Ultra-Processed Foods - It's Time For an Improved Definition (nature.com) 76
Nature's editorial board argues the UN's upcoming trans fat elimination proposal must specify "industrially produced" fats to avoid unintended consequences for nutrition in poor countries. The board supports a coalition led by the International Livestock Research Institute and African Union requesting precise language, noting natural trans fats occur in milk and dairy products.
The editorial extends criticism to the broader ultra-processed foods classification system. While acknowledging the 2009 NOVA scale by University of Sao Paulo's Carlos Monteiro pushed governments toward strong public health policies, Nature says the ultra-processed category problematically groups baby formula with hot dogs. The board calls for improved definitions that balance reining in industrial food production excesses while ensuring adequate calorie access globally.
The editorial extends criticism to the broader ultra-processed foods classification system. While acknowledging the 2009 NOVA scale by University of Sao Paulo's Carlos Monteiro pushed governments toward strong public health policies, Nature says the ultra-processed category problematically groups baby formula with hot dogs. The board calls for improved definitions that balance reining in industrial food production excesses while ensuring adequate calorie access globally.
Baby formula (Score:2)
Is it made from real babies? Hmmm?
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Sounds tasty.
Re:Baby formula (Score:4, Funny)
Is it made from real babies? Hmmm?
If you want to be certain, be sure to look for Modest Proposal brand baby food!
Modest Proposal - ask for it by name!
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Is it made from real babies? Hmmm?
Maybe Soylent Green [wikipedia.org] Baby Formula?
Perhaps the issue is catagorization (Score:5, Insightful)
Food and most other substances in the real world exist on a spectrum. There's likely no sharp dividing line between "processed" and "ultra processed". There's no vast gulf between "health" and "unhealthy" food.
I think we're probably better off not trying to put foods into buckets (unless it's a bucket of fried chicken). I know it's an attempt to simplify things for people who don't have the time or inclination to read food labels, if a food label even exists. But at some point we're arguing about whether a hot dog is a taco or a sandwich.
Re:Perhaps the issue is catagorization (Score:4, Insightful)
I know it's an attempt to simplify things for people who don't have the time or inclination to read food labels, if a food label even exists. But at some point we're arguing about whether a hot dog is a taco or a sandwich.
We've got an ongoing obesity epidemic going on in this country, the saddest part being at the child level where 1 in 5 kids are obese https://ballardbrief.byu.edu/i... [byu.edu] . Anything that helps people eat better is a good thing at this point and that includes categorizing things to make them easier to understand.
Re:Perhaps the issue is catagorization (Score:5, Insightful)
Anything that helps people eat better is a good thing at this point and that includes categorizing things to make them easier to understand.
Strong disagree with this sentiment. "won't somebody please think of the children!" is the entree to many a government ban.
The government war on saturated fat (and fat in general) starting back in the 70s is how we ended up with the high glycemic low fiber snack foods to begin with. Also the switch from butter to trans-fat containing margarine and other partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (remember those?) for several decades. until trans fats were recognized as a threat (and finally banned in some countries like the US.)
The UPF thing has some truth to it, but it is laden with a bunch of moralism and gauzy pastoralism and anti science oversimplification.
cheap, ubiquitously available, hyper-palatable foods are a huge issue we need to deal with but blaming carrageenan over boiled bone gelatin and HFCS over sucrose , and dough conditioners is just noise.
big fan of the US ingredients and nutritional info panel though!
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Strong disagree with this sentiment. "won't somebody please think of the children!" is the entree to many a government ban.
Of course I'm not advocating for a government ban, I'm advocating for more easily absorbed information for the public so people can make better decisions. Massive difference.
The government war on saturated fat (and fat in general) starting back in the 70s is how we ended up with the high glycemic low fiber snack foods to begin with. Also the switch from butter to trans-fat containing margarine and other partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (remember those?) for several decades. until trans fats were recognized as a threat (and finally banned in some countries like the US.)
