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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

Are you talking about following a raw food diet?

No. Whenever the word "diet" is used with regards to not eating "this" or only eating "that", something has already gone wrong. A "diet" is a voluntary restriction (well, usually after some involuntary event). But you only need to restrict foods with your brain by choice if you first disobey your body's needs.

You should not drink Coke because it has WAY too much sugar and WAY too little of anything beneficial. If you tried to consume the amount of sugar in Coke by eating apples, you would be too full long before you get to Coke-level sugar intake. That's because of all the other stuff in an apple; it's not concentrated sugar.

Your body is a wonderful thing. Respect it and listen to it, it will keep you healthy. That's literally its job, and it only knows how to repair and heal you. It will keep the things it needs, and discard the rest. You can't "over-consume" if you eat real foods. Your body won't let you; you'll get full and stop. You can only over-eat engineered foods, which over-saturate sugar|fat|carbs|salt|etc, which then necessitates a "diet".

> A "diet" is a voluntary restriction

The word "diet" is not always about restriction. Surely you've heard people use the term "standard American diet" which doesn't have anything to do with restriction.

I assume you are talking about a raw diet (not necessarily calorie restricted diet) because of your comment about minimizing steps between soil and mouth.

This description of the word "diet" is overly simplistic and marketing centric. A diet is just the schedule (list) of foods consumed, as in "I have a terrible diet" or in "pandas exist on a diet of bamboo shoots and leaves". This term is overloaded in areas like the weight-loss industry to refer to voluntary limited intake, but it's still a diet as in an enumerated schedule of specific foods. "Going on a diet" is often used in the context of specific health goals as distinct from the normal "diet".

There's an episode of Mad Men where they are coming up with pitches for weight loss products and losing weight is referred to as "reducing", a term from before the word "diet" was used as you've described.

You would be full eating three medium-sized apples (https://www.fatsecret.com/calories-nutrition/usda/apples ; https://www.fatsecret.com/calories-nutrition/coca-cola/coca-... ), with (by my back of the envelope calculation) not much more total volume than the can of Coke? Would this be longer lasting than the bloated feeling from the carbonation?

Have you tested this?

Uh, no?

Taking plants from the soil, or fruits from the tree/vine, and trimming, washing, cutting, and cooking are typically considered steps that are unavoidable for some plants.

The difference between a baked potato, potato chips, and Pringles is what we're talking about. The oil used for potato chips (and Pringles) originated from plants, but it has undergone several steps from plant to container of oil.

Aren't chips blown to smithereens and then reconstructed with the help of all those random ingredients? I think this is what "ultra-processed" means and what differentiates these foods from getting your bag of potatoes and frying them at home.

I don't know about Pringles / Lays &c, but I've never seen two potatoes of the same size and shape in a bag, so there must be some way they manage to get all their chips to look the same.

Pringles are reconstituted from powdered potato - which should be obvious as they're all the the same size and shape, and have a weird texture.

Lays and nearly every other brand are just thinner versions of potato chips you could make yourself at home (cut thin, fry in oil, dress in salt). Nothing "blown to smithereens" there.

Pringles also contain corn, rice, and wheat.

https://www.pringles.com/en-us/products/pringles-the-origina...

Lay's Classic contain only potatoes, currently with a grab-bag of oils:

https://www.pepsicoproductfacts.com/Home/Product?formula=LBS...

The most "basic" mass-produced snack food award goes to: Fritos!

https://www.pepsicoproductfacts.com/Home/product?formula=LBS...

(US formulations only. Your gas station may vary.)

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