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Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods are bad

economist.com

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Re: Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods are bad

#101

Post by drcongo »

Kirby64 wrote: post #17

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 r…

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.

Re: Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods are bad

#102

Post by cynicalpeace »

robnado wrote: post #89

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 behavio…

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.

Re: Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods are bad

#103

Post by VeejayRampay »

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

Re: Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods are bad

#104

Post by filipheremans »

0xEF wrote: post #88
0xEF wrote: post #66

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 wo…

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?

There is a clear link between the two industries: https://neurosciencenews.com/hyperpalatable-foods-big-tobacc...

Re: Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods are bad

#105

Post by swasheck »

arichard123 wrote: post #74

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.

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.

Re: Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods are bad

#106

Post by taeric »

burnte wrote: post #25
taeric wrote: post #19

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…

There have been experiments that control for portion size, processed food still spikes glucose more, etc.

Isn't that some of what this article was challenging?

Re: Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods are bad

#107

Post by cynicalpeace »

drcongo wrote: post #101
Kirby64 wrote: post #17

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 r…

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.

If it couldn't be made outside a factory, it's ultra processed.

Re: Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods are bad

#108

Post by tlb »

Kirby64 wrote: post #17

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 r…

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.

Re: Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods are bad

#109

Post by swasheck »

ptero wrote: post #29

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 m…

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.

Re: Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods are bad

#110

Post by nobody9999 »

anonym29 wrote: post #59

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 lin…

>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

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