Ultraprocessed Foods Linked To Heart Disease, Diabetes, Mental Disorders and Early Death, Study Finds (cnn.com) 221
Eating ultraprocessed foods raises the risk of developing or dying from dozens of adverse health conditions, according to a new review of 45 meta-analyses on almost 10 million people. From a report: "We found consistent evidence linking higher intakes of ultra-processed foods with over 70% of the 45 different health outcomes we assessed," said senior author Wolfgang Marx, a senior research fellow at the Food & Mood Centre at Deakin University in Geelong, Australia, in an email. A higher intake was considered about one serving or about 10% more ultraprocessed foods per day, said Heinz Freisling, a scientist in the nutrition and metabolism branch of the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer, in an email.
"This proportion can be regarded as 'baseline' and for people consuming more than this baseline, the risk might increase," said Freisling, who was not involved in the study. Researchers graded each study as having credible or strong, highly suggestive, suggestive, weak or no evidence. All the studies in the review were published in the past three years, and none was funded by companies involved in the production of ultraprocessed foods, the authors said. "Strong evidence shows that a higher intake of ultra-processed foods was associated with approximately 50% higher risk of cardiovascular disease-related death and common mental disorders," said lead author Dr. Melissa Lane, a postdoctoral research fellow at Deakin, in an email. Cardiovascular disease encompasses heart attacks, stroke, clogged arteries and peripheral artery disease. The study: Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review of epidemiological meta-analyses (BMJ)
"This proportion can be regarded as 'baseline' and for people consuming more than this baseline, the risk might increase," said Freisling, who was not involved in the study. Researchers graded each study as having credible or strong, highly suggestive, suggestive, weak or no evidence. All the studies in the review were published in the past three years, and none was funded by companies involved in the production of ultraprocessed foods, the authors said. "Strong evidence shows that a higher intake of ultra-processed foods was associated with approximately 50% higher risk of cardiovascular disease-related death and common mental disorders," said lead author Dr. Melissa Lane, a postdoctoral research fellow at Deakin, in an email. Cardiovascular disease encompasses heart attacks, stroke, clogged arteries and peripheral artery disease. The study: Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review of epidemiological meta-analyses (BMJ)
Fast food (Score:3)
I think it has been known for a while now that fast food (which tend to be ultra processed normally) is not good for health.
Didn't someone do a documentary on eating from mcdonalds for a month or so?
Re:Fast food (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, and it was pretty dishonest. Turns out he was an alcoholic who also stopped drinking the same time as starting his 30 days of McDonalds.
Re: Fast food (Score:4, Interesting)
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Here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/vi... [bbc.co.uk]
Vegan diet had lower cholesterol.
Otherwise, their outcomes were similar.
Re:Fast food (Score:5, Insightful)
1. I rarely dine at Fast Food places.
2. I cook most of my meals from scratch at home, and when grocery shopping, I pretty much ONLY shop the outside most aisle of the store, never the middle of the store.
Don't get me wrong, occasionally, I hit Taco Bell with a vengeance.....but rarely.
I find in general, I eat smarter, healthier and CHEAPER by cooking foods at home from scratch.
With the money I save, in general, I use that to go out to a "real" restaurant...get a cocktail, a bottle of nice wine and have great food and great food service.
I have no problem dropping a little coin to do some fine dining (and I live in New Orleans where it is REALLY a treat).
But seriously, it is not hard or that expensive to eat well and eat healthy.
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LOL...ok, I gotta give you that one. "Dining" at a FF place is a bit of a stretch in terminology!!!
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The only real non-ultra processed food that I eat is for dinner which I make from fresh ingredients. I have corn flakes or Cripix for breakfast and a sub for lunch both of which are in part (or wholly) ultra-processed.
Then, there is my snacking... granola bars and the occasional chocolate. Basically, if it comes wrapped in plastic it is ultra-processed.
I am probably pretty normal as far as my habits go. I fully expect to die of cancer before I reach 80.
Re:Fast food (Score:5, Funny)
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Bragging time.
I lived in New Orleans for a few years. Cajun is easily the best food on the planet. My family on my mom's side is Cajun and an uncle owns a restaurant on a long pier near Baton Rouge where he grabs all his food.
On my dad's side, just over the border in southeast Texas where I grew up, we had the best BBQ in the world cooked in our back huge yard brick oven, and free crawdads every year in season.
