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zeech

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We don't even have configurable search engines from the settings anymore

It's annoying, but you can still toggle `browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh` to true and it will restore the add/edit/remove buttons for search engines.

"Ultraprocessed" is at least a tangible definition

The Nova system's classification for UPFs seems to be what the majority of people who refer to them use as a definition.

In the Nova system, there are four main groups of food:

- Group one has 'unprocessed or minimally processed' foods, e.g. grains and fresh fruits.

- Group two has 'processed culinary ingredients'. These include foods that use naturally-derived ingredients like salt and flour.

- Group three has foods that combine the first two, like salted nuts, and can also include things with some added preservatives or flavourings.

- Group four is ultraprocessed foods. These are defined as industrially-manufactured foods made with multiple ingredients (typically multiple oils, sugars, fats, and salt) and ingredients with minimal culinary use.

The issue with group four is that it's far broader than it should be. For instance, under the Nova system sparkling water is a UPF because it's carbonated, and carbonation is considered a chemical additive. It also classifies anything with, say, Stevia as a UPF even though it's a perfectly safe artificial sweetener. It's broad enough that it covers tofu, various cheeses, and various breads, to name a few.

It also ignores the actual nutritional content of the foods (which the original Nova paper touches on, I think, specifically saying it's not meant to be used for nutrient profiling).

How would you prove that a given food item is "hyperpalatable"?

I was recently looking at a study about this [0]. The three criterion that have been found to best define hyperpalatability are as follows:

(1) Foods with over 25% of calories from fat and more than 0.3% sodium by weight

(2) Foods with over 20% of calories from fat and more than 20% of calories from simple sugars

(3) Foods with over 40% of calories from carbs (not counting dietary fibre and simple sugars) and more than 0.2% sodium by weight

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31689013/

Even if you do eat them, there's no evidence (or I suppose I should say no evidence yet) of microplastics being harmful when ingested. Nanoplastics, on the other hand, have been found to impact animal embryos and cells grown in labs.

This article equates ultraprocessed foods and hyperpalatable foods (foods designed to make people want to eat them more). While many hyperpalatable foods are classified as ultraprocessed, simply being hyperpalatable does not mean it's ultraprocessed.

Worth noting that the Nova food classificationvsysten (which this article references) completely disregards the actual nutritional content of foods.

For a good primer on a lot of the misconceptions around UPFs, check out [0].

[0] https://www.harvardmagazine.com/research/harvard-ultraproces...

IIRC the reason they don't (can't?) provide a search API directly is because they're pulling from other search sources, e.g. Bing, and can't provide an API without licence violations.

Agreed that a DDG API would be pretty great, though.

GrapheneOS only supports Pixels due to their having superior security features [0]. Calyx supports Pixels as well as some newer Motos and the Fairphone 4 and 5 [1]. Lineage supports tons of devices [2].

LineageOS is the only one of the three that supports older hardware, but I'd recommend getting a previous-gen Pixel for the seven-year (at least) support cycle.

[0] https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices

[1] https://calyxos.org/docs/guide/device-support/

[2] https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/