Good info! On a related note, some of us are quite adversely affected by gluten and that's behind "leaky gut" which you allude to. The cardiologist who wrote Wheat Belly observed using glucose test strips that pasta elevated his blood sugar twice as long as other carbs. When I eat wheat, it definitely slows down the transit time through my intestinal tract.
13
My father was the poster child for this, I realized it as I read this article. He was addicted to sugar his entire life. Wouldn’t admit all the problems it caused. He had major bouts with C Diff over the past couple of years of his life, bloody diarrhea and all. He refused to stop eating garbage and made excuses like a drug addict to eat as much processed trash he could. “But I have to eat something”. He literally couldn’t drink water to save his life.
I’m really worried about seniors. Ensure, that “meal replacement” drink given to a lot of sick people is loaded with all those substances mentioned in this article. Hospital food is terrible processed garbage.
62
Waitress here.
Diet soda drinkers are almost always overweight.
Diet soda must change a part of either your stomach or brain because 99 out of 100 will always ask for more.
It's like they can't be satisfied.
Just some real life observation, from fast food, fast casual to 4 star dining, it has been the same for 30 years.
87
Curious about trehalose and ground beef - why are sugars being added to ground beef?? First article I found says that Taco Bell's ground beef is only 88% beef, "the remaining 12% consists of ... soy lecithin, sodium phosphates, torula yeast and trehalose."
39
I am 66. I added 35lb when I was pregnant 28years ago. No matter what I did,even running 6 miles 3 times, didnt lose the weight THEN I gave up processed food, gave up sugar and white flower. In 4 months, without exercise, the the fat esp around my waist, went away! Its been 3.5years since and I STILL weigh 112-114 lbs! Can you imagine how awesome that it is!!!! I am so healthy too! Now I eat a lot of veggies, legumes and pretty much a vegan and almost 100% non-processed food!
DONT WAIT! Find a way to start and move on everyday to recognize what you eat can make your life very enjoyable or it can kill you!
76
Articles like these remind me, time and again, that science writing needs to be done with more care than the Times seems to cater for. Take this quote: "The implication is that by eating lots of seaweed, the ancestral Japanese pushed their microbiome to evolve until it adapted to their diet". That makes no sense at all. Historical societies, without the benefit of industrial food production, would have used foods that were easy to metabolize, and provided ample beneficial nutrition. If seaweed did not fit that bill, they wouldn't use that as a food source, considering the amount of effort it would take to harvest less effective foods, effort they could put to use gathering nourishing foods. One patently wrong conclusion in a narrative such as this invalidates much of the research.
11
I disagree. Prehistoric cultures would eat what was plentiful and readily available.
42
Arrrgh! As much as I would like to argue about it, it all makes sense! Yes correlation does not mean causation, and yes, we need more evidence, but still it is scary. There goes my 100 calorie sized commercial ice cream. I guess I will have to start making my own! A doctor' advice a while ago has proven to be prophetic. Eat a bit of everything, but try to avoid packaged (meaning processed) food at all costs.
43
I like the title. No one would read it if it had an overtly scientific title. It shows how addicted people are to artificial sweeteners. What reactionary comments
29
Eat food.
Not too much.
Mostly plants.
~Michael Pollan
68
Catchy title. But not at all accurate. This article is not at all about "The Germs That Love Diet Soda"-- it has nothing to do with "Diet Soda" but instead discusses various kinds of highly processed sugar.
14
At least something like the taste of it.
3
The solution.....eat organic food,drink uncontaminated water,and avoid ingestion and exposure to man made chemicals as much as is ,reasonably ,possible........and live in the wonder of each present moment of life by paying attention.
28
Thanks for the information, but that headline is more than a little misleading.
17
so - if some of the stuff we put in foods is bad for our bodies, and if we eat food to maintain the health of our bodies, then WHY do we continue to even allow this 'bad' for our bodies stuff to be added to our food?
18
A. It tastes good.
B. It makes corporations lots of money.
C. People are either too ignorant or indifferent to care.
51
Er, corporate america? Big business. You know...
19
I am still trying to figure out how studies on saccharine are relevant to diet sodas widely marketed in the U.S.
13
"... and saccharin, which we consume in diet sodas and “sugar-free” snacks ..."
9
Yet another article warning us of the danger of the food we eat. I am 66 years old, and have seen so many of these type of articles, and wonder what are we non-scientist types to believe? "Coffee is bad for you. Coffee consumption prevents cancer. Eliminate all fats from your diet because of the harm they cause. No, you need so-called healthy fats." The truth is that we can tolerate most things in moderation. So I will continue to drink coffee and Diet Coke and enjoy an occasional ice-cream cone. Maybe I should eliminate reading articles like this from my reading diet.
128
Wrong! The human body can tolerate real foods - but not this manufactured "food" full of chemicals and additives! Did you even read the article?
48
Coffee isn't bad for you and no credible scientist thinks that. Trans fat is what is bad for you. Other fats aren't. The truth is just because you can't understand nutritional science, doesn't mean articles like these aren't true.
81
Unfortunately, your attitude is extremely common and understandable. The media is filled with clickbait articles and the scientific communities need to publish (or perish) leads to poorly done studies.
The evidence is overwhelming that poor choices in diet and exercise leads to individual misery and extraordinary costs to society.
67
I have always viewed the center of the grocery store to be the heart of darkness that should be avoided at all costs. One can eat quite well by just going from the fruit and vegetable section, to the meat/fish counter and then by dairy (for milk). I have always been scared of putting things in my mouth that have been processed.
19
I would also recommend avoiding meats and dairy too. They are also highly processed and full of hidden, unhealthful ingredients..
14
If looking like a human barrel is not enough to make you change your eating habits, scientific articles won’t. Coming to the US from a trip abroad, the greatest shock is seeing how fat people are. I am always astonished by women who seem to be given up on their bodies, swelling up each year and then loudly complaining about faithless husbands or boyfriends. Not that the husbands look any better. When people enviously ask me how I manage to wear my high-school jeans, I have to tell them that there is no secret I can share except eating exactly half of what on the average American’s plate, cooking at home and never touching soda. Try it; it works.
68
For two of three meals a day, our habit is " half the plate=produce."
16
Germs (bacteria and viruses) are everywhere. On the outside of our bodies we are covered with microorganisms that are adapted by evolution to survive and prosper in different micro-environmental niches.
Inside, our guts have different microorganisms that have their own preferences for substrate (food) and conditions.
