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Is the amount of easy access processed food harming dieters health?
Replies
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ClosetBayesian wrote: »TavistockToad wrote: »jmbmilholland wrote: »I cannot believe we have made it this far into a discussion of tinned meats (and tangentially their availability in the UK), and there has not been a mention of Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam and Spam.
I am trying to remember the meats I usually bought at Marks & Spencer while a student there on a very tight budget, but I believe I wholly subsisted on fancy jam and baguettes.
I love spam! Not had it for yonks! It's going on the shopping list for next week regardless of what it's going to do to my internal organs!
What's a yonk?
It is a way of measuring preparedness for scary, running away on air inducing panic, which itself is measured in zonks. The yonks come before zonks.0 -
If you're concerned about what goes into processed foods, just read the labels. And by the way, most of what you eat is processed to some degree unless you grow it yourself (and in any case, being "processed" doesn't inject some mystical evil essence into a food).
I have two cans of imported Italian tuna in olive oil sitting on my counter ready to go with a package of frozen peas into a jar of marinara sauce which I'll have with whole wheat pasta. All of it, in other words, processed. I have absolutely no fears about what it might be doing to my internal organs -- other than tasting good and providing me with some good nutritional value.
And regarding one of the questions asked -- low fat does not make something good for you. That's why in spite of a couple of decades of high availability of low fat "diet" foods here in the USA people here are fatter than ever.
I think that is partly because a lot of those foods end up with added sugar. Like non-fat and low fat yogurts. Many have a ton of extra sugar.0 -
ClosetBayesian wrote: »TavistockToad wrote: »jmbmilholland wrote: »I cannot believe we have made it this far into a discussion of tinned meats (and tangentially their availability in the UK), and there has not been a mention of Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam and Spam.
I am trying to remember the meats I usually bought at Marks & Spencer while a student there on a very tight budget, but I believe I wholly subsisted on fancy jam and baguettes.
I love spam! Not had it for yonks! It's going on the shopping list for next week regardless of what it's going to do to my internal organs!
What's a yonk?
It is a way of measuring preparedness for scary, running away on air inducing panic, which itself is measured in zonks. The yonks come before zonks.
And before those darn meddling kids ruin my plans.0 -
thankyou4thevenom wrote: »ClosetBayesian wrote: »TavistockToad wrote: »jmbmilholland wrote: »I cannot believe we have made it this far into a discussion of tinned meats (and tangentially their availability in the UK), and there has not been a mention of Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam and Spam.
I am trying to remember the meats I usually bought at Marks & Spencer while a student there on a very tight budget, but I believe I wholly subsisted on fancy jam and baguettes.
I love spam! Not had it for yonks! It's going on the shopping list for next week regardless of what it's going to do to my internal organs!
What's a yonk?
It is a way of measuring preparedness for scary, running away on air inducing panic, which itself is measured in zonks. The yonks come before zonks.
And before those darn meddling kids ruin my plans.
That's ZOINKS! Totally different than Zonks.0 -
I found this in my kitchen. I don't like the taste but it's not yucky ingredient wise0 -
WinoGelato wrote: »thankyou4thevenom wrote: »ClosetBayesian wrote: »TavistockToad wrote: »jmbmilholland wrote: »I cannot believe we have made it this far into a discussion of tinned meats (and tangentially their availability in the UK), and there has not been a mention of Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam and Spam.
I am trying to remember the meats I usually bought at Marks & Spencer while a student there on a very tight budget, but I believe I wholly subsisted on fancy jam and baguettes.
I love spam! Not had it for yonks! It's going on the shopping list for next week regardless of what it's going to do to my internal organs!
What's a yonk?
It is a way of measuring preparedness for scary, running away on air inducing panic, which itself is measured in zonks. The yonks come before zonks.
And before those darn meddling kids ruin my plans.
That's ZOINKS! Totally different than Zonks.
Spoil sport.0 -
IMO, people get hung up on the term "processed" and thereby equate convenience foods to being bad because they're not "clean" or whatever the latest buzzword is. It's really quite simple - if it fits in your calorie allotment, go for it. Unless of course you have a health issue with sodium, nitrates, etc which are often contained in convenience/ processed foods.1
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singingflutelady wrote: »
I found this in my kitchen. I don't like the taste but it's not yucky ingredient wise
FLAKES of chicken? LOL I have never seen one put that way before, that sounds so funny to me.
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Wickedfaery73 wrote: »singingflutelady wrote: »
I found this in my kitchen. I don't like the taste but it's not yucky ingredient wise
FLAKES of chicken? LOL I have never seen one put that way before, that sounds so funny to me.
