Sounds like this is mostly about fast food chains, not restaurants in general. It also seems like this story should really be about calling out specific restaurants/chains for contaminated food, not presenting it as a general fact about restaurants.
There is little difference between "fast food chains" and "restaurants in general".
Fast food chains make their food from prepared components that they buy in bulk through some sort of homogenized supply chain. So do most restaurants.
Fast food chains involve a lot of plastic in their food preparation, even hot food and even while cooking. So do most restaurants.
Fast food chains use food components that are optimized for shelf life, using whatever chemicals that the FDA said are "generally recognized as safe" in 1958. So do most restaurants.
And so on.
Places where the chef goes out to the farmer's market every morning, hand-selecting the ingredients, and then painstakingly crafts your meal using only metal and ceramic are the exception rather than the norm.
Even one-off family restaurants where you get "good" food are doing most of this stuff, just because it is the norm, and they don't see anything wrong with it.
If you don't believe me, just go in the kitchen of your favorite restaurant and observe what the chef does and read the ingredients on the big containers of "raw" ingredients.
From my experience, it is pretty much down to how much you're willing to pay.
When I was younger and worked in lower quality places, a lot would be purchased through a supplier (although very rare to see premade items purchased), where as now (I work at a fine dining establishment), the current head chef indeed goes to the farmers market once a month - he will go through their produce, and select which items he will want for that months menu (note we get deliveries daily, and check each for quality - anything subpar gets returned and if happens more than once we will find a different supplier).
The same goes for our meats and seafood.
As for those places that order in bulk, optomised for shelf life. They do not deserve to be called restaurants, they are just a fast food joint with a different name.
I agree it is semantics, but it shouldn't be in my opinion.
While it will never happen, I would prefer to call yourself a restaurant you would need to prove that you had hired qualified chefs and that you were producing all the for you sell.
It's a major gripe of the industry that people like me do the work to create real quality food, and then get lumped in with places that use premade crap.
I should probably stop my rant now, I could go on for a while haha.
I doubt anyone on HN is close enough, it's in Ibiraki Japan - a little far for most of the people on here. (Note most of my experience is in Australia btw)
Well we are full every night (I can't remember a night in the last 3 weeks we haven't been at least 75% full at one stage). So at least enough are voting for quality here.
>Fast food chains make their food from prepared components that they buy in bulk through some sort of homogenized supply chain. So do most restaurants.
Fast food chains involve a lot of plastic in their food preparation, even hot food and even while cooking. So do most restaurants.
Fast food chains use food components that are optimized for shelf life, using whatever chemicals that the FDA said are "generally recognized as safe" in 1958. So do most restaurants.
Depends if in "non fast-food restaurants" you include a TGIF or a Chipotle.
So... tap water? Most countries add flouride to their tap water because it improves dental health. Unless you're a redneck screaming about alien mind control, that isn't some crazy scary chemical compound.
> soy sauce with sodium beonzoate
*Sodium Benzoate
Again, perfectly boring salt that reduces pH. Not some scary mind control substance, just a salt you can produce at home.
> sodium nitrate-laden
Every preserved meat in the world. Also found naturally in Chile.
> pesticide- and preservative-laden bread
Pretty much been the case since humans found out about vinegar. I wouldn't call < 1% in total to be "laden" though, unless you're eating an awful lot of bread.
> yellow #5
You realize that was a myth that it would reduce your sperm count right? There is a segment of the population that has a sensitivity to it, but it's pretty small.
> heats up frozen soup in a plastic bag
Again, most plastics are rated for this. Also helps cut down on glass shards in your food, or badly sanitized cookware giving you the runs.
I'm sorry, but your points here aren't some ultimate "gotcha", they're just anti-scientific scaremongering. I'd tell you to stock up on tinfoil for those hats, but I heard that causes alzheimer's.
> Every preserved meat in the world. Also found naturally in Chile.
