I'm not convinced that there's a coherent concept of real food. Most real food advocates I've seen are happy to eat, say, tofu. They'll admit that technically it's processed, in the sense that it's industrially manufactured by pulverizing soybeans beyond recognition then adding chemicals to the big holding vats. But people say it's not highly processed, or it hasn't lost the natural essence of soy, or whatever. I just can't find a way to extract a meaning beyond "the kind of food that real food advocates like".
Tofu is processed but also incredibly ancient[1]. If it was bad for us, we'd probably have found out about it by now. Ditto for seitan[2], tempeh[3], various pickles and other types of preserved foods, and cheeses. "Traditionally" processed foods get a pass on the "real" food scale because they've (mostly, apart from smoked and cured meats and fish) passed the "is it harmful?" test.
Really 'real food' is latter day religion/marketing based upon what sounds good and validates their emotions/sells the premium product.
The /actual/ ancient past was way more concerned about quantity and physiological performance in a 'can you get big on it' as a positive and 'how likely is it to kill you' as opposed to any high minded ideals.
Despite trying to sound like it 'real food' isn't a real goal or metric in the same way that dog breeds which don't have a purpose other than aesthetics defined by vapid breed standards rapidly become the canine counterpart to the Hapsburgs. Compare to a working dog breed's actual defacto requirements. "Smart enough to keep up with and herd livestock, mean enough to chase away predators but not so vicious it kills the livestock itself." is a real set of goals that constrains it into a functional space to optimize for and can even tolerate some wasteful vanity in appearance selection. Hell even something overspecialized like "Try to be the fastest on the race track without being so badly behaved that they are disqualified." is better.
I am convinced that the underlying issues be they dog breeds or food aren't the real problems but ways of thinking.
It's OK if there's not a universal definition of every concept. Some things in life are culturally subjective - especially cuisine. However, I think an intelligent person can look at string cheese and say that's fake food.
I've started realizing that there is very little space for nuance and subjectivity in discussing things on HN
You're giving the marketing department way too much credit in my opinion.
Pretty much all of these highly processed foods are highly processed in order to reduce cost in some way (e.g. increasing shelf life, decrease storage requirements, use a substitute ingredient, remove the need for some other product, etc). All the finicky bits of producing food (e.g handling ingredients that are much less shelf stable than the final product) and abstracts that away to some factory somewhere. All of this seems like you're getting something for nothing if you don't know it's unhealthy.
The technology and processes used to create stuff that is recognizable as "modern industrial food" were mostly developed and matured over the late 1800s and early 1900s. For reasons that should be immediately obvious cheap and shelf stable became highly sought after traits for ingredients in the 1930s and 1940s. Likewise a generation of people grew up seeing their parents shoe-horn products like Crisco into use cases formerly reserved for other more natural ingredients. Considering that they grew up on it it's no surprise they stocked their 1950s and 60s cupboards and pantries with the sorts of products that they were familiar with from their youth.
Of course marketing is icing on the cake but things, like cooking habits, that you generally learn from your parents are generally resistant to fast change without some sort of strong outside motivation.
I think Chris Kimball of America's test kitchen spoke on this, one of the other big reasons that American's went from lard to Vegetable shortening was because lard is used in ammunition, so in world war II, much of the production of lard went to the war effort, so folks started to use shortening instead.
Thank you for a detailed and nuanced history. No doubt the industrial processed food supply was necessary for the population growth in the latter half of 20th century. The agriculture industry will need some massive overhauls to survive the next century
All makes sense but I'd say that there is also the factor of trying to maximize particular nutritional traits for marketing purposes ("no saturated fat," "no fat," "no sugar added," "no nitrates," whatever).
I think it's a spectrum of realness rather than real or not real - I also really dislike the title of this article as it connotes stuff that isn't literally conveyed. Industrially produced food is what nearly all of us eat, our sausages, our kale, our milk... all produced on an industrial scale.
