[HN Gopher] Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods ar...
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Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods are bad
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 139 points
Date : 2024-11-26 15:46 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| goles wrote:
| https://archive.is/EfaFI
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| tldr hint: the last 5 paragraphs get to the point, and are worth
| reading.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Why do we need these kinds of sensationalist names for things?
| Why is it so important that they be "ultra-processed" foods?
| Can't they just be "overprocessed" or perhaps use some other more
| neutral term?
|
| It's like the 90s when everything had to be "EXTREME!!"
| snapcaster wrote:
| I think it's partly due to the people (this site is full of
| them) that would read any other term and go "what is
| processing? Cooking and cutting is processing hurr durr"
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| I have had this exact argument on HN at least a half dozen
| times.
| snapcaster wrote:
| yeah people still do it but at least adding the "ultra"
| indicates is not something a person cooking for their
| family would be doing to food
| tjpnz wrote:
| Until you add ketchup.
| nightski wrote:
| It's just as dumb though because the act of processing
| doesn't really mean anything.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| If it didn't mean anything then why the findings in the
| article?
| nightski wrote:
| The findings in the article basically came down to -
| people eat more calories when it tastes good. Even the
| article itself admits there are a multitude of other
| factors that could account for the results other than
| UPF.
| snapcaster wrote:
| It absolutely does if you're able to take off the
| pedantry glasses for like 5 seconds. Why are you
| nitpicking this? is it because you actually think
| articles like this are about chopping carrots?
|
| "if it couldn't be made outside of a factory, don't eat
| it."
|
| from someone else in the comments is pretty clear
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Why jump from one weird statement to another? Maybe even
| a worse one?
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| Here we go again...
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| It's still a misleading term, so it would be good to talk
| about what the actual harm is, as to not confuse people.
| And it does confuse, since I vividly remember as a kid
| being confused by it, and it's important to have healthy
| habits from a young age. It always sounded a bit weird
| that food being "processed" means it's bad, so I didn't
| understand it really. And if you don't focus on the harm,
| but use terms like this, it's hard to say what is
| pseudoscience and what is actual science.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Someone will have to explain to me why so many people claim
| that honey is not a "refined sugar." If bees do the
| refining than it doesn't count?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Olive oil, steel cut oats, and dried beans, are processed. It's
| to differentiate from things like Coca-Cola or TV dinners.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| It's funny that it's only the high IQ types that have
| difficulty distinguishing beans from coca cola.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It's what I like to call being so smart they're stupid.
| Everyone strives to be the smartest most pedantic one in
| the room around here.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Just as a side note/for info, there's a specific definition (I
| think by the FAO?) used for them. The tldr is that when you're
| extracting/reacting something to use as an ingredient (eg
| _hydrogenated_ oil), it becomes ultra processed.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Well, it's only _over_-processed if we assume it is _bad_. A
| consensus does seem to be emerging that it _is_ bad, but
| building that right into the name seems unhelpful. And as
| alluded to in the article, what the point is after which
| something is 'over'-processed is not particularly clear.
| TheBigSalad wrote:
| Proce-X'ed foods
| willcipriano wrote:
| > some other more neutral term
|
| Nutrient dense/high calorie is probably more accurate.
| snapcaster wrote:
| This would encompass eggs and is leaving out what might be
| key components (engineered by food scientists and produced in
| factory)
| ninalanyon wrote:
| Ultra-processed foods are broadly speaking foods that cannot be
| produced in a normal domestic or restaurant kitchen.
| csours wrote:
| Nobody knows = there is wide disagreement
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33309818/
|
| My personal feeling is that I can eat like a king every day of
| the week. If I only had access to one kind of dessert, I'd be
| fine. I'd get tired of it. Oh, vanilla ice cream again.
|
| But we have access to a wide variety of highly palatable foods,
| each with distinct flavor profiles; and advertisements reminds us
| how much better we'll feel after a snack!
|
| Big recommend for Guyenet's "The Hungry Brain"
|
| (randomly chosen podcast interview)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl1g8l-MdZk
| thrawa1235432 wrote:
| I always take "Nobody knows!" "Nobody could have predicted!" as
| a warning for either something really dumb, biased, or
| uneducated take is about to follow.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| Surely not that mysterious - the adulterants added processed
| foods in order preserve it longer for the shelf, disguise the
| looks, mask the taste or simply bulk it out for max profit
| generally do not provide additional nutritional value
| tpm wrote:
| Simply not providing nutritional value would be neutral from
| health perspective. We are looking for something that provides
| negative effects, either direct (something toxic) or indirect
| (like causing us to eat more which causes obesity...).
| Kirby64 wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Even if the results show conclusively that processing, and not
| just nutrients, leads to poor health, policymakers will face
| another difficulty: the definition of upfs remains woolly. The
| Nova classification has no tolerance at all for artificial
| ingredients. The mere presence of a chemical additive classifies
| a food as a upf, regardless of the amount. This can lead to
| confusing health outcomes--a recent observational study from
| Harvard University, for example, found that whereas some upfs,
| such as sweetened drinks and processed meats, were associated
| with a higher risk of heart disease, others, like breakfast
| cereals, bread and yogurt, were instead linked to lower risks for
| cardiovascular disease. Dr Astrup warns that the current
| classification risks "demonising" a lot of healthy food. Insights
| from Dr Hall's work could therefore help refine the understanding
| of upfs, paving the way for more balanced and useful guidelines.
|
| This to me is the most damning evidence against the current
| classification of 'ultra-processed foods' being absolutely,
| totally worthless. I look forward to the study noted in the
| article comparing high-density vs. hyper-palatable. I strongly
| suspect the study will show its a combinatorial effect... but
| we'll see.
| snapcaster wrote:
| I agree it leaves a lot to be desired but i wouldn't say it's
| totally worthless. It's clearly identifying something and even
| a poorly understood adherence to avoiding UPFs would likely
| make the average person healthier. Overall though we obviously
| need to come up with better terms for this
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Adherence to avoiding UPFs, by the current Nova
| classification, would lead to most people having to radically
| change their diets, assuming you actually follow the Nova
| classification of UPFs to a tee. And assuming they're already
| reasonably healthy, there would be no meaningful health
| benefits I suspect.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| That's precisely what the food product industry wants you
| to believe.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| > avoiding UPFs would likely make the average person
| healthier
|
| UPFs are defined in a way where you could replace them with
| essentially identical foods that only count as "processed" by
| swapping out a couple ingredients with nutritionally
| identical ingredients (e.g. replace HFCS with sucrose).
|
| The research on UPFs doesn't actually compare ultra-processed
| food with similar "processed" foods.
|
| So if you replace a pie containing HFCS with a kale salad,
| yeah it's probably healthier, but there isn't really evidence
| that replacing an "ultra-processed" pie containing HFCS with
| a home-made "processed" pie containing sucrose that otherwise
| has the same nutritional content is healthier (there is some
| researching showing that fructose can be harmful but the
| glucose/fructose content of HFCS isn't significantly
| different from sucrose).
|
| If there is no direct comparison between similar
| ultraprocessed foods and processed foods, the research
| doesn't actually show that ultraprocessed foods are bad in a
| way that homemade processed foods aren't, in which case I'm
| not sure what the point of defining ultraprocessed foods as a
| separate category is.
| heisenbit wrote:
| > there is some researching showing that fructose can be
| harmful but the glucose/fructose content of HFCS isn't
| significantly different from sucrose
|
| Indeed a lot of people ignore this. Still it is worth
| pointing out that
|
| a) a higher glucose content due to sucrose based sweetness
| helps absorbing fructose in a home-made cake.
|
| b) the ultra-processed cake likely got added a fair share
| of sugar alcohols (keeping it moist) which for a single
| digit percentage but still significant portion of the
| population interferes with fructose absorption leading to
| fermentation in the gut.
|
| c) the longer and cold storage of the industrial cake will
| lead to an increase of recombined starch which is harder to
| digest.
|
| (a, b due to fructose transport from gut less efficient
| than for glucose and the transport part relying on presence
| of glucose. Some people suffer from fructose mal-absorption
| where the main transport mechanism is not working and the
| backup mechanism can be blocked by sugar alcohols)
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| 40-60% of nutritional studies cannot be replicated.
|
| You can't reliably draw any conclusions from them. You have to
| use common sense and rules of thumb.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| My favorite plant is wheat, deep friend in peanut oil,
| covered in corn(syrup).
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| is the last one even widely accepted anymore
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What's not widely accepted?
|
| https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/healthy-eating-
| plat...
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| That's pretty good. Though it should be balanced with
| avoiding factory made food.
|
| I personally think non processed meat is good for you, but
| that's a minor point compared to ultra processed vs not
| really processed foods.
|
| I once argued with med students that Oreos (which are
| vegan) are not healthier than a steak.
|
| Absolutely crazy and tbh frightening that anyone (let alone
| med students!) would think Oreos are healthier than a
| steak.
|
| The reasoning of course is that processing and sugar
| content don't matter as much as any level of saturated fat.
| rout39574 wrote:
| The avoidance of factory food is part of the point. GP is
| invoking Michael Pollan from the Omnivore's Dillema,
| among others. By 'Food', Pollan specifically means to
| exclude the sorts of chemical-engineered vague nutrient
| simacrula you're talking about.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Eating most plant starches would be a terrible diet.
| progbits wrote:
| It's saying most of your food should be plants, not that
| most plants should be your food.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| (Michael Pollan)
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/18508-eat-food-not-too-
| much...
| vixen99 wrote:
| Can you please give your reference for that definitive
| statement. And what are 'nutritional studies'? Why wouldn't
| they include the research that led to the list of nutrient
| recommendations issued by USDA and similar publications in
| the UK, Norway, France, Australia and many other countries.
| No conclusions from them? I think there are. There is a truly
| vast literature on subjects nutritional so it's vital to be
| very specific.
|
| Separately, when using the term 'ultraprocessed' we should be
| precise about the processes used. There are many different
| ones with undoubtedly different effects to different degrees
| on the nutrients therein.
| thrawa1235432 wrote:
| The RDA and nutrient recommendations are the bare minimum
| so you do not die. Vast literature is ad populum fallacy.
|
| Also consider that genetic background matters in
| nutritional matters and well... The populations under study
| have changed, and that's assuming you have a fairly similar
| background to a population and not very mixed.
|
| And we are not even getting into how these things go down
| in practice, with heavy industry lobbying and what not...
|
| TLDR, you are on your own in terms of optimal nutrition but
| as another commenter said "eat food, not too much, mostly
| plants"
| workflowing wrote:
| 40-60% - that's a pretty large p-value and reasonable proxy
| for thumbs and sense.