Whether inside and outside these microorganisms may work together or in competition against each other to grow and reproduce. Sometimes this is beneficial for us as their "host" and other times not.
That's life, for us and for them.
Germophobia is not a good health practice. Young children need to be exposed to many "germs" early in life to develop a healthy immune system. Failure to get this exposure may cause allergies for some.
Exposure to harmful infectious microorganism's antigens by immunizations is a healthy practice and the best way to prevent unnecessary illness and premature deaths.
Human beings, like all creatures, have their place in Nature's scheme of things. To some microorganisms we are home, to others we are dinner.
13
Those who don’t want to face the reality that food affects our health, do so at their own peril. Not every truth needs a formal experiment for proof. Just like the facts that point to collusion with Russia, science, common sense and observation demonstrate that processed foods are unhealthy and lead to disease. As a physician, I see this on a daily basis. Patients are misinformed and worse yet, the hospital cafeteria and doctors lounge serves processed, unhealthy items that contradict the mission of the organization. Managing disease is not the same as promoting health.
38
I have Hashimoto's, which is an autoimmune disease that attacks the thyroid. This is apparently the fastest-growing autoimmune disease and is linked to "leaky gut." While I think the Epstein-Barr virus is also involved, maybe there is some combo that triggers this because a LOT of people improve their condition through a combination of a very restricted diet and thyroid meds.
18
It doesn't sound like the glucose intolerance that arises from changes in the gut microbiome are comparable to the glucose intolerance that precedes diabetes. The microbiome-generated glucose intolerance described here is driven by adaptation: the mice fed a steady diet of sucralose have an intestinal microbiome that preferentially metabolize sucralose. Suddenly change their diet, as the researchers did in this study, and the mice will absorb more glucose from their food because the bacteria in their gut eat less glucose than the intestinal microbiome of mice who have been on a normal diet.
This is very different from prediabetic glucose intolerance, which is accompanied by insulin resistance. This occurs when a significant fraction of the insulin receptors are blocked, requiring the pancreas to produce more insulin in order to control blood glucose levels. That a fecal transplant eliminated the glucose intolerance in the mice indicates that while the sucralose-fed mice were glucose resistant, they were not insulin-resistant.
11
Great article. I did not study nutrition in school and find myself reading more on the subject as I get older. I appreciate that 'healthy diet and regular exercise' has been the mantra of the AMA for a very long time but just what constitutes a healthy diet seems to be ill defined especially if you want to know why you need to avoid certain foods.
13
Germs evolve to love whatever their human livestock prefer in their diet.
Human beings evolved 300,000 years ago biologically DNA genetically fit programmed to crave fat, salt and sugar when they were all essential but rare and hard to find. While we were active hunter gathers for most of our existence with a high infant mortality who generally did not live to be 40 years old primarily due to disease aka germs and genetics not diet.
Domesticating plants for agriculture consumption and animals for food aka farming were the original 'diet soda' germ problems. Human access to clean fresh drinking water was the crowning achievement of limiting germs in our diets.
50
While fascinating, this article doesn't fully delve into what kinds of problems are associated with low flora gut. Other than c. diff or IBD or digestive issues, reduced gut biomes can cause irritability, mood swings, rumination (constant processing of negative thoughts), depression, fatigue and lethargy. I believe this is what's currently "wrong" with many Americans. Researchers should compare what our gut biomes looked like prior to the prevalence of things like road rage and mass shootings and what they look like now. I'd bet money there was a correlation. And this is specific to our Western diet. We just had a some company from Germany visiting for 3 weeks. They were kept commenting that all the boxes, labels and brands were the same as in Germany but everything across the board was sweeter tasting in the US. We are doing this to ourselves.
29
Please keep in mind that the earliest dietary studies were to understand how little food a slave could survive on.
2
Oh, major yuck! We know we are what we eat. The jiggly illustration by Julian Glander is so maggoty off-turning it was hard to concentrate on the execration of processed foods by Moises Velasquez-Manoff. So how can we limit our consumption of processed foods in this country of instant food gratification by Mickey D, KFC, dorito, cheeto and diet soda?
6
How do you limit your intake? Just say no.
Food companies will change their products in response to consumer demand.
Sorry, but people knowingly eat bad diets and are not active. Then they want to blame someone else. The education is out there.
20
Thank you for the provocative article!!
11
I'll be sure not to wash down my Twinkies with diet cola.
Aren't Twinkies nuclear radiation proof?
6
"In olden days" the popular saying was: stay out of court and out of the hospital! Now we have another reason.
7
Why are we adding sugars to ground beef????
22
Nice catch Muriel. Enquirering minds want to know?
8
So we can become addicted to ground beef and become HUGE.
This makes corporations very happy.
18
“The virulent strains existed before 2000, but they didn’t cause as many outbreaks. Only after large quantities of trehalose entered the food supply did they become this deadly.” Without the clinical proof showing a relationship, the writing of the authors is hyperbole. What the author of this piece forgets is that there has been an increase in the year-long availability of greens and vegetables since 2000, but those events have not been analyzed.
“The scientists also fed a small group of healthy people saccharin-sweetened drinks for a week. In a subset of volunteers, microbial shifts occurred, accompanied by mounting glucose intolerance. So for some people, diet sodas may not be any healthier than regular sodas.”The scientists fed the maximum allowable amount of saccharin. The scientists did not report that they monitored what else the participants ate. Did some people eat more sugar in the next following days? Moreover, these data are based on 7 people. With data from 7 people from a poorly described study I am not willing to change my dietary habits.
The author’s conclusion that “So for some people, diet sodas may not be any healthier than regular sodas” is premature based upon a study of 7 poorly described people. Can this work be the basis for better studies, yes. But, the NYT given its prominence and ability influence, should be more thoughtful about the science reports they are reading and the science they are conveying to the public.
22
Um, what are YOU basing this conclusion on? I was alive before 2000 and in the US, there was no issue getting year-round fruits and vegetables. So: pot, meet kettle. Don't criticize research that is based on a study you can google for more information when you throw off ridiculous statements.
"What the author of this piece forgets is that there has been an increase in the year-long availability of greens and vegetables since 2000, but those events have not been analyzed."
13
Must we "sugar-coat" Science to get it read?
It seems that there is far more in this information than diet soda! Mismatch of Headline...
If that's why some skipped reading, they would miss out on a great deal.
