15/05/2024
Cate Shanahan MD
Cate Shanahan MDCate Shanahan MD
Health Strategist | Seed Oil Scientist | Author | Challenging the Healthcare ParadigmHealth Strategist | Seed Oil Scientist | Author | Challenging the Healthcare Paradigm
5 zile • Cu 5 zile în urmă
How is charcuterie ultra-processed food?
Humans throughout Eurasia and the Middle East have been fermenting and salting meat for thousands of years. Salame, pepperoni, prosciutto, etc are bursting with nutrients, particularly protein, iron, vitamin D, B6, magnesium, and cobalamin. This is how our ancestors who did not have subzero freezers were able to preserve the big game they’d bring down.
Pound for pound, top-quality meats like this cost many times what you’d pay for a taco (tiny bit of meat with a deep-fried, toxic-oil-rich shell) or a bucket of KFC.
The widely read CNN article discusses a 30-year study that people who eat ultra-processed food are less healthy than people who don’t. I listened to the podcast about the study (link in the article) and neither of the nutrition experts quoted in this article or the podcast, Marion Nestle or Kevin Hall, say charcuterie is unhealthy.
So why does the CNN article feature it as the poster child of fattening, dangerous, ultra-processed food? Why not Doritos, candy bars or soda?
Maybe it's because the new food classification scheme that tells us what is ultra-processed and what is not, lumps this kind of high-quality traditional, artisanal food with meats from fast food joints.
Meat eaters who eat fast foods are mostly eating chicken nuggets, taco meat, and other foods fried in toxic vegetable oil. they also get sides of toxic-oil-laden fries and soda. The toxic vegetable oil and empty calorie sugars/carbs are the problem.
The caption to the picture I’ve posted below says “Meats were shown to have a bigger impact on risk of death than many other kinds of ultraprocessed foods, according to the new study.”
So meat, which people have been eating since, well, the beginning of people, is the worst thing in the food supply and candy bars and donuts are just fine.
No wonder experts can't agree on what a healthy diet looks like. Nutrition "science" often defies common sense.
