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Medicine

'Ultra-Processed' Junk Food Linked to Advanced Aging at Cellular Level, Study Finds (sciencealert.com) 126

Posted by EditorDavid from the forsaking-freshness dept.
Science Alert reports: People who eat a lot of industrially processed junk food are more likely to exhibit a change in their chromosomes linked to aging, according to research presented Tuesday at an online medical conference. Three or more servings of so-called "ultra-processed food" per day doubled the odds that strands of DNA and proteins called telomeres, found on the end of chromosomes, would be shorter compared to people who rarely consumed such foods, scientists reported at the European and International Conference on Obesity.

Short telomeres are a marker of biological aging at the cellular level, and the study suggests that diet is a factor in driving the cells to age faster. While the correlation is strong, however, the causal relationship between eating highly processed foods and diminished telomeres remains speculative, the authors cautioned.
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'Ultra-Processed' Junk Food Linked to Advanced Aging at Cellular Level, Study Finds More

'Ultra-Processed' Junk Food Linked to Advanced Aging at Cellular Level, Study Finds

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  • How can there be any doubt about the causal relationship when everybody knows that processed food is made up of CHEMICALS?

    • Are you being sarcastic? If you are then you need to be more obvious about it. 'Processed food' in the context given here is, of course, utter crap that people should not be eating at all (except very rarely), but your seemingly absolute statement makes it sound like it's all created at a chemical laboratory and never had a single gram of actual foodstuffs in it to start with. Yes, there are people who will take your statement that way.

      Have these items been 'processed' to the point where they barely rese

      • Re:ZOMG Chemicals! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sound+vision ( 884283 ) on Saturday September 05, 2020 @11:59AM (#60476816) Journal

        Something I find missing from almost all of these kinds of discussions is what, chemically, defines "processed food". Some processes create trans fats, some processes destroy vitamins, some processes can alter the macronutritional balance by adding more sugars for example. What processes do they mean, exactly? Getting a solid definition of terms is the first step to comprehension.

        • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday September 05, 2020 @12:11PM (#60476858)
          Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re:ZOMG Chemicals! (Score:5, Informative)

          by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Saturday September 05, 2020 @12:18PM (#60476890) Journal
          If you dig into the actual article [sciencealert.com] you'll find a link to another article [sciencealert.com] that sheds some light on what they mean by 'ultra-processed foods':

          A massive new study by scientists in France examining the dietary intake of over 44,000 French adults found that consumption of ultraprocessed foods [wikipedia.org] – including mass-produced snacks, sugary drinks, and ready-made meals – was associated with a higher risk of mortality over the study period.
          "Ultraprocessed foods are food products that contain multiple ingredients and are manufactured through a multitude of industrial processes," researchers, led by nutritional epidemiologist Laure Schnabel from Sorbonne University, explain in their paper [jamanetwork.com].
          "These food products are usually ready to heat and eat, affordable, and hyperpalatable."
          Convenient and tasty they may well be, but consumption of ultraprocessed foods – which also include highly processed breads, plus confectioneries and processed meats – is known to be problematic, having already been tied to higher risk of things like obesity, hypertension, and cancer.

          What I find ironic about this, is that these 'Beyond Meat' products we've been seeing lately, which supposedly are better for your health (because they contain no meat) and which are supposedly more humane, falls very firmly into the category of 'ultra-processed'.

          • Re:ZOMG Chemicals! (Score:4, Insightful)

            by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Saturday September 05, 2020 @12:31PM (#60476922) Journal

            What I find ironic about this, is that these 'Beyond Meat' products we've been seeing lately, which supposedly are better for your health (because they contain no meat) and which are supposedly more humane, falls very firmly into the category of 'ultra-processed'.

            I thought that we had already seen reports that "Beyond Meat" and the like were not a healthy alternative. They are a vegetarian alternative.

            https://www.cbc.ca/news/busine... [www.cbc.ca]

            • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

              by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 )

              not a healthy alternative. They are a vegetarian alternative.

