https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_gut_syndrome Thank you, I'd not read it was a myth before and had confused it with another condition 'worsening allergy symptoms due to the effects of alcohol'.

Sorry, I couldn't find a good link to describe the effect but did see numerous websites mentioning that alcohol can worsen allergy symptoms.

My allergist informed me that alcohol dilates the blood vessels allowing more allergens to pass thru. My anecdotal evidence is that I do seem to suffer from more food allergies when I drink alcohol. Foods that I have a mild allergy to become seem to be more problematic when I drink.

It's scary for how we have gone from "don't use Wikipedia as a citation" to "bro just trust what Wikipedia says about controversial topics".

"Leaky gut" might be a myth, but emulsifiers' impact on gut health is not. A steady stream of studies [1] and publications on this [2] has been coming out, since the role of our microbiome became more clear.

[1] ex https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-06224-3

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jun/29/the-tru...

And box mix tend to be overly sweet (at least from my limited experience tasting then when I was a student in the us)

Don't neglect the cultural component when considering taste tests. I've heard there are many americans who actually prefer american chocolate. To me it tastes like sugary beeswax with a hint of sock.

I wonder what is the proportion of that according to countries. In France, there's a label "fait maison" that's supposed to limit how much the baker or restaurateur rely on pre made mix. But besides this if a professional baker uses a premade mix, how do they differentiate themselves (but then I guess from my experience in the US some shops mostly compete on decoration and not taste)

> Cake mixes almost always come ahead in blind taste tests.

Could be a "New Coke"[1] thing, where people just like the one with more sugar. There's a reason food companies pack the stuff into everything - it (usually) works.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke

> The professional bakers around me who do a dozen cakes a day or whatnot are all pre-made mixes, maybe some small modifications to the mix, and from-scratch frostings. I'm not sure I could even find a local spot with cakes made from scratch - at least in the traditional sense. The spots making 200 cakes a day perhaps, but those are going to look a lot more like the mixes you buy from Sysco or whatnot.

95% of bakeries are using a box mix and a packet of jello pudding. That's the secret.

> subjective taste preferences of the masses is pretty much settled fact at this point.

You will be surprised to learn that brands have very differently tasting products developed for different markets. Often even under the same name.

> It may or may not be healthier, but the subjective taste preferences of the masses is pretty much settled fact at this point.

The masses sustain Hostess by buying enough of their atrocious boxed "cakes" and cookies. I really wouldn't trust their taste buds.

If your argument is, "if making cakes for the masses, boxed is fine," sure, I don't disagree. My argument is that I hang out with folks that do care about that kind of thing and basically never go to the middle aisles of a grocery store - that crowd will appreciate baked with straightforward ingredients. Flour, sugar, actual cocoa powder, yeast, whatever.

You can bake good cake from scratch with very little skill as long as you can follow instructions and mix shit together in the right amounts.

> I would like the emphasize "consistency".

This matters when you are trying to sell a product, not so much when you are cooking for friends and family as long as you get into the ballpark which isn't really that hard. Little variances and surprises just make home cooking more interesting.

> Normal, everyday families around the world use processed foods in their cooking

Do you have a source? I really haven't met anyone using cake mixes to make cakes.

But if you mean they use butter instead of milking a cow directly and producing the butter then yes, they use processed food.

I am loving this thread, and how cake is suddenly up there as a controversial, polarising topic.

Respect for working in a bakery, just hope you haven't got too many burn scars on your forearms from doing long night shifts. I am in broad agreement with you and I appreciate the difficulties of making a consistent product, particularly when there are variables in temperature, seasonal availability of ingredients, lots of machinery to keep running and workers that are probably taking a bit more than cake to see their shifts through.

In the UK, as far a cakes are concerned, you either have a 'bought one' or something you make from scratch yourself. There is no in-between and a cake mix would be frowned on by middle class snobs as 'having cheated'. Or, failing that, taken as an insult. A 'bought one' would be entirely understandable, and what you might expect for birthday celebrations, at home or in the workplace. But a cake mix?

