131–140 of 278 posts
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Yours argument is coming from just a place of science denialism. Industry powers do not negate simple science. Come to me with scientific evidence and not fear mongering, and then we can talk on an equal field.
Isn't the overwhelmingly obese American population scientific evidence enough?
What's ultra-processed vs processed? If I make my own sausage by grinding the meat by hand, mixing it with salt and spices, then filling natural casings, I would consider that processed food. What makes it ultra-processed? When Hormel does it instead?
This was my gut response too, I reluctantly read "Ultra-Processed People" after it was mentioned by so many people, expecting to find it annoying for this exact reason. I was actually massively surprised by how helpful a label ultra-processed can be, even if there are edge cases. Hormel are probably adding a huge number of lab-based emulsifiers, flavour enhancers and colouring, that you definitely won't have at home.…
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Seems like a typical blanket baseless unscientific attack of everything deemed "unnatural". Lots of the typical insane stuff, sugar is okay, but "Nonnutritive sweeteners" are not. Spices are okay, but MSG is not. Just a laundrylist of the typical alternative medicine mumbo jumbo. Kind of pathetic, but not unexpected from the state legislature I'm sure they extensively deliberated the health effect of Luo Han Fruit Co…
No, it's about processing. The food industry has demonstrated that it doesn't give a crap about producing healthy food if that impacts the bottom line, so they pull every trick they can to increase profits whilst hiding the changes from consumers' ability to detect them. Not unsurprisingly, most of those changes use fancy processes and ingredients to mimick other ingredients and processes. Legislation like this is sa…
What’s “processing”?
> The food industry has demonstrated that it doesn't give a crap about producing healthy food if that impacts the bottom line, so they pull every trick they can to increase profits whilst hiding the changes from consumers' ability to detect them
Ok? What’s that got to do with which forms of processing are unhealthy? This whole statement doesn’t really add anything.
> Not unsurprisingly, most of those changes use fancy processes and ingredients to mimick other ingredients and processes.
So it’s the “fancy” part you don’t like? What does fancy mean? You can quantify it, I’m sure?
> Legislation like this is saying "enough, you can only use the following set of processes".
Right, and as GP pointed out, the following set doesn’t seem to be particularly healthy.
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> 104661. (a) (1) For purposes of this article, except as provided in subdivision (b), “ultraprocessed food” or “UPF” means any food or beverage that contains a substance described in paragraph (2) and either high amounts of saturated fat, sodium, or added sugar, as described in subparagraph (A) of paragraph (3), or a nonnutritive sweetener or other substance described in subparagraph (B) of paragraph (3). > (3) (A)…
> (3) Not more than 35 percent of its total weight shall be composed of sugar, including naturally occurring and added sugar. This paragraph shall not apply to fruits, vegetables that have not been deep fried, or a dried fruit and nut and seed combination. wonder who'll be the first to argue that HFCS isn't sugar.
That aside, I think the law is a great step in the right direction for the US.
Hopefully it can be expanded across the US.
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thanks for the tip. The text is not on that page, but here's a link to it if anyone else is curious: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
> 104661. (a) (1) For purposes of this article, except as provided in subdivision (b), “ultraprocessed food” or “UPF” means any food or beverage that contains a substance described in paragraph (2) and either high amounts of saturated fat, sodium, or added sugar, as described in subparagraph (A) of paragraph (3), or a nonnutritive sweetener or other substance described in subparagraph (B) of paragraph (3). > (3) (A)…
I'll be very interested to see the definition of "ultra-processed" in this legislation. I couldn't find one at a first glance - it seems to mandate that someone defines it, but doesn't contain a definition itself from what I could see. Edit: Found it. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml... (thanks to @crummy for the correction). Seems like a reasonable start. Amusing to see that alcoholic dri…
Seems like a typical blanket baseless unscientific attack of everything deemed "unnatural". Lots of the typical insane stuff, sugar is okay, but "Nonnutritive sweeteners" are not. Spices are okay, but MSG is not. Just a laundrylist of the typical alternative medicine mumbo jumbo. Kind of pathetic, but not unexpected from the state legislature I'm sure they extensively deliberated the health effect of Luo Han Fruit Co…
Depends on
a) How well it's believed science is able to keep up with the "creativity" and dollars of the food industry.
b) The health costs to the individual and society of any subsequent problem.
c) How well the society in question is likely to do in overcoming the vested interests to fix any subsequent problem.
If you've never worked in food before, you may be unaware that borderline half of the foods you eat, in restaurants, hospitals, prisons, even schools, are just the same frozen foods from Sysco. Their products are sold nationally and are lower quality than the frozen foods you get at the grocery stores, sold at ridiculous markups at restaurants. Sysco UPFs are at best "mid" and usually worse. They also involve a lot o…
There’s an excellent discussion of the most recent RCT on UPF foods with its author here ( https://sigmanutrition.com/episode577/ ). Not only is the study itself very interesting, but it does a great job going over the evidence landscape on UPFs and food at the current point in time. Dr Dicken is very clear that at the moment, in his view, they have insufficient evidence to make policy decisions like this, a view tha…
if there's any misstep here, it's not focused enough on sugar (which is a hard drug for kids) .
What's ultra-processed vs processed? If I make my own sausage by grinding the meat by hand, mixing it with salt and spices, then filling natural casings, I would consider that processed food. What makes it ultra-processed? When Hormel does it instead?
This was my gut response too, I reluctantly read "Ultra-Processed People" after it was mentioned by so many people, expecting to find it annoying for this exact reason. I was actually massively surprised by how helpful a label ultra-processed can be, even if there are edge cases. Hormel are probably adding a huge number of lab-based emulsifiers, flavour enhancers and colouring, that you definitely won't have at home.…
Even then a group classification is useless if it includes a single element with a undue influence.
Consider an arbitrary SuperGiant classification that says that SuperGiant foods are harmful. SuperGiant foods are defined as any food you can buy in a supermarket plus also Polonium. You can easily produce a wide range of statistics to show harms caused by things classed as SuperGiant foods.
I'd recommend this podcast to anyone interested on what ultra-processed foods actually are (and in general): https://sciencefictionspod.substack.com/p/episode-6-ultra-pr... Spoiler: The science and definitions are... depressingly bad.
The key innovation that the UPF category is bringing to the fight is that it is hard to innovate and lawyer around it with complexity.
Arbitrarily defining foods that have artificial sweeteners as suddenly being ultra-processed is not coherent.