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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

#181

Post by mchannon »

nritchie wrote: post #172
mchannon wrote: post #49

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…

Another way to say this: Eat foods with low glycemic index. Avoid foods that spike blood-sugar levels.

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.

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

#184

Post by syntaxless »

zby wrote: post #162
marcuskane2 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, no…

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 direc…

> 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.

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

#185

Post by mecsred »

digging wrote: post #177
standardUser wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well if the sugar is ultra-processed, yes it does, doesn't it?

Is the sugar ultra processed?

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

#186

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

autoexec wrote: post #173
PittleyDunkin wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tha…

> 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?

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.

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

#187

Post by sfink »

ifyoubuildit wrote: post #94
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…

> 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.

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.

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

#188

Post by blablabla123 »

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…

> 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.

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

#189

Post by autoexec »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #186
autoexec wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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.

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?

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

#190

Post by code_biologist »

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…

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.

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