/ck/ - Food & Cooking

[Anonymous No.5674163]

Another month, another New Scientist cover story on our diets.

Opinions?

[Anonymous No.5674167]

>>5674163
>Opinions
Are worthless.
We need proven facts and evidence.

[Anonymous No.5674814]

new scientist sucks so bad man

[Anonymous No.5675325]

>>5674163
I'll give a fuck when I see nature run an article.

[Anonymous No.5675398]

Fat is good. Even saturated fat should be part of one's diet. Only transfat should be avoided

[Anonymous No.5675404]

my rule is if eating a plateful of something makes you feel shitty, it's bad for you.

if i ate nothing but steak for dinner, i'd feel fine
if i ate nothing but broccoli for dinner, i'd feel fine
if i ate nothing but rice for dinner, i'd feel fine
if i ate nothing but cheetos for dinner, i'd feel like throwing up

cheetos are bad for you

[Anonymous No.5675412]

>>5675404
I'd feel more shitty downing enough broccoli to keep me alive, calorie-wise, than I would cheetos.

[Anonymous No.5675415]

>>5675404
>on /ck/ everyone has weak digestive tracts

I've noticed this.

[Anonymous No.5675420]

>>5675415
weak against poison?

[Anonymous No.5675431]

>>5675420
Cheetos aren't poison

[Anonymous No.5675437]

>>5675431
Why do I feel horrible if I eat a packet?

[Anonymous No.5675438]

>>5674163
>Did we really get 40 years of dietary advice wrong

We based it off of dubious scientific field work and data gathering that is for sure. It was one of those things where the very first take on the matter just ended up sticking, no matter how many follow up studies would prove inconclusive or outright contradict.

[Anonymous No.5675440]

>>5675437
Dehydration and hypernatraemia.

[Anonymous No.5675442]

>>5675440
You really don't get the point, do you?

[Anonymous No.5675454]

>>5675442
Do you? You'd probably survive for longer eating nothing but cheetos than nothing but boiled rice.

[Anonymous No.5675462]

>>5675454
Why is that?

[Anonymous No.5675468]

>>5674163
>Fact
I take it this isn't an academically acclaimed magazine?

But yeah, the public was fed (heh) a bunch of bullshit while the real food scientists worked for the big food companies (scientists gotta eat too).

Salt, Sugar, Fat was an interesting read.

[Anonymous No.5675471]

ITT: Broscience

[Anonymous No.5675474]

>>5675471
And cancerous memes.

[Anonymous No.5675479]

>>5675468
>during WWII scientists had to figure out a way to get soldiers to want to eat more food under the stress of combat conditions. (because a calorie deprived soldier is an ineffective soldier)
>begin to scientifically and systematically discover the exact ratios of flavoring and calories to make people want to eat more
>after the war apply all the lessons they learned to supermarket processed foods, in the name of profits

yikes, no wonder people are fat.

[Anonymous No.5675486]

Story of my life.

Work at a hospital pharmacy, think: "hey, it's a medical establishment, everyone's healthy. Right?

>22 year old skinny fat man child
>literally a hypochondriac, can't eat dairy cause lactose intolerance, can't eat coconuts just because, doesn't drink soda because self diagnosed ulcer problems, all food makes his tummy hurt.
>EATS FROZEN BURRITOS AND FASTFOOD LEFTOVERS EVERY DAY
>tries making 'homemade' food, which consisted of frozen breaded chicken tenders with rice tossed in "stir fry sauce"
>gets sick, goes home.

Everyone else:
>gluten intolerance
>no dairy
>allergic to oranges, watermelon, pineapple
>diet consists of pill buffets and frozen dinners

What is it that makes them do this? Is it the attention they crave? Most of the entire population does not have allergies or intolerances, when they feel 'sick' ITS A FUCKING SIDE EFFECT FROM FOOD

YOU EAT FOOD
STOMACH DIGESTS
SHIT HAPPENS

FUCK

[Anonymous No.5675488]

>>5675479
thats not entirely true.

its only really true with MSG

[Anonymous No.5675498]

>>5675488
so it wasn't because of WWII that they found out that intense flavors actually serve to satiate the appetite? and that food with less intense flavor actually keeps the palette wanting more? and that there is a magic ratio between flavor and no flavor that leads to people eating more?

