I know it’s a shipost and this meme is at least 15 years old. But meat, cheese, and white bread (especially the ones in the US with added sugar) were never healthy
meat, cheese and bread were never healthy, says a man descended from 10 thousand years of meat cheese and bread eaters
it’s about the scale at which these items are consumed - eating meat every day was pretty much unheard of until the advent of capitalism
Was it capitalism or was it refrigeration?
There are hundreds of ways to preserve meat without a fridge
- Snow
Fresh or preserved (salted or dried) meat has existed as long as people have paid for them. Even ice was used for a while prior to refrigeration.
Salting and dehydration is not as efficient as refrigeration. Not even close.
You are totally missing the point. American?
Edit Refrigeration is optimal, and we agree on that. Yet, meat was notconsumptwed by regular folks because aristocrats were the only ones who could afford it (and I recall that many of them died of a disease that comes from meat overconsumption). Regular folks ate meat only on special occasions. And driying it makes it last for months if not years (source: the dry sausages that I buy in my granfather’s town, hand made by people, last for 14 months)
I think you mean gout. It was known as the disease of kings.
The point is that mass factory farming is the reason that meat is cheap now, and one of the technologies that’s enabled mass factory farming is refrigeration.
If I were to be fair then my answer would be neither as I don’t believe capitalism is forcing us to consume meat and there was methods to conserve meat for long periods of time before refrigeration was a thing.
I guess meat can be healthy. What certainly isn’t healthy is highly processed meat like burgers, hot dogs and deep fried turkey
Science suggests that meat consumption always comes with risks e.g. of genetic mutations. So if you can meet your demand of nutrients and trace elements without meat you probably should.
Science also says the primary sources of essential vitamin B12 come from meat and dairy.
Here is some fun reading:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6540890/
Vitamin B12 is an essential vitamin with largely non vegetarian source.[1,2] Indian population, with largely vegetarian food habit, is more prone to harbour deficiency of vitamin B12.[2,3]
Interesting. I guess you could still supplement b12
capitalism has led to never before seen economies of scale, allowing for dirt cheap food prices never before seen in history. if we were to look at capitalism through that metric and that metric only then it would be wildly popular…
did capitalism do that, or did technologies like aircraft and refrigeration do that?
why would economies of scale not exist under a different socio-economic system?
Because the focus wouldn’t be on profit just for profit’s sake. That is the main problem with capitalism. The technologies just allowed it. Plus, technologies are not sentient, you can’t blame a technology…
Because the focus wouldn’t be on profit just for profit’s sake
what socioeconomic system has existed where increased productivity was viewed as a bad thing?
e.g.:
- pure feudalism would’ve led to economies of scale because it would make the king of the castle wealthier.
- any kind of socialism with a centrally planned economy would’ve led to economies of scale because it enables the government to more easily meet the needs of the people.
- even pure marxist communism probably would’ve led to economies of scale eventually because any communities that worked together on a global scale would’ve been more prosperous for their community members, which is still a goal of the system
The technologies just allowed it
or in other words, their invention led to it, which was the original quote I was responding to
Plus, technologies are not sentient, you can’t blame a technology…
- socio-economic systems aren’t sentient either
- nobody’s “blaming” a technology—there isn’t even really a consensus in this thread on whether economies of scale leading to increased meat consumption is a good or bad thing
because prior to the advent of capitalism the priorities were not on the consumer, but on the aristocracy. while the end results of free market capitalism are clearly destroying the planet, it is insanely more equitable than anything that came before it.
the economies of scale exist due to the consumer pressure, which didn’t exist in other market systems.
i don’t get why people are downvoting that. i’m not saying capitalism is the best thing in the world and nothing will ever be better than it. i’m saying it allowed people to eat more meat and is democratic compared to feudalism or mercantilism
Because people can’t seem to understand the difference between ‘criticizing stuff while also being aware of and acknowledging its benefits’ vs ‘mindlessly bashing something whenever you get the chance bcuz tribalism’.
Hell, even Marx praised capitalism for the immense wealth that it has generated for the masses, which so many so-called ‘socialists’ don’t seem to understand.
Both. Refrigeration is what allows us to store and (I would argue more importantly) transport large amounts of meat, and is as such essential to the industry. However, Capitalism is also key to the meat industry because its lobbyists constantly push for meat subsidies, which is the main reason meat is cheap enough to be something we have every meal instead of once every couple of days.
In some circumstances you’re absolutely right. In many parts of the word, meat was either scarce or difficult to preserve. In other parts of the word, some peoples survived almost exclusively on animal products. The natives on Alaska are the first that come to mind.
Of course “meat” was a very important part of their diet, they relied heavily on organ meats for their essential vitamins and nutrients. They were significantly more humane and less wasteful than we are today.
But they were also out and about hunting that stuff for days. Unlike average Joe American who never moves more than from bed to garage and from the parking lot to his office chair in a day.
