General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why “Clean Eating” is a Myth [View all]Silent3
(15,201 posts)Or a preservative, just any preservative?
The whole point of the OP article is that there's little evidence that, for instance, any particular commonly used preservatives, in the quantities typically consumed, have any particular deleterious effects.
And why on earth would something being mixed ahead of time, and put into a box, make it less "real" in any particular and meaningful way that your body would care about one way or another?
You may very well find the stuff you make yourself tastier and more satisfying than anything you ever make from a mix, or anything with preservatives in it, but that could come down to the particular mixes tried or other factors that are poorly defined by using "real" as the word to distinguish those factors.
There's a whole lot of room for in such things for placebo-like effects here too, for your own knowledge that you made something yourself, and a pre-existing psychological bias against mixes and preservatives to make a big difference in what's essentially a subjective judgment. I suspect its highly unlikely that you've done either double-blind taste tests or double-blind nutritional studies.