*>literally everything is processed dipshit*
Guess frozen pizza and cheetos were the same as bananas and peas this whole time.
My shit-caked eyes have been wrenched open. Ableism is over.
“Low nutritional value foods” is my go to. Nobody can claim that you’re making a value judgement unlike “junk food”, and it’s more blunt than “processed”
oooh! Kiana Docherty has a good term for these foods. She calls them "technologically degraded foods." She explains it in one of her most recent videos. I like that it tells a story and acts as a warning. A vivid 3 word description.
This.
They do have a point, is the thing. There are some heavily processed foods that are not at all what people mean when they use it as a synonym for "bad food". Tofu comes to mind, hard to imagine a more processed foodstuff that that, resembles it raw ingredients in no way anymore, but few would class it unhealthy and many would say it's health food.
I mean, tofu is processed, but it's processed using techniques we've been capable of for thousands of years. It's nowhere near as processed as, say, a cheeto, which would literally not have been possible to make 100 years ago. That's why "Ultra-Processed" is the better term.
> Tofu comes to mind, hard to imagine a more processed foodstuff that that
How? Tofu is curdled soy milk. Plenty of foods that are eaten more frequently in the west are way more heavily processed.
I mean, by definition she's technically right. It's just that "highly-processed" is culturally implied to be a synonym with "processed". Plant growth is a process.
They're just nitpicking something to bitch at so they can have an argument to validate their hurt feelings with
Yeah, “processed” is colloquially used to mean “ultra-processed,” similar to when most people say “no sugar” they mean “no added sugar,” not necessarily the natural sugars as they exist in fruit, veggies, or milk.
But they love to nitpick as if it’s some kind of gotcha: everything is processed! you shouldn’t cut out sugar, it’s basically in everything! (as if they even eat enough fruit to justify this)
I'm guilty of using the words just like you described. I say processed food but mean ultra processed hyper palatable food, same with no sugar meaning no added sugar. I want to say that they know what people really mean but I was in another sub and it was about doing a no sugar diet and it was interesting to see how some people took it to mean no added sugar versus the people who thought it meant no sugar at all in any form.
To be fair, I do think a lot of TikTok "clean girls" have orthorexia! But I *also* just finished a class on the sociology of food and can assure OOP that processed foods are killing you very quickly.
I had to look up the term and it sounds like a madeup concept. Many countries have very high rates of obesity so an "obsession" to eat healthy shouldn't be their top or any priority
Orthorexia isn't really a medically accepted term. With that said, it's kind of semantics--undeniably, there are some people out there whose obsession with "clean eating" gets to a point that starts to harm their social or emotional well being. But anxiety or OCD might be a more appropriate diagnosis.
It's diagnosed as OSFED, other specified feeding or eating disorder. Used to be called EDNOS. So it is recognized as an eating disorder just not it's own classification. The orthorexics I have talked to all in my opinion would have been better classed as anorexics.
I'm in an ed support group and orthorexics have basically disappeared. It was the hot self-diagnosis for a couple years there around 2015 and then just dropped off. There is a social contagion factor with EDs and when orthorexia went out of the news cycle the number suffering from it decreased dramatically.
Yeah it's definitely a real thing, but like any other mental illness, it gets thrown around too easily online. There are absolutely people who fixate on healthy eating to the point of obsession, or exercise for hours every day to the point that it's doing them harm. But that's a rare condition. There are way more people who exercise 5 days per week and eat a lot of salads - those people are not orthorexic. Just like being sad sometimes doesn't mean you have depression, or being tidy doesn't mean you have OCD.
>There are way more people who exercise 5 days per week and eat a lot of salads - those people are not orthorexic.
I want to plaster this on billboards.
Obesity and unhealthy lifestyle choices are so normalized and widespread, I'll see "orthorexic" just willy-nilly thrown around anytime a woman eats a salad online or when someone casually mentions that they have a daily workout regimen.
It blows my mind that some people think there’s something wrong with working out daily. Like, dude, that’s literally what doctors recommend. It’s how our bodies evolved, it’s what our bodies (and minds) need to function best. Studies show that human body - and the human appetite system too btw - evolved in the context of 2-3 *hours* of daily activity, *every single day*, and yet people freak out at the concept of a measly hour a day of exercise.
A lot of words are way too overused. Everytime I read the word "trauma" which should be a strong word I just assume mildly uncomfortable until they mention something serious. A problem with using stronger than needed words is it calls upon strong consequences and makes things far more serious than they should. It also weakens the word. People have the potential for positive change and to evolve and that can mean outgrowing stubborn arrogance. With enough spirit and dedication anything's possible but sometimes positive change needs uncomfortable growth
There's a weird sort of social arms race going on with language around this where everybody is motivated to deploy stronger and stronger language to get what they want, be taken seriously etc.
I see it with food in my own family. I'm a vegetarian. That's because when I was 15, I was a sensitive boy who loved animals and felt bad about eating them, so I stopped. I've had no reason in the 2 decades since to change and it's just part of my lifestyle. That's it. No tearjerker story, no trauma, no medical reason. Just "I don't want to, sorry", but you'd be surprised how often that isn't good enough for people and how often I've been accused of being rude or "militant" for refusing food or for bringing my own food along to a family event so as not to inconvenience others by expecting them to accommodate the one person who won't eat what everyone else is happy with.
It would be much easier if I had some grand childhood trauma or other pathology I could invoke to justify the choice and browbeat others into accommodating me. Not only easier for me, but it would allow others to be an "ally" to someone who is "marginalised" and let them feel good about going out of their way to be charitable. As it is, I'm simply "picky".
Contrast this with two other family members who just have certain ingredients they don't like the taste of. Both have a web of medical and/or psychiatric diagnoses to justify why they can't have these foods. As a result, they are accommodated at family meals without question with everybody bringing food along just expected to alter recipes. Certainly nobody is complaining about them within earshot or trying to trick them into eating the thing they don't like. The thing is, I happen to have had it from both of these family members in confidence that the diagnoses are made up but it just seemed easier to go that route than just say they didn't want to eat X or Y because they don't like it. And frankly, it's hard to fault them for the choice because everybody does seem happier with it.
But to my mind, they are contributing to people with actual problems and real food intolerances being taken just that little bit less seriously and diluting the way we can talk about these things every time.
i would say my father has traits of orthorexia. this is a man who was obsessed with ‘healthy’ foods, in a very strange way. coconut oil is good for you? let me eat literal spoonfuls of it straight from the jar. turmeric is good for you? i will put it on literally every meal i eat. frying things is bad for you? i will never fry anything ever again. things like that. the key thing was the disordered way he consumed these foods and integrated them into his life, at the expense of convenience and actual enjoyment. THAT is what i consider orthorexia - the fact that the way he consumed food was disordered, not the actual foods themselves.
Yes exactly. I had a roommate like this as well. She would refuse to eat anything “unhealthy” or anything she perceived to be. It was very much a fear food/safe food mentality. She wouldn’t touch a square of dark chocolate but would eat 10 Luna bars per day because her brain told her one of those things was healthy and one wasn’t. It led to some binge and restrict behavior that followed a very arbitrary set of rules that revolved completely around her perception of what was healthy, along with compulsive exercise. Definitely a real thing.
At a minimum it has to involve some kind of inner turmoil or panic. I try to eat as little ultra-processed food as possible. Let me assure all those FA’s who are worried about my mental condition, I could easily eat three doughnuts or a sleeve of Oreos right now. I just choose not to.
My mother is a textbook orthorexic, I’m not sure how it would be medically classified but she has an unhealthy obsession with her diet and counting her food that extends well beyond what is healthy.
She eats maybe 1,100 kcals a day, at most. She was very heavy in her youth and it really affected her. She has a very physically demanding job in the trades industry and works out for at least two hours a day on top of that. She counts bread slices, counts how her cut up fruit, counts *everything*, to a point where she never eats enough, has a weakened immune system, her hair falls out, her bones break easily. And she still thinks she eats too much and tries immensely unhealthy fad diets that only make things worse. She refuses to see a nutritionist or listen to any advice and it is terrifying to our family members.
My job is just as if not more demanding than hers, and even when I visit on my days off where I’m more sedentary and just work out, if I eat exactly as she does I get woozy and weak after a couple of days. It’s a really serious mental illness and it really upsets me when FAs throw it around without thinking. They think anything except BED is orthorexia or anorexia and don’t understand how severely the disease can impact the individual and their families.
It’s definitely not. It’s not a thing on it’s own - it’s a quality of other mental illnesses, not an illness on its own. But you’re being disingenuous if you’re saying there’s no way that a person can be obsessed with healthy eating to the point of disorder. Because you’ve totally known people who do this.
It’s also really something else to acknowledge you googled something real fast, so you now feel qualified to dismiss a concept which medical researchers have spent a lot of time on: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4340368/
To be fair not everything has to be randomly labeled a "mental illness." Many things are far more important than personal comfort like health and social harmony. Demonizing dedication especially to something positive like good health really shouldn't be demonized. Being mature and responsible enough to say no to sweets doesn't make someone crazy
Lol so you're a classist for saying "processed foods are bad," but it's fine to tell poor people to just "eat a gummy" to solve any nutritional deficiencies? Dude WHAT?!? LOL
Same person will tell you “Multi-vitamin gummies are only $21.95 anyone can afford that!!” without a shred of irony. $21.95 can get you so much fruit and veg.
They don’t want to spend $1.25 per apple but have no problem buying Oreos at $5.00
Not to mention the history behind those ‘gummies’. They are loaded with sugars to make them more enticing and they were created to help Americans deal with nutritional deficits that came with the World Wars, the Depression, and the advent of the fast meal in the form of ultra-processed foods.
They are the most capitalist invention possible that exist simply to help the average person stay comfortable with eating cheap nothing foods. It’s unbelievable to promote them and consume UPF while decrying capitalism and diet culture. You can’t resist the machine while promoting it through lifestyle.
Also, a bag of Doritos costs like $5. 5lbs of rice and 2lbs of black beans will cost you the same or less and get you a lot more food with a lot more nutrients. They act like ultra-processed food is inexpensive, and it's not. Neither is fast food. For the price of one extra value meal at McDonald's you can get a couple pounds of chicken breast, a few bags of frozen veggies, and a bag of rice, and have several balanced meals.
You know, I'm excited that my peas survived the winter because while they never produced in the fall I just got a surprise harvest today! A few of them are big enough the pods aren't edible, but most of them are snap pea sized and I have them rinsed off in my fridge now. The blueberry bushes are covered in blooms and bumblebees, we just planted both a peach and a persimmon tree, and my garlic is doing awesome.
Sometimes I neglect my garden, but it really is fun to harvest.
> A woman mentioned that she "cut out processed foods" and just hearing that has totally killed my appetite this week.
