Things food snobs are wrong about

bogleech:

bogleech:

• “Organic” isn’t better for you or for the environment. It actually means nothing of any significance at best and is sometimes even the more wasteful, more hazardous option.
• A shitload of “natural” food including a lot of imported produce is grown and harvested through slave labor in inhumane conditions.
• Pizza, fried chicken, french fries, fast food, candy bars and chips ARE nutritious. They are loaded with good things. Just because they have an abundance of excess fats and might not be healthy as a staple doesn’t mean they are “nutritionless” or that their calories are “empty.” Those are hokey buzzwords pushed by the people in charge of how much you pay for the alternatives.
• Eating healthier costs more. Much more. Looking down on people for their reliance on cheaper food is extremely classist and expecting everyone to be able to live off fresh veggies and cage-free meats is insultingly unrealistic in the modern world.
• “Processed” literally only means the food went through some kind of automated process. This can be literally the exact same thing a human being would have done to the food for it to be labeled “unprocessed.” Being processed does not make something less healthy.
• Chemicals with long, scary names are part of nature. An apple is full of compounds you probably can’t pronounce. A shorter ingredients label only means they didn’t bother listing all 300 things the product is actually made of and HAS to be made of.
• Preservatives, artificial flavors and other additives are not the devil. Most are harmless and in general they are part of the reason you haven’t already starved to death or died of a food borne illness.
• MSG is not bad for you at all.
• The fact that something might be made of “scrap” meats like pig snouts or chicken necks only means one thing: that we didn’t waste perfectly normal, edible meat.
• I DON’T KNOW HOW I FORGOT THIS IN MY FIRST VERSION OF THIS POST BUT GMO’S ARE NOT DANGEROUS TO EAT. GMO’S ARE SAVING LIVES. YOU’VE ALREADY EATEN GMO’S BEFORE YOU EVEN KNEW THE TERM. IT’S FINE. EAT THEM.

I love how, for two years, this has continued to get angry comments on it from people who believe I “claimed junk food was healthy.”

I guess this is because I called it “nutritious,” and in Food Snob lingo that’s literally treated as the same word as “healthy.”

“Nutritious” means “IT CONTAINS NUTRIENTS,” which is a fact of virtually all food. Burgers and potato chips and ice cream all contain nutrients that your body will use. Good nutrients.  Fat itself is  good nutrient your brain needs to function. I even say in the same breath that excess is all that makes them bad.

The argument was against the idea that they are “empty” or “devoid” of anything. The organic-natural-alternative health movement pushes this narrative that some everyday foods are just plain Evil Death Poison or Hollow Voids of Nothingness and it’s utter bull.