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Just a reminder to anyone going on a vegan diet to be more healthy.... heroin is also vegan.
@freemo chuckle So true… I’m a vegetarian and I am terribly annoyed by all the people who go all “oh, I try to eat healthy, too”. That isn’t my reason, and, given that I manage to be quite fat, it isn’t a particularly good reason in the first place 😛
@aexiruch hahaha yea.. moral reasons make perfect sense and i even encourage it. But health reasons not so much. In fact I'd say it can be a bit harder to be healthy being a vegan or on any restrictive diet simply because you need to be more aware of nutrients you normally get from animal sources. Even just protein can be tricky for some vegans if they dont eat enough beans or tofu or something.
I think there is at least some truth to that. The only issue with preprocessed food in terms of health is the salt. Thankfully most people arent salt sensative. So most of the time I dont think preprocessed food makes much of any difference. That said as you say everyone is different so there is always the chance there is some sort of allergic reaction or something to be concerned with.
From the moral and environmental side though thats a whole different ball of wax. In that sense reducing meat intake is likely a very beneficial boon to the environment.
@freemo @bonifartius Yeah, a lot of the time the “eat no preprocessed food” idea boils down to a quasi-religious belief in things being “unnatural”, which I’ve always found funny, seems to stem from the whole “human created as separate from animal/nature” bullshit. But there are some, some legitimate concerns, and salt is the big one, agreed.
Yea exactly.. the salt is legit, and other fillers (for example normally high protein meats being high in carbs due to fillers)... but the whole idea that "humans processed this, therefore bad" doesnt cut the mustard with me.
+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄
@freemo
i think that every preservation (which preprocessed food essentially is) goes along with a loss in value regarding nutrients. especially the things which are in food in only tiny amounts tend to get lost. i think our bodies are well tuned by evolution to process (and to work best when supplied) fresh food for the most time of the year. i assume the reason that mediterranean or japanese diets are healthy is the amount of fresh, relatively unprocessed ingedients. that said, salt and some other things added to preprocessed food are probably the main reason for them being unhealthy.
That has less to do with preprocessing and more to do with raw vs nonraw... Raw veggies are packed with nutrients. If you dry them out or boil them, even if you buy them fresh, you destroy most of the nutrients.
Its largely unrelated to preprocessing though, its secondary to that. For example if you have raw meat and its preprocessed by adding, say, MSG to it, you wont see any decline in nutrient value. Same is true when you precut apples and add preservatives to stop it to brown, no loss of nutrients there because the apples are still uncooked despite being processed.
@freemo
> That has less to do with preprocessing and more to do with raw vs nonraw... Raw veggies are packed with nutrients. If you dry them out or boil them, even if you buy them fresh, you destroy most of the nutrients.
sure, but i have to cook them longer if i i put them in a can (just as example). of course not _every_ processed food is bad. cheese is processed milk. tofu is processed soybeans. it isn't black & white. forgoing some convenience and doing some steps oneself with fresh ingredients just may be better if you only look at the food. if you are ultra-stressed because you have to cook but also ten other things to do, it may be better to use something which doesn't take as long :)
> Its largely unrelated to preprocessing though, its secondary to that. For example if you have raw meat and its preprocessed by adding, say, MSG to it, you wont see any decline in nutrient value. Same is true when you precut apples and add preservatives to stop it to brown, no loss of nutrients there because the apples are still uncooked despite being processed.
i'd argue that for adding large amounts of MSG the converse of "lost nutrients" may be the case, as we've had no chance to adapt to such food. again not black & white, some amount of MSG is naturally in tomatoes etc. the vitamin c added to precut apples is likely negligible, although they'd last even longer if not cut :P
it's just my opinion and what i've found to work well for me, i can't point to any papers for these things.
I think youll find needing to cook them longer wont make a huge difference. The vast majority of the nutrients are likely lost early on in the cooking process. Any additional cooking wont make as big a difference.
I havent found any evidence to suggest there is an adapting issue here either. Most of the "chemicals" we use, as you point out, are just extracted from natural ingredients anyway. Those that arent havent really been shown to have any health effects.
@freemo
> I think youll find needing to cook them longer wont make a huge difference. The vast majority of the nutrients are likely lost early on in the cooking process. Any additional cooking wont make as big a difference.
seems to be right, with the exception of cooking in the microwave (which is imho under appreciated):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6049644/
> I havent found any evidence to suggest there is an adapting issue here either. Most of the "chemicals" we use, as you point out, are just extracted from natural ingredients anyway. Those that arent havent really been shown to have any health effects.
i was more thinking of the amounts here, which tend to be added in bigger quantities than naturally occurring.
Sure.. hey look cooking fresh is definately better because you can do things raw or close to raw, plus its just going to taste better. But my overall point is, prepossessed food is not going to make a significant health difference for most people presuming your picking healthy foods, which often you may not be if its processed too much.
@bonifartius, I wonder how much of the nutrients are lost because they dissolve in water. Do you have any data including grilling or sautéing for comparison? Also for low-starch fruit how much better it would be to not reach well done or at least better control the temperature via sous vide?
@freemo @aexiruch
imho, what is healthy regarding to food can be completely different from person to person as long as you get everything that your body needs. not eating preprocessed stuff is nearly always good though.
hot take: ultraprocessed vegan food from around the globe is probably morally worse than locally sourced free-range meat. "think global buy local" :P