[HN Gopher] Processed foods became so unhealthy
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Processed foods became so unhealthy
Author : HiroProtagonist
Score : 26 points
Date : 2021-06-10 20:38 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| the-dude wrote:
| I think the article is pretty thin on the _low fat foods_.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Processed foods aren't unhealthy. Unhealthy foods are unhealthy.
| The latter is a subset of the former.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _" The problem is that, in the past half century, a different
| type of food processing has been developed," says Fernanda
| Rauber, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of Sao
| Paulo, Brazil, about what we now call ""ultra-processed foods".
| "These substances would not be found in our kitchen. Usually,
| they contain little to no proportion of real foods."_
|
| This is ridiculous. Processed (or "ultra-processed") foods are
| mainly flour (wheat, corn, etc.), sugar (sugarcane, sugar beet),
| and refined oils (soy, canola). All of these are found in the
| kitchen and are very much "real foods".
|
| Yes, processed foods include small amounts of ingredients like
| emulsifiers and natural flavors, but by weight they're a tiny
| proportion. The idea that they make up most or all of a product
| by weight is utterly ludicrous.
|
| It's fine and good to be aware that processed food doesn't
| contain the "antioxidants and phytochemicals" found in
| unprocessed foods, and they may be calorie-dense and low in
| fiber. But it's unhelpful and utterly dishonest when
| nutritionists or scientists make absurd claims about processed
| foods being made mostly out of ingredients not found in our own
| kitchens.
| dilap wrote:
| Refined seed oils contain polyunsaturated fats (and more
| specifically, omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, and more
| specifically yet, linoleic acid) in far higher concentrations
| than traditional foods. I believe this is the main thing that
| makes processed food unhealthy, and, indeed, is the main driver
| of the epidemic of the so-called "diseases of civilization"
| (obesity, diabetes, cancer, etc) that most of the world is
| experiencing.
|
| This series of blog posts does an excellent job of summarizing
| the evidence:
|
| https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/what-causes-chronic-disease
| bumby wrote:
| What are the main causal hypotheses regarding why seed oils
| lead to obesity? I didn't see much in the article regarding
| the mechanism that links the two.
|
| I know Catherine Shanahan has written about this link and
| talks about how easily seed oils cause inflammation through
| free radicals. But how do we get from inflammation to
| obesity?
| c54 wrote:
| I think this retort is sorta factually correct but missing the
| author's point. Totally true that by mass the preservatives
| aren't a lot, but that doesn't mean the refined products of
| naturally occurring plants are 'real foods' in the sense the
| author intends it.
|
| One way to think of this is that a food which is refined moves
| further and further away from the original 'real food' as it
| naturally occurs. ~80% of a wheat 'corn' is the white part,
| ~20% of a soy bean is oil, and 15-20% of a beet is sugar.
|
| Similarly, one apple yields about 1/3c of juice. Drinking 2c
| worth of juice (in an hour?) is fairly common but nobody ever
| eats 6 apples in an hour
| crazygringo wrote:
| The quoted epidemiologist says "These substances would not be
| found in our kitchen."
|
| I'm not disagreeing at all about refinement or the health.
| I'm just saying these refined substances are _absolutely_
| found in our kitchen, and used in quantity. They 're nothing
| special or unique to processed foods.
|
| If you bake bread or cake or brownies, for basic recipes it's
| nutritionally virtually identical to processed crackers,
| cookies, and bars.
| drewcoo wrote:
| This is the other half of that quote, if we want to take it
| in context: "Usually, they contain little to no proportion
| of real foods."
|
| And those sentences were likely in a larger context but
| chosen by the author as a way to say something the reader
| could relate to.
| t0mbstone wrote:
| This rambling article talks about the earl of sandwich and the
| origins of soda and some early food processing methods for things
| like chocolate.
|
| The article doesn't say anything meaningful or interesting about
| how processed foods actually became unhealthy, though, and it
| also doesn't even talk about modern processed food.
|
| What a waste of time.
| reedjosh wrote:
| Well, it is the BBC.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Not to be pessimistic, but this is very typical of most food
| science + health journalism. The odds someone really did their
| research and didn't just start with whatever the current food
| and health trends are and work an article (poorly) backwards
| from there is very low.