| atombender wrote:
| But some are better than others. The NIH is currently running
| a study (N=36, expected to complete in 2025) on ultra-
| processed foods where the participants are sequested as
| inpatients at the National Institutes of Health Clinical
| Center's research facility and strictly monitored 24/7. They
| can't leave without a chaperone that ensures they're not
| cheating. They've done prior studies such as this one [2]
| (N=20) in 2019. In these studies, they switch the person's
| diet halfway through, in order to see if the effect is real.
| The participants were allowed to eat as much as they wanted,
| but the diets had the same amount of calories total, and the
| same calorie density. The results are striking; participants
| eating ultra-processed foods consumed more calories and
| gained weight while the other group lost weight. [1] https://
| www.nytimes.com/2024/07/30/well/eat/ultraprocessed-f... [2]
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31105044/
| dekhn wrote:
| Even though I'm a scientist and thoroughly trained in
| statistics, the idea that we can to sequester 36 people and
| monitor diet 24/7 and made general conclusions doesn't
| sound completely right to me. Partly in the technical sense
| and partly in the "why do the folks working on human health
| get away with sample sizes that would be laughed about in
| any other field?"
| atombender wrote:
| I don't know enough about medical statistics to say, but
| I often see small sample sizes in studies where the
| effect size is expected to be high. That may be the case
| here.
| dekhn wrote:
| the effect size will not be high
| bluGill wrote:
| There are too many variables in diet. If they study steak
| every meal vs rice and beans every meal they can come up
| with one. However most people are not that one-tracked
| either way. Sometimes the rich eat rice and beans,
| sometimes even poor manage to afford steak. For steak,
| did I mean beef, lamb, goat, pork... - this might or
| might not matter. There is also chicken, turkey, snake,
| deer, elk - and dozens more animals people eat which
| might or might not be healthy. OF each of the above there
| are different cuts (does it matter?), different fat
| levels (does it matter?). And that is just meat, how many
| varieties of beans are there, what about rice? What about
| all the other things people eat?
| duckmysick wrote:
| Do these other fields also study humans in controlled
| experiments?
|
| I think it has to do with the sample to staff ratio. It's
| not enough to observe human subjects. You have to
| actively prevent them from going off the rails. It
| doesn't scale well when you increase the sample size. I
| guess we could replicate a similar experiment n-times and
| then do a meta study, but it's not ideal either.
|
| How would you tackle the logistics of scaling up the
| above experiment?
| dekhn wrote:
| Yes, the most common example would be clinical trials for
| drugs and other medical treatments- often have thousands
| of patients (with recruitment being the limiting factor).
| There are tons of ways that studies can go wrong, for
| example when patients don't take the treatment and lie
| (this is common) or have other lifestyle factors that
| influence the results, which can't be easily smoothed out
| with slightly larger N.
|
| I don't know how to fix the nutritionist studies- I'm
| still pretty skeptical that you could ever control enough
| variables to make any sort of conclusion around things
| with tiny effect sizes. This isn't like nutritional
| diseases we've seen in the past, for example if you look
| at a disease like pellagra (not getting enough niacin),
| literally tens of thousands of people died over a few
| years (beri beri, rickets, scurvy are three other
| examples; these discoveries were tightly coupled to the
| discovery of essential nutrients, now called vitamins).
| bluGill wrote:
| The sample size doesn't concern me as much as what does
| that force on their lifestyle and in turn do they apply.
| They probably are not getting the same exercise as a
| normal person (which runs the range from "gym rat" who
| gets too much to "couch potato" who barely walks).
| nox101 wrote:
| "use common sense" lol - the same common sense that people
| use when confronted with dyhydrogenoxide? the same common
| sense that people used if asked about sodium chloride? The
| same common sense about that tomato, mushroom, seaweed
| extract called MSG?
| hu3 wrote:
| > sweetened drinks and processed meats, were associated with a
| higher risk of heart disease, others, like breakfast cereals,
| bread and yogurt, were instead linked to lower risks for
| cardiovascular disease.
|
| I highly doubt these extra sweetened breakfast cereals are a
| net positive for health. So perhaps they should be more
| specific when it comes to mentioning breakfast cereals.
| mint2 wrote:
| Likewise breakfast yogurt could be either yoplait "yogurt" or
| plain unsweetened actual yogurt, or anything in between.
|
| One is basically gelatinized sugar and the other is pretty
| healthy. If one's classification doesn't easily distinguish
| those two, that's absurd.
| sabbaticaldev wrote:
| one has added sugar and the other not, it's clear which one
| is ultra processed
| standardUser wrote:
| That doesn't make any sense. If I have a bowl of oatmeal,
| and I sprinkle sugar on top, it does not magically become
| ultra-processed.
| digging wrote:
| Well if the sugar is ultra-processed, yes it does,
| doesn't it?
| mecsred wrote:
| Is the sugar ultra processed?
| standardUser wrote:
| No, it does not, since ultra-processed, though not a
| strictly defined term, does not include household
| ingredients like granulated sugar or brown sugar. If you
| happen to have a jar of HFCS in your cabinet then that
| would quality.
| roywiggins wrote:
| it's pretty processed compared to sugarcane at least
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| So homemade bread is ultraprocessed because the wheat was
| processed into flour?
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| From what I understand, technically yes.
|
| I think there's a lot of work to be done on
| categorisation but the underlying principle tends to be
| fairly decent: the more stuff you do to your raw
| ingredients, the less healthy they become.
| johnyzee wrote:
| You can process wheat into flour at home. You cannot
| process sugar cane into table sugar without an industrial
| plant.
| epcoa wrote:
| Well then it is a worthless term. Both granulated sugar
| and HFCS are processed foods. Corn syrup is a household
| ingredient. No idea why you think a bit higher percentage
| of fructose changes anything.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| It does make sense if we're talking about yogurt. The
| sugary yogurts sold at super markets etc don't have sugar
| sprinkled on top, but mixed in. Normally, you can't do
| that.
|
| If you make yogurt the standard way [1] and try to add
| sugar to it while it's still a fluid, it will all sink to
| the bottom and then you'll just have some yogurt with a
| layer of sugar on the bottom. If you add it when it's not
| a fluid anymore, then you'll have a layer at the top. If
| you try to mix it up in between you'll break it up [2]
| and end up with mush; with sugar mixed in.
|
| The only way I can think of to add sugar to yogurt and
| ensure it is evenly mixed throughout its mass is to use
| some additive, probably some kind of stabiliser. I
| suspect that's what makes this kind of yogurt qualify for
| the ultra-processed category.
|
| Check the ingredients on your favourite yogurt. They
| should say: milk, yogurt culture. End of transmission. If
| there's anything else in it, then I would say there's a
| good claim it's been over-processed.
|
| ____________
|
| [1] Bring milk to boil or use UHT. Let cool to 45deg C
| (113deg F). Add lactic ferments (Lactobacillus
| delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus
| thermophilus - readiest source: yogurt). Keep warm. Do
| not disturb. Wait. Enjoy. Scales up to industrial level
| (and is dirt cheap to boot).
|
| [2] That's called syneresis - that's when you put a spoon
| in and then find a little puddle of milky fluid in its
| wake a few hours later. You've broken apart the jell'0
| like structure of the yogurt's curd, i.e. the coagulated
| milk solids, and caused the milk fluids to leak out.
| standardUser wrote:
| There are many brands of yogurt with "fruit on the
| bottom" or otherwise unmixed that use plain sugar. Not
| every store-bought product is the worst possible version
| of a store-bought product. There's a huge variation.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| >The only way I can think of to add sugar to yogurt and
| ensure it is evenly mixed throughout its mass is to use
| some additive, probably some kind of stabiliser. I
| suspect that's what makes this kind of yogurt qualify for
| the ultra-processed category.
|
| What?? I can't be the only one that gets plain greek
| yogurt and adds a tablespoon of honey or agave syrup and
| mixing it evenly before adding some granola + fruit. It's
| not that hard, and it's definitely not ultra-processed.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > I highly doubt these extra sweetened breakfast cereals are
| a net positive for health.
|
| You can't really evaluate this outside of a metabolic
| context. That goes for a lot of things, but you're a lot more
| likely to burn the sugar more or less immediately early in
| the morning, particularly before a workout.
|
| Sugar is a necessary nutrient (i.e. healthy by any sane
| meaning of the word, if such a meaning exists) and we've gone
| much too far in demonizing it.
| marcuskane2 wrote:
| Sugar is absolutely not "a necessary nutrient" and we
| haven't gone far enough in demonizing it.
|
| Literally every study, from rats to humans and from obesity
| to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral health to
| chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar is harmful.
| Modern Americans eat unprecedented amounts of refined sugar
| compared to any point in history.
|
| Sugar should be consumed in moderation akin to alcohol, not
| pumped into every product at every meal.
| com2kid wrote:
| > Literally every study, from rats to humans and from
| obesity to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral
| health to chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar
| is harmful. Modern Americans eat unprecedented amounts of
| refined sugar compared to any point in history.
|
| Emphasis on refined sugar.
|
| Most food products, even meat in trace amounts, has some
| level of some form of sugar in it.
|
| Added sugars are not needed in mass amounts for sure.
| cogman10 wrote:
| While I generally agree with the sentiment that we should
| be cutting added sugar. I have to point out that sugar is
| naturally occurring in most whole foods. Nearly
| everything will have at least a little sucrose, glucose,
| or fructose in it.
|
| Most of the body's natural way of generating energy
| involves turning macronutrients into glucose and later
| into ATP. sucrose and fructose just so happen to have
| very short and very fast routes to conversion.
|
| That fast path is what I think makes sugar particularly
| problematic (as well as honey and a whole lot of other
| "natural" sweeteners that are just repackaged *oses).
| That big jolt of energy which the body ends up converting
| to fat since it has nothing to do with it is (probably)
| where most of the problem lay.
| sabbaticaldev wrote:
| > That fast path is what I think makes sugar particularly
| problematic
|
| there is no way to separate the discussion, doing so it's
| just to avoid solving the issue that is to regulate
| refined sugar
| johnyzee wrote:
| Refined sugar is extremely concentrated compared to the
| natural sources. You need like 50 kilos of sugar cane to
| produce one kilo of refined sugar, and through multiple
| steps of heavy industrial processes.
|
| You could make a case for honey, but, like all other
| natural sources, it contains other ingredients that
| somehow limits ingestion or metabolization.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > Sugar should be consumed in moderation akin to alcohol,
| not pumped into every product at every meal.
|
| Sugar is naturally occurring in basically all the food we
| consume. Good luck ripping it out. Good luck getting a
| functioning body without consuming carbohydrates, either.
|
| > Literally every study, from rats to humans and from
| obesity to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral
| health to chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar
| is harmful.
|
| The body also requires dietary sugar to function :)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate
|
| > Sugar should be consumed in moderation akin to alcohol,
|
| Alcohol is a literal poison that you should not consume
| at all. Sugar is a basic dietary requirement. Of course,
| all nutrients should be consumed in moderation, but
| that's not unique to sugar in any way.
