"quite obvious but are hard to prove" ... "people love to poke holes in obvious truths, especially in well educated spaces like HN"

yes they're bad. It's not confusing, you're just overthinking it.

According to NHS:

A processed food is any food or drink that has been changed in some way when it’s made or prepared. Most foods we eat are processed in some way.

Processing can be used to:

make foods safe, for example milk is pasteurised to remove harmful bacteria make foods suitable for use, such as pressing seeds to make oil preserve foods or help them last longer, such as tinned or frozen foods change how food tastes, such as adding salt or sweeteners create ready meals and snacks

Not all processed foods are unhealthy, but many ultra-processed foods are high in calories, saturated fat, salt or sugar.

Eating too many calories, too much saturated fat, salt and sugar, and not enough fruit and vegetables and fibre is not good for you.

----

Like why should processing something make it inherently unhealthy? Do you want to eat raw meat?

> people love to poke holes in obvious truths, especially in well educated spaces like HN

Someone makes a statement that they say is obvious truth, yet it seems false or misleading. You can't get away by later saying that someone will try to counter this "obvious truth".

This is a disingenuous question because you obviously know cooked meat is not what we usually mean by processed food.

And that's why the term is confusing, because there's a magical meaning behind that, which who knows what it exactly means. And you use this term to raise children - I absolutely was confused as a child about the meaning behind it. It felt like this magical term that I was unable to comprehend. Almost like circular reasoning - if something is processed it's bad for you. What does processed mean? That it's made bad for you! It's the same thing about the word "chemical".

It's also hiding what are the exact and true health problems behind certain foods.

Then you get those terms that are used and you get the anti-terms.

"All natural", that is supposedly good, etc. Except there are quite many poisons and things in nature that can kill you.

Then people get those strong feelings associated to those labels, and they get manipulated in various directions, because something can be considered to be of that label.

It’s certainly got an element of know it when you see it. Nonetheless it’s pretty easy to figure out. One good piece of evidence to consider is whether or not process chemistry is involved in its making.

Is it - even as a child? When usually your education for the food you consume begins. I explicitly remember being confused about it.

I probably had quite a few inaccurate beliefs in general because of this type of terminology.

Another common thing that made me have inaccurate beliefs was the "E" labelling in Europe. And I remember being told that "oh look at how many 'E' (evil?)" substances are on this package.

But also Curcumin, Vitamin C, etc are considered E substances.

So just so many inaccurate ideas all around. And I don't think this inaccurate labelling has helped much if people are unhealthy.

Cooked carrot = not processed Oreo = processed Soda = processed Steak = not processed Sugar = processed

We can keep on going with all possible ingredients and all possible combinations and most sane people will agree on what is called "processed" or not.

This is disingenuous discussion dressed up in smarty pants talk.

Shall we continue or actually discuss something substantive? Like the fact that Americans are morbidly obese and eat 60 pounds of sugar a year. We look like crap.

First answer in Google says that cooked carrots and baked potatoes are processed. But I'm supposed to take your definition over what is available elsewhere? In addition frozen broccoli is processed. This is coming from Harvard Health Publishing and UCLA Health. Are they all insane?

Would you move on if I replace "not processed" with "minimally processed" and "processed" with "ultra processed"?

You're not some harbinger of truth if we do that.

In fact, it's pretty evil (idc if you're Harvard, UCLA, or a commenter on HN) to argue over whether or not you can distinguish between a cooked carrot or an Oreo.

Which brings me back to my original point. That educated spaces need a study or even just a link to an authoritative source to accept even the most basic point. Here's a Harvard link for you: https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/processed-foods/

Hope that's satisfactory for you. LMK if you need a UCLA or Stanford link.

> Would you move on if I replace "not processed" with "minimally processed" and "processed" with "ultra processed"?

I think it would still be better to not mention "processing", because it's not about the "processing", it's about what is there in the end foods that can cause issues. So I would say that excessive consumption of foods loaded with unhealthy fats, sugars and artificial preservatives, flavor enhancers are bad for you". It's bad to eat too many fats, sugars, calories in general and not enough fruits, vegetables which contain ingredients that your body needs to properly function. If you want to use a circular word you can also just use "unhealthy foods", not "processed foods".

> In fact, it's pretty evil (idc if you're Harvard, UCLA, or a commenter on HN) to argue over whether or not you can distinguish between a cooked carrot or an Oreo.

I'm not arguing about that. I'm arguing about what is healthy and what is not. Processing food inherently doesn't make it unhealthy.

"not enough fruits, vegetables which contain ingredients that your body needs to properly function."

Is orange juice a fruit? There, take some of your own medicine lol.

In all seriousness, if you're not convinced ultra processed foods are bad for you as a rule, there's nothing I can do except throw a bunch of studies at you, which I've already argued is insane for such a basic and common sense concept

I know you probably will take great issue with "common sense", but most people I know, don't. That's why it's common lol

And presumably you've already seen lots of these studies so I don't even know why we're arguing something that makes sense and is also backed up by many studies (though a large proportion of these studies are likely to be garbage)

> Is orange juice a fruit? There, take some of your own medicine lol.

I'm not sure what you are trying to imply here? That it is? Orange juice is not a fruit, it's a juice derived from a fruit. Which is healthy in moderation, but definitely not enough alone to cover all the optimal ingredients you would get from a variance of different fruits.

> In all seriousness, if you're not convinced ultra processed foods are bad for you as a rule, there's nothing I can do except throw a bunch of studies at you, which I've already argued is insane for such a basic and common sense concept

I'm not convinced because it all depends on how it was exactly processed and the amounts.

cooked carrot = processed

oreo = ultra processed

a raw carrot and a cooked carrot have different nutritional profiles.

I literally don't know what people mean when they say processed food, and neither do they. It's a weasel word based on circular, no-true-scottsman, logic.