Sounds like it’s joe not moving enough that’s the problem
Well it is easier to eat less meat than it is to run 20km every day.
*until the advent of mechanized agriculture and fertilizers, which allowed feeding large amounts of livestock in capitalist and communist countries alike
communism requires capitalism to exist … at its invention, capitalism was the cutting edge that allowed massive economies to form. free market capitalism allowed the creation of extremely complex and vast logistical networks that did not exist prior.
this is not some sort of “capitalism vs communism” thing. this is saying that capitalism was miles more efficient and liberating than anything that came before it. inshallah whatever comes after it will continue the trend
So if I come from a lineage of smokers it means smoking is healthy? I take your word for it, science man.
Literally not what hes saying at all, in fact thats almost the complete opposite of what hes saying.
hes saying is like “I come from a long line of smokers, so know how bad smoking is for people”
Proof you only have to live 15 years to reproduce doesn’t mean much for someone wanting to live 80 years.
Lots of people are not from northern Europe.
Nobody ate meat before very recently. And cheese was not your typical daily treat. Remembers it takes a long time to produce
Humans have been eating meat for at least two and a half million years.
But not in that quantity as we do today. In the past it was very special, because you allways had to kill one of your animals to eat some. And if you were a farmer who can decide to eat one big meal or ceep the animal and have milk for a long time its a preety easy decision.
And if you go back even more when humans were still “wild” meat was even harder to get. You had to hunt down an animal that was way stronger that you. So a hunt took days. If you got meat once every few weeks you were lucky.
Sure, nobody ate anything in the quantities that we eat today, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a crucial part of our diet. It’s amazing that modern industrialized humans are able to get enough calories and protein from a diet of varied plants, but if you’re a hunter gatherer you don’t have the luxury of a variety of genetically modified protein rich plants, you need meat if you’re going to grow. That’s the niche we evolved to fill, it’s why we have a highly acidic gut, a medium length digestive tract common in omnivores, and teeth designed to tear meat. It doesn’t take a lot of meat to meet a person’s protein requirements, the occasional successful hunt is enough, but without any they would die.
I am vegetarian for over 5 years. You realy don’t need any meat. That just some public believe the meat companies planted in our heads. For a vegetarian lifestyle your don’t even have to pay attention to a lot of stuff. In general it’s way more healthy if you do it right. The only thing is that it’s usually harder to cook something tasty, because you can just throw meat in anything and it tastes like something.
But what you’re missing is that being vegetarian wouldn’t be possible without the conveniences of our modern world. You’re relying on plants that have been heavily modified to be more nutritious to humans, and you’re relying on a variety that would have been difficult to find pre industrialization, and absolutely impossible to a hunter-gatherer. It’s not meat company propaganda to realize that human’s evolved to eat meat, it’s evident in everything about our physiology. From an evolutionary point of view, even farming is startlingly recent, an industrial world economy hasn’t even registered yet, so even though we’re living in a modern world, we’re still dealing with bodies that were built to hunt. That’s why so many types of overeating are such big issues, this farmed abundance just isn’t something that we evolved to deal with.
None of that takes away from the fact that vegetarianism is feasible and healthy today, I think that it’s great that we’ve reached a point where we can survive without meat. All that I’m saying is that we need to recognize it for the modern luxury that it is, instead of saying that it was ever the norm
Huh? Humans evolved in a hunter/gatherer lifestyle. Before the advent of farming, it was impossible to get sufficient calories for a tribe or village without hunting and bringing down big animals on a regular basis. Meat was quite literally the “meat” of human diet for most of history.
After the advent of farming, you could pack a lot of calories with things like breads, for when you didn’t have meat (or in early civilization) when the rich folks got the meat.
As for cheese, it really doesn’t take that long to produce unless you’re talking about aged cheese… But that’s a different topic (and both aged/fresh have different health benefits)
Very recently being thousands of years ago?
Since when is meat unhealthy?
Although high in nutrients, the difficulty in digestion makes it a carciogen. Particularly red meat - bird and fish (pre omnipresent plastics and heavy metals) are relatively healthier.
That’s sorta half the story. The official statement is that consistently eating more than 1.5lbs (500g) of red meat per week “probably” (their word) increases your cancer risk. The real story is that eating more than 50g of processed meat per week dramatically increases your cancer risk. To the extent that processed meat is ranked as a “Group 1” carcinogen.
Flip-side, grains and legumes have been tied to cancer as well. I can’t find exactly what category, but they seem fairly convinced they are carcinogenic.
It is, sadly, like the California Cancer joke, where almost everything causes cancer if taken to excess.
If it is hard to digest meat, why do carnivores have shorter guts than herbivores?
“Hard” doesn’t necessarily mean “requiring many resources” in this case. It has more nutrients, and as such it’s usually not digested as fully as herbivores digest plant matter.
