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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

#231

Post by lithocarpus »

forinti wrote: post #83
comrade1234 wrote: post #11

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?

One rule that's easy to verify is: would you have all the ingredients at home? UPFs usually have ingredients you've never seen for sale.

Except you can buy soybean oil, bleached refined wheat flour, and refined sugar at the store. That's all you need to have ultra processed food. The really weird ingredients are probably also bad but are not necessary for something to be ultra processed.

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

#232

Post by chithanh »

StackRanker3000 wrote: post #204
chithanh wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “it’s a cheap approach to make animal feed taste better, so the animals eat more and thus gain more weight/produce more milk/etc”. No, not at all. Feed conversion efficiency is the body weight gained per unit of feed consumed. If you add artificial sweeteners to animal feed, they will gain more weight when consuming the same feed, or gain the same weight when consuming less feed. This leads to cost savings for the…

Cheers. Do you have any citations handy for the old studies? I’m open to being wrong, but after some very brief searching and reading I’m skeptical that they properly controlled for increased feed intake (possibly due to palatability) to conclusively determine that some other mechanism was at play

The original study was:

DALDERUP, L., VISSER, W. Effects of Sodium Cyclamate on the Growth of Rats compared with other Variations in the Diet. Nature 221, 91–92 (1969) https://doi.org/10.1038/221091b0

But of course the manufacturers of feed additives also extensively studied which artificial sweetener compositions achieve body mass gain / feed efficiency increase for which group of animals. There is an extensive review e.g. on pigs here:

https://doi.org/10.3390/ani14203032

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

#233

Post by UncleMeat »

lithocarpus wrote: post #228
UncleMeat wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? The ingredients in Fritos are corn, oil, and salt. What processed additives? Is extruding cornmeal mixed with water through a die ultra processing?

The oil used is itself ultra processed and is not a natural food or whole food. It's a lipid isolated from the original food by a series of industrial processes.

The NOVA classification for canola oil is Category 2.

This is spinning wildly into seed oil crank stuff.

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

#234

Post by chithanh »

KempyKolibri wrote: post #190
chithanh wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, considerin…

> 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”?

It depends on the context. In the context of school lunches (which is discussed here) they absolutely need to be banned, same as added sugars. Giving children (sugar or artificially) sweetened meals trains children's palates and shapes lifelong preferences for sweet foods.

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

#235

Post by bevesce- »

lithocarpus wrote: post #225
bevesce- wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence that those are any healthier? If I'm going to overeat the same amount of calories eating store-bought cookies or grandma-made cookies - is my health outcome any different?

Yes. Look into the process used to make soybean oil vs the process used to make butter.

I'm not sure how is that relevant. My guess would be that saturated fat in butter is worse for health outcome.

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

#236

Post by stinkbeetle »

throwawaymb wrote: post #197
stinkbeetle wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think a large proportion of thin people are thin because of societal pressure. And conversely I don't think societal pressure makes many people thin, because I hear so much complaints about body shaming and unrealistic beauty expectations and discrimination against obesity etc, so it clearly isn't working any miracles. I think most people who are thin just have a food intake regulation that is pretty well bal…

Asians dont consume the same amounts of sugars. its that simple. they also tend to exercise more.

It's total calories, not just calories from sugar. And I already said that part of it was simple, remember? It's in the post you're replying to!

The question is why they have better balanced calorie intake. It's certainly not lack of sugar availability.

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

#237

Post by KempyKolibri »

lithocarpus wrote: post #226
KempyKolibri wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s do this one at a time, starting with salt. What’s your goalpost for evidence here, I.e. what would it take to convince you that salt consumption above the levels indicated in dietary guidelines is harmful?

Actual studies that isolate salt consumption as a variable and show worse outcomes from more salt would be a start. Every study I've looked into that purported to show salt was a problem did not isolate salt, and the most likely reason IMHO that the "less salt" group did better was because they ate less ultra processed food and more natural food.

So DASH-sodium (https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacc.2021.03.320) seems like it meets those goalposts? As does TOHP (https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.39147.604896.55).

When we scale out to what I believe to be a superior intervention - replacement of sodium with potassium, we have really robust data. The SASS trial (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2105675) showed reductions in stroke and CVD incidence from consuming salt substitute, along with reduction in all cause mortality.

I have a real salt taste - if I had no care for health outcomes I’d absolutely cover my food in it! However I think the evidence in favour of reducing or, ideally, replacing it with potassium-heavy substitutes is really convincing.

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

#239

Post by KempyKolibri »

chithanh wrote: post #234
KempyKolibri wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, considerin…

> 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”? It depends on the context. In the context of school lunches (which is discussed here) they absolutely need to be banned, same as added sugars. Giving children (sugar or artificially) sweetened meals trains children's palates and shap…

Ok, so we already have your standard: 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.

We have your proposed intervention: “In the context of school lunches (which is discussed here) [NNS] absolutely need to be banned, same as added sugars.”

So now we need evidence supporting this intervention sufficient to meet your own goalposts. Do you have it?

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

#240

Post by impish9208 »

michaelsshaw wrote: post #7

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…

Add Sodexo and Aramark and you’ve got close to the entirety of food caterers and suppliers to schools, universities, prisons, etc.
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