Want to reduce your intake of ultra-processed food? If so, cook at home more often, don’t eat late at night and chew your food more slowly.
Those are among some of the tips doctors have offered to help people limit the amount of UPF they consume given the acute and growing danger it poses to human health worldwide.
They demand that we stop enjoying one of the grand feats of capitalism. Excellent tasty food available for a – comparative – pittance. Also, that the wimmins git back into the kitchen. Can’t have people enjoying themsleves, with actual leisure time now, can we?
Given that the definition of UPF seems to be centering on anything produced for profit that’s the driving force here. Git back to 8 hours a day in the kitchen, wimmins. Freedom, choice, you’ve ‘ad yer lot.
Get out in that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans. Where have I heard this before?
I believe it’s a saying from one of the leaders of the UAE, Sheikh Rattlenrol.
I’m still struggling with the concept that chewing your food more slowly to reduce your intake of ultra-processed food. How could that work?
Thanks to the time-lag between eating enough food in response to hunger caused by a drop in blood sugar and the hunger easing off. The slower one chews the less excess food one will eat. This applies to all sorts of food: bread, even fresh fruit – not just UPF.
Very few people have hunger due to a drop in blood sugar. You’d have to have not eaten for a couple of days. People get hungry because by routine they eat regularly. It’s time for eating so they must eat. Psychological, not physical
I sometimes get hungry due to a drop in blood sugar. If my blood sugar was high enough to cover *two days* without food I’ld be in danger of diabetes. Twenty hours (occasionally only 18) is enough to make me notice.
You’ve obviously been exposed to “sports medicine”. which bears the same relationship to science as astrology does to astronomy. The body stores energy in the liver & muscles as glycogen. Exercise, the blood sugar drops, is raised by retrieving it from the stored glycogen. Very few people living a normal life haven’t got glycogen stored. So the blood sugar will return to normal whether you eat or not.
I had to go to hospital yesterday. I’ve picked up an intestinal parasite. One of the hazards of hanging around people from tropical developing countries. Symptoms are acute diarrhea, nausea, vomiting etc. I’m now on a drug will purge it. When I was at the hospital I hadn’t eaten & digested for 5 days. Blood sugar in the blood test was completely normal. And I’m not someone puts on fat. Which is the other way the body stores energy. I lose weight if I don’t exercise.
“Sports medicine” & “dietary science” are woo for the gullible. We eat carbohydrates & proteins which are broken down & absorbed as simple sugars & amino acids. And it doesn’t matter which carbohydrates Or which proteins. Digestive system doesn’t care. Add a varied diet for vitamins & minerals & you’re done.
You’ve obviously been exposed to a lot of woo yourself. I compare the various claims from “nutritrionists” with observed reality before deciding whether or not to accept them. Some do seem to work e.g. “carbo loading” the evening before a marathon.
What sort of carbohydrate during a marathon (or a longer race) or before a shorter race *does* matter – starch won’t help, simply sugars do.
One’s metabolism will adjust to a change in the level of exercise; mine does so with a time lag so I put on weight if I don’t exercise – yours seems to over-react if you lose weight when you don’t exercise.
That really does sound woo. Go do some biochemistry
How many marathons have you run? Observation is not “woo”
There are few more liable to fall for bollox than the sport & fitness community. They’re only playing. I’m much more interested in the opinions of people who do heavy manual work. Try laying 20 tons of concrete in a morning.
I’ve laid concrete by hand (not a lot, I must admit). Sounds as if you haven’t, probably because by the time I was old enough to be allowed to work the ready-mixed concrete machines had spread from Australia to the UK. I doubt Hercules would have laid 20 tons in a morning.
I’ve laid an awful lot of concrete John. You’d be surprised how much you can lay when you’ve got a load of readimix going off.
It’s something we used to find when we employed sports enthusiast students as labourers during their hols. Bunch of girls’ blouses the lot of them. Knackered before they got to tea break. Sports enthusiasts are really only playing. Doesn’t even come close week in week out hard graft.
I probably would not be *that* surprised at how much you can lay with ready-mixed – I’m just saying that it *really* does not compare with laying it by hand. So your denigrating sports enthusiasts by comparing marathons with pouring ready-mix really falls utterly flat.
I missed out “by hand” at the end of my previous post: Hercules would have picked up one of your mixers and poured but hand-mixing takes time as well as effort.