9
First, the article is listed as OPINION. Second, the title invokes "Diet Soda" but the caption shows only processed food. Third, I am not finding any "diet sodas" sweetened with it. Fourth, I am a major consumer of brewers yeast, along with the very nuts and grains mentioned as positive in the article for gut bacteria health. The point is that balance is always important: Balance your intake of INFORMATION even more than you balance your intake of food. Pass me some diet soda sweetened with phenylalanine, not a sugar but an amino acid.
14
There’s something seriously wrong with this scare headline and the ostensible facts deep in the article about diet soda. The writer says that we consume sucralose and saccharin “in the form of diet soda.” Not true. In the U.S., at least, almost all diet soda is sweetened instead with Aspartame. For all I know, Aspartame rots your brain and causes gangrene, but it isn’t in the class of sweeteners that this supposed expert trots out to scare us.
21
Findings in laboratory mice should be just that: applicable to a population of research mice. It is quite a “jump” to draw reliable & valid conclusions about humans. Interesting therefore that this piece is categorized as an “Opinion”. “Hypothesis” would be more accurate!
12
It's really simple. Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds.
59
No one in this article is suggesting to eat more meat. That is an antiquated stance. Eating more plants, legumes, and nuts will lead to all of the health benefits we stive for.
33
The author is no doubt right: we human beings were not designed to eat processed foods. But just to be clear, we weren't designed at all. To talk like we were is to tacitly promote the popular fantasy that we were made to live long, healthy lives in perfect harmony with Nature (deified, of course). It's utter nonsense.
Some processed foods are undoubtedly bad for your body, but romanticizing all things "natural" is undoubtedly bad for your brain.
15
When I was a kid, no fast food, my mom cooked everything we ate. Extremely few people were overweight. Now, what was freakish fat then is considered average. It is not just calories--50 years of food science has produced packaged food that we can't stop eating. Our obese world is not normal. Instead of changing our ways, we try to rationalize away this cultural disease and look the other way. Nowhere is the problem worse than the medical staff of any doctor's office or hospital. Try telling a doctor you want to lose 30 pounds, when the nurse is so fat she can barely walk down the hall. But accepting the grotesque is not doing anything to lower rates of diabetes, and all the diseases associated with it, nor all the digestive problems that no one heard of until the last 20 years.
206
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
49
I'll wait for the article that comes out in five more years, stating that it turns out all of this was actually wrong, but now we DEFINITELY know what's going on...
14
Why still researching saccharin which most people now avoid? Is it because you get more headlines about diet soda? Better to research stevia, Splenda, aspartame etc.
19
Thank you and please continue to write about this type of information. Humans need to get healthier. The healthier you are, the happier you are and you are also more able to help others. That's a guarantee!
7
An excellent article...but the title really does not reflect the content. It is a very misleading title, not becoming of the NYTimes, and I am afraid people may overlook the article for that reason. No one in my family drinks soda, let alone diet sodas - and I would have skipped the article if I didn't have an overall interest in health and nutrition. I found some information on IBD (affecting my brother, husband and brother-in-law) that I'd love to share and make use of.
It is an important article to help people understand why home-cooked from scratch really makes a difference and you can be eating your occasional cake and enjoying your sausage if it is natural and additive free.
13
I have one simple rule:
Don't ingest anything that did not exist in nature 10,000 years ago.
Hopefully this isn't too naive.
88
not naive but unduly restrictive - and possibly requiring a lot of research. Michael Pollan's rule is "don't eat anything your grandmother would not have recognized as food". For "your grandmother", possibly substitute "a cook in the 1920s or 30s".
A 10,000-year-rule would eliminate any cultivated food and any kept animals. Too hard and surely unnecessary.
29
Mr. Velasquez-Manoff enjoys sensational claims. Every article of his I've read is filled with speculation and connect-the-dots arguments that, coincidently perhaps, are vaguely consonant with popular dietary trends.
I'm no fan of highly processed foods. I rarely drink sodas. I eat very little red meat. But so many of the claims Mr. Velasquez-Manoff and others peddle have no basis in science. I don't know any companies that use saccharin anymore, but aspartame has been studied in great depth and found to be safe. No well-designed and conducted study has shown any detrimental health effects of GMO foods.
It turns out to be remarkably difficult to establish a cause-effect relationship between diet and health. Unless the effects are large, the studies have to be very long and include a large number of people. Just showing some effect in mice--or worse, at the cellular or biochemical level--is nothing more than hypothesis generation.
I've heard so many of these claims in the lay press over the years that just don't stand up to scrutiny when I go to the primary sources. I understand it makes good copy, but consider the costs to people who rearrange their diets like decks of cards, in hopes of better health.
I wish the Times would invite more practicing scientists to write these kinds of stories.
12
Sweeteners "found to be safe" simply means that the mice fed mega doses of the item didn't develop cancer.
4
Don't you know that eating well costs a great deal of money. None of this matters when you are going to food pantries for food. You get and eat what you can get. Have any of you shopped at Whole Foods or Trader Joe's? The prices for healthy food is astronomical. The majority of the country, where people are struggling to make ends meet, can't afford to be as picky as the article suggests. When healthy food becomes available, working class people will have a choice to be healthy. For now, 47% of the US are immune to these kinds of articles!
21
There are numerous grocery lists for healthy low cost diets, keeping a meal to less than $2.00 per serving. You don't have to shop Whole Foods to eat healthy, and you don't have to spend a lot. A bag of potato chips costs more per pound than many healthy fresh foods.
29
Even at Aldi's it will cost you. The 5 of you are clueless.
I buy virtually all of my nutritious, mostly plant-based, whole food diet in my local Shop- Rite.
6
The dreaded maltodextrin is the main ingredient in Tic Tacs.
6
"The big question is whether food additives are worse than the high-sugar, high-fat junk food diet they’re often a component of."
No, the question is whether additives are better than the high-sugar, high-fat foods they REPLACE.
This article, however well-intentioned, is disingenuous to the point of being misleading.
7
I am telling you, Kombucha really works for me. I drink two bottles a day (two different brands to diversify microbes taking in daily). I had uveitis before but it went away. I used to caugh a lot in winter time due to allegy but no more. I rarely get sick now. This microbiome thing is magical!
18
Everything you ingest affects the microbiome, not just the 3,000 "approved" additives. These additives are approved as non-acute poisons for you but may indirectly kill you slowly via your microbiome. Same with pharmaceuticals.
There's a new word going around - mapranosis. It's a bad word. It refers to a newly uncovered gut-brain connection.