              But, see, Vegans will try to convince you that eating 'foods' like that is actually healthier than the burger it's being substituted for.
              Me? Wouldn't touch that thing with a ten-foot pole.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by robi5 ( 1261542 )

                There are reasons for being a vegetarian or vegan besides "eating healthy". For some folks it's a moral decision, avoiding eating animals. Some folks are not vegetarian but try to never eat red meat (mostly an euphemism for mammals). Then there are folks who follow some religious rule. Etc.

                Also, while some of those Beyond burger and similar things are the result of heavy processing, there's proven health risks associated with red meat too, which they substitute. I don't think this recent study makes the poi

              • I got a free beyond whopper coupon, so I gave it a try. It's more palatable than other veggie burgers I've had the misfortune of trying in the past, but IMO still not very palatable. Just like other veggie burgers, it still tastes like shit, I think somebody would only like it if the only burgers they're used to having are veggie burgers.

              • Fake meats are not marketed for vegans or vegetarians. Their audience is people who like to eat meat but feel guilty about it.

                • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

                  by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 )
                  So, hypocrites?
                  • LOL, 'flamebait', really? I used to have friends who were actual Vegans (not the fake kind that eat vegetarian 'most of the time' but still own things made of leather, for instance) and they'd take someone to task if they ate something that tasted like meat even if it wasn't. Go ask a Vegan yourself.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by dgatwood ( 11270 )

              With that much sodium, it's sure to be good for you. Beyond Meat: It's got what plant-eaters crave.

          • So they refer to "a multitude of industrial processes" which is the same vague, nonspecific definition I see getting used everywhere else.

            Given that the multitude of processes have a multitude of effects on the food, which most likely means a multitude of effects on the body... it's not wise to lump them all together. To me a study like this is bordering on worthless.
            The field of nutrition in general seems to have an abundance of low-quality studies. I'm sure part of it is due to the difficulty of controlli

          • That's still not being very specific. In order for that to have any real meaning, it will have to be narrowed to what specifically is in overabundance, or alternatively what there isn't enough of an abundance of.

          • A massive new study by scientists in France examining the dietary intake of over 44,000 French adults

            If you had a dietary intake of 44,000 French adults, you'd be sick, too.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by WierdUncle ( 6807634 )

            This idea of ultra-processed foods puzzles me. There is proper cooking that uses lots of ingredients and some advanced cooking techniques, but nobody calls a genuine paella "ultra processed food".

            I have read that you should not eat packaged foods with more than five ingredients, but I see recipes that have many more ingredients than that. I made a simple pasta salad tonight with eight ingredients. I thought it was a good thing to get a variety of veg.

            Let me say this: cooking is processing; fermentation is p

          • They didn't even correct for being overweight. Probably somewhere between all and almost all of this effect is because of correlation with obesity.

            • Bingo! Sensational story about study showing health effects from unknown cause, magically conflated with a popular notion of cause. Paid for by the Church of Hippie-ism?

          • supposedly are better for your health (because they contain no meat) and which are supposedly more humane

            How are you treating these two concepts like they're the same? Their health benefits are not well established. If they are healthier, then they're not a whole lot healthier. However, this has nothing to do with their environmental benefits or the fact that they're more humane. Those things are uncontested.

        • Re:ZOMG Chemicals! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by apoc.famine ( 621563 ) <apoc.famine@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Saturday September 05, 2020 @12:34PM (#60476938) Journal

          I hate when people pick generic terms without having the specificity sufficient to make informed choices. Wikipedia tells me that 'ultra-processed' food includes, "Sausages, burgers, hot dogs, and other reconstituted meat products."

          Ok, so that includes turkey bacon, but not regular bacon?

          "Mass-produced packaged breads and buns."

          Does that include tortillas? Pitas? How about whole wheat, high fiber tortillas? If I bake my own bread with mass-produced flour, that's ok because it's not mass produced? My local chain grocery store has commercial ovens that they bake bread in, using commercial sized 50lb sacks of flour, but it's not packaged until you buy it. That's ok?

          "Pre-prepared meat, cheese, pasta and pizza dishes"

          But if I make my own pizza, I'm ok, right? So bleached white flour, mass-produced cheese, canned sweetened tomato sauce, salty canned olives, canned pineapple, ham slices, and pickled jalapenos. (None of that is on the wikipedia list.) But if I make the crust with whole wheat, make my own tomato sauce, use fresh mozzarella, fresh basil from the garden, fresh mushrooms, but add pepperoni I'm in trouble because of the sausage clause?

