On HFCS and the lies of the corn industry

Yonder wrote:

Illinois is Corn and Soybean country. The Corn takes the Nitrogen out of the soil and the Soybean puts it back in. I doubt that they would bother with Soybeans if it wasn't the most economic way to keep the soil from getting too low on Nitrogen, they'd just do all corn all the time. So at the very least they could all grow Soybeans there, because I don't think that there is an issue with overly... nitrogenizing... your soil.

Of course from my in-laws gardening in Illinois I know that the soil is just freaking fertile in general. The whole Corn and Soybean is very much just the best way to make money, I'm sure you could grow lots of different varieties of foodstuffs.

Conveniently enough soy is also subsidized. Even though corn is about three times the subsidy spending of soy it seems like a hell of a win-win for farmers rotating those two crops. Interestingly according to those charts for soy a good chunk of the money is going to 'Crop Insurance Premium Subsidies'.

Even, for the sake of argument, we accept that HFCS and sugar are equally as dangerous, the artificially lowered cost of using HFCS has lead to it being used in everything. Because at that price, there's no reason not to! So rather than being frugal with sweeteners as a simple cost/benefit rationale, companies can appeal to the nation's sweet tooth at practically no additional expense.

Seth wrote:

By claiming my system is false, you're asserting the opposite: that weight is not equal to [calories ingested] - [calories expended]. And that's almost dangerous.

Is it an oversimplification? Sure. So is "evaporation makes it rain," or "alcohol makes asian people get pink cheeks." Doesn't make it any less good of a rule of thumb.

(This is the part where, exasperated at being wrong, people attack my less than perfect analogies as a proxy to my point.)

I never said your equation is false, I am saying that it is not useful because you don't actually know the values of your variables. There are so many factors that affect what you actually absorb(not ingest) and what you burn. I would compare it the physics problems that you get in high school, where everything is assumed to happen in an frictionless vacuum with ideal objects and invariant conditions. The math simply doesn't work for problems in the real world at some point, due to the number of other factors involved.

Let me put it this way: I am eating more calories now on a low-carb diet than I did on a previous 'normal' calorie-restriction diet(I have done calorie-counting on both diets). By your math, I should have lost more weight on the calorie-restricted diet. Instead, I am seeing quicker, steadier weight loss while eating low-carb.

Look at what the HFCS has done to this thread!

Kraint wrote:
Seth wrote:

By claiming my system is false, you're asserting the opposite: that weight is not equal to [calories ingested] - [calories expended]. And that's almost dangerous.

Is it an oversimplification? Sure. So is "evaporation makes it rain," or "alcohol makes asian people get pink cheeks." Doesn't make it any less good of a rule of thumb.

(This is the part where, exasperated at being wrong, people attack my less than perfect analogies as a proxy to my point.)

I never said your equation is false, I am saying that it is not useful because you don't actually know the values of your variables. There are so many factors that affect what you actually absorb(not ingest) and what you burn. I would compare it the physics problems that you get in high school, where everything is assumed to happen in an frictionless vacuum with ideal objects and invariant conditions. The math simply doesn't work for problems in the real world at some point, due to the number of other factors involved.

Let me put it this way: I am eating more calories now on a low-carb diet than I did on a previous 'normal' calorie-restriction diet(I have done calorie-counting on both diets). By your math, I should have lost more weight on the calorie-restricted diet. Instead, I am seeing quicker, steadier weight loss while eating low-carb.

And this is where it gets back to my original idea that nutrition is religon. My body responds poorly to low carb diets and well to portion control, regardless of calorie type. For the record,I'm suspicious about your actual calorie numbers since I consider high fat / protein diets a pipe dream (and dangerous to your kidneys), but I think we can both agree that there's enough complexity in this field that neither viewpoint is wholly wrong.

Or, at least I can agree.

As I said above I do think it's a young field with a long way to go. However I think we also know enough that we can, with some confidence, call people out on truly ridiculous statements.

