I didn’t want to take too much on in one thread. But I’m also doing the above with regards to foods with added sweeteners. I’ve eliminated the sugar in my tea and coffee. I’m not a soda drinker nor a sweets/desserts craver.
GMO tomatoes have been off the market in the U.S. since 1998 and they are not allowed in Europe either. They were not responsible for the trend toward less-flavored tomatoes that would ship better, and they’re obviously not to blame today.
Look, I think we all get - and probably mostly approve of - what you’re intending to say. But you’re saying it badly and your facts are nonsensical.
Given the time and the space, I’d absolutely try my hand at much more than the three giant pots of various herbs I plant every year on the deck. I even tried tomatoes in a pot one time. Didn’t yield much and the taste was so-so. Probably because of the variety I chose. But yeah… under different circumstances, I’d absolutely have a proper garden.
I appreciate you tolerating my nonsense.
I said a gyro WITH a bag of chips. I mean, you wouldn’t replace your sour cream & onion chips to just eat a bowl of sour cream and onions so I’m guessing you won’t eliminate the chips from your gyro-flavored chip repast either.
It’s nice that we live in a time and a country where we can worry about what we eat instead of worrying if we have enough to eat. The main problem this country faces is eating TOO MUCH, and not the food additives (which are all FDA approved).
I don’t agree that an In N Out hamburger is nutritionally void. It’s full of good nutrition, just eat in moderation.
And don’t touch my Doritos!
PS. We don’t eat out much because of the cost and because restaurant food tends to be high-calorie.
I guess that’s the crux of my OP. I might not forgo the bag of chips with by gyro. But I’d certainly forgo the bag of gyro flavoured chips for an actual gyro. Extra calories be damned. Because it certainly would be the more satisfying option, right? I mean gyro flavouring vs. gyro sandwich (with plain chips, if I must). How is it even a contest? 
I thought this was going to be about how after you eat a bunch of Doritos, your tongue gets so saturated with the flavor-dust that they start to taste like plain corn chips. Or does that only happen to me?
Because that’s a totally unrealistic alternative. If you want chips, you don’t want a gyro. You want chips. And you might very well want them in any of a thousand different flavors.
You can create false dilemmas like this all day long. Why would anybody want watermelon ice cream when they could have watermelon? Why would anyone want a cherry Coke if they could have a cherry? Would would anyone have bourbon-flavored salt when they could just have bourbon?
Nobody thinks that way other than you. A flavored food is its own thing, not a substitute for a different type of food. Moreover, flavored foods are one of the great wonderfulnesses of modern times. Your argument just doesn’t work for us.
No it doesn’t, shandy is fruit drink flavor mixed with beer flavor. It doesn’t taste like a wine cooler.
There was a brand called Green Sands I loved, tasted like lemonade mixed with beer, but somehow tasty.
I think we really need to get out of the mindset of “healthy” and “unhealthy” foods. no one food product is inherently “unhealthy.” what matters is how much of it you eat, and in what ratios to other foods. I mean, I’m sure we can all agree that spinach is a “healthy” food, but if you ate nothing but spinach (and even other leafy greens) you’d be up shit creek in short order. I’m just so sick of hearing people say dumb shit like “mayo isn’t good for you,” or “fried foods are bad for you.”
It’s hard to get home-cooked foods to taste the same as processed foods. If someone eats a lot of weird, artificial flavours, I think they are going to end up eating more processed foods, because that is the flavour profile they are used to. But I’m not seeing that home-cooked, unhealthy foods (like cake or chips) are less unhealthy than mass-produced, unhealthy foods. Onion powder is highly processed and nutritionally void whether you add it to your chips yourself or let a factory do it.
Right, but the point still stands. “We” DO go to fast food restaurants because we don’t care about nutrition, we like Nacho cheese flavored Doritos shells on our Taco Bell tacos.
Your casual dismissal of a fantastically successful business model in the OP is just strange because it only targets the type of people that would do what you’re suggesting anyway.
I still don’t get the premise. If it’s OK for me to buy base foods like chips and high-flavor foods like onions and combine them at home, why is it not OK for me to let someone else combine them and buy the result?
That’s crap. There’s foods that are unhealthy. You can enjoy them in moderation without putting yourself on a death path but that doesn’t change the fact that some foods offer little benefit or large detriments to your health.
Eh, I’ve gotten pretty sceptical of the general “healthy food” hypothesis as well. Obviously you need to eat enough calories and nutrients to stay alive and avoid diseases of malnutrition, and over eating to the point of severe obesity is unhealthy, but beyond that the whole thing seems pretty confused and hand-wavy.
I’ve decided to go organic and the reason is that our food supply here in US is being controlled by big business and that means we are eating what greedy companies like Monsanto and Dow and a bunch of others want us to eat.