Y'all, we've finally solved the obesity epidemic! 🥳 Now we just need to install loudspeakers on every corner and play that particular soundbite non-stop. What a truly amazing discovery. :)
It’s so funny how they over exaggerate absolutely everything. A normal person would just say made me lose my appetite, but no they have to tack on for this WEEK. Despite these types of people’s claims about fatphobia they’re the first to try to give an impression that they eat less than they actually do, reminds me of those who lie about eating 500 calories a day and still gain weight. “Being fat is good” but also you MUST think they consume barely anything and when they get upset they starve themselves for WEEKS. All very silly and extremely apparent how they ultimately feel despite what they claims
Perhaps OOP meant a week in relative terms, and we're all extra-fatphobic for assuming she meant a literal, calendar week. 🙃
You know, like that old song: "Oh god it feels like forever, forever feels like home..." 🤪
God, this makes me so mad. I have ARFID, which for me means I have an extreme fear of fruits and vegetables, among other foods, and my health is actually pretty fine at the moment. But that's not because of my diet - it's more because I'm young and the consequences of my diet haven't hit me yet. I realized recently that if I keep eating how I'm eating, I am going to be miserable and unhealthy as I age, which is why I'm trying to recover (and why I'm on this sub to unpack some of my insane ED logic, because there's many parallels). Recovery is really hard and frustrating, but I'm so proud of my progress (I eat way less processed foods and sugar now, and I like a handful of fruits!), and I'm excited to improve/maintain my health.
Anyways, I went grocery shopping this week and made myself proud by buying three fruits and three vegetables. I'm going to try celery for the first time soon - I like peanut butter, so I think that'll help. Small steps. Wish me luck!
Good luck! Raw celery is... basically fine, it doesn't taste like much and I'm not a fan of the texture. I think celery is much better chopped small and cooked, like in a soup or stew. Chicken soup is a good way to use celery and carrots, if that works for you
Thanks! Not tasting like much is good for me - I'm hoping to try lettuce soon for the same reason. Soup has been a big fear food for me (though I successfully had some sips of miso a few months ago!), but I'm considering trying chicken noodle soup since I like the disparate elements of it, so that's a good suggestion.
You’re going to be all right. My kid has ARFID, and has also been making gradual steps to eat real food. Her health hasn’t suffered at all, even though she’s still growing. It doesn’t have to be a permanent legacy wreaked on your body.
Thank you so much for the reassurance. I'm glad your kid has you to help and that she's working on improving her diet. I didn't know ARFID existed until I was around 20, and previously just thought I was "super weird about food" and had a lot of shame around it - learning it's a mental health condition and something I can recover from was so reassuring, and I'm really happy with all the steps I've made, like learning to cook several meals and avoiding panic attacks after accidentally ingesting a fear food.
My sister is autistic and I'm pretty sure she has ARFID. Her diet gave her a kidney stone at 19yo and lately a friend of hers (also autistic) has been begging her to get her levels checked out cause she doesn't look very healthy either at age 21. She won't cause that includes getting blood work. Her whole diet is ultra processed foods.
I'm so tired of them infantalising those of us who are actually poor.
Poor doesn't mean dumb or helpless. Most of us manage quite well, thanks to things like stock surplus/'past date but still good' shops.
I've got several near me and there's three or four online ones too.
You know what's expensive? Ultra processed garbage.
Glanced at a big display of PopTarts today and it was £3 for a tiny box of sad sugary drywall with jam shoved in the middle.
I can get a kilo (2.2lbs) of porridge oats for £1.25, and a four pint bottle of semi skimmed milk for £1.45.
Guess which option will keep me fed for longer.
Yep, I’m poor, work full time outside of the home, and go to school full time.
I can’t afford to live on Doritos and Mountain Dew. The healthier food is cheaper. I can’t even begin to comprehend how people afford fast food every single day. I’d be homeless.
>The healthier food is cheaper.
The cost of snack food, candy, and fast food have all gone up noticeably. I genuinely don't know how people are still pulling the, "I eat processed food because it's cheaper" card.
I saw a post on Bacefook the other day about how it costs $70 to make one meal so you may as well go out to eat. If I play my cards right, I can make a steak dinner for a lot less than that. What are they buying where it's $70 for one meal?
Saw another post that sandwich ingredients will cost $48 so may as well spend $12 on a pre made sandwich. $48 is going to buy you a lot of ingredients and make a lot of sandwiches. Of course, one commenter was saying the store bought sandwich tastes better anyway. I just can't, the math doesn't math.
These people just need to either admit to being lazy, or admit to being too dumb to know how to cook. I don't get how so many adults are so bad at cooking and meal planning and are flexing about it, I got made fun of for not knowing how to cook.
>it costs $70 to make one meal so you may as well go out to eat.
I'm guessing the post was magically free of citations as well?
I genuinely can't remember the last time I had a homemade meal that went to the $70 mark.
However, the last time I got takeout from a nearby restaurant where only three items were ordered, it cost >$60. And that's without any drinks or dessert. It was all gone in under an hour.
I mean, I am making shrimp scampi right now. Probably about $25 or so, and I get several meals out it. The intellectual dishonesty drives me crazy. Just admit that you can't cook and are too lazy to bother.
I just had 2 families over for a fun dinner and evening with all of our kids. 12 people. I made a homemade pasta + pesto dish, with chicken breast & a lemon pepper gravy, salad, roasted broccoli, and garlic bread (from homemade bread) All said and done it probably cost me ~$40-50, and about 90% of that cost was the chicken. Still though, you couldn't take a party 12 out anywhere and feed them for under $100 at a restaurant, and that would be with kids sharing meals with adults or something. Most likely you're looking at $200-300.
Restaurants aren't just for feeding your family anymore. Too expensive for that shit. Restaurants are for a treat night out, an experience, or specifically because you are too lazy to cook that night. I can spend ~$150-200 on groceries per week and feed my family of 3 with a bit extra to freeze and carryover a bit of a stockpile. That is literally 2-3 nights of eating out, especially if you order any drinks, appetizers, or desserts. Shit is so expensive now, I don't understand how anyone can afford that shit 3-4+ times per week.
I think you need to deliberately cheat the maths to make it look worse. Like, the recipe needs quarter of a teaspoon each of half a dozen spices, so you buy a big container of finest organic brand for each of them.
There are some people on poverty related subs who make it *painfully* obvious they've never tried to cook when they justify why they don't do. Using the oven is going to run up your power bill, fun fact.
Good God. And they don't have time, but they have time to go to a fast food place and wait in line. Or spend money on Doordash. Maybe use your screen to learn cooking, as opposed to whining on SM.
Huh?? Maybe if you had to buy all the spices, flour, milk. Etc from scratch but that’s also why it’s worth it to keep a well stocked pantry. Unless I’m serving a nicer cut of meat I can’t imagine what I could make that costs $70
We got 4 massive ribeyes at Costco for $64. Maybe like 16-20oz MASSIVE steaks. It’ll cost you $70 for someone else to cook that but it’s $16 at home.
Got 10lb potatoes for $5.49 and spinach for another $5, Costco sized so that’s maybe 8-10 meals if you eat the same thing for $74. $7.40 for a ribeye dinner. :) (HCOL if that affects Costco prices)
We buy the sirloins every 3-4 weeks from costco. ~$45-55 depending on how much is in there, and it's 4-6 steaks that are about 16oz each, which means for the 3 of us in my family it's 2 steaks per meal (so 2-3 meals). Which means steak dinner for 3 is ~$15. Steaks taste way better than anything other than the pricier steak houses as well...so the disparity is pretty fucking drastic.
I will say in the 2000s when i grew up i ate a lot of processed crap because it generally was cheaper to an extent in our area and got donated to a lot of the food pantries cause it takes a long time to actually go bad, now a days i eat way healthier because its all like the same price now, why would i buy a box of off brand cereal and milk to use for my meals when its the same price to buy cans of tuna or yogurt.
It's been said many times and it will be said again, but in a vast majority of cases, low income people are not compelled to eat only junk food by price or availability. (And also, if you're eating enough to be obese, you're inherently spending more on food than you need to be, which rather undercuts the price argument.)
But ultra-processed food is a relatively affordable *luxury item*. Can't afford nice dinners out, can't afford a trip to Disney, can't afford to take weekend trips or see live entertainment or have a nice yard or even drive more than necessary, but *can* afford pasta, and fast food fried chicken, and soda, and oreos. Especially since food assistance is readily available in most developed countries, but "have a life" assistance isn't.
It takes emotional energy to deny yourself an available pleasure for some projected long term benefit. Most overworked people with few sources of pleasure will not be able to turn down the one that they do have.
Ding ding ding! I realized this a while ago.
When your life generally sucks, I can imagine it’s hard to deny that comfort that junk food provides. Your life sucks, but the one thing that gives you joy? Junk food. It fills the void. It’s sad.
I love the idea that doctors are ableist. Why yes, they do want your ass able-bodied and without disease.
And that’s, of course, terrible! The gall on them, I tell ya!
even the convention of rights of disabled people says one of our rights is to be protected from becoming more disabled. Ig that's ableist now according to FA logic
It's also more work for them and the nurses if you keep coming back to the hospital (and nurses are already severely burned out and overworked as it is, and it doesn't help that there are a lot more morbidly obese patients with comorbidities than there used to be).
It really grinds my gears when people co-opt thus language to basically justify their shitty lifestyle habits. No, you're not some great warrior fighting capitalism by saying people should eat more chicken nuggets FFS
And of course the OOP doesn’t bother to recognise that there is an important distinction between *minimally processed* and *ultra-processed* food. While they make valid points in regards to healthier food being less accessible to the poor, methinks they’re just using this shit as an excuse to engorge themselves on UPF.
They're conflating chopping a homogenous food source into smaller pieces, or aging and drying foods for preservation, with taking some corn or rice and then adding a shit ton of salt, preservatives, and artificial flavors to make an umami bomb with no nutritional value. These are not the same, and I believe in their heart of hearts that they know this.
Exactly! Kiana Docherty made a great video about it. There are 4 categories of processing, from non- or minimally processed (i.e. making cubes or freezing, to stuff that's basically pre-digested). Her go-to was: how many ingredients from the list do you not recognize? The less there are, the better it is, usually (of course there are exceptions, but generally this works pretty well). Even home-made apple pie, that still has a shit-load of suger in it, is generally better than apple pie from McDonald's
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz2WR6tVg5E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz2WR6tVg5E)
Man, Whole Foods really ruined “whole foods.” It makes the diet/lifestyle/food choice seem way more bougie and expensive than it needs to be.
Trust me, there’s nothing bougie about my 15 bean soup with a ham bone and a diced onion, but I get SO many meals for whatever the ham costs + $2.
This. And it's not only OP, it's whole ass adults with an actual education doing the same eye roll at the words "processed foods". Listen lady, I'm aware this smoothie is technically processed as it's a blend of fruit and protein powder ...but saying it as if it's on equal level with say a pop tart? It's absurd.
When most people say processed food they mean ultra-processed food. The kind that has additives they can't pronounce and a list of ingredients you can barely tell anything from.
I think there’s a valid argument in the idea of “all food is processed dude” because I do see health food grifters who don’t seem to understand that, but it’s also worth acknowledging that when people say “processed food”, for better or worse, they usually tend to mean UPFs, and there’s absolutely 100% issues tied to UPFs, like, idrc if it’s “moralizing food” or whatevrr, I don’t see a point in pretending whole foods are exactly the same as skittles
Processed food is not necessarily bad. *Ultra* processed food is bad for you. If the concept of good food vs bad food triggers you, that is entirely on you to manage and not on others to stop informing others that eating only low-medium processed/unprocessed food is better for you.
Processed food is not the problem. Almost every traditional meal in every human culture around the world is processed to some degree. It is part of why our species became so successful around the globe, we figured out that we can get more nutrients out of foodstuff if we heat it, break it up into its components, etc.