Yes, I'm fat. But I live in South Carolina now so I'm losing the weight.
Re: Fast food (Score:3)
South Carolina has the best BBQ in the country, son. That Texas shit is just beef with ketchup. Real barbecue is pulled pork with hash. And real barbecue joints are not open every day of the week.
Ward's BBQ on Alice Drive in Sumter, SC. You're welcome.
Re:Fast food (Score:5, Insightful)
While these are all good advice, the fact is for many people it is anything but easy. The one thing you left out is time. Make a meal from scratch takes a lot more time, both in preparation and in shopping as fresh ingredients go bad much faster. For many people (mainly poor people) that is a luxury they don't have. As far as expensive, generally it is more expensive to eat fresh. Fresh vegetables are generally more expensive that canned or frozen. There are some staples that can be done cheaply like rice, but overall fresh costs more. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with what you are doing, but the idea that everyone can do this is not obtainable for many people.
Re:Fast food (Score:4, Interesting)
I have to disagree with you.
I have means these days, but this was not always the case.
When I was a broke college student and even after when I was waiting tables and bartending....I had little money, however, I always ate well.
Everyone is granted 24 hours in a day, and what you DO with your time is up to YOU.
I still do what I did when I was broke....I always check the weekly sale ads at the grocery stores around me.
I find what is on sale and I make my menus out to cook based on what is on sale (usually that also means what is in season).
I also tend to beeline in the meat aisle to see what is marked down. Hell, one night while in grad school, late night writing a paper, I was taking a break and a friend came over with a pizza. She ate the pizza, and me? Well, I made a quick meal of sautéed veal with a champagne cream sauce....and my meal cost less than that pizza she had.
Guess who ended up eating whose food the most?
Anyway, I digress. But not only are these methods effective to buy raw ingredients at lower prices, coupons still work...AND there are also what I call 2nd chance food stores out there, that sell blemished foods, or things stores just need off the shelves. Perfectly good food and LOW prices.
So, you can buy non-processed foods at good prices. When something is on sale, especially bulk meats...buy it, divide it and freeze it.
Let's talk more about time.
As previously mentioned, we all get 24 hours in a day.
What I do usually, I shop for the week on one day. It used to be Saturdays, but lately our grocery stores here, put the sale ads out on Wednesday, and it so happens on that one day, everything on the previous weeks' sale and this new sale all are on sale that day.
But anyway, I buy my foods, mostly based on what's on sale. On the weekends, usually Sunday, I spend most of the day cooking.
I'll cook 2-3 main items (mostly my proteins) and maybe 2-3 sides (mostly veggies). I'll eat off these all week for lunches and dinners.
During the summer, I really like to fire up the grill outside (lump charcoal, better flavor than gas)...and I'll grill out a lot of different veggies, but often a mix of egg plant, squashes, onions, etc.
I'll grill meats too. Some of the veggies and meats I marinate first, some I just season.
I just throw those into containers in the fridge. And during the week, I can make wraps out of those, or salads, or casseroles, or just as ingredients for other quick meals. I like to grill things and just make a big batch of tzatziki sauce and graze on that all week.
Some times instead of dinner, I'll just graze on some cheese or bits of meat, and some fruits, etc.
These days I tend to lean more towards Keto....and with higher protein and fat, I find that I'm eating less actually....lately 1.5 meals a day and I'm stuffed.
But anyway, with a little planning, it is very simple to find the cheaper food, and time to cook from scratch.
It'll be healthier and price competitive to eating crap processed and fast foods all the fucking time.
I'm talking about people in general, of course there are outside, cases...but for most people in the US, even those with few resources, you CAN cook and eat foods that are healthy from
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Look, we can't discount the fact that a lot of people make a lot of really stupid fucking choices at a really stupid young age but it's perfectly reasonable to expect someone to not get knocked up as a teenager. It's perfectly reasonable to expect someone to start working or going to school to get some education.
If you dig yourself a hole before you are even 21, then yes, life is going to be a lot harder. Luckily, teen pregnancies in the USA are at an all time low and education is more accessible now that a
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I find that by the time I leave home, get in the car, drive to a fast food place, wait for my order, then get home, I could have made my own food for cheaper and it would taste better.
The downside is when I cook, I need to do the cleanup.
Re: Fast food (Score:2)
Well said present. In the US, calories are cheap, but nutrition is expensive.