As to “Sports enthusiasts are really only playing” – that IS what sports are!
You haven’t answered my question. So: are you pontificating on the effect of different carbohydrates during/before a marathon on the basis of experience or based on invincible ignorance?
I’ve done everything from hand mixed with a shovel, cement mixer,& barrow, readimix & pumped. Pumped is the hardest. You’ve readimix arriving on a schedule & renting pumps costs a fortune so you lay flat out until it’s done. And this isn’t just doing it once-in-a-while. Two of us were putting in tiled swimming pools in 10 days from hole to full of water, week in week out. But oh boy did we make some money!. And never the energy left to spend it.
Running along a road with your arms flapping like a girl it isn’t.
You repeatedly fail to answer my question.
Because it’s a nonsense question. Sports nutrition is just woo.
Problem is, people these days have no experience of hard graft so they swallow all this shit. Shipped grain bags used to weigh 2cwt apiece. That was adjudged a weight a stevedore could hook onto his shoulder & carry off a ship. They would do this for 10 hour days (if they were lucky enough to find work) on cheese sandwiches, maybe a pork pie & beer. They put more physical effort in than running a marathon day in day out for their entire working lives. Coalmen, farm workers similar When I started in construction related activities sand & cement bags were a mere hundredweight. Be slinging those about from 8AM to 5:30. Two bags of cement at a time if I could get the balance right. (Current bags of material are 25kg in case the poor dears strain themselves) At the time I was two stone of muscle mass more than my current 11 stone. I really do not need lessons about nutrition.
The reason typists, MPs & TV presenters can run marathons is because it’s not really, very hard. You just need to be the sort of person would pursue such a useless activity. You certainly wouldn’t catch me doing it.
Right: so you have no personal experience or specialist knowledge of in-race or pre-race nutrition and you have based your comments on invincible ignorance of a sport that you think beneath yourself.
Biochemistry says that starch takes around three hours to digest, simple sugars can be in one’s bloodstram in 15 minutes. So eating starch during a marathon is worse than useless.
But you’re doing something you don’t need to do. There’s sufficient glycogen in your liver & muscles to carry you through. How do you think people who were expending far more energy than you, got through a working day? They weren’t swilling sports energy drinks. They might not even have eaten the previous day let alone carb loading.. They ate when they could afford it.
Humans evolved as persistence hunters. They ran down their game until it was exhausted. Dinner was at the end, not the night before. They hunted because they were hungry. We’re actually designed to do this.
However back to the point of Tim’s original post. Which was about the dietary requirements of ordinary people not freaks who run 26 mile races. My references to hard manual work was because up until fairly recently that was ordinary people. The limp wristed is a modern innovation.
Just changing the subject again. No-one has to run a marathon (even Pheidippides did not *have* to do it, he could have said “Sod what the stay-at-homes want, I need a rest after fighting the Persians”) but that’s not the subject under discussion..
You do not know what you are talking about: people do collapse (very rarely, thank heavens) during marathons and rather more often but still relatively rarely “hit the wall” when their metabolism isn’t converting reserves into blood sugar fast enough to satisfy the demands from their muscles – happened to me once (I got a “good for age” place so I lined up on that start and assumed “they know what they’re doing” so I just followed them – after 18 miles I was shocked to hear the loudspeaker commentator say that the group I was in was on schedule to finish 20 minutes faster than I had ever previously achieved; after 21 miles my legs wouldn’t run and I had to walk for a mile, nearly 15 minutes, while my liver converted more glycogen/triglycerides into blood sugar before I could start running again). There is NOT always sufficient glycogen in the muscles to carry you through and that is usually the case for manual labourers as well. The human body converts fat into bloodsugar as and when it is needed (provided, of course, that it has fat reserves) but (i) that takes time and (ii) a good runner doesn’t carry a lot of fat, unlike most builders.
.
The great Bob Metcalfe (IYKYK) used to enjoy running marathons; not especially fast, but he got round. After retirement he said: “Now, I’m only doing half-marathons – I carbo-load and then I don’t run.” Top man.
It looks like the “pro” marathon runners go a little further.
“In total, Sawe ingested 115 grams of carbohydrates per hour, the equivalent, if eating normally, of about 18 slices of bread or five cups of cooked pasta, all while running.”
