With grocery prices going up, what little progress has been made might get reversed, unfortunately. Making America healthy again means making non-ultraprocessed groceries available to everyone & cheaper, and ensuring that working families have time to cook. Pressuring Coke to create a new product with sugar is not going to move the needle.
By cook, I don't mean "can add one box of prepared goods to another box of prepared goods with a can of prepared goods on the side", I mean buying meat, veggies, fruit, and grains and cooking a dish from home, mostly from scratch.
edit: 13 million Americans are in food deserts. If the problem were that small, it'd be similar in size to people who are addicted to substances other than alcohol. This is affecting almost everyone. There MUST be another, bigger solution.
Guess how they get most food? All that super-cheap rural land.
What are you suggesting they do instead? Scroll tiktok?
>and extreme hours
This is not the problem in rural communities.
I'd like to have an app that estimates the cost of groceries, including the long term health effects of regular consumption, and interpreting early death as a cost rather than savings. For me I think ribeye would end up being cheaper than Doritos.
Someone who bothers to input everything they eat into an app (basically calorie counting) probably already has enough intuitive sense of what's "healthy" that they don't need an app that they should eat beef rather than doritos.
It is unrealistic to expect the vast majority of humans to prioritize the long term in every single decision they make, especially if they have a dim view of the long term.
It is logical to want to enjoy life in the present, even if it will hurt in the long term, if you are being brought down by other aspects, such as stress about income volatility and belief in low probabilities of upward movement, etc.
Just like $50 shoes that last 6 months and $200 shoes that last 10 years, when you’re poor, you often have to chose the less expensive, short-term option because the more expensive, far far better option is literally out of reach.
Walmart has plenty of shoes and work boots for about $50 that will last more than 6 months unless you really abuse them. They don't look great but they're functional and reasonably durable.
Just taking a second to think about this, since we're in the context of groceries, here's another example: the bigger box of cereal will be cheaper per pound and last longer, but you have to pay more up front for it. Another example closer to the boots metaphor is comparing the longevity of cheap, used cars vs new cars.
Even outside of consumer goods, poor people are not able to hire accounts to find, um, ways to minimize your tax bill, or have the money for investments or even savings etc. Even middle class people who may be able to afford a mortgage that is less than their rent might take a while to save up for a down payment (and hopefully the housing market hasn't gotten too much worse in the mean time).
1. Mandating lower amounts of sugar, and significantly switching to zero calorie non glycemic sweeteners.
2. Removing plastic packaging and eliminating sources of microplastics and other endocrine disruption contamination of our food supply/
3. Banning most of the stuff that the European food agencies ban
4. Getting GLP-1's in the hands of every overweight person in America.
It's that easy, but "Make America Healthy Again" was made by a guy who had a worm eat his brain.
Even more than that, dosing hundreds of millions of Americans for life is one insanely expensive and ridiculous solution.
Side note, is there good research on the effects of microplastics on the body? I'm holding out adding that to my plate of concerns until this is the case, and last I heard we were pretty in-the-dark on the topic.
I find it odd that people can think these are not bad for you. Telling your body you're eating sugar, then not eating sugar must do terrible things
Just from first principles
Also decent for sous vide. I use a big glass jar instead of plastic bags, which are a health concern.
Lately I’ve been using more microwave rice just because it’s less cooking and cleanup, but still good overall.
I used to cook a lot of rice and have always used a simple pot
Very easy....
The way people talk about making rice online and having to seek out a rice cooker makes me wonder what they are even doing when they fail at making rice.
People assume ultra processed came about due to demand side factors but it’s actually more about supply side supply chain management and the scale in size of the US. By processing the food into more constructed ingredients they always enter a state where they’re easy to package and distribute across vast distances in that state. They can then be combined into food that is palatable through additives. Indeed the process disrupts the natural structure and content of the food - but that was necessary to feed everyone at a reasonable price a variety of foods grown across a vast distance at a reasonable price.
Obviously this led to demand because the food was more complete and varied than was generally available at the fresh grocer. Convenience was a side effect as well that was well capitalized.
These arguments actually hold until pretty recently. Even in my lifetime grocery stores growing up were pretty stark affairs with a few expensive fresh products that you splurged on for a special dinner like thanksgiving. Daily food was basically processed rations with a fancy box. It’s only in my adulthood, and the lifetime of the millennials, that there was really much optionality as supply chains globally and fresh food distribution with widely available refrigerated trucking with ethylene gas storage proliferated, free trade opened, etc.
Before all this, in my parents generation, the other option for ultra processed foods was malnutrition and wide spread rickets. It was when we tried to draft for WWII and the majority of rural young men were so malnourished as to be unfit for war that things really changed.
To sit today and compare the options of fresh food available and wonder how we got here ignores the reality of how we got here. But we are here so indeed, eat fresh and be happy we have free trade!
I’m not discussing the last decade, in fact in the last decade the availability of fresh food is absurdly better vs say 1930-1995 or so. The article also starts in 1950.
We are at a point where we can turn the tide, but the prevalence of fresh food in the store is counter balanced by the fact affordability is decreasing as inflation, restrictions on free trade, and stagnation of lower income takes the fresh foods away as an option. Add into it cultural inertia of 70 years of processed food prevalence as a staple food, you end up in this situation.
I suppose that the article hits on it a bit but a lot of the popular brands were great depression era hits. Most of us grew up on various forms of slop: hamburger helper, velveeta mac n cheese, spam, etc. The common link between everything I ate was it was easy, and allowed you to significantly stretch the meat in a dish. These days, now that we can afford more, it's most likely a matter of simplicity and brand affiliation. When you have 2/3 of an average store stuffed with ultraprocessed crap and even in the remaining 1/3 you have to be careful it's pretty easy to eat poorly. A perfect example would be "wheat" or "rye" bread which is basically the same as white bread with a little extra added. Though, these days, many even major supermarket chains offer reasonably high quality bread.
they didn't rob it, they hid it and put zillions of billboards selling their ultra-proccessed ultra-palatable anything with a huge profit margin.
