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CharlieDigital 2 days ago [-]
In Taiwan, many people eat out because it is quite cheap and convenient to do so (and for other cultural and social factors). Most homes have very small kitchens and refrigerators. Yet the rate of obesity is quite low for a high income country (Japan even lower) [0]
But something that is different is how much of the food is prepared at the vendor from whole ingredients. Ingredients often acquired whole day-of from nearby markets. Ingredients that have a shorter supply chain and higher freshness due to the smaller geography.
Reading this study, I wonder how much cheap ease of access to less processed foods contributes to the lower level of obesity and higher lifespans.
Do Taiwanese get as fat on average as African Americans on average when they eat an average American diet?
>In 2017–March 2020, non-Hispanic Black adults had the highest obesity prevalence (49.9%) followed by Hispanic (45.6%), non-Hispanic White (41.4%), and non-Hispanic Asian (16.1%) adults.
It has been shown that any group of people that starts to adopt a more American diet more heavily will see increases in rates of obesity.
juiceland 2 days ago [-]
Yes. The Japanese in Hawaii is the classic example.
rrr_oh_man 2 days ago [-]
> when they eat an average American diet
That site does control for diet. E.g., my Korean-born wife has always had home-cooked Korean food growing up in North America.
KellyCriterion 2 days ago [-]
> food growing up in North America.
Which is the second argument of OP, regional/fresh/not long distances etc.
rrr_oh_man 11 hours ago [-]
Did you read GP?
> Do Taiwanese get as fat on average as African Americans on average when they eat an average American diet?
Average American diet is problematic, especially if you control for family background
rdedev 2 days ago [-]
When comparing ant asian country to the US we should always keep physical activity and portion size in mind. A single cookie here in the US is massive and you always drive around just to get that cookie in the first place
ptsneves 2 days ago [-]
Exactly. If you are eating chips it’s very hard to stop until the pack is over.
There are 3 options in order of effort: eat the next snack from a pack in your hand, decide and stop eating the cookie that is in the pack; get another pack to continue eating.
It requires more effort to get another pack and that biases towards the “stop eating” outcome.
If packages are large the the easiest action is continue eating.
c22 2 days ago [-]
This is why I always put the amount of chips I want to eat on a plate before I eat them.
djtango 6 hours ago [-]
Even easier - don't buy them.
My diet would verge on the definition of extreme by most people given the lengths I go to avoid UPFs, additives and microplastics but that doesn't mean I don't like eating. If I have a bag of chips I'll easily gorge the whole thing before even making it back to the couch so keep them out of the house, out of sight and out of mind.
Snacks are truly a sin - they're just seasoning sprinkled on empty calories, engineered to deliberately leave you not satiated. Such a waste to blow your calorie budget on them while also eating a laundry list of chemicals - I'd rather hold off and eat more pasta or steak at dinner.
And if I really can't hold off, there are plenty of easy snacks you can prepare at home like eggs or toast. "a slice of buttered toast" is rated pretty high as a final meal...
An apple, banana or nuts also does pretty well if you can deprogram yourself from the conditioning of the snack industry.
ButlerianJihad 1 days ago [-]
In designing my own portion-control diets, I found this to be an important lesson. The very size of our dishes and plates and glasses control for how much we are served, to begin with. So, if you've got a family-sized bag of chips or cereal, dole it out into a small bowl. Even if you overeat, you will consciously see how much you have eaten during that sitting, and it should have a psychological effect on you. In contrast, sitting on the sofa with the Netflix on and plunging your hand into a bag of Doritos while you gulp directly from a 2L Cherry Pepsi bottle, not going to win any diet awards. Seeing how much you will eat, seeing how much you have eaten, and reaching the bottom of the dish, needing to get up and refill it, these are all inflection points, and opportunities to pause and consider.
Dieting as a bachelor presented challenges. Your frozen meals and pizzas are often one size that's too large or small. Your recipes are not going to be calibrated for one person, one meal, one sitting. Literally, every can in my pantry is too much soup or fruit to prepare for a single meal...
Restaurant eating makes portion control so difficult. Delivery, doubly so. The only recourse is to find a place that has tapas, appetizers, small plates that can be likewise doled out.
And yes, I am certain that food is engineered to foster addiction and dependencies. It's right there in the slogans, yes? "Once you pop, you can't stop!" "Betcha can't eat just one!"
djtango 7 hours ago [-]
> And yes, I am certain that food is engineered to foster addiction and dependencies.
This shouldn't even be a remarkable POV - the industry has been open about it for decades[1]
The average dinner plate today is 11.5 inches. Fifty years ago, it was 9.5in. A hundred years ago, it was 9 inches. In the 1700-1800s, it was 8 to 8.5 inches. For centuries before that, the common "trencher" was 4-6 inches square. And say ~2000 years ago, food was served for the entire dinner party on a single 12-16inch communal platter.
Dinner plates have gotten huge, historically speaking.
icantevenhold 1 days ago [-]
n=1 but when I was visiting the US I was amazed how expensive real food ingredients were and how cheap fast food. I was kinda broke back then and could rarely afford real food and mostly ate fast food.
Where I live it’s mostly the other way around.
Never really understood how that works
seemaze 1 days ago [-]
Processed food ingredients in the US are highly subsidized by the US government. The resulting processed foodstuffs are shelf stable, widely distributed, and trounce local options in the market place through sheer scale. More often than not, "real food" == "health food" == "luxury item". It's unfortunate and unhealthy.
the-mitr 1 days ago [-]
Why are they subsidised?I mean what if the rationale, is it through lobbying or as some policy decision
iteria 18 hours ago [-]
I assume that shelf stable foods are easier for people who live in food deserts or have uneven incomes to maintain. If you live an hour away from a grocery store, fressh produce becomes less of a priority. Honestly having to shop less often than weekly, makes you consider shelf stable foods more. Being low income, makes you consider them just because it's cheaper and I think it's reasonable for the government to prefer to finance food that can last a long time since recipients of the food might not be able to acquire it often.
I also think people forget that there are several regions in the US where keeping a couple weeks of food on hand is not just a choice, it's a realistic smart decision because of the common occurrence of natural disasters.
icantevenhold 10 hours ago [-]
The majority of people in the US live more than an hour away for a grocery store?
I think >90% of people live in an urban area where that is not the case so I don’t think it would make sense to massively shape policy for those few that live in the country.
Actually (again n=1) the people that I met that lived in the country had vastly better and cheaper access to unprocessed food than those in urban areas.
I reckon it’s more a culture thing than anything based on “cold logic”
andsoitis 24 hours ago [-]
> Processed food ingredients in the US are highly subsidized by the US government.
The government subsidizes the crops used in processed foods, specifically corn, soybeans, wheat, sugar crops.
But these crops also supply animal feed, fuel, exports, and ordinary foods.
asdff 17 hours ago [-]
Fast food isn’t actually cheap compared to real food. Large fry at mcd is like $4-5 now. That gets you a lot of russets at the grocery store in comparison.