Amusingly this equivalent of 18 slices of bread he consumed whilst running his sub 2 hour London marathon required no chewing, was highly absorbed and was clearly UPF. So yep, maybe chewing/not chewing is key, though I would accept that this is a somewhat special case.
It’s not blood sugar. You get satiation signals from your gut about 20 minutes after starting to eat. The signals are stronger from protein and fat intake than from carbs. If you eat slowly you will have eaten less before the satiation signals kick in, the result being you’ll eat less overall.
One of the reasons the Japs stay slim is that chopsticks force you to eat more slowly than knives and forks.
chopsticks force you to eat more slowly than knives and forks.
Really? Don’t know about the Sons of the Neon Chrysanthemum but I used to regularly frequent establishments around Gerard Street where most of the Chinese wield chopsticks. But they also eat in the Chinese manner, where the bowl is an eating utensil. So they’re not picking individual items off a plate in the western manner but holding the bowl close to their mouths & shoveling it in at a prodigious rate of knots. It is actually the only way you can eat noodles without getting them in your lap. Proficiency with the eating tackle gives one cred & access to the off the menu delights.
You ever scoffed round there? The food bears no resemblance whatever to a High St Chinky. Whole other thing.
I’m not particularly keen on Chinky chow. I know a good bit about the Japs and how they eat, though. They’ll do scooping and ramen slurping sure enough, but in general their food is ingested more slowly than from a Western plate and they are all aware of the “stop at 80% full” rule, which most of them still manage to do.
It’s one of the reasons my late-60s wife still looks 45.
Considering how many refugees fleeing from war-torn countries far far away are forced to undergo the difficult and dangerous journey to seek safety here and lawful employment in the food delivery trade thereby boosting our economy with all the tax they pay this article can only be seen as WAYCIST!!!!!!
For shame guardian
I’d like to know where this excellent tasty food available for a – comparative – pittance is available. Looking at my restaurant bills.
Most of the bill in restaurants is the cost of labour, the next largest slice is profit, then wine, then the cost of the food.
So I need to find a restaurant doesn’t employ labour, use services like electricity & water, pay taxes or make a profit. I don’t mind paying for wine.
Most of the bill in raw food is in the cultivation, transport, storage, and retailing thereof. What’s your point?
That’s an interesting economic point. The cost of anything is the labour input. It’s all added value to things that are essentially free. So when we talk about goods & services it’s just a fiction. There are only services.
Something I like to point out is that there are no clear lines on things. People put jobs and parts of the economy into brackets, but it’s more complicated than that.
Someone who manually picks grapes that’s a farming job. What about if you replace that with a picking machine? Is the driver of the picker agricultural or driving? What about the bloke that repairs it, who might repair all sorts of other machines? If they sell the wine at the vineyard is that a farming job, or retail? What about the nice girls that do tours of the vineyard or create marketing for the wine?
If you’re a factory and you employ a tea lady, that’s classed as a manufacturing job. If you decide to switch to using the cafe next door, that’s not. Making a CD is manufacturing, but delivering a stream over Spotify isn’t.
Most people who bang on about “manufacturing jobs” have no idea what that looks like. Britain is a service and craft economy, and that includes most of our manufacturing. Very little of it is blokes bashing rivets into things.
By the way, this is why sweet wine is so expensive. You pick at the point when grapes reach optimal sugar, which happens at different times, so requires a human to look for when particular grapes are ready and just pick those. The 2 euro wine is because so much human labour has been removed. 12 euro Montbazillac is almost entirely because of the extra picking labour.
What I like is that if you simplify the economy. We all supply services to each other & it’s the value added in those services creates money. You can get rid of Spudanomics & most of socialism.
The problem is that if you simplify, Spudanomics, all sorts of other nonsense don’t work. They need to pretend that things are complicated to require government to do everything. They need overcomplication and opacity so that people can’t see what is really going on.
Like a lot of people are so grateful when the NHS gets around to treating them. Because they can’t connect that they’re paying for this. And if they were coughing up the same money for private insurance, they’d be utterly disgusted. The NHS would HATE IT if there was something more like the Swiss system, where you pick an insurer, because a lot more people would be asking to see the manager.
If you want a laugh, look at the official list of industrial categories. It ought to win the Booker Prize.
Exactly. All resources are free but valueless until someone does something with them.
A lot of modern stuff is valueless but still costs money!
If BiS cooked for himself he would pay a lot less for his meal.
