[talkingtab]

What 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.

[spacechild1]

> 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.

[pibaker]

Seconded. Every culture discovers ways to preserve food beyond their natural life. You ain't eating no fresh veggies in the winter of 1790. Everything you had was pickled. And you didn't get cancer because something will kill you before cancer did.

If anything the modern cold chain and globalized food supply and just the abundance of food in general means we have more access to fresh food than our ancestors even though they farmed and we mostly don't.

[margalabargala]

> 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.

[wemwemwem]

This is simply not true. A calorie is a calorie might be true, and its hard to know which is healthier for any single fresh vs storage example but plenty of chemical processes are going on. It could certainly be the case that a small number of storage examples where particular changes occur cause particular risks that account for a significant portion of cancer.

[margalabargala]

Respectfully, that's a crock of nonsense.

"It's not at absolute zero, therefore there's some chemical process going on, therefore we don't know if it's causing significant portions of cancer"?

The number of things you can say that about is frankly infinite. You have zero reason to believe that any of the "chemical processes" that happen to an apple (or any food) in long term storage have anything to do with cancer.

This is a great example of correlation not equaling causation. You might as well say that writing years starting with a "2" could cause particular risks that account for a significant portion of cancer because of the different motions of our hand affecting our lymphatic system etc etc.

Irresponsible fearmongering with no foundation whatsoever.

[wemwemwem]

Science is building hypothesis and testing them. It is not saying it seems unlikely so I don't care. You can look up the changes to green beans depending if they are fresh, shipped a huge distance without bring frozen or frozen. Some nutrients change, these changes could affect satiety which could affect obesity, but you just don't care?

[margalabargala]

> Science is building hypothesis and testing them.

Bad science is building hypothesis and promulgating it publicly alongside zero evidence whatsoever.

The discussion is about stored apples specifically causing increased cancer rates, paired with an arbitrary woo categorization of "living" vs "dead" food. OP wondered why this did not occupy a larger portion of public discourse. Again, this hypothesis exists alongside humans writing more years whose first digit is "2", as evidence-supported cancer progenitors.

> Some nutrients change, these changes could affect satiety which could affect obesity

Yes, if you walk back the "living vs dead" woo concept and expand the scope to more varieties of foods than just apples and more processing methods than passively storing otherwise intact fruit, then you exit the zero evidence crackpot zone.

Lots of crackpot woo theories are similarly half a step away from real evidence-supported theories. Another example would be biodynamic agriculture, which looks a lot like organic and integrated farming practices right up until you get to the part about burying ground quartz stuffed into the horn of a cow so you can harvest cosmic forces in the soil.

[wemwemwem]

Passively storing (whole) fruit changes fruit, I'm sorry if that aligns with crackpot theories but you shouldn't just dismiss things as not happening to try to take them away from fad theories that have a story that propels them above a lack of evidence. This makes it all the more popular to hold theories as faith and argue that everyone does.

[tptacek]

Stored apples are not causing cancer.

[CalRobert]

Saving fruits and veg has been around for a long time. Here's a low-tech technique that has existed for ages. https://archive.org/details/rootcellaringsim0000bube

[CrzyLngPwd]

I grow garlic and onions, to name a few, which I cure by keeping them dry for a few weeks, and then store properly for months.

I am on the last of my onions from last year.

People have been doing this for a very long time.

Same for many root vegetables.

[gonzalohm]

I think the yogurt may be a bad example. Most store yogurts don't have any weird preservatives, it's just milk, live cultures and sugar. I would recommend doing your own to save money though.

[bluefirebrand]

> 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"

[gwbas1c]

> 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.

This isn't new: One of the early (pre-US) exports of the colonial US was apples back to Europe. They store and ship well.

[sillyfluke]

As every educated American knows, nothing good ever comes from asking, "What about the twinkie?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuwC3ESdwZA

[nonethewiser]

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.

[tonyedgecombe]

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.

[talkingtab]

Interestingly, as a result of this discussion, I have a much better understanding of the whole artificial intelligence issue. This:

There is a strong distinction line the ability to think (intelligence) and the ability to reason. (just ask google!).

There is lots of "intelligence" in this discussion. Reasoning? Not so much. Some how - and perhaps this is partly from how I phrased things - there was some impression that I meant storage of food caused cancer! But apples are indeed affected by storage. Just ask google!

And "just ask google" is the problem. You may be intelligent, and your comments may be perceived as intelligent, but does that mean they are reasoning? Nope.

And for all the people out there wanting to know whether you will have a job, and what the future with AI will be:

If you are only intelligent you are out of luck! If you can reason, there is a huge opportunity! Just ask google.

[kanbankaren]

[Trailer park Boys. I would give $50 if you delete your post.gif]