Most people don’t grocery shop for base ingrediants in the US. Produce section and base ingredients are like a small fraction of the grocery store by shelf area. Most people don’t know how to cook for themselves. Price out lean chuck from costco and estimate how many 1/8th lb big mac patties you can make from that.
CharlieDigital 1 days ago [-]
not just you.
whole and fresh prepared foods are pricey in the US.
asdff 17 hours ago [-]
You have to remember that for a lot of americans they scarcely walk further than 50 feet at a time.
msteffen 1 days ago [-]
For anyone who hasn’t read it, I highly recommend the book “Ultraprocessed People.” It's a scientifically literate and yet quite readable overview of research into ultraprocessed foods.
FWIW there are four categories:
1 is whole foods (eg fruits, nuts)
2 is stuff that is processed but still basically an ingredient (eg flour, maple syrup)
3 is combinations of 1 and 2 (most restaurants are here)
4 is ultraprocessed food (UPF): things that were not food that have been turned into food (e.g. modified starches, artificial flavors). Also, anything containing UPFs is a UPF, so e.g. most breakfast cereal (food coloring, flavors)
The basic thesis (which this research challenges, interestingly) is that UPFs aren’t inherently bad, but food scientists are shockingly good at creating highly specific and desirable flavors and textures (the book gives the example of a food company creating "ice cream" out of various modified starches and flavors so that it doesn't melt during shipping), and foods that come out of this process have generally been engineered to overwhelm our natural feedback mechanisms against overeating in order to sell more product.
ImaCake 1 days ago [-]
> is that UPFs aren’t inherently bad
My reading of Ultraprocessed People was more that the author was very careful to only pin on UPF's what could be proved to be true. The between the lines read certainly felt like "you should probably not eat UPFs".
I would humbly add that any of Michael Pollan's books, especially "In Defense of Food" are a good answer to how we should eat if we can't eat McDonald's. I have certainly found restarting the dining table tradition to have incalculable benefits for my family.
djtango 23 hours ago [-]
> I have certainly found restarting the dining table tradition to have incalculable benefits for my family.
I would love to hear more of your experiences here if you would care to share? It is something I have been thinking about a lot recently (the slow erosion of this practice and its benefits that we're giving up)
ImaCake 7 hours ago [-]
We have a small child so eating at the table is almost a default for some meals. But we went from basically never eating together at home to deliberately sitting and talking while eating for breakfast and dinner. There's no rules around not having devices available and we don't force the conversation. I think being relaxed about it has helped make the practice stick. Mostly its just semi-guaranteed time to talk and do something together every day.
rgoulter 1 days ago [-]
"UPF" is such a weird term to me.
For one, for achieving fat loss, it's surely simpler to focus on factors like calories & how full the food makes you. -- With that perspective, yeah it's obvious that fried chicken and sugary chocolate aren't great for your health when eaten frequently.
For another, e.g. it seems that nutritionally, something like "diet coke" is strictly better than the sugar drinks it replaces: you get the same taste, but zero calories. -- I mean, zero-calorie drink is clearly UPF but also nutritionally beneficial. I don't see "UPF" as a practical way to look at it.
msteffen 1 days ago [-]
The book discusses this a bit, actually. It basically credits the UPF theory to one Brazilian researcher, Carlos Monteiro, and discusses how he developed the theory by applying epidemiological techniques to the obesity epidemic in Brazil. It gives the specific example that, in Monteiro's research, if a family bought sugar at the grocery store, it actually reduced the likelihood that they were obese because, even though sugar is not healthy, it meant they were still cooking at home.
My understanding is that he would probably make similar predictions about your examples: people who eat fried chicken and chocolate as part of a mostly home-cooked diet are less likely to be obese than people who drink diet coke as part of a diet that mostly comes out of wrappers. He would probably also say that there's nothing inherently bad about diet coke, but there is something bad about getting all your food from people trying to make money instead of from people who love you.
rgoulter 1 days ago [-]
I'd say "calorie dense food that's highly palatable makes it easy to consume more calories than you expend, and that makes you fat". -- I mean, that's a mechanical model explaining how you get fat.
I think that UPF mostly aligns with that in that the food that's "UPF" is generally calorie dense, highly palatable, low satiation.
But...
> He would probably also say that there's nothing inherently bad about diet coke, but there is something bad about getting all your food from people trying to make money instead of from people who love you.
At this point, it seems more a discussion of morals and social values rather than a scientific "how to lose fat".
msteffen 20 hours ago [-]
> At this point, it seems more a discussion of morals and social values rather than a scientific "how to lose fat".
He uses language like that in the book (and I was speculating about “what he would say”).
I think the reason is that when people hear the theory “UPFs caused the obesity epidemic,” their brain sometimes goes to “well what is in UPFs that causes obesity?” His answer is “nothing.” He’s trying to emphasize that the issue isn’t some toxic ingredient, but that UPFs are a technology that are being used in a way that leads to this outcome.
(though the research in TFA might actually challenge the “nothing,” by showing that there is some kind of toxicity)
ggm 1 days ago [-]
I thought that aside from the social context above, there is a theory that artificial sweeteners actually cause paradoxical effects in the metabolism because of triggers associated with the sweetness not the glucose/sucrose content. Ie specifically "diet" soda aside from eating out a Lot, may not be helping.
mitxela 24 hours ago [-]
What could the paradoxical effects possibly be? Storing energy takes actual energy, and can't be triggered by hormones alone.
The soda replaced is also a UPF though, which does line up with the idea that none of them are good for you.
andsoitis 24 hours ago [-]
> Coke Zero
> I mean, zero-calorie drink is clearly UPF but also nutritionally beneficial.
What nutrition do zero-calorie manufactured drinks like Coke Zero provide?
ttoinou 20 hours ago [-]
Calories don’t exist and it is unscientific to believe in them
armitron 1 days ago [-]
Zero calories doesn’t mean it’s healthy, as all those drinks are loaded with artificial sweeteners some of which have a strong insulin response and are also associated with cancer.
rgoulter 1 days ago [-]
> and are also associated with cancer.
Last time I looked into this, the strongest research showed "we looked and couldn't find any evidence it's not associated with cancer".
That is, to hear "artificial sweeteners = cancer, I'm better off with the sugary drinks" was the wrong conclusion to take.
amanaplanacanal 1 days ago [-]
I haven't seen evidence that artificial sweeteners cause a strong insulin response, but would certainly love to. Can you point me to such evidence?
irthomasthomas 24 hours ago [-]
Here are a few papers:
1. Sucralose increases peak insulin response when co-ingested with carbs:
"Sucralose Affects Glycemic and Hormonal Responses to an Oral Glucose Load" (Pepino et al., 2013, Diabetes Care)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23633524/
Finding: Consuming sucralose 10 minutes prior to an oral glucose tolerance test increased peak plasma insulin levels by ~20% and decreased insulin clearance compared to water.
2. Microbiome-driven glycemic & insulin dysregulation:
"Personalized microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance" (Suez et al., 2022, Cell)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35987213/
Finding: A randomized trial showing saccharin and sucralose alter gut microbiota composition, leading to personalized impairments in glucose tolerance and postprandial insulin responses.