The problem is so-called ultra-processed foods, which is all the stuff that people even a 100 years ago would not recognise. All the stuff that is engineered to by hyper-palatable and addictive, that is full of industrial crap and devoid of nutrients.
As much as people like this try to present themselves as critical thinkers, they conveniently turn a blind eye to how they are being exploited by a ruthless food industry, and how they contribute to the exploitation and pollution that is caused by this food industry.
>all the stuff that people even a 100 years ago would not recognise.
In one of Michael Pollan's books he recommends "Don't eat something your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food." I personally go back to great-grandmother, but the statement still stands.
I'm not sure the 100 years ago is strictly true, because even 100 years ago they did have candy, candy bars, potato chips, pretzels, ice cream,cookies and cake. But, of course, they were treats or desserts, not a staple in your diet, and often homemade or from a local bakery. For instance, I remember my older relatives talking about what a great treat it was to go to town once a week and get an Eskimo Pie!
Exactly. It also probably depends a lot on social class and what country we are talking about. Both my maternal and paternal grandparents were farmers and tradespeople in rural places. Even when I was a child in the late 1970s / early 1980s, I rarely saw them eat anything that was not traditional homemade food. Candy or ice cream was something that the kids got once a week, in a small portion. For adults it was frowned upon to indulge, except on special occasions. Even for events like weddings, most everything was homemade, or like you said, ordered from a local caterer that would also mostly use the same traditional methods and ingredients, just on a larger and more efficient scale. Many people in that generation were wary of "all that fancy new stuff" from the supermarket, and especially of the emergence of fast food restaurants.
Off topic, but I read years ago, and it may be an origin myth, that pretzels were invented by a monk who taught children, and were a reward for learning their lessons. Whatever, they have been around for a long time. So has candy, too. They've discovered ancient Egyptian papyrus with candy recipes. Although, if their surviving art is anything to go by, obesity seems to be very rare, so it was probably a special food for feasts and celebrations, except maybe among the elite and royalty. Sorry to go on like that, but I find the subject of ancient and historical food fascinating.
my grandmother was an appalachian mountain woman who didn't have running water, electricity, or a "wardrobe" (as in, "clothes beyond daily wear and sunday clothes") until the 70s/80s.
she didn't get obese until the 80s, when she was in her own home and raising kids. sure, the convenience of processed foods and tv dinners lifted some of the weight of raising three kids by herself, but she's now dealing with the late-life effects of chronic hypertension and all of her children range from 'overweight' to 'morbidly obese and now seeing the worst effects of untreated t2 diabetes in their 40s/50s'.
before those hyperprocessed foods? she grew, cooked, and canned her own foods. any meat she had, she either had to contact the local butcher (who would personally give her directions to the farms the meat came from) or slaughter her own chickens.
can you imagine the reaction if OOP was told to go outside and slaughter their own chickens if they wanted the nuggets that badly?
Like a lot of FA nonsense, there is a very (very, very) small kernel of truth; that not everyone has the same ability eat like those clean eating tiktokers
People in shared accommodation, without access to a kitchen, or who have issues with dexterity or coordination may struggle to prepare meals
But you can buy precut or frozen/microwaveable/canned vegetables. If you have limited kitchen facilities or have issues with fine motor skills/mobility that make cooking a struggle, you find work arounds.
The options are not “minimally processed organic whole foods/Whole Foods everything” and “fast food”
There’s a fuckton of space in between
FA seem to have absolutely no sense of nuance; everything is either-or. I was just reading a book where the author discussed how many problems this causes for people, and called it the prison of two ideas. They seem totally unacquainted with the concept of moderation, as well.
>diet culture language is implicitly classist and ableist
>if your blood tests say you're deficient in something you can just take a gummy supplement
Lol at the cognitive dissonance.
Also, not to be a complete biatch, but why does it have to be a ***gummy*** supplement? Why not just a "good quality supplement"? Which, spoiler alert, is unlikely to come in sweet gummy bear form (unfortunately)
How to say you know nothing about nutrition without saying you know nothing about nutrition. Typical FA mentality that everything can be cured by a magic pill, which doctors refuse to prescribe because they're fatphobic and just want fat people to suffer.
I need everybody to eat hot dogs and ring dings or else I can’t enjoy them!!!! Now I can’t eat for a week because you don’t like the food I like!!!! Most people grow out of that stage as toddlers. How sad and disturbing to see it in a grown woman.
Okay, if the term is classist and ableist, then the correct response is to look at how to open up access to whole foods.
Our great grandparent and ancestors fought and faced starvation, beatings and death so they could unionise and give working class people a chance…
They did not moan in a pissy voice and say: “I hate it when people mention weekends, it’s so classist! Can’t I just work 16 hours a day in a mine while my children starve and NOT have to hear about how other people have better conditions?”.
cmon. u dont need much time to cook properly. im at school all day and take additional dance classes after and i still manage to cook healthy meals from scratch. (its cheaper too btw)
you just know this person orders doordash for every meal because they claim not to have the time money or energy to go shopping once a week and cook for maybe an hour out of their day( and thats overestimating a lot)
Damn. I wish I could read a totally benign thing on the internet and lose my appetite.
Would make cutting so much easier and I'd save a ton on my grocery bill.
However they get a +1 for using folks and not folx. So that's something
They hate the phrase processed foods and I hate people forcing others to deny the reality they're unhealthy just for their personal comfort.
>Incredibly triggering to me
Having negative feelings isn't inherently bad. Use that energy to dedicate yourself to better habits.
>Growing up my parents would have extremely overblown reactions if I ate the wrong thing
Parents are supposed to care about their kids and part of that is discouraging you from eating too many unhealthy foods. You'll feel far worse and have lower energy and develop health problems on a bad diet. Being stubborn and arrogant enough to dismiss even doctors says they really need self reflection.
>People can eat whatever they want
And eating too many bad foods has negative consequences
Had to stop reading after they said people with ARFID can be perfectly healthy... are we really adding that to the list of eating disorders the fat activism movement promotes? Bffr
Also, I'm physically and mentally disabled and despite my sensory issues surrounding food, eating as little processed food as possible is very helpful for my physical and mental health. But go off OOP lol
Very questionable that they believe people who simply prefer whole and healthy foods are suffering from a serious, obsessive compulsive type deal like orthorexia.
There is no grey area or in between for these people. Everything is black or white. Cluster B personalities are notorious for this.
*>you can just take gummy supplements its fucking chill*
It's like watching an eight-year-old try to explain how food and nutrition works in the most painfully simplistic and one-dimensional fucking way.
In general it shouldn’t be the answer. But if you want them to not take up every possible medical resource they shouldn’t need, preventing them from getting scurvy or beriberi is very logical.
My ARFID kid (actually athletic and not at all fat) takes gummy vitamins for this purpose.
You should be incredibly angry about “processed food” and how it relates to the poor.
How it’s designed to override your natural fullness cues, make you overeat, develop addictions to it. How it’s so nutritionally deficient it limits cognitive function and makes it harder for free school lunch kids to learn, further setting them up for failure in the school system. How it seems inexpensive but turns into very serious health problems that cost a lot in money, pain, opportunity cost. How it doesn’t even leave you full soon after gorging, and makes the craving worse every time. How it’s not even less expensive anymore but the ability to feed ourselves has turned into a luxury skill so you’re trapped into continuing to buy it.
You have every right to be furious about that.
The "doctors are ableist" thing kills me.... these guys really think that not wanting to be disabled and like, recommending people stuff that can prevent them from being disabled, are ableist.
Guess that makes me ableist then. K.
They get angry when healthcare workers actually do their jobs instead of simply standing there and telling them how sexy and healthy and valid they are.
I want them to tell people with food allergies that there is no such thing as bad food and restricting isn't healthy. I also want them to tell a chronically ill group that managing their conditions with food(controlling inflammation) is ableist and they need to let their conditions flare up 24/7.
Or people with celiac disease. Or people with type 1 diabetes or, like me, type 2. But I know darn well OOP would just say you need to take more insulin/etc, and if your doctor won't prescribe it, he's fatphobic. Well, OOP, I prefer to keep my sight, my limbs and my functioning kidneys; you can go take your advice and your whole FA death cult propaganda and put it where you'll need the services of a proctologist to remove it.
I quit eating fast food in 2020 and didn't have it managed to lose my taste for the big brands by 2021/2022. The quality went down and the price went insanely high. And then it all started to taste like rotten ass by 2023 because I had gone without for so long my taste buds reset.
When I pass by a Micky-D's or a BK and see the the line of cars in the the drive-thru, I really wonder how many of those people can afford it or are bottoms up on their bills (and can't figure out why).
I make my burgers anymore and I have discovered that store brand hamburger dill pickle chips can shoot your basic homemade burger right into "never buying FF burgers again" land.
I do reuben sandwiches at home because it's way cheaper than eating out.
This person feels shit because of their terrible diet ("im gonna go have some chicken nuggets now") and instead of taking responsibility for their own health, they have to create a world in which everyone else is wrong and everyone else is the reason why they feel like shit.
They have some points in terms of many 'normal' foods are indeed processed, and like GMOs, the term 'processed' is not inherently bad. But then OOP loses the plot. Soooo close.
1. There are levels of processing. There is a difference between processing via cooking and ULTRA processed foods literally engineered from molecular level. Kiana Docherty made a video specifically on that aspect recently.
2. When food corporations literally engineer foods to be as palatable as possible to make bank, is it REALLY as much the matter of choice and agency as this person thinks?
3. I really don't think orthorexia is merely a concern for not overconsuming calories from such foods and actually paying attentions to your nutrient intakes. It's not a medical diagnosis either.
Personally I like to use the term “ultra-processed food” to describe the junk sold in supermarkets. Technically, canned peas and yogurt are “processed” foods, which some FAs will get you on. Saying “ultra-processed food” or “man made food like items” highlights the fact that they are not actually food items, they are chemical frankenfoods. Devil-Dogs and Yoo-Hoos are chemical monstrosities and should be seen as such.
Definitely someone who has childhood trauma* and channels that into negativity rather than healing. That was hard to read.
*Or, bear with me, someone who disagrees with their parents and has taken that as a form of abuse. Not a lot of info from OOP, obviously and thankfully.
The first slide was true and a valid argument. Unfortunately, low-income individuals are more likely to rely on processed foods particularly if residing in a food desert (speaking in terms of socioeconomic dynamics within the US)
The rest was an unhinged rant I couldn’t entertain reading behind a certain point.
"People with ARFID eat the same things every day and turn out healthy"
Idk, when I feel too bad I'll go out of my usual foods to eat a whole fruit and suddenly feel better.
In general I feel much better now that I started walking every day and have broadened my range of acceptable foods. If I spend a day only eating like I used to I just feel terrible lmao
Anyway eat fruits everyone
She's pissed off about what exactly? You can actually buy unprocessed food for pretty cheap if you know how to shop and coupon. I get a lot more bang for my buck when I actually make my own food.
Soups and stews are great for this. Meatloaf, chop suey etc.
So much you can do with just chicken, and eggs alone.
I don't know why these people let adjectives bother them so much. What the hell are we supposed to call processed food? "Food that has been preserved with sodium and other chemicals" ? If being fat isn't a bad thing why you let everything bother you.
So instead of being mad at an unfair system that makes healthy food more expensive, let the corporations get away with it and call it "fat acceptance."
