It’s really just shorthand. Chemicals with complicated sounding names are more likely to be additives that would not be found in a home-cooked version of the item.
Saying “chemicals” itself is shorthand. Saying that you don’t want foods with chemicals in it is really just saying you don’t want foods that are so highly processed that they need complex chemical engineering to keep them palatable.
Highly processed foods, and the additives in them, don’t exist to make food better, they exist to make food cheaper. They make food palatable when it’s made of cheap ingredients. Don’t want to use expensive cream in your Ice Cream? Use something cheaper and replicate the mouthfeel with carageenan and Polysorbate 80.
I can’t cite supporting that claim, because I never claimed that. I don’t believe I claimed that all of the responses to any such question were the DHMO meme, only that it happens, and that I think it isn’t helpful.
Seriously, what kind of talk shows do you listen to that introduce a subject matter expert as simply a “scientist from the university”? Did they really not give any more information about his credentials than that?
I generally try to avoid so-called processed foods when I can. I’m not afraid of them; I don’t know for a fact that they’re harmful, but I’ve never seen a concise explanation of why they’re safe. What I do know is that in other countries where they habitually eat fresh fruit and vegetables, people don’t ride around in scooters because they’re too obese to walk.
“The longer the word, the more afraid you should be” is stupid advice to be sure. On the other hand, I don’t see any compelling reason to buy bread with HCFS, azodicarbonamide, etc. I can make it at home with 4 or 5 ingredients, same with ice cream. Am I missing out on anything or harming anyone? Given that this is a relatively new development on the human timeline, is it really so stupid to think that the jury might still be out?
This summer I taught English as a foreign language in the UK. I taught around 50 Italian teen students for a fortnight, three groups over six weeks. They were aged from 13-17 and were, mostly, from southern Italy. Some were from Milan, Pisa and Roma but most were from the south. So, over the six weeks, I and my colleagues taught around 2000 Italian teenagers who were mostly from agricultural, non-industrial areas and brought up on a Mediterranean diet. The girls said they learned cooking from their mothers and grandmothers, the boys liked hair gel.
Not one of them were overweight. Not a single one, out of the 2000 or so, were fat. I’ve taught in China and Korea where you’d get one or two in a class who has weight problems, but none we could say (and we spoke about that in detail) could be described as overweight. A few girls were ‘buxom’, although we avoided the subject, and a few were underweight. None were UK/US fat. In the Middle East and the UK - places I visit a lot - I see many people seriously overweight. I also see, in the UK, ill people going into McDonalds and Burger King. I go in for a coffee (when it’s the only option) around 10 or 11am and I see sick people waddling in for their fix. I despair for their health. I worked in McD’s when at college and only survived for four days on a Maccy D’s diet - I felt like I’d been poisoned and couldn’t eat any more. I also had some bathroom problems after four days on that diet. I hadn’t before, or have since, felt as ill as when I ate there for three meals a day, for four days. The food is poison. I have a coffee and a burger there, once a year at most, only when there isn’t anywhere else available. It’s shit. Or worse than that.
I’m not really sure what the OP was ultimately driving at, but it seemed like a dig at people who don’t eat processed food by lumping them in with some fool who is terrified of long, chemical-y words.
I think JustinC was trying to say that even though produce and McDonald’s are both chemicals in a literal sense, it’s very likely, if not completely evident, that they have differing effects on the human body. So if someone opts to buy carrots instead of a package containing ammonium sulfate, even if it’s because they don’t know what ammonium sulfate is, maybe it’s not such a terrible thing. And what is to be gained by asserting this semantic point that everything is technically a chemical?
No, most chemicals used in food make the foods more shelf-stable. They preserve the food and the quality of the food. There are also a lot of “stabilizers” that effect the… lets lump it all into “viscosity” of the food, if you will, like the carageenan you mentioned. From what I understand, such ingredients are NOT a substitute for good cream as you said, that isn’t a thing.
Let’s also take into account that freqiently the “chemical” brands people find much tastier in blind taste tests, when they don’t know which brand they’re eating.
Oh, no shit, sherlock? who knew eating only fast food would make you shit like a race-horse? That’s why you don’t eat it regular.
Speaking of which, do that many people eat it that regular? Why do the self-righteous d-bags who try to shove their non-science nonsense always act like there’s huge underclass of people who eat McDonald’s every single day for lunch and dinner. And you better believe that a huge underclass of minorities and working class peope is how they envision it, because these sel-righteous types are extremely insular and deep down racist though they don’t want to admit it.
Most of the time people have a deli close to them at work rather than a fast-food joint, at least in the populated areas (NYC/LA/Chicago, etc).
There’s this thing called “genetics”. Also epigenetics; entire populations can change their gene expressions based on what happened to their ancestors and the local environment/weather.
Oh jeez, come one. Melodram.
It’s just food. It’s just there when you don’t have the time and would prefer not to spend the money
I literally don’t unserstand what the hell you’re saying here.
Oh how nice of you. Yes, you’re a good samaritan, really, not a stuck up, holier than though doosh who wants to dictate what other people eat.
I gave a quick one above. Most of the additives are synthetic versions of things found in nature, or are in some class of compounds that already exists in nature and we know can be broken down by the body.
Aspartame, for example, isn’t technically “natural”, but it might as well be. It would surprise me if it HASN’T been proposed that they engineer/breed yeast or some microbe to make it so as to make manufacturing it cheaper because you could then grow it in fermentation vats.
Aspartame is two amino acids linked, and ester-connected to a methanol molecule. Your body already has the biochemical machinery to break amino acids apart, and to break ester bonds apart, and your body is quite capable of handling the resulting amino acids and methanol