Person A eats a large pizza, a family bag of doritos, 2L of pop and various other crap throughout the day - every day. They are morbidly obese.

Person A wrote:

I'm big boned // it's my thyroid // other reasons it's not their fault

We see this sort of thing so often that it gets a bit frustrating and causes some of us to perhaps overuse that simplified formula. There are countless individual factors affecting how efficiently your body absorbs what you ingest, and there are probably just as many or more factors determining your base metabolic rate. Situations like Person A just lead to frustration and face palming though so we whip out the "short version" as it were.

I do think at some point nutritionists will be able to take a genetic sample, look at your lifestyle, and tell you within a pretty good degree of accuracy what foods and supplements you should be eating and in what amounts. However getting to that point is probably going to take generations as nutritional studies aimed at optimizing long term health are likely to be lifelong experiments and being species specific I doubt we can pawn this one off on rats. For now the best we can do is keep helping the field get off the floor and demand that it hold itself to proper scientific rigor and such.

Knowing one's genetics might not even be enough to make accurate nutritional suggestions:
http://health.usnews.com/health-news...

This research indicates gut bacteria falls into at least three different distinct types that may have a significant impact on how you digest foods. They need to do a larger study to refine their results, but it is interesting.

Seth wrote:

And this is where it gets back to my original idea that nutrition is religon. My body responds poorly to low carb diets and well to portion control, regardless of calorie type.

So you're admitting this is to do with how your body responds to what you put in it and not the calorie content?

Seth wrote:

For the record,I'm suspicious about your actual calorie numbers since I consider high fat / protein diets a pipe dream

By the same card I might be suspicious that your portion control doesn't essentially just boil down to carb restriction.

Seth wrote:

(and dangerous to your kidneys)

This is the ketone bodies in the blood and kidney stress link. Yes ketoacidosis can indeed impair your kidneys but that is simply not a problem if you are metabolically healthy (i.e don't have diabetes for instance). The hypothesis that low carb diets lead to kidney stress is just that; a hypothesis. Plausible because ketoacidosis exists and is dangerous but 40 years of the Atkins book being available and used has not led to hospitals being flooded with cases of renal damage.

Seth wrote:

but I think we can both agree that there's enough complexity in this field that neither viewpoint is wholly wrong.

This is an issue of paradigms.Sure, the Bohr model of the atom isn't wholly wrong but sticking with the wrong paradigm means that you make incorrect predictions about systems, you can't incorporate conflicting data and on and on... And so it is with the calorie centric view of nutrition. The calorie centric view simply can't explain the difference between your and Kraint's experience (assuming you are both telling the truth).

The alternative view is to understand that system as it actually physically is; a complex interlocking serious of dynamic equilibria with understandable and predictable response to specific substances. You can describe the system and the inevitable outcomes without recourse to calories. I can tell you what 50 grams of fructose does to you (leptin antagonist, liver dislipidemia, little insulin response..); What 50 grams of glucose does to you (large insulin response, leptin increase, little liver interaction etc.); What 50 grams protein does and so on. Then we can understand what these hormone messages mean, what it is that your body chooses to do in reaction to ingested substances. When your insulin spikes you deposit incoming fuel molecules as fat. When your leptin spikes you feel sated. When your leptin is dis-regulated you need to eat more to feel sated. And these things are equilibria; push on either side of the balance and you correcting shifts. Eat lots and lots of glucose and you get a strong insulin/storage reaction if you're training for a marathon there will a strong countermanding signal to mobilise fat stores and that will draw from the far side of the storage equilibria.

With that in mind, now we're in a position to understand why different people have different responses to seemingly the same diet. When I eat 50g of glucose I have a different strength of insulin response to the guy sitting next to me. Different people's fat tissue has differing insulin sensitivity. Some people produce more or less leptin or ghrelin in reaction to eating or hunger. And on and on. And all these different, personal, responses set the multitude of equilibria points for these interlocking systems in different places for different people. And with the system configured differently for each person so you get different responses for each person.