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Yeah, plus stores like DollarTree deliberately try and muscle sources of fresh food out of neighbourhoods who lack the resources to push back, to create food deserts, so the only practical place to get food from is there (and guess how much of their "food" isn't fresh or ultraprocessed)
While people should be encouraged to eat fresh, the reality is that making access to fresh food difficult for people *on purpose* is a transparent and open strategy pursued by some rather large retail entities in the market.
So let's increase your work week by 20 hours (Score:2)
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I think it has been known for a while now that fast food (which tend to be ultra processed normally) is not good for health.
Didn't someone do a documentary on eating from mcdonalds for a month or so?
Rocks. Low in calories, salt and sugar.
Rocks, they're not just for breakfast any more.
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I thought it was "beer"?
As in the old saying :
"Beer....it's not just for breakfast anymore..."
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I thought it was "beer"?
As in the old saying :
"Beer....it's not just for breakfast anymore..."
Gotta have something to wash the rocks down with.
Re: Fast food (Score:2)
Quarry is natural because it's mined.
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"Supersize me". Pretty impressive and not in a good way. Obviously not a scientific experiment, but a nice demonstration why low-quality fast food should not be a major source of your calories.
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It has been known, but I think most people don't understand how strong the link is. See the image in the presentation of this video:
https://youtu.be/5QOTBreQaIk?t... [youtu.be]
In the UK, every ethnic group, every gender, everyone started gaining weight at the same time in the history. And that time happens to be the same time when ultraprocessed food came to the market.
Direction of causation (Score:5, Insightful)
I can believe that the causation goes that way in all cases, but for mental disorders, itâ(TM)s going to be very confused with the opposite causation - depressed people go after quick easy solutions.
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Agreed: Greater Cause - Poverty! (Score:4, Insightful)
The biggest confounder I see is with wealth - poor people eat crappy food from gas stations, don't exercise, and get worse healthcare.
Want to know the number one cause of Heart Disease, Diabetes, Mental Disorders and Early Death? - being poor! It causes a ton of stress and stressed-out people tend to overeat. When you're broke, you're more likely to buy cheap, processed food. When you're too busy to go to the store 4x a week, you'll rely on processed food.
If you want to live like Joe Rogan (the health nut stuff), Gweneth Paltrow, or a fitness influencer, it's a full-time job. Fresh food spoils. Educating yourself about nutrition takes time. Preparing and cooking a meal with unprocessed ingredients costs a lot of money, requires more gear, and takes a lot of time. While it's important to document and research this stuff, it's simultaneously annoying and fucking classist.
Want to live healthy? You need to be upper middle class with a low-stress job or middle class with an easy job and no family responsibilities. Fresh food, even non-organic from the cheapest grocery store in my area is much more expensive. It spoils quickly, so you can't buy too much fresh fruit, vegetables, and meat at once, so you need to go to the grocery store 3 times a week, minimum. A workout takes an hour a day average if you're over 30 (I could get by without warming up as much in my 20s).
I do this today because I want my 2 small kids to eat healthy (they would much rather have a hot dog for supper than a stir fry). However, if I didn't earn as much, I definitely wouldn't be able to do this. If I was constantly stressed about paying the bills, I couldn't spend 2h a day between shopping, cooking, prepping food, and working out to keep myself in health.
This is classic correlation vs causation. Until you factor out poverty and stress, this data is meaningless. Yes, processed food are terrible for your healthy, but how many people live off mostly processed food unless they're really poor or really have a lot of other factors going on in their life? People in good mental health with a decent income don't eat their lunch from 7-11 or a vending machine.
Re:Agreed: Greater Cause - Poverty! (Score:4, Interesting)
Bollocks. Plenty of not poor kids I knew growing up ate "ultraprocessed" food and in some cases the results were predictable while others not so much. Plenty of fast food, bagged snacks, etc.
The poor whites had a few different items in their diets like, I dunno, saltines and Vienna sausages (lol) or pork rinds.
Point is not everyone in the middle class or above get their meals from Hello Fresh.
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Want to live healthy? You need to be upper middle class with a low-stress job or middle class with an easy job and no family responsibilities. Fresh food, even non-organic from the cheapest grocery store in my area is much more expensive. It spoils quickly, so you can't buy too much fresh fruit, vegetables, and meat at once, so you need to go to the grocery store 3 times a week, minimum. A workout takes an hour a day average if you're over 30 (I could get by without warming up as much in my 20s).