We do do a lot of cooking. Mostly Brasilian. It was more an observation that excellent tasty food available for a – comparative – pittance is getting very hard to find. Restaurant bills here must have gone up 100% since Covid & are still rising.
Have they gone up? Or is it that there’s twice as much money circulating since then, due to paying people not to work?
In the UK it’s to do with increases in minimum wage, NI contributions, taxes in general, tighter employment regulations, but above all energy costs.
We can’t afford to eat out any more for the simple reason that we’re decent cooks – my wife is excellent, enjoys it, writes books on it – to the point that anything but high-end is no better than what we can do at home, and simply not worth the money. 10 years ago it wasn’t like this.
I’m going to add another one to this: the quality of ready meals. I had a Charlie Bigham fish pie with my mother the other day. Fish pie, green beans, a couple of cans of Cawston’s Rhubarb. I reckon it cost, in total, about £15. Total cooking effort? Take out of packet, put in oven. Go and watch some telly for 30 minutes. Come back, take it out, put green beans in microwave. Wait 3 minutes and serve.
Ready meals used to be shite. That one was as good as what you’d get in almost any pub. And if you think about it, this is going to beat a pub because you can have a machine making fish pies or curry sauces on a massive scale. The labour per unit is tiny. It scales like making bread or cars.
Like I went to Tracklements and saw their factory making lovely condiments. And they have huge tanks cooking chili jam. I don’t know how many jars you get out of this, but it’s a lot more than if you do your own, and for the same labour.
I can tell you wages in the catering industry have risen much less than inflation. Quite honestly I can’t understand how camareras get by on their wages. And the Spanish don’t tip. Must be why so many of them are willing to rent what they’re sitting on.
As for the prices, I think some of it’s the Spanish ignoring economics. Their response to a fall in turnover was to increase prices. But increasing prices reduces turnover. So they’ve got themselves in a doom-loop.
Reported figure for tourist spending are boasted at x (small number) but prices tourists are paying is multiple x. Result’s the type of tourists we’re getting has changed. Fewer enthusiastic spenders & more tight arses.
Or is it that there’s twice as much money circulating since then, due to paying people not to work?
I don’t know how much that affected Spain. The Covid shutdown was during the off season & much work here is seasonal. Plus you have a very large grey & black economy. I don’t think proportionally, the numbers of people getting free money was the same as UK. A lot of people just went hungry.
On Tuesday I bought carrots for 60p/kilo – the parsnips cost 150p/kilo so I didn’t bother; fresh apricots for £2/kilo – they have to be imported into UK, should be cheaper in Spain.
That depends on the time value involved.
A man who can earn £1000 an hour is foolish to spend two hours preparing and cooking food as opposed to one hour sitting in a restaurant and paying £100 for the meal, and perhaps £200 if he’s taking a client and doing a bit of business.
Of course, it all depends when he eats, how much enjoyment he gets out of cooking etc etc but you understand the basic principle.
Agree with sentences 1 and 3; sentence 2 *Assumes* that there is no limit (except 168) on the number of hours per week for which he can earn £1000. When I was earning most but getting paid a modest fraction thereof, I only cooked properly on Sundays when I didn’t do any paid work. If he earns £1000/hour for 20 hours each week and nothing for the remaining 148 hours then it’s cheaper to cook for himself (unless he is incompetent ar it).
The way I look at it all hours have the same value. I s’pose if I could be bothered about working now my billable rate would be €100/h. Occasionally charge that for consultancy. Since I’m quite capable of working 16 hour days, my lazing around in this delightful weather is worth €1600 per diem & every cent.. What’s the point of working if you don’t have the time to spend it?
Well, possibly the same value to you but they didn’t have the same price. I worked quite a lot of unpaid overtime but 8.30 to 5.30 got paid and 17.30 to 08.30 didn’t.
By historical standards, food today is a comparative pittance. For most of human history (and still today for many people) getting enough calories to survive was a struggle.
Rather my point above. People used to do the graft before the scoffing, not after.
Every doctor who will say that should be struck off. We know there is no clear definition of UPFs and no science that says why they are worse for you than other. Because the whole thing is fucking mental. Arguably, a good selection criteria for the Golgafringhan B Ark.
A Mr Kipling cake is basically the same thing as making it yourself. Home baked is fresher and nicer, generally a bit more cream in it. Home made ice cream is worse for you than Walls. That’s why you make it. Because you pile a lot more double cream in.
