Because as long as you’re satiated at a decent calorie level and have a good balance of nutrients, it doesn’t matter too much what you eat
Food such as pasta or pizza isn’t objectively bad for you. I wonder if people think that because they associate it with being tasty, and think that anything tasty must be bad
Or because here in the US, pasta is served by the wheelbarrow load at crappy “Italian” restaurants, and soaked in either butter sauce, meat sauce or both. Pizza has gotten so cheesy that you have to ask for light cheese to get what they used to put on it when I was a kid.
It blows my mind how much sugar is in tomato sauce here. I’ve seen anywhere from 3-7 grams of sugar per half cup serving on the jars at the grocery store.
I never put sugar in my tomato sauce I make at home. I don’t get it.
The bummer is that like most things sensory, our perception of how sweet it is depends massively on how sweet everything else we eat is. So for folks in the US who just grow up eating all of these over sweetened products it seems normal and less sweet products taste bland in a way most consumers can’t easily identify.
As for how we got here, this is how it seems to me:
Food marketers learned that if you take two identical food products, and add a small amount of sugar to one, most consumers will prefer the sweeter one even if they don’t identify it as “I like this one cuz it’s a little sweeter”. Our brains are just super primed to subconsciously reach for calorie dense foods, and sweetness says “there’s energy here”.
Think of a basic item like bread or tomato sauce - no sugar initially, they aren’t sweets after all. Imagine some brands take that tactic and add a little sugar - the others who don’t slowly lose market share until they either fade to irrelevance or add sugar too - well, now that’s the new perceived normal. Later, to stand out, someone bumps it again. Consumers start preferring that new slightly sweeter product - rinse and repeat for a few decades across basically all of our food products (plus guzzling soda, another topic), and eventually you have a country full of outrageously sugary foods that taste “normal” to most folks.
It’s sad and it’s actually really challenging to reset one’s palate. I’ve done it, for like 30+ days, ate only things that had zero added sweeteners of any kind, artificial or otherwise. It’s expensive and time-consuming here but before long, even certain raw veggies like carrots start to taste unmistakably sweet. Corn on the cob becomes almost a dessert. And then, now habituated to a much more normal level of sweetness, processed foods taste like the poison they are. But to do that consistently here in the US and keep that normal degree of sensitivity, it requires a dogmatic level of dedication, never going out to eat at all, etc.
So like most things, the population here got manipulated in subtle ways into slowly changing their preferences, without any real coordination or intent by the manipulators beyond “doing a little bit of this bad thing outperforms our competition”, and rinse and repeat until we’re all deranged and don’t even realize it.
Oh yeah, we usually go for store brand for most items but I made the mistake of getting store brand pizza sauce a couple months ago and it was disgustingly sweet. There’s a regional brand that’s really good but only a bit more and completely worth it.
Also pizza was my Covid recipe project. I’ve got a 20 minute dough recipe down and can have pizza ready from scratch in about 35 minutes.
Pasta has a low calory density. Pizza a bit more because of the cheese. You can eat pasta everyday and stay lean as long as you don’t put too much fat on it.
It’s very very simple: vegetables have carbs, you need vegetables (only way to get fibre, which is very important to gut health), thus the idea that carbs are bad is complete and utter lunacy. Even obligate carnivores will eat plant matter from time to time.
In general if someone tries to tell you a nutrient is objectively bad and can never be good or even acceptable, they’re delusional and/or trying to sell you something.
Sugar is the nutrient that is closest to being Bad, but there’s still nuance because it’s only bad if you eat large amounts of it and don’t burn the calories. People doing the Tour De France will literally suck on bags of sugar gel because they need pure energy that goes directly into their bloodstream.
Ok, let’s get into my social circle lunacy: one of my neighbors easily weighted like two grown men. Then he claims that through eating a protein-only diet, he halved that (one grown man weight unit).
He definitely looks much better, though I know people should eat their veggies, I can’t argue that his approach towards getting skinnier is not working.
He’ll eat a big boy’s steak and then leave everything else: tatoes, veggies, rice, bread, etc.
Ah, and he is still drinking coke (light, zero) as if it is the source of his lifeforce.
I’m still thinking that can’t be healthy, but he does look healthier in comparison to morbidly obese.
