[saghm]

At what point in the process does it stop being food? Is cornmeal with oil and salt still food, even though there's not a "cornmeal with oil and salt" plant? I think the point of the parent comment is that it's not clear that there's a single place to draw the line between "food" and "not food" in a way that everyone will immediately agree on.

[neuralRiot]

Of course, if you’ll go to the semantic approach then anything edible would be “food”, foods are no simply “good” or “bad”, they’re “better than…” “worst than…”

As a side observation and not particularly referring to your reply, I see that people tend to put food or nutrition if you want, almost in the same scope of politics and religion, many people I know who I consider very open-minded will get very on the defensive whenever I tell them that the best thing to do is to reduce the intake of proteins of animal origin and increase plant consumption. That goes to show that years of propaganda have worked very well.

[saghm]

Okay, but what's the alternative to the "semantic approach"? People keep alluding to it in this thread, but no one seems to actually be explaining it.

I'd argue that the main part of the confusion here is that people don't seem to agree on what "food" means, and I'll personally admit that I don't have any confidence in my ability to define it in a clear way that would satisfy most people here. I don't have any particular strong feelings against what you're saying about animal proteins and plant consumption (despite knowing that I fall far short of what anyone on either side of that argument would consider a healthy diet), but that's because it's at least clear to me what you're arguing. The issue to me is that saying something edible is "food" or "not food" implies a binary that's really hard for me to wrap my head around, and it really doesn't seem like anyone is willing to define that in a way that I can understand; as soon as I try to ask questions to understand, it feels to me like the people using this stricter definition of "food" are the ones who get defensive. I want to keep an open mind, since I'm well aware of my lack of knowledge when it comes to nutrition, but it's hard not to feel confused when someone argues that there's a strict boundary where processing something makes it no longer food, but no one seems to be willing to elaborate on what it is. From my perspective, it seems like some people might have a more nuanced understanding of what they consider food, but because it's inconsistent with the previous idea I had of what "food" is, I don't have any way of understanding what their understanding is. If there are people treating nutrition the same way as politics and religion, it's the ones who make bold claims without further explanation and reject any disagreement as the result of illogical forces.

[testing22321]

Have you read Michael Pollen’s books?

It’s actually trivially simple to define what is food, and what you should be eating. Every vegetable and fruit on the planet. Grains, rice, nuts. Chicken , meat, seafood, etc Put simply: it grows.

This is what all mammals have been eating for hundreds of thousands of years. We know it works. They have one ingredient. They have existed for at least as long as humans.

Then it is trivially simple to define what is not good, and no mammal should ever consume. (But realistically we will just minimize as much as possible). Coke. Fairy floss. MSG. HFCS. These things were grown in a lab. They have very minimal nutrition value, and often a host of negatives. They have only been concocted in the last century, and a massive number of severe health problems have come along with them. These things have many ingredients. They did not exist 100 years ago.

Then there is an enormous grey zone in the middle that people will argue about till the end of time.

It’s not worth your time. Just eat what is clearly food and pretend the rest doesn’t exist. The fact twizzlers and KFC exist have no impact on my life, and I am much healthier for it.

[saghm]

There are plenty of plants that aren't safe to eat though, right? I don't think anyone would advocate going out and eat random grass or wood from trees. Given that, it seems like you'd have to extend the definition to be something that's both edible and grows. At least in my experience, most people equate the idea of being edible with being food, which seems to me like what the parent comment way up the thread was talking about with redefining what "food" means being wacky; from a purely linguistic perspective, it's kind of wild to redefine a term to be a subset of the former usage but still require the old definition in order to state the new one. Essentially, you're trying to argue that what a lot of people have considered to be synonyms their entire lives should be distinct terms, with one of them remaining the same but redefining the other, and I don't think that will make sense to a lot of people. It would be like telling people that the word "quick" should only refer to speedy things that existed before 100 years ago, and anything else is "speedy" but not "quick". Even if you had a compelling argument for why this was better, it would still be kind of wacky.

[testing22321]

Yes, exactly. The world has changed around us. Only 200 years ago it was impossible to move faster than a horse, or go higher than climbing a tree. So “quick” and “high” were well know for hundreds of thousands of years across all languages. Now we have invented race cars and spaceships, that go a lot faster and higher, so those words don’t mean what they used to mean.

Similarly, We have now invented new lab concoctions that companies want to call “food” because it helps them make money, but it is a very, very different thing than what “food” meant 200 years ago.

Go to an uncontacted tribe and give them fizzy black liquid. No way in hell they’ll drink it, because that ain’t food, and it wasn’t for a few hundred thousand years.

[worik]

> At what point in the process does it stop being food?

    Just because you cannot see a clearly defined boundary does not mean it is not there.  A corn cob is food, a processed piece of corn mixed with <insert flavoursome/colourful/preserving chemical> sealed in a plastic bag with a six month shelf life is not

[saghm]

What you're saying sounds reasonable, but it completely avoids the question I asked about what point in the process it stopped being food by only mentioning the first and last steps. I'd argue that in order for a boundary to be clear, there needs to be specific step in the discrete process where the output of that step isn't considered food anymore. I honestly can't tell if you're saying that I personally can't see the boundary but you are able to, or if you're using "you" generically when you say "you cannot see", but if you mean the former, I don't think it's particularly helpful to assert that you know what it is without explaining further, and if you mean the latter, I don't think I agree with you on what constitutes a boundary being "clear".