1y ago

Say it ain’t so

233 comments

I know it's a shipost and this meme is at least 15 years old. But meat, cheese, and white bread (especially the ones in the US with added sugar) were never healthy
- Since when is meat unhealthy?
  
  Although high in nutrients, the difficulty in digestion makes it a carciogen. Particularly red meat - bird and fish (pre omnipresent plastics and heavy metals) are relatively healthier.
  
  Fr meat is the reason we have big brain.
  Now if you wanna argue that we should have never left the trees and created civilization then you may have a point.
  
  Since the grain industry gained power in the 1940s. They funded much research to say
  Meat is hard to digest (when in fact carnivorous animals have the shortest gut; we're omnivores and have a medium gut, we also have the most acidic stomach acid of the mammals which is an adaptation to eating meat)
  Grain is the healthiest food (the only type of animal that does well on seeds is birds, they don't have teeth for bread to get stuck between and rot. The ancient Egyptians lived on bread and had the worst dental health)
  That humans need a balanced diet of many different things - which we do when we're eating nutritionally poor foods like bread, but many thrive on simple diets of fatty meat (Inuit before they adopted the standard American diet; Buffalo hunting native Americans; modern followers of lion, carnivore, zero carb)
  The standard diet as recommended by science (much of which was bought by the wheat peak bodies) has made us fat. Getting fatter is the most unhealthy state, it leads to diabetes, hypertension, bad cholesterol and early death
  
  If you eat it more than 2 - 3 times per week.
- Specially processed meat, cheese and bread. In the case of fast food these ingredients are basically "hacked" to make us crave more and consume more. These industries have "food scientists" working on exactly that.
  Meat, cheese and bread in their more natural form is definitely healthy when consumed in moderation.
  
  Hacking implies a lot more than simply adding fat and sugar, and that's all you gotta do.
  I've seen several threads where chefs confess that all they do to make their dish(s) popular is load it down with butter and sugar.
  Wouldst thou like the taste of butter, wouldst thou like to live deliciously?
  In related news, this American finally figured out why Europeans find our bread sickening sweet, why I love sourdough and why it's called "sour". You're only gonna need one guess.
- Especially the US white bread which contains a carcinogen.
  
  Which carcinogen?
  
  Take care not to make statements so inaccurate they are effectively meaningless.
  "US white bread" isn't a singular brand and most brands don't "contain[s] a carcinogen"...
  You never mentioned what the carcinogen was. Probably because it would compromise your argument that "US white bread" as a whole contains it when it does not. (It's Potassium Bromate/Bromide (it's used interchangeably online sometimes), for those wondering.)
  It's not limited to white bread in where it can be used. It was an additive to flour in general.
  A lot of the fear mongering blogs, written by 'influencers' whose research consists of 10 seconds of Googling but not verifying a single fucking thing they write about, name brands that contain potassium bromate... but actually don't. Example: Wonder bread (https://wonderbread.ca/ourproducts/white-bread-675g/) Chex Mix. Looking up their ingredients list shows the item in question is not used at all. https://www.chexmix.com/products/chex-mix-traditional/
  TLDR: Think before you repeat vague, meaningless shit next time.
  BTW, You should look into the horrors of Dihydrogen Monoxide.
  
  Only if you live in California!

I am extremely sure if you make a burger by yourself with good ingredients it will be just as healthy.
Beware of the added sugars in things that aren't supposed to have that much sugar.

calling meat, cheese, and bread healthy
wow that food pyramid propaganda really did a number on you all didnt it.
Edit: im talking about the meat and dairy industies lobbying too, not just bread
- It seems odd putting meat in the same category as bread.
  In terms of pure health, there's not much out there better than most meats. Yes, beef is a bit lower than pork and chicken, but properly portioned (looking at most of us Americans) it has very few downsides.
  Bread on the other hand can be one of the worst foods we can eat. Of course, it is still all about moderation.
  EDIT: Why the reddit-like downvotes folks? There's really no cohesive argument that puts meat below bread healthwise in most situations. If you want to avoid meat, avoid meat. If you want to be morally opposed to anyone eating meat, so be it. Facts are still facts and misinformation isn't the right way to fight that battle.
  