It’s harder on the system doing the digestion.
I’m not getting it. Meat is hard to digest, but you can do it with a short gut, and produces very little excretion (the military “low residue diet” is meaty and low in fibre)
But vegetables are easy, yet take a longer gut and produce enormous amounts of shit
There’s nothing about difficulty in digestion on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat#Nutritional_information
Have you got a source - ideally one not produced by a vegan or vegetarian source?
I think it’s more the industrial farming and food processing practices that make it carcinogenic.
It’s not. Remember that evolutionary incentives don’t care if you tend to live very far fast 32.
It actually is. Most carcinogenic evidence on meats come from processed meats. Per cited references, eating way too much red meat is “probably” a cause for cancer, but eating processed meats is definitely a cause for cancer.
And by “way too much”, that’s 1.5lbs/week. I love a good steak, but don’t really eat 1.5lbs/week of it.
Yeah I just don’t believe you bud.
Well good thing science doesn’t give a shit what you believe lol. We’ve known this for decades at this point.
“That’s where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. Now, I know some of you are going to say, ‘I did look it up, and that’s not true.’ That’s ’cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that’s how our nervous system works.” - Stephen Colbert, 2006
Would you happen to know any papers with compelling evidence of this?
They use “can” and “probably” in scientific sources because it’s not entirely confirmed. The best citation I could find was “probably” an increased risk if you eat more than 500g of meat per week.
Fr meat is the reason we have big brain.
Now if you wanna argue that we should have never left the trees and created civilization then you may have a point.
The dose is the poison. Meat in the amount we consume today is unhealthy. In the past people didn’t eat meat every day or even close to it.
That doesn’t inherently make it unhealthy. We have the means to not have to eat the animals we slaughter immediately due to refrigeration.
The frequency and serving sizes are what make it unhealthy. Coupled with an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and one of the best/easiest decisions you can make to improve your health is to cut back on meat, especially processed meat products. Proccessed meat is definitely, 100% unhealthier than cuts from your local butcher.
Processed meat is a Group 1 carcinogen. We should be treating it like we treat cigarettes.
Dude I can breathe air and get cancer.
Yes, but all these points were not mentioned by the user I’m responding to. He stated that our ancestors didn’t eat meat as frequently as we do now. That was his argument against red meat.
That’s also true of almost any food. Grains and legumes cause liver cancer. Eating too many plain vegetables can lead to nutritional deficiencies. All carbs, even fibers, need to be eaten in moderation. This site suggests no more than 3-4 servings per day.
Everything in moderation
Since the grain industry gained power in the 1940s. They funded much research to say
- Meat is hard to digest (when in fact carnivorous animals have the shortest gut; we’re omnivores and have a medium gut, we also have the most acidic stomach acid of the mammals which is an adaptation to eating meat)
- Grain is the healthiest food (the only type of animal that does well on seeds is birds, they don’t have teeth for bread to get stuck between and rot. The ancient Egyptians lived on bread and had the worst dental health)
- That humans need a balanced diet of many different things - which we do when we’re eating nutritionally poor foods like bread, but many thrive on simple diets of fatty meat (Inuit before they adopted the standard American diet; Buffalo hunting native Americans; modern followers of lion, carnivore, zero carb)
The standard diet as recommended by science (much of which was bought by the wheat peak bodies) has made us fat. Getting fatter is the most unhealthy state, it leads to diabetes, hypertension, bad cholesterol and early death
This is a common explanation but is unfortunately propaganda in itself.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Weston_A._Price_Foundation
Long story short on what you wrote - meat is a nutritionally rich food option and kind of nutritionally acceptable if your people have been living in the tundra for a few thousand years & have actually managed to genetically accommodate it, since there isn’t much else food the further you go north (although it’s very much overly simplistic to depict Inuit diets as entirely meat-based). But for modern people, in temperature or tropical regions, it makes no sense at all, plant-based diets give you the best balance of nutrients without extremely high fat and cholesterol content…there’s a real anti-scientific hubris going on with people trying to brush away this basic fact.
If you eat it more than 2 - 3 times per week.
Specially processed meat, cheese and bread. In the case of fast food these ingredients are basically “hacked” to make us crave more and consume more. These industries have “food scientists” working on exactly that.
Meat, cheese and bread in their more natural form is definitely healthy when consumed in moderation.
Hacking implies a lot more than simply adding fat and sugar, and that’s all you gotta do.
I’ve seen several threads where chefs confess that all they do to make their dish(s) popular is load it down with butter and sugar.
Wouldst thou like the taste of butter, wouldst thou like to live deliciously?
In related news, this American finally figured out why Europeans find our bread sickening sweet, why I love sourdough and why it’s called “sour”. You’re only gonna need one guess.
Hacking implies a lot more than simply adding fat and sugar, and that’s all you gotta do.