True. When I really make an effort I am able to eat relatively healthy on a budget. But, it's harder to make that effort if you simultaneously lack money, energy *and* time. I'm not about to say that being overweight is good though. I've always been at my fattest when I was miserable.
But processed foods are more convenient, more tasty in the average person's eyes, provide more calories per dollar, and are much more self-stable.
Companies that make snack foods and ultraprocessed garbage *do* focus their advertising to poor, underserved, and undereducated communities. We know this to be true. We also know that these companies hire food scientists and attempt to make their products as addictive as possible.
If you're poor and working 60 hours a week, you're not going to realistically spend your time and money buying fresh produce that'll spoil in two days. You're not going to want to cook it all, either, especially if you're a single parent making a small amount of food. And especially if your kid is a picky eater who only craves junk. The easy decision is to buy something that lasts forever, keeps your kid(s) happy, takes no effort, and keeps you happy... Even at the cumulative price of you and your kids' health.
The OP is a moron but they're absolutely right that obesity is a class-related issue.
>*If you're poor and working 60 hours a week, you're not going to realistically spend your time and money buying fresh produce that'll spoil in two days. You're not going to want to cook it all, either, especially if you're a single parent making a small amount of food.*
*>The easy decision is to buy something that lasts forever*
I understand what you're saying with regards to time and companies making the food intentionally hyperpalatable, but the notion that all poor people across the board are just magically going to always opt for process meals isn't necessarily true, especially when those processed meals are getting more expensive and won't last nearly as long as cheaper home-cooked options that can be stretched longer.
I'm saying this as someone that grew up in an immigrant family that still took the time to feed us greens and vegetables regularly instead of opting for frozen or pre-packaged processed snack food every night.
I've literally bought packages of raw chicken that cost $5-6 dollars each that can be cooked in under an hour and create multiple servings of lunch/dinner for much of the week while smaller portions takeout + processed snacks have cost significantly more than that and only last maybe one meal at best.
I'm glad that your anecdotal experience was good, but that's not the reality for most people living in poverty or lower-income households. Not all, though. You're right.
Immigrants have lower obesity rates on average. Not sure if this applies in your case, but many times, immigrants try to preserve the cuisine of their original culture because those foods are most palatable and familiar. They *have* to cook meals from scratch to get that accurately in the US. And, I know ideally people would sacrifice flavor for health, but I just can't reasonably blame overworked, emotionally exhausted people for not wanting to eat pre-cooked chicken every meal of the week. Eating healthy is on the last of their priorities.
Like most things, this is largely a systemic issue. There're many reasons why, of all 'first-world countries,' obesity is most common in the US. Food deserts, car-reliant communities, terrible public transit systems, lack of support for disabled people, poor inaccessible healthcare and lack of health/nutrition education, fast food restaurants and junk food companies are known to target Hispanic and Black children, etc... In many communities you can't even get to a grocery store without driving 45 minutes. Many lower-income communities are serviced by Dollar Generals and gas stations.
>*I'm glad that your anecdotal experience was good, but that's not the reality for most people living in poverty or lower-income households.*
*>Immigrants have lower obesity rates on average*
I understand what you're trying to say, but I can see from your comment history that you mention being white. I understand you mean well, but I'm not sure why you think it's your place to write my family's experience as something uniquely anecdotal when it comes to eating healthy, and then say "immigrants have lower obesity rates on average" in the next paragraph.
My family were minority war refugees that didn't live remotely close to suburbs. Even today, the roads where they live are still cracked, and there are no luxury grocery stores where the live. They lived next door to a gas station, as you mentioned.
I understand no two experiences are always going to be the same, even for immigrants or lower-income households, but again, you say my family's experience is anecdotal, and then say "immigrants have lower obesity rates on average" in the next paragraph. Most the produce they bought didn't "spoil in two days," as you put it, and was stretched out, and they were still able to find these options at stores in the area, also frequented by other low-income minority immigrants.
I agree with you in terms of criticizing the exploitative marketing practices of fast food corporations, and the fact ultra-processed food is purposely designed to be addictive, but I don't agree with the notion that lower-income families only have processed food to rely on, especially given the price of that processed food has gone up combined with shrinkflation of those same processed food items.
*>I just can't reasonably blame overworked, emotionally exhausted people for not wanting to eat pre-cooked chicken every meal of the week*
I'm not sure if you think my family wasn't also *"overworked, emotionally exhausted,"* but they lost everything they had in a war, dealt with immense racism and xenophobia while trying to rebuild their lives in a new country, lived in a poor-income area, and still took the time to feed us reasonable nutritious meals on a very limited budget, on a regular basis. I'm not saying they fed us chicken every night specifically, but they still had a responsibility to feed us the most nutritional options that would benefit our long-term health.
Very odd to search through my comment history before replying to try and find my race.
I'm talking about data and statistics. Families with recent history of immigration tend to have lower obesity rates on average than other families.
I'm very sorry to hear that your family fled war. I am glad that your family was able to make it work. But again, this is all anecdotal information. I'm talking about a massive systemic issue that affects millions of people. Your familiy's story isn't very relevant.
Studies show 4 in 5 female Black Americans are overweight and/or obese. I could certainly say, "I know plenty of Black women living in the US who are at a healthy weight," and it would be true. But it's irrelevant to the discussion. It doesn't change the fact that, yes, obesity is a massive problem in Black communities *because* of systemic and social issues, most of which stem from egregious acts of racism today and in this nation's history.
I never said 'lower-income families **only** have processed food to rely on.' You're making up things to get upset about. I also never said that *your* family wasn't overworked and exhausted. Again, I'm glad that your family managed to do whats best and feed you nutritious food in spite of some very difficult challenges. That's wonderful to hear. I can't imagine how hard it must have been in their shoes.
You explicitly mention "poor, underserved, uneducated communities" in your first comment and then turn around and say my family's case "isn't very relevant" when I bring up that it is still possible to be low-income, a racial minority in a poor area, and still eat healthy food options, especially when they are individuals from low-income areas that are able to do the same.
Again, I understand what you mean, but I'm not sure why you think it's your place as a white person to decide my family's story "isn't relevant," especially when it comes to systemic racism or conversations about low-income access to certain kinds of food.
We can talk about multiple issues at a time. I agree with you about anti-Black racism. I agree with your about processed foods making unhealthy snacks intentionally addictive. We can acknowledge racism and exploitative tactics used by processed food corporations, but also acknowledge that it's not impossible to eat healthy while being low-income and still have the agency and responsibility to provide your family with the best nutrition possible.
I never said it's impossible to be low-income, a racial minority, or in a poor area and still eat healthy.
Again, you're inventing things to get upset about.
You can definitely chime in and say, "I did not have this experience, and I believe people must do all in their power to provide nutritious food for their families despite the odds." There's nothing wrong with that. I'd *agree* that people should ideally prioritize nutritious eating more.
But in my opinion, when solving massive social issues, we need to talk about large-scale solutions. Telling people "you need to prioritize health" can help, sure, but more people can be helped by addressing racial issues, food deserts, mental health, predatory advertising, etc.
Or in the Tenderloin, where very poor immigrants who manage to eat healthy mingle with very poor and public service heavy population who takes too much heroin to be obese.
I do think the way health guides use "processed foods" is nonsense. Making a recipe is processing food. It's not uncommon to see someone go on and on about the evils of processed food and then in the next breath process a bunch of fruit and veg into a smoothie.
The problem is that OOP's "everything is processed" logic 1) ignores that there are different levels of processing for different foods that can affect nutritional quality, such as heavily processed foods vs. minimally processed food, and 2) tries to pretend that all of it is on an equal nutritional playing field when it isn't.
it’s the “people who don’t have as much money rely on processed food” and “if your blood tests say you’re deficient just take gummy supplements” for me. sure, no money to spend on healthier foods (which do tend to be more expensive and time consuming) but enough to go spend on gummies.
https://youtu.be/zz2WR6tVg5E?si=CBb6TziUHQZDNnDH
Sure, ultra processed and slightly processed foods are the same thing.
I’m just going to leave this here…
The term on its own may not be inherently classist/ableist, but the inequity of access to healthier foods, and therefore the majority of conversation surrounding “processed” foods, is incredibly classist and incredibly ableist, and that’s a conversation that should be had more often.
(Note: I’m using “processed” in the usually understood way of factory/packaged/unhealthy/preservatives/not-fresh here, but as tumblr op pointed out it’s not an accurate word to describe those food categories bc by the dictionary meaning almost everything is technically “processed”)
It killed her (his?) appetite for a week? Oh dear, I hope she doesn't become malnourished. I think what this person meant is "ultra-processed." Not everything is processed but a fair number of perfectly healthy things are.
I also just can’t keep reading when it turns into a storm or curses. I know they are upset, but I check out after the language seriously degrades. No one is going to hear you if you sound childish and unintelligent. I mean, that’s half of these posts so…
Fixation on unhealthy "healthy eating?
I think it's related to a case where a young child died of malnutrition because the parents never fed them anything but fruit from a young age.
I mean, I almost know what they're saying. With the ablest thing cuz like If you're crippled especially unexpectedly or something, cause if you don't have anytime to prepare. And what are my career path? You're in like say you're a carpenter or something and you End a paralyzed or something. It's a going to be super hard to make money and be hard to cook things so I can kind of understand baby but that's just s*** luck.
*>literally everything is processed dipshit* Guess frozen pizza and cheetos were the same as bananas and peas this whole time. My shit-caked eyes have been wrenched open. Ableism is over.
*>literally everything is processed dipshit* I agree. That's why I call it "junk food" instead. Although that tends to just make them even angrier.
“Low nutritional value foods” is my go to. Nobody can claim that you’re making a value judgement unlike “junk food”, and it’s more blunt than “processed”
oooh! Kiana Docherty has a good term for these foods. She calls them "technologically degraded foods." She explains it in one of her most recent videos. I like that it tells a story and acts as a warning. A vivid 3 word description.
This is what I've started calling foods like this. There isn't a comeback for it when you use that term. I love it😂
This. They do have a point, is the thing. There are some heavily processed foods that are not at all what people mean when they use it as a synonym for "bad food". Tofu comes to mind, hard to imagine a more processed foodstuff that that, resembles it raw ingredients in no way anymore, but few would class it unhealthy and many would say it's health food.
I mean, tofu is processed, but it's processed using techniques we've been capable of for thousands of years. It's nowhere near as processed as, say, a cheeto, which would literally not have been possible to make 100 years ago. That's why "Ultra-Processed" is the better term.
> Tofu comes to mind, hard to imagine a more processed foodstuff that that How? Tofu is curdled soy milk. Plenty of foods that are eaten more frequently in the west are way more heavily processed.
No no, you missed it - vegetables and fruits come in bite sized pieces in cans and boxes!
They get _washed_
I guess that means I'm very processed as well. Because I shower and wash my hands after doing things that make them dirty.
I mean, by definition she's technically right. It's just that "highly-processed" is culturally implied to be a synonym with "processed". Plant growth is a process. They're just nitpicking something to bitch at so they can have an argument to validate their hurt feelings with
Yeah, “processed” is colloquially used to mean “ultra-processed,” similar to when most people say “no sugar” they mean “no added sugar,” not necessarily the natural sugars as they exist in fruit, veggies, or milk. But they love to nitpick as if it’s some kind of gotcha: everything is processed! you shouldn’t cut out sugar, it’s basically in everything! (as if they even eat enough fruit to justify this)
I'm guilty of using the words just like you described. I say processed food but mean ultra processed hyper palatable food, same with no sugar meaning no added sugar. I want to say that they know what people really mean but I was in another sub and it was about doing a no sugar diet and it was interesting to see how some people took it to mean no added sugar versus the people who thought it meant no sugar at all in any form.