| tredre3 wrote:
| > Good luck getting a functioning body without consuming
| carbohydrates, either.
|
| The body doesn't need carbohydrates to function.
|
| > The body also requires dietary sugar to function :)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate
|
| Again, the body does not :)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| Sure, if you like being constantly fatigued and stupid
| and have a constantly decaying body, you can strip all
| carbs from your diet. I'm not sure you can survive this;
| is there any evidence to the contrary?
|
| Ketogenic diet doesn't mean stripping all carbs from your
| diet (which is, again, effectively impossible). It just
| means burning fat. It's also wildly unhealthy if you
| don't have fat to burn. Only obese people should engage
| in that sort of diet.
| bityard wrote:
| > Sure, if you like being constantly fatigued and stupid
| and have a constantly decaying body, you can strip all
| carbs from your diet. I'm not sure you can survive this;
| is there any evidence to the contrary?
|
| You mean, is there any evidence aside from every person
| who manages their diabetes through diet alone? Or the
| various pre-industrial human cultures who ate virtually
| nothing but fish and small game because their climate was
| notoriously resistant to agriculture and fruit trees?
|
| > It's also wildly unhealthy if you don't have fat to
| burn. Only obese people should engage in that sort of
| diet.
|
| You seem to be confusing the ketogenic diet with
| starving. That's not how it works. If you deplete your
| fat body's stores and get hungry, you simply eat some fat
| and then your body will burn it for fuel. If you decide
| to eat much more fat than your body needs, your body will
| store the fat as fat. But it won't do it quite as readily
| as with sugar/carbs, and you won't get food cravings mere
| hours after eating.
| watwut wrote:
| > Or the various pre-industrial human cultures who ate
| virtually nothing but fish and small game because their
| climate was notoriously resistant to agriculture and
| fruit trees?
|
| We have longer life span. We are healthier then them. And
| we have also bigger muscles for those fitness oriented.
| zby wrote:
| That article starts with
|
| > The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein,
| low-carbohydrate dietary therapy
|
| Keto diet is low-carbs - not completely carbs free.
| bityard wrote:
| To split hairs, "low carb" means different things to
| different groups of people. Lifelong adherents of the
| keto diet put the limit at around 20g of carbs per day.
| But you can find research studies and the like where they
| take a normal Western diet (75-90% carbs) and reduce it
| to say, 60% carbs and then refer to THAT as "low carb."
| autoexec wrote:
| > Sugar is naturally occurring in basically all the food
| we consume. Good luck ripping it out. Good luck getting a
| functioning body without consuming carbohydrates, either.
|
| How do you go from "Sugar should be consumed in
| moderation" to "Sugar should be ripped out of all foods
| and the body doesn't need carbohydrates"?
|
| Why jump from a reasonable and sound observation to some
| ridiculous extreme nobody asked for?
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I interpret it to mean that we shouldn't be _adding_
| sugar to any of our foods. The natural sugar in the foods
| we eat is plenty.
| autoexec wrote:
| I wouldn't even go that far. A slice of birthday cake
| won't kill someone. Added sugars have their place, but we
| shouldn't be adding them where they aren't needed and we
| should consume them in moderation. It's wild how much
| random stuff has added sugar. I've even seen deli meat
| with added sugar. Who is asking for corn syrup to be
| pumped into their roasted turkey?
| zby wrote:
| Actually carbs are necessary and carbs are sugars. In the
| past people with diabetes tried to live on a completely
| carb free diet - but you cannot do that for long.
| Personally I am not sure I am buying the narrative about
| fructose - but it is plausible that it might be bad - but
| glucose you'll have in your blood even if you don't eat
| any sugar - because your own body produces it if you
| don't get it from the food directly.
|
| I wonder why nobody has started sweetening stuff with
| glucose as a 'healthy sweetener'. It is maybe 3 times
| more expensive than normal sugar - but I guess this is
| mostly because it is not a common product - cane sugar in
| Poland is of the same price - and the impact on the price
| of the end product would be marginal.
| syntaxless wrote:
| > In the past people with diabetes tried to live on a
| completely carb free diet - but you cannot do that for
| long.
|
| What is "long?" There are people living years on no carbs
| at all.
| shafyy wrote:
| Who is living years without any carbs?
| bityard wrote:
| The Inuit, for starters. Oh, and me.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| There are no essential carbohydrates. Essential vitamins,
| minerals, amino acids, and fatty acids, yes. Essential
| carbohydrates, no.
| bityard wrote:
| > Actually carbs are necessary
|
| This is NOT true. Carbs are ONE form of energy that the
| body can use for fuel. Fat is the other one.
|
| > people with diabetes tried to live on a completely carb
| free diet - but you cannot do that for long.
|
| I guess you're saying I don't exist?
|
| For about 10 years, I haven't eaten carbs beyond the VERY
| rare cookie or two every other month and the
| insignificant trace amounts in above-ground leafy
| vegetables and the like. I'm not alone, there are lots of
| us who eat this way. Whole online communities, full of
| people who each have their own reasons. I did it for
| general health and fitness reasons, others do it to
| reverse their type 2 diabetes.
|
| In the 1960s, a man named Angus Barbieri fasted for over
| a year under medical supervision and suffered no ill
| effects afterward. Unless you want to believe the whole
| thing is a hoax and he was secretly snarfing donuts on
| the sly, he is proof that humans don't NEED carbs.
|
| The planet used to be dotted with cultures that eat
| animals and fish primarily or exclusively for hundreds to
| thousands of years. The Inuit, Mongolian nomads, tribes
| in the Amazon, etc. They mostly don't exist anymore. (But
| not because of their diet.)
|
| It's not a big group, but there ARE modern people who
| live on a carnivore diet for years on end and don't
| appear to suffer any notable long-term effects. Generally
| these are either extreme keto/paleo adherents,
| bodybuilders, or those who are trying to manage a medical
| condition.
| whtsthmttrmn wrote:
| > In the 1960s, a man named Angus Barbieri fasted for
| over a year under medical supervision and suffered no ill
| effects afterward. Unless you want to believe the whole
| thing is a hoax and he was secretly snarfing donuts on
| the sly, he is proof that humans don't NEED carbs.
|
| Read a little about this on Wikipedia, that's insane! I'm
| still being stubborn and halfway refusing to believe
| there were no bad side effects, though lol
| standardUser wrote:
| If you don't eat sugar directly your body will produce
| it. And unless you plan on eating no fruits or vegetables
| I can't imagine a diet devoid of all sugar.
| bityard wrote:
| Maybe you can't imagine it, but lots of people do it all
| the same.
| standardUser wrote:
| What you are referring to would be something akin to a
| hyper-strict keto diet, which I think nearly all medical
| professionals would consider ill-advised if not outright
| dangerous.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| There is a lot of stuff I can't eat because the amount of
| added sugar is disgusting.
| standardUser wrote:
| Yeah, but even a cup of celery contains a gram of sugar.
| Eating "no" sugar is preposterous. You could never eat
| any fruits or vegetables! But lots of people avoid excess
| sugar, me included.
| Wolfenstein98k wrote:
| Almost correct, except sugar consumption has been
| declining for decades. The peak was prior to 2000 IIRC
| watwut wrote:
| That is just eating disorder kind of thinking. Stop
| spreading it. You can eat sugar, it wont harm you. Pretty
| much anything harms you in super large quantities.
|
| Sacharids are good for you in general, just like faits,
| protein and everything else.
| moomin wrote:
| Strong agree. The Nova classification is extremist and heavily
| useless. Yes if you come up with two classifications and one
| includes McDonalds burgers and the other doesn't you'll be able
| to show a health effect. Doesn't mean your categorisation is
| useful.
| anonym29 wrote:
| Do you really think it's not useful at all to know you can
| protect your health proactively with one classification
| system of UPFs, that is deemed a bit extreme?
|
| Or is it possible you're coming from a place of motivated
| reasoning? If you've got a worldview that deems your own food
| choices "healthy", but they're not on the Nova classification
| list, that doesn't automatically mean your own food choices
| aren't healthy, they're just not known to be healthy within
| one of many frameworks.
|
| Instead of tearing down what we know works because it doesn't
| include the foods you deem healthy, why not advocate for more
| research into the foods in question specifically?
| pjc50 wrote:
| The history of nutritional advice studies is _extremely_
| noisy and full of questionable, later reversed discoveries
| that have been p-hacked into existence. I think people are
| right to be very, very wary of rejecting the null
| hypothesis about anything without extremely solid clear
| evidence.
| anonym29 wrote:
| I don't disagree at all, but is there anything ambiguous
| about the health benefits of avoiding UPFs as defined by
| the Nova classification system? It seems the criticism I
| was responding to was more about the classification
| system being too strict, rather than lacking clear
| evidence of health benefits.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Nova does not make any judgment on the healthiness of
| foods, to my knowledge. The problem is that people take
| the extremely broad classification of UPFs by Nova, infer
| health detriments, and then cast judgment on the overly
| broad UPF classification as if everything in that
| category is equally as bad.
|
| Here's a reminder of the Nova UPF classification:
|
| > Industrially manufactured food products made up of
| several ingredients (formulations) including sugar, oils,
| fats and salt (generally in combination and in higher
| amounts than in processed foods) and food substances of
| no or rare culinary use (such as high-fructose corn
| syrup, hydrogenated oils, modified starches and protein
| isolates). Group 1 foods are absent or represent a small
| proportion of the ingredients in the formulation.
| Processes enabling the manufacture of ultra-processed
| foods include industrial techniques such as extrusion,
| moulding and pre-frying; application of additives
| including those whose function is to make the final
| product palatable or hyperpalatable such as flavours,
| colourants, non-sugar sweeteners and emulsifiers; and
| sophisticated packaging, usually with synthetic
| materials. Processes and ingredients here are designed to
| create highly profitable (low-cost ingredients, long
| shelf-life, emphatic branding), convenient (ready-
| to-(h)eat or to drink), tasteful alternatives to all
| other Nova food groups and to freshly prepared dishes and
| meals. Ultra-processed foods are operationally
| distinguishable from processed foods by the presence of
| food substances of no culinary use (varieties of sugars
| such as fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, 'fruit juice
| concentrates', invert sugar, maltodextrin, dextrose and
| lactose; modified starches; modified oils such as
| hydrogenated or interesterified oils; and protein sources
| such as hydrolysed proteins, soya protein isolate,
| gluten, casein, whey protein and 'mechanically separated
| meat') or of additives with cosmetic functions (flavours,
| flavour enhancers, colours, emulsifiers, emulsifying
| salts, sweeteners, thickeners and anti-foaming, bulking,
| carbonating, foaming, gelling and glazing agents) in
| their list of ingredients.
|
| A few items that stick out like a sore thumb to me
| regarding healthiness:
|
| * How could sophisicated packaging, usually with
| synthetic materials impact health?