          For this to really be actionable we need something as specific as "harm per gram" or something. And we can't just handwave categories of bad, like you noted.

          If I make a homemade pizza but add pepperoni, how much better is that than just ordering a domino's pizza? Which is worse, bacon or turkey bacon? By how much?

          • My money's on these kind of studies being funded by people selling "All-natural" products at a premium. Or, idiots. Probably both!

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by DogDude ( 805747 )
            If I make a homemade pizza but add pepperoni, how much better is that than just ordering a domino's pizza? Which is worse, bacon or turkey bacon? By how much?

            That's not remotely what was studied. The study shows that people who eat lots of junk food tend to have shorter telomeres than people who don't.

            • But what is junk food?

              If I buy raw potatoes, slice them into thin chips, kettle fry them in peanut oil, put a little seasoning on them to taste (salt, maybe some garlic and onion), and eat them, have I just eaten junk food?

              If I buy Lays BBQ potato chips and eat them, have I just eaten junk food?

              What makes anything junk food versus not junk food?

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by DogDude ( 805747 )
                It's how close the ingredients are to being real foods, according to the article & the paper. How much processing has been done to get them to the point when you put it in your mouth.

                • The people making these claims are nutritionists. That's the warning sign right there. Nutritionists are not licensed or regulated, anyone can call themselves a nutritionist and join the large industry of hand waving pseudo science. Very profitable because no money is ever wasted on research or verifying claims.

                • I cited the example of potato chips for a reason. Even if I make them at home out of raw ingredients, frying them can produce acrylamide:

                  https://www.food.gov.uk/safety... [food.gov.uk]

                  We've been frying potatoes for centuries, and baking them too. I can't prove to you that anything in a bag of standard BBQ Lays is worse than acrylamide. If you look at the color and texture of a standard (unseasoned) Lays potato chip, you can see that the signs of acrylamide formation are actually NOT there, whereas many boutique "kettl

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by DogDude ( 805747 )
                    That's all great. The study says that people who eat more processed foods tend to have significantly shorter telomeres. Do with that what you will. You can't extrapolate the whole of human nutrition from one small study about telomeres.

                    • What I will do is ask, "why?". If you can't tell me why, the study is useless.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by DogDude ( 805747 )
                      Not every study asks "why". This is a study looking to see if there's a correlation. There is. The study is not useless. This is how science works.

          • If I bake my own bread with mass-produced flour, that's ok because it's not mass produced?

            Yup. Flour, water, salt, optionally yeast. Now look at the list of ingredients on the plastic bag wrapped stuff at the supermarket.

        • Re:ZOMG Chemicals! (Score:5, Informative)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday September 05, 2020 @01:07PM (#60477044) Homepage Journal

          Short answer: learn to internet before whining.

          Longer answer: If you follow the links in TFA you will get to a WP article on ultra-processed food [wikipedia.org], which "are food and drink products that have undergone specified types of food processing". The article goes on to say that "The term ultra-processing refers to the processing of industrial ingredients derived from foods by e.g. extruding, moulding, re-shaping, hydrogenation, and hydrolysis. Ultra-processed foods generally also include additives such as preservatives, sweeteners, sensory enhancers, colourants, flavours, and processing aids, but little or no whole food."

          In order to make the food conveniently extrudable/moldable/re-shapeable, certain changes have to be made to its makeup. For example, chicken products are "glued" together with one of a small number of compounds, which are usually either carbohydrates or glycols. Hydrogenation and hydrolysis are commonly used to alter the composition of fats to make them last longer; hydrogenated or hydrolyzed fats have known health impact, so does pumping food full of carbs. Many preservatives, sweeteners, etc. also have known negative health impact.

          So really, for "ultra-processed" you can go ahead and read "processed in ways with well-known negative repercussions for health, and often for the environment as well". You're making this more complicated than it has to be in order to support some nebulous point that isn't in fact on point, while complaining that information which was included wasn't included.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by apoc.famine ( 621563 )

            Oh, your reply is GOLD! Well done on proving the GP 100% correct.

