery store frozen seafood) since I read it is all produced in Asia with very little regulations and heavy metals and other contaminants have been found in large doses. I will get some shrimp every once in a while if I get a craving but I try to limit. In the summer, I try to buy produce local and from farmer's markets if possible.
Curious, do all of you consider all that 'woo' too?? No one cares? As I said, caring about this stuff is very normal around where I live so reading how no one cares on here seems strange. Do you all also use traditional cleaning supplies? Again, everyone I know has pretty much switched to either homemade solutions such as vinegar or natural-based cleaners to avoid the extra chemicals. Also all BS?
I don't know where you live. Where I live (center of the palm in Michigan), the big grocery chains are full of people who're buying conventional produce from all over the world, and lots of mass-market cleaning supplies.
Are there people who think as you do? Sure. Could I surround myself with mainly those people? Probably.
I enjoy having a diversity of friends from varying economic groups, ethnic backgrounds, political outlooks, and more. Therefore, I tend to refrain from cross-examining about their food or cleaning product choices, unless those directly come up in conversation. If the subject comes up, I state my personal practices and reasoning, but avoid suggesting theirs are wrong. Perhaps this is not the way to change the world, but in my world it's a way to respect people and not assume my way is the best or only way. I'm certainly not going to argue a point without decent science on my side.
So, I have no idea what "everyone" around me does, because it's not a frequent or interesting conversation topic.
I've mentioned my food preferences in a previous post, and explained my reasoning. I won't repeat that here. I tend to clean with mild things (water, baking soda, salt, vinegar) most of the time, unless and until that doesn't work for some reason, then I sometimes use mass-market cleaning products.
As a vegetarian, I could go all "How could you possibly eat commercially-produced meat, when doing so requires bucketloads more protein than you get as output - do you care?" or "How can you eat fish, what with the over-fishing of our oceans and the destruction of habitat caused by commercial fisheries - is that just BS?" but I don't. And I won't, because I don't feel that way about it.
Here's my view: As an economically comfortable first-world modern human, I'm (a) very fortunate personally, and (b) inherently and unavoidably a small bundle of global environmental and economic harm. I can't fix that harm thing. I think good people make some choices that reduce the harms they create, and that - since it can't be completely avoided - it makes sense for people to choose the forms of harm reduction that are most achievable within their lifestyle and values.
Speaking only for myself, I don't find black and white thinking about it to be helpful to me; I bear too much first-world responsibility to be judgemental about others' choices (and it doesn't help with my goal of surrounding myself with diverse people); worrying routinely about small amounts of weird stuff in my food hurts my happiness more than it helps my health; and I believe that statements of the form "everyone I know does X" tend to be false (including the observation that people who don't do X will keep their mouths shut when they perceive themselves to be out of step with social norms in groups they otherwise want to socialize with).
Others are welcome to feel differently.
Just to note, I don't 'cross-examine' anyone about their habits either, it just so happens that as mostly moms of young kids, these topics come up in chit chat often.
The way others eat doesn't concern me in the least. It was just so normal to me to see people avoid junk food additives, try to make good choices with ingredients etc, that I just assumed it was 'normal' and typical for people active on a health and nutrition forum, of all places, and was very surprised to be proven wrong and be blasted for stating the opinion that some foods are inherently better choices than others. Oh well. I live in the PNW if that tells you anything; I've lived up and down the coast from Canada to California and have encountered the same philosophy. I can see how it may be different in other parts of the country.
And no, not all people in the PNW think this way.
I buy most of our fish off the boat twice a year to stock our freezer because we prefer the taste and we're lucky enough to be able to do so. We have a farm share from mid-Spring until late-Fall because we like the vegetables and enjoy them. I also go to the farmer's market regularly during the summer.
We also buy plenty of boxed meals and sides, TV dinners, etc., etc. and I never give it a second thought. I rarely buy organic unless it's actually cheaper.
I use a lot of baking soda for cleaning because it's cheap and works well. I also use regular commercial products.
I know very few people who go to the extremes you appear to, most people try to eat a well-rounded diet of food they enjoy and get some exercise.
