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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

#91

Post by xnx »

mchannon wrote: post #49

The article name is "Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods are bad for you", the opposite of this thread's title. Everyone's ignoring the elephant in the room: fiber. Fiber locks up calories and makes the body miss a lot of them, or absorb them later in the digestion process. If we reduce the word "processed" to a single action, it's removing fiber. It's turning wheat berries into flour. It's ripping off…

Agree completely. "Processing" is mainly the act of removing fiber so more food can be eaten faster and more often. Fiber satiates, which is not a good thing for companies that are trying to sell as much product as possible.

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

#92

Post by thrawa1235432 »

vixen99 wrote: post #82
cynicalpeace wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

40-60% of nutritional studies cannot be replicated. You can't reliably draw any conclusions from them. You have to use common sense and rules of thumb.

Can you please give your reference for that definitive statement. And what are 'nutritional studies'? Why wouldn't they include the research that led to the list of nutrient recommendations issued by USDA and similar publications in the UK, Norway, France, Australia and many other countries. No conclusions from them? I think there are. There is a truly vast literature on subjects nutritional so it's vital to be very…

The RDA and nutrient recommendations are the bare minimum so you do not die. Vast literature is ad populum fallacy.

Also consider that genetic background matters in nutritional matters and well... The populations under study have changed, and that's assuming you have a fairly similar background to a population and not very mixed.

And we are not even getting into how these things go down in practice, with heavy industry lobbying and what not...

TLDR, you are on your own in terms of optimal nutrition but as another commenter said "eat food, not too much, mostly plants"

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

#93

Post by makeitdouble »

xooxies wrote: post #76
makeitdouble wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

Avoiding manufactured food is absurd to a level I didn't think needed explanation.

Even from a logistics POV we're 8 billion on this planet, concentrated in cities. Everyone following that philosophy would bring a food chain collapse.

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

#94

Post by ifyoubuildit »

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…

> others, like breakfast cereals, bread and yogurt, were instead linked to lower risks for cardiovascular disease.

This surprises me. A lot of breakfast cereals and sweetened yogurts are basically candy, and I would have assumed are heavy contributors to poor health.

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

#95

Post by anonym29 »

pjc50 wrote: post #87
anonym29 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think it's not useful at all to know you can protect your health proactively with one classification system of UPFs, that is deemed a bit extreme? Or is it possible you're coming from a place of motivated reasoning? If you've got a worldview that deems your own food choices "healthy", but they're not on the Nova classification list, that doesn't automatically mean your own food choices aren't healthy, t…

The history of nutritional advice studies is extremely noisy and full of questionable, later reversed discoveries that have been p-hacked into existence. I think people are right to be very, very wary of rejecting the null hypothesis about anything without extremely solid clear evidence.

I don't disagree at all, but is there anything ambiguous about the health benefits of avoiding UPFs as defined by the Nova classification system? It seems the criticism I was responding to was more about the classification system being too strict, rather than lacking clear evidence of health benefits.

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

#96

Post by nightski »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #27
nightski wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just as dumb though because the act of processing doesn't really mean anything.

If it didn't mean anything then why the findings in the article?

The findings in the article basically came down to - people eat more calories when it tastes good. Even the article itself admits there are a multitude of other factors that could account for the results other than UPF.

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

#98

Post by Jensson »

ifyoubuildit wrote: post #94
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…

> others, like breakfast cereals, bread and yogurt, were instead linked to lower risks for cardiovascular disease. This surprises me. A lot of breakfast cereals and sweetened yogurts are basically candy, and I would have assumed are heavy contributors to poor health.

> A lot of breakfast cereals and sweetened yogurts are basically candy

Apparently "basically candy" is not the same thing as candy. That is a great find, lets us eat basically candy without the health consequences.

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

#99

Post by taeric »

bee_rider wrote: post #52
taeric wrote: post #19

Looking at the amount of processed food available in Japan, it is hard to think it is just the processed food that is to blame. I think it is a cheap observation, such that I expect people to push back on me, but it is hard to ignore portion sizes. Will try and take a dive on some of the data around that. But a personal level, it is hard to grapple with the fact that I just got less food per place that I went. And it…

What’s special about Japan in this context?

Possibly nothing. Was just recently able to observe it directly.

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

#100

Post by makeitdouble »

cynicalpeace wrote: post #72
makeitdouble wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

Good thing I didn't make that argument :)

I'm not sure what argument you were making then.

Assuming your point isn't that you used the "factory" terminology instead of calling it "unnatural", so it's not an appeal to nature.

I'd actually be pleased to dig on the deeper part you were pointing to.

PS: the "we are not adapted" to part of your post is the crux of it in my eyes: we're not adapted to a lot of things but that doesn't make it good or bad or problematic. We're not adapted to receiving MRIs, wearing glasses or looking at imaginary landscapes in VR, and that's totally fine in my book .

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