            Your reply doesn't help anyone going to the store to buy food. They haven't spent an hour nerding out and going down wikipedia holes to learn the intricacies of modern food processing. They're trying to get through shopping as quickly as possible with two toddlers in tow.

            For that parent with two toddlers, which chicken fingers do they pick? The one that says All Natural? The one that says No Antibotics? The one that says 100%* chicken breast m

            • It's a pretty good description though. There is unprocessed food like vegetables, meat, milk and so on, and processed food that have something like salt or oil added, and then ultra-processed where the food has been dramatically altered some way like chips, candy, cola, sweetened cereals, hotdogs, etc. which probably constitutes a fairly large part of what we all consume everyday.

              • And a massive, absolutely massive spectrum of food in between.

                As I noted in another post: baked potato, mashed potato, potato wedges, hashbrowns, steak fries, string fries, tater tots, scalloped potatoes, croquette, gnocci, latka, etc. Somewhere in there you move into ultra-processed range, but it depends on the product and the manufacturer.

                You can't say, "don't eat potatoes", because not all are ultra-processed. If I hand cut fries and cook them in fat from a duck breast I just cooked, I think you'd be har

              • Go to a 5-star restaurant, and the stuff that winds up on your plate may have gone through just as many processing steps, albeit for different reasons (and dramatically different results). You do a terrible crime to food prep in general when you try to lump foods together based on whether or not they've been altered in some form. You need to be specific about which production steps are unhealthy, and why, so the industry can improve rather than try to push everyone on some whole foods regime that is frank

              • However, if someone makes their own sausages at home (or probably the shed out back) then is it ultra processed? A few thousand years of culinary history just gone like that. Food needs to be preserved. We have too many people on the planet for everyone to grow their own food, and food that is shipped needs some manner of preservation, and food that is grown in one season needs some manner of processing to allow that food to still be edible in a later season. Ie, cheese is milk that you can store and ea

            • What's the lowest processed breakfast they can throw together in less than 5 minutes for the kids?

              If you can't find more than 5 minutes in your schedule to make sure your kids are eating good food, then maybe you can stop pretending you really give a shit.

            • Your reply doesn't help anyone going to the store to buy food.

              The world is a lumpy place. Life is complicated. I use this information to inform me when I go to the store to buy food, and it is useful. You have to rub it together with other information to light a fire under your breakfast. So what? Buying anything is complicated these days. It doesn't matter if it's a cable for your phone, or a car, or lunch meat. You have to know something, and utilize your knowledge to make intelligent decisions.

              They're trying to get through shopping as quickly as possible with two toddlers in tow.

              If they are going to be good parents, they're going to have to make comp

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ahodgson ( 74077 )

              The lowest processed breakfast they can throw together in 5 minutes is scrambled eggs, maybe with some grated cheese and pre-chopped veggies added.

              That would be about a billion times healthier than any breakfast cereal and it will actually power the kids through the whole morning without needing a sugar snack at 10.

              If it comes in a box from factory, it's ultra-processed. There, that should be clear.

        • If I had mod points I would add another +1 funny to GGP because I facepalm every time I hear somebody say "x is bad because it has chemicals." Ditto when I hear "x is bad because it's processed". If you slice it, it's literally, by definition, processed. If you cook it, it's processed. Basically no matter what you do to it to prepare it, it's processed. I also laugh when people say natural is better, especially when you consider that virtually nothing we eat is natural anymore, and hasn't been since time im

        • It comes down to simple guidelines. If you eat anything that you have not killed or grown yourself, anything that has ever touched a grocery store shelf, been stored in a refrigerator, or heaven for bid has been frozen, then you will almost certainly die.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by 2TecTom ( 311314 )

          Something I find missing from almost all of these kinds of discussions is what, chemically, defines "processed food".

          Easy, anything that is called 'food' but isn't. Look food comes from farms, not factories. Plants are food, and cooking is processing it. Anything else is changing the what constitutes food. This is due to the intimate relationship between food, the gut microbiome and the body. The three are intrinsically linked and evolved as such. These microbes are perfectly adapted to natural substances in natural concentrations and ratios. Change this and you change the microbiome you depend upon. It's actually two fol

      • A meatloaf doesn't resemble naturally occurring food stuffs either.