I was born and raised in southern California, lived there for almost 50 years. In that entire time, I never met/knew anybody who went to those extremes. Not one single person ever.10 -
nettiklive wrote: »nettiklive wrote: »Genuine question: do those of you who don't care about artificial additives in food also don't care about the source of the ingredients? As in, where your meat, produce etc comes from, whether it's organic, if seafood is imported and farm-raised etc? Again this is something that is very standard where I live, everyone tries to get the best ingredients they can afford and as local/seasonal as possible, I don't buy all organic but always organic meats and dairy at least for the kids (my husband eats a lot of chicken so I'll often get large packages of conventional chicken breasts for him otherwise we'd go broke lol); wild-caught fish and seafood as there are concerns about farm-raised, and we try to mostly avoid imported seafood when possible (which is most grocery store frozen seafood) since I read it is all produced in Asia with very little regulations and heavy metals and other contaminants have been found in large doses. I will get some shrimp every once in a while if I get a craving but I try to limit. In the summer, I try to buy produce local and from farmer's markets if possible.
Curious, do all of you consider all that 'woo' too?? No one cares? As I said, caring about this stuff is very normal around where I live so reading how no one cares on here seems strange. Do you all also use traditional cleaning supplies? Again, everyone I know has pretty much switched to either homemade solutions such as vinegar or natural-based cleaners to avoid the extra chemicals. Also all BS?
I don't know where you live. Where I live (center of the palm in Michigan), the big grocery chains are full of people who're buying conventional produce from all over the world, and lots of mass-market cleaning supplies.
Are there people who think as you do? Sure. Could I surround myself with mainly those people? Probably.
I enjoy having a diversity of friends from varying economic groups, ethnic backgrounds, political outlooks, and more. Therefore, I tend to refrain from cross-examining about their food or cleaning product choices, unless those directly come up in conversation. If the subject comes up, I state my personal practices and reasoning, but avoid suggesting theirs are wrong. Perhaps this is not the way to change the world, but in my world it's a way to respect people and not assume my way is the best or only way. I'm certainly not going to argue a point without decent science on my side.
So, I have no idea what "everyone" around me does, because it's not a frequent or interesting conversation topic.
I've mentioned my food preferences in a previous post, and explained my reasoning. I won't repeat that here. I tend to clean with mild things (water, baking soda, salt, vinegar) most of the time, unless and until that doesn't work for some reason, then I sometimes use mass-market cleaning products.
As a vegetarian, I could go all "How could you possibly eat commercially-produced meat, when doing so requires bucketloads more protein than you get as output - do you care?" or "How can you eat fish, what with the over-fishing of our oceans and the destruction of habitat caused by commercial fisheries - is that just BS?" but I don't. And I won't, because I don't feel that way about it.
Here's my view: As an economically comfortable first-world modern human, I'm (a) very fortunate personally, and (b) inherently and unavoidably a small bundle of global environmental and economic harm. I can't fix that harm thing. I think good people make some choices that reduce the harms they create, and that - since it can't be completely avoided - it makes sense for people to choose the forms of harm reduction that are most achievable within their lifestyle and values.
Speaking only for myself, I don't find black and white thinking about it to be helpful to me; I bear too much first-world responsibility to be judgemental about others' choices (and it doesn't help with my goal of surrounding myself with diverse people); worrying routinely about small amounts of weird stuff in my food hurts my happiness more than it helps my health; and I believe that statements of the form "everyone I know does X" tend to be false (including the observation that people who don't do X will keep their mouths shut when they perceive themselves to be out of step with social norms in groups they otherwise want to socialize with).
Others are welcome to feel differently.
Just to note, I don't 'cross-examine' anyone about their habits either, it just so happens that as mostly moms of young kids, these topics come up in chit chat often.
The way others eat doesn't concern me in the least. It was just so normal to me to see people avoid junk food additives, try to make good choices with ingredients etc, that I just assumed it was 'normal' and typical for people active on a health and nutrition forum, of all places, and was very surprised to be proven wrong and be blasted for stating the opinion that some foods are inherently better choices than others. Oh well. I live in the PNW if that tells you anything; I've lived up and down the coast from Canada to California and have encountered the same philosophy. I can see how it may be different in other parts of the country.
OK, now I'm curious. I've never been to the PNW. Where you live, do the large retail stores not stock a wide range of conventional non-organic produce and meats, imported products from regions with lax regulation, or mass-marketed chemical cleaning products?
I've visited CA (so limited experience there), spent longer time periods in AZ and NV, and visited grocery stores and Walmarts all across the North to South dimension of the East side of the country. and found those kinds of products ubiquitous, the aisles that stock them busy, and most shopping carts in the check-out holding some of those things. Is it different where you live?
I'm not baiting you; I'm sincerely curious, because it's so outside my experience.
edited: missing word.