The only thing unhealthy in your neighbors diet is the sugar substitute in the coke zero. If he reduced his obesity down to a normal weight, his life has massively improved.
should eat their veggies
This is the party line, but its actually up for debate because the actual scientific literature doesn’t have evidence that this is necessary.
I’m still thinking that can’t be healthy, but he does look healthier in comparison to morbidly obese.
Carnivores (which it sounds like your neighbor is) tend to be very data focused, ask if he would share his health metrics with you (lipid panel, hba1c, etc)… When you look at those metrics you will have to decide what “healthy” means (what outcomes you care about)
sounds like they’re just eating less, which… yeah that do be how to lose weight.
he’s probably not having much fun on the toilet though, unless he’s also taking fibre supplements.
but yeah it’s not a good idea, you should be really really really careful about diets that have you eating the same thing often. Diversity in your diet is very important to make sure you get all the nutrients you need and in sensible amounts, as well as avoiding eating too much of any one thing which might cause problems.
Carbohydrates are unnecessary for human health, and while they can be a amazingly huge factor they are not the only factor in obesity.
Industrial oils
Processed Ingredients
Agrochemical contamination of grains
So a Italian dish made in Italy with real olive oil, with organic food not contaminated by pesticides, and not ultra processed could tolerated by a healthy person.
I’m not justifying carbohydrates, just illustrating that there are many overlapping negative factors working against people on the standard western diet.
My reading of the available literature doesn’t reach the same conclusion. The Mongols, the Inuit, the Masai are examples of populations that were healthy without any carbohydrates.
I’ll agree that vegetables can be part of a healthy lifestyle, but they are not necessary
Edit: Ah, downvoting everything I’ve posted concerning food in the last 15 days. A tirade of negativity doesn’t really communicate the strength of your position.
Might be worth mentioning that modern wheat and grains aren’t the same as older varieties that might’ve been consumed a century ago. Grains are also affected by the environment they were grown in. This paper touches on the topic and may be interesting reading:
How is the home of pasta and pizza the thinnest place?
Because as long as you’re satiated at a decent calorie level and have a good balance of nutrients, it doesn’t matter too much what you eat
Food such as pasta or pizza isn’t objectively bad for you. I wonder if people think that because they associate it with being tasty, and think that anything tasty must be bad
Or because here in the US, pasta is served by the wheelbarrow load at crappy “Italian” restaurants, and soaked in either butter sauce, meat sauce or both. Pizza has gotten so cheesy that you have to ask for light cheese to get what they used to put on it when I was a kid.
Don’t forget that tons of pizza here has a whole bunch of sugar added to the tomato sauce. Shit is gross!
It blows my mind how much sugar is in tomato sauce here. I’ve seen anywhere from 3-7 grams of sugar per half cup serving on the jars at the grocery store.
I never put sugar in my tomato sauce I make at home. I don’t get it.
The bummer is that like most things sensory, our perception of how sweet it is depends massively on how sweet everything else we eat is. So for folks in the US who just grow up eating all of these over sweetened products it seems normal and less sweet products taste bland in a way most consumers can’t easily identify.
As for how we got here, this is how it seems to me:
Food marketers learned that if you take two identical food products, and add a small amount of sugar to one, most consumers will prefer the sweeter one even if they don’t identify it as “I like this one cuz it’s a little sweeter”. Our brains are just super primed to subconsciously reach for calorie dense foods, and sweetness says “there’s energy here”.
Think of a basic item like bread or tomato sauce - no sugar initially, they aren’t sweets after all. Imagine some brands take that tactic and add a little sugar - the others who don’t slowly lose market share until they either fade to irrelevance or add sugar too - well, now that’s the new perceived normal. Later, to stand out, someone bumps it again. Consumers start preferring that new slightly sweeter product - rinse and repeat for a few decades across basically all of our food products (plus guzzling soda, another topic), and eventually you have a country full of outrageously sugary foods that taste “normal” to most folks.
It’s sad and it’s actually really challenging to reset one’s palate. I’ve done it, for like 30+ days, ate only things that had zero added sweeteners of any kind, artificial or otherwise. It’s expensive and time-consuming here but before long, even certain raw veggies like carrots start to taste unmistakably sweet. Corn on the cob becomes almost a dessert. And then, now habituated to a much more normal level of sweetness, processed foods taste like the poison they are. But to do that consistently here in the US and keep that normal degree of sensitivity, it requires a dogmatic level of dedication, never going out to eat at all, etc.