So we shouldn't use the best science available to us because science is wrong some times? Might as well tare everything down because our best minds once thought the earth was the center of the universe, right?
Re:Perhaps the issue is catagorization (Score:5, Interesting)
So we shouldn't use the best science available to us because science is wrong some times?
Mmm... sort of ? Sometimes the "best science" still isn't very good. And in that case yes we should tread lightly especially the more side effects or ripple effects there are.
The science of human nutrition, did great 100 years ago in identifying problems caused by vitamin deficiencies.
But for multi-factorial things over long time and with a lot of cultural variability, like obesity and population health it has not been so successful. It has serious methodological problems since it is primarily based on observational studies and has also poor measuring tools (recall questionnaires).
https://kresserinstitute.com/t... [kresserinstitute.com]
a taste:
The NHANES program has published surveys since the 1960s to assess health and nutrition of people based on personal diet reports and physical examinations. A ratio of reported energy intake to basal metabolic rate below 1.35 is considered “implausible” and indicative of underreporting. In the nine surveys, when men and women were analyzed separately to create 18 groups, only three of the 18 groups’ diet reports were physiologically plausible (5). In kcal, the mean underreporting was 281 kcal/day for men and 365 kcal/day for women. In obese individuals, underreporting rose to 717 kcal/day for men and 856 kcal/day for women.
It also is questionable in how well it can identify and control for confounding factors.
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Mmm... sort of ? Sometimes the "best science" still isn't very good.
So how does this apply to the topic at hand? We don't need most ultra processed food, there's no nutritional deficiencies we're risking by trying to reduce their intake. This means we're dealing with a zero risk situation by following what is currently our best science.
Besides, all we're talking about here is making our currently best science more understandable to the masses so people can better make their own choices.
Re: Perhaps the issue is catagorization (Score:2, Insightful)
I think nutrition science is wrong more than sometimes.
It's a common ideological target as well. The EU banned GMO based on a study that has since been retracted and even bordered on scientific misconduct. Which is fine to me because proteomics is just yet another field that they're well behind the rest of the world on, and I'm not in Europe, and so long as their crops are unable to compete with ours in the global economy, that's even better. Nevertheless, Greenpeace is trying its hardest to get it banned e
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Yes, science is in a constant state of revision. What should we base our beliefs on instead though? Personally observed anecdotes? Sounds like a return to medieval medicine.
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Oh boy, you're just begging for it...
Yes, science is in a constant state of revision.
As if that couldn't be more obvious. What was your first clue?
What should we base our beliefs on instead though? Personally observed anecdotes? Sounds like a return to medieval medicine.
Ya think? Do you even know what the fundamental problem with self-reported studies are? Who am I kidding, of course you don't.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov]
https://www.lrdc.pitt.edu/Depa... [pitt.edu]
Controlled studies are the gold standard, and we rarely use them in nutrition science. Or is it you do know what they are, but empiricism is just too "right-wing" for you? I guess it may a
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Correction -- it's not that we rarely do, it's that we don't do it enough.
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> The EU banned GMO ...
The EU has not banned GMOs according to a google search. Do you have anything to support your claim?
> Which is fine to me because proteomics is just yet another field that they're well behind the rest of the world on
Any support for that ? This shows it's far from true:
"Proteomics Market Size, Share, and Growth Analysis" - https://www.skyquestt.com/repo... [skyquestt.com]
"European Proteomics Association (EuPA)" - https://eupa.org/ [eupa.org]
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The EU has not banned GMOs according to a google search. Do you have anything to support your claim?
Sort of. The EU made it hard to allow them at all due to overregulation, and most EU member states have de-facto banned them anyway. Looks like they've started the process for loosening up on it earlier this year, but even if they do, it sounds like it's going to be a PITA:
https://www.euronews.com/my-eu... [euronews.com]
Essentially they're saying, "ok, we'll allow it to a certain extent, but we'll only deregulate certain crops after you've taken a lot of other unnecessary steps first." I wouldn't be surprised unless it re
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> Sort of. The EU made it hard to allow them at all due to overregulation, and most EU member states have de-facto banned them anyway
Yeah, sort of sort of. 19 countries out of 27 have a ban on growing at least one GMO product and few to none ban GMO imports.