Who said stores don't stock them?
They do; however more and more aisles are stocked with all sorts of healthier or 'natural' alternatives to traditional snacks etc; there is also a large emphasis on stocking organic, local, and seasonal produce (with signs/ marketing); stores advertise, for instance, local wild-caught salmon when in season, etc. More and more stores follow the example of Whole Foods and do not stock *any* foods with artificial additives (though I know WF sells its share of junk so don't throw that in my face). In equal driving distance around me there is one Safeway and one local chain supermarket, a Trader Joe's, a Whole Foods, and two other local markets with a similar offering, stocking only natural/ organic foods. These stores tend to be just as busy, if not busier, than the conventional supermarkets. And even more and more 'traditional' companies are cutting out artificial additives in food, as pointed out above.
Our schools don't serve soda or packaged junk food; most families cook from scratch most meals; I have yet to go over to someone's home and see soda or Twinkies anywhere - it just doesn't happen anymore, most parents here would balk at someone offering their kid Coke on a playdate for instance.
I'm just comparing it to even a couple of decades ago when I was a teen, and 90% of what's available now in pretty much every supermarket could only be found in dusty 'health food' stores and terms such as organic, never mind local or seasonal, was considered hippie bs. A lot more awareness has driven up the demand for all of that. When I was in high school, teens would go to 7-11 to buy Slurpees and candy on lunch breaks; when my sister, who is 11 years younger, was a teen, she and her friends made protein pancakes and kale smoothies. There has certainly been a huge shift when it comes to food, in my eyes.18 -
I don't waste my money on "organic" foods because there is no proven health benefit to them. It's nothing more than false virtue signaling based upon misinformation and propaganda.
Here's an article (from a "real foods" devotee, no less) on the truth about the "organic" foods scam: https://dontwastethecrumbs.com/2015/03/14-facts-the-organic-industry-doesnt-want-you-to-know/17 -
nettiklive wrote: »nettiklive wrote: »Genuine question: do those of you who don't care about artificial additives in food also don't care about the source of the ingredients? As in, where your meat, produce etc comes from, whether it's organic, if seafood is imported and farm-raised etc? Again this is something that is very standard where I live, everyone tries to get the best ingredients they can afford and as local/seasonal as possible, I don't buy all organic but always organic meats and dairy at least for the kids (my husband eats a lot of chicken so I'll often get large packages of conventional chicken breasts for him otherwise we'd go broke lol); wild-caught fish and seafood as there are concerns about farm-raised, and we try to mostly avoid imported seafood when possible (which is most grocery store frozen seafood) since I read it is all produced in Asia with very little regulations and heavy metals and other contaminants have been found in large doses. I will get some shrimp every once in a while if I get a craving but I try to limit. In the summer, I try to buy produce local and from farmer's markets if possible.
Curious, do all of you consider all that 'woo' too?? No one cares? As I said, caring about this stuff is very normal around where I live so reading how no one cares on here seems strange. Do you all also use traditional cleaning supplies? Again, everyone I know has pretty much switched to either homemade solutions such as vinegar or natural-based cleaners to avoid the extra chemicals. Also all BS?
I don't know where you live. Where I live (center of the palm in Michigan), the big grocery chains are full of people who're buying conventional produce from all over the world, and lots of mass-market cleaning supplies.
Are there people who think as you do? Sure. Could I surround myself with mainly those people? Probably.
I enjoy having a diversity of friends from varying economic groups, ethnic backgrounds, political outlooks, and more. Therefore, I tend to refrain from cross-examining about their food or cleaning product choices, unless those directly come up in conversation. If the subject comes up, I state my personal practices and reasoning, but avoid suggesting theirs are wrong. Perhaps this is not the way to change the world, but in my world it's a way to respect people and not assume my way is the best or only way. I'm certainly not going to argue a point without decent science on my side.
So, I have no idea what "everyone" around me does, because it's not a frequent or interesting conversation topic.
I've mentioned my food preferences in a previous post, and explained my reasoning. I won't repeat that here. I tend to clean with mild things (water, baking soda, salt, vinegar) most of the time, unless and until that doesn't work for some reason, then I sometimes use mass-market cleaning products.
As a vegetarian, I could go all "How could you possibly eat commercially-produced meat, when doing so requires bucketloads more protein than you get as output - do you care?" or "How can you eat fish, what with the over-fishing of our oceans and the destruction of habitat caused by commercial fisheries - is that just BS?" but I don't. And I won't, because I don't feel that way about it.
