You’re listening to Burnt Toast!

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for your July Indulgence Gospel!

And… it’s our 200th episode!

To celebrate, we’re making today’s Indulgence Gospel free to everyone and offering a flash sale — 20% off to celebrate 200 episodes!

This newsletter contains affiliate links, which means if you buy something we suggest, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only ever recommend things we love and use ourselves!

One Good Thing

Now that it’s summer, ice cream is a daily state of being here and I’ve been using my East Fork ice cream bowls constantly (they are also the perfect size for cherries and for many of your favorite snacks). If you are also an East Fork disciple, heads up that their annual Seconds Sale starts today! This is where they sell pots that are slightly imperfect but still 100 percent functional and food safe for 30-40% off. And yes, there are a lot of cute ice cream bowls.

PS. You can always listen to our episodes right here in your email, where you’ll also receive full transcripts (edited and condensed for clarity). But please also follow us in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and/or Pocket Casts!

Episode 200 Transcript

Corinne

200! Can you believe it?

Virginia

I can and I cannot. It’s one of those things where I feel like we’ve always been making the podcast, but also 200 feels like so many.

Corinne

I went back through, to look at some old episodes. And I was like, you know, I kind of remember all of them. I was like, surely there are some I have forgotten. But yeah, kind of not.

Virginia

When I was looking back at the old episodes, it was like visiting old friends. I was like, I know you guys. We’re cool.

Corinne

If you write into us with a question and we answer it, it really sticks with us!

Virginia

We continue to think about you. And would like updates, honestly. We don’t always get them, so putting that out there. We’d like to know.

Corinne

To celebrate, we have a special two part episode for you. We’re picking favorite moments from the archives to revisit, to see if our feelings and opinions have changed.

Virginia

Alright, I decided to look back at our many excellent guest conversations and pull out some favorites. First up, I thought I’d look back at our work ultra-processed foods since it is such an annoyingly evergreen topic.

We did a great pair of episodes with Laura Thomas, PhD, who writes “Can I Have Another Snack?” which ran in July 2023.

Here is a little excerpt from the first conversation.

Virginia

It feels like it’s important to say very clearly that processed is not synonymous with has no nutrition, and that actually processing foods is a good thing to do in order to eat, right?

Laura

Yeah, well, all forms of cooking are a process, right?

So unless you like want to go down some raw vegan path, you can’t really avoid processing your food to some extent.

Now, advocates of NOVA, I think, would say that’s a bit of a red herring, because what we’re actually talking about is this additional level of processing, this ultra processing sort of phenomenon.

But even within that category, I think there are merits to processing–even Ultra processing–our foods. One of the things that happens when we process food is we extend the shelf life of it, and that means that we are wasting less food overall, which I think we would all agree is probably a helpful thing.

But industrial food processing, it reduces foodborne pathogens. It reduces microbes that would spoil food and make things like oils turn rancid faster. It also significantly cuts down on the time and labor that it requires to cook a meal. And I think that’s for me as a parent, and I know for you as well, like, that’s huge.

Virginia

It’s really everything, honestly. For me personally. Nothing should be everything for everybody, but limiting the amount of time I spend cooking dinner is the thing that enables me to eat dinner with my family at night.

Laura

But it’s not just like super privileged white women that have a lot of you know nutrition knowledge, right, that benefit from ultra processed foods. I’m also thinking about kids with feeding disorders that would struggle to get all the nutrition that they need without processed foods. I’m thinking about elderly or disabled people who can maintain a level of independence because they can quickly cook some pasta and throw an ultra processed jar of pasta sauce on that and have a nourishing meal. I’m thinking about pregnant people who otherwise might not be able to stomach eating because of morning sickness and nausea, which we know lasts forever, not just morning, right?

So there are so many groups of people that benefit from ultra processed foods, and they just seem to be missing entirely from the conversation around these foods.

Virginia

So often there’s this pressure of like, we have to just get poor people cooking more and get them cooking more. And it’s like, okay, but if you live in a shelter, you don’t have a kitchen. If you are crashing on a couch with family member, you know, in a house with lots of different people, and it’s not easy for you to get time in the kitchen. There’s so many different scenarios where cooking is not a practical solution, and having greater shelf stability is very important.

Laura

But it also says a lot about where we place our values, right? And who is making decisions about where we cook our values? Because it’s not everyone’s value system to spend more time cooking from scratch and buying fresh ingredients and spending more time in the kitchen.

Virginia

I picked this clip because I think Laura is summing up so many important pieces of this conversation that I just continue to see nowhere in the mainstream media discourse around ultra-processed foods. Like the fact that they are useful and convenient. And convenience is not a moral failing. I don’t know where we decided food should be inconvenient to be valuable and healthy? But it seems like that’s a thing that we believe.

Corinne

I know Maintenance Phase just did an ultra processed food episode. I listened to that.

Virginia

Oh, it’s excellent.

Corinne

And both they and you and Laura got into the way that “processed” is just such a moving target. It means so many different things.

Virginia

It means literally anything.

Corinne

And also nothing.

Virginia

Yes, when I say this is missing from the discourse, I don’t mean Maintenance Phase, who I think we’re very much in conversation with. As Mike and Aubrey kept discussing on their episode—I think Laura says some of this, too—depending whose classification system you go by, honey is ultra-processed or it’s not ultra-processed. Foods are moving categories all the time.

And as Aubrey said: Really what it comes down to is they’re categorizing foods so that the ones that “people who make less money than you buy” are bad. And I was like, yep, there it is. This is really classism and racism and all the other isms to say let’s demonize these foods that people rely on.

Which is not to say we shouldn’t improve the overall quality of food in the food system! But doing it through this policing of consumer habits just will never not make me furious.

Corinne

Really feels like this hasn’t gotten better since the episode aired two years ago?

Virginia

If anything, I think it has intensified. I think RFK and MAHA has really put this one in their crosshairs, and it’s just getting worse and worse. It’s really maddening, because we’re just not having any of the real c