|
| * How does making something highly profitably necessarily
| impact health?
|
| * Nova's definition of something with 'no culinary use'
| is extremely biased in my view. How do specific sugars
| (each with specific properties that are useful) have no
| culinary use? How are protein mixes not culinarily
| useful?
|
| * Nova's definition of 'cosmetic function' is also just..
| stupid in my view. Flavors are cosmetic? Emulsifiers are
| cosmetic? By this definition, adding MSG to a food makes
| it UPF.
| anonym29 wrote:
| While I can't speak to all of your questions /
| criticisms, food packaging is responsible for releasing a
| wide range of chemicals that are either known or
| suspected to be harmful to some (men, pregnant women,
| etc) or all humans, including BPA, phthalates,
| xenoestrogens, per- and poly-fluorinated substances, and
| microplastics. I'm sure there are many others, those are
| just the ones that come to top of mind for me.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| The poor categorization may be a purposeful obfuscation. If
| you have bad labels it becomes easy to have poor studies that
| are easily criticized, and entire movements or research
| fields for food safety can be dismissed. Instead of labels we
| need transparency on every last ingredient and process
| applied.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Instead of labels we need transparency on every last
| ingredient and process applied.
|
| Why not both? Let's list every ingredient on the label
| along with info on the processes involved.
| bluGill wrote:
| I need something so that when I go get some food I know
| if it is good or bad for me. Bad is a range, somethings
| are bad enough to never eat, some are fine as a treat.
| Some are good in specific circumstance but bad in others.
| Somehow I want to cut through all that to know how to
| eat.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| > others, like breakfast cereals, bread and yogurt, were
| instead linked to lower risks for cardiovascular disease.
|
| This surprises me. A lot of breakfast cereals and sweetened
| yogurts are basically candy, and I would have assumed are heavy
| contributors to poor health.
| Jensson wrote:
| > A lot of breakfast cereals and sweetened yogurts are
| basically candy
|
| Apparently "basically candy" is not the same thing as candy.
| That is a great find, lets us eat basically candy without the
| health consequences.
| sfink wrote:
| I don't see where your assumption is being challenged.
| "Breakfast cereals" is a very loose category. I would not
| conclude that Froot Loops lower risks of cardiovascular
| disease just because Ezekiel's Gravel Bits have been shown to
| do the same.
| drcongo wrote:
| Brit here: the idea that "ultra-processed foods" are really bad
| for you is definitely something that's entered the general
| consciousness here, but I don't think I know anybody who has
| any kind of meaningful answer to what "ultra-processed foods"
| actually are.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| If it couldn't be made outside a factory, it's ultra
| processed.
| vel0city wrote:
| At what point does a bakery become a factory?
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| I personally would avoid pretty much everything that
| comes out of a bakery.
| vel0city wrote:
| Ok, so when does a butcher shop become a factory?
|
| When does a fruit farm become a factory?
|
| Is candied bacon an ultra-processed food?
|
| And even then, things made in a bakery can be made at
| home so I don't get how your above standard still makes
| any sense. Is homemade bread with flour milled at home
| ultra-processed as well? Candied bacon can be made
| outside of a factory as well. If so, it's not really a
| "was it made in a factory" argument now was it?
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| Ah yes, the ol' I can't tell a fruit farm from a factory
| shtick
| tlb wrote:
| Most bread and yogurt in the average grocery store is pretty
| bad stuff, full of HFCS, hydrogenated oils, and hydrolyzed
| proteins.
|
| But yes, I'd rather have a classification that clearly
| separates Coke and Cheez Doodles from actual foods. There are
| some multi-billion dollar lobbies to prevent that happening,
| though.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > Most bread and yogurt in the average grocery store is
| pretty bad stuff, full of HFCS, hydrogenated oils, and
| hydrolyzed proteins.
|
| I eat a lot of (plain) yogurt. But my kids often eat
| sweetened yogurt, which I've suspected is not-at-all-healthy.
| So I went to check the ingredients of several sweetened
| brands. I could be wrong but I don't see any of those you're
| concerned about explicitly mentioned. I do see "fructose"
| which seems like it could be just about as bad as HFCS? Or
| maybe the terms you use are generic and there's some specific
| ingredients that qualify? Or did I just get lucky with these
| examples I picked?
|
| Examples:
|
| Yoplait GoGurt Protein Berry Yogurt Tubes contains: Grade A
| Reduced Fat Milk, Ultrafiltered Skim Milk, Sugar, Contains 1%
| or Less of: Kosher Gelatin, Modified Food Starch, Fruit and
| Vegetable Juice (for Color), Tricalcium Phosphate, Potassium
| Sorbate Added to Maintain Freshness, Natural Flavor,
| Carrageenan, Yogurt Cultures (L. Bulgaricus, S.
| Thermophilus), Vitamin A Acetate, Vitamin D3.
|
| Danimals Smoothie Strawberry Explosion And Mixed Berry Dairy
| contains: Cultured Grade A Low Fat Milk, Water, Cane Sugar,
| Modified Food Starch, Contains Less Than 1% Of Milk Minerals,
| Natural Flavors, Fruit & Vegetable Juice (For Color), Lemon
| Juice Concentrate, Vitamin D3, Active Yogurt Cultures S.
| Thermophilus & L. Bulgaricus.
| randerson wrote:
| "Natural Flavor" is an ultra-processed ingredient.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| Contains added sugar.
| tlb wrote:
| Added fructose seems bad for you. Specifically, a high
| ratio of fructose:glucose (which doesn't occur in nature)
| does something weird to your metabolism. Your gut uses some
| hack like detecting only glucose to trigger intermediate
| steps in the metabolism of both, and consumption of high
| fructose:glucose foods causes weight gain.
|
| More: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4145298/
| raverbashing wrote:
| I agree. Classification of UPFs seems more to be a "religious
| purity" discussion than actuall classification of good/bad
|
| Univariable classifications are usually not helpful, and this
| seems to just confirm it. In the same way "sugar free" or "fat
| free" make little sense
| rpdillon wrote:
| It's like the 'screen time' of the food industry.
| kelipso wrote:
| > breakfast cereals, bread and yogurt, were instead linked to
| lower risks for cardiovascular disease
|
| Breakfast cereals? That sugary stuff? Someone else said 40-60%
| of nutritional studies are not replicable. Sounds more like the
| whole field is BS.
|
| Scream naturalistic fallacy all you like but I would absolutely
| avoid all chemical additives and go natural all the way. If
| humans haven't been eating it for thousands of years, I would
| absolutely avoid it.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Yep. It's hard to trust anything, especially because in the
| US things that aren't banned are allowed by default.
| Companies add new substances to products constantly, often
| just minor variations of something that was banned.
| JoshTko wrote:
| This is the best advice. Also proportion should match
| historical proportion, ie. very little sugar most of the
| time.
| slt2021 wrote:
| not all cereals have added sugar, I dont buy 40% added sugar,
| but rather 0% and 14% added sugar cereals
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| What we need first is transparency. Complete information about
| every ingredient, its supplier, where it was grown, what
| process it went through, etc. then we can perform research
| without confusing and conflicting results. Unfortunately I've
| seen people fight state or local level labeling laws by falling
| for corporate propaganda, particularly from companies in the
| GMO industry.
| standardUser wrote:
| One hundred percent agree. Companies should be obligated to
| provide comprehensive information on the ingredients they use
| in producing the food they sell us. It seems so basic, but
| even small steps in that direction are always met with
| maximum industry resistance.
| slothtrop wrote:
| It's not hard to intuit, but yes it can be less useful owing to
| ambiguity and confusion. It would be less difficult to settle
| on a definition that does not lean so hard on "processing" and
| actually conveys what is problematic.
|
| For example, "shelf-stable packaged foods with a large flour
| component, wherein the flour component is stripped of all
| fiber, with added fat, salt, and sometimes sugar". You can also
| include candy, soft-drinks and juice.
|
| That doesn't tell you something is "ultra-processed", but it
| identifies more meaningful factors. These are typically non-
| satiating snack foods, very low in protein and fiber, but very
| savory with added salt and fat. The combination of refined
| flour, salt and fat seems to be of particular note (and sugar
| regardless).
| blablabla123 wrote:
| > This to me is the most damning evidence against the current
| classification of 'ultra-processed foods' being absolutely,
| totally worthless.
|
| It's quite funny that even 15 years after labeling UPF as such
| there's still a struggle to "officially" mark it as unhealthy
| and I don't understand why it should be challenged. I would
| think that most children growing up are being told that candy,
| fries and Gatorade aren't healthy foods. Most people I know
| consider E-numbers as dodgy ingredients.
|
| As mentioned in the article there are statistics that under the
| UPF classifications people are way more unhealthy both
| physically and even mentally. Shouldn't that be enough? Now a
| new study is needed to benchmark UPF that is low in fat, sugar
| and salt. Basically against a product class that hardly exists.
| I mean nobody eats like that. Most people put extra salt on
| their food, the Mediterranean diet somewhat the gold standard
| in good yet healthy food contains tons of fat and various
| cuisines from the region have rather sugary desserts.
|
| I'd be fine classifying UPF as unhealthy and calling it a day.
| If food businesses want to explore "healthy" UPFs they should
| probably do so and take the burden to re-classify it as
| healthy. This seems like a quite Kafka-esque endeavor.
| andybak wrote:
| > Most people I know consider E-numbers as dodgy ingredients.
|
| (From a quick 30 second search) E300 is Vitamin C, E101 is
| Vitamin B2
|
| And yes - I'm aware that vitamins that are naturally present
| are probably better than "fortifying" food - but still.
| r00fus wrote:
| I've never seen Vitamin C listed as E300 on a label. So
| while you are correct, the heuristic (avoid E-numbers)
| works in practice.
| Jensson wrote:
| Yeah, anything good wont be listed as an E number, you
| use the name people recognize.
| andybak wrote:
| OK but then why would a manufacturer ever use a E number
| - considering the stigma attached? Only when the other
| name "sounds worse"?
|
| Is there a legal threshold where you have to use the E
| number?
| olejorgenb wrote:
| Limited space on the label maybe :D Some of the real
| names of the E's are very long.
| pizzathyme wrote:
| The best exception is high quality protein powder. Additional
| protein consumption is extremely healthy for you, short and
| long term. But it's technically an ultra-processed food.
|
| It's _probably_ better to each 4-5 chicken breasts per day
| instead of protein powder. But as far as I know there hasn 't
| been a measured difference.
| swatcoder wrote:
| That's not a clear exception at all.
|
| Within some mental model, isolated protein powder is
| healthy because we generally treat high protein consumption
| as low-risk for most people and recognize that protein
| isolates can be very effective for professional and amateur
| athletes to consume a lot of while building muscle.