It's just like tuna but you know Canadians are odd
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WinoGelato wrote: »thankyou4thevenom wrote: »ClosetBayesian wrote: »TavistockToad wrote: »jmbmilholland wrote: »I cannot believe we have made it this far into a discussion of tinned meats (and tangentially their availability in the UK), and there has not been a mention of Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam and Spam.
I am trying to remember the meats I usually bought at Marks & Spencer while a student there on a very tight budget, but I believe I wholly subsisted on fancy jam and baguettes.
I love spam! Not had it for yonks! It's going on the shopping list for next week regardless of what it's going to do to my internal organs!
What's a yonk?
It is a way of measuring preparedness for scary, running away on air inducing panic, which itself is measured in zonks. The yonks come before zonks.
And before those darn meddling kids ruin my plans.
That's ZOINKS! Totally different than Zonks.
And don't even get started on the JINKIES!0 -
Just the thought of any meat in a can is gross to me
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singingflutelady wrote: »Wickedfaery73 wrote: »singingflutelady wrote: »
I found this in my kitchen. I don't like the taste but it's not yucky ingredient wise
FLAKES of chicken? LOL I have never seen one put that way before, that sounds so funny to me.
It's just like tuna but you know Canadians are odd
OH so it's more shredded (or flaked) like tuna usually is. That makes sense lol. The ones I buy say "chunked" or "chunks". My husband wont eat any of canned chicken, he says it smells like dogfood =D.
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janejellyroll wrote: »jmbmilholland wrote: »I cannot believe we have made it this far into a discussion of tinned meats (and tangentially their availability in the UK), and there has not been a mention of Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam and Spam.
I am trying to remember the meats I usually bought at Marks & Spencer while a student there on a very tight budget, but I believe I wholly subsisted on fancy jam and baguettes.
A canned meat I remember from college is Deviled Ham. Bought it once when it was on sale for super-cheap. Never again.
There may be a direct correlation between Deviled Ham and veganism.
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I don't like this brand either but Costco has a Kirkland brand chicken in a can which is quite nice for sandwiches. I would never eat it by itself lol0
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I'm sure that's true I've just never seen it or tried it.
Ok so someone who regularly eats canned chicken of the normal salt content variety. Assuming they also have other high salt foods in their diet will surely be less healthy for example high blood pressure than someone who avoids processed high salt foods? The one I saw had 11% salt. It also contained rib meat and some sort of bulking agent.
No. If you eat a variety of food and have a nutritionally rich diet the canned chicken isn't going to "harm your organs".
If all you eat is canned chicken, well your diet sucks and your going to have problems.
If all you eat is broccoli, well your diet sucks and your going to have problems. (in fact you diet sucks more and you'll have issues much faster as you see your thyroid shut down fast.)
Moderation and variety. It works.1 -
Wickedfaery73 wrote: »If you're concerned about what goes into processed foods, just read the labels. And by the way, most of what you eat is processed to some degree unless you grow it yourself (and in any case, being "processed" doesn't inject some mystical evil essence into a food).
I have two cans of imported Italian tuna in olive oil sitting on my counter ready to go with a package of frozen peas into a jar of marinara sauce which I'll have with whole wheat pasta. All of it, in other words, processed. I have absolutely no fears about what it might be doing to my internal organs -- other than tasting good and providing me with some good nutritional value.
And regarding one of the questions asked -- low fat does not make something good for you. That's why in spite of a couple of decades of high availability of low fat "diet" foods here in the USA people here are fatter than ever.
I think that is partly because a lot of those foods end up with added sugar. Like non-fat and low fat yogurts. Many have a ton of extra sugar.
No, plain 0% and low fat yogurt has NO added sugar.
All kinds of yogurt, including full fat, often are flavored, and obviously many flavored yogurts have added sugar. That has nothing to do with their fat content. This is a weird lie that people keep repeating.
Similarly skinless, boneless chicken and skim cottage cheese and milk and lean hamburger have no added sugar.0 -
singingflutelady wrote: »
I found this in my kitchen. I don't like the taste but it's not yucky ingredient wise
Looks Canadian. Hmm.
(Just kidding. I like Canada fine.)
Edit: also, already pointed out, oops.0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »Wickedfaery73 wrote: »If you're concerned about what goes into processed foods, just read the labels. And by the way, most of what you eat is processed to some degree unless you grow it yourself (and in any case, being "processed" doesn't inject some mystical evil essence into a food).
I have two cans of imported Italian tuna in olive oil sitting on my counter ready to go with a package of frozen peas into a jar of marinara sauce which I'll have with whole wheat pasta. All of it, in other words, processed. I have absolutely no fears about what it might be doing to my internal organs -- other than tasting good and providing me with some good nutritional value.
And regarding one of the questions asked -- low fat does not make something good for you. That's why in spite of a couple of decades of high availability of low fat "diet" foods here in the USA people here are fatter than ever.
