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
Edit
Refrigeration is optimal, and we agree on that. Yet, meat was notconsumptwed by regular folks because aristocrats were the only ones who could afford it (and I recall that many of them died of a disease that comes from meat overconsumption).
Regular folks ate meat only on special occasions. And driying it makes it last for months if not years (source: the dry sausages that I buy in my granfather’s town, hand made by people, last for 14 months)
The point is that mass factory farming is the reason that meat is cheap now, and one of the technologies that’s enabled mass factory farming is refrigeration.
If I were to be fair then my answer would be neither as I don’t believe capitalism is forcing us to consume meat and there was methods to conserve meat for long periods of time before refrigeration was a thing.
I guess meat can be healthy. What certainly isn’t healthy is highly processed meat like burgers, hot dogs and deep fried turkey
Science suggests that meat consumption always comes with risks e.g. of genetic mutations. So if you can meet your demand of nutrients and trace elements without meat you probably should.
There’s been a lot of back-and-forth. B12, like iron and Protein, are digested differently by the gut (with different efficiency) based on how they are consumed.
If absolutely all you care about is nutrition and nothing else, you should be eating a small amount of non-processed red and white meat (and/or seafood) on a regular basis because it is the best and healthiest source of those three things. Key term “small amount”
capitalism has led to never before seen economies of scale, allowing for dirt cheap food prices never before seen in history. if we were to look at capitalism through that metric and that metric only then it would be wildly popular…
Because the focus wouldn’t be on profit just for profit’s sake. That is the main problem with capitalism. The technologies just allowed it. Plus, technologies are not sentient, you can’t blame a technology…
Because the focus wouldn’t be on profit just for profit’s sake
what socioeconomic system has existed where increased productivity was viewed as a bad thing?
e.g.:
pure feudalism would’ve led to economies of scale because it would make the king of the castle wealthier.
any kind of socialism with a centrally planned economy would’ve led to economies of scale because it enables the government to more easily meet the needs of the people.
even pure marxist communism probably would’ve led to economies of scale eventually because any communities that worked together on a global scale would’ve been more prosperous for their community members, which is still a goal of the system
The technologies just allowed it
or in other words, their invention led to it, which was the original quote I was responding to
Plus, technologies are not sentient, you can’t blame a technology…
socio-economic systems aren’t sentient either
nobody’s “blaming” a technology—there isn’t even really a consensus in this thread on whether economies of scale leading to increased meat consumption is a good or bad thing
I wouldn’t call “profit” synonymous with “productivity”. Quite the opposite. Profit is intentional market inefficiency for individual gain. I’m just calling it because so many people do make the mistake of treating them as the same, presuming the former is inherently good because productivity is.
Pretty much everything else you said I agree with.
because prior to the advent of capitalism the priorities were not on the consumer, but on the aristocracy. while the end results of free market capitalism are clearly destroying the planet, it is insanely more equitable than anything that came before it.
the economies of scale exist due to the consumer pressure, which didn’t exist in other market systems.
i don’t get why people are downvoting that. i’m not saying capitalism is the best thing in the world and nothing will ever be better than it. i’m saying it allowed people to eat more meat and is democratic compared to feudalism or mercantilism
Because people can’t seem to understand the difference between ‘criticizing stuff while also being aware of and acknowledging its benefits’ vs ‘mindlessly bashing something whenever you get the chance bcuz tribalism’.
Hell, even Marx praised capitalism for the immense wealth that it has generated for the masses, which so many so-called ‘socialists’ don’t seem to understand.
Both. Refrigeration is what allows us to store and (I would argue more importantly) transport large amounts of meat, and is as such essential to the industry. However, Capitalism is also key to the meat industry because its lobbyists constantly push for meat subsidies, which is the main reason meat is cheap enough to be something we have every meal instead of once every couple of days.
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.
But they were also out and about hunting that stuff for days. Unlike average Joe American who never moves more than from bed to garage and from the parking lot to his office chair in a day.