“ That’s why you make it.” And also because it’s hard to buy commercial liquorice toffee ice cream. At least I’ve never seen it.
That’s true. I used to make cinnamon and cardamon.
I still make sorbet if there’s some lemons being sold off cheap. It’s so much sharper.
I beg to differ, WB, but only to a degree.
We know there is no clear definition of UPFs…
Many things don’t have a clear definition – from species to colours to jokes to art – but the concepts still function. That shades of grey exist doesn’t mean that black and white are impossible to identify…
UPFs are often defined through the Sao Paulo University NOVA classification.
NOVA identifies UPFs not just by their nutritional content, but by their industrial processing. UPFs are industrial formulations, containing for example:
•Substances rarely used in home kitchens, such as high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and chemically modified starches.
•Cosmetic additives: Ingredients designed to make the final product hyper-palatable or visually appealing, such as emulsifiers, thickeners, artificial flavours, and colours.
…and no science that says why they are worse for you than other.
Not true, on the evidence available. For example:
•UPFs tend to be high in added sugars, sodium, and saturated or trans fats. High intake of these is directly linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
•UPFs are high in emulsifiers – common in breads, ice creams, and sauces (eg carboxymethylcellulose and polysorbate 80) – that can disrupt the gut’s protective mucus layer.
Though the risk from modest consumption of UPFs seems to be minimal, a diet based upon them is unlikely to be healthy. I often consume UPFs – eg in ready meals – but I also eat fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, etc. And I class a Spoon’s breakfast as healthy – in moderation.
I think the UK concern about UPFs derives from public health bureaucrats who want their socialist health service to save money by modifying the diet of the proles…
They also want the proles to stop eating that horrid, common, disgusting processed stuff which they so obviously like. Oh, and drinking cheap lager, too.
They’re perfectly happy for the proles to wear rainbows and bum each other, though.
“UPFs tend to be high in added sugars, sodium, and saturated or trans fats. High intake of these is directly linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.”
WB’s home made ice cream I think meets those criteria and is not classed as a UPF.
“UPFs are high in emulsifiers – common in breads, ice creams, and sauces (eg carboxymethylcellulose and polysorbate 80) – that can disrupt the gut’s protective mucus layer.”
WB’s ice cream: cream, sugar, milk, vanilla and egg yolks. Egg yolks are an emulsifier and yet, WB’s ice cream is not considered to be a UPF.
I have no issue with saying sugar is bad for you or fat is bad for you, but that applies whether you eat it straight out of the bag (not UPF) or in ice cream (UPF). Let’s call this what it really is: snobbery about prole food. Every bit of elite newspaper (Times, Guardian) talk about food and drink is about being above the proles. Organic, fairtrade. £500 restaurants serving some moss and twigs. Revolting natural wine. If they had any taste, they’d be drinking decent Barolo but that doesn’t have the same sort of ecotwattery credentials to go with it.
WB’s homemade ice cream I think meets those criteria and is not classed as a UPF.
That grey exists doesn’t mean that black and white don’t exist…
The point, as jgh explains is that it’s about ingredients, not preparation. If you buy a prepared salad, it’s healthy as is making a salad yourself. If you make ice cream it’s unhealthy as is Ben and Jerry’s. Whether you make the thing in a factory or at home has no bearing on the healthiness of it.
None of that is ‘ultra’, nor is any of it ‘processing’. It’s a specific list of *INGREDIENTS*.
“Chew your food more slowly”, Ho. Ho.Ho. I remember a biology teacher 60 years ago telling me that was essential for the efficient digestion of carbohydrates because of the ptyalin in saliva.
Has somebody at the Graun read an old book? I don’t think any progressives use books anymore but it’s difficult to see how they would have found that ancient bit of lore online. Of course, the idea of UPF hadn’t been manufactured (!) by the doom-mongers 60 years ago…
Of course, the idea of UPF hadn’t been manufactured (!) by the doom-mongers 60 years ago…
Angel Delight was introduced in 1967.
It has been all downhill ever since.
And Bird’s Dream Topping. What was the difference between them? Was there any?
I wanted to reduce my intake of bollocks from the Guardian and I achieved this by the simple expedient of not reading it.
If you chew carefully it changes the make up of what you put in yout mouth? Really?