    • You are also made up of chemicals, So by that logic you must be processed food and we are allowed to eat you! Tasty tasty human on the BBQ tonight! (yes i'm joking for all those without a sense of humor who cannot tell.)
  • It's like tobacco. People know they shouldn't smoke and eat crap and they keep doing it. Then they have their colon or lungs removed and suddenly become an extremely vocal advocate for healthier lifestyles.
    • If tobacco didn't have nicotine in it, ever, then I think this whole 'smoking' thing would have died out a thousand years ago. But nicotine being an addictive substance, it's perpetuated itself. Now factor in the FACT that tobacco companies carefully breed their tobacco plants for maximum nicotine content, and you see the real problem.

      • If tobacco didn't have tar and numerous known carcinogens in its smoke, it wouldn't kill people off as quickly. And it probably wouldn't be taxed or regulated to the extent that it is today. You're kind of looking at it backwards.

  • Is this about obesity?

    • There are people who eat nothing but 'highly processed foods' all day every day, yes. Obesity is just a symptom of the real problem when put into the context of TFA.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Well, due to what the food industry usually does, "highly processed" pretty much implies "high fat, high sugar, high salt crap" with nice unhealthy additives.
        I wonder whether "highly processed" could be done in a way that is not unhealthy. It is seems certainly not be profitable to do so.

        • Those foods would be less addictive. But it's certainly possible. In fact, those foods do kind of exist - I used to eat "fruit leather" as a snack. Is it really that much better than a product with "unhealthy additives"?

          https://www.stack.com/a/are-st... [stack.com]

          (that wasn't the exact brand but I think the ingredients in what I ate were similar)

          Fact is that fresh fruit doesn't last long, and it's bulky and hard to store sometimes. I can have a fruit leather or I can have some semi-rotten, squished fruit. Hmm. S

    • "People who are fat and unhealthy and who's parents are fat and unhealthy don't eat healthy food" is what I think the story is telling us.

      But has this year's Nobel prize for Bollox Sociology already been awarded ?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        "People who are fat and unhealthy and who's parents are fat and unhealthy don't eat healthy food" is what I think the story is telling us.

        Sounds like it, yes. Another instance where supposed adults are helpless.

  • "The 645 men and 241 women were equally divided into four groups, depending on their consumption of ultra-processed foods.
    Those in the high-intake group were more likely to have a family history of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and abnormal blood fats."

    My conclusion from that is that people who are inclined to eat junk food come from unhealthy families and are therefore less healthy themselves.
    As one would expect, but nothing to do with the effect of "junk food" on normal people.
    Which rather spoils the

    • The fact that for most people what they eat is strongly correlated to what their family eats, and what they were fed as children. What food was denied to them except during special occasions and what foods they were forced to eat under duress leave lasting habits.

      The farmer's kid who grew up on meat, potatoes, and corn probably isn't going to move 10 miles down the road and start eating sushi and rice. Likewise, the kid who grew up going to McDonalds every Friday as a treat is probably a lot more likely to

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Corbets ( 169101 )

        And yet, people can change. I did.

        Your family failing to teach you right may be a reason. It is not an excuse.

        • Watching your father have a heart attack will definitely give you incentive to change your own diet.

      • Please read what I wrote and not what you want me to have written.

        I stated that AFAICT the study does not show the effect of unhealthy food on people, it shows that people from unhealthy families are unhealthy and eat unhealthy food.
        So *if I am correct* the study does NOT show that eating unhealthy food makes one unhealthy.

        So the question is: Am I correct, and if not, why not ?

    • "645 men and 241 women were equally divided into four groups" - So one man and one woman were quartered - ouch. That is rather extreme.

    • I love it when the armchair statisticians come out.

    • The paper is about people who eat lots of junk food have shorter telomeres than people who don't. You should consider just reading the paper outline.

  • Then let's use more preservatives for anti aging!

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday September 05, 2020 @12:09PM (#60476846)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • My 2 cents (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Saturday September 05, 2020 @12:18PM (#60476892)
    I know Americans like to think they are masters of their own domain; but there have been recent studies that demonstrate that people are basically a product of their surroundings. That is, people who are exposed to bad foods more often will eat more of them and there isn't much that can be done about it. As long as companies are rewarded financially for making crap to feed to the population, the population will be made ill by it.