And none of this view of the system requires that we think in calories.

Vaguely on topic: a very interesting read - Is Junk Food Really Cheaper? If the question interests you at least a bit go read it.

wanderingtaoist wrote:

Vaguely on topic: a very interesting read - Is Junk Food Really Cheaper? If the question interests you at least a bit go read it.

Thank you for the link.

There's also another financial cost, in the US it is $11.35 per person per year in corn subsidies (2010 numbers).

That doesn't seem like much but then there's yet another cost - the resultant healthcare that living that way long term can result in. In Canada we all foot the bill, down there I gather the person or their insurance does - if it's the insurance then it's likely resulting in higher insurance costs for everyone. How much is this junk-food induced healthcare cost? I have no idea and I'm not sure we could ever really determine that precisely, but we know it's not free.

wanderingtaoist wrote:

Vaguely on topic: a very interesting read - Is Junk Food Really Cheaper? If the question interests you at least a bit go read it.

That "a chicken and salad can feed a family of 4 and therefore fast food is more expensive than real food" line of argument is pretty close to rubbish. Sure, the very poor might not be eating in McDonalds every day, but nobody is arguing that restaurants are cheaper than making your own food. Nonetheless, I can buy 24 of the cheapest frozen beef burgers for $5 and with a couple of potatoes and I could have a meal for 4 of incredibly processed meat with deep fried chips on the table for less than $4. Mechanically recovered meat products are, without exception, cheaper than their unprocessed equivalents.

And I really take exception to that "oh everyone has to just learn to enjoy cooking again", and where are they going to get the time and energy for that? That hour and half people spend in front of the TV isn't because they are lazy slobs, it's because people need some daily downtime. But most importantly the last time we had the luxury of most families principally eating home cooked meal we lived in a period where many families could live comfortably on one person's salary so another parent did actually have the time to cook. You want everyone to go back to having the time to cook and enjoy it then maybe you need to address the economic situation that means most families need two salaries to get by.

DanB wrote:

But most importantly the last time we had the luxury of most families principally eating home cooked meal we lived in a period where many families could live comfortably on one person's salary so another parent did actually have the time to cook. You want everyone to go back to having the time to cook and enjoy it then maybe you need to address the economic situation that means most families need two salaries to get by.

I'm wondering if this is an impression you have or if there's been some study showing that adults in a household simply don't have the time anymore. I think I'm one of the few adults in my circle of friends/family that doesn't have children, and I'm pretty sure I cook at home way, waaay less than they do, which is usually to the tune of 4-5 times a week minimum. But then, I live in Austin, and there's a big food culture here so I may have a skewed viewpoint.

I think it goes without saying that, again, I disagree with your conclusions, Dan the fact that you haven't considered cooking as a form of entertainment is a pretty glaring flaw, I would say, whereas you seem to elevate tv to some untouchable pastime.

There's two principle alternatives to eating poorly. The first is to pay someone to do it, and the second is to learn to do it yourself. This is *no different* from literally millions of choices we make daily. The alternative to drivnig with bad brakes is to pay someone to fix them or learn to fix them yourself. Same for weightloss, home repair...the list is limitless.

I don't really fault people who choose the junk food path, mostly because calories in / calories out trumps junk food for me. But dont let people shirk the responsibility for their own actions.

I'm a bad example because I don't have kids, but a whole chicken, some potatoes some fresh vegetables, a few cans of black beans, a gallon of milk, and the ingredients for cabbage soup just cost me 26.00, and that will feed my wife and I for 4+ days. That's 8 lunches and 8 dinners, all for 26 dollars and maybe 45 minutes of prep time.

Claiming it's impossible is just ignorant.

Seth wrote:

I think it goes without saying that, again, I disagree with your conclusions, Dan the fact that you haven't considered cooking as a form of entertainment is a pretty glaring flaw, I would say, whereas you seem to elevate tv to some untouchable pastime.

