Comment by chubot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chubot | Hacker News Reader

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pork-belly contains a ton of fat and is just innately unhealthy

Citation needed. Not all fats are created equal.

For example Inuits consume 50% of their calories from fat [1]. They do not have the "western diet disease" (obesity, heart disease, etc.)

It really IS the processed fats that are bad for you. You can see this all over the world when Aboriginal peoples are introduced to industrial cooking / ultra-processed foods / "western corporate diet".

They literally get addicted, and their body size increases by double digit percentages within a generation. This also happened in the US, but happens faster around the world. The average body weight for a man in the US increased from ~166 in the 1960’s to ~196 today [2].

This is an amazing fact that needs an explanation if you don't believe it's a result of the rise in industrial cooking.

And if you believe in capitalism, you would have to explain how this would NOT happen. Why wouldn't companies gradually develop cheap, consistently manufactured, addictive foods? The profit motive would lead them there, even if it weren't intentional.

I suggest reading some of Michael Pollan's books like Omnivore's Dilemma or Cooked; they talk about this (and probably talk about Inuits specifically as far as I remember)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_cuisine

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/12/look-...

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Another anecdote: I know someone from the Midwest with "industrial cooking disease" who dropped from 350 lbs to 200 lbs in a year by going on the "carnivore diet", where he ate exclusively beef and chicken (yes, literally).

I remember someone else remarking the same thing on HN, and observing that going vegan can have the same effect.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19177116 (not sure if this is the thread but there are many of them on HN)

Hypothesis: Both the carnivore diet and a vegan diet are BOTH suboptimal. The reason that they help many people with "western diet disease" is that you eliminate industrial cooking / ultra-processed foods from your diet.

The human body is extremely flexible and can metabolize a wide variety of things in the environment. What it apparently can't metabolize is addictive foods that corporations have created...

> Citation needed. Not all fats are created equal.

Filipino diet, consisting of fresh chicken, fresh pork, fresh fish, and fresh rice will lead to heart attacks at relatively young ages.

Nothing against my family or heritage. But these things are known. Balancing it out with some "processed" canned veggies for +Fiber intake can grossly help and improve overall health. And cutting out the fatty Lechon (aka: "Island Pork" with the apple in the mouth) helps too.

Also bad air quality, bad water quality, etc. etc. lead to other issues. But diet is clearly a problem IMO. Even if it is a fresh chicken and/or fresh Lechon/Pig (which really is quite tasty, and barely processed at all)

Hahaha, the Filipino diet involves FAR more than those fresh foods you list. The poverty experienced in that nation is extreme and very few eat properly. I'd wager that they may have worse health metrics than americans in nearly every category (including obesity)

Worse, everyone (even americans) tend to agree that "ordinary" Filipino food is less healthy (and less tasty) than basically anyone elses. Compare your experience at jolibees to at McDonald's. I claim that almost everyone (even people who hate both) will prefer the food at McDonalds, and that the average item from McDonalds is healthier than from Joliebees

Filipinos trying to bring up their good food and "somehow were still having bad health outcomes" is pinoy pride going wrong. And who can forget about THIS delicacy? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagpag

Yes, but... How much lumpia and stir-fry is going along with the fresh chicken, pork, fish, and rice? My personal anecdote of around a dozen Filipino friends shows me that they're eating their mothers fried food far too often. Preparation matters.

Stir-Fry is unprocessed foods. Its just rice, veggies, and meats.

That's what's so ridiculous about this "unprocessed" vs "processed" label. Lumpia is just flour + water for the wrappers, and then fillers (beef+rasins is pretty common, but maybe you're a veggie-lumpia person). Ultimately, its just flat + fresh dough wrapping fresh foods. Nothing processed about it at all.

I bet you that frying your food and filling it up with oils and salts probably has more to do with your health than how "processed" those foods are.

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If you've been to the Philippines, you can watch people literally rip the plantain (a bananna-like fruit) from a tree, wrap it, and deep fry it for you. Its about as fresh and "unprocessed" as it gets. Literally, these people just sit on the side of the road selling this stuff. Its kind of awesome. (Or they'll climb a tree and cut a fresh Buko / Coconut for you. Etc. etc.)

That doesn't make it any healthier. Now it makes it really, really tasty and a really good experience. But no way in hell am I going to call that healthy eating.

Frying (and cooking in general) is absolutely a type of processing. It generally degrades a food's micro-nutrient content to at least some extent (chemical breakdown of vitamins due to the high temperature, and leaching of nutrients in the case of boiling).

