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Medicine Science

Eating Processed Foods Tied To Shorter Life, Study Suggests (theguardian.com) 243

Posted by BeauHD from the cost-of-convenience dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The study, in JAMA Internal Medicine, tracked diet and health over eight years in more than 44,000 French men and women. Their average age was 58 at the start. About 29 percent of their energy intake was ultraprocessed foods. Such foods include instant noodles and soups, breakfast cereals, energy bars and drinks, chicken nuggets and many other ready-made meals and packaged snacks containing numerous ingredients and manufactured using industrial processes. There were 602 deaths over the course of the study, mostly from cancer and cardiovascular disease. Even after adjusting for many health, socioeconomic and behavioral characteristics, including scores on a scale of compliance with a healthy diet, the study found that for every 10 percent increase in ultraprocessed food consumption, there was a 14 percent increase in the risk of death (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). The authors suggest that high-temperature processing may form contaminants, that additives may be carcinogenic, and that the packaging of prepared foods can lead to contamination.
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Eating Processed Foods Tied To Shorter Life, Study Suggests More

Eating Processed Foods Tied To Shorter Life, Study Suggests

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  • sugars are the devil.

    • sugars are the devil.

      Sucrose certainly is. Avoid it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Most processed foods are engineered to be hyper palatable and include added sucrose. They also commonly contain zero, or nearly zero fiber. Highly refined starches can also present a challenge to the human metabolic system.

  • Have you noticed how fucked up the world is? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GrumpySteen ( 1250194 ) on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @10:51PM (#58113532)

    Pass me another can of pasteurized processed spray cheese food product so I can take myself out before it gets any worse.

  • Processed milk (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Raw milk is better for you. Listeria is fake news created by the dairy industrial complex to keep consumers on profitable processed food.

  • The Snack of Dorian Gray (Score:5, Funny)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @11:03PM (#58113604)

    You even wonder how processed foods last so long?

    They do it by consuming the life energy of the future consumers to keep themselves looking youthful!

    • You even wonder how processed foods last so long?

      They do it by consuming the life energy of the future consumers to keep themselves looking youthful!

      Never accept candy from a time vampire.

  • My cognitive ability ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @12:25AM (#58113868)

    ... directly correlates with my current diet. When I force myself / see to it that I cook myself and eat healthy and ad in an amount of fresh veggies and similar foods and reduce sugar (the only substance I'm addicted to) I am more "awake" than usual. That effect kicks in noticably after a week or so.

    The more processed foods are, the more unhealthy you're living. To me that's evident in quite a few ways.

    • Yeah, while there are contributing factors like sitting still and focusing on the road, after a long road trip eating fast food, I'm always ready for some fruit, veggies, and perhaps yogurt to right things once we've arrived at whatever far flung relation we're visiting.

    • And when someone runs ANOVA and determines that factor X is significant but factor Y is not, one generally needs a more convincing argument to assert factor Y is really the important one.

  • ... it is the way and procedure food is processed. Foodprocessing factories put way too much sugar and salt in their products, and of course other substitutes that are just not right in food (cellulose, fibers etc.). Proper, wealthy processed food is possible, think of things like greatgrandmothers used to preserve food.

    • Many traditionally cured meat products contain nitrites.

      By the way, nitrites are still nitrites even if they come from triple organic certified celery.

    • and of course other substitutes that are just not right in food (cellulose, fibers etc.).

      You know that cellulose is the chemical name for dietary fiber, which is something very good for you that is sadly lacking in a lot of processed foods, right?

  • Deficiency disorders? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by steveha ( 103154 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @02:35AM (#58114164) Homepage

    I really wonder how many of the maladies of old age are actually deficiency disorders.

    Vitamins were discovered when someone figured out that people going months without eating Vitamin C got sick. Someone empirically figured out that eating citrus fruit staved off scurvy and that led to the discovery of Vitamin C. Other vitamins are also important but take longer before a deficiency makes you sick.

    Natural food has all kinds of stuff in it and I wonder if some of it is healthy in really subtle ways that take a very long time to show up.

    Also, processed foods lack fiber, and you need some in your diet, to help your body control cholesterols.