[Anonymous No.5675499]

>>5675438

Put away the conspiracy theories.

[Anonymous No.5675502]

I don't know why people think the American public ever collectively decided to follow dietary guidelines. If anything though, the guidelines promote too much fat.

[Anonymous No.5675515]

>>5675499
the fact that you really can't study saturated fat's effect on the body in isolation was enough for me to question the prevailing rhetoric. so you take two people and feed one a diet high in saturated fat and the other a diet low in saturated fat and you see what happens. seems like it would be a sound study but the problem is that one is going to be eating a diet much higher in calories, unless you decide to balance the calories in which case the person eating a low fat diet is going to be adding something else in that the high fat diet isnt getting. it can be vary hard to nail down any firm conclusion in this kind of highly variable study. that was enough for me to decide to take ANY nutritional study with a healthy helping of salt.

[Anonymous No.5675516]

>>5675462
It has more protein and some salt. Obviously, you'd have to drink water to survive on either.

[Anonymous No.5675525]

>>5675498
In WW2 the Japs just shoved MSG up the ass so people thought it was delicious (US cloned) everyone else was just salt up the ass

[Anonymous No.5675531]

>>5675499
>cherry picking studies

did you even read that book? it was an absolute slog simply because of the amount of scientific literature it references. study after study after study, both proving and disproving the hypothesis and plenty of inconclusives. and I didnt say anything about grains or beans but nice straw man. my opinion on grains and beans is that they are good for you. i dont even vehemently dislike refined carbs, i just don't have a very high opinion of them. the main thing, i think, is just not to eat too much, whatever you are eating.

[Anonymous No.5675542]

>>5675515

But we can study the effects of saturated fat, and our inderstanding of saturated fat jives perfectly with the way virtually every study ever shows saturated fat to do what we expect them to do. Before you think "but I've seen studies that say the opposite," I implore you to actually read and understand studies that fad dieters on fringe health websites show you before you accept them without skepticism over the word of the world's top health experts

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/76/3/504.full.pdf

Saturated fat causes a lowering of LDL recepters, leading to an increase of plasma LDL. This alone is a fact that can't be disputed, the main thing people try to argue is that plasma cholesterol concentrations are a risk factor for heart disease. Knowing that saturated fat and serum cholesterol are undoubtedly linked, the only way to argue in favor of saturated fat is to find a way to make high cholesterol numbers seem benign or beneficial, which works on people who aren't familiar with medical science, but not on people who are out curing heart disease in patients by lowering cholesterol levels

[Anonymous No.5675544]

>>5674163
If we're eating incorrectly, why did people living 100+ years ago with diets significantly less healthy by modern standards not have an obesity epidemic?

[Anonymous No.5675546]

>>5675525
>In WW2 the Japs just shoved MSG up the ass so people thought it was delicious (US cloned) everyone else was just salt up the ass
and what they discovered is that when a flavor, be it saltiness or otherwise, reaches a certain threshold your body turns off its appetite, and you feel satiated. flavor in and of itself contributes to that. this is why you can never stop eating saltines once you start. they are just flavorless enough to keep you wanting to eat more, to keep you chasing that salty taste. its why coke and pepsi have to be loaded with sodium. it balances out the obscene amount of sugar.

[Anonymous No.5675550]

>>5675544
Because they didn't sit and look at a computer screen all day long.

[Anonymous No.5675559]

>>5675546
>its why coke and pepsi have to be loaded with sodium

>Coca cola
>40µg/ml sodium

>Pepsi
>88µg/ml sodium

http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/chemicals/sodium.pdf
The taste threshold for sodium in water depends on the associated anion and the temperature of the solution. At room temperature, the threshold values are about 20 mg/litre for sodium carbonate, 150 mg/litre for sodium chloride, 190 mg/litre for sodium nitrate, 220 mg/litre for sodium sulfate, and 420 mg/litre for sodium bicarbonate (6)

[Anonymous No.5675563]

>>5675550
So this is a consequence of the industrial and technological revolutions?