| [deleted]
| stakkur wrote:
| Processed food always has two goals:
|
| 1. Minimize cost of production; real food is expensive.
|
| 2. Make processed food last as long as possible (preservatives).
|
| But the simpler explanation is that 'processed food' isn't food
| at all, it's a 'food product' make to _resemble_ food.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Please explain the preservatives found in a can of tomato
| paste. Lets take... Hunt's tomato paste, a popular brand.
|
| Hint: the preservative is "Citric Acid", also known as lemon-
| juice. A wee bit more acidity negates any chance of botulism
| (which just barely can live in the PH of Tomato-acid. But add a
| squeeze of lemon to it and make it slightly more acidic and
| this rare bacteria is taken care of).
|
| Otherwise, you're looking at just mashed up tomatoes + a
| squeeze of lemon inside of a can. No joke, nothing else is in
| there.
|
| -------
|
| The other aspect of "preserving" is the airtight can, which
| prevents other organisms (other bacteria, mold, fungus) from
| entering the can.
|
| Any tomato paste can you find is basically using this
| technique.
|
| --------
|
| Other canned veggies are even more pure. Canned corn is just
| heated (at the factory) to a temperature that kills botulism
| spores. A lot of cans add salt for flavor, but you can easily
| buy salt-free cans and get pure corn if that's your preference.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Can someone explain to me how the difference of a molecule of
| some protein is any different when it's processed? How does my
| body know when I'm eating processed foods vs non processed?
|
| I'm under the impression that when I eat food, my stomach
| converts it to a liquid, which then gets further "processed"
| through my digestive system, eventually absorbed in my blood
| stream. Is it the residual stuff that my body cannot break down
| but was unable to convert to fecal matter along the way that
| feeds into my blood stream the bad thing? Or is it still just
| straight up ignorance because people are afraid of having yet
| another process abstracted from their daily lives?
| retzkek wrote:
| It's not so much that the food molecules are different, but the
| amounts that ultimately makes something "unhealthy." It's right
| there in the first paragraph:
|
| > high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt diets
|
| Much like how the attention industry has refined
| advertisements, games, news, etc to become exceedingly
| effective at targeting the pleasure areas of the brain, making
| us want to consume more, so too has the food industry.
|
| Humans have evolved to find pleasure in eating fat, sugar, and
| salt, as the former are excellent sources of energy, and the
| latter is required by many processes ("Brawndo, it's got what
| plants crave!"). Processed food has optimized, distilled, and
| combined these components into foods that could never be found
| in nature, and which our bodies are ill-equipped for.
| munk-a wrote:
| Just as an aside (and I'm ready for this to get downvoted
| because I'm discussing voting - don't feel guilty) - this
| comment raises a number of interesting points for the
| discussion, please don't blindly down vote it because either 1)
| you disagree with it or 2) hanging out on reddit and being
| exposed to sealioning makes you assume everyone with a question
| is a troll. It's well worded, intellectually curious and a
| helpful root for discussion.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _how the difference of a molecule of some protein is any
| different when it 's processed?_
|
| Not a nutritionist, but I believe the answer falls into two
| broad categories.
|
| One, chemical: processed foods frequently contain additives,
| _e.g._ preservatives, that less-processed food doesn 't.
|
| Two, physical: a peach smoothie is digested and hits your
| bloodstream differently from a whole peach. They're chemically
| identical but physically different, and that changes everything
| from how quickly you ingest it, how much of it you ingest, how
| it hits the stomach and how it hits your gut.
| aaron-santos wrote:
| Processing can also mean separating out parts of foods to
| exclude them from the product. Take fiber for example.
| Processing an ingredient to reduce or remove its fiber
| doesn't change the molecular make up of the remaining portion
| of the ingredient. The molecules in = molecules out (minus
| the fiber).
|
| However, fiber lowers cholesterol levels by preventing
| cholesterol from being absorbed, and slows the absorption of
| glucose. When we examine the modulating effects of
| ingredients and couple that to biological non-linearities,
| it's not too hard to see how processing can affect how food
| interacts with the body. Reduced fiber foods, can affect the
| body in ways different from non-processed food even if the
| molecules being ingested are identical to those in the
| original ingredients.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| But why does that matter? Assuming the caloric intake is the
| same, how does eating a peach smoothie differ from eating a
| peach? They are the same and get liquified the same. I mean
| technically when you eat you're supposed to have it mashed up
| enough that your stomach has to do little as little work as
| possible (so equivalent to a smoothie as possible). I still
| don't see how that makes a difference.