In principle yes, but in reality it extends much farther than that and there is a whole industry built around this.
For example, the “Subway Sandwich smell” is something desired but not easily replicable, and is a guarded secrecy that corporate is pretty shush-shush about. It not only accentuates the flavor but can get people into the shop from blocks away.
It’s… Just just the smell of baked bread and yeast. Anyone that makes their own bread knows what’s going on with the smells in subway and can easily replicate it. I worked at one when I was younger there’s absolutely nothing nefarious or secret about it lmao. I personally think it’s the yeast more than anything. It’s a smell that used to be really common but is much less so these days so it sticks out. A lot of subways have the bread proofing/rising right up by the front too
I’ve seen several threads where chefs confess that all they do to make their dish(s) popular is load it down with butter and sugar.
Not “confessed”. That’s a part of what they teach in culinary school. Restaurants strive for increased flavor, and the most effective flavor profiles are sweet and umami. Sugar and butter (or meat or MSG etc).
But yeah, we definitely use more sugar (instead of, or as well as umami) in America. However, there’s a lot of that going on in Japanese and Chinese (real, as in eating in China) cooking as well. When I was in China, everything that wasn’t meat was shockingly carb-loaded. These weird (yummy) sweet cheese breads I swore had simple syrup slathered all over them with what tasted almost like American Cheese.
Especially the US white bread which contains a carcinogen.
Which carcinogen?
Can’t you read? “A” carcinogen. Doesn’t matter which one!
/s
I don’t know exactly, but it’s one of the preservatives. It’s banned in Europe.
How profound. Clearly, you have a lot of important things to say.
I said all of that in my other comment, replying to someone else.
Take care not to make statements so inaccurate they are effectively meaningless.
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“US white bread” isn’t a singular brand and most brands don’t “contain[s] a carcinogen”…
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You never mentioned what the carcinogen was. Probably because it would compromise your argument that “US white bread” as a whole contains it when it does not. (It’s Potassium Bromate/Bromide (it’s used interchangeably online sometimes), for those wondering.)
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It’s not limited to white bread in where it can be used. It was an additive to flour in general.
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A lot of the fear mongering blogs, written by ‘influencers’ whose research consists of 10 seconds of Googling but not verifying a single fucking thing they write about, name brands that contain potassium bromate… but actually don’t. Example: Wonder bread (https://wonderbread.ca/our_products/white-bread-675g/) Chex Mix. Looking up their ingredients list shows the item in question is not used at all. https://www.chexmix.com/products/chex-mix-traditional/
TLDR: Think before you repeat vague, meaningless shit next time.
BTW, You should look into the horrors of Dihydrogen Monoxide.
My statement is far from meaningless. Mild carcinogens are still carcinogenic. Sure, a small dose as a one of will not cause problems short term, but long term build up is a thing.
- It’s a preservative widely used in US white bread, but banned in Europe and other places.
- I don’t know the specific carcinogen off the top of my head, I’ve never bothered to remember it, and didn’t look it up earlier while I was half snoozing being driven home.
- So you do know what I’m talking about.
- My source was Dr Joel Fuhrman. I’m not sure if you’d call him an influencer. While I do turn my nose up at some of his preaching, I think much of what he says is backed up by solid science. Not that I follow it myself. If it’s since been removed from most products then good for you and other people in the US.
Your link to Wonderbread is from Canada.
Chex Mix doesn’t contain azodicarbonamide (I’m guessing this is the one we’re talking about? I wouldn’t be surprised if there are others), but it does use butylated hydroxytoluene, which is also classed as GRAS (Generally Recognised As Safe) by the FDA based on a study from 1979. Yet both chemicals have since been called into question for their links to cancer. From a cursory glance, azodicarbonamide has a more proven link, while butylated hydroxytoluene has yet to be properly studied and the link is questionable.
Too much dihydrogen monoxide can kill you.
Alcohol is also carcinogenic - more so than bread additives - but I’m definitely having some of that tonight.
Also, Joel Fuhrman had a podcast talk about lemmy’s favourite, BEANS.
Edit: Bloody kbin users, breaking lemmy threads. Supposedly there’s a comment underneath mine, but it won’t load, and there’s nothing on kbin.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=4C9i9LMG_5c
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
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Only if you live in California!
Exactly lol.
But in all seriousness mild carcinogens are still carcinogenic.
I am extremely sure if you make a burger by yourself with good ingredients it will be just as healthy.
Beware of the added sugars in things that aren’t supposed to have that much sugar.
*calling meat, cheese, and bread healthy*
wow that food pyramid propaganda really did a number on you all didnt it.
Edit: im talking about the meat and dairy industies lobbying too, not just bread
It seems odd putting meat in the same category as bread.
