Ultra Processed Foods Warning Labels

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Well, not on FOOD, but yes on edibles with well documented health issues. But mostly I would look to stop any form of governmental subsidy now enjoyed by those products.

d fb

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Here’s the problem. There is nothing inherently wrong with a donut, macaroon, cheese cake, Twinkie, or funnel cake. Eating one every so often is not going to cause harm. What is unhealthy is eating these to excess, but then that is probably true for most things (it is after all part of the definition of “excess”), even broccoli.

It is easy to say nicotine or cocaine or heroin or Facebook is bad and the people trying to get you to use these things are evil. But you really can’t say the same thing about Key Lime pie or gelato even though these in excess will lead to higher risks of diabetes and heart attacks. It will require a nuanced social moral opprobrium.

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I think we can expect to see the demise of all warning and information labels in the near future. The next step will be public information in scientific studies being banned.

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I love Key Lime pie! I haven’t had any since I left California.

Humans evolved to be omnivores, to eat just about anything and everything but we have yet to evolve to deal with artificial foods like refined sugar and seed oils.

These days I’m cooking with lard, available in all supermarkets in Portugal. Jewish cooking uses chicken fat, it tastes a lot better than most fats.

The Captain

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In Portugal the labels are in several languages but mostly Portuguese and Spanish. I wanted to buy a salad dressing but it had aceite de colza. I looked it up, it’s rapeseed oil which the Internet claims is “excellent for your health.” Is it?

There are two main types of rapeseed oil: culinary and industrial. The culinary version, also known as canola oil, is used in the kitchen for cooking. Industrial rapeseed oil is mostly used in the chemical and automotive industries.

Yuck!

Rapeseed oil is naturally low in saturated fat and high in unsaturated fat, which is excellent for your health.

Another version, a more accurate version, said, “Rapeseed oil is technically good for your health.”

What does technically mean? It means that it is in accord with the official food guidelines,

  • Saturated fat is bad
  • Unsaturated fad is good

a myth that has been amply debunked but the official food guidelines have yet to catch up because it would be bad for the food industry.

There is a lot of misinformation (politically correct lies) on the Internet. One needs a lot of discretion to separate the wheat from the chaff. Too many people peddling snake oil.

I found a very interesting one, an anthropologist debunking paleo diets based on the evidence of thousands of years of diets. Morphology tells us a lot about the foods humans evolved to eat. Humans are omnivores, we eat just about anything and everything that is currently available but are not yet adapted to industrial food.

But even the presenter got something wrong, that hunters would eat every bit of the prey. Not so, it depends on availability. Zoologists claim that some carnivore monkeys eat the liver and discard the rest when the hunt is plentiful. I found that strange but seagulls confirmed the finding. This year, for the first time, I saw seagulls pecking at dead pigeons. I figured they would eat most of the flesh but not so. The last case I saw up close. The seagull had pecked at the pigeon’s gut ignoring all else. Liver? Most likely. I love chicken livers! There is a great Hungarian chicken livers recipe. And foie grass.

When I was a kid there were lots of organ meats on the menu, Tongue, brain, kidneys, livers, lung, tripe, sweetbread, prairie oysters, nothing went to waste. Portugal, being “poor,” still offers most of it. The lack of organ meats is the result of demonising cholesterol, at least in part.

The Captain

Note: Dr. Christina Warinner is not peddling any competing diet, just laying out evidence that humans are opportunistic predators.

Anthropologist Debunks the Paleo Diet

Christina Warinner, Ph.D., of the University of Oklahoma debunks the paleo myth in her presentation at the 2016 International Conference on Nutrition in Medicine.

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That’s like the daily weather hysteria in the Shiny media. Technically, there is a “marginal risk”, which means 5%, of “severe weather”, therefore their forecast is for 60mph wind and 1" hail. The local media has probably forecast 20 of the last 2 “severe” events.

Steve

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My semi-tame neighborhood feral cats do the same thing…sometimes eat a whole rat but other times leave most of one (as a present?) minus, I’m guessing, the liver or some other tasty organ. Then later they come to the door and ask for a more civilized entree.

Mike

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I agree.

We’re all responsible for putting healthy food in our bodies, but our government can help!

https://www.axios.com/2024/07/03/fda-brominated-vegetable-oil-ban-food-additives-ban

BVO was banned in the UK (1970), India (1990), the EU (2008), and Japan (2010). Now it’s banned in the US (2024). Booyah…better late than never.

Maybe you don’t drink a whole lot of fizzy citrus sodas. Well, our food safety regulations in the US allow other nasty additives outlawed in other countries. Things like potassium bromate may be in the baked goods you eat.

Imagine warning labels that read -

  • “Warning, this food product contains additives that may cause cancer!”
  • “Bakers overexposed to the additives in this product experience diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal / digestive tract pain and irritation,”

We’re all accountable for what we choose to eat, but there’s no reason why sketchy food additives should be allowed in our food.

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I remember when the warning first appeared on packs of cigarettes. The tobacco farmers were howling “my family has been growing tobacco for over 100 years. they want to destroy my way of life”. I supposed there are people who would object if a factory making poison gas was shut down too.

What the “news” reported as 'ultra processed" was tube steaks and bologna, bread of any type, and all types of soda/pop. But we know how USians are. They will keep consuming the same stuff, and demand the drug companies come up with a pill to counteract what they eat…like the coworker I had that ate a lot of steak, in spite of having elevated cholesterol. He thought nothing of eating steaks, because he took pills for the cholesterol.

Steve…Coke shareholder.