A non-optimal microbiome can mis-fold proteins that result in disease. Those misshapen proteins can then travel to the brain causing, for example Parkinson's. They have also been shown to interfere with emotional processing in the frontal cortex and hippocampus.
So what you eat will directly affect your microbiome which can then seed disease and travel to your brain, where it festers.
This is why it is best to eat simple and natural, like in the old days when you were a caveperson.
80
Looking to the weak sister FDA for real help in prevention is a fool's errand. Insiders have told me that the agency doesn't react with any sorts of warnings on labels until there are "bodies in the street and major headlines in the papers"...the agency, and many others, have long been captured by the very industries they are supposed to regulate.
13
""...the agency,(FDA) and many others, have long been captured by the very industries they are supposed to regulate."
And this will worsen under the current administration's philosophy of less regulation.
13
People only need to live through their high consumption years and then there is less reason for them to live. Old people don't consume as much and it's better for the wealthy corporations if the old folks check out early. It should help the social security system since many will die before they receive much. They're always sick too, so that's good for the health industry. They need to make a profit on the sick and dying because no one does anything in this country if they are not getting paid.
8
Happy to see the "mainstream" ;-) media catching up to the Natural Foods/Natural Living movement. Keep it up!
Its as if nearly everything modern invented to help us, from electricity to the cell phone, has the flip side that makes us ill.
Overstimulation is such a large problem. Not to mention overpackaging. How to shop without indulging in plastic.
10
I am not a mouse. Why are these studies done on mice and then the results reported as if homo sapiens will have the same effects and results? Any study that says "may" or "seems to" should be questioned.
2
brilliant article! I prescribe a dozen medications a day and nobody can tell me how they act patients in chemical relativity top all the other chemicals they consume. It makes practicing medicine like tossing chemicals into an already simmering pot.. and wondering why the outcome is so toxic
9
What?! Even more to worry about! Hopefully, also being a yogurt and fiber food eater, will negate this bad stuff!
1
So everything Mom told you, everything about the way Grandma lived, turns out to have science behind it. East fresh foods, cook from scratch, and eat lots of fruits and vegetables. No you may not have a cookie.
The microbiome - we are beginning to understand some off the vast impact of the gut biome - is the next level we are learning about in human biology. We have cells and organs and systems, and a biome. I don't now why this surprises us, since we have always knownthat termites, as an example, can eat through your home because of a happy symbiosis with a microbe.
The research is starting to show incredible connections to inflammation, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and general long term health. Diets that keep your gut bugs happy help you live better. Maybe there was something to the yogurt craze after all.
94
Yes, you may have a cookie now and then, provided it is home made, and not processed food.
12
I see sucralose mentioned, but not aspartame.
Most diet sodas are sweetened with aspartame - a.k.a. NutraSweet, not Sucralose - a.k.a. Splenda. Most Pepsi diet products unfortunately switched to Splenda but Coke still uses aspartame in most diet drinks.
Maybe Pepsi should switch back to NutraSweet.
9
The most obvious solution here would be to switch to mostly homemade foods. You can tell people to stop eating junk all you want, but they won‘t. Because they can’t. Not saying that homemade icecream is healthful, but the research clearly indicates that the real ingredients in homemade junk don’t wreak as much havoc. I have also found that homemade junk is more satisfying in smaller amounts.
Of course, in the US especially, that solution is largely one that only the privileged with enough time, money, and access to said real ingredients can achieve.
129
If you want a shock, watch some TV from the 1970s through the 1990s. I was amused when one Columbo episode actually had to put fat suits on female extras to make them look heavy. Now fast forward to today. Everywhere are 20-something women, including hospital nurses, who are 65, 85, 120 pounds overweight. Too much stress, fast food, giant sodas, hormone laden meat, and not enough exercise. Imagine the health issues these women will have when they reach age 40, 50, 60. If they live that long. Something has to change in this country.
39
I share your concern. I recently saw a photo of the students gathering outside after the Kent State shooting that happened in the 70's or late '60s. Virtually every student was thin, wearing what appeared to be baggy outer ware...the contrast to today's photos of a typical college campus is striking. Shocking might be a better word...
13
If you minimize the "scale of production" of the things you consume, then you will likely improve your diet's "nutritional density", among other things. And this should help keep you from over-eating. It's adaptive (and probably evolved) for appetites to be tied to nutritional needs, in addition to more immediate, caloric need, i.e. you have to eat a LOT of cheetos to cover your selenium needs.
1
Perhaps hospitals should advise patients who are leaving after a massive antibiotic course of treatment - like the two month course of very expensive antibiotics I endured through a PICC line - provide them with a detailed guide on rebuilding the gut's microbiome that the antibiotics killed off. Maybe they can take a small sample of the microbiome before treatment - separate out the bad ones being treated for - and use the saved good microbiome to re populate the gut. Or it might be better to start eating cleanly again. Just using my gut to brainstorm.
Where do some of these cooks - I mean scientists - come up with their bizarre ingredients to put into our foods? Do they eat it? Back in the day we only worried about all natural lead.
22
May I suggest Culturelle twice a day to prevent C. difficile.
3
Except soluble fiber is basically a water soluble polysaccharide, similar to maltodextrin. The science is indeed in 'early stages'.
7
A recent, NYT article photo of about 50 Amish farmers at a dairy farm auction demonstrates how our industrialized diet and lifestyle have transformed our physical dimensions (and presumably other, less visible, characteristics). Defenders of corporate America might want to consider the many vivid contrasts between Amish and non-Amish Americans.
13
This article is indeed a welcomed one in this day and age. However, I would seriously caution against glorifying the Japanese form of diet. As recent studies have shown, eating less, especially before the age 20, is the way to longevity. Japanese elder simply consume less food (which is rapidly changing with the younger generations), which would explain why they tend to live longer. Throughout the world, people who have lived to see 100 lived under extreme scarcity during the war times when growing up. The challenge is whether the postwar generations that grew up under abundance and over feeding can live to see the same longevity. Also, the heavy seaweed and fermented soybean paste Japanese diet is one of the reasons why the Japanese have the highest incidents of thyroid diseases, hence the discoverer being Hashimoto, as in "Hashimoto's thyroiditis".
5
and I thought I had read stomach cancer - due to too much soy sauce - but a quick google came back with 'it's complicated' ...