Total 27,00€ ($31.57)
1kg potatos, 0,99€
3pcs bell peppers, 1,03€ (x)
1pcs ginger, 0,90€ (x)
1kg onions, 1,59€
100g garlic, 1,45€ (x)
500g carrots, 0,89€
500g frozen peas, 1,09€
1 can white beans, 1,09€ (x)
fresh fancy bread, 3,69€
400g chicken thighs, 4,99€
1l plain low-fat yogurt, 2,55€
1kg rice, 3,79€ (x)
650g ”farro”, 2,95€
(x) imported, not local
Typical prices in Finland, which is considered to be expensive European country.
Could maybe go down to 20+€ with cheapest options.
If over a third if the country has serious problems with this then it seems to me there is a systemic problem, and you can't only chuck it to individual failure.
Doesn't mean there is no individual responsibility at all – but there's a reason obesity rates have risen so sharply and why there are quite big differences between countries of comparable levels of development.
I don't think anyone claimed that it's impossible to eat healthy food – certainly the article didn't.
And yet, mcdonalds still does tidy business in this environment despite everyone saying mcdonalds is more expensive than ever.
Explain to me how that doesn't reflect widespread individual failure? Why does mcdonalds even exist in this market where you can eat amazing food from around the world in about the same time for about the same price? It isn't like these people are devoid of choice or limited by price. They are actively choosing mcdonalds over other options that are objectively better. I mean its like smoking cigarettes still despite all the information out there.
You can say it's their fault all you want, but that doesn't actually help you fix it.
Not to say that bad food should be illegal, but you can constrain portion sizes, you can constrain ubiquity (limit the # of fast food places per square mile/per population), you can constrain ingredients, you can constrain their marketing, you can limit how they decorate their buildings, you can do all sorts of things if the public will is there.
Now, whether or not the public will is there is another matter entirely. Policy prescriptions are easy, patient compliance is harder.
Edit: And frankly, I think we're in more agreement than you might realize. I grew up in the Bay Area, and it still drives me crazy how many of my peers would eat Chipotle. McDonalds is one thing, it's bad but at least it's unique, but Chipotle is just bad, expensive Mexican food. What's the point?? But, eventually, you have to accept that people will have bad taste and make bad decisions, and once those bad decisions start affecting society as a whole it's a policy issue, not an individual issue.
"The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food"
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinar...
It's not that there isn't a very legitimate issue underneath all this: packaged, hyperpalatable, low-nutritional-density low-satiety foods are probably a major driver of health problems. It's just that "UPF" isn't the right metric for isolating those foods, and with the wrong metrics you end up in a similar place as California does with the Prop 65 warnings.
We went through a similar thing with "pink slime" (transglutaminase preservation techniques).
<strike>This is before we get to the whole premise of avoiding nitrates. Would you eat a beet? That's a serving of industrial bacon's worth of nitrates right there.</strike>
Later
(Actually, super bad example, since the concern is nitrosamines which are formed in the presence of proteins. The point about the illegitimacy of nitrite-free bacon stands!)
For bacon, what do you think of these?
Applegate:
https://www.raleys.com/product/10400628/applegate-naturals-h...
Coleman:
https://www.raleys.com/product/103101180/coleman-natural-bac...
There's a really easy way to tell: does it taste like American bacon? Then: nitrites.
Are you sure about that?
Because it's the first time ever I stumbled upon this argument.
The explanation I heard is that there are legit bacterial food safety concerns (salmonella and listeria, IIRC) that justify using nitrites even if they are by themself harmful, the benefit/risk ratio is simply favorable to nitrites.
It is weird to me that people try to make an issue out of this, because it's not like the flavor change in cured meat is hard to miss. Just buy some pink salt! Corned beef tastes like corn beef because of nitrites.
I get that you like smoked pork belly. I do too. I don't even object to you calling it "bacon". All sorts of things that aren't American bacon are called bacon. But nitrites are absolutely part of the distinctive flavor of American bacon.
The whole thing is silly, because we can just point to ham and corned beef, two products where the debate doesn't even make sense; we only see it with bacon, and we only see it because vendors lie about whether their products are cured.
The problem isn't the curing, per se. In old school hand curing, almost all the nitrate/nitrite has reacted and is gone by the time you buy the meat.
The problem is the industrialization of the process. In order to not have to inspect the cured meat (as that would take people--the horror!), industry injects a massive amount of curing agents such that even when the meat is "fully cured" there is still a ton of it left in the meat itself.
For curing you really need only salt(or nitrite or sugar). Nitrates do have benefits in longer processes.
when you use a comparison like this, you choose an example that people will understand so they can then, by analogy, extend that understanding to the point you are trying to make...
like the kombu in the dashi, you say? dash-it-all, that's a combunation I hadn't considered!
I've heard this criticism a fair bit, and I sort of agree. The only thing is, what is the right metric? And if we don't have one, and know these foods are causing harm, should we just use UPF as a term anyway?
The previous comment was pointing out that there's an agreed-on definition of what "ultra-processing" means. There is. But there is no such agreement on mechanistic effects of ultra-processing.
Just regulate added sugar and saturated/trans fats and be done with it.
Canned Jalapeño often deploy a similar (but much less noticeable) trick in that the manufacturer grows Jalapeño without capsaicin, and then reintroduce chemically created capsaicin into the can in order to control for spiciness.
I don't think adding kombu to dashi would count as UPF according to the book's definition.
Later
This video is really frustrating. The first half of it is making relatively banal arguments about the importance of food to health. He's setting up an argument that I think basically everybody agrees with (hyperpalatable packaged food are a major driver of illness). But then he gets to UPFs, says the definition is totally agreed on, and then says they're all made by investor-driven large corporations.