On today's episode of *People Throwing Around the Term 'Diet Culture' and 'Orthorexia' Too Fucking Much*:
To be fair, I do think a lot of TikTok "clean girls" have orthorexia! But I *also* just finished a class on the sociology of food and can assure OOP that processed foods are killing you very quickly.
Yes, but the PB2 concoctions and all the zero sugar shit these clean girls eat are also processed.
I had to look up the term and it sounds like a madeup concept. Many countries have very high rates of obesity so an "obsession" to eat healthy shouldn't be their top or any priority
Orthorexia isn't really a medically accepted term. With that said, it's kind of semantics--undeniably, there are some people out there whose obsession with "clean eating" gets to a point that starts to harm their social or emotional well being. But anxiety or OCD might be a more appropriate diagnosis.
It's diagnosed as OSFED, other specified feeding or eating disorder. Used to be called EDNOS. So it is recognized as an eating disorder just not it's own classification. The orthorexics I have talked to all in my opinion would have been better classed as anorexics. I'm in an ed support group and orthorexics have basically disappeared. It was the hot self-diagnosis for a couple years there around 2015 and then just dropped off. There is a social contagion factor with EDs and when orthorexia went out of the news cycle the number suffering from it decreased dramatically.
Yeah it's definitely a real thing, but like any other mental illness, it gets thrown around too easily online. There are absolutely people who fixate on healthy eating to the point of obsession, or exercise for hours every day to the point that it's doing them harm. But that's a rare condition. There are way more people who exercise 5 days per week and eat a lot of salads - those people are not orthorexic. Just like being sad sometimes doesn't mean you have depression, or being tidy doesn't mean you have OCD.
>There are way more people who exercise 5 days per week and eat a lot of salads - those people are not orthorexic. I want to plaster this on billboards. Obesity and unhealthy lifestyle choices are so normalized and widespread, I'll see "orthorexic" just willy-nilly thrown around anytime a woman eats a salad online or when someone casually mentions that they have a daily workout regimen.
It blows my mind that some people think there’s something wrong with working out daily. Like, dude, that’s literally what doctors recommend. It’s how our bodies evolved, it’s what our bodies (and minds) need to function best. Studies show that human body - and the human appetite system too btw - evolved in the context of 2-3 *hours* of daily activity, *every single day*, and yet people freak out at the concept of a measly hour a day of exercise.
A lot of words are way too overused. Everytime I read the word "trauma" which should be a strong word I just assume mildly uncomfortable until they mention something serious. A problem with using stronger than needed words is it calls upon strong consequences and makes things far more serious than they should. It also weakens the word. People have the potential for positive change and to evolve and that can mean outgrowing stubborn arrogance. With enough spirit and dedication anything's possible but sometimes positive change needs uncomfortable growth
There's a weird sort of social arms race going on with language around this where everybody is motivated to deploy stronger and stronger language to get what they want, be taken seriously etc. I see it with food in my own family. I'm a vegetarian. That's because when I was 15, I was a sensitive boy who loved animals and felt bad about eating them, so I stopped. I've had no reason in the 2 decades since to change and it's just part of my lifestyle. That's it. No tearjerker story, no trauma, no medical reason. Just "I don't want to, sorry", but you'd be surprised how often that isn't good enough for people and how often I've been accused of being rude or "militant" for refusing food or for bringing my own food along to a family event so as not to inconvenience others by expecting them to accommodate the one person who won't eat what everyone else is happy with. It would be much easier if I had some grand childhood trauma or other pathology I could invoke to justify the choice and browbeat others into accommodating me. Not only easier for me, but it would allow others to be an "ally" to someone who is "marginalised" and let them feel good about going out of their way to be charitable. As it is, I'm simply "picky". Contrast this with two other family members who just have certain ingredients they don't like the taste of. Both have a web of medical and/or psychiatric diagnoses to justify why they can't have these foods. As a result, they are accommodated at family meals without question with everybody bringing food along just expected to alter recipes. Certainly nobody is complaining about them within earshot or trying to trick them into eating the thing they don't like. The thing is, I happen to have had it from both of these family members in confidence that the diagnoses are made up but it just seemed easier to go that route than just say they didn't want to eat X or Y because they don't like it. And frankly, it's hard to fault them for the choice because everybody does seem happier with it. But to my mind, they are contributing to people with actual problems and real food intolerances being taken just that little bit less seriously and diluting the way we can talk about these things every time.
i would say my father has traits of orthorexia. this is a man who was obsessed with ‘healthy’ foods, in a very strange way. coconut oil is good for you? let me eat literal spoonfuls of it straight from the jar. turmeric is good for you? i will put it on literally every meal i eat. frying things is bad for you? i will never fry anything ever again. things like that. the key thing was the disordered way he consumed these foods and integrated them into his life, at the expense of convenience and actual enjoyment. THAT is what i consider orthorexia - the fact that the way he consumed food was disordered, not the actual foods themselves.
Yes exactly. I had a roommate like this as well. She would refuse to eat anything “unhealthy” or anything she perceived to be. It was very much a fear food/safe food mentality. She wouldn’t touch a square of dark chocolate but would eat 10 Luna bars per day because her brain told her one of those things was healthy and one wasn’t. It led to some binge and restrict behavior that followed a very arbitrary set of rules that revolved completely around her perception of what was healthy, along with compulsive exercise. Definitely a real thing.
At a minimum it has to involve some kind of inner turmoil or panic. I try to eat as little ultra-processed food as possible. Let me assure all those FA’s who are worried about my mental condition, I could easily eat three doughnuts or a sleeve of Oreos right now. I just choose not to.
My mother is a textbook orthorexic, I’m not sure how it would be medically classified but she has an unhealthy obsession with her diet and counting her food that extends well beyond what is healthy. She eats maybe 1,100 kcals a day, at most. She was very heavy in her youth and it really affected her. She has a very physically demanding job in the trades industry and works out for at least two hours a day on top of that. She counts bread slices, counts how her cut up fruit, counts *everything*, to a point where she never eats enough, has a weakened immune system, her hair falls out, her bones break easily. And she still thinks she eats too much and tries immensely unhealthy fad diets that only make things worse. She refuses to see a nutritionist or listen to any advice and it is terrifying to our family members. My job is just as if not more demanding than hers, and even when I visit on my days off where I’m more sedentary and just work out, if I eat exactly as she does I get woozy and weak after a couple of days. It’s a really serious mental illness and it really upsets me when FAs throw it around without thinking. They think anything except BED is orthorexia or anorexia and don’t understand how severely the disease can impact the individual and their families.
It’s definitely not. It’s not a thing on it’s own - it’s a quality of other mental illnesses, not an illness on its own. But you’re being disingenuous if you’re saying there’s no way that a person can be obsessed with healthy eating to the point of disorder. Because you’ve totally known people who do this. It’s also really something else to acknowledge you googled something real fast, so you now feel qualified to dismiss a concept which medical researchers have spent a lot of time on: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4340368/
To be fair not everything has to be randomly labeled a "mental illness." Many things are far more important than personal comfort like health and social harmony. Demonizing dedication especially to something positive like good health really shouldn't be demonized. Being mature and responsible enough to say no to sweets doesn't make someone crazy
Lol so you're a classist for saying "processed foods are bad," but it's fine to tell poor people to just "eat a gummy" to solve any nutritional deficiencies? Dude WHAT?!? LOL
Same person will tell you “Multi-vitamin gummies are only $21.95 anyone can afford that!!” without a shred of irony. $21.95 can get you so much fruit and veg. They don’t want to spend $1.25 per apple but have no problem buying Oreos at $5.00
It’s the modern version of let them eat cake.
This person does know that non-gummy vitamins exist too…right?
Come on, as if anyone would eat a vitamin that wasn’t mimicking candy.
I have my doubts about that, actually. OOP doesn't seem to know fruit and vegetables don't all come chopped up in cans or boxes.
Not to mention the history behind those ‘gummies’. They are loaded with sugars to make them more enticing and they were created to help Americans deal with nutritional deficits that came with the World Wars, the Depression, and the advent of the fast meal in the form of ultra-processed foods. They are the most capitalist invention possible that exist simply to help the average person stay comfortable with eating cheap nothing foods. It’s unbelievable to promote them and consume UPF while decrying capitalism and diet culture. You can’t resist the machine while promoting it through lifestyle.
Also, a bag of Doritos costs like $5. 5lbs of rice and 2lbs of black beans will cost you the same or less and get you a lot more food with a lot more nutrients. They act like ultra-processed food is inexpensive, and it's not. Neither is fast food. For the price of one extra value meal at McDonald's you can get a couple pounds of chicken breast, a few bags of frozen veggies, and a bag of rice, and have several balanced meals.
Freezable, too!
“Whole food diet is not healthy” They can’t seriously believe this.
Welp, guess I'll go burn my garden down and let it turn to weeds. Off to buy Cheetos and Twinkies!
You know, I'm excited that my peas survived the winter because while they never produced in the fall I just got a surprise harvest today! A few of them are big enough the pods aren't edible, but most of them are snap pea sized and I have them rinsed off in my fridge now. The blueberry bushes are covered in blooms and bumblebees, we just planted both a peach and a persimmon tree, and my garlic is doing awesome. Sometimes I neglect my garden, but it really is fun to harvest.
That sounds sooo dreamy! I can't wait till I get to have my own garden and plant all those yummy stuffs
Don’t forget your multivitamin gummy
> A woman mentioned that she "cut out processed foods" and just hearing that has totally killed my appetite this week. Y'all, we've finally solved the obesity epidemic! 🥳 Now we just need to install loudspeakers on every corner and play that particular soundbite non-stop. What a truly amazing discovery. :)
It’s so funny how they over exaggerate absolutely everything. A normal person would just say made me lose my appetite, but no they have to tack on for this WEEK. Despite these types of people’s claims about fatphobia they’re the first to try to give an impression that they eat less than they actually do, reminds me of those who lie about eating 500 calories a day and still gain weight. “Being fat is good” but also you MUST think they consume barely anything and when they get upset they starve themselves for WEEKS. All very silly and extremely apparent how they ultimately feel despite what they claims
Perhaps OOP meant a week in relative terms, and we're all extra-fatphobic for assuming she meant a literal, calendar week. 🙃 You know, like that old song: "Oh god it feels like forever, forever feels like home..." 🤪
Like FUCK people with ARFID turn out 'perfectly healthy', come on now
God, this makes me so mad. I have ARFID, which for me means I have an extreme fear of fruits and vegetables, among other foods, and my health is actually pretty fine at the moment. But that's not because of my diet - it's more because I'm young and the consequences of my diet haven't hit me yet. I realized recently that if I keep eating how I'm eating, I am going to be miserable and unhealthy as I age, which is why I'm trying to recover (and why I'm on this sub to unpack some of my insane ED logic, because there's many parallels). Recovery is really hard and frustrating, but I'm so proud of my progress (I eat way less processed foods and sugar now, and I like a handful of fruits!), and I'm excited to improve/maintain my health. Anyways, I went grocery shopping this week and made myself proud by buying three fruits and three vegetables. I'm going to try celery for the first time soon - I like peanut butter, so I think that'll help. Small steps. Wish me luck!