In terms of pure health, there’s not much out there better than most meats. Yes, beef is a bit lower than pork and chicken, but properly portioned (looking at most of us Americans) it has very few downsides.
Bread on the other hand can be one of the worst foods we can eat. Of course, it is still all about moderation.
EDIT: Why the reddit-like downvotes folks? There’s really no cohesive argument that puts meat below bread healthwise in most situations. If you want to avoid meat, avoid meat. If you want to be morally opposed to anyone eating meat, so be it. Facts are still facts and misinformation isn’t the right way to fight that battle.
Bread can be healthy, just make sure it’s wholegrain. Read meat is acosiates with bad health outcomes..
But yeah nobody is going to put a wholegrain bun on their hamburger.
Yes, bread can be healthy. The right one in moderation. The same as red meat (per your reference), actually :).
But 80/20 extra-fattened with liver for a delicious burger? Definitely not healthy (but like a candy bar, it’s ok to have one every months or two)
But yeah nobody is going to put a wholegrain bun on their hamburger.
Uhh. Why not? Whole Grain comes in all shapes and sizes now. Hell, most higher end restaurants use whole grain buns. Not sure why you would conclude that?
This makes me think you’ve never had a 100% wholegrain bread
Do you live somewhere in the world where it’s hard to get? I rarely eat bread, but when I do buy from the store it’s always 100% wholegrain. I just bought some a few weeks ago and there were plenty of different choices on the shelf.
No wholegrain is easy to get. Just nog as burger buns in a restaurant. I wasn’t talking about bread in a supermarket
Your “source” is one doctor speaking out against and entire study where the researchers found “low” evidence that either red meat or processed meat is harmful. That’s not low health risks, or low percentage of affected individuals, but low evidence that here are any risks at all.
But yeah nobody is going to put a wholegrain bun on their hamburger.
yeah people do its not uncommon here
The doctor in your link says processed meat is likely bad all around, presumably due to additives, but that red meat in lower amounts (specifically, he says “2-3 times a week” and to use red meat as a side, instead of a main) is actually associated with lower health risks.
Bread can be one of the worst foods we can eat
Why?
I said it elsewhere. Basically, it combines low nutritional value with a high density pack of too-easily-digested carbs.
The effect is that it increases blood sugar and hunger, which very easily leads to higher weight. Higher weight alone is not immediately unhealthy, but it can get unhealthy pretty fast if you get heavier and heavier.
And the only objection is “well, better than sugar, so it’s not THAT bad”… But we have a lot of added sugar in bread here in the US.
Well, they sure have necessary nutrients
i love the greatest source of carcinogens in an average diet 🤤🤤
Everything is a fucking carcinogen, get over it and eat an actually balanced diet with exercise
nah meat and dairy is kinda gross
Meat ?
Of course. The unhealthiness of food is an emergent property arising from the arrangement of their constituents components relative to each other. The next time you have a burger and want to be healthy, just take it apart! Taps head
In all seriousness, for anyone confused by this, whether or not something is healthy for you is all about quantities and ratios. Specifically, that of your diet as a whole, not of individual items. So while I don’t agree with this sentiment, burgers can be considered unhealthy because:
- There is very little vegetables in relation to meat and bread
- It is very calorically dense
- Red meat is considered by many to be unhealthy in its own right, and burgers tend to have a lot of that
- It is usually consumed with large portions of fries and drinks or other sides that are also very calorically dense with little diversity in micronutrients
I’m sick of people claiming calorie dense food is unhealthy. It’s not. Calories are required for your body to function. An adult needs 2000kcal per day; whether they are spread out over 8 meals or 3 makes no difference. Eating the amount of calories of a hamburger every day is nothing special, especially if you do sports regularly.
This comment was made by the <20 BMI gang.
Only thing wrong with calorie dense food is that people eat too much. Guess you could add ignorance in there as well. Pretty shocking when you look at the numbers on the menu.
Not that people actually look. They got every excuse in the world for being fat, except the big one, placing calories in their mouth.
Coming from the >30 BMI gang, a lot of the food in the West (especially the United States but a lot of other countries are having this problem too) has a shit-ton of calories and very few other nutrients. That’s the biggest problem with caloric density, when food has a lot of calories and no nutrients it encourages either obesity or nutrient deficits.
There are some foods while very caloric will give you a massive amount of what you need. Its important to not made them the villains too.
Calories are required for your body to function
not mine 🙂
Are you a robot?
A robot powered by nicotine and aspartame.
Who’s this? Snack from Metal Gear Solid?
Robots need calories too (just they usually eat “food” like batteries or gasoline)! Clearly they are a ghost. Or a Walking Dead zombie. Those things defied physics.
whether they are spread out over 8 meals or 3 makes no difference.
While I agree with your overall point, this isnt true. While there is still debate about the “best” frequency to eat meals in, its generally agreed upon you dont want to eat all of your daily calories at once as you overstress your gut and cant process it efficiently.