    Finally, omega 3: I read a book called Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill [goodreads.com] that claims that omega 3 fatty acids are essential to health but at least 95% of people in North America don't get enough of it. Omega 3 is not found in processed foods, because omega 3 oils go rancid very quickly. Before processed foods, everyone got omega 3 naturally (for example, by eating fish or eating meat from grass-fed cattle) but these days people get very little, and get other kinds of oils instead. Since your body is made from what you eat, if you don't eat enough omega 3, your body has to use the other oils and it doesn't work as well. The book claims that while our bodies can't make omega 3, our bodies can convert it from one form to another; so it would suffice to eat only fish oil or only flax oil or whatever and trust the body to convert DHA to GLA or whatever.

    My wife and I buy flax oil blend and use it to make salad dressing; it's a painless way to add omega 3 to your diet.

    Simple salad dressing recipe:
    3-4 tablespoons of oil (flax oil, or olive oil)
    1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar (or any other vinegar you like)
    sea salt to taste
    black pepper to taste

    We measure into a convenient cup, then whisk with a small wire whisk. It's fast and easy. We have figured out how many cranks of the pepper mill or how many twists of the sea salt grinder measure out the amount we like so it's a quick grind-and-count, no need to use measuring spoons for the salt and pepper.

    Sometimes we put in some tomato paste; you can buy tomato paste in a tube [epicurious.com], and it's a handy way to add just a little bit when making just enough dressing for a couple of salads. Or garlic powder or any other spice that suits your taste. It's easy to tweak the recipe. We don't bother buying pre-made salad dressing anymore.

    We used to buy omega-3 chocolate truffles. They were expensive but were a tasty way to add omega-3 to our diets. Sadly the manufacturer no longer makes them... I think they were too expensive and didn't sell fast enough.

    • Also, processed foods lack fiber, and you need some in your diet, to help your body control cholesterols.

      We have excellent feedback systems in the body to produce exactly the right amount of cholesterol. We don't need fiber for that, but it is important not to disregulate the system by eating crap that we weren't meant to eat.

      • I believe that the cholesterol feedback systems are thrown off by too much saturated fat. But dietary fiber helps reduce the impact of saturated fat.

    • Re:Deficiency disorders? (Score:4, Informative)

      by ledow ( 319597 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @04:02AM (#58114334) Homepage

      You have a kernel of an idea, but I can't help but think that you're coming from a bias.

      Certainly it's possible that "some unidentified, or thought irrelevant, deficiency could contribute to ill health later in life" is certainly possible.

      However, all food is "natural", using such wording makes me doubt the origin of your viewpoint. All food is natural. There's no such thing as synthetic food, in essence. Just processed or unprocessed.

      Thus it's a question of whether that process affects the food negatively or not. Unfortunately the study stands alone in a sea of other studies that find that the benefits of processed food (i.e. no bugs, no diseases, food safety standards, wide range of foods available in the shops year round) basically outweigh any processing downsides so long as the consumer is sensible. It's much more a "consumer habit makes them get sick" than anything else, rather than laying the blame at processed foods in themselves.

      However, the study (which is based on web-reporting of people's food habits, and some of those people barely contributed at all) also finds that the deaths are cancer and cardiovascular disease. Cancers are basically what you die of if you die of nothing else. They are inherent, ever-present, virtually inevitable (unless you're a certain species of lobster, etc.), etc.

      Omega-3, in particular, is another snake-oil term from the "health" food industry. Like fibre, vitamin C and many other things, including oxygen - being DEFICIENT in it isn't good for you. But consuming more of it doesn't make you healthier. There are more studies concluding "Dietary supplementation with omegaâ'3 fatty acids does not appear to affect the risk of death, cancer or heart disease." than anything to the contrary, for instance. The EU's official line is "contributes to the normal function of the heart" (which appears a lot in our health adverts as they aren't allowed to claim things that can't be proven - if you read that sentence carefully it basically means "Yeah, you need some, that's about it")

      There were many hypotheses saying that Omega-3 is what caused us to evolve from wading animals to super-brain predators, but that's nowhere near true either. Probably it helped, having access to sea-food, but it's not an automatic "makes your brain better" food or else blue whales and sharks would be the cleverest things on Earth - all that fresh Omega-3!

      Again - necessary, but not super-boosting just because you eat more.

      The basic rule of any health nutrient is "the difference between 'normal' and what happens if you don't have it doesn't mean it'll give you those benefits again ON TOP of normal by having it". More fibre isn't better than normal amounts. More sugar isn't better than normal amounts. Similarly no-sugar isn't better than normal amounts. And "normal amounts" are widely publicised, heavily tested, and also subject to millions of years of evolutionary selection - we call it hunger.