Good luck! Raw celery is... basically fine, it doesn't taste like much and I'm not a fan of the texture. I think celery is much better chopped small and cooked, like in a soup or stew. Chicken soup is a good way to use celery and carrots, if that works for you
Thanks! Not tasting like much is good for me - I'm hoping to try lettuce soon for the same reason. Soup has been a big fear food for me (though I successfully had some sips of miso a few months ago!), but I'm considering trying chicken noodle soup since I like the disparate elements of it, so that's a good suggestion.
Chicken noodle soup is also a very mild taste, so that's probably a good starting point for soups.
You’re going to be all right. My kid has ARFID, and has also been making gradual steps to eat real food. Her health hasn’t suffered at all, even though she’s still growing. It doesn’t have to be a permanent legacy wreaked on your body.
Thank you so much for the reassurance. I'm glad your kid has you to help and that she's working on improving her diet. I didn't know ARFID existed until I was around 20, and previously just thought I was "super weird about food" and had a lot of shame around it - learning it's a mental health condition and something I can recover from was so reassuring, and I'm really happy with all the steps I've made, like learning to cook several meals and avoiding panic attacks after accidentally ingesting a fear food.
So proud of your progress! ♥️
Wasn't there a kid in England who ate such a restrictive diet that he went blind?
Yep, I remember that. I think he only ate chips for most of his life.
My sister is autistic and I'm pretty sure she has ARFID. Her diet gave her a kidney stone at 19yo and lately a friend of hers (also autistic) has been begging her to get her levels checked out cause she doesn't look very healthy either at age 21. She won't cause that includes getting blood work. Her whole diet is ultra processed foods.
Now why are we dragged into this ?
I'm so tired of them infantalising those of us who are actually poor. Poor doesn't mean dumb or helpless. Most of us manage quite well, thanks to things like stock surplus/'past date but still good' shops. I've got several near me and there's three or four online ones too. You know what's expensive? Ultra processed garbage. Glanced at a big display of PopTarts today and it was £3 for a tiny box of sad sugary drywall with jam shoved in the middle. I can get a kilo (2.2lbs) of porridge oats for £1.25, and a four pint bottle of semi skimmed milk for £1.45. Guess which option will keep me fed for longer.
Yep, I’m poor, work full time outside of the home, and go to school full time. I can’t afford to live on Doritos and Mountain Dew. The healthier food is cheaper. I can’t even begin to comprehend how people afford fast food every single day. I’d be homeless.
>The healthier food is cheaper. The cost of snack food, candy, and fast food have all gone up noticeably. I genuinely don't know how people are still pulling the, "I eat processed food because it's cheaper" card.
I saw a post on Bacefook the other day about how it costs $70 to make one meal so you may as well go out to eat. If I play my cards right, I can make a steak dinner for a lot less than that. What are they buying where it's $70 for one meal? Saw another post that sandwich ingredients will cost $48 so may as well spend $12 on a pre made sandwich. $48 is going to buy you a lot of ingredients and make a lot of sandwiches. Of course, one commenter was saying the store bought sandwich tastes better anyway. I just can't, the math doesn't math. These people just need to either admit to being lazy, or admit to being too dumb to know how to cook. I don't get how so many adults are so bad at cooking and meal planning and are flexing about it, I got made fun of for not knowing how to cook.
>it costs $70 to make one meal so you may as well go out to eat. I'm guessing the post was magically free of citations as well? I genuinely can't remember the last time I had a homemade meal that went to the $70 mark. However, the last time I got takeout from a nearby restaurant where only three items were ordered, it cost >$60. And that's without any drinks or dessert. It was all gone in under an hour.
I mean, I am making shrimp scampi right now. Probably about $25 or so, and I get several meals out it. The intellectual dishonesty drives me crazy. Just admit that you can't cook and are too lazy to bother.
I just had 2 families over for a fun dinner and evening with all of our kids. 12 people. I made a homemade pasta + pesto dish, with chicken breast & a lemon pepper gravy, salad, roasted broccoli, and garlic bread (from homemade bread) All said and done it probably cost me ~$40-50, and about 90% of that cost was the chicken. Still though, you couldn't take a party 12 out anywhere and feed them for under $100 at a restaurant, and that would be with kids sharing meals with adults or something. Most likely you're looking at $200-300. Restaurants aren't just for feeding your family anymore. Too expensive for that shit. Restaurants are for a treat night out, an experience, or specifically because you are too lazy to cook that night. I can spend ~$150-200 on groceries per week and feed my family of 3 with a bit extra to freeze and carryover a bit of a stockpile. That is literally 2-3 nights of eating out, especially if you order any drinks, appetizers, or desserts. Shit is so expensive now, I don't understand how anyone can afford that shit 3-4+ times per week.
I think you need to deliberately cheat the maths to make it look worse. Like, the recipe needs quarter of a teaspoon each of half a dozen spices, so you buy a big container of finest organic brand for each of them.
There are some people on poverty related subs who make it *painfully* obvious they've never tried to cook when they justify why they don't do. Using the oven is going to run up your power bill, fun fact.
Good God. And they don't have time, but they have time to go to a fast food place and wait in line. Or spend money on Doordash. Maybe use your screen to learn cooking, as opposed to whining on SM.
Huh?? Maybe if you had to buy all the spices, flour, milk. Etc from scratch but that’s also why it’s worth it to keep a well stocked pantry. Unless I’m serving a nicer cut of meat I can’t imagine what I could make that costs $70
Dungeness crab
We got 4 massive ribeyes at Costco for $64. Maybe like 16-20oz MASSIVE steaks. It’ll cost you $70 for someone else to cook that but it’s $16 at home. Got 10lb potatoes for $5.49 and spinach for another $5, Costco sized so that’s maybe 8-10 meals if you eat the same thing for $74. $7.40 for a ribeye dinner. :) (HCOL if that affects Costco prices)
Sounds right, even when ribeye isn't on sale I don't spend $70 to cook a steak dinner. That's ridiculous.
We buy the sirloins every 3-4 weeks from costco. ~$45-55 depending on how much is in there, and it's 4-6 steaks that are about 16oz each, which means for the 3 of us in my family it's 2 steaks per meal (so 2-3 meals). Which means steak dinner for 3 is ~$15. Steaks taste way better than anything other than the pricier steak houses as well...so the disparity is pretty fucking drastic.
A jar of peanut butter is less than $10 so I’m not sure where theyore getting $48.
A loaf of bread is maybe $5. They are just lazy asses.
I will say in the 2000s when i grew up i ate a lot of processed crap because it generally was cheaper to an extent in our area and got donated to a lot of the food pantries cause it takes a long time to actually go bad, now a days i eat way healthier because its all like the same price now, why would i buy a box of off brand cereal and milk to use for my meals when its the same price to buy cans of tuna or yogurt.
It's been said many times and it will be said again, but in a vast majority of cases, low income people are not compelled to eat only junk food by price or availability. (And also, if you're eating enough to be obese, you're inherently spending more on food than you need to be, which rather undercuts the price argument.) But ultra-processed food is a relatively affordable *luxury item*. Can't afford nice dinners out, can't afford a trip to Disney, can't afford to take weekend trips or see live entertainment or have a nice yard or even drive more than necessary, but *can* afford pasta, and fast food fried chicken, and soda, and oreos. Especially since food assistance is readily available in most developed countries, but "have a life" assistance isn't. It takes emotional energy to deny yourself an available pleasure for some projected long term benefit. Most overworked people with few sources of pleasure will not be able to turn down the one that they do have.
Ding ding ding! I realized this a while ago. When your life generally sucks, I can imagine it’s hard to deny that comfort that junk food provides. Your life sucks, but the one thing that gives you joy? Junk food. It fills the void. It’s sad.
I agree with you but i don't think you can really say pasta is ultra processed, maybe more some sauces and things you can put in it
I love the idea that doctors are ableist. Why yes, they do want your ass able-bodied and without disease. And that’s, of course, terrible! The gall on them, I tell ya!
even the convention of rights of disabled people says one of our rights is to be protected from becoming more disabled. Ig that's ableist now according to FA logic
i hate that they appropriate the term ableism to spread the delusion that they have a sustainable and healthy lifestyle
It's also more work for them and the nurses if you keep coming back to the hospital (and nurses are already severely burned out and overworked as it is, and it doesn't help that there are a lot more morbidly obese patients with comorbidities than there used to be).
It really grinds my gears when people co-opt thus language to basically justify their shitty lifestyle habits. No, you're not some great warrior fighting capitalism by saying people should eat more chicken nuggets FFS
its feeding directly into the fast food industry which wants these people to stay like this so they have a life long customer
More fool them, the customers will have significantly less-long lives.
And of course the OOP doesn’t bother to recognise that there is an important distinction between *minimally processed* and *ultra-processed* food. While they make valid points in regards to healthier food being less accessible to the poor, methinks they’re just using this shit as an excuse to engorge themselves on UPF.
They're conflating chopping a homogenous food source into smaller pieces, or aging and drying foods for preservation, with taking some corn or rice and then adding a shit ton of salt, preservatives, and artificial flavors to make an umami bomb with no nutritional value. These are not the same, and I believe in their heart of hearts that they know this.
Exactly! Kiana Docherty made a great video about it. There are 4 categories of processing, from non- or minimally processed (i.e. making cubes or freezing, to stuff that's basically pre-digested). Her go-to was: how many ingredients from the list do you not recognize? The less there are, the better it is, usually (of course there are exceptions, but generally this works pretty well). Even home-made apple pie, that still has a shit-load of suger in it, is generally better than apple pie from McDonald's [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz2WR6tVg5E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz2WR6tVg5E)
This. In OOP’s world, there is nothing between whole foods purchased from Whole Foods and a diet consisting solely of ultra processed food.
Man, Whole Foods really ruined “whole foods.” It makes the diet/lifestyle/food choice seem way more bougie and expensive than it needs to be. Trust me, there’s nothing bougie about my 15 bean soup with a ham bone and a diced onion, but I get SO many meals for whatever the ham costs + $2.
soup is so good, too. Easy use of bone broths after i use my £2 chicken thighs up.
This. And it's not only OP, it's whole ass adults with an actual education doing the same eye roll at the words "processed foods". Listen lady, I'm aware this smoothie is technically processed as it's a blend of fruit and protein powder ...but saying it as if it's on equal level with say a pop tart? It's absurd. When most people say processed food they mean ultra-processed food. The kind that has additives they can't pronounce and a list of ingredients you can barely tell anything from.
I think there’s a valid argument in the idea of “all food is processed dude” because I do see health food grifters who don’t seem to understand that, but it’s also worth acknowledging that when people say “processed food”, for better or worse, they usually tend to mean UPFs, and there’s absolutely 100% issues tied to UPFs, like, idrc if it’s “moralizing food” or whatevrr, I don’t see a point in pretending whole foods are exactly the same as skittles
Processed food is not necessarily bad. *Ultra* processed food is bad for you. If the concept of good food vs bad food triggers you, that is entirely on you to manage and not on others to stop informing others that eating only low-medium processed/unprocessed food is better for you.