Additionally, eight ounces of steak might be lean. (It also might not, of course.) Eight ounces of hamburger, especially one from a fast food restaurant, is absolutely not lean beef.
I always thought it was the proportions that weren’t healty. You get 50% bread, 50% meat, with a tiny slice of lettuce in the middle.
It’s really not the burger that’s unhealthy, but the fries and soda you get with them
Fries could be argued for, its the sugary soda that is the real issue. Sugar is absolutely terrible in large amounts frequently…
Absolutely this. Sure the fat and salt and lack of veggies isn’t great for you, but the fries and soda is way worse.
The burgers are unhealthy too. With all the dressing, roasted onion, fatty cheese, oil, salt…
Ratios and amount are the most important thing in healthy eating. For reference, vegetables should be more than half your food intake, the rest split between whole-grain carbs and protein (either meat or plant based) in order to be healthy. And we need to pay attention to how much total food we eat too since our monkey brains that evolved under extreme food scarcity don’t do a good job of moderating nutrient input.
No I can’t keep myself to that either.
I’m fat by nature (and environment) so I have examined and tried many diets, and I think I can only say for sure a few thing about healthiness of diets:
- if you eat carbs, fats beyond what is necessary to eat, are unhealthy
- If you don’t eat carbs you need to eat fats, some fats are better than others
- If you don’t eat carbs and you don’t eat fats you starve - to thin then to death
- Sugar is unhealthy and wrecks your teeth
- Highly processed foods are not healthy
So it’s as easy as eating a balanced diet?
If it fits your macros bro
Indeed, though it’s hard to get fatter on fat in absence of carbs or dairy
Becoming less fat? It’s hard.
I cannot do it eating a low fat diet. I find portion control impossible, I get very hungry when I eat carbs
The only success I have had has been on very low carb diets, but they are hard to stick to long term. I found the only one I can do easily is “zero carb”
Ed. It’s unbalanced - choose either:
- Carbs, protein & minimal high quality fats; or
- Fats, protein & minimal to zero carbs
If you eat balanced fat, carbs, protein then you will not be healthy
On the sugar note: Meat you buy in the store (for instance bacon) often have sugar additives. Better to visit the butcher.
Butchers won’t save you from sugar in bacon, many bacon brine recipes call for sugar, but a butcher will be able to tell you what the bacon was pickled in
Raw, unprocessed meat (steak, chops, chicken) is generally fine
Ah didn’t know that, thank you. I’ve just started to read the ingredients list on most of the products I buy from the store and realised I can’t even buy ham or many other kinds of meat, because of the sugar additives that they syringe into it.
additives that they syringe into it.
It’s usually only water they syringe into meat - so they can sell a 1.5kg leg of lamb as a 1.7kg ;) but only if your food supply is really badly regulated
The sugar in bacon is from the brine it is soaked in; in ham it’s from the glaze it was coated in before it was sliced - the sugar on sliced ham is all in the edge
Salami might have sugar to promote fermentation
Glazed sliced ham? No I’m talking a bout a big piece of meat without glace. I’m not in the states though so might be different there.
Sliced ham is cut from the big piece. And you’re right, aside from Christmas, ham isn’t usually glazed. I guess there’s sugar in the pot when the ham is cooked, so I think my advice is right - the sugar will not have penetrated far
I guess I haven’t thought much about sugar in smallgoods, as it was within the 20g allowance on keto (even with a bowl of salad) and now I’m on “zero carb” I don’t bother with ham because it doesn’t have enough fat
I’m also not in the states, g’day from Australia
What about protein? There’s a whole other macro you can use to make up for calories with if you cut out carbs. Eating near exclusively protein probably isn’t good for you, but you won’t starve. From what I’ve seen there can even be a lot of advantages to eating a little more protein, especially if you’re doing some strength training.
Protein is vital and is available on any kind of diet. Many vegetables, all meats, all fungi
Humans can either live on carbs or live on fats, in both cases we must also eat protein
Humans cannot (though cats can) live on protein, look up rabbit starvation. You will starve if you eat only protein, where eating only fat or only glucose will kill you much more slowly with vitamin deficiencies
White bread, cheese (at least not the one on burgers) and red meat aren’t exactly known as healthy foods. Definitely not in the proportions of a burger. Even more definitely not when you boil the meat in oil (often together with the onions).
She also is showing lean meat not 20% burger meat, it’s just dumb.
Look my internal butter system carries oxygen to my cells that’s why the doctor says I have IBS
Replace meat with bean burger
Replace cheese with guacamole or other sauce
Replace white bread with whole grain bread
Never replace the cheese. never. I’ll happily let veins get clogged up in 10 years for cheese, cheese is well worth dying a few years sooner
Silly westerners and your cheeses…
~(Proceeds to put mozzarella cheese all over his otherwise authentic Korean ddokbokki)~
Smothering Korean food in cheese is pretty authentic ngl
Just say you switched to budae jigae and you’re good
Have you seen old people? Eating cheese to eliminate the last decade of “living” basically as a zombie that shits itself sounds like a win not a loss.