[Anonymous No.5675569]

>>5675559
>micrograms
try milligrams

[Anonymous No.5675582]

>>5675531

>it was an absolute slog simply because of the amount of scientific literature it references

Quantity over quality, right? Watch Videos 1-16 in the "Nutrition Past and Present" series on this website, starting with this video.

http://plantpositive.com/2-the-journalist-gary-taubes-2/

[Anonymous No.5675583]

>>5675569
No, it's µ/ml which, very conveniently, is equivalent to mg/l. At least, that's what the labels say. If you're so sure that they're lying, run some tests on the product, you'd stand to make a huge amount of money. The amounts of sodium are lower than your average mineral water.

[Anonymous No.5675593]

>>5675583
small exerpt from their own nutrition information pdf

notice the mg

[Anonymous No.5675597]

>>5675582
no, im not going to do that, you've made your point, which is that people have wildly varying opinions the matters of nutritional science from people who write non-fiction books on the subject to people who make posts on anonymous image boards. i get it, point taken, the only nutritional advice ive ever taken to heart is 'don't eat too much'

[Anonymous No.5675602]

>>5675593
That's 40mg in 354ml of cola which translates to 112µg/ml or 0.112mg/ml. I used the USDA for my values. That's still below the taste threshold.

[Anonymous No.5675604]

>>5675593
its inconsequential, the point is that fizzy drink syrup is incredibly sweet, and if it weren't balanced by the bitterness of carbonated water you would probably spit it out. but when combined its just one the verge of being really sweet and its that taste that you keep chasing as you drink more and more soda.

[Anonymous No.5675606]

>>5675604
Assuming
>>5675546
is you. Why do you keep changing your story?

[Anonymous No.5675615]

>>5675606
i think i was wrong about one thing and that is the amount of sodium in soda, it does have sodium, though not much of any consequence, but i have not changed my story on the flavor effect the soda producer is trying to achieve in the customers mouth. which is not to give it a satisfying amount of sweetness, but instead to give it just enough to keep a person wanting more. i know you feel like you've caught me in a lie or something, but really you've just corrected a factual error in a relatively minor detail, and for that I thank you, but otherwise you've contributed very little to the conversation

[Anonymous No.5675618]

>>5675597

>you've made your point, which is that people have wildly varying opinions

My point was more that some peoples' "opinions" are factually incorrect. I don't even think Gary Taubes believes the things he says. He's a journalist who built a career out of writing contrarian articles, starting with a hugely criticised New York Times article where every doctor he quoted came out to say that he had grossly misquoted them. It's simply his job as a journalist to write books that sell, and what better way to sell a book than to tell people bacon is healthy.

[Anonymous No.5675630]

>>5675618
even if you are 100% correct, im still not going to stop eating bacon, or real butter, or drinking whole milk. there are about a million ways to die, and massive coronary failure is as good as any of them.

[Anonymous No.5675631]

>>5675499

here comes the VIDF to shit up another thread

[Anonymous No.5675632]

>>5675615
Perhaps we haven't evolved to find drinks refreshing. Certainly, in nature, there are very few liquids routinely consumed by adult humans (milk in infants being an example of an exception) that constitute an entire feeding session.

I find it very hard to imagine a soft drink that would be considered both satisfying and delicious. I usually limit myself to a serving and make up any residual thirst with water but it could just be that it's not something that's possible to make. However, when I have drunk larger quantities of soda, the limiting factor for me is finding it too sweet after a larger amount.

Also, from a profit driven perspective, wouldn't a product that drives you to consume more be a natural result of modifying your product based on what sells well? Finally, do consumers choose products that they find themselves unable to stop drinking over those that are more delicious (assuming that's a possibility) or is the former a result of the latter?

[Anonymous No.5675635]

>>5675630

I'm not asking you, eat whatever you like. All I ask is that people stop casting confusion and misleading others about what foods are healthy

[Anonymous No.5675637]

>>5675632
yeah, you're just micro-focused on soft drinks. im not limiting my statements to soft drinks. rather its the modus operandi of the processed foods industry as a whole.

[Anonymous No.5675638]

skip lunch and abstain from fatty/sugary foods and you'll drop weight without even realizing it.

[Anonymous No.5675644]

>>5675635
were Ancel Keys initial studies not scientifically dubious?

[Anonymous No.5675649]

>>5675637
That's the pitfall of sweeping generalisations.