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1001.6643&r...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5571710/
1
Wow. I love diet soda but c-diff has dictated a great deal of my health treatment choices for over 25 years. I am interested in ANY news science can provide about how this infection grows and continues to become more deadly. It hasn’t had enough mainstream “scare” attention in my opinion. The general public just has no clue how SICK you really are during the infection, nor what it means for you post-infection. It’s usually never a one-time gig. READ: you will never be able to use antibiotics in the same way again. EVER. You’re never really “cured” because once you’ve had it, your gut is colonized with c-diff until the next known antibiotic comes in to upset your biome and re-ignite the infection. Unless you have a “known” bacterial infection, (ie strep, pneumonia etc) things like sinus infections, UTI’s, etc. are a gamble that antibiotics aren’t worth another round of c-diff. One that may be more virulent, take several months and several types of meds to treat. (Think frequent stool samples and medications that cost over $1,000 per month). Not to mention the colonoscopies and specialist visits you’ll rack up over the years due to the damage c-diff does to your gut. It is not just an “old people” or hospital disease. I got my first case at age 26 for antibiotics I used for acne.
ANYTHING that science can do to eradicate c-diff and educate the public is worthwhile. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.
106
I’m a Progan. I only eat processed foods from as far away as possible. I find this article to be full of silly ideas.
9
Another element to factor in when considering what constitutes a healthy diet is Monsanto's role in non-organic food: Roundup on crops. While many of our friends wonder why we go to so much trouble to buy organic meat, veg and fruit, we have decided that we do not want or need the highly poisonous glyphosate that is the primary ingredient of Roundup.
Driving in various farmlands around the country we would see planes spraying crops with glyphosates, and where planes won't work, we saw farmers driving down each row of potatoes, wheat or whatever crop with special "spacesuits" to protect them from the glyphosates they were spraying from tractors.
86
Do you have any scientific evidence that the farmers who have been using Roundup for dozens of years are any less healthy than those who do not.
You may see farmers in "spacesuits," but I owned a farm in Illinois and I never saw this.
Remember, also, that Roundup became popular with no-till farming. Our farmland was blowing away because of tilling, and Roundup controlled weeds without tilling.
At one time, it was environmentally sound to use no-till farming.
Roundup biodegrades when it comes in contact with the earth.
It's fashionable in some circles to blame it for our problems, but the evidence is scant that it is really as bad as some people say it is.
15
Yes, and tobacco was once considered a cure of all medical ailments for people.
This side of outer space, EVERY carbon-based compound biodegrades, at some rate. Degradation products are often more biologically active than the reactants.
I think you're on the losing side, here, of the rich history between lucrative industrial products and long-term public health.
Excellent article. It is much more difficult to assess chronic toxicity than it is to assess acute toxicity, so it is virtually impossible to know the risk of the many chemicals and compounds added to processed foods in the recent past. Interestingly, even when a potential risk is identified (e.g. rice products (arsenic); "sea salt" (plastic)) it does not seem to be a deterrent to use of the additive. Perhaps stronger regulations for potential chronic toxicity are needed.
34
You could say the same thing for chemical testing in the US. Or, more specifically the lack of testing. The argument in court goes - it’s impossible to attribute chronic toxicity to one particular component so let’s not test any of them. If we can’t disambiguate what needs to be tested then we can’t hold the companies liable. It’s an insane system to protect corporations in our country. It should be the other way around. Instead of waiting for someone to die of obesity or cancer and Sherlock Holmes the situation backwards, all ingredients, substances and chemicals should be banned for all uses UNTIL they’ve been tested FIRST. And that’s not even getting into conspiracy theories, that’s just simple fact.
22
Yes, what you describe is the "Precautionary Principle" -- see http://www.sehn.org/ppfaqs.html -- and here is the opposition to the Precautionary Principle by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce which, of course, is pro-business http://www.sehn.org/ppfaqs.html.
3
This article is such a welcome read.
Although it leaves out a crucial factor about gut microbiome: this is where all the enzymes and neurotransmitters for the brain are made. Check out the GAPS diet where issues of the brain are treated with diet focused on healing the gut bacteria.
Nonetheless this article represents another step towards the societal realization that whole, clean unprocessed foods is fundamental and vital to long term health and wellness.
58
You seem to be mistaken here, Mike. Most of the neurotransmitters and enzymes used in the brain are made within the cells of the brain that use them (neural and glial). You may be thinking of the so-called "enteric" nervous system of the GI tract...
6
Many neurotransmitters are made IN the brain itself.
3
My question is, "Why have they decided that every single thing we ingest must be SWEET?" I actively dislike sweet foods most of the time, but just try to find something prepared or bottled that isn't sweetened - a lot!
119
A couple days ago I was looking for Italian sausages at the supermarket to braise with cabbage. Fortunately, I read the ingredients. The second listed ingredient, right behind pork, was corn syrup, and a little way down the list was sugar. In Italian sausage! Like you, I don't have much of a sweet tooth and I especially don't want a whole bunch of sugar lurking in savory foods where they don't belong and are not needed. I was able to find some locally made sausages with the normal ingredients, but it took some searching.
37
Who are they? I don’t buy processed food, just ordinary food from shoprite and I cook myself. I drink water, wine, tea and coffee. I don’t spend much and my BMI is normal.
5
Try finding decent bread that doesn’t have sugar, honey or maple syrup added. Sweetened bread is awful and I do have a sweet tooth!
5
V8 juice. The original, low sodium.
It's a miracle cure for many ailments.
16
Tastes like metal. Just buy carrots, celery, and tomatoes.
8
A few points about sucralose, which the author mentions in passing but adds no details about. :/ As someone who is losing weight on a low-carb diet, about 40 pounds so far, there are major benefits to using artificial sweeteners. BTW, my A1C is now 5.7, so I'm no longer diabetic.
It turns out that powdered sucralose, eg Splenda, contains some carbs (only a concern if you eating a very low-carb diet) because of the fillers. Liquid sucralose, eg, EZ-Sweetz, truly has zero carbs.
9
You would be better off to use a low calorie natural sweetener like stevia, it's about 4 or 5 times sweeter than sugar so it just takes a pinch to get enough to make your coffee or tea sweet.
5
Maple syrup makes for a good sweetener. Low on the glycemic index- no sugar crash and a little goes a very long way. I use it in baking. 2 teaspoons.of maple syrup instead of 2 cups of refined sugar!