I think that is partly because a lot of those foods end up with added sugar. Like non-fat and low fat yogurts. Many have a ton of extra sugar.
No, plain 0% and low fat yogurt has NO added sugar.
All kinds of yogurt, including full fat, often are flavored, and obviously many flavored yogurts have added sugar. That has nothing to do with their fat content. This is a weird lie that people keep repeating.
Similarly skinless, boneless chicken and skim cottage cheese and milk and lean hamburger have no added sugar.
So sorry, the flavored ones are what I was thinking of because I don't usually eat plain except in place of sour cream. I was also thinking about mainly prepackaged foods that are labeled diet or light that I myself have seen to have more sugar or sometimes fat than their 'regular' counterparts.0 -
jmbmilholland wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »jmbmilholland wrote: »I cannot believe we have made it this far into a discussion of tinned meats (and tangentially their availability in the UK), and there has not been a mention of Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam and Spam.
I am trying to remember the meats I usually bought at Marks & Spencer while a student there on a very tight budget, but I believe I wholly subsisted on fancy jam and baguettes.
A canned meat I remember from college is Deviled Ham. Bought it once when it was on sale for super-cheap. Never again.
There may be a direct correlation between Deviled Ham and veganism.
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I would be very interested to hear (read) what people think about this.
I've noticed on some of the "what people are eating" type threads, there's a lot of easily accessible heavily processed foods being eaten. Because it says low fat on the tin does this make it good for us? Lots of salt seems to be added to processed food as well as all sorts of other ingredients that I don't even know what they are.
I'm not knocking CICO at all, its working for me, and I am not a food saint. I include all sorts of foods in my diet including fatty food, chips/crisps, sweets and chocolate. I have to do this in moderation otherwise I would be starving all the time because of the amount of calories these things have in them. I would also rather have a bowl of home made soup than a can of chicken. I had literally never heard of canned chicken before today (its not used widely in the UK). I'm astounded. I haven't eaten canned tuna for years because of the welfare aspects of it. I tend to be quite conscientious in my food choice when it comes to animal welfare but I'm aware that I am lucky enough to be on my own and able to afford to be that way.
I know the main aim of dieting for most of us is to lose weight but what could processed food be doing to our organs? I'm honestly interested in whether being thin but eating these sorts of foods has a detrimental effect on health?
how are you defining processed?
nope, dietary context is what mattes so as long as one gets adequate nutirtion, hits calorie targets, and meets macros "processed" (however you are defining that) does not really matter...
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TavistockToad wrote: »I love spam! Not had it for yonks! It's going on the shopping list for next week regardless of what it's going to do to my internal organs!
Go the whole hog and make Spam fritters!!
...
Now I want Spam fritters. *sigh*
...
We had a fair amount of tinned ham growing up, probably because it was cheap - this sort of thing:
Inside the tin it looked like this *shudders*:
I detested the jelly stuff round the edges, made me feel ill just to look at it. But my mum made me eat whatever I couldn't scrape off anyway. Corned beef too, my parents loved that stuff.
It didn't affect me in the slightest... *twitch* *twitch*
To answer the OP more seriously, though - it seems like there can be a lot of sodium (sometimes naturally occurring?) in many foods, not just "overly processed" ones. (And who decides how much processing is "too much" anyway? That would need to be a personal choice, I think.) I don't think the blame for poor diet can be laid entirely at the door of processed foods, although as one poster said it probably could make it easier to overeat some of those foods. It's easy to overeat in general if you don't watch your intake, even on "healthy" foods.
In my opinion, though, the availability of cheap processed foods could have helped a lot of people on limited budgets to eat more healthily than they might otherwise have been able to. If you ('you' being people in general) can afford to buy fresh, unprocessed ingredients and make all your meals from scratch, that's great! But many people have to make do with whatever they can get, and many canned foods have very little added to them anyway. (Plus longer shelf lives make them great to stock up on when they go on sale.)
In conclusion - no, I don't think processed foods are evil and I don't think they would harm our organs, unless we have an issue with any of the ingredients. In which case it's presumably not the fault of the processing!
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ClosetBayesian wrote: »TavistockToad wrote: »jmbmilholland wrote: »I cannot believe we have made it this far into a discussion of tinned meats (and tangentially their availability in the UK), and there has not been a mention of Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam and Spam.
I am trying to remember the meats I usually bought at Marks & Spencer while a student there on a very tight budget, but I believe I wholly subsisted on fancy jam and baguettes.
I love spam! Not had it for yonks! It's going on the shopping list for next week regardless of what it's going to do to my internal organs!
What's a yonk?