Just because it's common or "natural" doesn't mean it's not bad for you. There are legitimate health concerns about nitrate use in foods.[1][2]
>> heats up frozen soup in a plastic bag
> Again, most plastics are rated for this. Also helps cut down on glass shards in your food, or badly sanitized cookware giving you the runs.
How do you know which plastics are being used by the restaurants you eat at? And what does "being rated" for heating actually mean? Does it mean that no plastic or other chemicals from the bag actually gets in to the food? As a consumer I have no way of knowing.
> I'd tell you to stock up on tinfoil for those hats, but I heard that causes alzheimer's.
This sort of snark is really not welcome on HN. Please try to be civil.
Ignoring conspiracy theory gibberish (in this case the fluoridated water rubbish) is MUCH worse than calling it out. You want HN to eventually be populated solely by ‘science proves immunization causes autism’ fruit-cakes? Then keep doing what you’re doing, which is ignoring their lunatic conspiracies and attacking anyone who calls them out with petty sanctimonious appeals to the rules.
This is regulated by the FDA. See [1] for a link to their hub which goes into far more detail. Obviously a restaurant can violate the regulation, just as they can slip glass shards into your food or not wear gloves.
> Just because it's common or "natural" doesn't mean it's not bad for you
You're correct in this regard at large, see Sharks, Lions and Bears. However nitrates (especially sodium nitrate, not to be confused with potassium nitrate) have been used for a very very very long time in human history for preserving meat. The guardian article is extremely disappointing in that it makes no reference to published material and seems to make several bad claims, including to the reference of salting meat as an "alternative". That being said like all chemicals too much of it will cause adverse side effects, and there are people with genuine reasons (migraines) who want to watch their consumption of it.
> This sort of snark is really not welcome on HN
I'm mostly surprised to see blatantly conspiracy theorist level "there's fluoride in the water man!" kind of nonsense here. It's one thing to discuss your favorite nitrate-free red wine or have a preference on bacon, it's another to suggest that flouridated tap water is a negative.
There was recently a town near me, in Texas, that voted to de-flouridate their water supply. This kind of non-logical fear is backed by comments like this that suggest anything with a vaguely scientific name is bad for you or should be avoided.
We have already seen this happen with vaccines and already kids have died from measles - MEASLES. A disease that should never pop up again in the industrialized world. We shouldn't be wasting resources to convince educated adults in a first world country to get their vaccines, we should be helping to bring life saving basic medicine to everyone.
So yes, that was snarky and sharp. However I don't think it's okay to spew blatantly alarmist non-scientific nonsense and pretend it's "just an opinion". (And sorry for the rather long rant.)
Processed meat itself is basically a carcinogen according to the WHO:
> Furthermore, processed meats can also contain other carcinogenic compounds such as PAHs which can be formed during smoking of meat (e.g. salami). Processed meats, particularly those containing red meat also contain heme iron, which can enhance the formation of carcinogenic compounds (NOCs) in the body.
I'm not opposed to specific, verifiable claims - "Non-foodsafe plastics are likely to leech into food especially when heated", etc. I'm entirely opposed to vague claims - "plastics are in your food and killing you!"
If you have a specific claim, then by all means make it. Don't make the claim "but nitrate laden meats!" because that is meaningless.
> So... tap water? Most countries add flouride to their tap water because it improves dental health. Unless you're a redneck screaming about alien mind control, that isn't some crazy scary chemical compound.
There are legitimate sources [1] today that are questioning the utility of adding fluoride to tap water. Questioning the utility and healthfulness of chemicals added to tap water should not be taboo or related to conspiracy theories.
Shame on that source for splitting up those two graphs and giving them different axes. Furthermore it doesn't give us the actual incidence rate of cavities between the two groups numerically, or account for differences in dental care.
But yes, unsurprisingly, dental care has improved since 1975. I would be horrified if that were not the case.
Let's follow that link at the bottom of the story, the one that lists "Letters in response".