3. Reduced insulin sensitivity from daily intake:
"Sucralose decreases insulin sensitivity in healthy subjects: a randomized controlled trial" (Romo-Romo et al., 2018, AJCN)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30535090/
Finding: 14 days of daily sucralose intake significantly decreased insulin sensitivity in healthy young adults compared to placebo.
4. Direct pancreatic beta-cell mechanism:
"Sweet Taste Receptor Expressed in Pancreatic β-Cells Activates the Calcium and Cyclic AMP Signaling Systems and Stimulates Insulin Secretion" (Nakagawa et al., 2009, PLoS ONE)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19352508/
Finding: Sweet-taste receptors (T1R2/T1R3) expressed on pancreatic beta-cells bind sweeteners (sucralose, Ace-K, saccharin), mobilizing intracellular cAMP and Ca2+ to stimulate insulin secretion.
juiceland 23 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ShinyLeftPad 1 days ago [-]
so what category is simple steak then
ludicrousdispla 1 days ago [-]
I would think that a simple steak is a whole food, but I have no idea what would be in a SimpleSteak™
1 days ago [-]
refurb 1 days ago [-]
Most of the “chemicals” in so-called ultra-processed food aren’t added so customers overeat, they’re added to improve things like shelf-life or product quality (modified starch thickeners).
I’d find it hard to believe there are evil food scientists in big food companies who are nefariously designing food for overeating.
What is more likely is they are creating food that taste good, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Now if the claim is they work towards this goal without much concern about things like sugar content or glycemic index, I could believe that.
But at the same time nobody thinks eating a whole bag of five servings of Doritos is a healthy food choice. If you’re designing good tasting food and assuming people will eat one serving as a part of a healthy diet, then no nefarious goals are required.
pydry 1 days ago [-]
>I’d find it hard to believe there are evil food scientists in big food companies who are nefariously designing food for overeating.
You really find it hard to believe that profit making companies that engineer food would engineer food for profit?
What about if they advertised it with a catchy phrase like "once you pop you can't stop"? Would you still shake your head and say "not credible"?
asdff 17 hours ago [-]
They came out with a new coke can for the first time in my life some years ago. Its smaller than the old cans, not bigger. How does that fit the thesis of these companies fattening us up?
GP missed the major point. Its not even about engineering tastier food. Its about shelf stable food that isn’t going to give you botulism in 3 weeks.
refurb 7 hours ago [-]
> You really find it hard to believe that profit making companies that engineer food would engineer food for profit?
That's not what I said is it?
I said "I said I find it hard to believe food scientists are devising addictive food".
Clearly they are trying to make their food taste food (LOL, do you want them to make it taste bad?).
There doesn't have to be any conspiratorial evil food scientists to get where we are.
pydry 29 minutes ago [-]
How? Addictive food is profitable food is it not?
I agree that no conspiracy is necessary, basic market incentives dictate that addictive "once you pop you can't stop" food is just good business.
Madmallard 1 days ago [-]
Lol the entire junk food industry would like to hire you for PR
You know cigarette companies have existed for 100 years and bought food companies right? You know their stuff is blatantly toxic and kills millions of people a year and they advocated ads and stuff and paid doctors to say it's not harmful right?
Like what world do you live in?
You really think hanlon's razor or any other thing like that remotely applies here?
refurb 7 hours ago [-]
Was it your intention to reply to a point I didn't make or was it your lack of understanding that got us here?
Madmallard 4 hours ago [-]
Apparently you didn't even read what you wrote lol
"I’d find it hard to believe there are evil food scientists in big food companies who are nefariously designing food for overeating."
Lerc 1 days ago [-]
>foods that come out of this process have generally been engineered to overwhelm our natural feedback mechanisms against overeating in order to sell more product.
That's the point at which it becomes highly speculative.
It seems to invoke an assumed knowledge of human biology that either does not exist or is known by some select few in some form of conspiracy (somewhat unlikely)
It reminds me of raw foodists that argue that cooking is bad because humans harnessed fire only after we'd mostly evolved. Or a magnet bracelet peddler claiming that since we started wearing shoes, that separation from the earth's magnetic field means we need the bracelets now.
msteffen 1 days ago [-]
> That's the point at which it becomes highly speculative.
The “…in order to sell more product” part is scientifically speculative, I agree—the book makes the claim, but the scientific research it references does not, IIRC. The book’s author imputes it from interviews and the like.
The “overwhelm…feedback mechanisms” part is mainly substantiated by a 2019 study by Kevin Hall where, similar to TFA, they had people essentially live inside a calorimeter and eat calorie- and nutrient-matched meals that were UPF or not. They found that when given UPF, the same people ate more and faster, and gained weight at a pace that surprised the study authors (who were initially skeptical of the theory and had constructed the study to try and disprove it. The study author is interviewed and explains why he found it compelling).
Whether you find the evidence compelling is, of course, up to you :-), but I felt the book did a good job interviewing members of the obesity research community and tracing the history of the theory.
It didn’t take an advanced understanding of reward pathways to realize that things like nicotine and cocaine were highly addictive and that aspect could be concentrated (e.g. crack).
esperent 2 days ago [-]
From the actual study:
> The non-UPF and UPF test meals were closely matched on meal weight, energy, energy density, macronutrients, available carbohydrate, glycaemic index and load, total dietary fibre, sodium and water (all ≤1.6% deviation between meals; Fig. 1b).
So they did match glycemic index, which the article omits.
tancop 2 days ago [-]
That means the only options left are micronutrients, specific additives or psychology.
I bet a lot of this is psychosomatic, you expect some food will give you fast energy so your body thinks that means you need it and releases insulin.
andor 2 days ago [-]
I was about to comment that the physical structure of the food and the fiber content also make a difference. For instance, rolled oats are available in different thicknesses, and the thicker ones don’t digest as easily. Brown vs white rice is another example.
But these examples have different glycemic indexes, which the study matched for.
eudkfkriEir 2 days ago [-]
> That means the only options left are
plus all of the options that are complete unknowns which, in biology, is probably close to 99.999%
PowerElectronix 2 days ago [-]
Not only psychology, but training. If your body gets a load of sugar every time it tastes UPF additives, it learns to release insulin on taste to protect itself.
esperent 2 days ago [-]
Isn't that what glycemic index means though? How quickly the sugar gets released?
2 days ago [-]
irthomasthomas 2 days ago [-]
Not really, chemical sweeteners have no sugar, but still trigger an insulin response.
And chewing. How fast it is eaten is likely affected.
nrclark 2 days ago [-]
Another option is that it's affected by the order of consumption.
I know somebody who got really into blood glucose monitoring, and she tells me that the order in which she eats a meal affects how much it spikes her glucose. So if she eats a piece of toast followed by a piece of cheese, it causes her a bigger glucose spike than she'd get if she eats the cheese first and then the toast.