That said, I think I value food that has fewer steps in preparation as being "more real" so I'd prefer something like a meat and onion skillet to beef wellington or a clumped cream chicken pot pie.
Yes. They're also bad for you if eaten regularly. Not all "real food" is healthy. Not all "fake food" (whatever that means) is unhealthy. They're orthogonal concepts.
IMO any processed food that hasn't been around for a couple of generations should be treated with some suspicion.
If you want to define "processing" a loosey-goosey definition might be "anything that can't be done in the average kitchen using ingredients commonly found at a grocery store". By this definition, maybe breakfast cereals aren't processed - you could make Grape Nuts in your kitchen if you were sufficiently determined and masochistic. But it's a decent heuristic otherwise.
SpicyLemonZest|6 years ago
triceratops|6 years ago
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu#History
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_gluten_(food)
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempeh#History
buckminster|6 years ago
https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova
Nasrudith|6 years ago
The /actual/ ancient past was way more concerned about quantity and physiological performance in a 'can you get big on it' as a positive and 'how likely is it to kill you' as opposed to any high minded ideals.
Despite trying to sound like it 'real food' isn't a real goal or metric in the same way that dog breeds which don't have a purpose other than aesthetics defined by vapid breed standards rapidly become the canine counterpart to the Hapsburgs. Compare to a working dog breed's actual defacto requirements. "Smart enough to keep up with and herd livestock, mean enough to chase away predators but not so vicious it kills the livestock itself." is a real set of goals that constrains it into a functional space to optimize for and can even tolerate some wasteful vanity in appearance selection. Hell even something overspecialized like "Try to be the fastest on the race track without being so badly behaved that they are disqualified." is better.
I am convinced that the underlying issues be they dog breeds or food aren't the real problems but ways of thinking.
ip26|6 years ago
Just about anyone can make beer, grind flour, churn butter, or bake bread. Even make tofu.
squish78|6 years ago
I've started realizing that there is very little space for nuance and subjectivity in discussing things on HN
dsfyu404ed|6 years ago
Pretty much all of these highly processed foods are highly processed in order to reduce cost in some way (e.g. increasing shelf life, decrease storage requirements, use a substitute ingredient, remove the need for some other product, etc). All the finicky bits of producing food (e.g handling ingredients that are much less shelf stable than the final product) and abstracts that away to some factory somewhere. All of this seems like you're getting something for nothing if you don't know it's unhealthy.
The technology and processes used to create stuff that is recognizable as "modern industrial food" were mostly developed and matured over the late 1800s and early 1900s. For reasons that should be immediately obvious cheap and shelf stable became highly sought after traits for ingredients in the 1930s and 1940s. Likewise a generation of people grew up seeing their parents shoe-horn products like Crisco into use cases formerly reserved for other more natural ingredients. Considering that they grew up on it it's no surprise they stocked their 1950s and 60s cupboards and pantries with the sorts of products that they were familiar with from their youth.
Of course marketing is icing on the cake but things, like cooking habits, that you generally learn from your parents are generally resistant to fast change without some sort of strong outside motivation.
kop316|6 years ago
squish78|6 years ago
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/hidden-costs-industrial-agr...
emodendroket|6 years ago
rayiner|6 years ago
munk-a|6 years ago
That said, I think I value food that has fewer steps in preparation as being "more real" so I'd prefer something like a meat and onion skillet to beef wellington or a clumped cream chicken pot pie.
abdullahkhalids|6 years ago
squish78|6 years ago
Edit: I see that you're a former lawyer. I'm going to assume it's a semantic word-play thing
triceratops|6 years ago
IMO any processed food that hasn't been around for a couple of generations should be treated with some suspicion.
If you want to define "processing" a loosey-goosey definition might be "anything that can't be done in the average kitchen using ingredients commonly found at a grocery store". By this definition, maybe breakfast cereals aren't processed - you could make Grape Nuts in your kitchen if you were sufficiently determined and masochistic. But it's a decent heuristic otherwise.