|
| In no way does that imply that these protein isolates are
| "extremely healthy" for the general public or even for
| anyone in the long term. There's just not any data to say
| that specifically (it's too niche to perform those kinds of
| studies), and far too little reason to make that assumption
| with confidence.
|
| (And it's almost certainly a _terrible_ idea for most
| people to eat 4-5 chicken breasts per day -- or a
| comparable amount of protein isolate powder. Please
| remember that most people are not living a gym bro
| lifestyle and shouldn 't be following gym bro nutritional
| advice in the first place.)
| cgh wrote:
| Protein isn't bad for you and 4-5 chicken breasts is
| around 120g a day, a healthy amount for an adult. By way
| of comparison, indigenous people where I live ate
| hundreds of grams a day in their traditional diets. I've
| run into this whole "don't eat too much protein, oh man
| you will die!" nonsense meme before and I wonder where it
| came from.
| swatcoder wrote:
| > 4-5 chicken breasts is around 120g a day
|
| Bad math? Per USDA standards, a single boneless skinless
| chicken breast has ~54 grams of protein; so 4-5 would be
| ~200-250g of protein.
|
| Because that's grossly outside the norm for the general
| public, you're not going to find any evidence to support
| the idea it's a healthy amount for a typical person to
| consume for a long period of time. And likewise, you'll
| find little evidence saying what negative consequences it
| might have, if any.
|
| You're welcome to make whatever assumptions you want to
| in that case, but there's not a lot of ground for anyone
| to convince skeptics who disagree with them. It's tenuous
| assumptions all the way down.
|
| Regardless, in the real world, that also represents
| 1200-1500 calories of absurdly (mind-numbingly) high-
| satiety food and quite a lot of slow digestive bulk. Most
| people simply wouldn't be able to consume that while also
| eating a varied diet that provides them with adequate
| long-term nutrition. So it's probably a pretty bad idea
| for them to dedicate themselves to it, unless -- like
| some athletes and gym bros -- they have the _further_
| discipline to _also_ stuff themselves of all the other
| stuff they need to eat while _also_ not eating so much
| that they become overweight. Do you know many people like
| that? I 'm not sure I've met more than a handful in my
| lifetime.
|
| Whatever the impact of the very high protein consumption
| itself in some abstract theoretical kind of way, which
| we're far from having evidence into understanding, it's
| just terrible advice for the general public because of
| the secondary effects we might reasonably expect in
| practice.
| tugdual wrote:
| When Carlos Monteiro decided to operationalize UPFs by giving
| them a definition (laymans terms: UPF is one ingredient you
| wouldn't find in a traditional kitchen and wrapped in plastic)
| Kevin Hall from the US had the same reaction as you and decided
| to make a multi-million dollar experiment to disprove the
| definition proposed by Dr. Monteiro. Result: People who ate
| unprocessed lost weight, and the other group gained weight.
| (Groups were exchanged after 2 weeks and saw similar effects).
| 317070 wrote:
| A link for other people who are interested in this:
| https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-
| find...
| wnevets wrote:
| People don't understand that basic task like washing is
| "processing" the food and can be frustrating when talking to
| them about this subject.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| I think there's some fudging of the terms here. When the
| article is talking about "bread" being healthy- well, there's
| bread, and then there's bread. Supermarket bread (sliced,
| packaged) typically lists a couple dozen ingredients. Ordinary
| bread... you know, bread-bread, like the one some of us bake at
| home, is made of: flour, water, salt, leavening agent (yeast or
| sourdough for those as have the patience). Bread-bread is
| probably healthy especially if you make it with (expensive)
| wholemeal flours. But supermarket bread? I don't think so.
|
| Same goes for breakfast cereals and breakfast cereals. e.g.
| there's oatmeal and weetabix that are basically just a bit of
| fiber, not the healthiest thing you can eat but won't kill you.
| And then there's ... well my favourite poison is Kellog's
| Smacks and it's basically just as nourishing as eating
| cardboard with sugar on top.
| troyvit wrote:
| There's a cool book I didn't finish White Bread by Aaron
| Bobrow-Strain. It talks about the history of store bought
| bread supplanting home baked bread, and the marketing wars
| waged both for and against store bought bread. I'm gonna
| start it up again and I recommend it.
| goalieca wrote:
| > But supermarket bread? I don't think so.
|
| Why? The point of the quotation was to question if this was a
| problem in the quantities listed. I know I'd rather eat whole
| grain enriched supermarket bread than refined white flour
| bread from some low protein source wheat.
| willy_k wrote:
| The whole grain bread is definitely preferable, but it is
| still very likely to have added oils, gums, and/or
| preservatives. I think their main point is that supermarket
| bread is rarely made of just bread. There are exceptions
| but that requires one to first take the time to identify
| them and then fork up the extra dough (punintended).
| HPsquared wrote:
| Is there even a proven causal link? It could just be another case
| of "poor people do thing X, and poor people have higher
| mortality".
| taeric wrote:
| Looking at the amount of processed food available in Japan, it is
| hard to think it is just the processed food that is to blame.
|
| I think it is a cheap observation, such that I expect people to
| push back on me, but it is hard to ignore portion sizes. Will try
| and take a dive on some of the data around that. But a personal
| level, it is hard to grapple with the fact that I just got less
| food per place that I went.
|
| And it is frustrating, as getting the food, I would want a large
| burger/sandwhich/whatever. But waiting a small amount of time
| after a small snack/meal works.
| burnte wrote:
| There have been experiments that control for portion size,
| processed food still spikes glucose more, etc.
| taeric wrote:
| Isn't that some of what this article was challenging?
| burnte wrote:
| I don't believe so, I felt it was we know it does just not
| why yet.
| taeric wrote:
| I mean, that is the headline. The thrust of the article
| was that a lot of the common things people offer for why
| don't have any real evidence. All we seem to have is that
| people eat more calories when doing processed foods.
|
| Specifically, the RCT showing that people eating ultra
| processed foods eat an average of 500 more calories per
| day is what I was looking at. Seems to basically align
| far more heavily with it being the volume of food than it
| is other qualities. Though, my memory was stronger in
| what that paragraph claimed.
| nightski wrote:
| I honestly think stress and work obsession along with sedentary
| lifestyles has a lot more to do with anything health related
| than ultra processed foods.
| coding123 wrote:
| Very true, someone that has time to make a meal from scratch
| is clearly not stressed, has money and time. Maybe not all,
| but from a category view, there are so many factors on those
| two different worlds that affect health, that focusing on
| just food is crazy.
| bee_rider wrote:
| What's special about Japan in this context?
| bilekas wrote:
| They do have a particularly high life expectancy.
|
| https://data.who.int/countries/392
| qup wrote:
| And don't have the obesity problem we have
| bee_rider wrote:
| This is a lagging indicator though, right? I wonder how the
| diets of Japanese people ~50 years ago compare to the
| Americans of today.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| Good health outcomes compared to other first world countries?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Japan isn't special IMHO, but overweight rate is on the low
| side.
|
| Now, trying to understand why is can of worm (social pressure
| and bullying probably plays a role for instance, which have
| other adverse effects possibly worse than just being
| overweight)
| formerlurker wrote:
| I went to Japan recently and one of the most striking
| things to me was how easy it was to walk to places. Their
| infrastructure astounded me because it was set up with
| people in mind and not car companies.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if keeping moving contributed
| more to not dying than diet specifics.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| My understanding (albeit only gathered from blogs/YouTube
| videos/Google Maps) is that the biggest difference is
| parking. On-street parking is mostly not allowed, free
| parking at businesses is mostly limited to car-centric
| ones like mechanics and dealerships, and you can't
| register a car without proving that you have a place to
| park it. Tens of millions of Japanese people living in
| less-dense areas have no problem with that, but in Tokyo
| it's prohibitively expensive for the average person due
| to land cost. This means that even in suburban areas,
| roads are narrower and everything is closer together.
| jimbokun wrote:
| When I worked in Japan for a year and lived in the
| company subsidized dormitory, a coworker half-joked that
| it cost more to house his car in a payed parking spot
| than it did to house himself in the dorm.
| robocat wrote:
| I think this can be seen in cities with walking-to-work
| culture (often metro/underground).
|
| Although I've wondered if cause is enforced exercise or
| just selection (people that move to a large city to work
| have a demographic).
| taeric wrote:
| Possibly nothing. Was just recently able to observe it
| directly.
| loeg wrote:
| Much lower rate of obesity. Like 5% instead of 40% (US).
| AmVess wrote:
| In the US, portion size, calorie density, frequency of eating
| high calorie foods are contributing to people getting a lot
| fatter a lot faster than before. We now have instant
| gratification in food delivery services. Get anything you want
| without leaving home.
|
| In fast food, people are eating a day's worth of food in one
| sitting. Triple burger, large fries, large drink. People are
| doing this once a day every day of the week.Then they go home
| and order more high calorie food with high calorie drinks and
| constant snacking.
|
| It is amazing to see how much more obese people have gotten in
| the last decade, and the % of fat people has gone up a lot,
| too.
|
| Restaurants of all types serve massive portions, and people eat
| it without thinking or realizing they are eating a day's worth
| of calories in one meal, and I haven't touched on the amount of
| fat, sugar, and sodium they are packing away.
|
| The fact that people today have shorter lifespans than their
| parents should be sounding alarms everywhere, but there is
| nothing but silence.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> In fast food, people are eating a day 's worth of food in
| one sitting. Triple burger, large fries, large drink. People
| are doing this once a day every day of the week.Then they go
| home and order more high calorie food with high calorie
| drinks and constant snacking._
|
| The UK had a reality TV show called _Secret Eaters_ where
| they signed up people to be monitored 24 /7 by cameras and
| private investigators which tracked every single thing they
| put in their mouth and counted up the calories.
|
| It was really informative to see how some people eat and it
| is not pretty. Even the people who didn't regularly eat fast
| food or go out to chip shops ate way more than is healthy
| with fatty sausages, fried things, and little fruit or
| vegetables, all in huge portions.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I'd love to see that happen with people that are keeping a
| food diary and see how much they're being honest with
| themselves.
|
| Though their behavior would probably change if they knew
| they were being recorded.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Sedentary lifestyles are a huge factor too.
| Fricken wrote:
| Many elite athletes devour ultraprocessed foods. Elite
| cyclists have pushed their performance limits by eating as
| much sugar as their digestive systems can handle. They eat
| sugar until they puke and it trains their guts to tolerate
| more sugar in the future.
|
| Sugar and other simple carbs are quick burning fuel. You
| don't want to be flooding your blood stream with fuel when
| your body doesn't need it, but when it does, well, it's
| fuel, it gets into your system fast, and it makes you go.
| cush wrote:
| These people you describe are experiencing very real eating
| disorders. Even if they aren't counting calories, they are
| keenly aware that they're destroying their body. They aren't
| silent, they're addicted.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Socially acceptable eating disorders are the foundation of
| multiple hundred billion dollar companies.