Looking at the two meals in the study: if I sat down to eat the processed one, I'd probably start with the veggie straws. If I saw down to eat the unprocessed one, I'd almost certainly start with the egg or the cheese.
edit: and here are some other options: I notice that the unprocessed one is grain-free, vegetarian and has significantly less sucrose. I don't know if any of that makes it more or less healthy, but they're significant differences nutritionally.
canucker2016 2 days ago [-]
If you look up how to calculate the glycemic index of a meal, the formula treats each meal component's glycemic index as a proportion of the total meal's glycemic index.
But the above example shows that the body doesn't treat food in that manner - the relatively low carb, higher fat cheese didn't smooth out the higher proportion carb count of the toast.
In the paper, the largest carbs for the ultraprocessed meal was instant mashed potatoes, while the non-processed meal had bananas as the largest carb source followed by craisins/cranberries.
The high carb foods in the unprocessed meal are paired with fiber.
The high carb foods in the ultraprocessed meal are NOT paired with fiber.
The fiber slows the rate of carb intake.
Same thing occurs with protein - same amount of ground beef and steak, ground beef meal will result in faster amino acid ingestion than the steak meal. No idea if there are any pros/cons of the faster ground beef ingestion, but there is a difference in how the digestive system processes the two meals.
jwr 2 days ago [-]
> I know somebody who got really into blood glucose monitoring, and she tells me that the order in which she eats a meal affects how much it spikes her glucose. So if she eats a piece of toast followed by a piece of cheese, it causes her a bigger glucose spike than she'd get if she eats the cheese first and then the toast.
This is what I read in a book about glucose. So I went ahead and measured. I found it not true, at least in my case. The recommendations of eating salad before your meal do nothing measureable for my glucose spikes.
bilsbie 2 days ago [-]
I got a cgm and found the exact same thing. A piece of cake after a protein and fiber containing meal didn’t move my blood sugar at all.
On the flip side I seem to gain the same amount of weight regardless of what my blood sugar does.
An obvious flaw in this study is that the meals were not anything like equivalent.
The minimally processed food consisted mainly of cheese, egg, and pieces of whole fruit: No unbound simple carbohydrates.
The ultra processed food included jelly, turkey, chips, a cookie, cereal, instant mashed potatoes: Lots of unbound simple carbohydrates and much less fiber.
Of course insulin would spike higher with such a meal. There’s nothing at all non-obvious about that.
Also, the protein wasn’t equivalent. The turkey roll is meat protein and cheese is dairy protein. Also, the salt content was probably higher in the ultra processed foods, and that was not controlled for.
If this could be replicated using exact equivalents that are either processed or not processed, I would be more convinced. But I really doubt that it would replicate.
reliablereason 1 days ago [-]
Right if it was literally the processing they make the claim about and not the molecular ingredients. Then they basically have a result that points to there being something fundamentally wrong with our model of physics.
You cant have a non mediated cause according to our current model of physics.
1 days ago [-]
tgv 1 days ago [-]
How many turns and twists have we seen regarding egg consumption? I don't put a lot of faith in these studies. They offer a bit of an indication, but nothing more.
BrenBarn 1 days ago [-]
> Also, the salt content was probably higher in the ultra processed foods, and that was not controlled for.
Salt is listed as among the things that was matched between the two meals.
pythonRon 2 days ago [-]
Before we come to a final conclusion on this, we need to reexamine the NOVA food classification system. It holds some rather baffling contradictions. For instance, if you buy a deep fryer and a mandolin slicer to make your own potato chips at home, they're classified as processed foods. But if you buy a bag of plain potato chips (ingredients: potatoes, oil, salt) they're classified as ultra-processed.
astura 2 days ago [-]
This whole concept just doesn't make sense to me - this study included peanut butter and jelly as part of the "highly processed" meal and cheese as part of the "minimally processed" meal. I don't think that either peanut butter or jelly is more processed than cheese.
virtual_void 2 days ago [-]
I suppose it's partly because it's the whole meal that is being represented and they match it for nutrients.
I'd guess they wanted to include store purchased bread, hence the pb&j.
The other thought i had was that most peanut butter includes (at least) palm oil (ultra processed) and sometimes other emulsifiers to prevent separation. Though you can buy pb that is just peanut and salt.
The jelly would contain quite a bit more in the way of preservatives, regulators and flavour enhancers etc than the jelly i'd make at home (if i did such a thing)
I'd guess it's just regular cheese which does require quite some processing to make but unless it's got extra additives to extend shelf life, change texture or taste it's just processed.
californical 2 days ago [-]
Yeah the other response to you is right. As someone who’s gone down the UPF (ultra processed foods) rabbit hole, it’s based on the additive ingredients.
And at least in America, most commonly-bought peanut butter has additives, and most store-bought bread has 40 different UPF ingredients. Even the jelly will often have “natural flavors” (intentional scare quotes) and pectin.
It’s possible to have a non-UPF peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I might have one today! It’s just that the default options for most Americans contain a ton of crazy ingredients.
Depending on the cheese you buy, many are very simple, and rarely have weird additives. But if you buy a block of cheese or even usually the sandwich-sized slices, it’s not ultra-processed.
astura 2 days ago [-]
>As someone who’s gone down the UPF (ultra processed foods) rabbit hole, it’s based on the additive ingredients.
So if you add enzymes that completely change the characteristics of the food (aka "industrial reformulation") that's perfectly fine but you add an emulsifier to improve the mouthfeel and texture now it's suddenly a "ultra processed" food and is pure evil and should be regulated like cigarettes? Now it has "crazy ingredients" and "weird additives"? I'm sorry but this stance is totally and completely illogical. You aren't going to convince me that this makes any sense.
>Even the jelly will often have “natural flavors” (intentional scare quotes) and pectin.
For fucks sake, jelly requires pectin to be jelly. Sure, you can rely on the naturally occuring pectin in fruit, but adding additional pectin makes it so you have a consistent product and can add less sugar and don't have to cook it as long - aka healthier and less processed.
I don't really have a horse in this race, I found the picture of the "highly processed meal" gross on a visceral level, I just hate the illogically of it all. This is a religious belief.
Nemi 19 hours ago [-]
So you bring up emulsifiers and in my opinion, that is one of the big baddy's in UPF. Yes, we have been using emulsifiers for centuries, but the effectiveness of modern emulsifiers is on another level then something like lecithin from soybeans. The strength and ubiquity of modern emulsifiers has completely changed the food we eat. They are almost literally in everything we eat today.
Why are they bad? What do emulsifiers do? They combine substances that don't want to be combined. What in your body might this affect? Your mucosal lining. Emulsifiers don't break down in your gut as they pass through. They just emulsify everything as they move through. Including your mucus. That layer is extremely important for a normally functioning gut. Lose it and then chime will contact the gut lining. This disrupts the microbiota and allows things to get through your gut that are not supposed to. It causes inflammation.
UPFs contain many bad things, but they HAVE to be categorized to fully appreciate the levels of badness. Some things are just not that big of deal, and the "health industry" does everyone a disservice by not clarifying it.