*until the advent of mechanized agriculture and fertilizers, which allowed feeding large amounts of livestock in capitalist and communist countries alike
communism requires capitalism to exist … at its invention, capitalism was the cutting edge that allowed massive economies to form. free market capitalism allowed the creation of extremely complex and vast logistical networks that did not exist prior.
this is not some sort of “capitalism vs communism” thing. this is saying that capitalism was miles more efficient and liberating than anything that came before it. inshallah whatever comes after it will continue the trend
But not in that quantity as we do today. In the past it was very special, because you allways had to kill one of your animals to eat some. And if you were a farmer who can decide to eat one big meal or ceep the animal and have milk for a long time its a preety easy decision.
And if you go back even more when humans were still “wild” meat was even harder to get. You had to hunt down an animal that was way stronger that you. So a hunt took days. If you got meat once every few weeks you were lucky.
Sure, nobody ate anything in the quantities that we eat today, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a crucial part of our diet. It’s amazing that modern industrialized humans are able to get enough calories and protein from a diet of varied plants, but if you’re a hunter gatherer you don’t have the luxury of a variety of genetically modified protein rich plants, you need meat if you’re going to grow. That’s the niche we evolved to fill, it’s why we have a highly acidic gut, a medium length digestive tract common in omnivores, and teeth designed to tear meat. It doesn’t take a lot of meat to meet a person’s protein requirements, the occasional successful hunt is enough, but without any they would die.
I am vegetarian for over 5 years. You realy don’t need any meat. That just some public believe the meat companies planted in our heads. For a vegetarian lifestyle your don’t even have to pay attention to a lot of stuff. In general it’s way more healthy if you do it right. The only thing is that it’s usually harder to cook something tasty, because you can just throw meat in anything and it tastes like something.
But what you’re missing is that being vegetarian wouldn’t be possible without the conveniences of our modern world. You’re relying on plants that have been heavily modified to be more nutritious to humans, and you’re relying on a variety that would have been difficult to find pre industrialization, and absolutely impossible to a hunter-gatherer. It’s not meat company propaganda to realize that human’s evolved to eat meat, it’s evident in everything about our physiology. From an evolutionary point of view, even farming is startlingly recent, an industrial world economy hasn’t even registered yet, so even though we’re living in a modern world, we’re still dealing with bodies that were built to hunt. That’s why so many types of overeating are such big issues, this farmed abundance just isn’t something that we evolved to deal with.
None of that takes away from the fact that vegetarianism is feasible and healthy today, I think that it’s great that we’ve reached a point where we can survive without meat. All that I’m saying is that we need to recognize it for the modern luxury that it is, instead of saying that it was ever the norm
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)
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.
It’s… Just just the smell of baked bread and yeast. Anyone that makes their own bread knows what’s going on with the smells in subway and can easily replicate it. I worked at one when I was younger there’s absolutely nothing nefarious or secret about it lmao. I personally think it’s the yeast more than anything. It’s a smell that used to be really common but is much less so these days so it sticks out. A lot of subways have the bread proofing/rising right up by the front too
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.
Take care not to make statements so inaccurate they are effectively meaningless.
“US white bread” isn’t a singular brand and most brands don’t “contain[s] a carcinogen”…
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.)
It’s not limited to white bread in where it can be used. It was an additive to flour in general.
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 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
Removed by mod
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
Was it capitalism or was it refrigeration?
There are hundreds of ways to preserve meat without a fridge
Fresh or preserved (salted or dried) meat has existed as long as people have paid for them. Even ice was used for a while prior to refrigeration.
deleted by creator
You are totally missing the point. American?
Edit Refrigeration is optimal, and we agree on that. Yet, meat was notconsumptwed by regular folks because aristocrats were the only ones who could afford it (and I recall that many of them died of a disease that comes from meat overconsumption). Regular folks ate meat only on special occasions. And driying it makes it last for months if not years (source: the dry sausages that I buy in my granfather’s town, hand made by people, last for 14 months)
I think you mean gout. It was known as the disease of kings.