Now I don't live in the USofA but have been there often enough and I can say from experience fresh vegetables and fruit is no more expensive than most crappy processed food.
Just buy beans and in-season vegetables, especially the (dried) beans and peas can be kept for years, vegetables keep several days in a fridge.
Cooking takes max 30 minutes, so what is the problem?
About the work out, that's dumb, just find a place nearer to where you shop or work and do it all walking.
Re:Direction of causation (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't really establish causation. From the paper;
Depression - but also just being poor, or stressed, or overworked - could conceivably all be external factors that result in both increased processed (cheap, easy) food consumption and poorer health.
The only causal relationship that absolutely do have evidence for is that highly processed foods contain more calories per serving, and that this is a factor in weight gain. Not that I think eating that kind of foods is good for you, of course, but I'm no seeing this study as saying anything we didn't already know.
=Smidge=
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Nope. Your body makes all the saturated fat you need, Source (one among many) [johnmuirhealth.com]
You can eat it, but you don't need to, and you definitely don't need to eat lots of it.
So... vegans beware! (Score:5, Interesting)
Quote: "ultraprocessed foods"
And, that's the "zero-meat that tastes like meat"-alternatives you eat.
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It stands to reason that vegan junk food would be just as bad as any other kind of junk food.
On the other hand, if you eat an absolutely perfect diet, you die anyway.
So, this is just another quality-of-life vs quantity-of-life trade-off.
As we all know, abstaining from smoking can add ten years of being old to your life.
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I knew an obese proud vegan woman, a decade my junior, who ate a flat of Oreos per day. And I do mean seven packages in a weekly shopping cart.
She derided my aged ribeye without provocation so I returned the favor.
Funny thing is she styled herself an anticapitalist and I bought meat from a local farmer.
Oh, and she's dead.
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Sure, "vegan" is a "diet of exclusion" -- it's defined by what is *not* in it. That leaves unlimited scope for making bad decisions. That said, most diets of exclusion (e.g., low-carb) tend to work because they usually exclude ultraprocessed foods and refined carbohydrates. Sure, technically oreos are vegan because the "creme filling" is made from vegetable oil, corn syrup and soy lecithin, but ultraprocessed junk food isn't a *typical* foundation for most vegan diets, which tend to be centered around be
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Hardly matters. Vegans consume an unnatural diet that is extreme enough to need chemically produced supplements. If they screw that up, they will harm and sometimes kill themselves and occasionally their children. Not a smart choice, not a sensible choice, not a save choice, but some people are part of groups that virtue signals so hard that all sanity goes out the window. As far as that goes, vegans are obnoxious but overall pretty harmless. Let them do their thing. There are enough other virtue signalling
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I am. There is a _massive_ difference between "vegetarian" and "vegan" regarding the effects. I was specifically commenting on "vegan".
"Ultra-processed foods" definition? (Score:4, Informative)
The best definition I could find, and the one that the study apparently makes the most use of despite the absence of a universally accepted definition, comes from the NOVA classification system:
Ultra-processed foods are industrial formulations made entirely or mostly from substances extracted from foods (oils, fats, sugar, starch, and proteins), derived from food constituents (hydrogenated fats and modified starch), or synthesized in laboratories from food substrates or other organic sources (flavor enhancers, colors, and several food additives used to make the product hyper-palatable). Manufacturing techniques include extrusion, moulding and preprocessing by frying. Beverages may be ultra-processed. Group 1 [unprocessed or minimally processed] foods are a small proportion of, or are even absent from, ultra-processed products.
Re:"Ultra-processed foods" definition? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: "Ultra-processed foods" definition? (Score:3)
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These findings would be more useful if they could identify exactly what properties or ingredients are the key problems. I wonder how much of the signal actually comes down to sugar/salt/fat content - and to what extent "processing" is kind of a red herring?
People who lack time, money, and/or a place to cook are going to continue to gravitate towards cheap, fast, shelf-stable food, so knowing where the health problems are coming from is important.
For myself, I try to eat somewhat healthy, but some of the st
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Here's a quick test to see if you have ultra processed foods.
Does it have a label on it?
When you read the label, is there an ingredients list and on said list are there words you cannot pronounce and do not recognize as food (chemicals, preservatives)?