It’s not a religious belief. There is a mountain of scientific evidence supporting the idea that ultra processed foods are bad for you, including the study linked in this HN submission, for reasons linked to the biological effect of specific ingredients and processes.
Type any enzyme or emulsifier off an ingredient list into Google and you can easily find a study about its health impact.
astura 22 hours ago [-]
We have been using emulsification for centuries, dude. This is fully a religious belief about purity. The fact that the package the food comes in is considered in the nova classification just makes me double down on this stance, you don't eat the packaging.
>including the study linked in this HN submission
This study proves absolutely nothing - the participants were not blinded to what they were consuming (and presumably could consume it at any speed/order). We already know how you perceive a food will effect hormones/biological response [1].
Avoid any food additives that you want; you just won't convince me 1) this framework is something logical or 2) cheese is a minimally processed food.
I mean there are different levels of processing, yes, and many of the additives that have been researched do have negative effects. Maybe minor negative effects, but over time the combination of a lot of chemicals with minor negative effects can absolutely affect your health and cognition in a perceptible way.
There is research for a lot of additives, but many have limited evidence or small studies that aren’t replicated. Usually the result is either “it doesn’t affect health either way” or “it is negative to health”. Very rarely is there an ultra processed ingredient with a large body of science that says “we should eat more of this specific thing, it has a positive effect on longevity!”. And if we do, it’s usually medicine rather than a food additive, which due to being heavily researched and tailored to individuals, prescription medications are healthy (obviously). But these aren’t that…
So I think you have to stretch your reasoning that the practice as a whole is probably negative, but I feel like I’ve personally seen enough negatives of certain UPF that I limit my intake whenever reasonably possible.
Obviously having small amounts isn’t going to be horrible but they’re in everything now
astura 22 hours ago [-]
That's a whole lotta words to say "you're right, this classification doesn't make any sense."
somenameforme 2 days ago [-]
Peanut butter definitely is. Even if you make it home-made you need to add some sort of oil to get the persistent creamy texture, but it naturally separates. To get that permanent creaminess you get from the store it's going to have various sorts of chemical additives - emulsifiers, stabilizers, etc. You also generally want to add some sort of a sweetener. I use honey, but with store bought stuff you're looking at all sorts of stuff including e.g. high fructose corn syrup.
By contrast cheese is completely natural outside of a few exceptions like American cheese. You take milk, add something to curdle it like an acid (e.g. vinegar) or rennet - an enzyme obtained from the stomach of young calves, separate the coagulated stuff, salt it, dry it, age it - you now have cheese. Ricotta can even be made straight from raw milk with no additives. Cheese's long shelf life is natural.
burpingtree 2 days ago [-]
Well the peanut butter I get from the store is just peanuts and salt and there is plenty of brands available. It does have to be stirred because it separates. But yes the Jiffy and Skippy that most people refer to as peanut butter is really just peanut flavored palm oil.
somenameforme 2 days ago [-]
I think you mean peanuts, salt, and oil, because otherwise there's nothing to separate. The oil is already usually going to leave it something as either high or ultra high processing.
thinkmassive 2 days ago [-]
Peanuts contain plenty of oil.
Peanut oil is commonly used for all kinds of frying. It's hilarious that you're trying to lecture people without knowing this basic fact.
bigmadshoe 1 days ago [-]
The oil is released by the peanuts when you roast and blend them.
1 days ago [-]
thinkmassive 2 days ago [-]
> Peanut butter definitely is. Even if you make it home-made you need to add some sort of oil to get the persistent creamy texture, but it naturally separates.
False, peanuts contain their own oil. Nothing needs to be added, not even salt.
Anything containing more than peanuts and salt should be referred to as something else, like peanut spread.
askvictor 1 days ago [-]
> Peanut butter definitely is. Even if you make it home-made you need to add some sort of oil to get the persistent creamy texture, but it naturally separates.
Depends on how you make it - it's definitely trickier at home to get a creamy texture without extra oil, but with the right machine (i.e. peanut butter maker) it comes out smooth with just peanuts (and salt if you like); some wholefoods shops have the machine where you can make it yourself.
Many store-bought peanut butters use oil as an additive as the peanut oil is more expensive, so they remove that to sell as peanut oil, and replace it with cheaper oils
irthomasthomas 2 days ago [-]
Probably it is the bread which classifies it as UPF.
ImaCake 1 days ago [-]
> Before we come to a final conclusion on this
Science can be patient but those of us who eat should act now. Something is making us fat, and it sure looks like its the UPFs.
rgoulter 1 days ago [-]
> Something is making us fat, and it sure looks like its the UPFs.
A couple of years ago I lost 20kg (~40lb) of body weight.
I find this phrasing odd. -- Should I say "something made me lose 20kg of body weight", or should I say "I was able to improve the food I ate, and I lost 20kg of weight".
I tend to think that even without scientific literature, people know that e.g. lettuce is "healthier" than chocolate cake and fried chicken.
The term "UPF" seems like a weird term that puts the moral responsibility on the food manufacturers, rather than on "us" who are fat and want to lose weight.
amanaplanacanal 1 days ago [-]
"Moral responsibility" feels like a weird term to use here.
From an epidemiological standpoint, something changed in the environment that caused obesity rates to start rising in the 70s and 80s. There are many theories as to exactly which environmental change is the cause. Figuring out what that change was would be a good thing.
rgoulter 10 hours ago [-]
It's kinda a question of scope.
If your concern is about your own health as an individual? I want to lose weight now? I think it's useful to say "I have agency, I can lose weight". If you have the agency to lose weight, it makes sense you can take on the responsibility for having gained weight.
"Why did society in general get fatter?" is a different question. And if your main concern is "how can I lose fat?" it's not directly interesting.
virtual_void 2 days ago [-]
Would simple potato chips bought in a store be classified as ultra-processed under nova? I didn't read it that way. What in Nova would make it so?
*assuming the same ingredients as your home cooked example, which i think is your point, right?
astura 2 days ago [-]
Group 4 considers the packaging the food comes in - "sophisticated packaging, usually with synthetic materials."
virtual_void 2 days ago [-]
Interesting!
I guess i can see how packaging makes a difference to the desirability / convenience of the food.
I guess i'm less likely to eat chips if i have to make them myself compared to grabbing a bag and more likely to over eat them if it's super convenient.
Though I admit to being a bit lazy like that.
tayo42 1 days ago [-]
Can you really buy potato chips with just three ingredients? They don't rot to fast?
askvictor 1 days ago [-]
Yes, and no. Just about all of the water is removed; and the high salt and fat content make them hostile to microbes.
Terr_ 1 days ago [-]
There's also some interesting science with stuff like MREs, where I have significant water content but it has somehow been made non-bio-available to smaller organisms.
bigmadshoe 1 days ago [-]
Most plain potato chips are like that, not sure how they last but they do.
1 days ago [-]
bentt 2 days ago [-]
> “The two meals are matched within 1 percent of carbs, fat, proteins, calories, water, and salt,” said Zach Hutelin, a researcher at the institute and the study’s first author.
