Food engineering has grown to the point where food is treated as “products”. Taste, feel and looks are highly engineered to optimize our sensations.
Looks: Marketing of food products use wildly unrelated items (glue to mimic cheese, shoe polish to mimic seared meat) to make the food look appetizing. This sets up for completely unrealistic standards.
Taste: Sugar has been pushed in our diet under different names (dextrose, fructose, corn syrup). Salt has been optimized to excite our senses. But the proportion is carefully controlled to ensure we never feel overwhelmed or saturated with a particular taste.
Feel: Food companies hire the best engineers to optimize surface characteristics to ensure their ‘products’ has great sound, great texture and so on. Pringles famously worked on double curvature for specific mechanics.
These food companies have created ‘products’ that are extremely far from nature. They are engineered heavily to maximize profits at the cost of consumers health.
What can you do:
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Read labels: Most countries have food regulatory bodies that require companies to publish their nutrition info. Check the “daily value” information. Check the “serving size”. DO NOT TRUST WHAT IS PRINTED ON THE FRONT. The real info is always in the back in a boring black and white table.
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Spread awareness: Companies are betting on the fact that you are too tired, too occupied or too ignorant to care about all this. I understand you may have bigger problems. But always remember that you may have 1000 worries but when you have a health issue you only have 1 worry.
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Reach out: If you struggle with food addiction and over consumption don’t struggle alone. This battle cannot be won alone. You are fighting against an army. Join local support groups. Help yourselves to gather allies. If you know know someone who is struggling, reach out and help. Any food that you make at home ( no matter what you make) cannot possibly be as unhealthy as ultra processed crap.
There is some good information in here, but it’s also mixed in with some bad.
I don’t have the energy to go through it all. But for just one tiny example: Parmesan cheese and cellulose. First of all, bad information says “cellulose is what you find in wood. You’re eating wood!” Yes, cellulose is in wood. It’s also in VEGETABLES. If you eat vegetables, you’re eating cellulose. Furthermore, it’s a small percentage of the grated parmesan cheese, and it’s there to prevent the cheese from caking and clumping. This video claims [approximate quote] “There’s hardly any cheese in parmesan cheese” which is a bullshit claim. It’s usually like 95% cheese, if not more.
Just one example.
And yes, there is some good information in here.
But also, regarding being able to pronounce ingredients: Look up what makes up an apple. It’s chemicals you can’t pronounce. And yet apples are most certainly healthy.
This video is really not a great source of information. Marginal at best. I think they were trying, and there is some good info in there. But it’s mixed in with some pretty marginal info.
Reading the labels helps avoid the truly shitty makers. There was a brand of fake parmesan cheese that got outed for having higher than 45% filler in their grated Parmesan cheese. 50% of the filler was the cellulose powder.
The worst offenders are NOT a small percentage. It’s usually easy to notice because it’s so much cheaper than the rest on the shelf but not always
Iirc they called them bulking agents in the article I rememebered