> As an example of what I mean by this ...
I'm usually unimpressed by analogies and emotional pleas but I'm open to better numbers on GMOs in the EU.
> Market doesn't mean what you think it means. Regardless, that actually supports what I said any
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Yeah, sort of sort of. 19 countries out of 27 have a ban on growing at least one GMO product and few to none ban GMO imports.
I didn't say anything at all about imports. I already know they allow that, particularly because they import ours. If you dig through my post history (as many here often do in order to try to discredit me) you'd find that I've even commented about this before. In fact, I've been somewhat an activist on this topic for a very long time. This post even got accepted waaaaay back:
https://slashdot.org/firehose.... [slashdot.org]
I don't know where the accepted version is, but the reason I linked that in particular is that I've m
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I pointed out that in your original comment that you made two specific claims that as stated seem to be clearly false:
1) "The EU banned GMO"
2) "proteomics is just yet another field that they're well behind the rest of the world"
The first, is partly true, though as stated false.
The second, you've made that claim before, and all I can find on that specific topic shows it to be false.
> What market means to me specifically isn't relevant and that map isn't really saying much about whats going on on a global
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Anything that helps people eat better is a good thing at this point and that includes categorizing things to make them easier to understand.
Well, that's the trick, isn't it? Things should be made as simple as possible but no simpler. If we over-simplify advice, we create all sorts of political battles, opportunities for corruption, and unfortunate behavior lead by hucksters. "Fat is bad!" is way too imprecise, as is "eat only what a caveman could find."
If we make the advice more nuanced, people TL;DR it. I have no idea how much of what kinds of fats I should get in my diet and no way of knowing how much I'm actually eating. It's just not worth
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Life is about more than just living as long as possible.
Sure it is, it's about quality as well which is all the more reason to eat well. From higher energy levels today to just an overall better quality of life when you're old tomorrow.
Eating junk food from time to time is fine for the vast majority of people though. The problem is right now people are having a hard time identifying what is actually junk food which doesn't at all help with our obesity problem.
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You're too focused on your own situation. It's just a personal anecdote.
Yes, the potential for weight gain does vary by the individual. But also, yes what you consume also matters. If your 20lb overweight housemate exercised more or cut back a little they could very likely get down to a healthy weight. Likewise with yourself, it sounds like you got the short end of the stick for weight gain (sorry to hear that) but how you eat still matters a lot. If anything it's more important.
Re:Perhaps the issue is catagorization (Score:5, Insightful)
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Funny, I don't eat at fast food any more, nor buy bags of chips to eat every week, or subsist on gallons of soda. And yet, I'm barely heavier than I was in high school (which was practically rail thin) and sit on my ass all day in the office.
It's almost as if what you just said isn't true.
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It's almost as if different people have different metabolic rates.
Some people can stay naturally thin without having to exercise much (and while eating junk food), while others can put on weight even if they eat fairly reasonably. We even have words that roughly group people into categories, such as "ectomorph" (like you) vs "mesomorph" or "endomorph." Those even these are oversimplifications, as the specific (and changeable) balance of gut bacteria has an impact, as does (obviously) the amount and nature
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Are you saying that it would be wise for me to find a smart, attractive, skinny woman and get her to provide me with a stool sample for insertion into my colon? I'm not sure that this either 1) wouldn't do any good or 2) kill me.
I'm not far enough behind at work for #2 yet.
Re: Perhaps the issue is catagorization (Score:2)
I don't believe it is either. I believe problem is more due to overabundance than anything else.
One thing I can't help but notice is the difference between the behavior of wildlife and domesticated animals. The easiest way to tell dog footprints from coyote footprints is coyotes always walk in a straight line, where dogs are always bouncing all over the place, and their tracks tend to look like a doggy dance floor.