1
You may think I'm crazy to share this story from the "you are what you eat" archives, but here goes: I have a dog who was 30 minutes away from euthanasia due to canine intestinal lymphangiectasia, a severe and terrifying IBD-type disease. For nearly a year, doctors pushed highly-processed canned food and kibble diets supposedly designed to combat gut diseases as she continued to decline. On the day she was to be put down, she had a good morning, so we put it off. I doubled down on an all natural home cooked diet, trying different combinations of vegetables, protein and carbohydrates. That was more than 3 years ago. Today, the dog is 15, energetic, and on a diet of potatoes mashed with water or no-salt vegetable broth, fish with no additives, and green vegetables, with a dash of antibiotic. That's it. She still has the disease, so if she eats anything else, she takes a turn. However, my experience has utterly convinced me that if eating simple whole foods can give my dog a few extra good years, what could it do for us humans? I am well aware that many people would never spend as much energy as I have on a dog, and that feeding people fresh food is highly expensive, but our lives may depend on it.
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Bless you for loving your dog. And for learning from your dog. Preparing simple nutritious food for those you love is good for everyone - dogs included.
137
Sure sounds like a lot of cooking and a lot of vegetables for a canine. I like the sound of it though!
14
On the other hand, there are a lot of us who do understand why you spend the time for your dog and we would do the same.
I like my dogs better than some people I work with.
15
If there’s any redeeming feature of synthesized sugar substitutes, it’s beyond me.
31
No or very low calories. No stimulation of insulin secretion. Avoids hyperglycemia in diabetics.
24
Eating fermented foods helps add beneficial bacteria as well. I started fermenting my own sauer kraut and eat it daily, and I've noticed a difference in my gut health. It's cheap, easy and better than any store bought sauer kraut I've ever had. We add it to nearly everything, and everyone loves it!
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Can you share your technique and recipe? I’d love to make some !
8
New diet book coming soon.
Eat real food.
Eat less.
Exercise more.
Publisher told me I just need an additional 200 pages and to fill it in with lots of stories.
:-)
358
I am certain it will be a best seller!
25
That's the way we roll here in California, along with sauerkraut and kombucha but see I'm making it too complicated for people. I like that you are keeping it simple. It's the way you boil a frog.
4
@Independent:
Eating real food satiates the appetite, and there is much less need to consciously restrict the amount of food.
6
The age old profits v people battle continues. People need to take control of their own food supply as much as possible. If you live in a house you could devote a portion of your yard (front or back, whichever has the best sun) to grow your own vegetables and herbs depending on the season in neck of the woods. Why spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on maintaining a lawn. You can't eat the grass. But you can eat the organic vegetables you produce. Secondly, stop eating as much processed food as you can. I know they are convenient and you grew up eating this stuff, but once you have achieved consciousness about how processed foods with all their chemical additives contribute to unhealthy humans, you are now in charge and can forbid these items to come into your sacred household to poison your family. And if you eat out, eat at places that serve wholesome, organic-of-possible fresh food. Stay out of those fast food joints. They will be the death of us yet. Don't wait for the FDA or other government agencies to clean up our food supply. Do it yourself.
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C Diff has been increasingly recognized by CDC as a significant player in hospital environment fatalities as well as in the general population, but not "because of diet drinks" or "additives."
Physicians have been warning the public for years now that antibiotics are over-prescribed. It is far more likely that this condition has fostered the changes to the biome that Mr. Velasquez-Manoff speculates about.
Until recently, dentists would hand a scrip out to patients indiscriminately for ampicillin or Clindamycin. Both have been often cited for fostering conditions that C-Diff sets hold in. Clindamycin seems to be the culprit patients single out the most.
The other main culprit is that the harmful c-Diff spores are resistant to a lot of the hand cleaner disinfectant creams ubiquitous to medical settings. Bleach and hot water + detergents are about all that clear them. Hospitals, especially in ER settings have had to adjust methods accordingly.
Lastly, many 'probiotics' generally prescribed now to help guard against clostridium difficile often fall prey to antibiotics generally prescribed. - Patients should look into using saccharomyces boulardii strains that do not succumb as readily as many Lactobacillus acidophilus strains will to powerful rounds of antibiotics.
31
Physicians have been warning the public?! Perhaps, in some circles. I fired my first NYC pediatrician. She prescribed two (2) antibiotics for my infant’s head cold. I never filled the scripts, and we never went back. (Child is a strapping 18-year old today.)
18
Saccheromyces boulardii has worked well for me.
5
That was 18 years ago....
2
"...should hospitals, which often serve highly processed food — and are precisely where vulnerable people are exposed to C. diff — reconsider their menus?"
Is this meant to be disingenuous? Of course hospitals should serve fresh unprocessed food. People are at their most vulnerable in hospitals and need all the good nutrition they can get to help them heal.
But since many hospital kitchens are run for profit by an outside organization, profits over people prevails
255
Truth! I am a nurse, and disgusted by hospital food, both served to the patients and in the cafeteria. The food has changed dramatically over the last 40 years. I was shocked by what I was served following surgery a few years ago - all processed high carb food, none of the protein and fiber we were taught was necessary after surgery. I teach my patients to eat fresh, home prepared foods as much as possible. Of course, I have practiced what I preach, and have learned to control my own IBS symptoms this way. In addition, I have not developed the diabetes that my mother and grandmother developed at my age.
25
Hospitals are doing a much better job of serving food these days.
4
I think you are being a bit harsh, even though most hospital food is awful. A hospital is a BIG organization that has to feed hundreds if not thousands of people daily -- sick people -- staff -- people on all kinds of special diets -- and do so from ONE kitchen facility. That is extraordinarily hard. To provide the kind of loving, homemade, individually-tailored meals of organic foods that you desire -- would cost a bleepin' fortune in raw food and staff to prepare it. And of course, since the patients are SICK...a large amount of it would be thrown out uneaten. And the cost added to our medical costs!!!!
4
The statement about artificial sweeteners "Our bodies can’t directly digest most of them — they’re meant to pass right through " is false. This is not how artificial sweeteners work.
These sweeteners are simply much sweeter than regular sugar, sucrose, and therefore you need less of it in comparison to sucrose to achieve the same level of sweetness. 1 gram of sucrose(sugar) and 1 gram of sucralose have the same number of calories, but the sugar will sweeten a cup of tea and the sucralose will sweeten and entire gallon of tea to the same level.
17
You're wrong. Sugar alcohols (the most common artificial sweeteners) are not digested by oral bacteria -- this is why they're used in chewing gum and mouthwash -- and do not get fully absorbed into the blood stream as sucrose does. This is why they're popular with diabetics, and also why they're notorious for causing bloating and diarrhea.