It’s not as if your health will be optimal before the last bit of brie clogs your artery
Being from Wisconsin, this is essentially how the entire culture is. The good news is this means we have some pretty spot-on cheese replacements in vegan restaurants 😊 (I’m not vegan, but my internals do better when I pretend to be)
Everything has cheese, even shit that shouldn’t have cheese. I’m not complaining cuz it’s delicious, but it does (especially when added to beer) make maintaining a healthy weight and digestive tract a lot harder.
I’m a hardcore omnivore and bordeline anti-vegan… but there are some “faux cheese” options that are surprisingly pretty damn good.
I was tricked into trying a faux lasagna with cashew cheese. The “not-meat” was as disgusting as I expected, but the cashew cheese was surprisingly delicious. It didn’t entirely want you to believe it was really cheese, but it wanted you to agree it was a delicious savory sauce that worked where cheese goes.
The best fake meat is the stuff that’s at least real food, and not pretend food (like bean burgers, though those are still better than Impossible Burgers).
It’s not just the dying earlier, it the feeling like crap all the time before it gets bad enough that you die from it.
I’d feel worse if I couldn’t eat cheese
but if you feel bad you can just eat more cheese to help
Especially if the alternative is guacamole.
Replace me from that entire scenario because I ain’t eating that shit when I wanted a burger.
Fr. Vegans out in force here. Which is fine. No issue with vegans. But I have an issue with how much elitism and smugness is coming from this comment section.
The topic is a shit post about how easy it is to make healthy food unhealthy through bad eating habits, poor balance in ingredients, and through misrepresentation of food’s nutritional value. All the condescending “JuSt EaT pLaNt” is not asked for and obnoxious.
Replace good taste with veggievomit
You clearly need to learn how to cook.
Yeah, I’ve never understood why burgers are unhealthy if beef, grain, and vegetables are healthy.
First of all there’s a huge gap between home made hamburger and, well, anything else tbh. Actually, let’s expand it, there’s a huge difference between home made anything and any other kind of food, be it restaurant or assembly line made.
Backing up a little though, if you make a hamburger at home, with lean good quality beef that you grind up yourself or ask them to grind it for you at the counter, lots of veggies and very little oil, on a home made bun or on actual bread (the kind made with flour, water and salt, that’s it), then it’s quite healthy. Still wouldn’t eat it more than once a week since red meat yada-yada, but still, not that bad.
What you get at a fast food though is very low quality meat with lots of fats, dipped in other fats, sugar and spices to mask the flavor, processed bread, processed cheese, very little veggies and, usually, a side of french fries and a soda, which are a meal onto themselves. Let’s take McDonald’s, looking at their website a quarter pounder is 500+ kCal, the medium fries are 300+ kCal and a medium coke is 200+ kCal. That’s 1000+ kCal for a “meal” full of fats, sugar and processed food. Also it’s a huge spike in insuline which will lead you to a huge crash just a few hours later leaving you hungry and craving for more.
Restaurants are also a bit guilty of this. They tend to add much more fats than you’d ever do at home in order to drastically improve the flavor of their dishes. Can’t even fault them for it, if I wanted a bland healthy meal, I’d have eaten at home. If I’m going to the restaurant it’s because I want a great tasting dish. Ready made meals you can get at a supermarket are also full of fats, vegetable oils and preservatives in order to mask the shitty flavor.
So at the end of the day I’d say the best thing is to avoid as much as possible processed foods, avoid all take outs and deliveries, go out to eat maximum once a week and cook all your meals yourself starting with simple ingredients. It’s not that hard either and cooking can be fun.
if you make a hamburger at home, with lean good quality beef that you grind up yourself or ask them to grind it for you at the counter
If you use lean beef to make a burger, you’re Doing It Wrong™. Make the burger smaller or eat them less often if necessary, but don’t go below about 20% fat.
More concretely, I recommend using brisket to grind for your hamburgers. It has the correct amount of fat, plus a whole brisket is among the cheapest cuts of beef you can buy.
My method is two or three ~1" cubes of beef then one 1" cube of pork belly, repeat. Hella juicy.
Hell yes.
My method is smoked pork bellies and hold the hamburger till next week. I’m a huge pork belly fan. I know they’re horrible for me, but I don’t eat em often.
Very helpful and interesting too!
Burgers aren’t inherently unhealthy, in moderation. The problem comes when you’re buying the burgers from fast food joints.
Beef ain’t healthy, White bread isn’t either and don’t forget, the McDonalds Cheesburger doesn’t even have vegetables.
Well, there’s a pickle.