|
| Every junk and fast food company in America sells food that
| does not satisfy you, is unhealthy for you, has a "taste"
| that is not easy to replicate at home but that has been
| scientifically curated to prevent you from reaching the
| satiation point when you are eating them (like Pringles,
| "Bet you can't eat just one", but it's all of the foods all
| of the time), has less nutrition year over year despite
| artificial vitamin supplementation, and is just a hair less
| expensive than cooking it yourself with better ingredients.
|
| It's not an eating disorder to eat junk food in America.
|
| It's a symptom of a larger society wide dysfunction that
| any person who lived in a sane world and was suddenly
| subjected to would consider
| demonic/evil/abhorrent/terrifying.
|
| Don't blame the victims. Recognize the blight for what it
| is.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| You cannot imo use Japan as an argument for anything. There are
| so many unique and localised factors at play in Japan, that it
| could be something as obscure as incredible self limiting
| eating due to fear of social stigma.
|
| Japan is a basket case.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| The end of the article gets the point. The problem isn't _that_
| food is processed; the problem is that extremely processed foods
| are much harder to moderate yourself on and present a much, much
| more appealing food to overeat on, which in turn causes health
| problems and is why so many people are so fat, along with other
| factors like people being lonely and depressed, and food being a
| quick and cheap way to make yourself happy, the broad
| availability of unhealthy food and the sometimes restricted
| availability of healthy food, the fact that people are too damn
| busy to find time in their schedules to prepare their own food,
| etc. etc.
|
| Which itself ties into other systemic incentives. Processed food
| is shelf stable, fresh often is not, so it's friendlier to
| logistical systems that deliver everything we eat, which means
| less of it gets wasted, which means the prices are lower and
| availability is virtually guaranteed. Put simply: it is far
| easier and more profitable to ship, stock, and sell potato chips
| than it is to sell potatoes, and because everything in our system
| is profit driven, the better things map onto that, the more they
| occur. Ergo we're drowning in potato chips and still starving.
| thrawa1235432 wrote:
| In that case we can just take Ozempic or whatever guys!
|
| Just kidding, no that's not the problem. The problem is
| processing destroys/alter many molecules we do not even know
| about or know it's full "purpose"/role in nutrition and
| digestion. The commonly talked about vitamins and RDA and such
| are just the bare minimum so a broad population does not get
| sick, but does not mean optimum health for a given individual.
|
| Cf. eating 10mg of iron in a steak, readily bioavailable vs
| eating 10mg of iron from cereal. One is bound in easily
| digestible compounds, the other is iron shavings or rust.
|
| e.g The British Navy discovering that scurvy is fixed by eating
| fresh food; ensuring to add citrus to sailors diets, then
| forgetting about how it worked. Then retrying citrus, but
| cooking it one using copper vessels, which destroy much of the
| vitamin C content.
| jumpoddly wrote:
| Excessively editorialized headline for the post to the point of
| trying to make the opposite point as the original.
| jaggederest wrote:
| So even beyond the factors in the article (calorie density and
| hyper-palatability) there's other contributing factors in
| processed food. First of all, the processing itself introduces
| several factors: mechanical and heat energy changing the
| structure (but not composition) of the food, usually into smaller
| particle sizes; and the potential introduction of new
| contaminants - one that has been discussed before is lithium
| grease[1].
|
| The other thing that processed food does, partially discussed in
| the article, is sit on shelves much longer. I wonder whether
| we've detected the acute effects of spoilage (e.g. food-borne
| illness) but missed some chronic effect.
|
| [1]: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2024/07/27/lithium-
| hypothesis-...
| julianeon wrote:
| This is a great point and one that I think would change many
| minds.
|
| If you say "more calories" or "hyperpalatable", many people
| will think "I can control that with portion control - I just
| won't binge them."
|
| But if you say "it changes the physical form of the food" or
| "it has contaminants in it," it's clear that no amount of
| portion control can fix that.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Well that depends on what the form change _does_. Most form
| changes are just fine.
|
| And whether portion control can fix contamination depends on
| what the contaminant is. A lot of things are only potentially
| harmful above a certain level.
| natdempk wrote:
| The Slime Mold Time Mold article is maybe an interesting
| starting point, but really not great analysis... see this
| thorough rebuttal around the Lithium stuff that has not been
| responded to:
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7iAABhWpcGeP5e6SB/it-s-proba...
|
| TBH a lot of the discourse around this annoys me because it
| ignores sort of fundamental obvious stuff like food/snacks got
| way tastier, access to unhealthier food is higher, we live a
| way more sedentary lifestyle, takeout got more affordable,
| studies show that people overall consume more calories from
| unhealthier sources, you can go to the grocery store and see
| you should basically avoid much of the food there, food spikes
| your glucose higher, more artificial ingredients, switch from
| fat to sugar, more processed ingredients, etc. and yet everyone
| says "well it can't just be that" because XYZ specific study of
| some quality and timeframe took one of those axis in some
| degree of isolation and showed that _maybe_ it's not that
| specific thing only. Kind of a missing the forest for the
| common sense trees aspect. Obviously we don't understand the
| whole picture of obesity, but there's a degree of denial around
| common sense health stuff that's really weird in the kind of
| "rationalists try to figure out obesity" writing. I really
| think we should work more from a place of "you don't see people
| who do moderately intense exercise regularly and eat healthily
| being overweight/obese" as a baseline...
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| Seems pretty obvious to me. Humans didn't have factories until a
| couple hundred years ago.
|
| This means we are not adapted to factory made food.
|
| This entire debate is hilariously overcomplicated by smarty pants
| "show me the study" or "aren't cooked carrots processed?" types.
|
| 40-60% of nutritional studies cannot be replicated. It's called
| the "replication crisis". Google it.
|
| Rules of thumb are greatly underrated on HN. Here's one: if it
| couldn't be made outside of a factory, don't eat it.
| snapcaster wrote:
| "if it couldn't be made outside of a factory, don't eat it." i
| follow this as well it's a great rule. I have no idea on the
| internet, but in real life nobody who's ever been the smarty
| pants saying "aren't cooked carrots processed?" has health or a
| body i'm envious of
| makeitdouble wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| Good thing I didn't make that argument :)
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I'm not sure what argument you were making then.
|
| Assuming your point isn't that you used the "factory"
| terminology instead of calling it "unnatural", so it's not
| an appeal to nature.
|
| I'd actually be pleased to dig on the deeper part you were
| pointing to.
|
| PS: the "we are not adapted" to part of your post is the
| crux of it in my eyes: we're not adapted to a lot of things
| but that doesn't make it good or bad or problematic. We're
| not adapted to receiving MRIs, wearing glasses or looking
| at imaginary landscapes in VR, and that's totally fine in
| my book .
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| If I wanted to say unnatural I would have said unnatural.
| I said factory.
|
| Factories come with a mountain of lubricants, plastics,
| metals, agents, colorings, flavorings, etc that are
| poisonous. They are poisonous because we were not evolved
| to consume them. That's just 1 of many reasons factory
| made foods are bad.
|
| > we're not adapted to a lot of things but that doesn't
| make it good or bad or problematic
|
| These things would be good for you _in spite_ of the fact
| that you 're not adapted to it.
|
| There are far more many things that you are not adapted
| to that would kill you. Your list is hilariously arguable
| (VR might actually be bad for you lol). My list would
| consist of basic inarguable things like, fish can breathe
| underwater naked, humans cannot, and my list would be
| inexhaustibly long.
| xooxies wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Avoiding manufactured food is absurd to a level I didn't
| think needed explanation.
|
| Even from a logistics POV we're 8 billion on this planet,
| concentrated in cities. Everyone following that philosophy
| would bring a food chain collapse.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| Good thing you don't need to follow what everyone else
| does :)
| snapcaster wrote:
| If we were on less censored forums would just ask you to
| "post body". Since that's not considered a valid argument
| here instead i'll just gesture to the countless
| innovations that have been developed by humans that turn
| out to have massive negative health consequences. What
| gives you the confidence that our current food
| manufacturing techniques won't turn out to be one of
| those things? Would you have made this argument about
| cigarettes in the 20s?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| People are forgetting we had famines a few centuries ago
| in the west, and still have famines in many places. Sure,
| they are also usually associated with governing issues
| and other complicating factors, but still. The number of
| peoole being alive is my answer to whether food
| manufacturing is a net negative or not.
|
| While the pendulum has swung way past the equilibrium for
| us, rejecting whole categories of food that tend to be
| nutrious, easily preserved is just not realistic.
|
| To me there are dozens of other levers we can pull to
| deal with health improvement. As pointed out in the other
| threads, not all OECD countries are facing what the US
| are facing.
|
| PS: do I get all my points accepted as truth if I can
| prove a BMI that satisfies you ? Would 22 do it ?
| mihaic wrote:
| Always using the appeal to nature is a fallacy, but a more
| refined heuristic is to simply consider that the burden of
| proof for a processed meal is much greater than that for an
| unprocessed one.
|
| I remember a movie from the 1950s, where a character was
| arguing that "margarine is just like butter", and the
| response was that "butter needs no explanation".
| yurishimo wrote:
| There's a woman on YouTube that I watch sometimes who recreates
| popular sweets/snacks/desserts but using fresh ingredients and
| home friendly (usually) cooking techniques. What always blows
| me away is just how long is takes to make something like a
| Little Debbie Oatmeal cream pie from scratch.
|
| If we as a species could no longer rely on industrialization to
| create junk foods and instead had to make them from scratch,
| we'd spend 100x as long making them as we do shoving them down
| our throats and therefore savor the few that we do make and
| likely eat less.
|
| The subconscious power of availability and plenty on the human
| psyche is enormously underestimated.
| Eumenes wrote:
| > This entire debate is hilariously overcomplicated by smarty
| pants "show me the study" or "aren't cooked carrots processed?"
| types.
|
| Whenever the topic of Ozempic comes up on HN there is an
| instant flurry of comments suggesting that people don't have
| control over what they eat whatsoever and pharmaceutical
| intervention is the only way to solve obesity. Those are the
| same people suggesting there is nothing wrong with processed
| food.
| blurri wrote:
| And yet science doesn't have an clear answer here. Just
| conjecture and theories like the ones you stated.
| ptero wrote:
| TLDR: According to the article, people eat more calories when
| they eat ultra-processed foods. The reason is unknown, one
| possibility is more calories per bite as manufacturers remove
| water and some other ingredients during processing.
|
| Overall, a pretty underwhelming article. Not surprising,
| unfortunately -- I have been subscribing to the Economist for
| over 15 years since late 1990s until the slow erosion of quality
| made me drop it.