Unlike dogs, coyotes can't just eat whenever they want, nor do they have any idea when they'll
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At *this* point, people are questioning whether baby formula fits in the same processed "bucket" as a hot dog. I don't think clarity on this subject is a bad thing, even though things in life defy simple categorization.
I get your point. Some classifications are easy. Some less so. I should avoid too much fat, just like I should avoid too much sugar and protein.
The issue is someone decided to bucketize foods by fat content and that's how formula and hot dogs wind up in the same category. I'm sure it's accurate by whatever metric got agreed upon. The issue is it seems it was a lousy metric: the amount and types of fat a baby needs is way different from what you and I need.
I guess what I'm arguing is that having very simply
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One of these things is not like the other.
Also, I DO have a very simple bucket that IS both VERY clear and VERY helpful: Food is aliv
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Also, I DO have a very simple bucket that IS both VERY clear and VERY helpful: Food is alive!
I hope most of my food is quite dead by the time I get to it. Maybe the apple I just munched on was still alive but most of my food is cooked.
Michael Pollan has a great slogan: 'Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much." I think it's pretty good advice. He wrote a whole book, In Defense of Food, explaining what he means.
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Exactly. It's hard to categorize foods.
UPFs are often stuff you can make in your own home today - take say, french fries. It's hard to see what makes it "ultra processed" when for most home cooks, it's usually just potatoes, with a little batter coating of flour, water, salt, deep fried and then sprinkled with salt or spices. It's hard to say that's bad for you, even though the fries you get at the fast food joint likely is.
Even potato chips can also be made at home with very little processing yet is still
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UPFs are often stuff you can make in your own home today - take say, french fries. It's hard to see what makes it "ultra processed" when for most home cooks, it's usually just potatoes, with a little batter coating of flour, water, salt, deep fried and then sprinkled with salt or spices. It's hard to say that's bad for you, even though the fries you get at the fast food joint likely is.
And indeed, French fries are not considered healthy, even if prepared at home. They are too fatty, too salty and lack proteins.
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And indeed, French fries are not considered healthy, even if prepared at home. They are too fatty, too salty and lack proteins.
And yet you need both fats and carbohydrates in a healthy diet. Fries with some grilled fish and veggies is a fine meal.
That's the point: the terms "healthy" and "unhealthy" are far to broad and un-nuanced to be useful. There's nothing especially bad about making fries once a month. Eating a big batch three meals a day is another story. The dose makes the poison.
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If your French fries are too salty that's on you for over salting them at the table.
If the oil is hot enough before you put them in they will absorb a lot less.
Take potato, optionally peel, slice appropriately, deep fry until lightly brown. Add salt to taste. There is nothing highly processed about it.
Now a pringles potato chip is a different matter. Reconstituted potato dust is highly processed.
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This is not scientific but I think there is something different between me slicing some russets and frying them at home versus a McD fry which has a pretty long ingredient list. Yeah neither of them are healthy but is the former heailti-"er" than the latter? Or say Five-Guys or In-n-Out who advertise on "3 ingredient" fries. It's an interesting question.
Hell it might just be the caloric effort you put into preparing the fries yourself that makes them "healthier"
Ingredients: Potatoes, Vegetable Oil (canola
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American cheese and "processed cheese product" are two different things. That's why Kraft Singles are called that and not Kraft American Cheese Singles. Legally it's not even cheese, while American cheese is.
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There's no vast gulf between "health" and "unhealthy" food.
There most certainly is. Very few things exist in the grey area. You're a victim of corporate misinformation if you believe otherwise.
There's likely no sharp dividing line between "processed" and "ultra processed".
It's not the processing that's the problem, it's that easy to process ingredients are bad for us. Even ingredients with good bits have the good bits removed because they are hard to process.
The ultimate problem is that processing plants are operated by corporations therefore government won't protect us.
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The cube rule [cuberule.com] leads to the same conclusion.
