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Ultra-processed foods need tobacco-style warnings, says scientist

theguardian.com

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Re: Ultra-processed foods need tobacco-style warnings, says scientist

#31

Post by dragontamer »

zug_zug wrote: post #8
Tagbert wrote: post #7

Can we start with an actual definition of "ultra-processed". I've seen studies that defined any product with more than five ingredients as "ultra-processed" which seems both arbitrary and broad. Has anyone shown actual harm from these foods or is it more a correlation where people that each ultra-processed have a lot of other factors that contribute to unhealthy outcomes?

We can, but it's going to be technical. The layman's definition is -- "things we eat that bear little resemblance to the food we have evolved on" but wikipedia says that Nova defines it as: 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…

> "things we eat that bear little resemblance to the food we have evolved on"

Okay.

So are we ready to ban bread? Is that really what you're proposing? Or white-rice?

> 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).

So Lays potato chips (only Potatoes, Oil, and Salt on the ingredients list) don't need a warning label?

McDonalds fries and potato chips are fine because they're all natural ingredients, amirite?

Re: Ultra-processed foods need tobacco-style warnings, says scientist

#32

Post by why_at »

Tagbert wrote: post #7

Can we start with an actual definition of "ultra-processed". I've seen studies that defined any product with more than five ingredients as "ultra-processed" which seems both arbitrary and broad. Has anyone shown actual harm from these foods or is it more a correlation where people that each ultra-processed have a lot of other factors that contribute to unhealthy outcomes?

I agree that this proposed regulation seems like it probably won't help. Defining what counts as an ultra-processed food is challenging, and the actual causal link to health outcomes is far from clear. This article from Science-Based Medicine makes a good case against this kind of thing.[0]

What can we actually do to make people eat healthier though? Rising obesity rates are one of those societal problems where I'm not sure what the solution is. The best strategy I can think of is something like "do our best to solve poverty and hope that this helps with obesity as well".

[0] https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/ultraprocessed-foods/

Re: Ultra-processed foods need tobacco-style warnings, says scientist

#33

Post by _DeadFred_ »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #26
stavros wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your food comes with a label, it's not healthy.

I have some concerns about what our farmers are doing to our fruit and vegetables as well.

I've posted on here before but I'm concerned with the current 'off label' practice of using glyphosate for crop desiccation (basically spraying it on the crop prior to harvesting to kill it and dry it out sooner) when most studies of glyphosate have been for the standard use to kill weeds much earlier in the process and the lower residual levels the standard use leaves.

Re: Ultra-processed foods need tobacco-style warnings, says scientist

#34

Post by riku_iki »

why_at wrote: post #32
Tagbert wrote: post #7

Can we start with an actual definition of "ultra-processed". I've seen studies that defined any product with more than five ingredients as "ultra-processed" which seems both arbitrary and broad. Has anyone shown actual harm from these foods or is it more a correlation where people that each ultra-processed have a lot of other factors that contribute to unhealthy outcomes?

I agree that this proposed regulation seems like it probably won't help. Defining what counts as an ultra-processed food is challenging, and the actual causal link to health outcomes is far from clear. This article from Science-Based Medicine makes a good case against this kind of thing.[0] What can we actually do to make people eat healthier though? Rising obesity rates are one of those societal problems where I'm n…

> I agree that this proposed regulation seems like it probably won't help.

I would personally use this as a signal when making choice among other factors.

Say I am choosing between two types of ham.

Re: Ultra-processed foods need tobacco-style warnings, says scientist

#35

Post by riku_iki »

ideonexus wrote: post #13
nickff wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did your “very healthy” diet consist of? Why did you consider it healthy, and in what specific way were you wrong?

Just a few examples: 1. Sugarless Protein Bars: just last week I found one they claimed 30 grams of protein on the front of the package, but hidden in the nutrition facts is that it has four-times the daily recommended saturated fats. These will give you heart disease and are found in the health food section of convenience stores. 2. Pretty much all advertised "health food" snacks will make you exceed your daily satu…

> it has four-times the daily recommended saturated fats. These will give you heart disease

I think this is very debatable and doesn't have clear backing evidence.

Re: Ultra-processed foods need tobacco-style warnings, says scientist

#36

Post by shrimp_emoji »

theamk wrote: post #6

I just wish there were a good definition of "ultra-processed food", because most of the ones I saw basically equivalent to "I'll tell you when I see it". Like wikipedia [0]: "An ultra-processed food (UPF) is an industrially formulated edible substance derived from natural food or synthesized from other organic compounds." But this describes almost any prepared food. For example take an good cheese, something made onl…

Yes, the definition is everything except raw meat and raw vegetables.