> On behalf of the American Dental Association and its 159,000 member dentists, I am writing to express sincere concern over the article entitled, “Is fluoridated water safe,” by Nicole Davis that appears in Harvard Public Health, Spring 2016. The article overlooks critical facts about community water fluoridation that must be shared with your esteemed readers and the public at large.
> I am writing to express concern that Harvard Public Health would publish an article titled “Is Fluoridated Drinking Water Safe?” in the Spring 2016 issue and to share the reasons why the American Academy of Pediatrics stands behind the safety and effectiveness of community water fluoridation
I'm going to stop there, despite there being MANY more letters. Flouride in water is safe. That doesn't mean we can't still research it, ask specific questions and continue being informed, but if you are petitioning to remove flouride from water currently, you are acting irrationally and with no scientific basis whatsoever.
Note the "...respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says..." in the site guidelines. Calling parent a "redneck screaming about alien mind control" is definitely not this. Many developed countries have either stopped fluoridating their water or never chosen to add fluoride to their tap water supply, for various reasons.
And again, this miniscule phthalate level increases matters why? (Even cumulative.)
Please answer with solid evidence of morbidity. Guardian did not do the homework. The studies on phthalates are quite tenuous for adults. There are a few which link to developmental problems.
This is a very different case from children chewing on phthalate containing foams or sleeping in such. Which has been quite clearly linked. The risk is mainly for pregnant women then?
Regardless, most of the problems would be related to packaging. Ditch styrofoam and plastic. Use ones certified phthalate free.
Oh and Guardian published this some years ago in a better way. Misrepresenting evidence then too.
Not sure what kind of agenda you are implying... Prematurely stop plastic use in food production/packaging before we are completely sure it affects our health negatively?
All I know is that this is new, untested input into a 4-billion-year-old tangle of spaghetti code.
If you are confident being the guinea pig, since "human health effects of phthalates are not yet fully known but are being studied," be my guest.
* Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate is listed as "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen"
* Current levels of seven phthalates posed "minimal" concern for causing reproductive effects.
* High levels of one phthalate, di-n-butyl phthalate, may adversely affect human reproduction or development.
Note that high levels of the specific phthalate is of relevance to workers in plastic factories. There's really no way to get them that high up otherwise. For an adult of course. It is different for a newborn fed and hydrated by pvc tube.
I agree about potential carcinogen. How about actual carcinogen evidence though?
Should be easy to get, scrutinize plastic workers.
You seem to imply that this research has not already been carried out, or is non-obvious...
>The reinforced plastic plant workers showed, in terms of semen quality, better values in the percentages of live sperm and immotile sperm, whereas they had a reduced percentage of normally shaped sperm.
> Our food system resembles a Brave New World-esque intelligence test that most of us are failing.
Agreed, it's very sad.
I had a friend who took me to this burger place for lunch once, that he said was a gourmet burger place.
It was utter shit, it was the worst looking, cheapest looking patties I've seen outside of a McDonalds, cooked to the point of worthlessness then a few pieces of limp looking salad on top.
Then the guy wants to charge proper burger place prices. (£10 / $15). Now, I don't mind $15-$20 for a burger, if it's a good burger but this was just atrocious, and my friend had no idea how bad it was.
I don't know what some peoples baseline is for food quality, but it's way too low.
It really is not that much different. Both are buying and reselling large quantities of standardized food products, the production and lifecycle of which are part of the problem.
The restaurant supply company is selling to dozens and hundreds of restaurants, so it is kind of like a fast food chain, just not under the same logo.
The restaurant needs twenty five-pound bags of prepared chicken every day. The supplier sources this chicken meat, spices, seasonings, and synthetic chemicals from a number of distributors, who source the components from a number of other suppliers, who eventually source them from the farms. The farms are producing for volume, so quality is not really in the picture, as long as it meets the inspection standards and government regulations.
It is not only the finished product, but also the sub-components, that spend days, months, sometimes years in the supply chain, being processed, preserved, and homogenized, and processed again.