And there are the people that open their cheesburger to remove it.
Yup. I am people
Hello people
Because the stuff is heavily processed using a lot of sugar, saturated fats and salt. Also the gravy the meat is fried in. Also the poor quality of the meat, being made from god knows which scraps of the animal, that couldn’t sell otherwise.
The grain/carbs is the unhealthiest part. The low quality fat is next.
I’ve thrown away all the carbs in my pantry and went from keto to now carnivore. My wife’s diabetes is reversing and I’ve lost 35lbs this year!
Look, I’m not gonna tell you how to live your life, but you should consider eating some nuts and veggies. Your guts are going to fall apart if you eat nothing but meat, and you’re simply not going to get enough nutrients. The entire carnivore diet is unfortunately pseudoscience and no different than other fad diets of the past.
Just balance your diet and you’ll likely see many of the same benefits, but you’ll a) have less negative impact on the environment and b) have fewer long term health issues down the line.
I thought it was a bad diet until I learned about it more from doctors and nutritionist showing the data from blood work. I get what you’re saying that it’s pseudoscience, sorry to be blunt, prove it. You haven’t said anything I haven’t heard already.
I get what you’re saying that it’s pseudoscience, sorry to be blunt, prove it.
But medical experts have pointed out that there is absolutely no scientific evidence to back up these claims, pointing out that the diet could lead to vitamin deficiencies.
The carnivore diet has evolved from the keto and paleo diets, which eschew carbs in favour of protein and fat. Some followers of the lifestyle include fish, dairy products and eggs in their diets too.
Although there are health benefits to meat - it’s a great source of protein, B vitamins, iron, zinc and magnesium - many nutritionists and dietitians have raised concerns that following the carnivore diet is unhealthy.
“I honestly think one of the biggest risks of the carnivore diet is colon cancer,” nutrition professor Rachele Pojednic told Lifehacker. “But we won’t have data on that for years to come (and this would also mean that someone needs to do a study on this diet, which I honestly don’t see happening).”
As the lifestyle advocates focussing on fatty meats, followers run the risk of raising their levels of LDL cholesterol, which can lead to an increased risk of heart disease and heart attacks.
“One thing you can’t ignore is there are some nutrients you just can’t get from meat,” Harley Street nutritionist Rhiannon Lambert wrote on Instagram.
She explains that only eating meat deprives your body of folate, vitamins C and E, and fibre, which are all essential for good health: “that’s why sailors used to get scurvy with not enough vitamin C in their largely fish diets.”
What’s more, subsisting on meat alone doesn’t provide the body with fibre, which is essential to promote a healthy gut.
“Meat also tends to push the balance of our good and bad cholesterol (called HDL and LDL) towards the bad end,” the Re-Nourish author adds.
Like some else said a balanced diet is important, minimize carbs but have at least some, also vegetables and some grains is good too. Your gut bacteria loves diversity.
People eat too much burgers
Real answer (since there’s a lot of crap going around).
Grain really isn’t that healthy in large quantities, but isn’t bad. But if you grind it into flour and bleach out the bran and germ, it’s far less healthy. When you bake it into a bread, you create this extremely high-density/high-calorie end product with very little nutritional value.
And beef, similar story. Beef is below-average on healthiness of meat (high cholesterol, though it’s complicated the same as high-salt foods would be). But in a burger, you usually use especially fatty beef, like 80/20. Restaurants will sometimes supplement the fat in the beef with pork fat to make for an even tastier (and more unhealthy) burger.
Nobody will ever say that tomato, lettuce, or pickle on a burger are unhealthy.
Red meat is bad, white bread is bad, cheese is also shit. Also like others have said heavily processed
Beef, under no circumstances, is healthy. Raw beef, beautifully seared beef, ground beef, AAA Chuck Sirloin whatever, doesn’t matter. Animal fats are linked to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. The maillard reaction when you cook any meat at all is carcinogenic.
Can I get some sources? Im seeing opposing arguments about red meat being healthy or not in here and I’m seeing basically no sources.
Afaik the least healthy part of that is the grain. Most breads, aside from a handful of micronutrients, are pretty close to empty calories. The killer with fast food is the soda and fries, usually.
I think it’s because of the quality of the ingredients. If you make a burger with homegrown vegetables and high-quality meat it would be healthy
Step one is to ask yourself what you think healthy means. Generally it’s used as a catch-all by people to justify whatever shitty diet they have.
It’s really only unhealthy if you’re eating that every time you eat. And mostly what makes it unhealthy is the fat/lean ratio. Hamburgers usually use fattier hamburger. You can make them with leaner meat tho. They just don’t taste nearly as good.
I’ve always been a proponent of full-fat products. Give me cream and I’ll drink it! It is the sugar that I am wary of, even though it is so delicious!
Hamburgers use hamburgers
I have great news for you! It ain’t so!
