[justin66]

Partially hydrogenated oils do not exist in nature. If anyone finds that assertion confounding it'd be interesting to hear why.

There's some subjectivity as far as "processing" goes. Olive oil is processed mechanically, canola oil is processed chemically, so that's a pretty wide gap that people might fight over. But partial hydrogenation? Seriously?

[cbr]

    Partially hydrogenated oils do not exist in nature

"Partially hydrogenated" describes what we did to the oil, so of course you won't get that without human involvement. Partially saturated oils, however, even ones with trans bonds, do exist in nature. For example, raw canola oil is around 0.5% trans fat.

That aside, I'm still not sure your classification for "processed" or "natural" makes sense. The key step in partial hydrogenation is mixing hydrogen with the oil, [1] while a step in canola refining is mixing hexane with the oil. [2] How does your naturalness heuristic tell us one is ok and one not?

[1] Which makes it surprising that this would create trans double bonds, since the effect is to reduce the number of double bonds. The problem is that with all that hydrogen available some bonds flip from cis to trans.

[2] As you alluded to by saying "processed chemically".

[justin66]

I did not offer a classification, which sounds like a very boring thing to do. Indeed, I meant to cast doubt on hard and fast classifications with the olive oil versus canola oil example!

I just don't think any classification could categorize partially hydrogenated oils as "natural" without rendering the term entirely meaningless. Because of what we do to make them, because of their effect on the body, or because of how they differ chemically from more "natural" stuff: take your pick. The point being, eating "naturally" might be a slippery concept but a lot of what we're talking about here can be safely excluded by anyone shooting for that "natural" goal.

Food threads on HN are dumb enough that I'm going to leave it at that. The parent comment has already been downvoted multiple times for some reason...

[cholantesh]

Natural simply means 'existing in nature', which humans do. Human activity is, by extension, also natural. Ergo, partial hydrogenation is natural.

But implying that something that is natural (ie, not borne of human activity, per your usage) is by definition good is fallacy. Remember that Socrates (among other enemies of the Athenian state) died after drinking an infusion of hemlock.

[justin66]

> Natural simply means 'existing in nature'

It took me 15 seconds to find a dictionary entry with seven different definitions for the word. But thank you for your valuable contribution.

> But implying that something that is natural (ie, not borne of human activity, per your usage) is by definition good is fallacy.

But as a heuristic it's probably not terrible. The paleo diet people have some strange ideas but the diet itself is really not bad. Veganism as a heart healthy diet is playing out well for a lot of people. And so on.