I used to love cream cheese until I looked at the ingredients list. Buncha weird ass bean gums and stuff. No thanks.
Now I use ricotta, or just butter.
Now I use ricotta, or just butter.
> pasteurized milk and cream, whey protein concentrate, whey, salt, carob bean gum, natamycin (a natural mold inhibitor), vitamin A palmitate, cheese culture.
https://www.myfoodandfamily.com/brands/philadelphia/product/...
We can summarize this as "a bunch of milk products, salt, vitamin A, an antifungal, and carob bean gum".
It seems pretty inoffensive. There is one (1) bean gum in there, but at this point I'd ask whether "carob bean gum" is different from "carob powder".
For example, quoting from wikipedia:
> Locust bean gum [another name for carob bean gum] occurs as a white to yellow-white powder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locust_bean_gum
It appears to be the powdered endosperm of carob beans.
If this is bad, wait till you hear about chocolate. Or refried beans.
> Full Fat Soft Cheese, Salt, Stabiliser (Locust Bean Gum), Acid (Citric acid).
Which is similar, except without the mould inhibitor (only allowed on hard cheeses here) or vitamin A.
Honestly cheesecake is better with ricotta anyways, and my waist can do without bagels, so I'm kinda post-cream cheese at this point.
I don't really care what it is exactly; a food additive that didn't exist until a research team found it 60 years ago, I can do without.
You've made that perfectly clear, but your personal standards for food safety are entirely arbitrary and not reflective of reality. If you tried applying those same standards to medicine, for example, you'd find that simple injuries all of a sudden become deadly and for no legitimate reason.
Also, gums (particularly locust bean gums) have been used in food for hundreds of years, and in other uses for thousands of years. They're nothing new, and your concerns are imagined.
The point is not that I'm right because it works for me; the point is that if you follow recommended diets from various governments, you'll end up on average worse than my entirely arbitrary made up diet I do to feel rustic. Government can be wrong about HFCS and seed oils being safe, and so instead of trusting them, I will just eat what is proven to be safe and wholesome across human history: meat, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, fry in tallow, drink bone broth. Your appeal to science is precisely what I'm avoiding.
You were just told that gums are a simple and naturally occurring ingredient and have been used for thousands of years, and your rebuttal was to refuse them because you don't eat compound ingredients recently invented in a lab. I think that says everything about the mental gymnastics you're doing to convince yourself that you've got it all figured out.
If you eat nuts, or the skins of many fruits, or any root vegetables, then you are consuming gums (aka polysaccharides (aka sugar)). You just don't call it that, because it's one ingredient among many in a larger product -- like say, a potato.
You seem to think that I'm arguing that I have the optimal diet, or that if you can prove something I don't eat is safe, then I'm wrong. Obviously, trivially, there is something invented in the past 2000 years that is safe and fine to eat. I just choose not to eat that. I have literally not made an arguable claim in this thread other than stating what my diet is. When you call my diet irrational or unscientific, you fail to understand that I explicitly distrust and ignore nutrition science. Yes, it's naturalistic and unscientific; that is intentional.
Except that all you've done is repeatedly try to convince everyone that gums are "nasty" and "invented" and "unsafe" within the personal anecdote of "I don't eat gums and look at me, I'm the definition of perfect health, and that means you shouldn't trust any science!"
Despite your insistence that you've "literally" made no claims at all, here is a shortened list of the false and disinformative claims you managed to make within the span of five brief comments:
1. Seeds and gums are "unsafe" because "reasons."
2. Gums were "invented in a lab."
3. Gums are "unnaturally and chemically produced."
4. You can "taste the gum" in "cheap" cream cheese products.
5. Cream cheese contains "other unsafe and lab-invented ingredients."
6. Food science is "arbitrary" and "isn't even science."
7. A naturally occurring process "doesn't exist until it's observed," at which point it becomes an "invented manmade process."
8. Anecdotes can "prove" safety, but scientific research can't.
9. You are "one of the few remaining people" in the world to not be overweight.
That's a whole bunch of completely untrue claims for "literally only stating what my diet is," and the last claim is easily one of the most arrogant and ignorant statements I've ever heard, given that only 39% of the global population is considered "overweight or obese." It's very telling that you consider yourself to be so uniquely special despite being in the same classification as 4.75 billion other humans, which explains why you're so overly (and mistakenly) confident about your anti-science views.
> If someone would like to replace it with a traditional fruit skin gum or whatever, then I would eat it.
It has been explained to you multiple times now that locust bean gum -- the gum used in nearly every cream cheese brand -- is a milled seed that has existed and been used for thousands of years. It is completely natural in every conceivable way, it meets all of your arbitrary pre-science and pre-modern requirements, and is chemically the same as a "traditional fruit skin gum." So if you're willing to eat fruit skins, you shouldn't have an aversion to locust bean gum. Yet, you're still here trying to convince people that it's "unsafe" and "invented recently," and that your anti-science philosophy is something to be applauded.
Quite the contrary. Your intentional dedication to irrationality and disinformation is quite disturbing, and that you think irrationality is a characteristic that makes you better than other people is even more troubling. Nobody is trying to convince you to eat bean gums, but you're decidedly trying to convince everyone not to.
Now please feel free to go back and find all the other points you've created from a phantom to be mad at. I'd say at least 5 of those bullets are not based on any coherent reading of my posts.
Below are all of the direct references from the list, where you make baseless claims in an attempt to convince everyone that cream cheese and seed oils and bean gums are unsafe. You zeroed in on trying to use xanthan gum in an attempt to repeatedly advertise your entirely (and self-admittedly) irrational belief that anything discovered less than 2,000 years ago (no matter how naturally occurring) is unsafe, while everyone else was talking about the actual product in question -- cream cheese, for which locust bean gum is almost universally used.
> Yep, it's a chemical product for sure, full of xantham gum and other such "ingredients" [...] you can actually taste the gum [...] Lots of nasty things [...] like seed oils [...] the ingredient was invented in a lab less than 100 years ago [...] a food additive that didn't exist until a research team found it 60 years ago [...] current state of nutrition "science" [...] and I'm one of the few remaining people to not be overweight [...] I will just eat what is proven to be safe and wholesome across human history [...] I have literally not made an arguable claim in this thread other than stating what my diet is
Please explain to me how you didn't say any of those things -- I copied them directly from your comments -- or how they magically mean something other than what you're plainly saying.