Note that fiber is not part of that list. Stripping out fiber essentially means that our gut microbiome is starved. Not coincidentally, it also means that these foods are much less prone to spoilage.
gkdr 2 days ago [-]
The study itself (linked at the bottom) does mention fiber (though they spell it "fibre", if you go looking for it). What I do notice is that they use "total dietary fibre", so there could be a difference between soluble and insoluble fiber content.
ssivark 2 days ago [-]
What does fiber has to do with spoilage? Is this a significant motivation for processed foods to strip out fiber?
Also, from the study:
> The non-UPF and UPF test meals were closely matched on meal weight, energy, energy density, macronutrients, available carbohydrate, glycaemic index and load, total dietary fibre, sodium and water (all ≤1.6% deviation between meals; Fig. 1b).
talon8635 1 days ago [-]
Doesn’t Metamucil have a very long (many years) shelf life?
seanhandley 2 days ago [-]
I hope the ultra processed food industry will come to be viewed similarly to the tobacco industry over time.
The human body is evidently not able to safely consume these products over the course of a lifetime and the ultimate toll on society and healthcare is already evident.
They are addictive and harmful to the body’s mechanisms.
It’s time to control the promotion, labelling and taxation of these products the same way we do cigarettes.
irthomasthomas 2 days ago [-]
It was the tobacco industry! Big tobacco began buying food companies in the 1960s. Companies like Kraft and Del Monte where bought by tobacco companies R.J Reynolds and Philip Morris. These buyouts continued through the 90s. They applied their science of addiction engineering to food. And in cooperation with the USDA and farmers, they pushed a low-fat, high-carb diet, creating a market built on dirt-cheap grains.
For the purposes of this conversation - let’s think of it as pre chewed food.
The body evolved to eat foods that take a lot of chewing and digesting. As far as I can tell, one of the biggest problems with food that is “too” processed is that it’s absorbed far too quickly and early in the tract.
Food that makes it all the way through has a slower and more even absorption rate so we don’t get hungry again as fast.
asdff 17 hours ago [-]
You have canines for cutting flesh and yet you cook your brisket until it melts apart in your mouth. I don’t think pre chewed is much an argument. All cooking is “pre chewing” in a sense. You are dumping energy into this food. It’s going to do something to it.
JMKH42 2 days ago [-]
That doesn't help define a useful understanding at all.
There will likely never be a satisfactory definition, and doesn't need to be. Instead we define what foods are causing health problems and which aren't.
Look in this study, cheese is on the unprocessed side. That is an absurdity of language.
In the end they may figure out that the key difference here isn't processing at all, but fiber, or some particular ingredient added to floud based products on the processing side.
seanhandley 2 days ago [-]
Look into “the food matrix” and you’ll see what I mean.
Many ultra processed ingredients have been so pulverised that there’s no structure left to help regulate the speed at which your body can break it down and absorb it.
So it absorbs nutrients too quickly, blood sugar spike, blood sugar crash, hunger pang, and you end up eating more than you would have otherwise during your waking hours.
Multiply that by years and you get metabolic issues.
Soup seems to be different - it's more satiating than a solid version of the same ingredients, and keeps you fuller longer.
seanhandley 2 days ago [-]
Good rule of thumb: If you’re eating things you couldn’t make in your own kitchen using ingredients that were available 200 years ago… they might not be great for you.
breezybottom 2 days ago [-]
That's an absurd and completely arbitrary rule.
devilbunny 22 hours ago [-]
But it works.
masfuerte 2 days ago [-]
Cheese is not unprocessed. It's not ultra-processed. There's no absurdity in that.
PeterStuer 19 hours ago [-]
My gut instinct and observations are that the root is not "ultraprocessed" but the level of what I would call "calory accessibility". They do overlap but are not the same. Take the same steak, eaten raw or artisanally minced into a sausage. Neither would be called "ultraprocessed". However, the "predigestion" process in the latter means our metabolism will have a far easier time extracting the energy from that same meat. Look at the foods obese people gravitate towards: it is not just high sugary salty fats. Yes, it is those, but on top of that those under easy release forms.
GarnetFloride 12 hours ago [-]
I can't find it at the moment, but I saw a study where they fed snakes different forms of beef. Raw chunk, raw chopped, raw ground, and cooked versions of the same. And they found the smaller the bits the more calories were available to the snake.
kamma4434 1 days ago [-]
It does not take a metabolic chamber to guess that the plate on the right is choked full of added sugar, while the one on the left has none. The plate on the left has some fiber while the one on the right has none, and fiber act as a sponge for sugar release.
They should have compared natural and ultra processed food matching the same glycemic indexes to understand if there is some kind of procedure in manufacturing that changes it significantly even the same amount of sugar and fiber
ticulatedspline 2 days ago [-]
good study with, entirely expected results? Variances in bioavailability are well known no? A block of wood has calories but you can't live off it. As for processing there's been papers describing "roasting meat and veggies" as a gateway to our larger brains because cooking makes calories in food more available.
Does a cooked steak and a raw steak actually show different values when measured with a calorimeter?
their chosen dishes also seem to conflate a lot of factors, like processing, vs flavor. it's known that artificial sweeteners can elicit insulin responses despite not being a digestible sugar, I've heard studies showing that "Tasting" in the gut can perceive the sweetness.
DivingForGold 23 hours ago [-]
The fallacy of the KETO diet is that significant consumption of saturated fats eventually leads to arteriosclerosis and cardiovascular disease, whereas the VETO diet employs the same high protein, low carb principles using only plant based proteins, which will achieve better long term health results. Also, based on the proven theory of biomagnification, a carnivore diet accumulates more pesticides, poisons and toxins that are commonly applied to crops in modern agriculture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomagnification
Also, refer to the post on HN: Scandinavia's first farmers slaughtered hunter-gatherer population, DNA suggests.
… "This transition has previously been presented as peaceful. However, our study indicates the opposite. In addition to violent death, it is likely that new pathogens from livestock finished off many gatherers".
oortoo 23 hours ago [-]
I looked up the VETO diet and I intrigued as its similar to what I've eaten in the past or the ideal diet for me (plant based, low carb) but I just about had an aneurism when it claimed that diary was a "plant-based" protein source. Bro what.
DivingForGold 23 hours ago [-]
Prollie somebody hallucinating on what the true VETO diet is. I wrote 20+ pages about my own experience.
bettercallsalad 1 days ago [-]
What about blending? I often blend veggies and fruits with protein powder as smoothie to drink on the go.
I noticed it keeps me less full than if I had the ingredients as a whole.
asdff 17 hours ago [-]
Worse for digestive fiber purposes.
gib444 1 days ago [-]
I read regarding eg Huel if you drink it slowly it supposedly keeps you more full. Have you tried sipping it over eg 30 mins?
Just _two distinct_ meals and such a vast conclusion?
Yeah... is that even science?
It's on par with "nutrition science" stating that potatos should be left out of meals, all the while you could _provable_ live the longest with just potatos (don't try it, just means the least deadly deficits).