This isn't a problem unique to restaurants, though - at some point you have to get your own ingredients from that supply chain unless you have the money or time to do otherwise.
Just like with software, you have to check and verify all the sources, or at least have someone do it for you. This may mean buying from the farmer's market, or going to the farm itself.
If you can't do that, you have to find a trustworthy supplier and take their word for it.
> I'm including both corporate chains like TGIF and Chipotle
I would not consider those, nor e.g. a diner, to be a “restaurant”. Restaurant implies having a chef; chefs are active in sourcing and preparing their food. If someone is heating up pre-made things they’re a cook, not a chef, and work at something that isn’t a restaurant.
> the article talks about "dining out" and doesn't distinguish based on your restaurant classification
I think the gist of this discussion is that lumping together fast food and restaurants muddies the study. It is like saying "eating mushrooms increases levels of poisoning" because one didn't differentiate between edible and non-edible fungi. These findings are applicable for people who regularly eat industrial food, to whom I can't imagine this is surprising.
Isn't this like saying macro-nutrients are all that matters? Pop a vitamin and eat slop made from grounding up all the animal parts? In theory it makes sense but we haven't even begun to understand the millions of different hydrocarbons in a small piece of meat. So there is an unscientific albeit widely believed statement about quality ingredients.
There isn't legislation to make sure only X is allowed in a processed food - there are only laws that exclude known harmful things like brain matter because of prions, or antibiotics if labeled as such, or pesticides if labeled as organic. /u/given even linked a study less than 2 weeks ago
showing that an array of human vaccines tested had a slew of metal and other contaminants. The only vaccine tested that lacked contaminents was a veterinary vaccine for distemper..smh [1]
The closest, one would think to getting pure macros, is plant or whey-based proteins, carbohydrates, and oils/lipids like coconut oil. But most of the pure plant protein powders and supplements have an even worse infiltration - high levels of metals from the soil the plants were grown in. Highly dependent on the country of origin. Now, I'd garner that if these companies cared enough and could spend more money, they'd be able to chellate or use ion-exchange filters, or maybe just mechnical methods like centrifugal separation / sub-micron filters, etc.. to remove the metals and other undesirables.
Do biological contaminents in plants get even near the possible ones' in animals like cortisol? Does a poorly sunlit plant produce stress chemicals? I'd guess that because the animal kingdom is a divergent evolution to the plant kingdom, harmful compounds would be lesser. Yes, we have phytoestrogens from soy, and tobacco, hemp, poppy, and all kinds of poisonous plants out there. A side note, plant alkaloids serve two functions, to poison to protect the plant or to create desire for the purpose of spreading seeds; this is why poisons are often found on leaves, while desirable drugs or flavors are found on the fruit or seedbearing parts. It's not an easy distinction to make, poison vs drug - many substances we consider drugs are actually made by the plants to protect themselves, ie. tobacco or willow bark (aspirin).
In any case, the chemicals naturally found in acceptable farmed plant species are likely to be less reactive in an animal body, than a poorly treated cortisol-filled animals' internal chemistry.
It'd be awesome if there truly was a micron-filtered food supplement out there. But even Soylent isn't that. The protein powders on the market, pea, crickets, whey, etc.. all have the aforementioned issues with heavy metals or hormones.
It's a grace of our generation to know most of the vitamins and minerals required by our bodies. To be able to eat just pure carbs, fats, and proteins, and pop a vitamin for the rest. But we still don't have food products that provide pure macros. When will we see the futuristic "slab" or "paste" that is literally only a single digit number of compounds? I think it's about time that we get something like this.
I'm actually in the process of producing a bee-derived meal replacement shake that will feature sub-micron filtration. [2] Honey might be your first thought but bee pollen is the main ingredient - it's actually packed with tons of protein and isn't sweet. Let me know if you would be interested in a purely bee honey, pollen, royal jelly based meal replacement. I haven't gauged interest yet so it'd be interesting to see if HN is interested. Cheers.