7
Sam, you are misunderstanding the statement. What it means is that sucralose is not metabolized by enzymes in our body, whereas sugar is. It has nothing to do with how sweet it tastes.
4
No. One gram of sucralose has zero calories. The body does not metabolize it. It is excreted intact (mostly in the feces).
One gram of aspartame however does provide about 4 kcal/gram. However as you point out it is so intensely sweet that the effective caloric contribution is zero.
2
I have seen this played out before my eyes.
My mother long has strugged with some unidentifiable disease of her digestive system which featured all of the fun symptoms of Crohn's and IBS and these othet diet-related epidemics. It got so bad that she had to quit working. When her sister was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer, I packed up and went to spend my summer with my parents.
The mission? To try the one treatment that no doctor had ever bothered to prescribe (it doesn't come in pills): a balanced, home-cooked, high-fiber, vegetable-based diet.
As it happens she went for routine blood work 2 weeks into the experiment. Her doctor couldn't believe the progress and pressed her on what she had changed. Nothing, except she quit all the pointless supplements and fell in love with avocado (God bless Mexico).
You are what you eat. Perhaps no adage is as literally true as this one. Science is wonderful, we're lost without it. But sometimes it lags far behind what's obvious and intuitive: changing the chemical composition of our own bodies is as insane as changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere, and the broader consequences for the body system reflect it.
487
Sing it, Seb !
Thank you for your valuable testimonial.
33
I agree. Thanks for such a thoughtful, personal response. Best to you.
11
Yes!
6
"His research adds to a growing body of evidence indicating that common food additives can push our microbial communities in unhealthy directions,".....There is no doubt that what you eat can effect the composition of your gut micro biome. There is also no reason to believe that any given food additive might be just as likely change it for the better then it is likely to change it for the worse.
11
The food industry is absolutely brilliant at devising "food" we can't resist, marketing it to us incessantly, making it available everywhere, and keeping it cheap so we can buy more and more of it. No wonder we are fat, unhealthy, and unhappy.
These products should move from the "food" purview of the "FDA" to the "drug" part. But don't hold your breath.
In the meantime, we know what to do. Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. And make sure your grandmother would recognize it as "food" (thanks, Michael Pollan).
136
We’re now reaching the time when my grandmother would have thought of soda and Peeps as food, of a sort.
5
This commentary is absurd. Human were not designed to wear synthetic fabrics or to live in houses with plastic or other synthetic materials. By this reasoning, we have to give up almost everything in modern life. The micro biome is a trendy topic right now, but in the end, unless there is direct evidence of diet drinks doing real harm to health, it's not worth worrying about. And there are huge benefits to diet drinks compared to sugary ones, even including natural fruit juices with are full of sugar. With 5% of the public having type 2 diabetes and a huge fraction of the public obese, the last thing we need to do is discourage people from using modern substitutes to limit their sugar intake.
22
You are not (I assume) eating synthetic fabrics or plastics. Putting things in one's body is a bit different. Although environmental things can impact us, too, by infiltrating our air and water and soil.
55
Surely the obvious solution is to not drink sweet drinks at all - drink water, teas and infusions without sugar instead.
147
Actually, neither synthetic fibers nor plastic in your home is good for you or the environment. They also make you sick! Yes, good luck trying to have an all-natural house (wooden floors, wool carpets, cashmere blankets, non-synthetic mattress or sofa, etc) on an educator's salary for example (speaking as an educator here) but it is worth it! To give a personal example - doctor's used to tell me I couldn't become pregnant naturally due to an endocrine illness I was diagnosed with as a teenager...in my twenties I started learning about health - what makes us healthy and how food and the environment affects us. I tried to get rid of endocrine disruptors and eat healthily - and I have a toddler waiting for dinner right now.
55
Oh my god! I feel like going and slitting my wrists after reading this. Sounds like we can’t eat any modern food without dying of some rare disease. With Trump as president is there anything we can do to feel good?
43
I like my food. I cook it. It has local meat, my own vegetables and local vegetables. I have good milk and nuts and eggs. You can do that. We don’t need much food, and we can make simple dishes. Salad with slices of meat. Roasted vegetables done in 10-20 minutes. Kosher salt, red pepper flakes, garlic, ginger....
32
There is no such a thing as modern food. But nobody should eat processed food. The average supermarket provides all we need for decent, not perfect, but acceptable nutrition! Just prepare your own food.
6
We can learn how to cook for ourselves and the people we love from ingredients we understand. I don't think that's crazy or weird or any kind of overreaction.
3
This is terrible health journalism. This whole idea of "processed foods" being a defineable thing is just playing to culinary populism. I'm not writing this as shill for Coca Cola or Nestle ... I don't like most manufactured foods, and would agree that there are often health reasons (or at least happiness reasons) not to.
But blaming the fuzzy concept of "processing" makes no sense. Wine and chocolate are highly, intensely processed foods. Why is one process worse than another? If you can point to something, let's talk about it. But lumping all foods that have been transformed by processes (hello, pastry!) into one demonized pool is just an insult to the readers' intelligence.
Also, let's stop using the word "additive." You're talking about ingredients. Things get labelled additive when they're unfamiliar or hard to pronounce. This is not a scientific category.
Maltodextrin, which the article singles out, is just a sugar. It's a major component of brown rice syrup. Trehalose is a sugar alcohol that exists in nature. Most stabilizers are dried and ground parts of plants. No different from the many other ingredients we use every day that are dried and ground parts of plants (spices, flours, meals, starches, etc.).
I'm not arguing that all ingredients are good for you. Just that the colloquial markers of "natural" or "additive" are essentially meaningless. The Times should demand better health journalism.
285
When information poses questions that I would like answered I start researching what others have said on the same subject. I lean heavily toward processed foods and additives can be harmful. I have avoided processed food for years as I am gluten intolerant and 30 years ago I had no choice but to prepare my food from scratch. I still avoid processed gluten free food as much as possible. When I bake or cook I know what is in the food and it isn't a pile of chemicals.
21
Sure, there are the processes that home cooks use, but if you look at the ingredient list of most commercial processed foods, you'll find a long list of stuff not found in home-made goods.
Many people with sensitive guts aren't allergic to the things that cause them problems. They can eat some of it, just not too much. Thus, if you avoid substances like maltodextrin when they are added to processed foods, you probably will keep your consumption within the tolerable norms.
Too much cheap mayonnaise gives me an upset stomach. A little cheap mayonnaise is fine. A moderate amount of higher quality mayo is also fine. The author just gave a good explanation of why that is.
