The Incredible Arrogance of Thinking ‘Natural’ Means ‘Good’

Greatest example of this is Honey v HFCS

Same thing, basically, yet ...

Honey tastes better. But my pantry always has sugar, honey, brown sugar, powdered sugar, corn syrup, molasses, and stevia. You never know which sweetener you will need. I have never stocked HFCS in my pantry though.

Mmmmm I have! Every year right before Thanksgiving I need to stock up on Karo to make pecan pies with........

OHGAWDNOTHESKYISFALLING

Nope, you are safe. Karo products don't contain HFCS. Corn syrup and HFCS are not the same thing.

Ladies, please don't go all natural. You've gotta trim your stuff...

(to the OP)

Great, next thing you are going to try to tell me is that the organic chocolate cake with organic cheese puffs and organic lemonade (with no HFCS of course) my kids had for lunch is what is making them fat! :noway:

It just turns out that manufactured foods frequently use calorie-dense ingredients, because they are engineered to be extremely tasty and compelling to eat.

God forbid our food be extremely tasty and compelling to eat. I'm sure to lose weight if I only eat food that is tasteless and offensive. And then I'm sure to jump off the nearest bridge...

I know, I know. Eat to live...don't live to eat. I've already given up recreational drugs, binge drinking and anonymous sex. NOW you want me to stop enjoying food too? I don't think so.

God forbid our food be extremely tasty and compelling to eat. I'm sure to lose weight if I only eat food that is tasteless and offensive. And then I'm sure to jump off the nearest bridge...

I know, I know. Eat to live...don't live to eat. I've already given up recreational drugs, binge drinking and anonymous sex. NOW you want me to stop enjoying food too? I don't think so.

You can lose weight eating anything. There was a professor who lost weight eating only Twinkies and other snack cake goodies.

If you've got the willpower to stay on a caloric deficit while eating tiny amounts of calorie-dense food, more power to you!

For me, it's hard enough never being satisfied by a meal. No sense in making it worse with tiny amounts of calorie-dense food.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/what-they-do-to-food-20120608-201su.html

this article talks a bit about the various processes involved in supermarket fruit production. It also mentions a lot about how the taste is neglected in favour of visual appeal, how they change them artificially to make them look ripe before they really are.

Compare bananas from a supermarket and a local produce shop and then come back to me. I bet the supermarket ones look much more vibrant than the local ones. Probably less imperfections and blemishes too. But I bet they don't taste as good.

I understand what you're saying, but the reality is that we don't all have access to "local" produce. For example, I live at high altitude in Colorado. Our last frost is June 14. Snow is often flying in early-mid September. We have no growing season to speak of and the climate is very dry, only a notch above desert. Cold for most of the year (Spring doesn't start until May and summer is over at the end of August) plus no precipitation for most of the year means...Well, it's fabulous ranch land, but good luck growing stuff. If I were only to eat what can truly be grown locally without a ton of work and artificial methods and a lot of water wastage (Water is precious to us here), then I'd be stuck with...let me see...Hmm...Cactus. Prickly pear is pretty good, actually. And pine nuts; we can get those cheap because pine trees (and scrub oak and cottonwoods) are about all we have in terms of native trees. And peaches for a brief stretch of about 2-3 weeks at the end of July. And some small,chalky, and not very tasty apples in the short window between the time they ripen and the time the frost gets them. I have a little garden and I try to grow a few things myself, but it is very, very hard. My garden is often ruined because I hedge a bit and put things in a bit early and a late frost gets them or else I put things in a bit too late and the frost gets them before they're ready to harvest. It sucks, but it's the reality of where I live. And, since I come from the US East Coast, where farms and farm stands are everywhere with delicious stuff for cheap...Well, that's the ONLY thing I miss about Back East.

Anyway, my point is, if I have to choose between produce that is picked too early, force half-ripened, and then shipped halfway across the country or up from Mexico and no produce at all...Well, I'd rather have the produce, thanks. I'm not going to worry about what's done to it, to be honest. Something is better than nothing. I'm going to guess that a lot of people who live in places where lots of locally-grown stuff is simply unavailable would rather have something rather than nothing. The only recourse people like me have is the picked-too-early and then "processed" stuff. And I'm OK with that; it's just a consequence of choosing to live where I live, a consequence I'm willing to accept in exchange for a non-humid climate where the sun shines 330+ days out of the year and the scenery is gorgeous. As for the taste...Well, like I said, our local apples are, IMO, pretty yucky. I'll take a supermarket one any day. If I lived in Washington State, I might feel differently...but I don't live in Washington State. Like they say: It's location, location, location.

So, in short, the methods used to ripen/lengthen the shelf life of supermarket produce aren't going to kill you. And while some nutrition/taste is lost, yes, it is better than nothing, especially for those of us who have no choice in the matter or who don't have the means to purchase anything except what's on sale at the grocery store. I'd rather make available to more people more fresh fruit/veggies, even given the methods that must be employed to make more available to more people, than bemoan the fact that in our modern world small farms are going by the wayside. It's sad, yes, but that's "progress."

It just turns out that manufactured foods frequently use calorie-dense ingredients, because they are engineered to be extremely tasty and compelling to eat.

God forbid our food be extremely tasty and compelling to eat. I'm sure to lose weight if I only eat food that is tasteless and offensive. And then I'm sure to jump off the nearest bridge...

I know, I know. Eat to live...don't live to eat. I've already given up recreational drugs, binge drinking and anonymous sex. NOW you want me to stop enjoying food too? I don't think so.

The engineered foods available today are a Pleasure Trap. I switched to a whole foods plant based diet nearly a year ago. Fruit, vegetables, grains and legumes are 99% of my diet. It took a while for my tastes to reset. The gain is I no longer feel "compelled" to eat those foods. The cravings for them went away. It was actually very liberating.

I'm sure if I castrated myself I'd no longer want sex either.

How is that a win?