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California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

gov.ca.gov

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Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#181

Post by cfmcdonald »

chneu wrote: post #173
reorder9695 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we define what food is ultra processed though? Do we need "cake (commercial)" and "cake (home baked)" as I can bake a cake with all the standard stuff I have at home, but commercial cakes are usually chock full of E numbers. Another example would be like a jar of pasta sauce and a pasta sauce I've made, I don't think it's arguable that a pasta sauce I've made is ultra processed. Like that definition doesn't se…

You're fixating on a singular definition. A homemade cake is minimally processed. The flour and sugar are processed but nothing that heavily alters it. A commercial cake on the other hand has stabilizers, ph balancers, etc. You're over thinking it. Almost nothing made at home is ultra processed unless you're doing some weird sausage making. If you can name the ingredients easily, it probably isn't ultra processed.

I think the GP's point is there is no meaningful nutritional difference between a from-scratch cake and a box cake. Both are pretty unhealthy and should be eaten only as special treats. "Ultra-processed" is not a useful way of separating healthy from unhealthy foods.

Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#183

Post by IAmBroom »

donatzsky wrote: post #98
maxerickson wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Avocado calories are pretty close to 10% saturated fat, as an example. Excess sugar and simple starches tend to get absorbed more completely than excess fat, I'm not sure added fat is the biggest issue.

Look into the keto diet. Fat is definitely not the main issue, sugar and other simple carbs are.

Your conclusion presupposes we buy into the "keto diet is healthy" proposition.

However, there is a preponderance of real data that fats have been demonized by the sugar industry in the past, and HGI foods (high-carb, generally) are a bigger issue.

Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#184

Post by IAmBroom »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #135
camel-cdr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)…

So no pasta carbonara or Jam

I'm OK with kids not being fed a pile of jam.

If it's spread on bread, the jellied bread is the food. (As that still is probably mostly carbs, it's still not a good lunch item for kids.)

Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#185

Post by IAmBroom »

gusgus01 wrote: post #105
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> raw sugar and guacamole would both count as processed No. Processed culinary ingredient (Group 2) and minimally processed (Group 1). (Obviously, both can be turned into a UPF through fuckery.)

Guacamole would count as Group 3 I believe. You use Group 1 and Group 2 ingredients to create it unless you're just grinding up avocados, in which case that's not a guacamole. If you really want to get interesting, you could even say homemade guacamole uses citric acid (from limes) to extend shelf life and enhance the flavor, which is on top of the sodium chloride (salt) that you use to do the same.

TIL the No True Scotsman fallacy can be used by guac snobs! :)

Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#186

Post by benrutter »

Lerc wrote: post #139
benrutter wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

There's an issue here with classification and harm. You can only say that UFPs are harmful if the definition used when measuring harm matches the definition used elsewhere. It seems all to easy to attach the harm to the label then switch out the contents while keeping the label. Even then a group classification is useless if it includes a single element with a undue influence. Consider an arbitrary SuperGiant classif…

> 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.

That's very true, but you've intentionally made SuperGiant foods to have two distinct categories. Scientists only considering SuperGiant foods might show harm, but quite quickly a study could be done to show that specifically, Polonium is the relevant item.

If that couldn't be shown, then avoiding SuperGiant foods would be a sensible precaution, even if you suspect there's something specific causing harm that isn't in all SuperGiant foods - with the obvious caveat that you've defined SuperGiant foods to more or less impossible to actually avoid.

Currently UPF is not similar to this, in that nobody has yet shown that UPFs are a category containing something else which is bad for you. That probably is the case, but until the parallel of Polonium is found, being cautious around UPFs seems like a sensible idea.

Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#187

Post by IAmBroom »

robertlagrant wrote: post #65
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the minimally processed food that bread is made of? Flour is minimally processed, Nova Group 1, if it’s simply milled and separated. If it’s prepared with industrial solvents, or bleached, it goes straight to Group 4.

Is flour considered food at all? It sounds more like an ingredient than a food.

You can eat it and survive.

Cooking it first is a big improvement, but the same is true of carrots, IMO.

Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#188

Post by mschuster91 »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #58
londons_explore wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it points to a failure of the scientific community to identify better criteria. There is plenty of data showing diet has a big impact on health and other outcomes, yet far less data on specifics. Since science doesn't give specific things to ban, legislation is pretty much headed towards "let's have everyone eat what they eat in the south of France where people are really healthy".

I think the scientific community has done just fine. When these individual substances are tested they're by and large not found to have negative health effects. Then the loonies just refuse to believe it and thing the chemicals are making their kids gay. The problem isn't the MSG. It's providing a well balanced diet. We have a relatively clear idea of what constitutes "well balanced". You can quibble about the specif…

> The problem isn't the MSG. It's providing a well balanced diet.

Part of the problem is the logistics and financing of school and generally cantina meals.

Unlike restaurants which can command high meal prices for artisans preparing meals out of ingredients as close to "fresh from the field" as possible, mass kitchens face insane cost pressure, which often means going for pre-processed food with very long shelf lifes for packaged units to keep waste as close to zero as possible.

Generally, I love to point at tomatoes when talking about food access and quality... for one, most tomatoes you can buy these days are grown in greenhouses with artificial light and bred to have pretty robust skin to avoid damages in shipping and storage, at the cost of flavor. As an individual making a tomato salad, you can mask off that lack of flavor by just dumping balsamico, olive oil, salt and pepper over the tomatoes... but if you are making, say, a tomato soup in a large ass kitchen for pasta, you'll probably go for the ultra-processed variant from a can or tub: no need to have employees cut up and mash tomatoes, it will keep fresh for far longer than if you'd send someone to the wholesalers to buy tomatoes every day...

And the truly ultra large kitchens that make meals for thousands of school children (or prisoners or hospital patients) a day, they probably go for the even cheaper variant and that's where the problems really show - entirely premade tomato sauce, filled with preservatives to prevent the sauce from going bad, with tons of sugar and flavorings to make it palatable (as the source tomatoes are going to be the cheapest, lowest quality, flavorless tomatoes the original processor can find), and quite possibly with a bunch of food dyes on top to appear "healthy red like a good organic tomato".

Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#189

Post by forinti »

cfmcdonald wrote: post #181
chneu wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're fixating on a singular definition. A homemade cake is minimally processed. The flour and sugar are processed but nothing that heavily alters it. A commercial cake on the other hand has stabilizers, ph balancers, etc. You're over thinking it. Almost nothing made at home is ultra processed unless you're doing some weird sausage making. If you can name the ingredients easily, it probably isn't ultra processed.

I think the GP's point is there is no meaningful nutritional difference between a from-scratch cake and a box cake. Both are pretty unhealthy and should be eaten only as special treats. "Ultra-processed" is not a useful way of separating healthy from unhealthy foods.

That is precisely the point that should be discussed because, from what I've read, UPFs are much worse than plain fatty or sugary food cooked by human hands.

The extra stuff in UPFs interacts with your body in ways that you are not prepared for and some of them are designed to make you consume more. The first example that comes to mind is the sodium added to make you tolerate more sugar.

Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#190

Post by KempyKolibri »

chithanh wrote: post #171
KempyKolibri wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me get this straight: your epistemic framework is such that when presented with RCTs in humans showing positive effects, observational studies in humans showing null findings (likely because of poor adjustment models) and negative associations in rats, we should conclude “artificially sweetened is every bit as bad as sugar sweetened”?

No. What I say is if we introduce a public health policy, then we need to take human behavior and adherence rates into account. Example: Abstinence is 100% effective against STDs and teenage pregnancy in any controlled setting. That does not make it a good public health policy to tell teenagers to abstain from having sex. In fact despite condoms having lower efficacy than abstinence, teaching people the proper use of…

Ok, so if I understand correctly, your argument is: in order for you to support a public health intervention we need to see evidence that such an intervention results in positive outcomes in a free living population with ad libitum consumption, regardless of the evidence in controlled settings.

So what’s the evidence that banning artificial sweeteners leads to positive outcomes in a free living population, considering you said: “I'm in favor of banning artificial sweeteners”?

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