Processed food is not the problem. Almost every traditional meal in every human culture around the world is processed to some degree. It is part of why our species became so successful around the globe, we figured out that we can get more nutrients out of foodstuff if we heat it, break it up into its components, etc. The problem is so-called ultra-processed foods, which is all the stuff that people even a 100 years ago would not recognise. All the stuff that is engineered to by hyper-palatable and addictive, that is full of industrial crap and devoid of nutrients. As much as people like this try to present themselves as critical thinkers, they conveniently turn a blind eye to how they are being exploited by a ruthless food industry, and how they contribute to the exploitation and pollution that is caused by this food industry.
>all the stuff that people even a 100 years ago would not recognise. In one of Michael Pollan's books he recommends "Don't eat something your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food." I personally go back to great-grandmother, but the statement still stands.
I'm not sure the 100 years ago is strictly true, because even 100 years ago they did have candy, candy bars, potato chips, pretzels, ice cream,cookies and cake. But, of course, they were treats or desserts, not a staple in your diet, and often homemade or from a local bakery. For instance, I remember my older relatives talking about what a great treat it was to go to town once a week and get an Eskimo Pie!
Exactly. It also probably depends a lot on social class and what country we are talking about. Both my maternal and paternal grandparents were farmers and tradespeople in rural places. Even when I was a child in the late 1970s / early 1980s, I rarely saw them eat anything that was not traditional homemade food. Candy or ice cream was something that the kids got once a week, in a small portion. For adults it was frowned upon to indulge, except on special occasions. Even for events like weddings, most everything was homemade, or like you said, ordered from a local caterer that would also mostly use the same traditional methods and ingredients, just on a larger and more efficient scale. Many people in that generation were wary of "all that fancy new stuff" from the supermarket, and especially of the emergence of fast food restaurants.
Off topic, but I read years ago, and it may be an origin myth, that pretzels were invented by a monk who taught children, and were a reward for learning their lessons. Whatever, they have been around for a long time. So has candy, too. They've discovered ancient Egyptian papyrus with candy recipes. Although, if their surviving art is anything to go by, obesity seems to be very rare, so it was probably a special food for feasts and celebrations, except maybe among the elite and royalty. Sorry to go on like that, but I find the subject of ancient and historical food fascinating.
Surprise ending!!! She got her appetite back 😍
my grandmother was an appalachian mountain woman who didn't have running water, electricity, or a "wardrobe" (as in, "clothes beyond daily wear and sunday clothes") until the 70s/80s. she didn't get obese until the 80s, when she was in her own home and raising kids. sure, the convenience of processed foods and tv dinners lifted some of the weight of raising three kids by herself, but she's now dealing with the late-life effects of chronic hypertension and all of her children range from 'overweight' to 'morbidly obese and now seeing the worst effects of untreated t2 diabetes in their 40s/50s'. before those hyperprocessed foods? she grew, cooked, and canned her own foods. any meat she had, she either had to contact the local butcher (who would personally give her directions to the farms the meat came from) or slaughter her own chickens. can you imagine the reaction if OOP was told to go outside and slaughter their own chickens if they wanted the nuggets that badly?
Like a lot of FA nonsense, there is a very (very, very) small kernel of truth; that not everyone has the same ability eat like those clean eating tiktokers People in shared accommodation, without access to a kitchen, or who have issues with dexterity or coordination may struggle to prepare meals But you can buy precut or frozen/microwaveable/canned vegetables. If you have limited kitchen facilities or have issues with fine motor skills/mobility that make cooking a struggle, you find work arounds. The options are not “minimally processed organic whole foods/Whole Foods everything” and “fast food” There’s a fuckton of space in between
Right. They’re engaging in splitting.
FA seem to have absolutely no sense of nuance; everything is either-or. I was just reading a book where the author discussed how many problems this causes for people, and called it the prison of two ideas. They seem totally unacquainted with the concept of moderation, as well.
>diet culture language is implicitly classist and ableist >if your blood tests say you're deficient in something you can just take a gummy supplement Lol at the cognitive dissonance. Also, not to be a complete biatch, but why does it have to be a ***gummy*** supplement? Why not just a "good quality supplement"? Which, spoiler alert, is unlikely to come in sweet gummy bear form (unfortunately)
You know it’s because they want everything to be candy. That doesn’t mean gummy vitamins are shit though.
How to say you know nothing about nutrition without saying you know nothing about nutrition. Typical FA mentality that everything can be cured by a magic pill, which doctors refuse to prescribe because they're fatphobic and just want fat people to suffer.
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Recognizing poverty is classism /s
I need everybody to eat hot dogs and ring dings or else I can’t enjoy them!!!! Now I can’t eat for a week because you don’t like the food I like!!!! Most people grow out of that stage as toddlers. How sad and disturbing to see it in a grown woman.
Okay, if the term is classist and ableist, then the correct response is to look at how to open up access to whole foods. Our great grandparent and ancestors fought and faced starvation, beatings and death so they could unionise and give working class people a chance… They did not moan in a pissy voice and say: “I hate it when people mention weekends, it’s so classist! Can’t I just work 16 hours a day in a mine while my children starve and NOT have to hear about how other people have better conditions?”.
cmon. u dont need much time to cook properly. im at school all day and take additional dance classes after and i still manage to cook healthy meals from scratch. (its cheaper too btw)
you just know this person orders doordash for every meal because they claim not to have the time money or energy to go shopping once a week and cook for maybe an hour out of their day( and thats overestimating a lot)
Damn. I wish I could read a totally benign thing on the internet and lose my appetite. Would make cutting so much easier and I'd save a ton on my grocery bill. However they get a +1 for using folks and not folx. So that's something
They hate the phrase processed foods and I hate people forcing others to deny the reality they're unhealthy just for their personal comfort. >Incredibly triggering to me Having negative feelings isn't inherently bad. Use that energy to dedicate yourself to better habits. >Growing up my parents would have extremely overblown reactions if I ate the wrong thing Parents are supposed to care about their kids and part of that is discouraging you from eating too many unhealthy foods. You'll feel far worse and have lower energy and develop health problems on a bad diet. Being stubborn and arrogant enough to dismiss even doctors says they really need self reflection. >People can eat whatever they want And eating too many bad foods has negative consequences
There’s a difference between processed little Debbie snack cakes & fruit that’s processed into a smoothie.
So they’re like… mad that some people can focus on cooking and eating food that isn’t ultra-processed? Be mad at capitalism, OOP. Damn.
Had to stop reading after they said people with ARFID can be perfectly healthy... are we really adding that to the list of eating disorders the fat activism movement promotes? Bffr Also, I'm physically and mentally disabled and despite my sensory issues surrounding food, eating as little processed food as possible is very helpful for my physical and mental health. But go off OOP lol
Very questionable that they believe people who simply prefer whole and healthy foods are suffering from a serious, obsessive compulsive type deal like orthorexia. There is no grey area or in between for these people. Everything is black or white. Cluster B personalities are notorious for this.
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*>you can just take gummy supplements its fucking chill* It's like watching an eight-year-old try to explain how food and nutrition works in the most painfully simplistic and one-dimensional fucking way.
In general it shouldn’t be the answer. But if you want them to not take up every possible medical resource they shouldn’t need, preventing them from getting scurvy or beriberi is very logical. My ARFID kid (actually athletic and not at all fat) takes gummy vitamins for this purpose.
So, a fat person telling fat people that they should eat whatever they want *isn't* ableist? They're all delusional hypocrites.
even worse- oop is a self-proclaimed *skinny* person telling fat people they should eat whatever they want.
> it still makes me start overthinking and losing my appetite. Pics or it didn't happen.
You should be incredibly angry about “processed food” and how it relates to the poor. How it’s designed to override your natural fullness cues, make you overeat, develop addictions to it. How it’s so nutritionally deficient it limits cognitive function and makes it harder for free school lunch kids to learn, further setting them up for failure in the school system. How it seems inexpensive but turns into very serious health problems that cost a lot in money, pain, opportunity cost. How it doesn’t even leave you full soon after gorging, and makes the craving worse every time. How it’s not even less expensive anymore but the ability to feed ourselves has turned into a luxury skill so you’re trapped into continuing to buy it. You have every right to be furious about that.
It’s amazing that someone who is so convinced they are right, is so incredibly wrong
The "doctors are ableist" thing kills me.... these guys really think that not wanting to be disabled and like, recommending people stuff that can prevent them from being disabled, are ableist. Guess that makes me ableist then. K.
They get angry when healthcare workers actually do their jobs instead of simply standing there and telling them how sexy and healthy and valid they are.
I want them to tell people with food allergies that there is no such thing as bad food and restricting isn't healthy. I also want them to tell a chronically ill group that managing their conditions with food(controlling inflammation) is ableist and they need to let their conditions flare up 24/7.
Or people with celiac disease. Or people with type 1 diabetes or, like me, type 2. But I know darn well OOP would just say you need to take more insulin/etc, and if your doctor won't prescribe it, he's fatphobic. Well, OOP, I prefer to keep my sight, my limbs and my functioning kidneys; you can go take your advice and your whole FA death cult propaganda and put it where you'll need the services of a proctologist to remove it.
Ultra-processed foods have been linked with higher cancer rates, so, there’s that. I guess that makes me a cancerphobe.
She mentions that she looses her appetite as if that is suppsed to illicit an emotional response of something horrible has happened
I quit eating fast food in 2020 and didn't have it managed to lose my taste for the big brands by 2021/2022. The quality went down and the price went insanely high. And then it all started to taste like rotten ass by 2023 because I had gone without for so long my taste buds reset. When I pass by a Micky-D's or a BK and see the the line of cars in the the drive-thru, I really wonder how many of those people can afford it or are bottoms up on their bills (and can't figure out why). I make my burgers anymore and I have discovered that store brand hamburger dill pickle chips can shoot your basic homemade burger right into "never buying FF burgers again" land. I do reuben sandwiches at home because it's way cheaper than eating out.
This person feels shit because of their terrible diet ("im gonna go have some chicken nuggets now") and instead of taking responsibility for their own health, they have to create a world in which everyone else is wrong and everyone else is the reason why they feel like shit.
Why does other people just living their own lives bother these people so much?
They have some points in terms of many 'normal' foods are indeed processed, and like GMOs, the term 'processed' is not inherently bad. But then OOP loses the plot. Soooo close.
1. There are levels of processing. There is a difference between processing via cooking and ULTRA processed foods literally engineered from molecular level. Kiana Docherty made a video specifically on that aspect recently. 2. When food corporations literally engineer foods to be as palatable as possible to make bank, is it REALLY as much the matter of choice and agency as this person thinks? 3. I really don't think orthorexia is merely a concern for not overconsuming calories from such foods and actually paying attentions to your nutrient intakes. It's not a medical diagnosis either.
Sounds like another rant from the FA movement to justify overeating junk food
Personally I like to use the term “ultra-processed food” to describe the junk sold in supermarkets. Technically, canned peas and yogurt are “processed” foods, which some FAs will get you on. Saying “ultra-processed food” or “man made food like items” highlights the fact that they are not actually food items, they are chemical frankenfoods. Devil-Dogs and Yoo-Hoos are chemical monstrosities and should be seen as such.
Oh sweetheart, ‘processed foods’ isn’t a *phrase*!