Not had it for 'yonks' is like saying not had it for ages!0 -
Yeah, I used to eat flavored lowfat yogurt that had quite a bit of sugar added to it (along with HFCS).Wickedfaery73 wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Wickedfaery73 wrote: »If you're concerned about what goes into processed foods, just read the labels. And by the way, most of what you eat is processed to some degree unless you grow it yourself (and in any case, being "processed" doesn't inject some mystical evil essence into a food).
I have two cans of imported Italian tuna in olive oil sitting on my counter ready to go with a package of frozen peas into a jar of marinara sauce which I'll have with whole wheat pasta. All of it, in other words, processed. I have absolutely no fears about what it might be doing to my internal organs -- other than tasting good and providing me with some good nutritional value.
And regarding one of the questions asked -- low fat does not make something good for you. That's why in spite of a couple of decades of high availability of low fat "diet" foods here in the USA people here are fatter than ever.
I think that is partly because a lot of those foods end up with added sugar. Like non-fat and low fat yogurts. Many have a ton of extra sugar.
No, plain 0% and low fat yogurt has NO added sugar.
All kinds of yogurt, including full fat, often are flavored, and obviously many flavored yogurts have added sugar. That has nothing to do with their fat content. This is a weird lie that people keep repeating.
Similarly skinless, boneless chicken and skim cottage cheese and milk and lean hamburger have no added sugar.
So sorry, the flavored ones are what I was thinking of because I don't usually eat plain except in place of sour cream. I was also thinking about mainly prepackaged foods that are labeled diet or light that I myself have seen to have more sugar or sometimes fat than their 'regular' counterparts.
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However, the damage done by the neurotoxin from Clostridium botulinum is very well known. We're talking permanent damage to the neuron here. Modern canning techniques have virtually wiped out cases of botulism poisoning (about 1000 cases a year world wide).0
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However, the damage done by the neurotoxin from Clostridium botulinum is very well known. We're talking permanent damage to the neuron here. Modern canning techniques have virtually wiped out cases of botulism poisoning (about 1000 cases a year world wide).
Touche0 -
ForecasterJason wrote: »
Yeah, I used to eat flavored lowfat yogurt that had quite a bit of sugar added to it (along with HFCS).Wickedfaery73 wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Wickedfaery73 wrote: »If you're concerned about what goes into processed foods, just read the labels. And by the way, most of what you eat is processed to some degree unless you grow it yourself (and in any case, being "processed" doesn't inject some mystical evil essence into a food).
I have two cans of imported Italian tuna in olive oil sitting on my counter ready to go with a package of frozen peas into a jar of marinara sauce which I'll have with whole wheat pasta. All of it, in other words, processed. I have absolutely no fears about what it might be doing to my internal organs -- other than tasting good and providing me with some good nutritional value.
And regarding one of the questions asked -- low fat does not make something good for you. That's why in spite of a couple of decades of high availability of low fat "diet" foods here in the USA people here are fatter than ever.
I think that is partly because a lot of those foods end up with added sugar. Like non-fat and low fat yogurts. Many have a ton of extra sugar.
No, plain 0% and low fat yogurt has NO added sugar.
All kinds of yogurt, including full fat, often are flavored, and obviously many flavored yogurts have added sugar. That has nothing to do with their fat content. This is a weird lie that people keep repeating.
Similarly skinless, boneless chicken and skim cottage cheese and milk and lean hamburger have no added sugar.
So sorry, the flavored ones are what I was thinking of because I don't usually eat plain except in place of sour cream. I was also thinking about mainly prepackaged foods that are labeled diet or light that I myself have seen to have more sugar or sometimes fat than their 'regular' counterparts.
Flavored full fat has sugar added too.
Again, it has nothing to do with the fat content.
It's also quite easy to find flavored yogurt without HFCS. I normally eat plain yogurt, but if I get flavored I tend to avoid HFCS (more as a political/taste thing than because I think HFCS is worse for us than sugar, as they aren't particularly different).0 -
I have @lemurcat12 however, seen a lot of prepared foods from the middle aisles, touted as "low fat" where sugar was added to compensate. I noticed because as a diabetic, I was counting the sugar/carbs. One of my pet peeves is lower fat Kraft peanut butter. Way to ruin a perfectly good spread.0
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Ah, here's a tasty full fat flavored yogurt I have bought from time to time (not a great protein content, but that's because it's traditional yogurt, not greek): http://traderspointcreamery.com/products/yogurt/
"Banana Mango Yogurt ingredients: organic 100% grassfed whole milk, organic banana puree, organic mango puree, organic evaporated cane juice, organic skim milk, live cultures, probiotic culture"
See, full fat and added sugar -- that's because it's flavored.
Fage 0%: http://usa.fage.eu/yogurts/fage-total-plain#fage-total-0
No added sugar.0 -
Nope.
It's the dieters' decisions that is harming the their health. Always has. Always will be.0
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