Doritos are just fried corn tortillas with salt, and depending on the variety, some flavourings like dehydrated cheese and bell pepper. It's not a perfect food, but it's food. In fact, combine that with some refried beans and you might be able to live off it for a long time.
> Take away all the science experiments and eat what your great grandma did “mostly greens, not too much”
I don't know about your great grandma, but mine was mostly eating bread and potatoes, not mostly greens. Certainly generations before her were as well.
Actually, they aren't. They're what's left of corn tortillas after the industrial frying process stripped anything that could be considered nutrients (hyperbole, of course), with a little salt added for flavor. Now you just have a calorie dense but non-nutritious glorified salt lick.
It's hardly food, and if you don't think so, try living on nothing but Doritos for a week and see how that works out for you. Potatoes may not be much more than starch and fiber, but I could live off those for any length of time because they are food.
The difference is that the fried corn tortillas that I make fresh actually retain the majority of their innate nutrients and could sustain me for a week, more even.
Look, I get that not treating snacks like staple foods is a good idea overall, and we're probably not going to see eye to eye on this, but it's not clear to me that the profile of "innate nutrients" is actually different in Doritos. They might have that taint of being a mass-produced snack, but they start with corn just like your homemade tortillas. Unless I'm missing something, the industrial frying, packaging, and seasoning is not stripping nutrients, intentionally or unintentionally.
It's a relatively simple product, as packaged snacks go.
you're forgetting the corn maltodextrin in doritos, which is a kind of predigested food-derivative that this article is warning about. Your body turns it into glucose much more efficiently than just corn, and overdosing over a long period of time probably leads to health issues.
Grandparents from both sides had a small patch of garden, and it was used to the fullest, produce was eaten for rest of the year. Yes a significant portion were potatoes, which are much healthier side dish than ie rice. Mostly boiled or oven baked ones. Rest were veggies, cabbage, onions, some greenhouse stuff. And some fruit trees, but veggies mostly.
One side they lived till higher 80s, another both till 95. Active till very late, basically maybe 1-2 years before death.
The thing is, they all lived frugally (and under hardships of communist rule, thats why garden). No junkfood as we know today. Tons of slow physical work on that garden. No vices like frequent alcohol consimption or cigarettes.
One of their sons (aka my uncle) smoked half a pack a day. Dead at 54 from heart attack, had a cancer before but got cca cured. Another daughter got over time overweight, little physical activity, and as I learned only recently became over time an alcoholic. Dead from an heart attack at 62.
Some folks I know have much worse lifestyles (ie smoke more than uncle, plus are more overweight, plus are alcoholics) yet keep living much longer.
Not sure what I want to say with all this, maybe that eating veggies is not enough. Its whats the rest of the plate and how much of it, how active you are, how stressed, how much exposure to bad chemicals. And genes, one thing completely out of control, but as mentioned above they alone wont save you.
Carbohydrates. Slow-release caloric intake - the main thing you need in your diet after your protein/vitamin/mineral needs are met. Also provides some fat.
People are being really weird about greens which have almost no caloric value and supplementary health benefits at best when for all of human history the name of the game is cheap readily available carbs, fats, sugars, and protein. That's stuff is food. Everything else, while good for you, is a garnish.
Doritos are bad because poor people can afford them. Making your diet mostly organic greens is good because you need lots of money to afford them and you will be underweight and incapable of performing peasant style manual labor.
> Take away all the science experiments and eat what your great grandma did “mostly greens, not too much”
I don't know about your great grandma, but mine was mostly eating bread and potatoes, not mostly greens. Certainly generations before her were as well.