That's just straightforwardly false. I made a mac & cheese out of some stored roasted cauliflower (never put a raw cauliflower in your fridge). To melt the aged cheddar I used, I added a half teaspoon of sodium citrate (a miracle ingredient). My cauli-mac is now a UPF. No giant corporation made it.
My argument isn't that packaged food isn't exactly as much of a problem as the UPF people say it is. My argument is that "UPF" is not the right axis on which to determine which foods are and aren't healthy.
Additionally, even if that substance is perfectly safe, the extraction process may effectively increase (as a %) the amount of byproducts. For example - and this is totally made up - suppose ice cream normally contained 1ppm microplastics, but adding carrageenan increased that to 10ppm because of the microplastics in seawater and the failure of the extraction process to remove them. Or even things that are “good” in their normal dosages might be “bad” at higher doses found in extracts.
In general, I would suggest it’s a good heuristic to avoid foods containing ingredients added for stability, preservation, or color. Maybe it’s fine but the benefit vs just eating fresh food that doesn’t need it is basically nil even in that case. Carrageenan would fall into this category. (It seems like there is some research suggesting carrageenan is not great for you but I’m not an expert: I’d not heard that and avoid it simply because it’s not anything I would add to a food I made.)
Whatever else is going on with carrageenan-stabilized yogurt, the carrageenan itself isn't doing anything to drive the health problems this speaker is talking about.
This is actually I think a really good illustration of the problem. There is absolutely a (primarily message-board-driven) literature of concerns about specific variants of carrageenan. But those concerns --- which I don't think are well-founded --- have nothing to do with the wave of concern about "UPFs" generally. The UPF thing isn't about IBD (some think kappa carrageenan exacerbates intestinal inflammation with susceptible people) --- it's about people eating hyperpalatable low-satiety packaged food, which are obesogenic. Getting rid of carrageenan does precisely nothing to address that problem; getting rid of cane sugar, which is not a UPF ingredient, absolutely does.
Is there something wrong with the precautionary principle? It would be one thing if the supposed benefit was something really incredible, like extending lifespan or curing cancer. Then maybe we should be less cautious. But we're talking about adding something to your ice cream to make it look nice for longer.
> it's about people eating hyperpalatable low-satiety packaged food, which are obesogenic. Getting rid of carrageenan does precisely nothing to address that problem; getting rid of cane sugar, which is not a UPF ingredient, absolutely does.
I'm not advocating anyone eat tons of sugar, but sugar consumption and the obesity epidemic are not very well correlated. I would agree that we should eliminate "hyperpalatable low-satiety packaged food", but if you were to hypothetically ban basically all non-salt/sugar preservatives, stability agents, flavor enhancers, colors etc. then you almost eliminate this entire product category, because it's no longer practical to produce and sell, easy to consume, or as marketable. Even banning corn syrup in packaged food (as a UPF ingredient) would be a positive move because forcing its replacement by cane sugar (regardless of whatever alleged health problem HFCS s may or may not have) would mean that such products become less economically viable, because its more expensive and less stable.
> the naturalist fallacy.
The naturalistic "fallacy" is approximately true for diets. We are animals that evolved in a way that optimized for the consumption of various foods in our environments. We're some of the most wildly complex chemical systems in the world, and we have remarkably broadly adapted digestive systems with a pretty good tolerance, so you can get away with throwing a lot of stuff down the pipe without anything bad happening. But that's exactly why "eat the same foods people always have and not bizarre lab concoctions" is a useful heuristic for health. It's entirely possible that various additives are perfectly fine or even pro-health, but it's not the way to bet as a general principle, and it's impractical to conduct meaningful long-term nutritional studies to find out with any real assurance.
But all this just shows to go you: this whole "UPF" thing is a sort of motte and bailey deal. We all broadly agree that packaged hyperpalatable low-satiety foods (along with liquid calories) are a danger to human health; that's the motte. The bailey is all this stuff about how we need to rid the food chain of stabilizers and glutamates and nitrates and preservatives because "bizarre lab concoctions" endanger people.
The right food classification scheme wouldn't have this problem, and wouldn't be a way for people to smuggle in proscriptions against sodium citrate or transglutaminase while coming up with "UPF-free" logos for cane-sugar-sweetened beverages.
In my case, I'm arguing that doing away with these things, regardless of any health effects they may have, has the effect of eliminating the entire class of foods you have a problem with.
> "UPF-free" logos for cane-sugar-sweetened beverages.
I'm not arguing that people should drink coke (which is full of all kinds of stuff besides HFCS I doubt people should be consuming), but the obesity epidemic is not well-correlated to soft drink consumption. The latter has been in decline since around the mid-90s.
The Prop 65 people make a lot of the same arguments you are --- most especially that we should more formally adopt the precautionary principle. Which is why you get cancer warning labels on bags of organic sweet potato sticks. And so nobody takes those labels seriously anymore.
I'm curious about this. Do you have a reference for this? What is in decline specifically? Number of people drinking sugary soda? Number of sugary sodas consumed per person (on average)? Amount of sugar consumed by drinking sugary soda? I'm curious because it seems the amount of sugar per can of soda has drastically increased since the 90's. If my memory serves me well, a can of soda 20 years ago was like 26g of sugar, today they're like 53 g per soda. At least in the United States.
I think what you're observing is larger cans and bottles are available now. I haven't seen an increase.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-drinking-way-less-s...
https://www.coca-colacompany.com/about-us/faq/ingredients
Sugar consumption per capita has been trending up slightly in the last few years. But ironically it was actually higher back in the 1970s when the population was less obese.
https://www.helgilibrary.com/indicators/sugar-consumption-pe...
Step #1 Make good yogurt and eat it.
1. Go buy a quart of milk, full fat. 2. Buy some yogurt culture. Bulgarian preferred. 3. Follow the directions. You need to keep the temp at around 110F, warm water bath, heating pad, hot water bottles, put it in a cooler, whatever.
