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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

#281

Post by SoftTalker »

Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #232
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…

Almost correct, except sugar consumption has been declining for decades. The peak was prior to 2000 IIRC

Yeah there used to be a children’s breakfast cereal called Super Sugar Crisp and the cartoon character promoting it in commercials was named Sugar Bear. Foods in the ‘70s and ‘80s were loaded with sugar.

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

#282

Post by Kirby64 »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #208
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…

I think there's some fudging of the terms here. When the article is talking about "bread" being healthy- well, there's bread, and then there's bread. Supermarket bread (sliced, packaged) typically lists a couple dozen ingredients. Ordinary bread... you know, bread-bread, like the one some of us bake at home, is made of: flour, water, salt, leavening agent (yeast or sourdough for those as have the patience). Bread-bre…

Nova makes this distinction already. “Freshly made” bread is considered category 3 (processed). That said, what distinguishes supermarket bread from freshly made bread?

Literally the only difference is typically some sort of preservatives, some added vitamins, and possibly a dough conditioner.

In general, bread is just not that healthy if you make the fluffy white kind. The preservatives and slicing have little to do with it. If anything, the added vitamins may make it healthier than something you make at home.

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

#283

Post by mft_ »

code_biologist wrote: post #190
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 Diabete…

I think you're wrong about the food industry not slowly harming people, for two reasons.

1) For "unhealthy" food (i.e. not something that's acutely poisonous) the link between ingestion and harm is in the long-term; it would be very difficult to blame harm on a particular group of foods, let alone a specific product. Maybe in a couple of decades there will be hand-wringing and governmental investigations, but in the short term, there's no negative incentive for food companies.

2) Most executives are directly incentivised to think in the short term - this bonus cycle, this year's results, the two-three years until LTIs vest, or a next promotion or change of job. Short of something catastrophic, there will almost never be a comeback for those individuals, meaning they have all of the positive incentives to chase profit, and it's very unlikely that they'll ever personally experience anything negative from their decisions.

---

Also, I don't really want to engage with quasi-conspiracy theories, but if you think that pharma companies have a hand in influencing dietary advice to be unhealthy so they can sell more drugs, IME you're vastly overestimating the competence of the pharma industry.

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

#284

Post by Suppafly »

johnyzee wrote: post #259
tourmalinetaco wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So homemade bread is ultraprocessed because the wheat was processed into flour?

You can process wheat into flour at home. You cannot process sugar cane into table sugar without an industrial plant.

>You cannot process sugar cane into table sugar without an industrial plant.

That's obviously false.

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

#285

Post by SoftTalker »

autoexec wrote: post #189
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In side by side taste tests more people like the version with added sugar. That’s why they add it; it sells.

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

#286

Post by BizarroLand »

luckycharms810 wrote: post #255

I think the rub is actually here: "The participants received either ultra-processed or minimally processed foods for two weeks before swapping diet for the next fortnight. Participants in both diets had access to the same amount of calories and nutrients like sugars, fibre and fat. People were free to eat as much or as little as they wanted. The results were striking. People on the ultra-processed diet ate about 500…

Weight loss/gain is specifically tied to calories consumed vs calories burned, yes.

But that is not the purpose of the study.

2 groups of people, 2 diets, and the 1 group given an unlimited amount of relatively healthier food, chose to eat less of it and lost weight. The other ate more junk food and gained weight.

That implies that there are non-conscious factors at play and that diets may be more naturally successful if they are comprised of healthier less-processed food even without restriction.

Additionally, this implies that there must be an X factor that takes place in the processing of foods that causes overweight people to keep eating when they have met their caloric requirements.

For context, look at the data regarding nutrient density in vegetables over the last 60 years and see that the nutrients aside from fat/carbs/protein have been on a steady decline year over year.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10969708/

When I put these things into perspective, my hypothesis is this:

Being overweight, commonly viewed as a weakness of character or a sickness of the mind or body, is more likely a symptom of some larger issue.

Evidence of this can be found piecemeal from studies on human diets the world over.

The foods that are readily available to people are making them sick, my guess is that this is from some form of malnutrition. This may be a nutrient malnutrition or some compounding effect that the overprocessing of foods has on the human body that isn't trivial to differentiate from its non-processed counterparts.

I feel it is reasonable to assume that in general overweight and obese people on an ultra-processed diet are overeating in a non-conscious attempt to compensate for a lack of fundamental nutrition in the foods that are available to them.

Therefore, to test the hypothesis, the underlying nutritional issues should first be addressed by eliminating ultra-processed foods from the diet and replacing them with minimally processed foods, the higher in "quality" the better.

Theory: An overweight person will naturally reduce their caloric intake when their diet meets or exceeds their nutritional requirements.

The results, listed in the article above, seem to suggest that this theory is correct.

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

#287

Post by mft_ »

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…

> And so, they give the market what it buys. Simple as.

It's not this simple.

Marketing isn't just about making an existing product attractive to consumers - it's also about creating new products and even new product categories, and then creating a desire amongst consumers leading to purchases.

Where do you think all of the ultra-processed food has come from in the past decade? It didn't always exist...

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

#288

Post by ben_w »

johnyzee wrote: post #264
cogman10 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I generally agree with the sentiment that we should be cutting added sugar. I have to point out that sugar is naturally occurring in most whole foods. Nearly everything will have at least a little sucrose, glucose, or fructose in it. Most of the body's natural way of generating energy involves turning macronutrients into glucose and later into ATP. sucrose and fructose just so happen to have very short and very…

Refined sugar is extremely concentrated compared to the natural sources. You need like 50 kilos of sugar cane to produce one kilo of refined sugar, and through multiple steps of heavy industrial processes. You could make a case for honey, but, like all other natural sources, it contains other ingredients that somehow limits ingestion or metabolization.

> You could make a case for honey, but, like all other natural sources, it contains other ingredients that somehow limits ingestion or metabolization.

In the natural environment, said other ingredients would be the angry swarm of bees?

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

#289

Post by Suppafly »

tredre3 wrote: post #128
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…

> Good luck getting a functioning body without consuming carbohydrates, either. The body doesn't need carbohydrates to function. > The body also requires dietary sugar to function :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate Again, the body does not :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet

>The body doesn't need carbohydrates to function.

Only in so much as that it will built glucose out of other things you eat if you don't eat carbs separately. Your body runs on glucose which is a carbohydrate.

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

#290

Post by cynicalpeace »

mauflows wrote: post #278
cynicalpeace wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the ol' I can't tell a fruit farm from a factory shtick

Uninformed Average Joe here and I'm with GP. If bakeries are out of the question then I'd be questioning fruit and meat shops as well

Bakeries load their goods with sugar.

Typically you don't mix sugar with meat. Though I think that practice is unfortunately becoming more frequent.

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