Tavishi
In the past few years, the internet has experienced a surge in "crunchy" food influencers, who label any difficult to pronounce ingredient as "toxic" and claim essential food processing practices that prevent disease "remove nutrients" (Listeria is NOT a superfood).
To be clear, I don't think that there is anything wrong with trying to limit the amount of ultra-processed food in your diet. My key philosophy towards food is everything in moderation, a concept which sometimes seems to be absent in food content on the internet (see: "carnivore" diet...)
The biggest issue with food influencers like this is that it promotes unsafe practices. Recently, many have claimed the pasteurization of milk gets rid of good gut bacteria and the like. Most of these claims, however, are entirely unbased in science.
The pasteurization of milk was invented to prevent pathogenic bacteria from causing infection via milk and to allow it to have a longer shelf life. Pasteurization adds no funky chemicals, or anything of the sort. Rather, milk is heated to 160.7 degrees Fahrenheit for a grand total of 15 seconds. Pasteurization rids milk of Listeria, Yersinia, Campylobacter, Escherichia, and more.
In the past few years, raw milk has caused outbreaks of listeria, a rather rare disease with a fatality of about 25%. Consuming raw milk has so much risk, and it doesn't have many more nutritional benefits in comparison to pasteurized milk.
Pasteurized milk does have less vitamin B2, riboflavin, than raw milk, and minor decreases in vitamin E. However, these nutritional deficiencies are easily made up for by eating meat, mushrooms, dairy products, spinach, and grains. Milk isn't the primary source of riboflavin in a diet after all.
Next, MSG, or monosodium glutamate, is widely hailed as being an excessively harmful product and the biggest reason to avoid Asian food. MSG is a staple umami seasoning in cultures around the world, but it is more noticed within east Asian cuisine.
Many claim to experience headaches, sweating, and nausea as a result of MSG consumption, but in blinded studies, MSG appears to produce none of these symptoms. A lot of the feelings of unsafety linked to MSG are a placebo.
There's no evidence that clearly and soundly links MSG to a lot of the issues it claims to cause, and it can pretty much be inferred that MSG is safe.
Seed oils are also the target of safety hysterics. Seed oils are extracted from a variety of oils, like peanuts, soybeans, sunflowers, and rapeseed (canola).
When the discussion comes to seed oils, it's definitely a lot more nuanced than something like pasteurization. Seed oils aren't good for you, per se, but they aren't bad for you, either. In moderation, seed oil consumption is just fine- I just wouldn't recommend chugging a jar.
Seed oils have a high content of polyunsaturated fats, including linoleic acid. Critics of seed oils claim that linoleic acid, among other omega-6s "produce inflammation".
This is a highly oversimplified understanding of how our body works. Linoleic acid is often recommended to replace saturated fats, commonly found in foods like lard, butter, and more; additionally, linoleic acid is an essential fatty acid.
Saturated fats are commonly with cardiovascular disease because of the resultant increase in low-density lipoproteins.
Lipoproteins are lipid transport proteins, and LDL transports cholesterol. Low-density lipoproteins create problems when they enter the arterial walls, and end up "drawing in" and "keeping" other LDLs in the arterial wall, where they start to produce issues with blood flow, causing cardiovascular disease.
Finally, sodium benzoate. Sodium benzoate is a food preservative, and often gets a bad reputation. It's commonly used in foods like pickles, lemon juices, sodas, and the like, where it is converted to benzoic acid under acidic conditions. As a result, benzoic acid keeps all the nasty lil furry food funguses and bad bad bacteria AWAY!
However, sodium benzoates are often claimed to be the cause of hyperactivity in food- and of course, all peer-edited scientific studies found no conclusive links.
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