I'm not sure if you thought I was defending fast food. I was merely saying that most prepared food that is not "fast food" is not great either.
I think that the best we can do today is approximate as closely as possible the diet (and lifestyle) we have been evolving for in the millions of years prior to industrial agriculture.
To me, that means a diet of mainly plants and a little meat, mostly raw, some cooked with direct heat, occasional fasting, sleep and rest as allowed by circumstances, lots of getting dirty, and not stressing about macro things we can't change.
P.S. nih.gov links do not work without JS. I like your logo design.
I agree with you. But I also don't think it's terrible to have macro isolates that are chemical-grade. Everyone wants pure water but we never think about purifying foods, only processing them which is a crude process. And I put the wrong link for the vaccine study. It is actually:
http://medcraveonline.com/IJVV/IJVV-04-00072.php
IMO writing from the third world, it is almost always a safer bet to eat from an established fast food chain franchise, than restaurants, due to the poor state of regulation and enforcement of food safety standards. At least the chain franchise will have some guidelines on the quality of food, which ensures atleast that the food is not deadly if not healthy, where as with traditional restaurants all bets are off.
I've found across the whole of Asia, its perfectly safe to eat in independent restaurants, from hole-in-the wall places, street stalls and even old women frying chicken using portable burners on pavements in Indonesia.
I've always gone to places that are popular with locals - think about it, they wouldn't be popular if they gave customers the raging shits.
I can only assume that this holds true across other parts of the world. You don't make money without returning customers.
It’s also always worth thinking about the health impact of eating a lot of restaurant/fast/chain food simply from a nutritional perspective. If you’re eating a double quarter pounder with cheese, fries and a soda, the actual food is by far the worst part of the experience. The carcinogenic and cardiovascular downsides of such a fatty, low fiber, high sugar and sodium diet are profound and well understood.
A friend of mine recently came to me with an article that a “chemical found in silly putty” was found in fry oil. They were horrified, but I pointed out that it’s known to be inert. They were still horrified. I pointed out that to get a mg of the stuff, you’d have to eat half a kilogram of fry oil (not a kg of fries, but oil). If you’re packing in half s kilo of grease, it’s not the mg of additive you should be worried about!
This only seems to be a correlation between people reporting having eaten out and the test levels. I can't see why restaurant food would be that much different to home cooked food unless there was something very wrong with the supply chain or kitchen practices.
The newspaper article does not mention if they have looked at following the source of these phthalates back up the chain to see where they actually come from.
My theory is that most affordables restaurant don't make food anymore, they assemble it. So it comes from multiple packages. Add the fact there is a lot of take away / doggy bags, which means repackaging the finished product, and stronger hygiene regulation, which mean detergent used in contact with the food, and you have more opportunities for phthalates to come by.
While at home, you may very well cook it from more raw ingredients, with less packaging, put it on a plate, and just quickly wipe the table and plate when you're done.
You will also cook a big meal for the entire house, while a lot of restaurant are just fast food, preparing one meal per person.
Remember, for most families, they won't go to a michelin restaurant. They will got to Scramblz', Chipotle or the local "italian".
About restaurant-packaged foods - around here, they still cook (Iowa). I'm thinking back on the last dozen restaurants I've visited - they all cook I think! And I eat lunch at a different place every day.
Trick is, avoid the chains I guess? I choose various hole-in-the-wall Indian, Mexican, Texas, Japanese eateries and diners.
I think this may be US-specific. In the UK, there are certainly chains that 'assemble' food, but there are also a whole bunch of similarly priced chains amd independent resturants that cook fresh food. It's not michelin star quality, but it's fresh. In general I think resturaunts tend to add more seasoning (such as salt, sugar, etc) than most people cooking at home would.