Close to worthless.
Madmallard 1 days ago [-]
Colorful potatoes are pretty damn nutritious foods!!!
pissed-off 1 days ago [-]
Am I missing something or article just say that body reacts “differently” on processed food and not. They are not really saying which one is better, just mention that processed food gives more insulin spike and different response in brain.
1 days ago [-]
rramon 2 days ago [-]
I think because the foods aren't equally digestible and as such lead to a different supply of steady energy. Food cravings can distract.
niek_pas 2 days ago [-]
Would love to read the original research paper if anyone has access to it. My university unfortunately doesn’t.
esperent 2 days ago [-]
It's linked right at the bottom of the article and you can download the full pdf.
Thanks! For some reason it was behind a paywall for me earlier — maybe I used another link.
bigbaguette 2 days ago [-]
Make your own pastas with good quality flour and prepare a serve the same size as what you would normally be having with pastas from the supermarket.
It's very likely you're not going to finish your plate.
scns 2 days ago [-]
Or switch to protein pasta. If you have picky kids to feed, mix 50/50 with regular pasta.
astura 2 days ago [-]
Why is cheese not considered highly processed?
delichon 2 days ago [-]
American cheese slices, Velveeta, Cheese Whiz, cheese spreads, nacho cheese are all NOVA group 4 ultra processed because they are industrial reformulations with added ingredients (like emulsifiers). Your average cheddar isn't.
astura 2 days ago [-]
And? For an "average cheddar" you still have to heat the milk, add enzymes, and age it and at the end you get something entirely different. Sounds like "processing" to me, or to use your words, "industrial reformulation."
delichon 2 days ago [-]
Yes, it is group 3 processing. Group 4 "ultraprocessed" is more so. The lines between get blurry.
astura 2 days ago [-]
So if cheese is a group three Nova classification "processed foods" then why did this study include cheese as literally the main component of the the "minimally processed meal?" Sounds like the authors very much consider cheese "minimally processed." Or at least less processed than peanut butter (literally just ground peanuts), which they put in the "highly processed meal."
You say "lines between get blurry" but I'm going to call it straight up meaningless bullshit since nobody agrees on anything or is talking about the same thing even when using the same framework. Once I read from an authoritative source that quesadillas are always ultra processed, like, by definition I realized that this whole concept is stupid.
Then you have weirdos coming in here talking about how "ultra processed food" is like tobacco and fraud, fucking hell, we've lost the plot.
amanaplanacanal 1 days ago [-]
Although I probably agree with your point, most peanut butter sold in the US is not "just ground peanuts".
It sounds like there are things left out of the article, probably click through and read the study itself to get the real definitions.
bouncycastle 2 days ago [-]
group 4 ultra processed is basically food fraud in my opinion. There is so much complex industrial scale chemistry going into it that it's mind boggling that it's actually legal. On the other hand, the process for making real cheese is simple and relies on a natural process.
parasti 2 days ago [-]
Only includes water in one type of meal?
astura 2 days ago [-]
They matched water content between the meals, so I guess only the ultra processed one required additional water to match the natural water content of the less processed one.
scotty79 2 days ago [-]
I wonder how they managed to put in same amount of salt in the low processed meal. That cheese must be super salty.
I'd also wonder what would happen if they didint use heat treated carbs in the ultraptocessed one. If I were to guess I think they might be main offenders.
1 days ago [-]
aleksandern08 1 days ago [-]
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sourcecodeplz 2 days ago [-]
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TheChaplain 2 days ago [-]
I believe they are on to something, but wouldn't it be much better if the sample size was larger than just 57 people?
emj 2 days ago [-]
This is a good question but not an invalidation of the study. People underestimate the cost of doing large scale surveys, first year researchers become painfully aware of it. There are lots of research were you try to get a quantitative result cheap. But most costs a lot of money (the big studies are usually very well spent money imho)
But something that is different is how much of the food is prepared at the vendor from whole ingredients. Ingredients often acquired whole day-of from nearby markets. Ingredients that have a shorter supply chain and higher freshness due to the smaller geography.
Reading this study, I wonder how much cheap ease of access to less processed foods contributes to the lower level of obesity and higher lifespans.
[0] https://data.worldobesity.org/rankings/
>In 2017–March 2020, non-Hispanic Black adults had the highest obesity prevalence (49.9%) followed by Hispanic (45.6%), non-Hispanic White (41.4%), and non-Hispanic Asian (16.1%) adults.
https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/adult-obesity-facts/
That site does control for diet. E.g., my Korean-born wife has always had home-cooked Korean food growing up in North America.
Which is the second argument of OP, regional/fresh/not long distances etc.
> Do Taiwanese get as fat on average as African Americans on average when they eat an average American diet?
Average American diet is problematic, especially if you control for family background
There are 3 options in order of effort: eat the next snack from a pack in your hand, decide and stop eating the cookie that is in the pack; get another pack to continue eating.
It requires more effort to get another pack and that biases towards the “stop eating” outcome. If packages are large the the easiest action is continue eating.
My diet would verge on the definition of extreme by most people given the lengths I go to avoid UPFs, additives and microplastics but that doesn't mean I don't like eating. If I have a bag of chips I'll easily gorge the whole thing before even making it back to the couch so keep them out of the house, out of sight and out of mind.
Snacks are truly a sin - they're just seasoning sprinkled on empty calories, engineered to deliberately leave you not satiated. Such a waste to blow your calorie budget on them while also eating a laundry list of chemicals - I'd rather hold off and eat more pasta or steak at dinner.
And if I really can't hold off, there are plenty of easy snacks you can prepare at home like eggs or toast. "a slice of buttered toast" is rated pretty high as a final meal...
An apple, banana or nuts also does pretty well if you can deprogram yourself from the conditioning of the snack industry.
Dieting as a bachelor presented challenges. Your frozen meals and pizzas are often one size that's too large or small. Your recipes are not going to be calibrated for one person, one meal, one sitting. Literally, every can in my pantry is too much soup or fruit to prepare for a single meal...
Restaurant eating makes portion control so difficult. Delivery, doubly so. The only recourse is to find a place that has tapas, appetizers, small plates that can be likewise doled out.
And yes, I am certain that food is engineered to foster addiction and dependencies. It's right there in the slogans, yes? "Once you pop, you can't stop!" "Betcha can't eat just one!"
This shouldn't even be a remarkable POV - the industry has been open about it for decades[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food)
Dinner plates have gotten huge, historically speaking.
I also think people forget that there are several regions in the US where keeping a couple weeks of food on hand is not just a choice, it's a realistic smart decision because of the common occurrence of natural disasters.
I think >90% of people live in an urban area where that is not the case so I don’t think it would make sense to massively shape policy for those few that live in the country.
Actually (again n=1) the people that I met that lived in the country had vastly better and cheaper access to unprocessed food than those in urban areas.
I reckon it’s more a culture thing than anything based on “cold logic”
The government subsidizes the crops used in processed foods, specifically corn, soybeans, wheat, sugar crops.