  Bread can be healthy, just make sure it's wholegrain. Read meat is acosiates with bad health outcomes..
  But yeah nobody is going to put a wholegrain bun on their hamburger.
  
  Bread can be one of the worst foods we can eat
  Why?
- Well, they sure have necessary nutrients
  
  i love the greatest source of carcinogens in an average diet 🤤🤤
- Meat ?

Of course. The unhealthiness of food is an emergent property arising from the arrangement of their constituents components relative to each other. The next time you have a burger and want to be healthy, just take it apart! Taps head
In all seriousness, for anyone confused by this, whether or not something is healthy for you is all about quantities and ratios. Specifically, that of your diet as a whole, not of individual items. So while I don't agree with this sentiment, burgers can be considered unhealthy because:
There is very little vegetables in relation to meat and bread
It is very calorically dense
Red meat is considered by many to be unhealthy in its own right, and burgers tend to have a lot of that
It is usually consumed with large portions of fries and drinks or other sides that are also very calorically dense with little diversity in micronutrients
- I'm sick of people claiming calorie dense food is unhealthy. It's not. Calories are required for your body to function. An adult needs 2000kcal per day; whether they are spread out over 8 meals or 3 makes no difference. Eating the amount of calories of a hamburger every day is nothing special, especially if you do sports regularly.
  This comment was made by the <20 BMI gang.
  
  Only thing wrong with calorie dense food is that people eat too much. Guess you could add ignorance in there as well. Pretty shocking when you look at the numbers on the menu.
  Not that people actually look. They got every excuse in the world for being fat, except the big one, placing calories in their mouth.
  
  Coming from the >30 BMI gang, a lot of the food in the West (especially the United States but a lot of other countries are having this problem too) has a shit-ton of calories and very few other nutrients. That's the biggest problem with caloric density, when food has a lot of calories and no nutrients it encourages either obesity or nutrient deficits.
  
  Calories are required for your body to function
  not mine 🙂
  
  whether they are spread out over 8 meals or 3 makes no difference.
  While I agree with your overall point, this isnt true. While there is still debate about the "best" frequency to eat meals in, its generally agreed upon you dont want to eat all of your daily calories at once as you overstress your gut and cant process it efficiently.
- Additionally, eight ounces of steak might be lean. (It also might not, of course.) Eight ounces of hamburger, especially one from a fast food restaurant, is absolutely not lean beef.

I always thought it was the proportions that weren't healty. You get 50% bread, 50% meat, with a tiny slice of lettuce in the middle.

It's really not the burger that's unhealthy, but the fries and soda you get with them
- Fries could be argued for, its the sugary soda that is the real issue. Sugar is absolutely terrible in large amounts frequently...
- Absolutely this. Sure the fat and salt and lack of veggies isn't great for you, but the fries and soda is way worse.
- The burgers are unhealthy too. With all the dressing, roasted onion, fatty cheese, oil, salt...

Ratios and amount are the most important thing in healthy eating. For reference, vegetables should be more than half your food intake, the rest split between whole-grain carbs and protein (either meat or plant based) in order to be healthy. And we need to pay attention to how much total food we eat too since our monkey brains that evolved under extreme food scarcity don't do a good job of moderating nutrient input.
No I can't keep myself to that either.

I'm fat by nature (and environment) so I have examined and tried many diets, and I think I can only say for sure a few thing about healthiness of diets:
if you eat carbs, fats beyond what is necessary to eat, are unhealthy
If you don't eat carbs you need to eat fats, some fats are better than others
If you don't eat carbs and you don't eat fats you starve - to thin then to death
Sugar is unhealthy and wrecks your teeth
Highly processed foods are not healthy
- So it's as easy as eating a balanced diet?
  
  Becoming less fat? It's hard.
  I cannot do it eating a low fat diet. I find portion control impossible, I get very hungry when I eat carbs
  The only success I have had has been on very low carb diets, but they are hard to stick to long term. I found the only one I can do easily is "zero carb"
  Ed. It's unbalanced - choose either:
  Carbs, protein & minimal high quality fats; or
  Fats, protein & minimal to zero carbs
  If you eat balanced fat, carbs, protein then you will not be healthy
  
  If it fits your macros bro
- On the sugar note: Meat you buy in the store (for instance bacon) often have sugar additives. Better to visit the butcher.
  