This is one of the best foods there is.
Step 2. Go to your grocery store or stores and try to find some yogurt that is as good.
You can repeat these steps for other foods. Coffee - roast your own. Cheese. Just go to a gourmet cheese store. Get something that does not come in a plastic bag.
Or go to Europe and try real croissants. Everyone in Paris can get real croissants almost anywhere every day. And not to mention real bread - again the plastic bag.
We are so used to what is available here that we have come believe it is "food" when really it is just adulterated to have a long shelf life. Sorry, but really just try it.
I live in one of the largest metro areas with quite a few Michelin star and recommended eateries, lovely food culture, and we love our dairy. I think there are two dedicated cheese mongers you can walk into in the entire area, neither are particularly accessible.
edit: https://guide.michelin.com/us/en/colorado/denver_1261491/res...
The biggest obstacle is that you need a cheese cave to age the cheese. This can be a small dorm refrigerator with something like an inkbird temperature controller.
I do know one family that makes cheese and then just eat it without the aging. Store it in the refrigerator. They think it is much better than store bought.
Still, almost every grocery store I've been to (even the lower-cost ones in my region, like King Soopers) has a fresh bakery area. It's such a profitable product to sell, it really makes no sense not to add it if you have any space at all to spare. Even Target has one.
I'm cheap, so I go like 30 minutes before closing time and get the bread for like 80% off because it doesn't have the shelf-stabilization stuff, so it will go bad in a couple days.
- https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/product/painterland-sisters...
- https://www.hy-vee.com/aisles-online/p/2284457/Siggis-4-Milk...
- https://www.jewelosco.com/shop/search-results.html?q=yogurt&...
- https://www.marianos.com/p/dannon-gluten-free-whole-milk-non...
As for roasting beans, that is an immensely deep rabbit hole that will #1- not give you better results than specialty roasters and #2- cost you much more than specialty roasters. Not to mention you will have a tough time getting high quality beans unroasted.
Edit: also all of these grocery stores I listed I can guarantee have fresh bread made daily to buy. Not "white bread", but "real" "European" bread.
1) 32oz of whole milk into a pot, set burner to 6, set a 7 min timer (whats optimal for my burners), walk away.
2) Come back, check temp with thermometer, should be between 180°-190°f. Shut off burner. Set 10 min timer. Go do something else.
3) Come back, put burner on low simmer, set 20 min timer, do something else.
4) Come back, shut off burner, crack lid of pot open, do something else for about a half hour.
5) Come back, check temp, should be around 110°f now. If not wait. If it is, add last scoop from last batch of yogurt to pot.
6) Pour into mason jar. Put in instapot. Put in 1 cup water into instapot. Hit yogurt button. Get yogurt in 12 hours.
This is like less than 5 mins of actual hands on work. Probably the easiest thing you can do in the kitchen beyond like making spaghetti. I started my initial batch with one of those premium yogurts so I stole their cultures.
Theory being that the issue is one of the billion colourants/flavourants/preservatives & cooking from scratch cuts most of them.
Too early to confidently tell (4 days in)...but the vibes sure feel promising
As much as there are all the science around low carb diet and optimizing calories, macros and what not, I think there are some wisdom to it in the long game view.
Someone that had a good nutritious breakfast (you will notice every major culture has its variant of breakfast akin to "English breakfast"), would have less difficulty resisting food with empty calories and doing frequent snacking. Contrary, if you had packaged "cereal" with questionable ingredients and nutrition density, no wonder by 11 you will feel the need to snack. And then if you happen to have a lunch in one of the typical take out restaurants optimized for cost at the expense of quality, a 3pm snacking is more likely than not.
By the end of the day, you had racked up calories intake with bunch of empty calories from those snacking episodes that could be entirely prevented with a solid dense breakfast.
I will take the science over old wives tales and marketing bs any day. Even if the science is as poorly done as most nutrition science is.
This also ignores that most European countries emphasize breakfast even less than Americans, and that the British (home of the English breakfast) have a lower life expectancy than most of their western European peers (but not as low as Americans).
There are plenty of specific processes that are extremely questionable and probably dangerous. Europe bans a lot of them, or to be fair almost everybody bans them but the US. But somehow, when the references to food additives and processes get specific, outlets like the NYT start using phrases that include "right-wing," "corners of the internet," "rant," "outburst," "conspiracy theories," "...but the science actually says...," "the consensus," "...that the vast majority of scientists agree to be safe..." etc...
Also, dangerous additives and processes are an entirely different question than talking about people eating fatty, sugary, salty foods because they like them. They're on the verge of turning "ultraprocessed foods" into a moral crusade against the tastes of the lumpen, which their upper-middle class audience loves because it allows them to feel superior (and deserving.)
Also, preservatives are good. They make food cheaper and make it last longer. I want dangerous preservatives banned.
It really changed my relationship with food knowing that it’s not my gut malfunctioning but stems from what I’m putting in me.
Insanity•10h ago
Even something as simple as Yogurt is usually insanely sweet / sugary compared to European variants. Ingredients that are banned in Europe are regularly found in products, and something as simple as bread has a ton of preservatives (as the article shows).
And I'm vegetarian, I assume for people who eat meat there's the additional concern of antibiotics resistance due to the antibiotics given to livestock.
dkga•10h ago
colechristensen•10h ago
The concern isn't eating meat from an animal treated with antibiotics infecting you with resistant bacteria.
The concern is treating animals with antibiotics puts evolutionary pressure towards breeding resistant bacteria that spill into the ecosystem and eventually get back to us. But not through meat consumption, it effects everyone regardless of diet.
0xbadcafebee•10h ago
Antibiotic resistant bacteria isn't the only harmful downstream effect of factory farms of course. Regular-old harmful bacteria are in the runoff, as well as super-high levels of nutrients that harm waterways, plants and animals. Algal blooms, oxygen dead zones, contaminated water table, etc.