What truly differentiates the processed food industry from the rest of the food industry (if there is indeed a clear demarcation)? Sure, they're making food on a budget so they use somewhat less appetising ingredients but ultimately they seek to make a product that sells well. What determines the difference between food that is cynically designed to be addictive and food that is addictive because it's delicious?

[Anonymous No.5675657]

>>5675644

They were not. People claim he cherry-picked data out of a larger body of countries he had data for, but in reality, as had already been explained back in his day when he first published his work, he only chose the countries for which the data was reliable and usable. It wouldn't make sense to use the data from Mexico, for example, because at the time Mexico didn't even have an official death record system. Several European countries were largely affected by World War 2, their diets changing dramatically during this time, and millions of refugees fleeing from one country to another.

[Anonymous No.5675658]

>>5675649

the difference is the smug sense of self-importance one gets from telling everybody The Truth™ about [processed foods; artificial sweeteners; dietary fat; the rothschilds/illuminati; 9/11; bohemian grove; the holocaust]

pick one or more and you instantly become important in your own mind

[Anonymous No.5675674]

>>5675658
I was rather hoping
>>5675637
would answer (assuming you're not him)

I have always been confused by those who claim that there is some sort of evil in the actions of the budget food industry in making their food more addictive and can't really see the difference between addictive food and delicious food.

[Anonymous No.5675679]

>>5675649
i dont think that people in the processed food industry are involved in some kind of grand conspiracy. i just think that the industry self organizes around a profit motive which incentivizes getting people to eat more. shit man, obesity rates are skyrocketing. i don't care whether someone contributes to the problem because of some devious motive or whether they legitimately think they're doing good. i only care that the result is a world filled with lard-asses.

[Anonymous No.5675683]

>>5675679
>incentivizes getting people to eat more
Do you believe there is a clear difference between food that is delicious and food that is addictive? It seems to me that it is more an unfortunate consequence of evolution that the foods we find tastiest are also those that will do the most harm when consumed in excess. However, I'm happy to be proven wrong in this assumption and I also appreciate the subjective nature of taste that complicates the question.

[Anonymous No.5675689]

>>5675683
>Do you believe there is a clear difference between food that is delicious and food that is addictive?
this is just straw man i never said a word about addiction

i know that there are stringent guidelines used by the food industry to tailor their food to an exact standard that results in hitting carefully selected flavor profiles, and that if those flavor profiles resulted in people wanting to eat less of that food, their company stock would go down.

[Anonymous No.5675698]

>>5675674
i'm not him, no. in truth it really is about worldview: it's important for some people to continue believing what they already believe because in their minds it speaks to their veracity and therefore the soundness of their mind. i could elucidate all of the reasons in detail but none of them have much to do with any of the actual issues surrounding those bizarre opinions.

people are fucking cowards is the short answer.

[Anonymous No.5675703]

>>5675689
By addiction, I meant designing foods that encourage people to eat them in the greatest quantity. Is there any real difference between foods that just taste good and those engineered (whether through direct design or market forces) to encourage repeated consumption?

[Anonymous No.5675706]

>>5674163
problem is there's no hard science, the only fact that scientist did get right about dieting, that was squelched by popscience media bullshit, was that we were eating too much.

too busy demonizing specific nutrients to fucking take a step back and notice that the nutrient wasn't the big issue, but eating too much of everything was.

tl;dr
don't eat so fucking much.

[Anonymous No.5675707]

>>5675706
this is one of the only things we know that we know. so much of nutritional science research is known unknowns--we're lucky that it hasn't become as polluted as climate or tobacco research. yet.

[Anonymous No.5675716]

>>5675706

>I'm uneducated, so that means everything I don't know isn't real

[Anonymous No.5675739]

>>5675703
no what Im saying is that flavor can actually contribute to the sense of 'feeling full' in itself. so food with strong flavors will actually curtail that desire to continue eating, now whether or not that strong flavor is actually good or not is something else. but if you want to both feel full and eat good food its a lot harder than just cracking open a bag of funions. but most people dont have chef levels of expertise in creating flavor profiles so they just resort to cracking open the bag of funions, which tastes good, but it doesn't taste enough that they feel full. in my personal experience, its just easier to get used to the idea that not everything you eat is going to taste good.