  Butchers won't save you from sugar in bacon, many bacon brine recipes call for sugar, but a butcher will be able to tell you what the bacon was pickled in
  Raw, unprocessed meat (steak, chops, chicken) is generally fine
- What about protein? There's a whole other macro you can use to make up for calories with if you cut out carbs. Eating near exclusively protein probably isn't good for you, but you won't starve. From what I've seen there can even be a lot of advantages to eating a little more protein, especially if you're doing some strength training.
  
  Protein is vital and is available on any kind of diet. Many vegetables, all meats, all fungi
  Humans can either live on carbs or live on fats, in both cases we must also eat protein
  Humans cannot (though cats can) live on protein, look up rabbit starvation. You will starve if you eat only protein, where eating only fat or only glucose will kill you much more slowly with vitamin deficiencies

White bread, cheese (at least not the one on burgers) and red meat aren’t exactly known as healthy foods. Definitely not in the proportions of a burger. Even more definitely not when you boil the meat in oil (often together with the onions).
- She also is showing lean meat not 20% burger meat, it's just dumb.
- Look my internal butter system carries oxygen to my cells that's why the doctor says I have IBS

Replace meat with bean burger
Replace cheese with guacamole or other sauce
Replace white bread with whole grain bread
- Replace me from that entire scenario because I ain't eating that shit when I wanted a burger.
  
  Fr. Vegans out in force here. Which is fine. No issue with vegans. But I have an issue with how much elitism and smugness is coming from this comment section.
  The topic is a shit post about how easy it is to make healthy food unhealthy through bad eating habits, poor balance in ingredients, and through misrepresentation of food's nutritional value. All the condescending "JuSt EaT pLaNt" is not asked for and obnoxious.
- Replace good taste with veggievomit
  
  You clearly need to learn how to cook.

Step one is to ask yourself what you think healthy means. Generally it's used as a catch-all by people to justify whatever shitty diet they have.

Yeah, I've never understood why burgers are unhealthy if beef, grain, and vegetables are healthy.
- First of all there's a huge gap between home made hamburger and, well, anything else tbh. Actually, let's expand it, there's a huge difference between home made anything and any other kind of food, be it restaurant or assembly line made.
  Backing up a little though, if you make a hamburger at home, with lean good quality beef that you grind up yourself or ask them to grind it for you at the counter, lots of veggies and very little oil, on a home made bun or on actual bread (the kind made with flour, water and salt, that's it), then it's quite healthy. Still wouldn't eat it more than once a week since red meat yada-yada, but still, not that bad.
  What you get at a fast food though is very low quality meat with lots of fats, dipped in other fats, sugar and spices to mask the flavor, processed bread, processed cheese, very little veggies and, usually, a side of french fries and a soda, which are a meal onto themselves. Let's take McDonald's, looking at their website a quarter pounder is 500+ kCal, the medium fries are 300+ kCal and a medium coke is 200+ kCal. That's 1000+ kCal for a "meal" full of fats, sugar and processed food. Also it's a huge spike in insuline which will lead you to a huge crash just a few hours later leaving you hungry and craving for more.
  Restaurants are also a bit guilty of this. They tend to add much more fats than you'd ever do at home in order to drastically improve the flavor of their dishes. Can't even fault them for it, if I wanted a bland healthy meal, I'd have eaten at home. If I'm going to the restaurant it's because I want a great tasting dish. Ready made meals you can get at a supermarket are also full of fats, vegetable oils and preservatives in order to mask the shitty flavor.
  So at the end of the day I'd say the best thing is to avoid as much as possible processed foods, avoid all take outs and deliveries, go out to eat maximum once a week and cook all your meals yourself starting with simple ingredients. It's not that hard either and cooking can be fun.
  
  if you make a hamburger at home, with lean good quality beef that you grind up yourself or ask them to grind it for you at the counter
  If you use lean beef to make a burger, you're Doing It Wrong™. Make the burger smaller or eat them less often if necessary, but don't go below about 20% fat.
  More concretely, I recommend using brisket to grind for your hamburgers. It has the correct amount of fat, plus a whole brisket is among the cheapest cuts of beef you can buy.
  