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

    Alas, no more 'reconstituted meat products'- hmmm

  • Please be more specific (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Saturday September 05, 2020 @12:49PM (#60476992)

    If there are specific ingredient(s) or processing steps that alters food in some specific way having specific tangible harmful effects please itemize them specifically.

    Otherwise you end up effectively declaring the state of California has determined life causes cancer. It becomes worthless noise guaranteed to be all but discarded by the public.

    From document describing what "ultra-processed" means:

    "Common attributes of ultra-processed products are hyper-palatability, sophisticated and attractive packaging, multi-media and other aggressive marketing to children and adolescents, health claims, high profitability, and branding and ownership by transnational corporations."

    " These are industrial formulations typically with five or more and usually many ingredients."

    "Several industrial processes with no domestic equivalents are used in the manufacture of ultra-processed products, such as extrusion and moulding"

    Does aggressive marketing change the chemical properties of food? What about profitability? Ownership? Does a higher count of ingredients make the resulting food unhealthy in some way? Does extrusion and moulding change the nutritional properties of food in some way?

    It's one thing to call out specific process or preservatives and cite specific evidence of harms. Or to say too much sugar, salt, fat, carb.. does x based on y evidence.

    At least if you do that people might bother to make selections which avoid outcomes.

    Simply saying everything that isn't directly plucked from a tree, bush or ground is harmful is not usable information even if it happens to be true.

    • RTFA: "Ultra-processed foods are industrially manufactured substances composed of some mix of oils, fats, sugars, starch, and proteins that contain little if any whole or natural foods."

      Specific ingredients change constantly, and there are different versions of the same thing. Can you name all of the "hydrogenated fats" in existence, so you know to avoid each one? Hence, the simple one sentence explanation of what "ultra-processed foods" are.

      It's called science communication. It's an entire line of s

      • RTFA: "Ultra-processed foods are industrially manufactured substances composed of some mix of oils, fats, sugars, starch, and proteins that contain little if any whole or natural foods."

        I've read the article and reject the premise "natural" is good and "unnatural" is bad. The objective properties of individual things determine whether they are good or bad *NOT* the modalities of their production.

        Specific ingredients change constantly, and there are different versions of the same thing. Can you name all of the "hydrogenated fats" in existence, so you know to avoid each one? Hence, the simple one sentence explanation of what "ultra-processed foods" are.

        If too many hydrogenated fats are causing the problem explained in TFA then they should just say so. It should not be difficult. When it was determined partially hydrogenated oils were unsafe it was not necessary for the public to remember each one. All that was required was a substring search

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by DogDude ( 805747 )
          I've read the article and reject the premise "natural" is good and "unnatural" is bad.

          The perogative to ignore science is yours. Congratulations. You are officially less-informed.

          If too many hydrogenated fats are causing the problem explained in TFA then they should just say so. It should not be difficult

          It would be difficult. That is not what was studied.

          Really what is going on is this study has no idea what specifically the cause of measured harms are. They can't name specific fats, preserva

          • Re:RTFA (Score:4, Insightful)

            by apoc.famine ( 621563 ) <apoc.famine@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Saturday September 05, 2020 @03:05PM (#60477352) Journal

            What crawled up your ass today? That's a pretty asshole response to a GP who was entirely spot on. There is nothing actionable for the average consumer. There is no specificity which with they could make buying decisions.

            Somewhere in the line of baked potato > mashed potato > wedges > steak fries > shoestring fries > hash browns > tater tots we cross the line from not ultra-processed to ultra-processed. But there's no information for consumers to understand that everything up to shoestring fries is not ultra-processed, but hash browns and tater tots are. Or that one fast food chain has fries which are, but another does not. Or that the act of frying them counts as ultra-processed, so anything not fried is fine. Or if it's a simple fat they are fried in, it's fine, but if it's an ultra-processed fat, it's not.

            Nothing actionable is being communicated to the public

            Actually, if you bothered reading the paper...