Yes, because chewing and immersion in saliva starts the digestion process. In particular it starts the breakdown of carbs into sugar. Chew a mouthful of carbs for half a minute and you’ll notice it getting sweeter.
James Bond thought so, in “Thunderball” (after he’d been to the health clinic at Shrublands…)
There are two factors at work here, and it’s nowt to do with food. Firstly, puritan hair-shirt guilt at finding pleasure in..well, anything. Secondly a desire to control what others do, to project your own masochistic preferences on people who need looking after by their betters.
Down with this sort of thing.
Careful now.
Firstly, puritan hair-shirt guilt at finding pleasure in..well, anything
Obviously apart from wanking and bumming, nowadays.
An update on food related inflation, I was pleased to see that my “nice” bread had come back down from over £2 to £1.50 yesterday, so bought a loaf. For some reason I fancied a meat pie so looked in the fridge area. I did that thing of walking back and forth thinking I missed what I’m looking for, or they’ve been moved. But no. There they were. £1.67. For one pie. I. Can. Not. pay £1.67 for a single meat pie. That’s what THREE should cost. So I bought three packets of biscuits instead.
In case you want to make your own, allow me to share the greatest shortcrust pastry recipe ever from the point of view of both ease and taste.
Melt 175g of butter in 3x tablespoons of water.
When the mixture has just begun to bubble slightly remove from the heat and stir in 250g of plain flour and a bit of salt.
Mix together, and it naturally forms a rough ball.
Allow to cool until you can handle it and then roll it out.
Takes hardly any time, zero skill, and produces brilliant pastry each time.
I find your bread prices alarming. We usually buy a Vienna. Probably a small by UK standards although here there isn’t a large. That’s 95 cents from the bakers. In the big supermarket probably 40 cents. Normal white sliced “pan molde’s” about 80 own brand. Last time I bought a baguette in the super it was 35 cents. £1= €1,14? To be paying €2,18 I’d be buying German specialist rye.
Wut? You run out of time and can’t finish your meal?
Fixed it.
Whose words are these? GUARDIANS. They tack it on to a sentence with ‘doctor’ to give the appearance of authority. A common Guardian ruse.
No one seems to know why the measure of how healthy your food is should be related to how processed it is. I could see why some poor quality ingredients might be “ultra-processed” in order to make them more palatable but why, in general, would a lot of processing make your food less healthy?
My general view is that nutrition isn’t really rocket science. There are certain vitamins and essential nutrients that you need to make sure you consume in sufficient quantities. Some food is bad for you but won’t do you any harm at all if consumed in moderation. If you are doing sports you might need some extra carbs and proteins if you are going to perform at your best. You need to replace salt and a few other minerals if you work up a sweat. That’s about it, for most of us that’s pretty much all you need to know.
Yeah, don’t listen to Popeye – you get more digestable iron from apricots than spinach. Most of the food that is good for you tastes nice because evolution has led to those genes that appreciate food that is good for humans winning out over those genes that hate food that is good for you (children inheriting the latter group of genes tended to starve to death before reaching maturity during most of pre-history).
As to your second sentence I have read apparently reputable claims that certain nutrients are concentrated in the skins of potatoes and of grains of wheat so skinning them makes boiled or mashed potatoes and white bread less nutritious than baked potatoes or brown bread. If the “ultra-processing” adds calories without vitamins or trace minerals – or deletes vitamins (e.g. by boiling sources of Vitamin C) and trace minerals, then the result would be “less healthy”. A lot depends on how many calories you burn up per day. A marathon runner can manage on a vegetarian diet whereas a sprinter, who burns fewer calories in training, could not do so satisfactorily.
you get more digestible iron from apricots than spinach.
…not if you put some lemon or lime juice on the spinach. That drastically increases the iron uptake. Goes well with mushrooms in garlic.
That improves the uptake from the spinach but it still doesn’t match good apricots. Absorption rate from raw spinach is 1.7% of the 0.00027% of Iron in spinach, Even if you raised the absorption rate to 100% (not plausible) that would still be less than the “up to .0006%” in dried apricots. You would need a >200% absorption rate. The addition of lemon juice merely increases the absorption to something close to that for apricots, does not double it.
Correct.
‘Food’ is an object, with mass and volume. It has no capacity to be good or bad. It is human usage that can create problems. It can’t be the food’s fault. If it is actually bad for people, it’s not ‘food.’
You can eat Amanita bisporigera, but that doesn’t make it food.