I never said either of those things. And it's kind of laughable given that I watch minimal TV and really enjoy cooking. But I don't pretend that because I like it and find it good to wind down with that other people would. And I'm aware that I and my partner have the luxury of both working jobs where we can get home early and spend time cooking if we so desire.

Seth wrote:

There's two principle alternatives to eating poorly. The first is to pay someone to do it, and the second is to learn to do it yourself. This is *no different* from literally millions of choices we make daily. The alternative to drivng with bad brakes is to payb someone to fix them or learn to fix them yourself. Same for weightloss, home repair...the list is limitless.

Sure people have limitless choices but what they don't have is limitless time. I'm not going to fault or take the moral high ground if someone else doesn't enjoy cooking and they choose something else for their limited downtime. You want them to add other tasks to their life give them more downtime.

Seth wrote:

I'm a bad example because I don't have kids, but a whole chicken, some potatoes some fresh vegetables, a few cans of black beans, a gallon of milk, and the ingredients for cabbage soup just cost me 26.00, and that will feed my wife and I for 4+ days. That's 8 lunches and 8 dinners, all for 26 dollars and maybe 45 minutes of prep time.

Claiming it's impossible is just ignorant.

I never said frugal cooking is impossible, hell I fed myself week in week out for less than $20 at university, but it requires lots more than just making the choice to cook to implement. But given the example in the article I was pointing out that I could put a meal on the table for a family of four, way cheaper than their roast chicken example and also pointing out that the fast food poor people choose isn't McDonalds day in day out. I grew up in a pretty poor family and my mother was a genius at this type of frugal cooking but nonetheless, for our family of 5, Sunday's roast chicken was all but picked clean by the end of the meal, it made exactly 5 dinners for 1 meal time and then the carcass would make soup and maybe 1 or 2 sandwiches later in the week.

Bloo Driver wrote:

I think I'm one of the few adults in my circle of friends/family that doesn't have children, and I'm pretty sure I cook at home way, waaay less than they do, which is usually to the tune of 4-5 times a week minimum.

But what's considered home cooking? Hamburger Helper and a bagged salad smoothered in ranch dressing or only that home roasted chicken and fresh veggies?

A lot of families use those prepackaged (and heavily processed) foods as the core of their meals simply because they're affordable and fast. So they're technically cooking, but they're also ingesting an ass-load of sodium and the processed carbohydrates that are increasingly being looked at as the real reason we as a nation got fat.

Well now you're just blatantly contradicting yourself. Pick a position, don't change it based on what I say.

Edit: meant for danb, not og.

OG_slinger wrote:
Bloo Driver wrote:

I think I'm one of the few adults in my circle of friends/family that doesn't have children, and I'm pretty sure I cook at home way, waaay less than they do, which is usually to the tune of 4-5 times a week minimum.

But what's considered home cooking? Hamburger Helper and a bagged salad smoothered in ranch dressing or only that home roasted chicken and fresh veggies?

A lot of families use those prepackaged (and heavily processed) foods as the core of their meals simply because they're affordable and fast. So they're technically cooking, but they're also ingesting an ass-load of sodium and the processed carbohydrates that are increasingly being looked at as the real reason we as a nation got fat.

That's a fair question, and I really don't know the answer. I could make some ballpark guesses based on the friends in question, but I was really just trying to gauge how much speculation we were getting into. As much as I like facts and statistics, I don't have much in this dept.

Seth wrote:

Well now you're just blatantly contradicting yourself. Pick a position, don't change it based on what I say.

Edit: meant for danb, not og.