All because we really like cheap pork, beef and chicken.
colechristensen•9h ago
I'm not saying eating a bit of cow poop on your lettuce never gets anyone sick, but that's not the mechanism of concern.
One: poop is mostly bacteria, by mass. It isn't infected with ... it is. Some can be "pathogens" but that's what the last stage of digestion is, fermentation with mostly a wide array of bacteria.
The concern is these gut bacteria developing antibiotic resistance and bacterial infections in the animal developing resistance. Then infections are spread between animals and across species and the waste is reintroduced into the environment. Resistant bacteria in the environment share. Horizontal gene transfer between species of bacteria can lead to these resistance genes being popular and everywhere. It's not cow poop infecting you, its the genetics getting spread into the environment and eventually ending up in a human pathogen.
>animal waste is sometimes used as fertilizer
More or less all industrial farmed animal waste ends up as fertilizer. Also a major component of the kinds of soil we grow crops in is bacteria, much of which has been through the digestive system of an animal. Again I don't know what people think soil is. If you want "clean"(?) never been poop growth medium for your plants you have to go completely artificial. And manure isn't sterilized before it goes into fields, it's alive.
nradov•10h ago
Antibiotic resistance is a concern but the FDA has made progress in that area.
https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/safety-health/antimicr...
The EU bans routine antibiotic use for promoting animal growth but antibiotics are still widely used for other purposes.
https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/first-report-eu-wide-sales...
0xbadcafebee•10h ago
parineum•7h ago
benrutter•6h ago
> US farm antibiotic use is 2.6 times higher than the median use in European countries and 60% higher than the average use throughout Europe.
[0] https://www.saveourantibiotics.org/media/1830/farm-antibioti...
throwway120385•10h ago
yesb•9h ago
For example this contains only milk, cream, bacteria: https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/plain-whole-mil...
This is basically sugary milk with thickeners added to make it vaguely like yogurt: https://www.yoplait.com/products/original-single-serve-straw...
nradov•9h ago
https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/greek-whole-mil...
Or you can buy essentially the same thing for less at Walmart.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Mountain-High-Low-Fat-Yogurt-Vani...
While there are some people who live in "food deserts" with very limited options, complaints by most HN users about the difficulty of finding healthy food don't align with reality.
technothrasher•9h ago
yesb•9h ago
But not sure I would consider fermented milk to be an "adulterant" in a different fermented milk product...
secabeen•8h ago
yesb•8h ago
steanne•7h ago
OJFord•7h ago
appreciatorBus•7h ago
ziml77•1h ago
morsch•8h ago
chimpanzee•7h ago
Some… Most…
You’ve made some broad assumptions here. I’ve lived in various neighbordhoods in one of the largest cities in this country and near and far suburbs of the same. Only when I’ve lived in ritzy or trendy areas have I had no issue eating healthy (according to my definition of healthy), and always at significantly greater financial cost.
My guess is either your concerns are less restrictive than mine annd others’ on this thread. Or you’ve been privileged enough to not have a clear perspective on just how large, dispersed and discontinuous, the American “food desert” truly is.
nradov•7h ago
There are a small fraction of people who do live in food deserts and we ought to help them out. Probably the best thing we could do to make many food deserts "bloom" would be to fund the police and strictly enforce shoplifting laws, especially against organized retail theft gangs. Good grocery stores have been driven out of some neighborhoods partly by high shrinkage rates (not the only problem but a major contributing factor).
vector_spaces•10h ago
Large parts of the US are designated as food deserts, where one's best option for groceries might be the convenience store attached to a gas station. Good luck finding plain yogurt with no sugar added there. Your specific experience is exactly that.
[1] https://ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/chart-deta...
nradov•9h ago
https://news.uchicago.edu/story/food-deserts-not-blame-growi...
vector_spaces•9h ago
I am not sure why you mention eating habits, since this is not what is being discussed
dragonwriter•8h ago
Actually, you pointed out that food deserts exist, and asserted that that meant that plain yogurt is not generally available, the thing you pointed out does not support the conclusion drawn from it.
seemaze•8h ago
[0]https://vividmaps.com/us-block-level-population-density/
maxerickson•8h ago
nradov•8h ago
But you don't have to take my word for it. Instead of making things up you can literally just go look.
vector_spaces•7h ago
dragonwriter•8h ago
Now, fresh produce, except—if you are very lucky—extremely expensive (for the quantity), relatively small packs of cut carrots and other things people might reasonably purchase as snacks, anything usable as a cooking fat excepted salted butter, and lots of other things, sure, you are going to be SOL, but plain yogurt (both the usually watery American kind and strained "Greek” yogurt) seems pretty common.
vector_spaces•8h ago
My issue was less with the plain yogurt specifically and more with the logic of the parent, namely that "X product has been available in every grocery store I have shopped in" implies that "X product can be found in every grocery store"
kulahan•8h ago
In which case you can just grow the food.
supportengineer•8h ago
parineum•7h ago
supportengineer•2h ago
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/537685fafa614d80ac83a60...
parineum•28m ago
Seems like the qualifications are whatever they want them to be.
vector_spaces•8h ago
kulahan•7h ago
Even if it were true, it still only affects 13 million people. There are 330 million in the US, so it's a non-issue with regard to our obesity problem.
vector_spaces•5h ago
In any case, I am talking about the availability of items in response to the parent's obviously absurd implication "every food market I have been to sells X, therefore every food market sells X".
I am using food deserts as a counterexample since definitionally these are regions where certain items are hard to find. I know (hope?) that the person I am responding to likely doesn't believe every grocery store in the United States carries plain yogurt, but I also know that people here often forget that not every place enjoys the same level of choice that is enjoyed in places like the SF Bay Area
I truly don't understand why you are bringing up obesity, this feels very remote to what is being discussed.
kulahan•4h ago
mjparrott•8h ago
supportengineer•8h ago
I find that you do the research once, and then you know what to buy next time.