The point is that mass factory farming is the reason that meat is cheap now, and one of the technologies that’s enabled mass factory farming is refrigeration.
If I were to be fair then my answer would be neither as I don’t believe capitalism is forcing us to consume meat and there was methods to conserve meat for long periods of time before refrigeration was a thing.
I guess meat can be healthy. What certainly isn’t healthy is highly processed meat like burgers, hot dogs and deep fried turkey
Science suggests that meat consumption always comes with risks e.g. of genetic mutations. So if you can meet your demand of nutrients and trace elements without meat you probably should.
deleted by creator
Interesting. I guess you could still supplement b12
There’s been a lot of back-and-forth. B12, like iron and Protein, are digested differently by the gut (with different efficiency) based on how they are consumed.
If absolutely all you care about is nutrition and nothing else, you should be eating a small amount of non-processed red and white meat (and/or seafood) on a regular basis because it is the best and healthiest source of those three things. Key term “small amount”
capitalism has led to never before seen economies of scale, allowing for dirt cheap food prices never before seen in history. if we were to look at capitalism through that metric and that metric only then it would be wildly popular…
did capitalism do that, or did technologies like aircraft and refrigeration do that?
why would economies of scale not exist under a different socio-economic system?
Because the focus wouldn’t be on profit just for profit’s sake. That is the main problem with capitalism. The technologies just allowed it. Plus, technologies are not sentient, you can’t blame a technology…
what socioeconomic system has existed where increased productivity was viewed as a bad thing?
e.g.:
or in other words, their invention led to it, which was the original quote I was responding to
I wouldn’t call “profit” synonymous with “productivity”. Quite the opposite. Profit is intentional market inefficiency for individual gain. I’m just calling it because so many people do make the mistake of treating them as the same, presuming the former is inherently good because productivity is.
Pretty much everything else you said I agree with.
because prior to the advent of capitalism the priorities were not on the consumer, but on the aristocracy. while the end results of free market capitalism are clearly destroying the planet, it is insanely more equitable than anything that came before it.
the economies of scale exist due to the consumer pressure, which didn’t exist in other market systems.
i don’t get why people are downvoting that. i’m not saying capitalism is the best thing in the world and nothing will ever be better than it. i’m saying it allowed people to eat more meat and is democratic compared to feudalism or mercantilism
Because people can’t seem to understand the difference between ‘criticizing stuff while also being aware of and acknowledging its benefits’ vs ‘mindlessly bashing something whenever you get the chance bcuz tribalism’.
Hell, even Marx praised capitalism for the immense wealth that it has generated for the masses, which so many so-called ‘socialists’ don’t seem to understand.
nobody reads theory anymore 😔
Both. Refrigeration is what allows us to store and (I would argue more importantly) transport large amounts of meat, and is as such essential to the industry. However, Capitalism is also key to the meat industry because its lobbyists constantly push for meat subsidies, which is the main reason meat is cheap enough to be something we have every meal instead of once every couple of days.
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.
But they were also out and about hunting that stuff for days. Unlike average Joe American who never moves more than from bed to garage and from the parking lot to his office chair in a day.
Sounds like it’s joe not moving enough that’s the problem
Well it is easier to eat less meat than it is to run 20km every day.
*until the advent of mechanized agriculture and fertilizers, which allowed feeding large amounts of livestock in capitalist and communist countries alike
communism requires capitalism to exist … at its invention, capitalism was the cutting edge that allowed massive economies to form. free market capitalism allowed the creation of extremely complex and vast logistical networks that did not exist prior.
this is not some sort of “capitalism vs communism” thing. this is saying that capitalism was miles more efficient and liberating than anything that came before it. inshallah whatever comes after it will continue the trend
So if I come from a lineage of smokers it means smoking is healthy? I take your word for it, science man.