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While I understand what you're trying to say, that healthy food is a spectrum that needs to include a variety of foods consumed in a balanced diet, there absolutely are "unhealthy" foods, and the gulf was large enough to even have "banned" food additives since our understanding over the many decades is that some additives cause cancer. I would happily say there's a gulf between carcinogenic additives and foods without them.
It's one of the reasons we don't sell radioactive chocolate anymore. Yes that was a t
You know what's ultra-processed? (Score:2)
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through intensive processing
I'm trying to train the cows to lie down on an open hamburger bun of their own volition.
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Please also train them to shave themselves first.
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Going through a meat grinder is "intensive processing"?
This is why we need this stuff better laid out.
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Yeah, the entire NOVA scale is like that. It classifies pasta (made with only flour and water) as group 1, "Unprocessed and minimally processed foods". But "grinding or milling" (such as, say, turning wheat into flour...) is group 2, "Processed culinary ingredients". Homemade plain yogurt is group 1, but add fruit and it becomes group 4 "Ultra-processed foods". It's all very subjective and seems to be based on the premise that if an idealized old-country grandma made it, it's minimally processed.
NOVA say
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The burger patty is not ultra processed. The ketchup and BBQ sauce are.
This is why I think the ultra-processed term doesn't mean what people think. Just because I ran some tomatoes through a blender and strainer doesn't make them less healthy but it does make it ultra-processed. The health effects and the processing don't always have a lot to do with each other. It's more about removing or adding components to the food. To me, that makes "ultra-processed" a misleading term.
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"Don't kid yourself Jimmy. If a cow ever got the chance he'd eat you and everyone you care about" [youtube.com]
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Unless you are buying fast food 'burgers', which barely qualify as meat.
Pre Digested (Score:1)
Thats the problem with these, its too easy to get all the stuff out of them for your body. Digestion is supposed to take some work.
This stuff was designed for ww2 soldiers who were um doing soldier things.
American cheese, anerican chocolate (Score:2)
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Pretty sure europe owns those beer companies now.
I'd say ... (Score:2)
... a minimum of 500mg of "proceed-ness" per serving.
(Thomas Dolby voice) Science!
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... a minimum of 500mg of "proceed-ness" per serving.
(Thomas Dolby voice) Science!
That would have been funnier if I had spelled "processed-ness" correctly ...
Food education sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
Growing up we learned about the food pyramid, and the four food groups, and we learned that fat is very bad for you. It turns out all of that was wrong, at least partly. You can now find so much food information by so-called gurus and most of it is contradictory. Almost every source of information on food and nutrition is untrustworthy. There are just so many variables. I went down a rabbit hole trying to find out what the "most healthy dinner" would be. Like somewhere, someone must have come up with a dinner menu that's the most healthy based on our known understanding of health science. But actually no. The people who are most trustworthy realize they don't know that much and they don't make pronouncements. Everyone telling you what to eat is generally trying to sell you on some new fad diet or product.
A heart specialist told one of my relatives: "pretty much if it tastes good it's bad for you". I believe that's probably true. I do my best but I'm only human.
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There are two pieces of nutrition health advice that have stood the test of time:
1. don't eat too much.
2. have a varied diet.
One incarnation of the first one is to eat until 80% full. Or to chew slowly, so your stomach (which is slow to realise) can properly indicate fullness.
One incarnation of the second is the food pyramid, another easy to remember one is 5 fruits and vegetables of different color per day.
If you come across advice of the form "you need this one thing in your diet", it's rubbish (see point
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Everyone telling you what to eat is generally trying to sell you on some new fad diet or product.
That's weird, virtually all nutritionists I know promote a balanced diet made of a variety of nutrients, and yes they include many sources of fats as well. I suspect you're judging an industry by who is pushing fad diets, that is a minority of people on the whole.
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Fresh meat and vegetables are the healthiest.
Just vegetables can be healthy, but more attention needs to be paid to what you eat.