OJFord•7h ago
jmathai•7h ago
It's exhausting being a consumer these days.
Scarblac•6h ago
So, we can say it's reasonable for people to do some research and pick the yoghurt they consider best, but we know most people don't do that. And that supermarkets prefer to give the best spots to sugary yoghurts.
What's wrong with doing the research once for the average person and then regulating the supermarkets so they give those the eye level space? People can still make different choices if they want.
cma•5h ago
appreciatorBus•6h ago
maxerickson•8h ago
nradov•8h ago
chimpanzee•7h ago
So the nutrition facts and ingredients list doesn’t convey any new information? The designers managed to cram all that info into an appealing front facing label? And the marketers refrained from soft deceptions and convenient omissions, prioritizing truth and clarity over sales numbers? Sure.
nradov•7h ago
ikr678•2h ago
Your local coastal city store might have a half dozen plain greek yogurts but I bet there are plenty of areas where they are not stocked because they know it won't sell.
nradov•1h ago
But hey, don't take my word for it. Most large supermarkets now offer online ordering. Pick a few small Midwestern cities at random and look what dairy products the major local supermarkets have in stock. It's hilarious how people keep posting uninformed comments here without taking 5 minutes to do some trivial fact checking.
pnutjam•6h ago
Glad you're hear to tell people they are dumb and they should work around systemic problems instead of trying to fix the system.
eikenberry•6h ago
UncleMeat•3h ago
SirFatty•10h ago
Sure, if you limit your purchases to Dollar General and Casey's. If you spent time in an actual grocery store, you'd find that your comment isn't true.
garciasn•10h ago
vel0city•10h ago
garciasn•9h ago
And I’m not sure why folks are downvoting this; objectively, Target has limited and terrible selection compared to standalone grocers.
vel0city•9h ago
But yes, I do agree their range of choices for fresh food products is usually more limited compared to good, actual grocers. But that applies to their packaged goods as well, they often don't have as many choices of lots of things. I might find almost a dozen brands of pasta at an actual grocer but only have three or four brands at Target. To me it seems the ratio is about the same, its just the scale is different.
And to be honest, its the same story for practically all the stuff at Target. They don't have the widest supply of craft supplies compared to craft stores like Michael's and Hobby Lobby. They don't have the widest selection of bicycles compared to the bike store. They don't have nearly as many toys as what Toys R Us did. The book section is smaller than a Barnes & Noble. What else is new.
SirFatty•10h ago
atmavatar•9h ago
There exist Wal-Mart Supercenters which are basically a full-blown grocery store combined with a traditional Wal-Mart store.
There also exist Wal-Mart Neighborhood Markets which are regular grocery stores.
It's not uncommon for some people to refer to all of them as simply "Wal-Mart", especially if only one of them exists locally.
0xbadcafebee•10h ago
(i'm ignoring the additional fact that the US has many more food deserts than abroad. even within rich neighborhoods with many expansive grocery stores, those stores have more unhealthy options and fewer healthy options than abroad, unless it's specifically a "health food store")
unregistereddev•7h ago
As someone else in this thread used sweet yogurt as an example, it is trivially easy to find unsweetened yogurt in nearly any grocery store in the US. The difference is that there's also a very large selection of sweet flavored yogurt.
0xbadcafebee•44m ago
"Ultra-processed food staples dominate mainstream U.S. supermarkets. Americans more than Europeans forced to choose between health and cost" - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.16.24302894v...
"Price and availability trends by level of neighbourhood deprivation however, remain unclear; while studies in the US have tended to find differences between neighbourhoods and prices for availability of healthier food items, studies conducted in other countries have generally reported no association" - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3679513/
"The distribution of the FPro scores in the three stores shows a high degree of similarity: each store exhibits a monotonically increasing curve (Fig. 2a), indicating that minimally pro-cessed products (low FPro) represent a relatively small fraction of the inventory of grocery stores, the majority of the offerings being in the ultra-processed category (high FPro). Although less-processed items make up a smaller share of the overall inventory, they likely account for a proportionally larger portion of actual purchases, highlighting a discrepancy between sales data and available food options. Never-theless, systematic differences between stores emerge: Whole Foods offers a greater selection of minimally processed items and fewer ultra-processed options, whereas Target has a particularly high pro-portion of ultra-processed products (high FPro)." - https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-024-01095-7.epdf?shar...
"“Our research shows that consumers prioritize taste and price when shopping for food, with nutrition coming in a distant third,” Balagtas said. “So the fact that consumers associate healthy eating with high costs and low taste is a challenge for food manufacturers and public health advocates.”" - https://ag.purdue.edu/news/2025/08/how-americans-make-health...
We have more ultraprocessed foods, fewer healthy options, the healthy options are more expensive, and their distribution is uneven (less healthy food depending on the store). Consumers' associations confirm this.
Meanwhile abroad there is less ultraprocessed food, the healthy food is more often subsidized (so it's cheaper), and healthy food distribution choices are more evenly distributed.
FirmwareBurner•10h ago
Also as "an European" whatever that means, I only spent a couple of months in the US as a tourist, and had no issues finding healthy foods from leafy greens, to good meats in places like Wholefoods.
If he couldn't find it while actually living there, tells me he's not commenting in good faith.
thatfrenchguy•9h ago
Jensson•9h ago
Sure it might be possible to find that in USA as well, but its so much harder as not every store has it.
vel0city•8h ago
OJFord•6h ago
vel0city•6h ago
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Block-Sharp-Cheddar-C...
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Low-Moisture-Part-Ski...
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Frigo-Parmesan-Cheese-Wedge-5-oz-...
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Tillamook-Medium-Cheddar-Cheese-B...
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Swiss-Cheese-Block-8-...
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Dutchmark-Smoked-Gouda-Cheese-7-o...