Here's my view: As an economically comfortable first-world modern human, I'm (a) very fortunate personally, and (b) inherently and unavoidably a small bundle of global environmental and economic harm. I can't fix that harm thing. I think good people make some choices that reduce the harms they create, and that - since it can't be completely avoided - it makes sense for people to choose the forms of harm reduction that are most achievable within their lifestyle and values.
Speaking only for myself, I don't find black and white thinking about it to be helpful to me; I bear too much first-world responsibility to be judgemental about others' choices (and it doesn't help with my goal of surrounding myself with diverse people); worrying routinely about small amounts of weird stuff in my food hurts my happiness more than it helps my health; and I believe that statements of the form "everyone I know does X" tend to be false (including the observation that people who don't do X will keep their mouths shut when they perceive themselves to be out of step with social norms in groups they otherwise want to socialize with).
Others are welcome to feel differently.
Just to note, I don't 'cross-examine' anyone about their habits either, it just so happens that as mostly moms of young kids, these topics come up in chit chat often.
The way others eat doesn't concern me in the least. It was just so normal to me to see people avoid junk food additives, try to make good choices with ingredients etc, that I just assumed it was 'normal' and typical for people active on a health and nutrition forum, of all places, and was very surprised to be proven wrong and be blasted for stating the opinion that some foods are inherently better choices than others. Oh well. I live in the PNW if that tells you anything; I've lived up and down the coast from Canada to California and have encountered the same philosophy. I can see how it may be different in other parts of the country.
And no, not all people in the PNW think this way.
I buy most of our fish off the boat twice a year to stock our freezer because we prefer the taste and we're lucky enough to be able to do so. We have a farm share from mid-Spring until late-Fall because we like the vegetables and enjoy them. I also go to the farmer's market regularly during the summer.
We also buy plenty of boxed meals and sides, TV dinners, etc., etc. and I never give it a second thought. I rarely buy organic unless it's actually cheaper.
I use a lot of baking soda for cleaning because it's cheap and works well. I also use regular commercial products.
I know very few people who go to the extremes you appear to, most people try to eat a well-rounded diet of food they enjoy and get some exercise.
Shrug. I don't know why everyone seems to think eating the way we do requires some sort of militant policing or why it's 'extreme'... It really doesn't feel that way to me. Like I said, it takes no effort to eat this way especially because thankfully it is much easier nowadays. I also don't really 'give it a second thought' - it is just natural to me to shop primarily the whole foods aisles in stores and to pass by boxed meals, chips, pre-packaged sweets and so on. They are not just in our routine. Our extended families eat this way too, as do our kids at friends' houses etc. So it's really a non-issue.21 -
nettiklive wrote: »nettiklive wrote: »nettiklive wrote: »Genuine question: do those of you who don't care about artificial additives in food also don't care about the source of the ingredients? As in, where your meat, produce etc comes from, whether it's organic, if seafood is imported and farm-raised etc? Again this is something that is very standard where I live, everyone tries to get the best ingredients they can afford and as local/seasonal as possible, I don't buy all organic but always organic meats and dairy at least for the kids (my husband eats a lot of chicken so I'll often get large packages of conventional chicken breasts for him otherwise we'd go broke lol); wild-caught fish and seafood as there are concerns about farm-raised, and we try to mostly avoid imported seafood when possible (which is most grocery store frozen seafood) since I read it is all produced in Asia with very little regulations and heavy metals and other contaminants have been found in large doses. I will get some shrimp every once in a while if I get a craving but I try to limit. In the summer, I try to buy produce local and from farmer's markets if possible.
Curious, do all of you consider all that 'woo' too?? No one cares? As I said, caring about this stuff is very normal around where I live so reading how no one cares on here seems strange. Do you all also use traditional cleaning supplies? Again, everyone I know has pretty much switched to either homemade solutions such as vinegar or natural-based cleaners to avoid the extra chemicals. Also all BS?
I don't know where you live. Where I live (center of the palm in Michigan), the big grocery chains are full of people who're buying conventional produce from all over the world, and lots of mass-market cleaning supplies.
Are there people who think as you do? Sure. Could I surround myself with mainly those people? Probably.