A home made cake is 'proof of work' and the use of a cake mix just undermines it. Approximately the same amount of time is spent in the kitchen and the oven is on for the same amount of time, plus there is the same amount of washing up.

Advertising these processed foods started a lot earlier in America than anywhere else. There are geographical challenges that make this understandable. But, over time, the food companies coalesced into a dozen gigantic mega-corporations and brands that once stood for quality and no adulterated ingredients (from the days before the FDA) now stand for adulterated ingredients.

In the UK we used to have Quaker owned confectionery companies such as Cadburys where the original product was all about health, happy workers and all these good things. They automated processes because they were ideologically against slavery. But, generations on, with the likes of Cadburys owned by the likes of Kraft or Nestle, it isn't like that. The milk and cocoa content goes down, the sugar and palm oil goes up. The Fairtrade cocoa goes and the 'Rainforest Alliance' cocoa comes in, and you can guess the ethics of the latter are not to the standards of the former.

None of these mega-corporations pay any tax. They can avoid doing so by setting up a shell company in a tax haven that owns the rights to the branding, to then create subsidiaries that then license the branding for vast sums, as per the Starbucks business model, to never make any profit since they have these extra costs that have to be paid to tax havens.

Back to stupid British snobbery, I would prefer one of your mass-made cakes any day over something that has been made by a snobby Brit as the 'ultimate in cake', where you can't just enjoy it, you have to express to the baker that every mouthful is like the greatest, most orgasmic experience in the history of the universe, for which you are eternally grateful. In these scenarios, you daren't wolf the cake down as that would be disrespectful, and you daren't ask for anything more than the thinnest slice since any more would be deemed greedy.

Available, sure, but the small sliver they get in the baking aisle probably says all you need to know about the turnover they generate.

The problem is indeed not processed ingredients in cake. Unfortunately, in the US, those ingredients are not limited to cake.

And yes, most industrial, chemical, ingredients are harmless. That said, around the world, there's a emphasis on non-processed food. Unprocessed foods tend towards healthier. Less added sugar, less saturated fat etc.

I guess, taken as an overall picture, American health is perceived as poor. Poor food choices. Poor food-related outcomes and so on. That's predicated on a food culture that prioritizes cost, profit, quantity, ubiquity etc over health and quality.

Taken in that light, arguing in favor of processed foods seems like a outcome most countries would like to avoid.

Agreed, but you claimed above that:

> I garuntee a box mix will make a much better cake than "from scratch" unless you are very experienced.

That is simply untrue. It does not take an experienced baker to make a better cake than a boxed cake mix. The fact that you can avoid the other weird ingredients (which are probably not terrible at small scale) is just the icing on the cake.

C'mon now, orange juice or cheese - perfectly safe?

Unless you are specifically out to gain weight or needing extra calories due to hard work, you should not be drinking your calories. With orange juice you have sugars stripped from fibre and you can glug the sugars in a dozen oranges just glugging away for a few seconds. To eat those oranges would take an hour if you had to peel them first.

Cheese is worst thing ever for saturated fat, which clogs the arteries, gives you diabetes and sends you to hospital for some bypass surgery. Besides, what is natural about consuming dairy? The bull gets jerked off, the cow gets artificially inseminated, the baby gets eaten and the milk for the baby gets stolen. That is just plain weird. Technically everything is natural if you want to see it that way.

Cakes are just fats, sugars and additives, sometimes with some fruit in there, but you are right, these things have to be consumed just because it is a cultural tradition. Healthy cigarettes are just as easy to find, and cigarettes are arguably a cultural tradition. The more you look into it, the more messed up it is.

Chocolate is particularly messed up, with small children that should be at school sifting the beans for us in Ghana. Then there is climate change, with cocoa supplies being so low at the moment.

Undoubtedly cake brings joy but there is all of this misery and cruelty that goes into the ingredients. Haven't even got as far as where the red food colouring comes from. Yet it all started so innocently.