The NYTimes article has 2 points

a) Cooking is cheaper than junk food. But its example is Roasting a chicken at home Vs McDonalds. If you're poor the cheapest hamburgers and a packet of hamburger helper are cheaper again than the chicken is, and that's no less junk food. That's not as strong a sound bite because it doesn't contain implied anti-McDonalds sentiment mind.

b) Then the other point it makes is that people aren't cooking, and more people should be encouraged to cook. But what they really mean is the "right" kind of cooking (which contains a load of class judgement). Yet people who are time poor, might not have the education about cooking, and don't enjoy it don't want to spend 45 mins of prep time, they want to spend the 10 minutes it takes to put some hamburger helper or MacNCheese in the oven. Getting involved in efficient frugal cooking means getting involved in and having the time to cook.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Even, for the sake of argument, we accept that HFCS and sugar are equally as dangerous, the artificially lowered cost of using HFCS has lead to it being used in everything. Because at that price, there's no reason not to! So rather than being frugal with sweeteners as a simple cost/benefit rationale, companies can appeal to the nation's sweet tooth at practically no additional expense.

It's not JUST the artificially low cost. HFCS is in many ways a wonder drug/ingredient. It not only sweetens and is easily included into processed foods, it also works as a preservative to extend shelf life, which is pretty key to large national companies with long supply chains.

Keep in mind which demographic you fall into that may cause you to be anti-HFCS:

Anti-corporation/processed food
Anti-government (subsidies)
Free trade (cheap South American sugar)
Energy independence (oil -> fertilizer -> only way to make money growing corn)

Each cause has a different reason why HFCS is bad. This thread seemed to focus on the health issues at first and quickly spiraled into the political arena.

Bloo Driver wrote:

That's a fair question, and I really don't know the answer. I could make some ballpark guesses based on the friends in question, but I was really just trying to gauge how much speculation we were getting into. As much as I like facts and statistics, I don't have much in this dept.

I don't think we're getting into too much speculation. If you look at any of the grocery trade publications (yeah, I admit I that I do...I once had client who sold to grocery stores and for some strange reason I found the industry fascinating) there's been a slow and steady shift to prepackaged foods over the years (things like Hamburger Helper).

The industry's new hotness are so-called convenience foods, which are the prepared ready-to-eat or heat-and-serve stuff. This category is growing about 7% a year which is absolutely unheard of in the grocery business (it helps that the category is also the most profitable segment for grocery stores).

The category is growing because of consumer time constraints: they feel they don't have enough time to cook a meal from scratch.

I think you'd be hard-pressed to call any of these foods home cooking as they are all heavily processed.

DanB wrote:

b) Then the other point it makes is that people aren't cooking, and more people should be encouraged to cook. But what they really mean is the "right" kind of cooking (which contains a load of class judgement). Yet people who are time poor, might not have the education about cooking, and don't enjoy it don't want to spend 45 mins of prep time, they want to spend the 10 minutes it takes to put some hamburger helper or MacNCheese in the oven. Getting involved in efficient frugal cooking means getting involved in and having the time to cook.

Yup. And it also requires that you have pots and pans, more than just a microwave, and, most importantly, access to the right kinds of food. The article glossed over the issue of food deserts, which affects nearly 30 million people. If you live in one of those you couldn't even buy a fresh vegetable if your life depended on it.

Jolly Bill wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Even, for the sake of argument, we accept that HFCS and sugar are equally as dangerous, the artificially lowered cost of using HFCS has lead to it being used in everything. Because at that price, there's no reason not to! So rather than being frugal with sweeteners as a simple cost/benefit rationale, companies can appeal to the nation's sweet tooth at practically no additional expense.

It's not JUST the artificially low cost. HFCS is in many ways a wonder drug/ingredient. It not only sweetens and is easily included into processed foods, it also works as a preservative to extend shelf life, which is pretty key to large national companies with long supply chains.

Keep in mind which demographic you fall into that may cause you to be anti-HFCS:

Anti-corporation/processed food
Anti-government (subsidies)
Free trade (cheap South American sugar)
Energy independence (oil -> fertilizer -> only way to make money growing corn)

Each cause has a different reason why HFCS is bad. This thread seemed to focus on the health issues at first and quickly spiraled into the political arena.

Incidentally, to back up the point that sucrose is just the same as HFCS, here's just two studies
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...

DanB wrote:
Seth wrote:

Well now you're just blatantly contradicting yourself. Pick a position, don't change it based on what I say.