            Well done on proving the GP correct. The public isn't reading the paper because it's behind a fucking paywall. The only thing they can possibly read is the abstract, and that doesn't define the terms. More than likely, they're just reading the summary in the MSM, or worse, in some blog post submitted to facebook.

            If you think that the public is going to go do some academic reading and consult multiple sources, make a process and ingredient list all to understand what's good and bad in their diet, I don't know what to say. Ultra-processed is absolutely not well defined, and it's very unclear from studies like this what is really causing the effects they see. What percent of ultra-processed ingredients in a food makes it unhealthy? What's the limit? 100%? 1%? 10%?

            Is homemade pizza ok if everything is made from scratch except the pepperoni? Is that better or worse than a cheese pizza from Pizza Hut? That's the sort of actionable information that the average consumer needs.

            Is orange juice ultra-processed? Are some brands ultra-processed but others not? At what point does a fruit juice cross that line? Fresh squeezed at home? Added sugar? Added preservatives? All of that, concentrated, and then diluted to the target consistency?

            If we want to get the average consumer to eat healthier, they need very clear information, presented in the places they're going to see it. An academic journal is not the place. Put a 'processed' scale from 1-10 on foods, and that might make a difference. If I could see that white bread was a 7 but a whole wheat tortilla was a 4, I might choose making a wrap over making a sandwich. If I could see that one brand of OJ was a 10 an another was a 6, that might influence which one I bought.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by DogDude ( 805747 )
              This is one individual research paper. It is not a prescription for human health. It is not designed to inform angry people about what they should or should not eat. It's a simple paper that shows a very strong correlation between ultra-processed foods (which they list in the paper), and shortened telomeres. That's it.

              • Wow, you are trolling HARD in this discussion. Well done.

                This is one individual research paper. It is not a prescription for human health. It is not designed to inform angry people about what they should or should not eat.

                And two posts back you said,

                And actually, I don't want shorter telomeres, so I'm going to work to eat less of this type of food.

                Well, it seems to have informed at least one angry person about what they should or should not eat.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by DogDude ( 805747 )
                  I'm not trolling. I'm explaining to non-science people what science is, and how it's done. I'm explaining what this one paper says. I'm sorry you're not understanding my posts. I think they're pretty clear.

          • The perogative to ignore science is yours. Congratulations. You are officially less-informed.

            You can't refute the fact objective properties not modality of production determine safety so the only recourse is derisive commentary?

            Actually, if you bothered reading the paper, you'd know that all of those types of foods are associated with shorter telomeres.

            The paper is behind an oxford paywall. I doubt anyone has bothered to read it. Article citing the paper partially defines what ultra-processed means. It does not say specifically what components of "ultra-processed" contribute to the effects described in the article. It does not indicate the study concluded ALL "ultra-processed" foods contribute to the problem. A findin

  • Is that one level higher than "marginally-processed"? How about they simply say "eating food made entirely of flour and sugar and no other nutritional value is bad for you. Eating food made from leftovers in animal processing probably means you're getting high fat content protein.".

    Just because something is "processed" doesn't turn it into toxic waste.

    • Indeed.

      One might suggest that grinding grain is "ultra-processing." Or maybe slow-cooking. So I guess bread and soup are "ultra-processed"? Research shows that soup can be very healthy--or unhealthy--depending on the ingredients, even if the processing is the same. https://www.bicycling.com/heal... [bicycling.com]

      This nonsense about processing is a red herring. Of course junk food is bad for you. But it's not because it's "processed" or "ultra-processed"!

  • But lotsa junk food junkies are gonna hate on it. Even if the study isn't perfect, do you really think junk food doesn't junk you up?

  • As if there was any other kind.

  • Ultra-processed food (Score:3)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Saturday September 05, 2020 @03:00PM (#60477328)

    Three or more servings of so-called "ultra-processed food" per day doubled the odds...

    That's why I draw the line at "mega-processed food". This far, no further!

  • I remember a friend talking about telomeres and wanting to keep them long. Besides that an obvious high correlation of junk food eaters more likely to have health problems. Then combined with pervasive marketing of junk food, and higher number of unhealthy people. It gets worse as those in poorer neighborhoods generally live in a "sahara desert" with limited stores of fresh fruits and vegetables. And if accessible, not that cheap.

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