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Castello-Gourmet-Creamy-Danish-Ha...
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Kerrygold-Grass-Fed-Dubliner-Iris...
and on and on and on and on and on...
It might not be right next to the pre-shredded cheese (usually those house brand blocks of cheddar and what not are), sometimes they're in a fancier part of the deli area. But I can't think of a time I've gone to a Walmart looking for a block of cheese and not found any cheese.
Its not going to be the fanciest varieties, but once again the question was for "basics" that don't exist. Having cheddar, swiss, parmesean, gouda, etc. is having the basics.
asdff•5h ago
vel0city•4h ago
Note, I agree, they're not fancy cheeses, they're quite basic, plain, and common varieties. But how are they not real cheeses?
asdff•2h ago
volkl48•8h ago
I'm not saying this is specifically the case for you, but it is remarkably common for visitors from other parts of the world to visit, go into what we consider a "convenience store", and then be confused that there's basically nothing in terms of actual groceries in there, with probably 80%+ of the "consumable" shelving devoted to snack/"junk" items.
Those stores are intended pretty much entirely for stuff people want while on the go, and the few "groceries" they stock are basically aimed at the kind of things a drunk/stoned person is craving at 3AM when nothing else is open (say, a frozen pizza), or the few things you might run out of by surprise in the morning/when about to eat and be willing to greatly overpay for being able to grab somewhere close by before your meal/schedule is ruined. (ex: milk, condiments, maybe eggs).
vel0city•6h ago
supportengineer•7h ago
Please provide some, or retract your claim.
nradov•9h ago
https://www.siliconvalley.com/2025/06/26/cupertino-whole-foo...
asdff•5h ago
The real issue is people don't cook for themselves and seek out premade shelf stable offerings of what their grandparents were making from scratch decades ago. It is like knowledge has been lost.
vector_spaces•10h ago
I am familiar with what the grandparent is referring to, having spent a decade running purchasing teams in US grocery stores. Even in urban areas with many different food retail stores, a typical supermarket in the US is a fairly difficult place to shop for someone with specific food sensitivities. Hopefully folks here who live in the SF Bay Area appreciate that it's a total outlier in both the diversity of stores available and the assortment of products sold in a typical Bay Area supermarket
[1] https://ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/chart-deta...
SoftTalker•9h ago
supportengineer•8h ago
nradov•9h ago
vector_spaces•9h ago
BetaDeltaAlpha•8h ago
vector_spaces•8h ago
I will also point out that "cost conscious" is one of several shopper profiles that Safeway targets, but broadly speaking Safeway targets a more affluent shopper (although cost conscious isn't the same as non-affluent). The degree to which a particular location services these targets varies by area. But no, these stores target fundamentally different shoppers and think very differently about assortment, at least with regard to the long tail
supportengineer•8h ago
- La Plaza Market
- 99 Ranch
- Grocery Outlet
- Rose Market
- Nob Hill
- Lucky
- Smart & Final
- Walmart
- Target
- India Cash & Carry
- Bharat Bazar
I'm probably leaving out a ton.
kritr•7h ago
stevenwoo•7h ago
stevenwoo•7h ago
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Whole-Foods-vs-Safeway-W...
Ranch 99 and the little De Martini's produce shop undercut Safeway prices on produce in Mountain View. The comparable items work out to be less expensive at Trader Joe's versus Safeway, too, last time I looked. Produce at Costco is regularly less than all of the above but I only buy a few produce items that I can freeze for later use there. For me the two advantages to Safeway are the extended hours of operation and the locations being convenient.
nightski•8h ago
So yeah, there are a lot of towns that fit that criteria (less than 1000 residents). But as a portion of U.S. population it is not substantial in any way.
chasd00•8h ago
vel0city•5h ago
Or you just ate the food you were growing on your own lot, or what your neighbors were growing, or from the farmer selling stuff off the highway.
nradov•8h ago
Instead of making things up you can just go look. Many supermarkets have online ordering now so you can see exactly what they stock at each local store.
vector_spaces•8h ago
In any case, I love most of what you have written here.
Online ordering enables larger long tails. In which market do you suppose online ordering is more common, Daytona Beach or Mountain View?
If you were managing assortment at a Publix in Daytona Beach, how would you structure your long tail? Would you look to a Safeway in Mountain View as a model to follow?
supportengineer•8h ago
UPDATE: ChatGPT tells me that at Publix it's called "GreenWise Organic" and at Kroger it's called "Simple Truth Organic"
newfriend•8h ago
Yes, in rural areas you often need to drive further than 1 mile to get to a grocery store. That doesn't mean that normal food doesn't exist for these people.
GLdRH•6h ago
losvedir•6h ago
Der_Einzige•10h ago
1. Upscale western grocery stores and markets, ideally located within the biggest and most affluent city possible. Pikes place market would be a great example of what I'm talking about for you seattle folks.
2. Asian grocery stores, like "H-mart"
3. Farmers markets, but these are hit and miss, especially in smaller communities
Most other grocery stores, including Costco, Trader Joes, etc are full of extremely unhealthy trash slop. It's still extremely hard to find reliable low sugar options nearly anywhere, including at health and "organic" oriented grocery stores.
America just sucks for foodies who don't have unlimited time to get through the slop.
dgfitz•9h ago
I think by definition, being a “foodie” means you have, and enjoy finding, the time to sort the wheat from the chaff. Nobody has unlimited time for anything.
“I want to be be a ‘foodie’ but really I just want to be judgy” is a weak argument.
Der_Einzige•9h ago
When I travel to Japan, for example, I interpret a bad google maps review score for a location as a GOOD thing, because the average white tourists palette is incompatible with the local cuisine.
I can walk to basically any random place, anywhere in Japan, or France, or Singapore and get very high quality food that I don't have to worry about being full of bullshit. That's not true in America.
dgfitz•9h ago
ashtakeaway•8h ago
dgfitz•4h ago
asdff•5h ago
Yizahi•10h ago
vel0city•9h ago
If its not something that is OK to sit on a shelf for a few months, you won't find it at a Dollar General.