|
| Back to the additives, what difference does it make if your
| body properly disposes of it because it can't break it down
| and it doesn't get absorbed by you? Or...does it get absorbed
| by you (which is what I'm partially asking)?
| notshift wrote:
| If you made a peach smoothie out of nothing but pure
| peaches, it would be identical to eating the peaches, I'm
| sure.
|
| I am also not a nutritionist, but from my reading processed
| foods are bad because (1) they just have far fewer
| nutrients, vitamins and minerals that our body needs to
| function, (2) the additives and chemicals that are added
| sometimes harm our body directly and/or require the body to
| dedicate resources towards removing, or (3) they harm our
| microbiome by feeding bad bacteria which similarly produce
| stuff that isn't good for your body and damaging the good
| bacteria which we need.
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| Chemistry occurs at the surface of the food - if you have
| lumps of peaches in your stomach then they have to be
| digested, ie broken down. If you drink a smoothie then
| the surface area available to chemical reactions is a lot
| larger, so digestion happens quicker. Quicker digestion
| of sugars causes a larger insulin spike, which is bad.
| Also commercial smoothies usually have a lot more sugar
| and fat in them than you'd think, I know you said just
| blended peaches, but in reality everyone adds stuff to
| it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If you made a peach smoothie out of nothing but pure
| peaches, it would be identical to eating the peaches, I
| 'm sure_
|
| Mastication matters. A peach smoothie is to a whole peach
| as a pill chewed is to itself swallowed.
| munk-a wrote:
| > how does eating a peach smoothie differ from eating a
| peach?
|
| I think that eating a peach smoothie, one where you just
| take a peach and some ice - throw them in a blender and mix
| away, is no different from eating a peach[1] but ordering a
| peach smoothie at Jugo Juice is not peach in a glass, it's
| some peach and added juice (containing added sugar) and
| added sugar also some ice, probably with added sugar - all
| mixed together with some "healthy protein base" which is
| probably a bit of whey with added sugar - basically a
| smoothie ends up having very little relationship to the
| fruit.
|
| _Additionally_ if you slurrify raspberries you can drink
| them by the dozen in a single gulp - while eating them by
| hand you 'll strike a more leisurely pace and stop once
| you're feeling full - often times with smoothies and the
| like we'll over consume because it takes a while for our
| body to actually realize we're full.
|
| 1. Maybe a slight loss of healthy stuff due to fibers
| separating out and not ending up in the juice but ideally
| that's negligible.
| yumaikas wrote:
| Often some additives may get absorbed by your gut.
|
| A smoothie vs a peach may well have different glycemic
| indices. Few people chew their few up to the extent that a
| bender will break it down. Also, how many peaches go into a
| smoothie, and how much extra sugar via, say, yogurt, or
| smoothie mix?
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| We're not talking about a peach smoothie at jamba juice,
| we're talking about blending peaches vs eating it raw and
| chewing it with your teeth. The molecular makeup of the
| food is 100% the same, the difference is it's physical
| attributes of it as you ingest it.
| msandford wrote:
| > Assuming the caloric intake is the same, how does eating
| a peach smoothie differ from eating a peach?
|
| Your body has regular teeth. Most people don't chew even 30
| times per bite.
|
| A blender has mega-ultra-turbo teeth that are both way, way
| sharper than a person's and also they never get tired
| because they're powered by electricity not muscles.
|
| How much chewing do you think is equivalent to blending? My
| very unscientific guess is that blending is something like
| 1000 chews per bite or more given that our teeth aren't as
| sharp as blender blades.
|
| Eventually quantitative differences (number of chews)
| become qualitative (sugars and starches encapsulated in
| small bits vs chemically liberated). Blenders do a lot of
| the work of digestion mechanically well before your body
| has a chance to do it chemically.
