@Scruffy Dux :krita: :inkscape: My experience with food is that the biggest factors for me are:
* Poverty: because of how it impacts my ability to make money, calories become the priority over everything else because I can't afford to eat low calorie foods in enough quantities to get my caloric needs met... so lots of grains
* Consistency: the more heavily processed foods (ie. chicken nuggets vs chicken wings) are much more consistent in experience, which helps protect me from ARFID shifts due to unpleasant or unexpected tastes/textures
* Simplicity: foods that don't require preparation because executive dysfunction makes meal preparation draining

When you start looking at that list, you find alot of beige...

@MarkusL @Scruffy Dux :krita: :inkscape: most of that talk is conspiratorial nonsense, with a dose of chemophobia.

"Processed food" basically means anything that's not raw (ie. if I eat a raw apple it's unprocessed, but if I mash it into apple sauce it's now processed food). And there's all sorts of levels and types of processing, so saying "ultra-processed food" is just vague language at best.

What we're talking about in terms of ARFID and Autism is food consistency. ie. the difference between a chicken patty and a chicken breast/wing or hamburger and a steak.

We often struggle with food that doesn't have consistent textures and flavors, it's a big part of why chicken nuggets are so often a staple diet item for many of us... because it's really just the same chicken as wings/breasts, but we don't have to deal with inconsistent fat distribution and bones.

And there's thousands of different ways to process food from shredding, grinding, cooking, canning, freezing, marinating, etc.

So if you're going to cite problems with food processing you need to give specific processing methods because they're wildly different.

Also, to be clear, the multivitamin suggestion isn't because of perceived problems with processing, it's because of the lack of variety we typically have in our diets. If we're eating the same thing for every meal, we're inevitably going to have missing nutrients unless it's something like soylent.

@Scruffy Dux :krita: :inkscape: @MarkusL And again it depends on those substances, that's why I called out chemophobia in the beginning as well. Plenty of them are benign, well understood, and entirely safe... they just get a bad reputation because they never got a "common name". The most common example is MSG, that got a bad reputation because of chemophobia and racism (lots and lots of racism).

It's perfectly okay to call out specific additives, but calling out "processing" is vague and fearmongering.

Fun fact: the opposite happens with "organic" in which the food is drastically less healthy and less environmentally friendly, but people think it's better.

@Scruffy Dux :krita: :inkscape: @MarkusL But it's also entirely unspecial in that regards, much like gluten and gluten intolerance.

My heart goes out to you because the only place I can think of where you can somewhat avoid MSG is ironically asian food, it's in everything.

@MarkusL @Scruffy Dux :krita: :inkscape: yeah, that's just chemophobia with extra justification, plus conspiracy theories.

We binge foods with too much sugar and fat because our bodies are designed for that, historically those are much rarer materials so we're wired to consume them when available to store up energy for when they're not. We've just made them available constantly and our body is still wired to think of them as semi-scarce.

Salt on the other hand is just because it's one of the common spices and probably the most common preservative. And of course people buy products with more spices, let alone products that survive longer on shelves.

@MarkusL @Scruffy Dux :krita: :inkscape: I mean, they just them tastier and tastier because of course when given the option of tasty vs bland we pick tasty.

Of course I'm using bread and jelly with my peanut butter rather than just eating it straight out of the tub (... usually).

The whole argument here started with you taking ARFID and turning it into a soap box to say that frozen chicken nuggets are somehow disasterous to my health. That my diet of processed food due to a mental disorder is horrible because vague evils of the food industry.

Is it the healthiest diet? It is for me and the people like me because it's what we will eat, and fed is best. But it's also not some dire health concern beyond sometimes needing supplements to offset the things we can't eat.

And I'll note in the context of the original conversation: we're talking chicken nuggets, pasta, peanut butter, etc. Not chocolates, potato chips, cookies, etc. I don't know anyone whose only safe food is cookies.

On top of all that, it's not some BS conspiracy for them to manipulate us via our food... we do this to ourselves. When choosing between two different food products, we'll pick the one that's more enjoyable and of course they're going to compete to be the more enjoyable one.