| thrawa1235432 wrote:
| Yes, I agree with you, the Economist from the 90s was a
| different animal. If you ask me the above article is just paid
| shilling for Ozempic et. al. Not directly obviously, but in the
| mindset and viewpoint it wants to develop in readers
| swasheck wrote:
| ultra-processed people by chris van tulleken hypothesizes that
| it's because the food is less nutritionally dense through
| extraction and reconstitution to more palatable and
| economically expedient forms. additionally, these forms require
| less effort to process by chewing so we're able to ingest more
| calories more quickly before our biochemistry can catch up and
| signal that we've consumed what we need. finally, the
| processing of food breaks down the original nutrient "matrix"
| in the way that our metabolism evolved to process it. we
| evolved to metabolize an apple, i believe was his example, by
| eating it raw and in its original form, together with all that
| constitutes an "apple" and not simply the composite of
| nutrients that we can extract from an apple. the hypothesis is
| that the whole apple influences our biochemical response
| differently than the extracted nutrients that have been
| reconstituted in a different form.
| im3w1l wrote:
| My guess is water. Natural foods have a lot of water compared to
| processed foods.
|
| Consider dried fruit. Quite minimally process wouldn't you say?
| Yet as snackable as candy.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| There's currently a lot of DHMO in all of those foods, which
| can be quite dangerous for humans and has been a cause for
| numerous deaths in the World, including young children.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I sometimes wonder if there are lessons from British period of
| WWII rationing. Huge numbers of people were enabled to have for
| free the right amount of nutrients instead of the malnourishment
| of the 1920s/30s. And millions more found it hard to get the
| excess sugars and fats.
|
| If we created a new rationing, with no processed foods, feeding
| the whole population what would happen tomorrow and in ten years?
|
| Imagine how unpopular the Prime Minister who started this would
| be. Then imagine ten years later when he would be the guy that
| got millions of people thinner, fitter and having more sex (I am
| told that's what thinner fitter people do!)
|
| Imagine that election :-)
| makeitdouble wrote:
| The jump from a Brazilian doctor classifiying food to a British
| study tracking consumption under that classification, to end on a
| US study with 20 adults, waiting for another one with 36 members
| ending next year, kinda illustrate how hard it is to come with
| relevant data.
|
| And now that we've more and more ultra-processed diet food, we'll
| need a few more decades to have an idea of their actual effect at
| any scale.
| s3p wrote:
| >...people in Brazil were buying less sugar and oil than in the
| past. Yet rates of obesity and metabolic diseases were still
| rising. This coincided with the growing popularity of packaged
| snacks and ready-made meals, which were loaded with sugar, fats
| and other additives.
|
| What. So they were buying less sugar and fat. But they were
| actually buying more sugar and fat?
| philipkglass wrote:
| They were buying less sugar and oil as ingredients to cook at
| home with. They were substituting home cooking by buying more
| ready-made foods and snacks that contained fat and sugar as
| components.
| dismalaf wrote:
| I mean, look at the ingredients list on most processed foods.
| Much higher quantities of various sugars and starches. More
| processed foods are rarely 1:1 ingredients compared to less
| processed foods...
| ninalanyon wrote:
| According to the BBC Inside Health podcast I recently listened to
| they are often bad for you because the processing removes fibre
| and vitamins and also makes sugars more available. And that to
| make them int4eresting enough to eat excess salt is added.
| a3w wrote:
| WHO says "eat 30 grams of fibre every day". Which is a lot,
| unless you use whole grains without sweeteners, fat or meat on
| top (which reduces fibre per calorie). Or eat lots of roots or
| cabbage, and salads. Especially since you have to think of
| eating until 30 grams of pure fibre content is reached every.
| Single. Day. Of. A. Year.
| bobajeff wrote:
| To me it looks like it could be something of a plucebo effect.
| Like they are bad for us because we expect them to be bad.
| Minucebo effect?
| mchannon wrote:
| The article name is "Scientists are learning why ultra-processed
| foods are bad for you", the opposite of this thread's title.
|
| Everyone's ignoring the elephant in the room: fiber.
|
| Fiber locks up calories and makes the body miss a lot of them, or
| absorb them later in the digestion process. If we reduce the word
| "processed" to a single action, it's removing fiber. It's turning
| wheat berries into flour. It's ripping off rice husks to make
| white rice. It's crushing nutritious apples and oranges into
| sugar water.
|
| Western countries use calories as a metric, and it's a very
| hackable metric. If I eat 1000 calories of whole oats, a lot of
| those calories are passing through my body. If I turn those whole
| oats into oatmeal, fewer are. If I'm McDonald's I'll pulverize
| them to get all 1000 calories into my health-conscious deluded
| customer's bloodstream, so they buy more food from me.
|
| Of course you can add 100g of Metamucil fiber to a processed
| meal, but the original fiber's function was to lock in the sugar,
| which the new stuff can no longer do. So it doesn't help.
|
| Why are processed foods bad for you? Follow the fiber.
| xnx wrote:
| Agree completely. "Processing" is mainly the act of removing
| fiber so more food can be eaten faster and more often. Fiber
| satiates, which is not a good thing for companies that are
| trying to sell as much product as possible.
| orev wrote:
| Using a blender is also processing, but it doesn't remove the
| fiber. It does, however, break open the cells and makes the
| nutrients and sugars more easily available separately from
| the fiber.
|
| Eating healthy is just as much about the shape/structure of
| the items being consumed as it is about the nutritional stats
| it has.
| snapcaster wrote:
| This is something not talked about enough. I think it's one
| of those things where people really struggling with weight
| should be told CICO (calories in calories out) just to get
| their head in the right place but it's not strictly true
| for all the reasons you mentioned and others
| nritchie wrote:
| Another way to say this: Eat foods with low glycemic index.
| Avoid foods that spike blood-sugar levels.
| mchannon wrote:
| That's a completely different thing.
|
| Honey, for instance, has a high glycemic index. Watermelon
| has a high glycemic index. They will not get you fat the same
| way cane sugar and watermelon juice will.
|
| A juice made of celery, kale, and spinach, will still have a
| low glycemic index. But it's still nowhere near as good for
| you as unprocessed celery, kale, and spinach.
| AJ007 wrote:
| Who made up this word? Before 2022 it more or less doesn't exist
| (per Google Trends.)
| code_biologist wrote:
| The phrase as originally coined is from the Nova classification
| system, proposed in 2009 by researchers at the University of
| Sao Paulo, Brazil:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification
| anonym29 wrote:
| Dukeofdoom's original comment: ``` Don't they add food coloring
| from ground bugs sometimes. In case of sausage they add
| preservatives to make it last longer. Actual poison if you were
| just to eat a lot of it. Generally companies are liable if they
| make you sick right after eating their product. So they do
| everything they can to prevent that. Nobody is going to held
| liable if they give you cancer 10 years down the line. Super hard
| to prove. So not a worry for them. Backlash after the failed
| covid vaccine makes some reform more likely now. ```
|
| My response:
|
| Several food colorings (e.g. Red 40, Yellow 10) are synthetic
| dyes derived from crude oil and other petrochemicals.
|
| At least here in the US, it seems many people believe that if
| it's available for sale, that means a government agency deemed it
| safe, neglecting to consider that what a government agency
| declares safe may not actually be safe. This happens routinely
| for a variety of reasons - corporate capture (big business
| teaming up with big government to screw over human beings), gross
| incompetence of government employees (who in turn, are nearly
| impossible to fire, even with cause), complex modes of unsafety
| (per- and poly-fluorinated substances are bioaccumulative and
| persistent, and the relationship they have with our health
| remains ambiguous), complete lack of awareness of the risk (in
| the last week or so, we just discovered chloronitramide anion
| exists in the water supply of about 1/3 of the USA, little is
| known about the health effects it has on mammals in general, let
| alone humans), etc.
|
| Reality is complex. We are basically one step removed from
| cavemen still, and need to remain humble, curious, and
| intellectually honest about the sheer extent of that which we do
| not know. That's missing in so many people these days. I think
| more (but not all) people would benefit from undergoing an ego
| death and reintegration experience that so many others have found
| in psychedelics, which are nonaddictive and generally safer than
| legal drugs like alcohol and various combinations of amphetamines
| (ADHD medication).
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >At least here in the US, it seems many people believe that if
| it's available for sale, that means a government agency deemed
| it safe, neglecting to consider that what a government agency
| declares safe may not actually be safe. This happens routinely
| for a variety of reasons - corporate capture (big business
| teaming up with big government to screw over human beings),
| gross incompetence of government employees (who in turn, are
| nearly impossible to fire, even with cause), complex modes of
| unsafety (per- and poly-fluorinated substances are
| bioaccumulative and persistent, and the relationship they have
| with our health remains ambiguous), complete lack of awareness
| of the risk (in the last week or so, we just discovered
| chloronitramide anion exists in the water supply of about 1/3
| of the USA, little is known about the health effects it has on
| mammals in general, let alone humans), etc.
|
| That's not actually how it works in the US. The standard is
| "Generally Recognized as Safe" (GRAS)[0], which requires the
| manufacturer to "confirm" that an additive is "safe."
|
| At least that's been the requirement since 1958, although some
| 700 existing additives were declared exempt from the
| potentially biased/unconfirmed testing of the manufacturer.
|
| If, as you suggest, "...many people believe that if it's
| available for sale, that means a government agency deemed it
| safe", those folks are woefully misinformed.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generally_recognized_as_safe
| 0xEF wrote:
| Living in the US, my takeaway is this:
|
| Food manufacturers do not care if we stay healthy, but they're
| also not interested in harming us on purpose. Their goal is to
| maximize profit, which usually means cheapest ingredients with
| addictive properties produced as quickly as possible by low-cost
| labor.
|
| But they also know this only works if the market allows it. If
| nobody bought their snack cakes (random example), they would stop
| making them. But their snack cakes are designed to make you want
| to eat the whole package and sold cheaper than an alternative
| like a healthy fruit and nut mix, making the consumer's choice
| almost a moot point since consumers tend to trade their own best
| interests for convenience and "saving" money.
|
| And so, they give the market what it buys. Simple as.
|
| But I do hate it. I have to put a stupid amount of effort into
| eating healthy because I don't have room for a garden and
| healthier alternatives are often more expensive. I can see why
| most people just reach for the snack cakes and call it done.
| 0xEF wrote:
| In retrospect, I realize the food industry probably took a page
| out of the cigarette industry's playbook. Or was it the other
| way around?
| filipheremans wrote:
| There is a clear link between the two industries:
| https://neurosciencenews.com/hyperpalatable-foods-big-
| tobacc...
| feoren wrote:
| This game theory problem, where consumers are buying
| unhealthier options because they're cheaper, and companies are
| producing unhealthier options because they're more profitable,
| is _exactly_ what regulation is for. I don 't understand why
| we've all collectively forgotten why regulation exists and
| become so cynical that it can actually work! Actually I do
| understand: it's industry interests spending hundreds of
| billions of dollars on intentional misinformation and
| government capture for a half century.