[Anonymous No.5675759]

Everything shifts so much that I can't take any nutritional information seriously at all.

I suspect that all food except for a small set of plants is bad for us, and all we can do is try to find out what's least bad.

[Anonymous No.5675765]

>>5675759

Whole plant foods seem to be the safest bet. Eat different colored plants, don't eat anything that's been stripped of its natural fiber and nutrition, and get daily exercise

[Anonymous No.5675767]

>>5675739
Why would a consumer seek out foods that don't satisfy unless they were the same as those which taste good? It would take mass co-ordination on the part of the fast food industry to ensure every product stayed within those boundaries and even slight variance would upset the market.

[Anonymous No.5675769]

>>5675759

I actually feel the opposite, I think that almost everything is completely fine for us with a small set of things that are bad.

[Anonymous No.5675782]

>>5675767
what you've described is pretty much exactly what happens. they even created a term for this thing they're trying to achieve but I cant remember what they called it from when I read Salt, Sugar, Fat, which is by the way, all Im trying to do, to relate some of the things I remember from that book. anyways, there is scientific method the food industry uses to get you to eat its food, and they have gotten very good at it, so good that you don't want to quit eating their food. what else do you want me to say to you? no their food is not meant to satisfy they admit this, its right in their advertising "once you pop you can't stop!". they don't even pretend to be trying to satiate your appetite.

[Anonymous No.5675810]

>>5675782
>they don't even pretend to be trying to satiate your appetite.

so what's the problem? sounds like honesty in advertising and we don't only eat food for satiation and nutrients--you might have noticed this by the variety of types and flavors and the creation of nearly calorie free snacks which deliver enjoyable tastes and smells with on satiation by design.

what exactly are you talking about if not >muh evil corprashuns?

[Anonymous No.5675821]

>>5675782
I just don't think there's difference between optimising a food to taste good and optimising it to encourage consumption, simply because it would be so easy to wreck the curve by making something that tended towards the former. People eat more of food that tastes good than food that doesn't, that's pretty straight forwards, unfortunately, the food that taste the 'best' (within the confines of the subjective nature of taste) are often those that, given unlimited access, we will eat to unhealthy excess. Just as we'll be driven by nature to fuck ourselves into poverty because the mechanics of the world are quite different from how it was 10,000 years ago.

[Anonymous No.5675841]

>>5675810
this is what im talking about, as i said before, and you can read it, or don't, i dont care. there is information in it, what you make of it is up to you. i dont even need to sit here and try to attack processed food giants, and the fast food industry and anyone else making a fortune selling food to the masses, and quite frankly, neither does the book in pic related. people's waste lines speak for themselves.

[Anonymous No.5675856]

>>5675821
>I just don't think there's difference between optimising a food to taste good and optimising it to encourage consumption

well, if you want to find out, there is a book, its called Salt Sugar and Fat, and I read the book, and btw I got a 30 on the ACT in the reading section, and I want to point that out because that is the only area of expertise I can claim in this matter, so through my reading I can relate to you, in this book, nutrition scientists in the WWII era were tasked with figuring out a way to make soldiers under duress of combat, whose appetites were suppressed from being under so much stress, eat more of the food provided to them. so they found out which MRE the soldiers preferred in taste, ie, which they thought tasted the best, and they compared that information to the MRE which, they found out, when the soldiers did eat, they were able to eat more of, and they found out that it was a different MRE. the MRE they liked the most was some intensely flavored lasagna or something, and the one they ate more of when they ate it was some buscuit or crackers or something. and they concluded that because of the intensity of the flavor in the one MRE, it was causing the soldiers to feel full, whereas the other MRE was relatively bland, so the soldiers were eating more of it to feel full. and on that, im going to let my argument rest. obviously, its a very interesting subject, and i implore you, find out a lot more about, and come back here, and tell me if im full of shit. i will be glad to have more input on the matter.

[Anonymous No.5675866]

>>5675398
the opposite of transfat is cis fat

scum

[Anonymous No.5676017]

>>5675856
I'll certainly look into it but there's a world of difference between being presented with one defined meal and having a free market to choose from. If it were that simple, you'd get things like unsalted chips outselling salted and flavored.