The wide variety of other "foods", mostly which are manufactured, are utter garbage... even if they taste great. You can tell they are bad when the average person does not fully understand the ingredients.
An interesting problem. (Score:2)
There are papers arguing that smoothies aren't as good as eating real fruit because it seems that there's actually a benefit to having to break down cell walls, even at the expense of not getting 100% of the nutrients from it. However, cooking food breaks down cell walls, although obviously not to the same degree. It's not clear that breaking down cell walls is harmful, even if it's not beneficial.
A lot of ultra-processed foods have been accused of having unhealthy levels of certain ingredients (usually sug
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The part about smoothies (and fruit juices) vs whole vegetables ( and some of the arguments about finely ground foods in general) are about glycemic index. i.e. how quickly the sugars in it hit your bloodstream. And generally speaking stuff that spikes blood sugar quickly is worse than stuff that takes longer for the digestive system to extract.
That said i doubt there's a big difference between a smoothie and the same ingredients boiled (a compote or stew, i guess).
On the rest of it, the problem with mos
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The part about smoothies (and fruit juices) vs whole vegetables ( and some of the arguments about finely ground foods in general) are about glycemic index. i.e. how quickly the sugars in it hit your bloodstream.
There is a big problem with using the glycemic index as a tool for diet planning. It is a thing, it can be measured, but is it really a relevant thing in the diet for the large majority of people? The rush to found diet plans on the glycemic index was based on assumptions about what effect it probably has on people, not on actual evidence by studying people and their diets. A large meta-analysis of studies [nih.gov] found:
The strongest intervention studies typically find little relationship among GI/GR and physiological measures of disease risk. Even for observational studies, the relationship between GI/GR and disease outcomes is limited. Thus, it is unlikely that the GI of a food or diet is linked to disease risk or health outcomes. Other measures of dietary quality, such as fiber or whole grains may be more likely to predict health outcomes. Interest in food patterns as predictors of health benefits may be more fruitful for research to inform dietary guidance.
Glycemic index based diet planning is planning based on a 40 year olf hypothesis, not actual evi
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I do very much understand what you're saying and it certainly adds to the complexity. One cannot put sociological or psychological factors on a box.
That aspect of the problem is indeed going to be much harder to deal with than, say, salt, trans fats, or known carcinogenic compounds.
Honestly, I'm not sure what you can do about those aspects - financial incentives help a little, but honestly I don't believe they make a huge difference - which is why I've concentrated on unsafe levels of ingredients, because a
Let's make a list (Score:2)
We all know it when we see it. Grinding is processing. The nixtimalization process for corn is processing and it's GOOD, because without it you don't get enough nutrients. American Indians did it. You could do it in your own kitchen if you had to. You saute, puree, grind, and mix all the time in a home kitchen. These are processes, but they're not ultra-processing.
You know what I've never heard of anybody doing at home? Hydrogenating. Partially or fully, nobody does that shit in their kitchen. So. Fir
It's not the amount of processing per se (Score:1)
It's the effect the processing has on the food that counts.
If you are going to have meaningful definitions, you need to make it clear what the nutritional value of the end product is. It really doesn't matter how much or how little "processing" it took to get to that point.
Nutritionally does it really matter if I put an apple in a Vegimatic 3000(TM) and turn it up to "ultra" and leave it on for 1 minute then let it sit for an hour vs. having it "process" for a full 61 minutes?
On the other hand, putting the
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And I've now read every post and I'm still not sure why making julienne carrots qualifies them as ultra-processed???
Time to throw out the phrase entirely (Score:2)
The more people try to refine "processed" with adjectives to make it more clear, the more muddled it gets.
Homemade bread is a highly processed food, but it's recognized as having a high nutritional value.
The squishy variety that you find in grocery stores, not so much. But the level of processing puts it in the exact same category.
It's about the ingredients, not the processing. If you put food colorings in food that are not food, that's an example of bad ingredients.
Nutrition is complicated. Stop trying to