So like most things, the population here got manipulated in subtle ways into slowly changing their preferences, without any real coordination or intent by the manipulators beyond “doing a little bit of this bad thing outperforms our competition”, and rinse and repeat until we’re all deranged and don’t even realize it.
Oh yeah, we usually go for store brand for most items but I made the mistake of getting store brand pizza sauce a couple months ago and it was disgustingly sweet. There’s a regional brand that’s really good but only a bit more and completely worth it.
Also pizza was my Covid recipe project. I’ve got a 20 minute dough recipe down and can have pizza ready from scratch in about 35 minutes.
What do you use for sauce?
I do that: if it’s tasty, it’s bad. And that makes it even tastier.
Pasta has a low calory density. Pizza a bit more because of the cheese. You can eat pasta everyday and stay lean as long as you don’t put too much fat on it.
what is unhealthy about pasta and pizza?
Honestly, I was told that carbs are bad.
yeah that’s nonsense, carbs are great
like, the alternative is only eating protein and fat, which… blergh
Y’all carb-opinionated people get down on a big powwow and decide what’s what, then please let me know kindly.
It’s very very simple: vegetables have carbs, you need vegetables (only way to get fibre, which is very important to gut health), thus the idea that carbs are bad is complete and utter lunacy. Even obligate carnivores will eat plant matter from time to time.
In general if someone tries to tell you a nutrient is objectively bad and can never be good or even acceptable, they’re delusional and/or trying to sell you something.
Sugar is the nutrient that is closest to being Bad, but there’s still nuance because it’s only bad if you eat large amounts of it and don’t burn the calories. People doing the Tour De France will literally suck on bags of sugar gel because they need pure energy that goes directly into their bloodstream.
Ok, let’s get into my social circle lunacy: one of my neighbors easily weighted like two grown men. Then he claims that through eating a protein-only diet, he halved that (one grown man weight unit).
He definitely looks much better, though I know people should eat their veggies, I can’t argue that his approach towards getting skinnier is not working.
He’ll eat a big boy’s steak and then leave everything else: tatoes, veggies, rice, bread, etc. Ah, and he is still drinking coke (light, zero) as if it is the source of his lifeforce.
I’m still thinking that can’t be healthy, but he does look healthier in comparison to morbidly obese.
The only thing unhealthy in your neighbors diet is the sugar substitute in the coke zero. If he reduced his obesity down to a normal weight, his life has massively improved.
This is the party line, but its actually up for debate because the actual scientific literature doesn’t have evidence that this is necessary.
Carnivores (which it sounds like your neighbor is) tend to be very data focused, ask if he would share his health metrics with you (lipid panel, hba1c, etc)… When you look at those metrics you will have to decide what “healthy” means (what outcomes you care about)
Yep, he does use an app and all that jazz.
sounds like they’re just eating less, which… yeah that do be how to lose weight.
he’s probably not having much fun on the toilet though, unless he’s also taking fibre supplements.
but yeah it’s not a good idea, you should be really really really careful about diets that have you eating the same thing often. Diversity in your diet is very important to make sure you get all the nutrients you need and in sensible amounts, as well as avoiding eating too much of any one thing which might cause problems.
Carbohydrates are unnecessary for human health, and while they can be a amazingly huge factor they are not the only factor in obesity.
So a Italian dish made in Italy with real olive oil, with organic food not contaminated by pesticides, and not ultra processed could tolerated by a healthy person.
I’m not justifying carbohydrates, just illustrating that there are many overlapping negative factors working against people on the standard western diet.
all vegetables contain carbs, and you need vegetables to be healthy, thus you need carbs.
My reading of the available literature doesn’t reach the same conclusion. The Mongols, the Inuit, the Masai are examples of populations that were healthy without any carbohydrates.
I’ll agree that vegetables can be part of a healthy lifestyle, but they are not necessary
Edit: Ah, downvoting everything I’ve posted concerning food in the last 15 days. A tirade of negativity doesn’t really communicate the strength of your position.
negativity log
Might be worth mentioning that modern wheat and grains aren’t the same as older varieties that might’ve been consumed a century ago. Grains are also affected by the environment they were grown in. This paper touches on the topic and may be interesting reading:
Do ancient types of wheat have health benefits compared with modern bread wheat?