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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

#291

Post by cush »

BizarroLand wrote: post #271
cush wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people you describe are experiencing very real eating disorders. Even if they aren’t counting calories, they are keenly aware that they’re destroying their body. They aren’t silent, they’re addicted.

Socially acceptable eating disorders are the foundation of multiple hundred billion dollar companies. Every junk and fast food company in America sells food that does not satisfy you, is unhealthy for you, has a "taste" that is not easy to replicate at home but that has been scientifically curated to prevent you from reaching the satiation point when you are eating them (like Pringles, "Bet you can't eat just one", b…

It’s both. I do recognize, and agree with most of what you’re saying. The junk food industrial complex is real.

But people have autonomy and if you took their burgers away tomorrow they’d riot.

> It's not an eating disorder to eat junk food in America.

It absolutely is a disorder to eat to the level you described in your previous comment.

Just because millions of people take part in it, and it’s socially acceptable doesn’t make the way Americans eat not an eating disorder. They’re also aware, not silent, or ignorant. Everyone knows junk food and eating until you want to throw up is bad for you.

And yes I fully understand there are people out there inventing ways to make food even more addictive. Fuck those people. Those are the worst people.

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

#292

Post by ben_w »

bityard wrote: post #209
zby wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Actually carbs are necessary This is NOT true. Carbs are ONE form of energy that the body can use for fuel. Fat is the other one. > people with diabetes tried to live on a completely carb free diet - but you cannot do that for long. I guess you're saying I don't exist? For about 10 years, I haven't eaten carbs beyond the VERY rare cookie or two every other month and the insignificant trace amounts in above-ground l…

> Angus Barbieri

So far as I can tell, he consumed yeast extract, which all my suppliers of assure me does in fact contain carbohydrates.

But perhaps Barbieri ate a special kind that didn't?

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

#293

Post by luqtas »

bityard wrote: post #209
zby wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Actually carbs are necessary This is NOT true. Carbs are ONE form of energy that the body can use for fuel. Fat is the other one. > people with diabetes tried to live on a completely carb free diet - but you cannot do that for long. I guess you're saying I don't exist? For about 10 years, I haven't eaten carbs beyond the VERY rare cookie or two every other month and the insignificant trace amounts in above-ground l…

have you ever actually tried to read about indian diet on Amazon? ... it's not because they hunt(ed) fish and capybaras that you can make such a claim, go figure

i also tried to find a link for a paper here but it's been a long time but basically the population we have the smallest register of disease is an indian tribe around the coast of South America that mostly has a super high carbohydrate consumption compared to the rest of the world (will edit and comment if i find it)

edit: yeah, doubt i'll find but another counterpoint, go look at the rate of disease of Eskimos... they eat meat only!

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

#294

Post by tremon »

disparate_dan wrote: post #207
klik99 wrote: post #205

Putting aside the vague hand wavy definition of what "highly processed foods" literally means, my suspicion is that there are two things making processed food worse for you. I've heard drinking juiced fruits is worse for you than eating the equivalent fruits, as the sugars in the fruit are wrapped in fiber that make the sugars "slow release" into your body, and those are broken down when juiced so the sugars hit you…

I agree. I think there is a third thing: processed foods are more likely to contain additives like colorants, emulsifiers, preservatives and stabilisers that humans have been eating for decades rather than centuries so we don’t have the same body of knowledge about them or their health-related impacts.

> that humans have been eating for decades rather than centuries

That's false btw. We humans have been eating emulsifiers and preservatives for centuries, even if we only classified them decades ago. Examples:

- Lecithin (E322): naturally found in egg yolk

- Citric acid (E330): naturally found in lemons and oranges

- Agar (E406): found in red seaweed, an edible crop from southeast Asia

- some sulphites (E221, E226) naturally occur in wines. Old wines are actually likely to contain more sulphites than modern ones since we now have a body of knowledge about them and their health-related impacts

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

#295

Post by e_y_ »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #150
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…

What we need first is transparency. Complete information about every ingredient, its supplier, where it was grown, what process it went through, etc. then we can perform research without confusing and conflicting results. Unfortunately I’ve seen people fight state or local level labeling laws by falling for corporate propaganda, particularly from companies in the GMO industry.