  Very helpful and interesting too!
- Beef ain't healthy, White bread isn't either and don't forget, the McDonalds Cheesburger doesn't even have vegetables.
  
  Well, there's a pickle.
- Burgers aren’t inherently unhealthy, in moderation. The problem comes when you’re buying the burgers from fast food joints.
- Because the stuff is heavily processed using a lot of sugar, saturated fats and salt. Also the gravy the meat is fried in. Also the poor quality of the meat, being made from god knows which scraps of the animal, that couldn't sell otherwise.
  
  The grain/carbs is the unhealthiest part. The low quality fat is next.
  I've thrown away all the carbs in my pantry and went from keto to now carnivore. My wife's diabetes is reversing and I've lost 35lbs this year!
- Real answer (since there's a lot of crap going around).
  Grain really isn't that healthy in large quantities, but isn't bad. But if you grind it into flour and bleach out the bran and germ, it's far less healthy. When you bake it into a bread, you create this extremely high-density/high-calorie end product with very little nutritional value.
  And beef, similar story. Beef is below-average on healthiness of meat (high cholesterol, though it's complicated the same as high-salt foods would be). But in a burger, you usually use especially fatty beef, like 80/20. Restaurants will sometimes supplement the fat in the beef with pork fat to make for an even tastier (and more unhealthy) burger.
  Nobody will ever say that tomato, lettuce, or pickle on a burger are unhealthy.
- People eat too much burgers
- Beef, under no circumstances, is healthy. Raw beef, beautifully seared beef, ground beef, AAA Chuck Sirloin whatever, doesn't matter. Animal fats are linked to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. The maillard reaction when you cook any meat at all is carcinogenic.
  
  Can I get some sources? Im seeing opposing arguments about red meat being healthy or not in here and I'm seeing basically no sources.
- Red meat is bad, white bread is bad, cheese is also shit. Also like others have said heavily processed
- Afaik the least healthy part of that is the grain. Most breads, aside from a handful of micronutrients, are pretty close to empty calories. The killer with fast food is the soda and fries, usually.

I think it's because of the quality of the ingredients. If you make a burger with homegrown vegetables and high-quality meat it would be healthy

It's really only unhealthy if you're eating that every time you eat. And mostly what makes it unhealthy is the fat/lean ratio. Hamburgers usually use fattier hamburger. You can make them with leaner meat tho. They just don't taste nearly as good.
- I've always been a proponent of full-fat products. Give me cream and I'll drink it! It is the sugar that I am wary of, even though it is so delicious!
- Hamburgers use hamburgers

I have great news for you! It ain’t so!

It’s the heavy amounts pf processing and adding far too much sugar that does it.
Bin the bread bun and have the burger with a nice fresh salad and decent cheese and you’ll live longer and healthier.
- Cheese isn't healthy. Ground beef neither. I couldn't think about anything healthy you could use as a burger sauce.
  
  While cheese may not be healthy, it's not necessarily unhealthy either. It's got a good amount of protein, iodine, and b vitamins. All of which are very important and usually lacking in other foods (particularly the iodine and b vitamins). Are there options with similar nutrition that are better for you? Absolutely. But I wouldn't say it's necessarily bad for you either

Yogurt is an accepted and perfectly healthy snack, unless you put it in the freezer first, then its bad for you for some reason.
- Unflavored Greek yogurt is great for you. Its the sugars and fructose they add that is bad for you.

you forgot the most important ingredients: salt, oil

From a certain point of view

I will not go...

Based on this thread I've decided that all food is bad for me.

Literally nothing is healthy about eating any part of a cow's flesh. Red meat is, entirely, bad for your health.
- How could that possibly be true? We are omnivores and have evolved as such. There are many animals that only eat meat lol
- Is that really true? Guess it depends on what we define as healthy, but I would assume that eating varid is the way to go.
  Yeah eating red meat every day is probably not good, but once a week or less might be ideal?
- You are wrong, eating meat and vegetables is natural for humans.

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