      The reason your manufacturer no longer makes "Omega-3 chocolate truffles"? They were a processed food that likely eliminated most of the Omega-3 in their production (like any processed food), and then the hype around Omega-3 died off and nobody bought them.

      Honestly, if you haven't read up on this stuff, you shouldn't be offering nutritional advice (I'm not offering nutritional advice either - I'm asking people to exercise caution and, ironically, take every health-fad with a pinch of salt).

      The recommended diets are there, heavily researched and tested down to every individual component. They don't mention extremes of Omega-3 or anything else like that, nor do they say "don't eat any processed food". That's your current science. Any parroting of something that sounds like something a "health food shop" checkout girl would tell you is likely to be proven nonsense after the fad has worn off.

      But your original line - that's probably right. It's not much use to us, however, if people just don't eat the right diet in the first place.

      • And to add to that great silver lining of the post chain:

        The problem with the study of nutrition is that its based on a chain of events. Its one thing when a baby is in the womb, where the mothers body is going into full overdrive to create nutrients to stave off deficiency during birth, and eventually staving it off defencies at some later point.
        For humans its one thing, because we are at the top of the food chain and we live long. Humans can live long enough to experience long term deficiencies in mineral

        • The systems involved in synthesis are all intertwined and you probably can't get into the detail you're talking about until we could model the whole thing in a computer somehow. In any case, you're talking about micromanaging a system that is currently optimized to ensure you live long enough to reproduce as well as long enough to ensure your children reach reproductive age (not all animals bother with the latter). Nutrition is important! The idea that we could micromanage our nutrition to live to 150 ye

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by steveha ( 103154 )

        However, all food is "natural", using such wording makes me doubt the origin of your viewpoint. All food is natural. There's no such thing as synthetic food, in essence. Just processed or unprocessed.

        I think most people understand the idiom where "natural food" means less-processed food. In case anyone didn't get that: when I said "natural" I meant "less-processed, fresher food, as opposed to more-processed food that may have had nutrients stripped out to make it more shelf-stable or more palatable."

        The re

    • Hello,

      I heard the omega 3 fatty acid story slightly differently than you tell it. ALA is the primary omega 3 fatty acid present in plant sources. Your body doesn't want ALA, it wants DHA or other forms of omega 3.

      No problem, your body will convert ALA into DHA or whatever it needs. However, I read that this metabolic pathway competes with a process that converts dietary omega 6 fatty acids into what the body needs. So if you have a lot of omega 6 fatty acids in your diet, a

    • I really wonder how many of the maladies of old age are actually deficiency disorders.

      Interestingly enough, there's recent research that indicates some aging related ailments could be caused by too much accumulated iron [sciencealert.com].

    • Since your body is made from what you eat, if you don't eat enough omega 3, your body has to use the other oils and it doesn't work as well

      This is not how digestion and biosynthesis works.

      he book claims that while our bodies can't make omega 3, our bodies can convert it from one form to another; so it would suffice to eat only fish oil or only flax oil or whatever and trust the body to convert DHA to GLA or whatever.

      Unfortunately for the book's claim, this was studied by giving people omega 3 fatty acids, and not giving them to the control group. It did not have the effect claimed in the book.

  • Q. If I eat nothing but vegetables and brown rice and give up beer, wine, tea and coffee will I live to be 100?

    A. It'll sure feel like it!

    TY, IHAW.

  • What? (Score:2)

    by Jiro ( 131519 )

    packaged snacks containing numerous ingredients and manufactured using industrial processes.

    The only thing one could consume that would not fall under that is water. Everything else contains numerous ingredients. And we can't manufacture things using non-industrial processes.

    • And we can't manufacture things using non-industrial processes.

      Isn't that the point? Cook your own food.

  • I suspect part of the aminoacids of the protein in food are chemically changed by the industrial processing to unnatural toxic aminoacids.

    Here are examples of toxic aminoacids:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    I suspect the body could use the unnatural aminoacids to build proteins. Those proteins could cause proteopathy, like for example alzheimer's.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • How do they define "processed" food? Cooking is a process. Cutting is a process. Harvesting is a process. Eating is a process! There needs to be more resolution into the types of processes in order to provide meaningful data.

  • I tried eating no processed foods once for a year.
      But then I died of starvation.

  • Self reported data on food consumption is incredibly flimsy. So you're going to get flimsy results. You can't ethically lock people up and force them to eat only this type of food to get solid data. And they need a better term than 'processed' foods; washing is a process.

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