I think adding labels to the product is only useful to a certain extent. There's a few things that stand out, like if a product has 70% DV sodium that's usually a bad sign, or "cheese product" tells you that it's not real cheese (for better or worse). But stopping to look at the ingredient list of every product you buy is time consuming.

This is where online food databases might work better. Scan the UPC/EAN with an app and the app can tell you which ingredients are generally safe, which ones to avoid. The recommendations could be personalized to your dietary needs or allow ratings from different organizations that might have varying criteria for what they consider OK vs bad.

Such apps exist but usually requires someone (volunteer crowdsourcing or paid) to input products into the system so it may not be complete or fully up to date. And as you suggested, supplier information and more detail on the processing isn't available. Having an international, public database of that information (with an API for app makers) could help make nutrition label apps -- or maybe even built into Google Lens -- much more accessible to the general public.

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

#296

Post by ben_w »

bityard wrote: post #210
shafyy wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is living years without any carbs?

The Inuit, for starters. Oh, and me.

So far as I can tell, Inuit get about 15–20% of their calories from carbohydrates, because of all the glycogen from the raw meat they consume.

But I am only looking at summaries outside a bunch of paywalls, so I can't confirm the quotes on the wikipedia page.

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

#297

Post by atombender »

dekhn wrote: post #268
duckmysick wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do these other fields also study humans in controlled experiments? I think it has to do with the sample to staff ratio. It's not enough to observe human subjects. You have to actively prevent them from going off the rails. It doesn't scale well when you increase the sample size. I guess we could replicate a similar experiment n-times and then do a meta study, but it's not ideal either. How would you tackle the logist…

Yes, the most common example would be clinical trials for drugs and other medical treatments- often have thousands of patients (with recruitment being the limiting factor). There are tons of ways that studies can go wrong, for example when patients don't take the treatment and lie (this is common) or have other lifestyle factors that influence the results, which can't be easily smoothed out with slightly larger N. I…

From my reading, that's not generally true. It all depends on the methodology. Safety or feasibility studies can use very small sample sizes. I've been reading safety studies on monoclonal antibodies like Cimzia, for example:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29030361/ (N=16)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28814432/ (N=17)

https://ard.bmj.com/content/83/Suppl_1/1145.2 (N=21)

Of course, these are not nutritional studies.

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

#298

Post by hackingonempty »

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.

Sugar is literally evaporated sugar cane juice. You need a lot of cane to make a little sugar because water is heavy. "refinining" is just separating out the molasses to make it white and so the molasses can be sold separately. You only need "heavy industrial processes" to make it profitably at scale.

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

#299

Post by wnevets »

tremon wrote: post #275
wnevets wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't understand that basic task like washing is "processing" the food and can be frustrating when talking to them about this subject.

That's not about understanding, that's deliberate obfuscation. If people cannot (or don't want to) distinguish between a faucet and a blender, there is no further discussion to be had.

I don't know if that is true when speaking to the general public about this. They usually think processed food means toxic chemicals were added.

Certain podcasters/influences/etc are absolutely misleading people either for the views or to sell people a "detox" tea they can drop ship from China.

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

#300

Post by adamparsons »

willy_k wrote: post #258
goalieca wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But supermarket bread? I don't think so. Why? The point of the quotation was to question if this was a problem in the quantities listed. I know I’d rather eat whole grain enriched supermarket bread than refined white flour bread from some low protein source wheat.

The whole grain bread is definitely preferable, but it is still very likely to have added oils, gums, and/or preservatives. I think their main point is that supermarket bread is rarely made of just bread. There are exceptions but that requires one to first take the time to identify them and then fork up the extra dough (punintended).

In Australia, our supermarket bread almost always has “vegetable oil” in the ingredients. They can’t even be bothered sticking to one type of vegetable oil or listing which ones they use.

I’ll take the home bread

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