If so, you stand about a 99.9999% chance of holding in your ha
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dubious (Score:2)
smoked fish, which has been around longer than civilization itself, counts as a "processed food".
and interestingly, there are fewer incidences of prostate cancer from ultra-processed food, but they never want to mention the benefits!
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Perhaps that's semantics.
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smoked fish, which has been around longer than civilization itself, counts as a "processed food".
It's processed, but not ultraprocessed. Those are distinct categories.
This article is about ultraprocessd food.
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im just saying it aint that bad try a bit
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Error line 1: Sentence not parsable.
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Smoked fish is probably not great for you, compared to the unsmoked kind. It doesn't really matter how long it's been around.
"Ultraprocessed" - and, why I am not surprised. (Score:2)
In case you were as curious as me, this is from the article.
Ultra-processed foods, as defined using the Nova food classification system, encompass a broad range of ready to eat products, including packaged snacks, carbonated soft drinks, instant noodles, and ready-made meals.1 These products are characterised as industrial formulations primarily composed of chemically modified substances extracted from foods, along with additives to enhance taste, texture, appearance, and durability, with minimal to no incl
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Or they could, you know, keep improving food chemistry to make these "ultraprocessed" foods less unhealthy for consumers.
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Well, there's your problem.
The food, starts out as healthy, with vitamins, minerals, proteins, etc....
But each processing step along the way, removes the healthy parts of the food...and by the time they are finished with it, there is nothing beneficial really to the human body.
They add stuff back in artificially as they can, but the damage is largely done by the time they process it a
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1). You're painting with a broad brush.
2). If you wind up with a healthier product at the end, it doesn't really matter how you got there.
Processed foods are a here to stay, if only for reasons of shelf life.
I'll take... (Score:2)
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Expect a dozen follow up stories in the press over the next decades about how the food industry "knew it all along and hid the truth from us!" and "intentionally marketed candy to children!" :)
Kind of like how only the tobacco industry knew about its negative effects, and "cancer sticks" was never a term...
Really? (Score:2)
Really, we needed yet another study to determine this? Or is this some pretext to go after the food industry and make the only barely affordable food even less so?
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You want scientists to stop doing Science? Why?
Meh (Score:2)
This is only good news for me really.
This is a meta study (Score:2)
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It's pretty easy really....if your food has a label on it, it is likely processed food.
If you want to narrow that down, if on the label it has an ingredients list, listing anything more than a basic food, ie if it has chemicals or preservative (basically anything hard to pronounce), it is processed food.
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https://ecuphysicians.ecu.edu/... [ecu.edu]
This is what they reference in the study.
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Maybe look into some of the studies this meta study used.
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The mechanisms are pretty well known and they do not come from ultraprocessing itself. They come from bad, cheap, greedy ultraprocessing and an excess of salt, sugar and bad ingredient quality (e.g. low-quality fat) covered with additives. Since this particular study did not set out to find the mechanisms, they correctly state that they confirmed a correlation. But this paper does not exist in a vacuum at all.
Beware of arm-wavers with "studies" (Score:3)
There's SCIENCE, and then there's "studies" and these two are often completely unrelated.
"studies" are, far too often, simply causation-correlation-fallacy style associations observed from statistics - that's not from the field of SCIENCE, it's from the field of STATISTICS. Statistics and such activities are a TOOL and a fine way to spot something interesting to be scientifically investigated, but they are not themselves "science".
If a correlation is observed, then it may be interesting, and worthy of study, BUT it's not science until some actual science has been done, and that correlation is not only observed, but an actual cause-and-effect relationship has been established. This will often be indicated by the presence of an uncovered underlying mechanism. If the person ranting and waving his arms over his "groundbreaking study" cannot explain the mechanism by which a supposed cause drives a supposed effect, then it's likely just a statistical thing and not much more likely true than a weather prediction by Punxsutawney Phil. It might be true, but Phil is sometimes right too, while not being science. It's one thing to say "we believe X causes Y" and another thing entirely to say "we have shown that X affects Z1 and Z2 in following manner which in-turn causes Y, and here's how you can repeat our work and observe the results..."
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That is very rarely the case. Also, statistics very much _is_ a Science. In the case here, there is already enough causal relationships in the individual effects to make a non-causal correlation implausible enough as to require extraordinary evidence. For example, eating a lot of ultraprocessed food results in higher alt intake and that causes a lot of health issues. Sutre, it is still possible that some people with health issues from other cause like to eat more salt and it is possible that for some people
Grow and cook your own foods? (Score:2)
Even vegetables have been compromised with disease ridden tomatoes, spinach and probably everything else too.
