Environment

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The hidden cost of ultra-processed foods on the environment: ‘The whole industry should pay’ (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by solo@piefed.social to c/environment@beehaw.org

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[–] OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm convinced 'ultra-processed food' is a bullshit term used bully poor people for their lifestyle. It seems designed to split food into expensive handmade (which is always good, regardless of what it's made out of) and industrial processed (which is always bad).

What about the environmental cost of expensive air shipped food like lobster or the very fancy single origin coffees? It will absolutely dwarf the cost of a packet of m&ms.

[–] solo@piefed.social 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I’m convinced ‘ultra-processed food’ is a bullshit term used bully poor people for their lifestyle.

Not too sure what you mean. Ultra-processed food has a pretty standard definition. Briefly, it's food that has been highly processed by some industrial methods.

What about the environmental cost of expensive air shipped food like lobster or the very fancy single origin coffees?

That's a tricky question, but there is a section in this post called What we don’t know, where you could partially find some answers. They explain how difficult it is to track everything down: Getting an exact measure of the environmental toll of UPFs [Ultra-Processed Foods] is nearly impossible, given that, definitionally, UPFs consist of many ingredients and a high volume of opaque processes.

[–] OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Ultra-processed food has a pretty standard definition. Briefly, it's food that has been highly processed by some industrial methods.

It's worth looking into the history of the term some time. Basically, it's always been intended to target poor people's food, but they kept screwing up the definition, and catching e.g. slow cooked stew or pasta sauce in their definition.

The addition of "industrial" to the definition is the latest attempt to exclude socially acceptable/ higher status complex foods.

If you look at the current definition from the byline.

Industrially made foods involve several ingredients and processes to put together,

This is now completely redundant. It could just read "industrially made food". All industrially made food has a process to make it, and maybe only ice doesn't have multiple ingredients.

[–] solo@piefed.social 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Ok, I think I understand better what you meant. It looks like we see things very differently.

For example, in a conversation about ultra-processed foods I don't see what you mention: it’s always been intended to target poor people’s food. Instead, I see capitalist/neoliberal/etc economic incentives and neglect for anything or anyone else. What do I mean by that?

For me, the capitalists that are in the food industry are there because they just care about the economic value, not the nutritional one. So in order to maximise their profit these capitalists/industrialists/etc, they say something like: "if I buy 1 potato I can make 1 potato chips packet, but if I turn this potato into powder then I can mix it with this other powders and get 5 packs of crisps that I can sell cheaper than the competitor with the real potato crisps"

So poor people are affected by UPFs not because there is a conspiracy targeting them, but because UPFs have almost zero nutritional value, while being in the price range they can afford to consume.

[–] OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I don't mean that the people selling UPFs are part of a grift, but the people that talk about it are.

It's targeting middle class people and says you should feel bad about eating cheap and easy to cook food. As such, it feeds into product differentiation and empowers capitalism, by telling people with more money that they have a moral necessity to eat more expensive food.

Alienating and bullying poor people is just a side effect of the grift.

The reason I say it is a grift, is because the whole thing is run entirely on vibes. The people selling the idea of UPFs struggle to say if particular foods are UPFs or not, and they can't identify harms that make it meaningful to talk about them.

Are there foods that are bad for you? Yes.

Are they all UPFs? No.

Are all UPFs bad for you? Also no.

Is it true that most UPFs have almost zero nutritional value? Absolutely not.

So instead of engaging in a meaningful debate about specific harms and what can be done about them, UPFs just tell you to spend more time and money on food or feel guilty.

The environmental harms are the same. The article made no attempt to actually say what the harm is e.g. per packet of m&ms, but because of economies of scale and their long shelf life means they can be shipped slowly, we should be very suspicious of any claim that they are particularly bad vs. more gourmet alternatives.

[–] xylem@beehaw.org 2 points 3 weeks ago

I don't think the intent or messaging should be to shame people for their choices in buying ultra processed convenience foods - because the real problem is that they don't have the choice. Systemic factors have made whole, locally produced, healthy foods inaccessible for too many people - food deserts and the consolidation of the agricultural and food production sectors, and the fact that people juggling multiple jobs and childcare just don't have the time to prepare meals from scratch.

Systemic problems require collective solutions, either from government or from direct organizing. But the first step is to identify the problem and research the harms that UPF and long supply chains cause.