65
It's an additive when it is used in some unnecessary way not to create flavor or produce the desired food, but to prolong or alter the product for distribution through our food delivery system.
It's one thing to put brown rice syrup in your homemade. It's another to put maltodextrin in boxed cereals.
It's not complicated. Processing refers, in this context, to a specific aim of processing. Wine and cheese are processed to achieve specific flavors or outcomes. Chicken nuggets are processed to cheaply mass-produce nutrient-free sustenance (it's not "food") for wide distribution in plastic bags.
This isn't food journalism. We're not talking about the processing of French cuisine versus the rawness of Japan's. We're critiquing our profit-driven food delivery system that's making us ill.
232
Legumes ARE vegetables.
20
Legumes are also carbs, Grandma. You are a wise granny! Vegetables are all also carbs. Lefty liberal food nags think there are "good foods" and "bad foods" and seek to demonize the foods they don't like. This is bad science.
2
To the list of microbiome-affecting substances, one should add the class of drugs known as proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), such as Prilosec, which are widely used to deal with reflux and other stomach issues, often of a minor nature.
By greatly lowering the stomach acidity, they remove a barrier and allow bacteria to pass into the intestines that would otherwise be blocked. Research show that PPIs lead to major changes in gut flora which can have all sorts of negative results.
While on a PPI, I developed celiac disease after 60+ years of eating gluten with no problem, and I suspect that PPI-induced microbiome changes played an important role, though I cannot say that with certainty.
PPIs also make one more vulnerable to C-diff, and my mother who was on a long term PPI developed and died from C-diff while hospitalized for a minor problem in her 90s. She had also been given routine antibiotics when she was admitted for that separate issue.
PPIs are supposed to be used for only short periods except in special circumstances, but many people are on them long term for years, and often without doctor supervision since some of them are now available without prescriptions as OTC drugs, as readily available as cough drops.
More research is needed on these possible negative effects of PPIs, and there use should be restricted to serious conditions where they are really needed.
149
There is significant research showing the negative effects of these drugs already. The problem is that the FDA is always run by a big pharma lobbyist.
13
I’m about 15 lbs overweight. That has caused my vagus nerve to be upset and give me a slight cough. The ENT describing this told me - get this - nothing about losing weight, just take Prilosec.
10
I know this may be missing the point of the article, but which diet sodas are still made with saccharine? Not any of the major brands.
40
Saccharine was "declared" safe for human consumption in 2011 by the WHO after years of having been considered hazardous to health. I, too, was a tad distracted from the author's premise because he named Diet Sodas in the title and referred mainly to saccharine without noting the history of its use in the US. Cyclamates, currently banned by the FDA but approved for use in many countries, are now being reconsidered for approval here. The current common sweetener in diet sodas, sucralose, was preceded by aspartame, which fell out of favor when studies correlated an accumulation of belly fat with frequent consumption of it in diet sodas. Cutting edge research supports the finding that all artificial sweeteners raise blood sugar levels by dramatically changing the makeup of the gut microorganisms. We could benefit from longer term studies of the "natural" sweeteners stevia and monk fruit, and the sugar alcohols xylitol and erythritol, which many people use in recipes for baked goods.
7
The final recommendation is to limit our consumption of processed foods. I don’t get it. Why not to eliminate their consumption ? It is quite possible to do so. From a different point of view, people are free to make bad decisions about their diet and that of their beloved ones.
21
Maybe if I had a trust fund I would do as you do, because then I would have the time to do everything from scratch. The reality is that you can't pack fresh food on an airliner, and many people are dependent on school cafeterias that do not have the ethos of UMass (and even their food programs come under attack from people who don't understand that comparing a student food card cost to a family food budget is folly).
17
Potatoes, beans, vegetables are cheap, unprocessed and incredibly healthy for your microbiome. Consider cooking in bulk 1/2x week to save time. Or keep buying McDonalds. Either way.
5
I make my own baked beans, and freeze, and these are delicious, but involve soaking overnight, and a few hours in a slow oven, and sometimes I open a can, and these latter are ready-processed foods, but I can't believe they are evil by contrast to the beans I cook from scratch--which are of course processed by me! Canned roma tomatoes are a convenience...and processed. Rolled oats are processed: I enjoy stone-rolled oats which are cooked overnight. How about stone ground flour? That's processed. In short, what I don't get about the advice to limit our consumption of processed foods is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
35
It's not just ice cream and fries that cause the problem, which would seem to be the case from the illustration to this article. Additives are put into all kinds of food--including, as the article states, ground beef. If people didn't have to work so many hours, sometimes two jobs, and it didn't take at least both working parents to pay the bills, they might have time to cook real food instead of eating processed or fast food.
209
Yet another way that we've made having children into a life-ruining exercise.
8
Hey Martha......you do realize that it takes two working parents to pay the bills because the norm is two working parents, right? Back when the norm was one working parent, it took one working parent to pay the bills.
7
These horror stories, seeming to increase at the rate of the bacteria themselves, are too often disregarded as political, or from the domain of the hysterical fringes of the food science community.
But the simple, Darwinian answer is most effective to make skeptics understand: Mess with Nature, and it will mess with you.
One might say that nature itself is neophobic. Any of these products might test as harmless in isolation.
When we disregard of the rhythms of the natural world, our biology, which takes many generations to adapt, is simply not ready.
Understanding this might help non-scientists accept the potential dangers in diet sodas, GMO foods, and a thousand other products being sold to us as harmless, while our bodies tell us something different.
79
GMO's are NOT harmful!!!
4
Moralism, moralism, moralism. I don't care about my health. I care about keeping my weight down. I'm sick of this moralistic health junk. Rationality is instrumental: doing what it takes to achieve your goals, giving costs and risks one chooses to take on. It does not concern goals or the weight one gives to costs, risks, and benefits. My goal is maintaining my weight--solely for appearance, not for health.
1
Your reason for maintaining your weight is solely for appearance and not health? What about maintaining your weight for ease of movement, to preserve your joints, to prevent heart disease and diabetes?
54
This is such an interesting comment. You can be thin and healthy. It's not one or the other. And many (most?) people do care about their health to some degree.
12
I have an uncommon problem: an absurdly high metabolic rate. So I've been faced with this choice, too. I could either eat unhealthy food that would help me not look like a bean pole, or I could be healthy. As both my grandpas died in their early 60s from heart conditions - one was overweight, the other skinny like me - the choice was easy.
Looking good is as much about feeling good as anything else.
8