Literally not what hes saying at all, in fact thats almost the complete opposite of what hes saying.
hes saying is like “I come from a long line of smokers, so know how bad smoking is for people”
Lots of people are not from northern Europe.
Proof you only have to live 15 years to reproduce doesn’t mean much for someone wanting to live 80 years.
Nobody ate meat before very recently. And cheese was not your typical daily treat. Remembers it takes a long time to produce
Humans have been eating meat for at least two and a half million years.
But not in that quantity as we do today. In the past it was very special, because you allways had to kill one of your animals to eat some. And if you were a farmer who can decide to eat one big meal or ceep the animal and have milk for a long time its a preety easy decision.
And if you go back even more when humans were still “wild” meat was even harder to get. You had to hunt down an animal that was way stronger that you. So a hunt took days. If you got meat once every few weeks you were lucky.
Sure, nobody ate anything in the quantities that we eat today, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a crucial part of our diet. It’s amazing that modern industrialized humans are able to get enough calories and protein from a diet of varied plants, but if you’re a hunter gatherer you don’t have the luxury of a variety of genetically modified protein rich plants, you need meat if you’re going to grow. That’s the niche we evolved to fill, it’s why we have a highly acidic gut, a medium length digestive tract common in omnivores, and teeth designed to tear meat. It doesn’t take a lot of meat to meet a person’s protein requirements, the occasional successful hunt is enough, but without any they would die.
I am vegetarian for over 5 years. You realy don’t need any meat. That just some public believe the meat companies planted in our heads. For a vegetarian lifestyle your don’t even have to pay attention to a lot of stuff. In general it’s way more healthy if you do it right. The only thing is that it’s usually harder to cook something tasty, because you can just throw meat in anything and it tastes like something.
But what you’re missing is that being vegetarian wouldn’t be possible without the conveniences of our modern world. You’re relying on plants that have been heavily modified to be more nutritious to humans, and you’re relying on a variety that would have been difficult to find pre industrialization, and absolutely impossible to a hunter-gatherer. It’s not meat company propaganda to realize that human’s evolved to eat meat, it’s evident in everything about our physiology. From an evolutionary point of view, even farming is startlingly recent, an industrial world economy hasn’t even registered yet, so even though we’re living in a modern world, we’re still dealing with bodies that were built to hunt. That’s why so many types of overeating are such big issues, this farmed abundance just isn’t something that we evolved to deal with.
None of that takes away from the fact that vegetarianism is feasible and healthy today, I think that it’s great that we’ve reached a point where we can survive without meat. All that I’m saying is that we need to recognize it for the modern luxury that it is, instead of saying that it was ever the norm
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)
Very recently being thousands of years ago?
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.
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.
It’s… Just just the smell of baked bread and yeast. Anyone that makes their own bread knows what’s going on with the smells in subway and can easily replicate it. I worked at one when I was younger there’s absolutely nothing nefarious or secret about it lmao. I personally think it’s the yeast more than anything. It’s a smell that used to be really common but is much less so these days so it sticks out. A lot of subways have the bread proofing/rising right up by the front too
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.
Especially the US white bread which contains a carcinogen.
Which carcinogen?
Can’t you read? “A” carcinogen. Doesn’t matter which one!
/s
I don’t know exactly, but it’s one of the preservatives. It’s banned in Europe.
How profound. Clearly, you have a lot of important things to say.
I said all of that in my other comment, replying to someone else.
Take care not to make statements so inaccurate they are effectively meaningless.
“US white bread” isn’t a singular brand and most brands don’t “contain[s] a carcinogen”…
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.)
It’s not limited to white bread in where it can be used. It was an additive to flour in general.
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.
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.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=4C9i9LMG_5c
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Only if you live in California!
Exactly lol.
But in all seriousness mild carcinogens are still carcinogenic.