Dana Bash on CNN calling the BS out

  • FrankFrankson@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    “Processed foods” has the same energy to me as when people say food is bad because it has “chemicals” in it.

    When following a recipe I start with ingredients and I end up with a prepared meal that I processed. We need to identify and specify the processes that causes problems in food instead of giving that food a label that could be applied to any meal you create.

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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      12 hours ago

      Preservatives and high sodium is probably the better term(s), because that’s what people usually mean when they say processed foods. Like have a butcher cut instead of Oscar Maier salami slice

    • Bob Robertson IX @discuss.tchncs.de
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      12 hours ago

      I feel the same way when someone says a certain food is ‘organic’… well, yeah, pretty much everything we eat is organic. Even the main ingredient in Roundup is organic.

      I get the need to be able to market ‘clean’ food in a way to differentiate it from everything else, but using a term that is scientifically incorrect is poor marketing.

    • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      You’re being overly literal. That you made it yourself with real ingredients is a good rule of thumb for not ultra-processed. You’re unlikely to have partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, mono and diglycerides of fatty acids or high fructose corn syrup lying around, and you won’t test your recipe repeatedly until humans want more of it than any of the competing products on the supermarket shelves.

      Yeah, everything’s a chemical, but that’s not what people mean when they say there’s chemicals in the food. They mean there are edible non-food ingredients whose only purpose is to cheaply make it last longer on the shelf or be more moreish or reduce costs.

      There’s a significant correlation between proportion of ultra-processed foods in diet and all-causes mortality. Don’t pretend there isn’t.

      • Exatron@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        No, sweetie, they’re not being “overly literal”, they’re just telling the truth.

        We don’t even have a consistent definition of what “ultra-processed” should mean.

        People using words like chemicals wrong is a problem with them.

        Correlation doesn’t imply causation, and we still need to agree on a definition for “ultra-processed” to conduct any meaningful science.