Also, the health impacts alleged are negligible and will be altered drastically in 5 years.

Ergo, none of this is worth thinking about and is just a busybox for people's death anxiety.

Re: Ultra-processed foods need tobacco-style warnings, says scientist

#37

Post by BobaFloutist »

hollerith wrote: post #17
matthewdgreen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deep fried instant noodles are extremely bad for you. It’s possible to buy baked (non-fried) varieties and the only difference I’ve noticed is that the cooking time goes up by a few minutes.

Noodles don't need to be fried or baked, and I would think that baking them would produce nasty acrylamide in even greater quantities than frying them does unless perhaps the baker is using carefully-controlled low temperatures, which it is unrealistic to assume an economically-motivated producer would do. But then maybe noodles do need to be fried or baked to have a long shelf life in hot weather when refrigeration…

Suggesting scratch-made noodles as a reasonable alternative to instant noodles demonstrates an astonishing lack of understanding of the reason people eat instant noodles, not to mention the lack of reasoning it would take to deduce that people drawn to a product labeled "instant" are probably looking for something relatively quick.

Re: Ultra-processed foods need tobacco-style warnings, says scientist

#38

Post by hollerith »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #37
hollerith wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noodles don't need to be fried or baked, and I would think that baking them would produce nasty acrylamide in even greater quantities than frying them does unless perhaps the baker is using carefully-controlled low temperatures, which it is unrealistic to assume an economically-motivated producer would do. But then maybe noodles do need to be fried or baked to have a long shelf life in hot weather when refrigeration…

Suggesting scratch-made noodles as a reasonable alternative to instant noodles demonstrates an astonishing lack of understanding of the reason people eat instant noodles, not to mention the lack of reasoning it would take to deduce that people drawn to a product labeled "instant" are probably looking for something relatively quick.

Astonishing.

Re: Ultra-processed foods need tobacco-style warnings, says scientist

#39

Post by zero-sharp »

filoleg wrote: post #29
zero-sharp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it's not a binary classification. Now what? I'm confident that you can distinguish between foods with more additives and those with less. Science will give you conclusions you can be confident in. But who would be paying for the research? Would there ever be that much incentive to investigate individual ingredients? How long would it take? I'm sure somebody a lot more diligent than I am can point you to all of…

You aren’t addresing the problem posed by the grandparent comment. You say we should be more on the cautious side. Sure, that’s a fine take. But without actual classification as to what counts as “ultra-processed” food that actually maps to harm in some way, you end up with the California-style “potential carcinogen” sticker warning slapped on almost everything. Which is useless at best.

Like I said, it's not binary. The UPF category can be too broad to the point of it being meaningless. Somebody else in the comment chain mentioned creating a score instead.

The other thing is that the risk likely depends on the ingredient and the amount. Part of my point is that I don't think science will ever be fast enough to satisfy the type of person who wants a study telling them that their staple shouldn't be top ramen. And yet, I still think we should discourage it.

Re: Ultra-processed foods need tobacco-style warnings, says scientist

#40

Post by msteffen »

To the extent that people are curious about the definition of ultra-processed foods, I recommend Chris Van Tulleken’s book “Ultra Processed People.” From it, I got the sense that the real emphasis is on this aspect of the NOVA definition:

“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…modified starches…modified oils…protein sources such as hydrolysed proteins, soya protein isolate, gluten, casein, whey protein and 'mechanically separated meat') or of additives with cosmetic functions (flavours, colours, emulsifiers, thickeners…) in their list of ingredients.”

The history of NOVA is that as the obesity epidemic was spreading, a Brazilian nutrition scientist, Carlos Monteiro, did a large scale project to identify likely causes right as it reached Brazil and obesity in Brazil started to rise. In short, he found statistical evidence indicating, basically, that as as people stopped cooking they became obese. In the book, he observes that connection was so strong that if the one single thing you knew about a person was that they had bought sugar, it predicted that they would not be obese because sugar, while unhealthy, is usually used to cook with. Thus the emphasis on “traditional culinary uses”.

Cooking has a lot of virtues, but evidence that the ingredients themselves are the issue came when an NIH researcher, Kevin Hall, did an experiment where he had people live in an NIH facility and half ate “processed” food (in the NOVA system) and half ate “ultra-processed” food with equivalent nutritional content, and the UPF group gained weight very quickly relative to the “processed” group. The Hall excitement is when Monteiro’s theory really started getting traction.

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