I enjoy having a diversity of friends from varying economic groups, ethnic backgrounds, political outlooks, and more. Therefore, I tend to refrain from cross-examining about their food or cleaning product choices, unless those directly come up in conversation. If the subject comes up, I state my personal practices and reasoning, but avoid suggesting theirs are wrong. Perhaps this is not the way to change the world, but in my world it's a way to respect people and not assume my way is the best or only way. I'm certainly not going to argue a point without decent science on my side.
So, I have no idea what "everyone" around me does, because it's not a frequent or interesting conversation topic.
I've mentioned my food preferences in a previous post, and explained my reasoning. I won't repeat that here. I tend to clean with mild things (water, baking soda, salt, vinegar) most of the time, unless and until that doesn't work for some reason, then I sometimes use mass-market cleaning products.
As a vegetarian, I could go all "How could you possibly eat commercially-produced meat, when doing so requires bucketloads more protein than you get as output - do you care?" or "How can you eat fish, what with the over-fishing of our oceans and the destruction of habitat caused by commercial fisheries - is that just BS?" but I don't. And I won't, because I don't feel that way about it.
Here's my view: As an economically comfortable first-world modern human, I'm (a) very fortunate personally, and (b) inherently and unavoidably a small bundle of global environmental and economic harm. I can't fix that harm thing. I think good people make some choices that reduce the harms they create, and that - since it can't be completely avoided - it makes sense for people to choose the forms of harm reduction that are most achievable within their lifestyle and values.
Speaking only for myself, I don't find black and white thinking about it to be helpful to me; I bear too much first-world responsibility to be judgemental about others' choices (and it doesn't help with my goal of surrounding myself with diverse people); worrying routinely about small amounts of weird stuff in my food hurts my happiness more than it helps my health; and I believe that statements of the form "everyone I know does X" tend to be false (including the observation that people who don't do X will keep their mouths shut when they perceive themselves to be out of step with social norms in groups they otherwise want to socialize with).
Others are welcome to feel differently.
Just to note, I don't 'cross-examine' anyone about their habits either, it just so happens that as mostly moms of young kids, these topics come up in chit chat often.
The way others eat doesn't concern me in the least. It was just so normal to me to see people avoid junk food additives, try to make good choices with ingredients etc, that I just assumed it was 'normal' and typical for people active on a health and nutrition forum, of all places, and was very surprised to be proven wrong and be blasted for stating the opinion that some foods are inherently better choices than others. Oh well. I live in the PNW if that tells you anything; I've lived up and down the coast from Canada to California and have encountered the same philosophy. I can see how it may be different in other parts of the country.
OK, now I'm curious. I've never been to the PNW. Where you live, do the large retail stores not stock a wide range of conventional non-organic produce and meats, imported products from regions with lax regulation, or mass-marketed chemical cleaning products?
I've visited CA (so limited experience there), spent longer time periods in AZ and NV, and visited grocery stores and Walmarts all across the North to South dimension of the East side of the country. and found those kinds of products ubiquitous, the aisles that stock them busy, and most shopping carts in the check-out holding some of those things. Is it different where you live?
I'm not baiting you; I'm sincerely curious, because it's so outside my experience.
edited: missing word.
Who said stores don't stock them?
They do; however more and more aisles are stocked with all sorts of healthier or 'natural' alternatives to traditional snacks etc; there is also a large emphasis on stocking organic, local, and seasonal produce (with signs/ marketing); stores advertise, for instance, local wild-caught salmon when in season, etc. More and more stores follow the example of Whole Foods and do not stock *any* foods with artificial additives (though I know WF sells its share of junk so don't throw that in my face). In equal driving distance around me there is one Safeway and one local chain supermarket, a Trader Joe's, a Whole Foods, and two other local markets with a similar offering, stocking only natural/ organic foods. These stores tend to be just as busy, if not busier, than the conventional supermarkets. And even more and more 'traditional' companies are cutting out artificial additives in food, as pointed out above.
Our schools don't serve soda or packaged junk food; most families cook from scratch most meals; I have yet to go over to someone's home and see soda or Twinkies anywhere - it just doesn't happen anymore, most parents here would balk at someone offering their kid Coke on a playdate for instance.
I'm just comparing it to even a couple of decades ago when I was a teen, and 90% of what's available now in pretty much every supermarket could only be found in dusty 'health food' stores and terms such as organic, never mind local or seasonal, was considered hippie bs. A lot more awareness has driven up the demand for all of that. When I was in high school, teens would go to 7-11 to buy Slurpees and candy on lunch breaks; when my sister, who is 11 years younger, was a teen, she and her friends made protein pancakes and kale smoothies. There has certainly been a huge shift when it comes to food, in my eyes.
