alt Hacker NewsWhat I find interesting is the concept of dead food versus live food. This is just something I wonder about. For example a dead apple is one that was picked a year ago, sold today, kept in storage until now. Long shelf life - is the crucial change in our eating that I can see. When was the last time you had a fresh apple? Does the food industry want us to consider the health benefits of a dead apple versus a living apple?
Let think twinkies! You can open a package of twinkies and let it sit out for a long time. A long time. A long, long time. They you can eat it. Long shelf life means it does not succumb to digestion by random microbes etc in the environment. Does the twinkie then succumb to the random microbes in your gut? I think not, but what do I know.
Then there is living food. You can take milk, put a culture in it and let it grow for 10 hours. Instant pot, heating pad, whatever. Then you eat it. It is now filled with living cultures. It tastes better to me than any store bought yogurt, costs exactly the same as the same quantity of milk. With a chopped apple, cinnamon and a tiny bit of sugar it tastes better to me that most of the faux ice cream you get these days.
What is funny to me is the conversations we have about "ultra processed food" do no address this aspect of the issue. I keep wondering why.
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> I keep wondering why.
Mainly because the distinction you are making doesn't actually exist.
An apple doesn't "lose" anything by being stored. There are no preservatives, just refrigeration. The apple will proceed to go bad just as quickly once taken out of storage, and it will be just as nutritious as if you had eaten that same apple fresh off the tree.
You can also take that same apple that's been in storage for a year, press the juice out of it, put a culture in it, and it too will grow and be filled with living cultures. The year-stored apple is no less "living" than the milk that you also had to inoculate to turn to yogurt.
In fact, the list of edible things that will not be filled with living cultures, hours after you add a culture to them and then keep them warm for 10 hours, is very short.
For the apple, why call it living vs dead? why not old vs new?
Milk is also probably the best example of dead vs. live except you have it backwards. The milk sold in stores deliberately kills off the good bacteria to greatly extend shelf life and prevent food borne illness (pasteurization). Your point is more consistent with raw milk.
Sounds like nonsense to me. The reason we can eat year old apples is because they keep really well at the right temperature. A lot of root vegetables also keep well.
As every educated American knows, nothing good ever comes from asking, "What about the twinkie?"
> What is funny to me is the conversations we have about "ultra processed food" do no address this aspect of the issue. I keep wondering why.
Hate to say it, but it's because it comes across as unscientific woo
We can measure the differences between an apple freshly picked and one preserved for a season. We can objectively see how the sugars and carbs and calories change, if they do.
Maybe there's some yet-to-be-discovered process in our bodies that deals with preserved food differently than fresh food, but if that is the case it's more likely because of the preservatives than the food being "dead"
> For example a dead apple is one that was picked a year ago, sold today, kept in storage until now.
It has always been normal for certain fruits and vegetables, such as apples, pears, potatoes, etc. to be stored for months in a cellar. In the old days, you simple could not get a fresh apple outside harvest time.
Your concept of "dead food vs live food" seems rather questionable.