Ultra-processed food took over your shopping basket
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
> What kind of snob would disparage a Creme Egg or fail to recognise the joy of licking cheesy Wotsit dust from your fingers?
I am thankful that my parents valued gardening for sustenance, making meals at home (not that I don't know what a Happy Meal is, just that it was a rare treat), and blocking out playtime outside, during which time if we wanted to eat it'd have to be something we foraged. They weren't perfect, of course, and I've dealth with mental-health issues over the years, in part decreasing the barrier to treating my symptoms with lower-quality food more frequently throughout the day. I've finally re-adjusted to eating less frequently and making those meals out of mostly Nova 1 and 2 ingredients (I see sardines are Nova 3-4, unfortunately; I wish I lived closer to the water). Anyway, I have the privilege to be one of those snobs regarding many of the foods my childhood peers are nostalgic for.
> The question is whether these foods would still be harmful if the levels of sugar and oil could be reduced.
> On the unprocessed diet, a hormone called PYY, which reduces appetite, was elevated, suggesting that homemade food keeps us fuller for longer.
> But if you accept the argument that processing is itself part of the problem, all of this tweaking and reformulation becomes so much meaningless window-dressing.
While it's not an easy road at first, it feels right (for me, at least; someone who's struggle is less about weight and more about mental health and how I feel in my body) to go longer without food and to prepare sit-down meals of minimally-processed foods, eaten slowly until sated. After a day or two without eating, those meals are heavenly and I'm much less likely to want to reach for a distraction while I'm eating. One thing that really helps is adding salt to warm/hot water, about 0.003-0.005 ratio of salt to water by weight (sea water is on average 0.035 salt to water).
I've found Life in the Fasting Lane, by Jason Fung, Eve Mayer, and Megan Ramos to be helpful,
along with
Metabolical, by Robert Lustig
and
The Fasting Cure, by Upton Sinclair (for the 100-years-ago perspective; in some ways not much has changed)
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi also writes positively about fasting in one of his earlier books (in which there are some bits of advice I'm still skeptical about, mind)