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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

#361

Post by udfalkso »

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…

100% this. There is a wonderful book called The Dorito Effect that goes into this in more detail.

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

#362

Post by astura »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #202
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.

It does make sense if we're talking about yogurt. The sugary yogurts sold at super markets etc don't have sugar sprinkled on top, but mixed in. Normally, you can't do that. If you make yogurt the standard way [1] and try to add sugar to it while it's still a fluid, it will all sink to the bottom and then you'll just have some yogurt with a layer of sugar on the bottom. If you add it when it's not a fluid anymore, the…

This is an incredibly bizarre comment - I buy unsweetened yogurt and sometimes mix honey in before I eat it.

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

#363

Post by Kirby64 »

devchix wrote: post #360
Kirby64 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Are you scared of perfectly good products? If you added preservatives to your bread it wouldn't stale quickly either. Add a small amount of white vinegar to your bread and it will stale much less quickly.

The question is what kind of preservatives. Formaldehyde is a preservative. Acetic acid is a component of long-ferment lean dough such as sourdough, and an insignificant component of short-ferment (~2 hours) enriched dough, such as sandwich bread. It will not help with enhancement and preservation of texture, in this case the gelatinization of starch in the finished product.

Unless you're suggesting that the pita bread you threw out was preserved with formaldehyde, there isn't much of a question here. Taking issue with bread keeping its freshness is in-and-of itself no bad. If you have issue with a specific preservative, perhaps discuss that specificity.

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

#365

Post by devchix »

Kirby64 wrote: post #363
devchix wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is what kind of preservatives. Formaldehyde is a preservative. Acetic acid is a component of long-ferment lean dough such as sourdough, and an insignificant component of short-ferment (~2 hours) enriched dough, such as sandwich bread. It will not help with enhancement and preservation of texture, in this case the gelatinization of starch in the finished product.

Unless you're suggesting that the pita bread you threw out was preserved with formaldehyde, there isn't much of a question here. Taking issue with bread keeping its freshness is in-and-of itself no bad. If you have issue with a specific preservative, perhaps discuss that specificity.

Let us go back to the beginning. Are you saying home-bake bread which molds in 7 days is comparable to store-bought bread which does not mold in 7 days. OK then, in which we have nothing to argue about. I have no scientific source to cite one is better or worse than the other. By all means, buy and consume bread that does not mold for a long time. That sounds good.

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

#366

Post by Aloisius »

cynicalpeace wrote: post #26

Seems pretty obvious to me. Humans didn't have factories until a couple hundred years ago. This means we are not adapted to factory made food. This entire debate is hilariously overcomplicated by smarty pants "show me the study" or "aren't cooked carrots processed?" types. 40-60% of nutritional studies cannot be replicated. It's called the "replication crisis". Google it. Rules of thumb are greatly underrated on HN.…

> Here's one: if it couldn't be made outside of a factory, don't eat it.

I'm not sure I understand. Every food made in a factory was first made outside one.

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

#367

Post by therealdrag0 »

watwut wrote: post #266
samaltmanfried wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It's clear that most people don't understand basic nutrition, and most people have a very distorted view of what the human body should actually look like. The average American is very overweight. If you raise your arm above your head in front of the mirror, you should see your ribs, and you should see the clear outline of your latissimus dorsi. If you can't see these two things clearly, you are overweight.

That is not health advice, that is "how to be anorectic" advice. If you are at the weight with longest lifespan, you are somewhere at the top of "normal" bmi range and wont see ribs. You wont seen them in the middle of "normal" range and plenty of thin wont see them either. Otherwise said, for quite a lot of people accomplishing this would mean underweight. Underweight is less healthy the overweight.

It’s unnecessarily crude heuristic but it’s not totally wrong. It seems like you can see ribs in adult men up to around 25% body fat which is around the end of healthy range.

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

#368

Post by rendaw »

Aloisius wrote: post #354
Kirby64 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d be wrong about that, though. Wonder bread white has 140 calories, 1.5g of fat, 5g of protein, and 29g of carbs for two slices. 5g of claimed added sugar. In comparison, a recipe I’ve used to make very good white bread (the zojirushi recipe for their bread maker, for reference) has, for an equivalent weight of bread: 137 calories, 2.2g of fat, 3.9g of protein, and 24.8g of carbs. The recipe has roughly 2.5g of “…

You can't really tell how much sugar there is in baked bread simply based on the amount added in a recipe. Yeast ferment sugar, so depending on how much yeast you have, how active they are and the fermentation time, a small amount of sugar can easily be long gone by the time the bread comes out of the oven.

That goes for both store bought and homemade.

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

#369

Post by chrchr »

wnevets wrote: post #330
chrchr wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food that is merely washed might be processed, but is not ultra-processed according to the Nova classification [1]. There's an actual criteria that's being applied in these studies that concern ultra-processed food. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification

And have you read their definition?

Yes. The Nova classifications are on the page I linked.

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

#370

Post by d1sxeyes »

marcus0x62 wrote: post #302
d1sxeyes wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, technically yes. I think there’s a lot of work to be done on categorisation but the underlying principle tends to be fairly decent: the more stuff you do to your raw ingredients, the less healthy they become.

No, homemade bread would be NOVA group. 3. The flour itself is group 2 (processed culinary ingredients.) Mixing the group 2 ingredient (flour) with group 1 ingredients (water, yeast, salt) and baking it makes it group 3 (processed food.) If you added something like Xanthan Gum to your "homemade bread", that would make it group 4 (ultra processed foods.)

Thanks for the correction!

Homemade bread is a processed food, not an ultra processed food.

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