I said I wasn't baiting; I wasn't. Thank you for answering.
I have WF and a couple of local health food stores within a few miles, and certainly agree that there are way more organic (etc.) foods available than when I was young, and that that has increased significantly in the big grocery chains in the last decade or so. I do shop at one of the local health food stores, Costco, WF, and farmers' markets. These places are much less patronized than the big chains, however, and the distribution of chains is denser geographically.
However, since I'm old (62), I'd say that the percentage of produce in stores that comes from local sources is lower than it was in my childhood, as transportation systems have improved so much. I may be biased by being raised in the country, where it was common to raise and can produce, and even to raise, hunt for, or fish for one's own protein sources. (I'll make the guilty admission that it amuses me when organic-focused locavore foodie friends express horror about eating squirrel. ). Farmers markets were a bigger thing when I was young, later almost vanishing, and now re-emerging on a smaller but more distributed scale.
Because of industrial agriculture, transportation improvements and distribution improvements, the range of produce and meat now available is much, much larger than it was in my childhood/teens.
BTW: I was a hippie. Kind of still am. 11 -
nettiklive wrote: »Genuine question: do those of you who don't care about artificial additives in food also don't care about the source of the ingredients? As in, where your meat, produce etc comes from, whether it's organic, if seafood is imported and farm-raised etc? Again this is something that is very standard where I live, everyone tries to get the best ingredients they can afford and as local/seasonal as possible, I don't buy all organic but always organic meats and dairy at least for the kids (my husband eats a lot of chicken so I'll often get large packages of conventional chicken breasts for him otherwise we'd go broke lol); wild-caught fish and seafood as there are concerns about farm-raised, and we try to mostly avoid imported seafood when possible (which is most grocery store frozen seafood) since I read it is all produced in Asia with very little regulations and heavy metals and other contaminants have been found in large doses. I will get some shrimp every once in a while if I get a craving but I try to limit. In the summer, I try to buy produce local and from farmer's markets if possible.
Curious, do all of you consider all that 'woo' too?? No one cares? As I said, caring about this stuff is very normal around where I live so reading how no one cares on here seems strange. Do you all also use traditional cleaning supplies? Again, everyone I know has pretty much switched to either homemade solutions such as vinegar or natural-based cleaners to avoid the extra chemicals. Also all BS?
You're very privileged.
And apparently, you only care as far enough as your pocketbook takes you in some cases, so that speaks to your caring being less of a bone deep conviction and more of a social construct, given how you describe what sounds like an equally privileged social circle.
Interesting.
27 -
nettiklive wrote: »Genuine question: do those of you who don't care about artificial additives in food also don't care about the source of the ingredients? As in, where your meat, produce etc comes from, whether it's organic, if seafood is imported and farm-raised etc? Again this is something that is very standard where I live, everyone tries to get the best ingredients they can afford and as local/seasonal as possible, I don't buy all organic but always organic meats and dairy at least for the kids (my husband eats a lot of chicken so I'll often get large packages of conventional chicken breasts for him otherwise we'd go broke lol); wild-caught fish and seafood as there are concerns about farm-raised, and we try to mostly avoid imported seafood when possible (which is most grocery store frozen seafood) since I read it is all produced in Asia with very little regulations and heavy metals and other contaminants have been found in large doses. I will get some shrimp every once in a while if I get a craving but I try to limit. In the summer, I try to buy produce local and from farmer's markets if possible.
Curious, do all of you consider all that 'woo' too?? No one cares? As I said, caring about this stuff is very normal around where I live so reading how no one cares on here seems strange. Do you all also use traditional cleaning supplies? Again, everyone I know has pretty much switched to either homemade solutions such as vinegar or natural-based cleaners to avoid the extra chemicals. Also all BS?
My food choices are primarily rooted in cost. I have a limited budget so organic, free range, grass fed, etc and even seafood are not within my means.
I guess that means we’re doomed to die. Or perhaps we’ll just be better preserved after death.
14 -
I’m just going to add some random thoughts. Brunch today was a home made waffle that includes white flour, white sugar, white salt, and canola oil. These have all taken a bad rap on occasion. It also has PB2 and is drizzled with maple syrup.
Is it a good or bad meal?
Also, I find it funny to refer to baking soda, salt and vinegar as “modern” cleaning products compared say, to Windex, Comet or Fantastic. I have all these products in my home.
Today’s brunch:
8
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