Edit: meant for danb, not og.

The NYTimes article has 2 points

a) Cooking is cheaper than junk food. But its example is Roasting a chicken at home Vs McDonalds. If you're poor the cheapest hamburgers and a packet of hamburger helper are cheaper again than the chicken is, and that's no less junk food. That's not as strong a sound bite because it doesn't contain implied anti-McDonalds sentiment mind.

b) Then the other point it makes is that people aren't cooking, and more people should be encouraged to cook. But what they really mean is the "right" kind of cooking (which contains a load of class judgement). Yet people who are time poor, might not have the education about cooking, and don't enjoy it don't want to spend 45 mins of prep time, they want to spend the 10 minutes it takes to put some hamburger helper or MacNCheese in the oven. Getting involved in efficient frugal cooking means getting involved in and having the time to cook.

So you're saying the article is spot on correct, but you can come up with unrelated examples how how to eat even cheaper *and* less healthy? How is that relevant to the article? And then you're saying that people who don't consider cooking "fun" but can't / won't afford to pay for the convenience of having healthier food prepared should get a pass when they choose food that in excess causes dangerous side effects?

I just don't understand either your beef (pun!) With the article or your larger point.

DanB wrote:

Incidentally, to back up the point that sucrose is just the same as HFCS, here's just two studies
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...

I appreciate the quote, but I don't think those studies (about metabolizing HFCS) addresses anything I was talking about. Probably just adding to the conversation

Seth wrote:

So you're saying the article is spot on correct, but you can come up with unrelated examples how how to eat even cheaper *and* less healthy? How is that relevant to the article?

Because the article claims that cooking from scratch is cheaper than eating junk food but their comparison is 'Cooking from scratch' Vs 'paying to eat at a fast food restaurant'. If you want to make that claim you need to compare cooking from scratch with the actual kinds of junk food people are actually eating. As I've pointed out I could buy 24 of the cheapest frozen hamburgers, a bag of potatoes and eat lunch and dinner for 12 days cheaper than just about any of the presented options, that's junk food and it's damn cheap.

Seth wrote:

And then you're saying that people who don't consider cooking "fun" but can't / won't afford to pay for the convenience of having healthier food prepared should get a pass when they choose food that in excess causes dangerous side effects?

I just don't understand either your beef (pun!) 2with the article or your larger point.

But the article's larger, and I think rather condescending, point (advice even) is that people just need to find cooking fun and magically make more time. But it ignores all of the social issues that go with "finding" time and that's the main problem with the article. If you really want people to have the time then you seriously need to look at the kind of economic structure we have. Berating people for not making the right choices simply doesn't address those problems, it doesn't help. To say nothing of the fact that if you don't like cooking how is being made to cook helping you relax and stay sane to do the day job you do? Sure it would be great if we were all rational automata and made perfect choices but real world advice should deal with people's real world behaviours.

Alongside this, this is also critically a class issue. The poorer people are the longer hours they're working, the less (health) education they have, the less access to fresh food they have and on and on. So the more likely they are to buy whatever cheap frozen stuff is on hand and put it in the oven.

Want to really change people's health, how about massive subsidies for whole chickens and broccoli instead of HFCS? Make those things actually cheaper.

DanB wrote:
Seth wrote:

So you're saying the article is spot on correct, but you can come up with unrelated examples how how to eat even cheaper *and* less healthy? How is that relevant to the article?

Because the article claims that cooking from scratch is cheaper than eating junk food but their comparison is 'Cooking from scratch' Vs 'paying to eat at a fast food restaurant'. If you want to make that claim you need to compare cooking from scratch with the actual kinds of junk food people are actually eating. As I've pointed out I could buy 24 of the cheapest frozen hamburgers, a bag of potatoes and eat lunch and dinner for 12 days cheaper than just about any of the presented options, that's junk food and it's damn cheap.

