I don't get these health related HN submissions. Salt bad, sugar bad, wheat bad, fitness is a lie... what's next?

I dont't troll. I just don't understand why all of our basic foods are now bad. Guess we made them bad as we put sugar and salt in everything...

I don't understand why a sizeable part HN is in thrall to nutjobs when it comes to food.

I don't mind the people saying "Food is probably complicated and we don't have much information about it"; but the amount of anecdote and pure nonsense that comes out on almost any thread about food is depressing.

> Salt bad, sugar bad, wheat bad, fitness is a lie

Hyperbole and link-bait titles. Too much salt is probably bad; too much sugar (a 2 litre soda is not a single serving and people who drink 64 ounce sodas should expect it to be harmful) is probably bad; doing no exercise[1] is worse than doing some exercise.

[1] Some people do remarkably little exercise - they have sedentary jobs; they don't move around at home; they drive everywhere and park close to where they need, etc.

> why a sizeable part HN is in thrall to nutjobs when it comes to food

A sizable part of HN worships at the alter of the pursuit of extreme efficiency. It seems to lend itself to jumping from one fad to another to squeeze out whatever iota of perceived benefit they wish to measure themselves by.

Another part is simply related to peoples superiority complexes, a complex that is strong in programmers but by no means limited to them. They've become better than you programming, so they see themselves as better than you in everything. People like that just can't stay away from secret knowledge that you don't know. In this case secret knowledge about the way the human body works.

You're probably reasonably healthy, and a reasonable weight. Therefore, these things don't prey on your mind.

However, there are a lot of really smart, capable people who can't lose weight, or they suffer from some ailment they can't understand, so these articles have a lot of power. Everyone wants an explanation!

Like back in the day my grandmother was cooking with lard. Lard from pigs that she kept in her own farm. Later lard also became bad (except bacon which is good...). Nowadays lard is coming back and do you know who uses it? Haute cuisine restaurants.

They also use lots of other fats, and lots of salt, and lots of sugar.

They use it because it's tasty.

"Supersize Me" on Haute Cuisine would have similar catastrophic results, but be considerably more expensive.

Nonsense, the problem with McDonalds and other fast food restaurants is that it barely qualifies as food -- it uses as few real ingredients as possible because real ingredients have a short shelf life.

What non-real ingredients do you think they use? Hamburgers are pretty simple. It's not like Kraft selling guacamole made with food coloring instead of avocados.

I've no idea what mcd.s does, but you can add all sorts of crap to hamburger before it becomes too obvious. Probably a lot of it is not ... so appetizing (the bits you don't want to know you're eating, etc).

My mom used to buy hamburger meat that was bulked up with soy protein, mainly because it was cheaper than pure ground meat. [I absolutely loved the taste of that stuff actually, much more than all-meat burgers! Wish I could find it as an adult...]

You can still cover real food in fat and sugar and salt.

Someone eating food bought only from Michelin starred restaurants is going to be in trouble unless they're careful about what they eat.

Haute cuisine isn't really relevant when discussing "bad" food where bad means not good for you, their job is to create tasty food, not necessarily healthy food.

That's because nut and seed based oils don't taste nearly as good as animal fats.

Margarine on the other hand is an abomination that isn't fit for consumption.

I see it more as a manifestation of the fact that things are never as simple as they appear. As we start to look deeper into how our bodies work we're finding that the situation with regards to sugar/salt/fat/gluten/<anything else> is more complex than we realised. These things aren't inherently _bad_, but if we abuse them then we end up with side effects that can be disastrous. The key, as ever, is understanding the effects and treating everything we eat with appropriate respect.

Because the group that says sugar and wheat is bad is different to the group that says that bacon is bad.

In fact, the group that says that sugar and wheat is bad says that bacon is very good for you.

It's not that sugars (or other nutrients) are bad per se, just the balance in one's diet, i.e. excessive amounts leading to health problems.