Mass vegetable growing in search of higher profit causes all sorts of chemicals to be used.
Is the only solution to grow your own food?
I really don't have the time for that.
Can I trust the "organic" designation?
There are cheaters everywhere.
How depressing.
At least the sun is shining today.
I'm going for a walk.
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Just drop the seeds in the dirt and water about once a week, whilst the plants grow indoors, then when they are a few inches tall, take them outside.
Kitchen scraps of celery, onions,
Familiarity breeds contempt (Score:2)
We move the goalposts on food. We take that which is familiar and we transform them into supersensory experiences (unknown in nature) with sugar, salt, fat.. But, I suspect we lose perspective in the process.
If grapes did not exist, and you created a dessert that tasted like grapes and kept the process a secret, you'd probably become a billionaire. Grapes are that great.
It is not the "ultraprocessing" (Score:2)
It is that this is routinely done by greedy scum that uses low-quality ingredients and then add tons of salt, sugar, low-quality fats, etc. and then use the properties of ultraprocessing to hide that via artificial aromas and the like. In non- or low-processed foods you can essentially not hide bad quality ingredients.
Also, has been known for a long time. Do not eat ultraprocessed food regularly.
If only (Score:2)
Evolutionary Diet (Score:3)
Tell me about your new pet theories - sure - but while that's being tested eat as close to an equatorial evolutionary diet as you can and fast occasionally.
Odds are the pet theory will fade and what we're evolved to eat will remain.
I got lazy for a while and puffed back up, but then I remembered how to eat and forty pounds fell off easily again with just a bit of fasting (as our ancestors were used to).
No sugar, folks.
cause and effect (Score:2)
Dare I say...rigged? (Score:2)
Such foods have been around at least since the 1970's. Why would it take this long to discover such? It's a strong correlation such that it should have showed up decades ago. Should I wear my industry-suppression-foil-hat? The tobacco, sugar, pain med, and fossil fuel industry et. al. were caught influencing doctors and researchers to STFU, so it's not unheard of.
We know it when we see it (Score:3)
We know it when we see it, but we need a better definition, perhaps a new name. Take corn for instance. Some types of corn will literally give you malnutrition if they are not processed [wikipedia.org].OTOH, the manufacture and addition of syrup from corn (high fructose corn syrup) also leads to malnutrition!
Perhaps that's why they're going with this "ultra" prefix, but that just implies more processing than usual; not necessarily unhealthy processing.
Maybe malprocessed is the word we need. I can't necessarily define it, but I know it when I see it.
Some good rules of thumb: in the frozen aisle, packaged in plastic, or comes in an aluminum can. Ingredients include hydrogentated oils, added sugars, and preservatives.
Even these aren't perfect rules though. Some healthy foods violate them, some unhealthy foods don't.
You just... know it when you see it.
Heinz Freisling (Score:2)
Never mind the ultra-processed foods. Tell us what happened to the first 56 versions of your tomato juice.
Is this true for everyone or just weak people? (Score:2)
What do they mean by "ultra-processed?" (Score:2)
It's a bit of a personal grudge when people use vague, poorly defined terms and overgeneralizations when talking about nutrition. It really dumbs down the overall conversation about it and it's why I try not to talk to people about the topic offline; most people have no clue what they're talking about and just repeat now-meaningless terms like "processed."
Re:What do they mean by "ultra-processed?" (Score:4, Informative)
They tell you the exact term for the specification they used - the NOVA Classification. It's in the very first line under "Abstract".
https://ecuphysicians.ecu.edu/... [ecu.edu]
Group 4 (Page 4):
Ultra-processed foods are industrial formulations made entirely or mostly from substances extracted from foods (oils, fats, sugar, starch, and proteins), derived from food constituents (hydrogenated fats and modified starch), or synthesized in laboratories from food substrates or other organic sources (flavor enhancers, colors, and several food additives used to make the product hyper-palatable). Manufacturing techniques include extrusion, moulding and preprocessing by frying. Beverages may be ultra-processed. Group 1 foods are a small proportion of, or are even absent from, ultra-processed products.
