It's really simple - good food is food prepared by yourself from raw ingredients (some exceptions for pasta, bread etc - use whole grain). If you do that, you will be good - it's really hard to eat bad with food you prepare yourself. On the contrary, it's extremely hard to eat well with eating processed food.<p>I've traveled recently to US and the amount of shit food available was amazing. I've seen several small grocery shops without a single fresh veggie available. What a contrast with France (where I live) !
What is "ultra processed" food? According to [1] it is stuff like:<p><pre><code> Soft drinks
Packaged bread and buns
Chips
Candy
Store-bought ice cream
Boxed cake mix
Instant noodles
Infant formula
Breakfast cereal
Energy bars
Flavored yogurt
Chicken nuggets
Fast food burgers
Hot dogs
</code></pre>
Some of these make sense... other don't. But clearly the actual degree
of processing required to obtain a given food item isn't the main factor
to label it "ultra processed".<p>You're gonna tell me my muesli energy bar is "ultra-processed"? It's literally just a bunch of grain sticking together.<p>Besides, those qualifiers are really weird: linking the category of an
item to the place it was purchased instead of its actual ingredients
(<i>Fast food</i> burgers, <i>store-bought</i> ice cream, <i>packaged</i> bread and buns)?<p>This smells like bullshit, clickbait, and health-craze pseudoscience.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.cookinglight.com/eating-smart/nutrition-101/what-is-ultra-processed-food" rel="nofollow">https://www.cookinglight.com/eating-smart/nutrition-101/what...</a>
Related: statistics on consumption of 'ultra-processed' foods across 19 European Countries (from Feb 2018)<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/02/ultra-processed-products-now-half-of-all-uk-family-food-purchases" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/02/ultra-proces...</a><p>The countries consuming the most ultra-processed foods are UK, Germany, Ireland and Belgium.
Would be interesting to see the fractions by mass rather than number of products. The latter could just be that we have many many varieties of chips and soda and only a few varieties of flour.
As a UK home baker I was surprised to see that the majority of US bread recipes i found seem to need sugar as a substantial ingredient (see <a href="https://www.thebrewerandthebaker.com/archives/17796" rel="nofollow">https://www.thebrewerandthebaker.com/archives/17796</a>) . Bearing in mind that bread basically consists of flour, water and usually yeast, the need for sugar is puzzling, especially as it doesn't really add to the flavour.
What did you guys managed to do to bread?<p>Every time i go to America' toast / sandwiches are inedible because it tastes closer to what i call cake.