| jbotz wrote:
| Of all the things that are different about processed foods
| that have been mentioned in this thread, this is probably
| the least important, but yes, there is still a
| difference... they don't "get liquified the same", because
| when you eat a whole peach you chew it, and when you chew
| it your mouth is mixing the pulp with digestive enzymes (in
| your saliva) and also priming the digestive juices in your
| stomach to adjust for the pH of the incoming matter! This
| turns out to be important enough that many nutritionists
| for over a century have emphasized the importance of eating
| slowly and chewing thoroughly. You can't really do that
| with a smoothie.
|
| Extracting energy and nutrients from food is highly
| optimized by evolution for obvious reasons, even in the
| case of omnivores such as ourselves. Modern
| "ultraprocessed" food is not adaptive.
| path2power wrote:
| > Assuming the caloric intake is the same, how does eating
| a peach smoothie differ from eating a peach?
|
| Increasing the number of masticatory cycles is associated
| with reduced appetite and altered postprandial plasma
| concentrations of gut hormones, insulin and glucose [0]
|
| [0]https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-
| core/c...
|
| TL;DR It's not just about calories, it's about what the
| food makes you do later.
| dtech wrote:
| Multiple reasons, among the most important:
|
| Modern processed foods have very little fiber and other non-
| processed parts, making you full slower causing you to overeat.
| A glass of coke has 140 calories, and so has 2-3 apples. You'll
| stop eating after 3 apples but can easily have 2 glasses of
| coke.
|
| The above also causes blood sugar to spike drastically
| immediately after eating processed foods, causing you to create
| a high amount of insulin, drastically lowering blood sugar and
| creating fat. Low blood sugar then causes you to become hungry
| soon after. This is the famous "hungry 2 hours after eating
| McDonalds" efffect. Non-processed foods are digested much more
| gradual.
|
| The calories are more empty. Lots of sugar and fat, not much
| protein and micro-nutrients like minerals and vitamins.
|
| They are made so you can't stop eating them, e.g. bliss point
| [1]. They hack our reward centers to so it feels so good to eat
| you'll overeat. You wouldn't eat 20 sugar cubes in one sitting
| but will eat a tub of Ben and Jerry's.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food)
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > [...] very little fiber [...] making you full slower [...]
| You'll stop eating after 3 apples [...]
|
| Every time someone repeats this sort of thing I have to laugh
| to myself a little. If only it were so easy to keep my body
| from constantly craving more calories!
| acchow wrote:
| > If only it were so easy to keep my body from constantly
| craving more calories
|
| Try protein shakes. Or other high-protein foods.
|
| But if you've made your body accustomed to a diet high in
| simple carbs (esp sugars), you need to break that cycle as
| well.
| munk-a wrote:
| The main difference between processed foods and fresh foods are
| 1) preservatives and 2) flavour enhancement - for the first
| goal we use things like salt to increase the shelf life of the
| product which has the side effect of shifting most folks over
| to having a higher expectation of salt content in their food in
| general - for the later salt is also useful (along with
| specific flavour enhancers like MSG), but sugar is far easier
| to throw in and get more bang for your buck.
|
| I can cook a meal and freeze it for a while reheat it and enjoy
| it - to allow it to survive (with a decent taste) long bouts of
| freezer burn and going stale I need to load that sucker up with
| a bunch of salt and sugar so that I don't care that the food
| tastes like cardboard.
|
| I can't speak to any molecular effects - those may also exist -
| but most of why processed food is bad for you is just to make
| it taste really really good so you'll come back for more - even
| if you're not hungry! Yay obesity!
|
| I imagine at some point in the future folks are going to look
| at the diet of the late 20th century like we look at covering
| your baby's crib with lead based paint.
| mahgnous wrote:
| And people think this lab grown meat and artificial meat is gonna
| be any better nutritionally...
| open-source-ux wrote:
| Somewhat related...a 2018 study of 19 European countries ranks
| countries by how much 'ultra-processed' food is purchased by
| households in those countries.
|
| The UK takes first place, followed by Germany, Ireland, Belgium
| and Finland.
|
| Countries that purchase the least amount of 'ultra-processed'
| food include Portugal, Italy, Greece and France.
|
| See the map listed in this article for the full country ranking:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/02/ultra-proces...
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