That's not to say we shouldn't cook our food (and in some cases cooking can make food more nutritious by destroying anti-nutrients like phytic acid), but we should be aware of how the cooking time, temperature, and method affect nutrient content. Boiled vegetables are generally going to be less nutritious than steamed vegetables, for example.

And of course, frying tends to use industrially produced oils which are highly processed. Oily foods like avocados that you find in nature are going to have some fiber and other nutrients; the process of removing all that to produce pure oil is a form of processing.

That's a good point, and I agree with everything you've said, especially anecdotally that oils in particular have more to do with nutritional health than processed foods... But, my original point was that oil _is_ highly processed.

> But, my original point was that oil _is_ highly processed.

You're not familiar with this new "unprocessed" vs "processed" vs "ultraprocessed" designation then.

https://worldnutritionjournal.org/index.php/wn/article/view/...

Oils are a "Group 2", low-processed food. Page 5:

> Group 2 items are rarely consumed in the absence of group 1 foods. Examples are salt mined or from seawater; sugar and molasses obtained from cane or beet;honey extracted from combs and syrup from maple trees; vegetable oils crushed from olives or seeds; butter and lard obtained from milk and pork; and starches extracted from corn and other plants

Group 2 foods are apparently NOT processed. For some reason, I didn't make this designation, I just make fun of it on the internet.

Group 3 foods are "processed", and Group 4 foods are "ultraprocessed". This designation is completely and utterly meaningless in regards to health.

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That's why something like LOL Lumpia + Stir Fry dinners is at worst... "Group 2", unprocessed by this designation (Both Oil and Flour are just Group2 designations, the most processed items in Lumpia). But if you eat a low-fat cereal + yogurt + applesauce, you're eating ultraprocessed stuff.

I bet you that "Group 4 Ultraprocessed" Low-fat fortified cereal + yogurt + applesauce meals are healthier than "Group 2 Unprocessed" Lumpia + Stir Fry dinners with fresh Lechon + Rice.

vegetable oils crushed from olives or seeds; butter and lard obtained from milk and pork; and starches extracted from corn and other plants

The distinction is accurate: These are unprocessed oils, and there is a big difference between them and the processed oil that fast food is fried in, and that industrial cooking uses.

The same plaintains fried in ultraprocessed vs. unprocessed Oils is going to be worse for you. See for example "The Dental Diet" for its effects on your teeth, but there are other nutritional reasons as well. (Anecdotally, I think lack of nutrients in the fat makes you hungrier; it makes it "addictive". If you cooked in real fats, you feel sated with very few fried plaintains.)

The way I think of this is: "Food is not a linear combination of macronutrients". All fats aren't equivalent; some fats are very good for you. Again Pollan's books are very good on this subject.

I'm not very familiar with the ingredients in Filipino cooking, but since it was an American colony in 1898, I would guess the habits are strongly influenced by industrial cooking (spam being popular, etc.) It's a mix of local ingredients and cheap ingredients bought from Western corporations.

You can see it in a Chinese-American family pretty clearly: the grandparents eat fatty cuts of meat (but small portions), fish heads, etc. and live until 100 years old. The parents are mixed -- they eat some traditional foods (fish and vegetables), but cook with American vegetable oil instead of soybean oil, and got addicted to McDonald's in the 80's. They have more health problems in their 60's and 70's a result (hypertension, heart disease), and they're not going to live until 100. Even without obesity, they still have these problems. Their kids are fatter than both generations, and as a result less healthy, at least without a change in diet in adulthood, etc.

I suspect it's clearer in the Chinese case because there was less western influence (fewer occupying armies and less trade). Whenever Western processed food companies take hold in a foreign market, the health of the population suffers. This is well known. And I would guess it happened earlier and to a greater degree in the Phillipines than in other countries.

I'm not claiming to be an expert here, but it seems suspicious, and some Googling reveals that people are studying that issue. That is, because of history you may not remember what is "traditional", but I can more or less see what was traditional (non-Western) from my grandparents born in 1916.

> The distinction is accurate: These are unprocessed oils, and there is a big difference between them and the processed oil that fast food is fried in, and that industrial cooking uses.

Five Guys uses pure peanut oil for their fast-food frying. Does that make their burgers / fries any healthier than alternatives?

Or is the innate carbohydrates + oil combination a high-calorie, fundamentally unhealthy thing to consume, no matter how "Fresh" the potatoes are or how "unprocessed" the oils are?

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