When it comes to actual fresh foods (which can be found if you go to actual grocery stores), those are highly regulated. You'll find fancier varieties at fancier grocery stores, but in the end a yellow onion at Kroger is about the same as a yellow onion in Safeway or Publix or Albertsons or HEB or Whole Foods.
selimthegrim•1h ago
rolisz•8h ago
supportengineer•8h ago
dgb23•6h ago
Unfortunate that they can be a bit difficult to grow. Very weather dependent.
parineum•7h ago
I think it's a combination of having them year-round (they are picked before they ripen for shipping) and the emphasis on color/look being very high. A good tomato tastes much better than most store bought to the point I didn't know I liked tomatoes until I had a garden grown one. Now I eat store bought as well but it's not the same.
I don't find most other fruits/veggies to suffer nearly as much from that though.
pirates•5h ago
tptacek•3h ago
dgb23•6h ago
FirmwareBurner•7h ago
Speaking also as an European, not they would not. There's a pretty big difference in the quality of the meant across the board between shops and brands(suppliers) of meat depending how the animals were raised, fed and cared for.
Here in Austria there's been plenty of scandals covering the poor conditions of animals in meat factories (living in feces, infections with puss, etc) yet the meat cuts receive the AMA seal of approval. I also did some work for the farm tech sector and the conditions of animals in some (most) EU countries I saw were indeed as appalling as those in the stories. It almost made me go vegan.
Sure, it's all(probably) technically safe to eat due to all the antibiotics they pump in those animals, just like in the US, but quality varies a lot.
And like sibling said, there's also a big difference between the quality of fruits and vegetables you find in supermarkets depending on where they come from and the conditions under which they were farmed.
That's why I dislike these over generalist "In Europe it's like this and that" blanket statements. No it isn't, it's just one point on the graph, but in reality it varies A LOT, it's a friggin continent ffs.
jeffbee•10h ago
asdff•5h ago
at-fates-hands•10h ago
If you want to eat healthy, you certainly can, but takes quite a bit of effort and some additional cost. Processed and ultraprocessed food has just made us lazy - like eating at fast food restaurants became easier than going home and preparing something from scratch.
COVID and the huge surge in prices that have yet to come down essentially forced my hand to find a better, healthier way to eat. It sucks, but at the end of the day, I know myself and my family are eating healthier regardless of the effort it takes.
SoftTalker•9h ago
gruez•9h ago
>If you want to eat healthy, you certainly can, but takes quite a bit of effort and some additional cost.
It does, but you really don't need to go to farmers markets and buy grass fed beef from a dedicated butcher to "eat healthy". You can get 95-100% of the benefits of your routine by going to a regular supermarket and buying non-ultraprocessed foods.
jjtheblunt•10h ago
i.e., these same revelations and frustrations are shared by a huge swath of people born in the States (probably Canada too), and it is indeed a pain in the neck being continually paranoid about what nutritional rubbish is included in ingredient lists.
jay_kyburz•8h ago
Here in Australia we have a column for grams per 100g by weight. It makes it much easier to compare foods.
hvb2•8h ago
jay_kyburz•8h ago
Instead you have than x% of your recommended daily amount, if you are an average size American, eating an average size serving according to the FDA. How are you supposed to do anything with that.
jjtheblunt•7h ago
tpmoney•2h ago
Simulacra•9h ago
gruez•9h ago
Guid_NewGuid•8h ago
nebula8804•8h ago
Its a symptom of same thing that is messing up the US in all other areas. Poor governance caused by layers of people all along the stack taking their cut and not caring about the overall picture.
wenc•9h ago
In the Seattle area there are overpriced grocery stores like PCC and Met Market that sell healthy food at a premium.
There is also Whole Foods.
Even normal grocery stores like Safeway and Kroger have a ton of healthy foods — you just have to read the label.
The one thing you have to know if that American grocery stores are giant — they carry way more SKUs than the average European grocery store. It’s on the shopper to find what they want. It’s usually there.
hvb2•8h ago
Not compared to France :) you can buy a dishwasher a tv and stuff for your car all in the same supermarket...
Don't ask me why, just stating a fact
spogbiper•8h ago
wenc•6h ago
Atomic_Torrfisk•5h ago
thinkingtoilet•8h ago
orochimaaru•8h ago
Bread is a bit of a shit show. Stick to something like sourdough for 0 adde sugars.
Hormones are banned for meat and poultry. I’m not sure how antibiotics are treated. Fwiw - with vegetarian food you also run the risk of pesticide contamination.
Either way, my point is that there’s a lot of options but do your research before you hit the store and in general try to limit highly processed food
portaouflop•8h ago
Completely impossible to get normal bread unless you go to some hipster store that charges an insane amount for it.
It’s just really really hard to get decent food in America, which is crazy because the land is so rich in resources and nature.
orochimaaru•7h ago
volkl48•7h ago
The bread aisle is pretty much for sliced sandwich bread (+ buns + similar things) that has preservatives to last for at least a week, and was usually not baked on site.
------
I think the secondary point to note is that you're also just running into cultural differences: Americans don't really eat that much bread. And it's not a staple of meals besides 2 slices if you want a sandwich for lunch.
Hard data is shaky but most sources I can find put American per-capita bread consumption at a small fraction of the consumption of somewhere like France.
Having far fewer standalone bakeries and far less "good bread" is not so much that people are eating a bunch of worse bread instead - no one's serving sandwich bread with dinner, they're often just not eating that much bread at all.
asdff•5h ago
asdff•5h ago
It is just people in this country have forgotten how to cook. Grandmother made her own mayonnaise. Mom bought kraft. To you making mayonnaise is a black art since mom never did it, so you also buy kraft. Extend that to most other food products.