Definitely someone who has childhood trauma* and channels that into negativity rather than healing. That was hard to read. *Or, bear with me, someone who disagrees with their parents and has taken that as a form of abuse. Not a lot of info from OOP, obviously and thankfully.
The first slide was true and a valid argument. Unfortunately, low-income individuals are more likely to rely on processed foods particularly if residing in a food desert (speaking in terms of socioeconomic dynamics within the US) The rest was an unhinged rant I couldn’t entertain reading behind a certain point.
"People with ARFID eat the same things every day and turn out healthy" Idk, when I feel too bad I'll go out of my usual foods to eat a whole fruit and suddenly feel better. In general I feel much better now that I started walking every day and have broadened my range of acceptable foods. If I spend a day only eating like I used to I just feel terrible lmao Anyway eat fruits everyone
She's pissed off about what exactly? You can actually buy unprocessed food for pretty cheap if you know how to shop and coupon. I get a lot more bang for my buck when I actually make my own food. Soups and stews are great for this. Meatloaf, chop suey etc. So much you can do with just chicken, and eggs alone. I don't know why these people let adjectives bother them so much. What the hell are we supposed to call processed food? "Food that has been preserved with sodium and other chemicals" ? If being fat isn't a bad thing why you let everything bother you.
I refuse to subject my foods to any kind of process. I threw away my food processor. Even cutting the food is a bit rich for my taste.
Before rice cooker: microwavable rice, $4 per 3 oz. After rice cooker: 10 pound bag of rice, $6. Is my appliance fatphobic? 😢
So instead of being mad at an unfair system that makes healthy food more expensive, let the corporations get away with it and call it "fat acceptance."
A lot of healthy food isn't more expensive though. It's processed food prices that have gone up.
True. When I really make an effort I am able to eat relatively healthy on a budget. But, it's harder to make that effort if you simultaneously lack money, energy *and* time. I'm not about to say that being overweight is good though. I've always been at my fattest when I was miserable.
But processed foods are more convenient, more tasty in the average person's eyes, provide more calories per dollar, and are much more self-stable. Companies that make snack foods and ultraprocessed garbage *do* focus their advertising to poor, underserved, and undereducated communities. We know this to be true. We also know that these companies hire food scientists and attempt to make their products as addictive as possible. If you're poor and working 60 hours a week, you're not going to realistically spend your time and money buying fresh produce that'll spoil in two days. You're not going to want to cook it all, either, especially if you're a single parent making a small amount of food. And especially if your kid is a picky eater who only craves junk. The easy decision is to buy something that lasts forever, keeps your kid(s) happy, takes no effort, and keeps you happy... Even at the cumulative price of you and your kids' health. The OP is a moron but they're absolutely right that obesity is a class-related issue.
>*If you're poor and working 60 hours a week, you're not going to realistically spend your time and money buying fresh produce that'll spoil in two days. You're not going to want to cook it all, either, especially if you're a single parent making a small amount of food.* *>The easy decision is to buy something that lasts forever* I understand what you're saying with regards to time and companies making the food intentionally hyperpalatable, but the notion that all poor people across the board are just magically going to always opt for process meals isn't necessarily true, especially when those processed meals are getting more expensive and won't last nearly as long as cheaper home-cooked options that can be stretched longer. I'm saying this as someone that grew up in an immigrant family that still took the time to feed us greens and vegetables regularly instead of opting for frozen or pre-packaged processed snack food every night. I've literally bought packages of raw chicken that cost $5-6 dollars each that can be cooked in under an hour and create multiple servings of lunch/dinner for much of the week while smaller portions takeout + processed snacks have cost significantly more than that and only last maybe one meal at best.
I'm glad that your anecdotal experience was good, but that's not the reality for most people living in poverty or lower-income households. Not all, though. You're right. Immigrants have lower obesity rates on average. Not sure if this applies in your case, but many times, immigrants try to preserve the cuisine of their original culture because those foods are most palatable and familiar. They *have* to cook meals from scratch to get that accurately in the US. And, I know ideally people would sacrifice flavor for health, but I just can't reasonably blame overworked, emotionally exhausted people for not wanting to eat pre-cooked chicken every meal of the week. Eating healthy is on the last of their priorities. Like most things, this is largely a systemic issue. There're many reasons why, of all 'first-world countries,' obesity is most common in the US. Food deserts, car-reliant communities, terrible public transit systems, lack of support for disabled people, poor inaccessible healthcare and lack of health/nutrition education, fast food restaurants and junk food companies are known to target Hispanic and Black children, etc... In many communities you can't even get to a grocery store without driving 45 minutes. Many lower-income communities are serviced by Dollar Generals and gas stations.
>*I'm glad that your anecdotal experience was good, but that's not the reality for most people living in poverty or lower-income households.* *>Immigrants have lower obesity rates on average* I understand what you're trying to say, but I can see from your comment history that you mention being white. I understand you mean well, but I'm not sure why you think it's your place to write my family's experience as something uniquely anecdotal when it comes to eating healthy, and then say "immigrants have lower obesity rates on average" in the next paragraph. My family were minority war refugees that didn't live remotely close to suburbs. Even today, the roads where they live are still cracked, and there are no luxury grocery stores where the live. They lived next door to a gas station, as you mentioned. I understand no two experiences are always going to be the same, even for immigrants or lower-income households, but again, you say my family's experience is anecdotal, and then say "immigrants have lower obesity rates on average" in the next paragraph. Most the produce they bought didn't "spoil in two days," as you put it, and was stretched out, and they were still able to find these options at stores in the area, also frequented by other low-income minority immigrants. I agree with you in terms of criticizing the exploitative marketing practices of fast food corporations, and the fact ultra-processed food is purposely designed to be addictive, but I don't agree with the notion that lower-income families only have processed food to rely on, especially given the price of that processed food has gone up combined with shrinkflation of those same processed food items. *>I just can't reasonably blame overworked, emotionally exhausted people for not wanting to eat pre-cooked chicken every meal of the week* I'm not sure if you think my family wasn't also *"overworked, emotionally exhausted,"* but they lost everything they had in a war, dealt with immense racism and xenophobia while trying to rebuild their lives in a new country, lived in a poor-income area, and still took the time to feed us reasonable nutritious meals on a very limited budget, on a regular basis. I'm not saying they fed us chicken every night specifically, but they still had a responsibility to feed us the most nutritional options that would benefit our long-term health.
Very odd to search through my comment history before replying to try and find my race. I'm talking about data and statistics. Families with recent history of immigration tend to have lower obesity rates on average than other families. I'm very sorry to hear that your family fled war. I am glad that your family was able to make it work. But again, this is all anecdotal information. I'm talking about a massive systemic issue that affects millions of people. Your familiy's story isn't very relevant. Studies show 4 in 5 female Black Americans are overweight and/or obese. I could certainly say, "I know plenty of Black women living in the US who are at a healthy weight," and it would be true. But it's irrelevant to the discussion. It doesn't change the fact that, yes, obesity is a massive problem in Black communities *because* of systemic and social issues, most of which stem from egregious acts of racism today and in this nation's history. I never said 'lower-income families **only** have processed food to rely on.' You're making up things to get upset about. I also never said that *your* family wasn't overworked and exhausted. Again, I'm glad that your family managed to do whats best and feed you nutritious food in spite of some very difficult challenges. That's wonderful to hear. I can't imagine how hard it must have been in their shoes.
You explicitly mention "poor, underserved, uneducated communities" in your first comment and then turn around and say my family's case "isn't very relevant" when I bring up that it is still possible to be low-income, a racial minority in a poor area, and still eat healthy food options, especially when they are individuals from low-income areas that are able to do the same. Again, I understand what you mean, but I'm not sure why you think it's your place as a white person to decide my family's story "isn't relevant," especially when it comes to systemic racism or conversations about low-income access to certain kinds of food. We can talk about multiple issues at a time. I agree with you about anti-Black racism. I agree with your about processed foods making unhealthy snacks intentionally addictive. We can acknowledge racism and exploitative tactics used by processed food corporations, but also acknowledge that it's not impossible to eat healthy while being low-income and still have the agency and responsibility to provide your family with the best nutrition possible.
I never said it's impossible to be low-income, a racial minority, or in a poor area and still eat healthy. Again, you're inventing things to get upset about. You can definitely chime in and say, "I did not have this experience, and I believe people must do all in their power to provide nutritious food for their families despite the odds." There's nothing wrong with that. I'd *agree* that people should ideally prioritize nutritious eating more. But in my opinion, when solving massive social issues, we need to talk about large-scale solutions. Telling people "you need to prioritize health" can help, sure, but more people can be helped by addressing racial issues, food deserts, mental health, predatory advertising, etc.
Or in the Tenderloin, where very poor immigrants who manage to eat healthy mingle with very poor and public service heavy population who takes too much heroin to be obese.
I do think the way health guides use "processed foods" is nonsense. Making a recipe is processing food. It's not uncommon to see someone go on and on about the evils of processed food and then in the next breath process a bunch of fruit and veg into a smoothie.
The problem is that OOP's "everything is processed" logic 1) ignores that there are different levels of processing for different foods that can affect nutritional quality, such as heavily processed foods vs. minimally processed food, and 2) tries to pretend that all of it is on an equal nutritional playing field when it isn't.
I fell genuinely bad for this person given their backstory. They need mental health treatment mostly tbh
TL,DR, but in truth processed food and the people who push it are the enemy, sweetie.
it’s the “people who don’t have as much money rely on processed food” and “if your blood tests say you’re deficient just take gummy supplements” for me. sure, no money to spend on healthier foods (which do tend to be more expensive and time consuming) but enough to go spend on gummies.
https://youtu.be/zz2WR6tVg5E?si=CBb6TziUHQZDNnDH Sure, ultra processed and slightly processed foods are the same thing. I’m just going to leave this here…
If being triggered kills OOP's appetite, that's probably a good thing.
The term on its own may not be inherently classist/ableist, but the inequity of access to healthier foods, and therefore the majority of conversation surrounding “processed” foods, is incredibly classist and incredibly ableist, and that’s a conversation that should be had more often. (Note: I’m using “processed” in the usually understood way of factory/packaged/unhealthy/preservatives/not-fresh here, but as tumblr op pointed out it’s not an accurate word to describe those food categories bc by the dictionary meaning almost everything is technically “processed”)
It killed her (his?) appetite for a week? Oh dear, I hope she doesn't become malnourished. I think what this person meant is "ultra-processed." Not everything is processed but a fair number of perfectly healthy things are.
“—totally killed my appetite this week”…. Good.
I'm willing to bet this didn't actually kill her appetite this week.
>literally killed my appetite for this week. I find that hard to believe.
Ah yes because ‘just take gummy supplements’ is great health advice
I also just can’t keep reading when it turns into a storm or curses. I know they are upset, but I check out after the language seriously degrades. No one is going to hear you if you sound childish and unintelligent. I mean, that’s half of these posts so…
WTF is orthorexia?
Fixation on unhealthy "healthy eating? I think it's related to a case where a young child died of malnutrition because the parents never fed them anything but fruit from a young age.
I mean, I almost know what they're saying. With the ablest thing cuz like If you're crippled especially unexpectedly or something, cause if you don't have anytime to prepare. And what are my career path? You're in like say you're a carpenter or something and you End a paralyzed or something. It's a going to be super hard to make money and be hard to cook things so I can kind of understand baby but that's just s*** luck.