|
| A reasonable counter-argument is "but the science is extremely
| muddy here, so effective regulation is especially difficult",
| which is unfortunately true, but I'd point out that the science
| is extremely muddy largely because of industry efforts to
| intentionally poison our understanding of nutrition.
| aboodman wrote:
| It's even (often) in company's selfish interest to have
| regulation so that they aren't forced into a race to the
| bottom.
| code_biologist wrote:
| It's not in the food industry's interest to harm us beyond
| pursing profit margin, but it is in the health and
| pharmaceutical industry's interest to harm us -- treatable
| chronic disease is recurring revenue. The more chronic disease,
| the more revenue. Pharma companies are making fistfuls of money
| from GLP1 agonists.
|
| This incentive to harm is translated into the food system when
| captured groups like the American Diabetes Association and the
| American Heart Association help write dietary guidelines (for
| school systems for example) that look good optically but
| actually create disease and future recurring revenue for the
| health industrial complex. Groups like the ADA and AHA are also
| captured by major funding from the food industry, so that cheap
| high margin food products fit into their dietary guidelines.
|
| The incentives are synergistic and exactly aligned to push food
| products with a veneer of health that cause long term disease.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > sold cheaper than an alternative like a healthy fruit and nut
| mix
|
| Sorry for sniping, but the alternative is to not buy a snack.
| You don't have to eat snacks.
| rbranson wrote:
| tl;dr is that "ultra-processed foods" are engineered to be more
| palatable and that tends to result in more caloric density.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Generalization is the real issue here. You can't just say
| "processed" food is bad. There are tons of definitions and
| different forms of processing. It would be much better to look at
| individual ingredients. A good start would be to change the GRAS
| process. There's no real investigation being done on many food
| additives and the evidence many use for GRAS is flimsy at best.
| arichard123 wrote:
| Ultra processed people by Dr Chris van tulliken and for for life
| by Dr Tim Spector are good reading on this. The first is more
| focused on this issue.
| swasheck wrote:
| was going to reference ultra-processed people. i walked away
| with some of the same general sentiments that are here -
|
| 1. nova classification is imperfect, but is better than what we
| had before it and i hope that we can iteratively find something
| more refined
|
| 2. so many nutrition studies are so woefully biased because of
| sponsorship (and antipathy) that it's laborious to extract
| meaning from them because much of the effort is tracing the
| money and potential bias.
| blackoil wrote:
| I find two principles work best. First, grandma's wisdom is
| mostly correct so prefer home-cooked culturally aligned food.
|
| Second moderation, you can have one can of drink and one meal
| outside power week of anything. So burger and coke or Indian
| sugary desserts all are good if you can control frequency.
| robnado wrote:
| Evolution has selected animals that, when they have access to
| foods with high caloric density, will gorge on them. This has
| been advantageous to their survival, because the history of life
| has been characterized by famine feast cycles for most species.
| Now, what UPF foods are is foods that have had most of their non-
| caloric content removed or been processed to increase calorie
| content, triggering this gorging behaviour. This is probably 80%
| of the obesity epidemic today. The rest is probably additives
| that affect our hormones that control hunger/satiety signals in
| the body.
|
| In my opinion, effective regulation would control the caloric
| density as food as well as ban any additives that can affect
| hormonal hunger/satiety.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| Why the insistence that these foods are only unhealthy because
| of the calories?
|
| Have you heard of poison? 0 calories. Can kill you in the right
| doses.
|
| Food factories contain dozens of these toxins in the form of
| plastics, lubricants, agents, flavorings, colorings, etc.
|
| Calories are important. But the insistence that it's _simply_
| calories feels almost conspiratorial to me.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Some part of it must be how small all the parts get when
| processed so you take in everything really quickly.
| VeejayRampay wrote:
| don't we though? they're known to contain very little nutritional
| value, to be stuffed with salt, fat, sugar, to feature next to no
| vitamins and natural fibers, which naturally corral sugar to the
| stomach instead of letting it go through the intestinal barrier
| freely
|
| so basically it's food that promotes poor variety in gut bacteria
| and inflammation
|
| that we pretend like we don't know is very surprising to me, it's
| not exactly shocking that the american diet is bad after some 50
| years of it running amok across the world
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Given standard home kitchen equipment and techniques, could you
| prepare this item? Yes -> not UPF; No, requires a factory -> UPF.
|
| This is kind of like the Jeff Foxworthy jokes.
|
| If you remove so many of the nutrients that you have to try to
| spray vitamins back on... you might make a UPF.
|
| If your product has ingredients where there is no evidence that
| those ingredients can actually be digested by the human body...
| you might make a UPF.
|
| If you have to add dyes so your product doesn't look like sawdust
| or poop, you might make a UPF.
|
| ...
| sabbaticaldev wrote:
| lots of people know but they don't advertise on the economist
| workflowing wrote:
| Indeed, you need scientists to simply pronounce the ingredients
| that are processed into, and into, food.
| Horffupolde wrote:
| My fast rule is to only eat food that's been around for 1000
| years or so.
| peterashford wrote:
| Oooohhh... not so sure. Bound to be a little moldy by now
| cupantae wrote:
| Summary: we still don't know why, but definitely don't eat UPFs.
| snapcaster wrote:
| From reading these comments, i wish nobody was allowed to post on
| threads like this without posting a pic of their body so we can
| calibrate their opinions
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Smokers are often experts on why cigarettes are bad for you.
| snapcaster wrote:
| I don't meet smokers arguing smoking isn't actually bad
| though...
| nitwit005 wrote:
| I have. You just haven't run into someone delusional
| enough. It's apparently a lie concocted by white people.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I haven't met one that argued it isn't bad, but many have
| certainly downplayed it, or they have wildly different
| standards.
|
| Like...15 years ago, I dated a girl that smoked, but
| wouldn't eat anything with artificial Blue or Red color
| because supposedly those cause cancer. I said, "You know
| those cigarettes cause cancer, right?" and got met with a
| "yeah whatever".
|
| That relationship didn't last (for many reasons), and I'll
| never again date a smoker. I always felt we were limited on
| the things we could do because she HAD to have that
| cigarette every ~30 minutes.
| samaltmanfried wrote:
| Agreed. It's clear that most people don't understand basic
| nutrition, and most people have a very distorted view of what
| the human body should actually look like. The _average_
| American is _very_ overweight. If you raise your arm above your
| head in front of the mirror, you should see your ribs, and you
| should see the clear outline of your latissimus dorsi. If you
| can 't see these two things clearly, you are overweight.
| cthalupa wrote:
| > If you raise your arm above your head in front of the
| mirror, you should see your ribs, and you should see the
| clear outline of your latissimus dorsi. If you can't see
| these two things clearly, you are overweight.
|
| This is kind of an absurd metric. You can be at ~20% BF
| (which is by any standard a healthy percentage - some studies
| show best all cause mortality outcomes in men at 22%) and
| still not have visible ribs or lats with one arm above your
| head.
|
| Different people carry weight differently as well, no visual
| test like this is going to be blanket accurate.
| watwut wrote:
| That is not health advice, that is "how to be anorectic"
| advice. If you are at the weight with longest lifespan, you
| are somewhere at the top of "normal" bmi range and wont see
| ribs. You wont seen them in the middle of "normal" range and
| plenty of thin wont see them either.
|
| Otherwise said, for quite a lot of people accomplishing this
| would mean underweight.
|
| Underweight is less healthy the overweight.
| 00N8 wrote:
| So when I mix whey protein isolate into pineapple juice with
| plain Greek yogurt, is that considered an ultra-processed food?
| It seems like it would be, but I doubt the criticisms of UPFs
| really apply here. My understanding is that these are healthy
| ingredients, in a blend that's fairly optimal for strength
| training, despite one of them being highly processed.
|
| Is there actually anything wrong with whey protein? Or can we
| find a better definition of the problematic UPFs?
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| The children were served some bizarre meat substitute chicken
| nuggets today during lunch. Tastes one once. Literally just
| matter. Flavorless.
|
| If they want to do meatless days they should serve well seasoned
| lentils or something.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| "Robert F. Kennedy junior, Donald Trump's nominee for secretary
| of health, has likened processed food to 'poison'"
|
| Wow, a bright spot.
| klik99 wrote:
| Putting aside the vague hand wavy definition of what "highly
| processed foods" literally means, my suspicion is that there are
| two things making processed food worse for you.
|
| I've heard drinking juiced fruits is worse for you than eating
| the equivalent fruits, as the sugars in the fruit are wrapped in
| fiber that make the sugars "slow release" into your body, and
| those are broken down when juiced so the sugars hit you at once.
| I suspect processed foods "mainline" nutrients in ways that
| unprocessed foods don't.
|
| Secondly, I think a lot micro-nutrition is ignored when comparing
| processed food, like the fat, carb, salt, etc is equivalent
| between potato chips and, say, a baked potato with butter, but
| there are a lot of small things that our body needs that are not
| part of that equivalence. At least for me, when I eat potato
| chips I eat more because they never quite satisfy me. I suspect
| this is because the micro nutrition is cooked or processed away,
| so I end up eating more carbs because it's not quite giving me
| all what I need, just the big macro needs.
| disparate_dan wrote:
| I agree. I think there is a third thing: processed foods are
| more likely to contain additives like colorants, emulsifiers,
| preservatives and stabilisers that humans have been eating for
| decades rather than centuries so we don't have the same body of
| knowledge about them or their health-related impacts.
| kalaksi wrote:
| And maybe to a lesser extent the plastics in packaging.
| klik99 wrote:
| Great user name btw
| willy_k wrote:
| The chips not satiating you is more likely to be the effect of
| the obligatory seed oils in chips; IIRC the linoleic acid that
| they are high in impedes satiety (and also promotes
| inflammation).
| rdedev wrote:
| The lack of fibre also contributes to lack of satiety which is
| another driving factor that makes people eat more processed
| food.
|
| The potato chip satiety issue is also investigated in a few
| studies. Baked potato is some of the most satiating foods. But
| when you fry it in oil it just does something to your brain
| that makes you crave for more
|
| https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324078#boiled-or-b...
| blueyes wrote:
| Robert Lustig has been preaching this for years:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Metabolical-Processed-Nutrition-Moder...
|
| A good rule of thumb if you care about avoiding UPFs but don't
| want to overly limit your diet is to only buy foods with 5
| ingredients in them (plus or minus 2 :).
| luckycharms810 wrote:
| I think the rub is actually here:
|
| "The participants received either ultra-processed or minimally
| processed foods for two weeks before swapping diet for the next
| fortnight. Participants in both diets had access to the same
| amount of calories and nutrients like sugars, fibre and fat.
| People were free to eat as much or as little as they wanted. The
| results were striking. People on the ultra-processed diet ate
| about 500 more calories per day than those on the unprocessed
| one"
|
| My understanding is that caloric intake is king.
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