I used to blow off the organic way to eat and I’m not a big conspiracy person but you know what? there is something going on in this country and other countries that allow GMO tainted food in the food supply.
Over half the people in the US are obese now and England is seeing the obesity rate going up as well.
I’m not going to go into all the rotten things Monsanto has done over the years all the law suits and the fact that Monsanto lobbyists are given government jobs in the Clinton administration and that Obama just signed a bill saying that Monsanto can’t be sued if it’s found that their foods cause health problems.
If you eat organic it tastes better and you will eat less because you will feel more satisfied.
Our meat supply is jacked up on hormones and antibiotics and these poor animals are feed GMO grains so pretty much everything you eat now in the grocery store and fast food restaurants are full of genetically modified, pesticide, and MSG riddled food.
There is a growing movement in this country to try and let people know what is being done to our food. The media is afraid of these big companies and usually won’t cover rally’s protesting GMO’s and Monsanto. Politicians on both sides are paid to vote against legislation like Proposition 37 that would require the labeling of foods that contain GMO’s. Monsanto developed AGENT ORANGE, DDT, ASPAERTAME, GMO’s, and ROUNDUP PESTICIDE and god only knows what else they have up their sleeve. I heard they are getting into genetically altered salmon and other animals. This really is Frankenfood.
By the way the organic people call Hillary Clinton “Bride of Frankenfood” which I think is funny.
All the fast food joints add MSG to their food and MSG makes you want to eat more. Like we need that! Monsanto doesn’t want you to know you are eating their food but if GMO’s are so good for you why the secrecy.
The information is out there and all you have to do is put a search in You Tube and they have documentaries and news outlet clips.
It’s hard to fight these companies because they have many powerful people willing to be paid off.
People are getting fatter and fatter and everyone wants to blame the person getting fat but nobody is looking at the companies that are flooding the food supply with this junk.
By the way Doritos are full of MSG and most likely GMO corn.
Go organic, it helps the little guy farmers and it’s better for you, it tastes better, and it’s nice to screw these big companies out of some of their profits.
It’s not even like flavored foods ever actually taste like what they are supposed to be. Getting a real pizza is pointless if you are craving that fake pizza flavor, for example.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Most flavors aren’t all that good. You might try them for the novelty, but most people don’t wind up loving them–which is why they disappear. Only the most liked flavors endure.
I totally agree with your basic point, and I think it’s very well put.
BUT.
I just got back from the store, where I happened to see a bag of those gyro-flavored potato chips. I stood there for a while, trying to decide whether the novelty and the possibility that I’d really enjoy the flavor would be worth the price and the extra salt and fat in my diet. And I almost bought a bag, until I realized that I was looking at the picture of a gyro on the package and thinking in the back of my mind, “Mmmm, gyro… That looks really good,” and I realized that my desire for that bag of chips was partly really a desire to eat an actual gyro like the one in the picture.
My thesis (and that of the book I mentioned in my OP) is that flavoured food that contains no actual natural ingredients of the food it’s trying to mimic is ultimately much less satisfying than the real thing. There is research that shows that people who drink diet sodas tend to over-eat because what they are consuming in the form of fake sweetness that they are craving is ultimately not satisfying to the body. So they have another later. Or they have a donut or fatty snack because they are still craving something satisfying and of course they should be able to eat it because they’re drinking a diet soda with 0 calories.
It is not a false dilema to suggest that while half the population is seriously overweight, they are seriously under-nurished with respect to nutritionally sound foods. Perhaps you don’t think there is a causality connection between obesity and the pervasive supply of highly processed and flavoured food, but I believe research supports that thesis as well.
And while we rarely see cases of scurvy or rickets, you can’t for a second believe that the population is generally healthier eating flavoured foods than food in its less processed state. Why are cereals and milk fortified with vitamins? Because people don’t consume enough greens and fruit to provide them with the necessary nutrition the body requires. So if a serving of cerial contains 100% daily allowance of whatever it is, it also contains a bunch of sugar that your body doess not need in such highly processed and concentrated amounts. You buy the cereal because the box says it’s good for you and it’ll taste like blueberries. But fact is, there are no real blueberries in the thing. It’s all manufactured flavouring and sugar. Which tastes great. But does it provide you the nutritional value of adding some real blueberries? I’m guessing not.
I beg to differ but many people think the way I do. And many more are coming around to the same conclusion. Documentary upon documentaty, book upon book is available on the subject. Some go to extremes I don’t agree with but there is a sane and reasonable argument here and it isn’t on the side of more processed/flavoured food.
i do agree with you about this… “A flavoured food is it’s own thing.” But is it a good thing?