Themes Mcgee

Wakes up from hypnosis where he was about to marry a woman he’s never seen before with his mystery girl’s voice, the instant he wakes up then the cute girl he’s actually fallen in love with now has that voice. Then she drops to the floor and has a fish tail, and then the first girl is suddenly cackling “too late!” and bursting out of her skin. So it turns out she’s actually an octopus woman who drags herself over to the real mystery girl - who’s a mermaid?! They’re real?! - and taking her back into the ocean. And Eric has no idea what’s going on here but okay, one of these women is clearly evil and he needs to go after his mystery girl.

And all of this happens/he realizes what he has to do within like, a single minute.

Prior to this he was just living out a sweet romance after having a Meet Cute with a shipwrecked girl, but okay, guess he’s involved in whatever the fuck this is. Acting first, questioning later.

title "Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain" but the sample size was 20 people and each diet was followed for 2 weeks.

but the thing that pissed me off about it was, it doesn't define what "ultra-processed food" is. Having an operational definition of the thing you're studying is a basic requirement in science!!!!!!!!

Even worse, it makes some vague suggestions about what "ultra-processed food" might be, but the foods actually used in the study as "ultra-processed" don't even match those descriptions

You have to download the supplemental materials to see, but there's photos and descriptions of the meals the participants in the study ate, and in the "ultra-processed" group there's stuff like. canned fruits and vegetables. Like there was canned sweet corn in the "ultra-processed" group vs. frozen sweet corn in the "unprocessed" group.

It's a rigorous study in the sense that they collected many different types of data including biological data and subjective questionnaires, but I think it doesn't demonstrate anything at all about "ultra-processed food" because it doesn't define what that is.

In the introduction, there are two different parts that might describe what "ultra-processed food" is, this:

an increasingly industrialized food system (Stuckler et al., 2012) characterized by large-scale production of high-yield, inexpensive, agricultural “inputs” (primarily corn, soy, and wheat) that are refined and processed to generate an abundance of “added value” foods (Blatt, 2008; Roberts, 2008).

and a reference to the NOVA classification of food processing, which you can read about on Wikipedia here. This is a quote from the Wikipedia article (itself a direct quote from a publication) which might help:

Ultra-processed foods are operationally distinguishable from processed foods by the presence of food substances of no culinary use (varieties of sugars such as fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, 'fruit juice concentrates', invert sugar, maltodextrin, dextrose and lactose; modified starches; modified oils such as hydrogenated or interesterified oils; and protein sources such as hydrolysed proteins, soya protein isolate, gluten, casein, whey protein and 'mechanically separated meat') or of additives with cosmetic functions (flavours, flavour enhancers, colours, emulsifiers, emulsifying salts, sweeteners, thickeners and anti-foaming, bulking, carbonating, foaming, gelling and glazing agents) in their list of ingredients

The NOVA system seems to be trying to capture the idea of foods that are created using industrial processes, out of ingredients that were broken down and extracted by industrial processes. It's pretty vague and flawed in some ways: "Flavors and flavor enhancers" could mean anything, including any seasoning at all.

But, NOVA classification at least gives a potential operational definition of "ultra-processed food."

Trouble is, the "ultra-processed" diets in the study don't even follow that definition.

If you download the supplementary materials, you can scroll down to where it shows photographs and descriptions of every meal the participants in the study ate.

Like, the ultra-processed diet includes...whole milk?? How on earth is whole milk "ultra-processed?" It's milk! Canned corn definitely isn't ultra-processed according to the NOVA definition. It's corn...in a can. Ditto with the green beans and peaches.

The Wikipedia for the NOVA classification explicitly says that the following foods fall under category 3, "processed," NOT "ultra-processed:

Examples include cheese, canned vegetables, salted nuts, fruits in syrup, and dried or canned fish. Breads, pastries, cakes, biscuits, snacks, and some meat products fall into this group when they are made predominantly from group 1 foods with the addition of group 2 ingredients.

There is no explanation of whether or how the foods selected for the "ultra-processed" group fit into the NOVA system, but at a glance, it seems like the "ultra-processed" diet includes a lot of things that aren't ultra-processed.

The "unprocessed" diet also includes items that (as per the NOVA classification) are not unprocessed, such as yogurt, spaghetti, and penne pasta. Like I get that it would be hard to make a meal out of only unprocessed foods but spaghetti noodles have been through some industrial processes. They don't grow out of the fucking ground like that.

I don't know, maybe it wasn't the point that every item in the meals fit the definitions, but if they don't all have to fit, it's kind of arbitrary, isn't it?

I appreciate how this paper shows how much more expensive the "unprocessed" diet is, and looking at the pictures you can get a sense of the kind of privilege you would need to eat that way: year-round access to fresh, perishable fruits and vegetables, and lots of time to cook and prepare meals. Whereas the "ultra-processed" meals are mostly easily prepared and shelf-stable.

The creator of the NOVA classification was analyzing "ultra-processed food" in relationship to class, but the authors of this study aren't.

Limiting consumption of ultra-processed foods may be an effective strategy for obesity prevention and treatment.

Then only privilege going on here is being so privileged you believe your taste buds are more important than another individual’s life.

"[...] nowhere has the vegan diet taken off more than in the African-American community. According to Pew Research Center survey, 8% of black Americans are strict vegans or vegetarians, compared to just 3% of the general of the population.

Those findings mirror a 2015 poll by the Vegetarian Resource Group, that found 8% of black people were strictly vegetarian, compared to 3.4% overall.

Recently, a January poll by Gallup found that 31% of non-white Americans had reduced their meat consumption in the past year, compared to only 19% of white Americans."

Vegans are a diverse bunch and globally, it's the rich white countries that consume the biggest quantities of animal products, at the expense of the poorest, who suffer the most from the consequences of the environmental damage caused by mass animal ag.

If you associate veganism with rich white people, you've fallen for propaganda and might want to look up the origins of vegetarianism and veganism, at least if you don't want to come off ignorant and racist.

i cant be normal about anything i like ever . it has to consume me like evil mold

Have you guys seen that clip