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
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
*until the advent of mechanized agriculture and fertilizers, which allowed feeding large amounts of livestock in capitalist and communist countries alike
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.
Nobody ate meat before very recently. And cheese was not your typical daily treat. Remembers it takes a long time to produce
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)
So if I come from a lineage of smokers it means smoking is healthy? I take your word for it, science man.
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.
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.
I think it’s more the industrial farming and food processing practices that make it carcinogenic.
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?
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.
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.
I don’t know exactly, but it’s one of the preservatives. It’s banned in Europe.
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.
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.
*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.
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.
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.
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?
Everything is a fucking carcinogen, get over it and eat an actually balanced diet with exercise
Replace meat with bean burger
Replace cheese with guacamole or other sauce
Replace white bread with whole grain bread
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 just the dying earlier, it the feeling like crap all the time before it gets bad enough that you die from it.
Silly westerners and your cheeses…
~(Proceeds to put mozzarella cheese all over his otherwise authentic Korean ddokbokki)~
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).
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.
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.
Literally nothing is healthy about eating any part of a cow’s flesh. Red meat is, entirely, bad for your health.
Yogurt is an accepted and perfectly healthy snack, unless you put it in the freezer first, then its bad for you for some reason.