If your issue is a semantic one -- that is, you don't like the narrow definition the article has used for junk food, that's fine. I typically use "junk food" to describe candy bars and sweets, not fast food. The article is claiming that it's cheaper to cook healthy food at home vs fast food, and the article proves that with ease. I don't think the article needs to caveat that point with "technically eating out of a dumpster or living on cat food is even cheaper!"

The thesis is very clearly stated:

that article[/quote wrote:

I frequently read confident statements like, “when a bag of chips is cheaper than a head of broccoli ...” or “it’s more affordable to feed a family of four at McDonald’s than to cook a healthy meal for them at home.”

This is just plain wrong.

Seth wrote:

And then you're saying that people who don't consider cooking "fun" but can't / won't afford to pay for the convenience of having healthier food prepared should get a pass when they choose food that in excess causes dangerous side effects?

I just don't understand either your beef (pun!) 2with the article or your larger point.

But the article's larger, and I think rather condescending, point (advice even) is that people just need to find cooking fun and magically make more time. But it ignores all of the social issues that go with "finding" time and that's the main problem with the article. If you really want people to have the time then you seriously need to look at the kind of economic structure we have. Berating people for not making the right choices simply doesn't address those problems, it doesn't help. To say nothing of the fact that if you don't like cooking how is being made to cook helping you relax and stay sane to do the day job you do? Sure it would be great if we were all rational automata and made perfect choices but real world advice should deal with people's real world behaviours.

Alongside this, this is also critically a class issue. The poorer people are the longer hours they're working, the less (health) education they have, the less access to fresh food they have and on and on. So the more likely they are to buy whatever cheap frozen stuff is on hand and put it in the oven.

Want to really change people's health, how about massive subsidies for whole chickens and broccoli instead of HFCS? Make those things actually cheaper.

Again we're just going to have to disagree here. Giving certain people a pass because their priorities don't involve cooking healthy food themselves is just wrong. I could eat healthy and I could be a doctor right now -- but my priorities include eating healthy but didn't include going to med school.

And making it a class issue is absolutely ridiculous, and a little bit offensive. Of Course it's tougher for poor people to eat healthy. Everything is tougher when you're poor. I lived the first 16 years of my life so far below the poverty line my parents never paid income taxes. But when you claim that an article showing people different options -- options they may not have thought of before because I firmly believe lack of education is the primary barrier to healthy eating (moreso than motivation or financial ability) - -it sounds to me like you're saying it's impossible for the poor to eat healthy, which is just absurd.

Seth wrote:

it sounds to me like you're saying it's impossible for the poor to eat healthy, which is just absurd.

Which is why he didn't say that. He's merely saying that things are not quite as simple as the article implies it to be.

I don't think we're really discussing actual poor people until we debate the nutritional merit of Tangwiches, personally.

Stengah wrote:
Seth wrote:

it sounds to me like you're saying it's impossible for the poor to eat healthy, which is just absurd.

Which is why he didn't say that. He's merely saying that things are not quite as simple as the article implies it to be.

So...it shouldn't be discussed at all? Every time I hit the "post" button I am not rebuked for not understanding the complexities inherent in forum database management. If the point is that imperfect understanding of nutrition is as bad as invalid understanding, then I suppose I can understand that point, even if I think it's wrong. It Does come full circle with people's uncomfortability with my calories mantra.

Seth wrote:
Stengah wrote:
Seth wrote:

it sounds to me like you're saying it's impossible for the poor to eat healthy, which is just absurd.

Which is why he didn't say that. He's merely saying that things are not quite as simple as the article implies it to be.

So...it shouldn't be discussed at all? Every time I hit the "post" button I am not rebuked for not understanding the complexities inherent in forum database management. If the point is that imperfect understanding of nutrition is as bad as invalid understanding, then I suppose I can understand that point, even if I think it's wrong. It Does come full circle with people's uncomfortability with my calories mantra.

Never said that either, I think you might be assuming that DanB is making arguments that he's not, because you're used to those arguments being presented alongside the argument he is making. Focus on what he's actually saying instead of what it sounds to you like he's saying.

well, agree to disagree.