- fatty, sweet, savory or salty packaged snacks
- pre-prepared (packaged) meat, fish and vegetables
- biscuits (cookies)
- pre-prepared pizza and pasta dishes
- ice creams and frozen desserts
- pre-prepared burgers, hot dogs, sausages
- chocolates, candies and confectionery in general
- pre-prepared poultry and fish ‘nuggets’ and ‘sticks
- cola, soda and other carbonated soft drinks
- other animal products made from remnants
- energy’ and sports drinks
- packaged breads, hamburger and hot dog buns
- canned, packaged, dehydrated (powdered) and other ‘instant’ soups, noodles, sauces, desserts, drink mixes and seasonings
- baked products made with ingredients such as hydrogenated vegetable fat, sugar, yeast, whey, emulsifiers, and other additives
- sweetened and flavored yogurts, including fruit yogurts
- breakfast cereals and bars
- dairy drinks, including chocolate milk
- infant formulas & drinks, and meal replacement shakes (e.g., ‘slim fast’)
- sweetened juices pastries, cakes and cake mixes
- margarines and spreads
- distilled alcoholic beverages such as whisky, gin, rum, vodka, etc.
It's the sugar and the toxic oil (Score:4, Interesting)
Ultra processing doesn't neccessarily mean the food is bad for you. But it just so happens, due to economics of making shelf-stable low cost packaged foods, that these ultra-processed foods all contain lots of sugar and lots of toxic oil. It's these two ingredients that are killing people, not the fact that the food is processed in a machine.
Sugar you all know about.It causes type 2 diabetes and metabolic disease which leads to obesity, and obesity causes a whole host of other problems (heart disease, cancer, fatty liver disease, etc).
But the other big problem, toxic oil, lots of people still don't get it. Toxic oil means soybean oil, cottonseed oil, rapeseed oil (AKA "Canola" oil), corn oil, etc. They are all very high in polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), which unstable and oxidize rapidly and become toxins which then lead to heart disease over time. These oils are frankenfoods.... they do not exist in nature in the pure liquid that we think of. There's only a tiny amount of oil in a soybean, and it's all bound up in the fibers and it's hard to isolate and concentrate it. That's why industrial processes using high heat and hexane (a petrolchemical solvent similar to gasoline) are used to extract and concentrate the soybean oil. It's then bleached to get rid of the gummy residue and to get rid of the smell. All this processing breaks down and oxidizes the PUFA, which is already unstable to begin with. That means the bottle of soybean/corn/rapeseed oil you buy from the supermarket is already oxidized to all hell and is going to be a major source of inflammation and irritation to your arteries and other things.
The only reason companies use these toxic oils is because they're very very cheap.
Prior to the 20th century, before the invention of these cheap toxic PUFA seed oils, everyone ate butter and tallow and lard, and maybe olive oil in climates where olives can grow, and heart attacks were nearly unheard of. Then beginning with the invention of hexane-extracted cottonseed oil (which were first used as industrial lubricant and not even considered for human consumption due to their dubious origin), heart attack rates rose and rose and rose until by the late 20th century, heart attack became the #1 killer of adults in all the "western" nations that switched over to these cheap oils.
Monounsaturated fats and saturated fats are what you should be eating. It's not that these good for you, it's just that they are stable products and are not toxins and they are not bad for you and they don't cause heart disease. So don't eat oil thinking it's good for you, do the opposite. Avoid the toxic shit.
Back to the original point of the article. There are some ultra-processed foods that are not bad for you at all. Think of freeze-dried egg powder. No sugar added, no PUFA oils, just normal regular eggs that are freeze-dried in a giant vacuum chamber and then ground up into a fine powder by industrial grinding machines. It's highly processed, but also it's perfectly healthy to eat it. Because it's got no sugar and no toxic oil.
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Do you have a source for your assertions about Polyunsaturated fats? Every reputable source I finds says they're not just not bad for you, but that they're actually good for you.
The truth about fats: the good, the bad, and the in-between [harvard.edu]
Polyunsaturated Fats [heart.org]
Dietary fat: Know which to choose [mayoclinic.org]
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'heart attacks were nearly unheard of" before the 20th century.
I think maybe that could be due to lack of medical knowledge (reporting deaths as Natural Causes or accidents, vs more accurate or modern understandings of Cancer and Heart Attacks), and people also dying much sooner due to other causes in general.
Life expectancy in the 20th century was much higher than before that of the 19th and 18th century; 10-20 years.
Food writer meme wave (Score:3)
The NOVA taxonomy appears to be drawn at least as much from agenda as from science. The author admits only wheat-based bread to the merely Processed category, omitting rye.