Whaaat? Restaurant food can be very different than home cooked food because restaurants apply tricks to dress up a dish in ways you will never do at home. Excessive corn starch in Asian soups, humongous amount of butter in every meal, higher amounts of salt, using old and dangerously suspect stored food to cook with, using substandard cuts of meat, stale sea food, using colors to boost the appearance of freshness ( use packaged tomato puree plus color instead of doing old fashioned tomato way at home), general hygiene issues in kitchen etc etc. Restaurant kitchen delivery system is drastically different than a home kitchen.
This should be "Eating out in industrialized fast food American food chains increases levels of phthalates in the body".
A restaurant is a different thing. In places like Spain, France or Italy when you say "restaurant" you never refer to "MacDonnals", "BurgerKing" or "FostersHollywood".
What are you talking about? BurgerKing is certainly classified as a restaurant in Spain, France, and Italy. What do they call these places? I’m not sure how you validate such an absolute statement. My own travels had many examples of people in these countries using restaurant to refer to both fast food and sit down restaurants.
I actually can't think of a collective term that I would use for these places. If someone asked what a McDonalds was, I'd honestly probably reply "It's a fast food place that sells shitty burgers"
You're referencing a quora post by an American about some time spent in Spain. How is this an authoritative source? The following answer specifically rails against fast food and contrasts it against "restaurants and tapas bars", implying a difference.
Sure you can use restaurant as a term to refer to a "place where food can be ordered" -- but if someone speaks the word, fast food is not what comes to mind.
The issue is that McDonalds is a type of restaurant (fast food). But still a type. Arguing that fast food or takeaways or whatnot isn’t a restaurant is pretty pedantic. (So is arguing at all, like I’m doing)
Well, the word will come to mind for those of us who use words correctly, rather than twisting them because we feel superior to the people at one establishment or another.
a business establishment where meals or refreshments may be purchased
My impression of the food service industry is that you have big companies like MCD that control their own supply chains, really expensive places where the chef goes to market every morning, and 95 percent of everything else where they serve whatever arrives on the Sysco truck. There's no need to get uptight--it's all just calories with a 1000 percent markup.
In addition to the issue of relying entirely on correlation, this report only states relative percentage increase without stating absolute levels or comparison to any known risk thresholds. Maybe 35% higher exposure isn't a significantly greater risk.
If it is a significant risk, I don't think I can rest easier only getting two thirds the exposure staying at home. That's still a lot of plastic if I'm actually that close to a toxicity threshold.
Edit: Also, as I noted in another comment, both CDC and Wikipedia are much more conservative about the health impact, making the question about toxicity threshold even more relevant.
In my office, I see seemingly reasonable white-collar employees regularly microwave their lunch in all sorts of flimsy plastic containers. I’m not even shocked anymore.
I think the people who know not to microwave plastic, and don't, are a very small minority. The people who have never heard it are in a slightly larger minority. The people who have heard it's bad, but choose not to heed the warnings for convenience sake, are seemingly the majority.
Most times I've mentioned it to someone who is about to microwave plastic, they say something along the lines of "oh yeah, I've heard that before", as they continue to put their plastic in the microwave and start it up. I've given up on trying to educate people about it.
> Researchers investigating levels of phthalates in the human body, which have been linked to asthma, breast cancer, type 2 diabetes and fertility issues in the past few years...
Neither CDC nor Wikipedia show very clear support for this assertion, especially given that the actual levels in the study weren't reported. Just relative percentages.
Everybody here has an idea of why this occurs and they all mention packaging. Did you see inside a McDonalds kitchen? They use plastic trays to cook and hold foods instead of stainless steel we would see in high end restaurants.
I am certain that food grade plastics leak into food at high heat when oils and other food compounds are present.
Misleading in some measure, as is almost every headline - given that appropriate qualifiers necessarily disqualify the text as a headline. But most of us assume that's the case and judge accordingly on the content.
It's the receipts, they are printed on paper that has these chemicals and handed to people right before they eat. As a test try not to touch the recipe when they attempt to hand it to you and get ready to be just about assaulted by the clerks as they try to force you to take it.