Though dextrins made industrially (I have some from Cargill) typically use a catalyst, roasting ordinary starch (group 2 Processed Culinary Ingredients) with no catalyst in an ordinary household oven will produce dextrins that smell delicious, because they are identical to those in freshly baked bread or toast. I do this for a graphic arts application and my grocery store + oven dextrin works as well as Cargill's. Was I ultra-processing, or merely being culinary?
Next, consider starch pica, where individuals directly eat starch powder. At one time, this was frequent among housekeepers, who would eat laundry starch. It was frequently associated with obesity.
It's not the processing, it's the attractiveness, calorie density and glycemic behavior of the end product. I never liked David Kessler much as FDA commissioner, but his book "The End of Overeating" is vastly more usefully informative than the current "ultraprocessed" memefest.
Food writers and agenda pushers parrot "ultraprocessed" because it sounds complicated and sinister. These are the same people who use the category "pulses" to describe peas and beans in American general public audience articles, despite the fact that if you asked any grocery store person where the pulses were, they would stare at you like an alien. This is not informative writing: it is screed.
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Canning or any level of preparation is seen as extremist:
what are you canning for?
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what are you canning for?
Winter.
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isnt your time worth more than canning fruit though? like, doesnt it make more sense economically to just buy canned stuff from your salary than become a farmer/canner in your spare time?
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Well, actually, I find home canning to be a fun project on some days.
Whether it is canning fresh veggies from my summer garden, or making jam/jellies....
Hell, I like to make home fermented things like sauerkraut from scratch and fermented pickles, etc.
Often not only do my home made items TASTE far superior to store boug
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what are you canning for?
Winter.
My family has always canned food, and the SO and I have taken it up the past 10 years or so. Corn, tomatoes, green and wax beans, beets, and my favorite, oil pack Hungarian Wax peppers. Nothing beats those on a Submarine Sandwich.
Another good reason to can is you know what you put into the jar. I also do Smoked Hungarian Sausage from prime pork and beef, smoked Briskit and smoked pulled pork.
I don't need to, but the food is so damned much better than the commercial stuff in most cases.
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You actually men
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You actually mentioned a lot of the same things I have in my threads.
LOL...we should get together for a feast...I also home brew beer and just got a new offset smoker that is producing some of the best BBQ I've had in a long time....
Oh hell yeah. My smoker isn't offset - I might have to build one, because some things like Cheese and salt need offset. I still have my beermaking equipment Haven't made any for a few years - I should brew another batch soon.
I need to expand my sausage making activities....
> The cool thing about sausage is the gazillion different recipes. I do mostly the Hungarian, but also breakfast sausage with sage, and summer sausage. I want to try boudin sausage some time.
Do you ever play around with fermenting your own foods (kraut, pickles, etc)?
We do pickles, Kosher- lotsa garlic, Dill - more tart, and Bread and Butter pickles. My B
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We never canned, but my Dad taught me how to freeze vegetables, tomatoes in particular. When the garden is in full swing, I fill the freezer with tomatoes and corn niblets. It's great for soups and sauces throughout the Winter.
The advantage to canning is that you don't have to worry about the power going out. The disadvantage is that you can kill yourself more easily if you screw it up. It's rare, but it can happen. I'm not sure what the statistics are on home canning vs. factories.
I fill empty freez
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Well, for one...it is fun.
And secondly....it's a great way to be able to stretch my summer garden veggie freshness and flavor into the winter.
I mean, hell, these days, you can't get a decent tasting tomato at a regular grocery store in the summer growing season, much less in the winter...
But my vine grown tomatoes that taste wonderful in the summer, are still really great and better than store bought when I opened the ones I canned during the winter.
And for quick meals....I lik
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Clickbait.
While the issue at hand with Miller primarily has to do with his selling of raw milk and meat outside the bounds of what the government establishment considers "safe" and "legal," PA Agriculture's arguments against him have far-reaching implications for all home-grown food.
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19 others were sickened [usatoday.com] in 2019 from drinking raw milk from a Miller's Biodiversity Farm (a member's only club) with drug resistant bruscella.
Previously, 78 people were sickened [pennlive.com] in 2012 after drinking raw milk from another farm.
There's a reason for pasteurization and inspections of those selling milk. But apparently people are supposed to get sick and die so the g