But these crops also supply animal feed, fuel, exports, and ordinary foods.
Most people don’t grocery shop for base ingrediants in the US. Produce section and base ingredients are like a small fraction of the grocery store by shelf area. Most people don’t know how to cook for themselves. Price out lean chuck from costco and estimate how many 1/8th lb big mac patties you can make from that.
whole and fresh prepared foods are pricey in the US.
FWIW there are four categories:
1 is whole foods (eg fruits, nuts)
2 is stuff that is processed but still basically an ingredient (eg flour, maple syrup)
3 is combinations of 1 and 2 (most restaurants are here)
4 is ultraprocessed food (UPF): things that were not food that have been turned into food (e.g. modified starches, artificial flavors). Also, anything containing UPFs is a UPF, so e.g. most breakfast cereal (food coloring, flavors)
The basic thesis (which this research challenges, interestingly) is that UPFs aren’t inherently bad, but food scientists are shockingly good at creating highly specific and desirable flavors and textures (the book gives the example of a food company creating "ice cream" out of various modified starches and flavors so that it doesn't melt during shipping), and foods that come out of this process have generally been engineered to overwhelm our natural feedback mechanisms against overeating in order to sell more product.
My reading of Ultraprocessed People was more that the author was very careful to only pin on UPF's what could be proved to be true. The between the lines read certainly felt like "you should probably not eat UPFs".
I would humbly add that any of Michael Pollan's books, especially "In Defense of Food" are a good answer to how we should eat if we can't eat McDonald's. I have certainly found restarting the dining table tradition to have incalculable benefits for my family.
I would love to hear more of your experiences here if you would care to share? It is something I have been thinking about a lot recently (the slow erosion of this practice and its benefits that we're giving up)
For one, for achieving fat loss, it's surely simpler to focus on factors like calories & how full the food makes you. -- With that perspective, yeah it's obvious that fried chicken and sugary chocolate aren't great for your health when eaten frequently.
For another, e.g. it seems that nutritionally, something like "diet coke" is strictly better than the sugar drinks it replaces: you get the same taste, but zero calories. -- I mean, zero-calorie drink is clearly UPF but also nutritionally beneficial. I don't see "UPF" as a practical way to look at it.
My understanding is that he would probably make similar predictions about your examples: people who eat fried chicken and chocolate as part of a mostly home-cooked diet are less likely to be obese than people who drink diet coke as part of a diet that mostly comes out of wrappers. He would probably also say that there's nothing inherently bad about diet coke, but there is something bad about getting all your food from people trying to make money instead of from people who love you.
e.g. obviously not practical for everyone but Taub's "Twinkie Study" showed fat 27 lbs of fat loss even from a diet of decidedly calorie-dense food like twinkies and doritos. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/comfort-cravings/201...
I think that UPF mostly aligns with that in that the food that's "UPF" is generally calorie dense, highly palatable, low satiation.
But...
> He would probably also say that there's nothing inherently bad about diet coke, but there is something bad about getting all your food from people trying to make money instead of from people who love you.
At this point, it seems more a discussion of morals and social values rather than a scientific "how to lose fat".
He uses language like that in the book (and I was speculating about “what he would say”).
I think the reason is that when people hear the theory “UPFs caused the obesity epidemic,” their brain sometimes goes to “well what is in UPFs that causes obesity?” His answer is “nothing.” He’s trying to emphasize that the issue isn’t some toxic ingredient, but that UPFs are a technology that are being used in a way that leads to this outcome.
(though the research in TFA might actually challenge the “nothing,” by showing that there is some kind of toxicity)
https://www.jofem.org/index.php/jofem/article/viewFile/547/2...
> I mean, zero-calorie drink is clearly UPF but also nutritionally beneficial.
What nutrition do zero-calorie manufactured drinks like Coke Zero provide?
Last time I looked into this, the strongest research showed "we looked and couldn't find any evidence it's not associated with cancer".
That is, to hear "artificial sweeteners = cancer, I'm better off with the sugary drinks" was the wrong conclusion to take.
1. Sucralose increases peak insulin response when co-ingested with carbs: "Sucralose Affects Glycemic and Hormonal Responses to an Oral Glucose Load" (Pepino et al., 2013, Diabetes Care) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23633524/ Finding: Consuming sucralose 10 minutes prior to an oral glucose tolerance test increased peak plasma insulin levels by ~20% and decreased insulin clearance compared to water.
2. Microbiome-driven glycemic & insulin dysregulation: "Personalized microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance" (Suez et al., 2022, Cell) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35987213/ Finding: A randomized trial showing saccharin and sucralose alter gut microbiota composition, leading to personalized impairments in glucose tolerance and postprandial insulin responses.
3. Reduced insulin sensitivity from daily intake: "Sucralose decreases insulin sensitivity in healthy subjects: a randomized controlled trial" (Romo-Romo et al., 2018, AJCN) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30535090/ Finding: 14 days of daily sucralose intake significantly decreased insulin sensitivity in healthy young adults compared to placebo.
4. Direct pancreatic beta-cell mechanism: "Sweet Taste Receptor Expressed in Pancreatic β-Cells Activates the Calcium and Cyclic AMP Signaling Systems and Stimulates Insulin Secretion" (Nakagawa et al., 2009, PLoS ONE) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19352508/ Finding: Sweet-taste receptors (T1R2/T1R3) expressed on pancreatic beta-cells bind sweeteners (sucralose, Ace-K, saccharin), mobilizing intracellular cAMP and Ca2+ to stimulate insulin secretion.
I’d find it hard to believe there are evil food scientists in big food companies who are nefariously designing food for overeating.
What is more likely is they are creating food that taste good, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Now if the claim is they work towards this goal without much concern about things like sugar content or glycemic index, I could believe that.
But at the same time nobody thinks eating a whole bag of five servings of Doritos is a healthy food choice. If you’re designing good tasting food and assuming people will eat one serving as a part of a healthy diet, then no nefarious goals are required.
You really find it hard to believe that profit making companies that engineer food would engineer food for profit?
What about if they advertised it with a catchy phrase like "once you pop you can't stop"? Would you still shake your head and say "not credible"?
GP missed the major point. Its not even about engineering tastier food. Its about shelf stable food that isn’t going to give you botulism in 3 weeks.
That's not what I said is it?
I said "I said I find it hard to believe food scientists are devising addictive food".
Clearly they are trying to make their food taste food (LOL, do you want them to make it taste bad?).
There doesn't have to be any conspiratorial evil food scientists to get where we are.
I agree that no conspiracy is necessary, basic market incentives dictate that addictive "once you pop you can't stop" food is just good business.
You know cigarette companies have existed for 100 years and bought food companies right? You know their stuff is blatantly toxic and kills millions of people a year and they advocated ads and stuff and paid doctors to say it's not harmful right?
Like what world do you live in?
You really think hanlon's razor or any other thing like that remotely applies here?
"I’d find it hard to believe there are evil food scientists in big food companies who are nefariously designing food for overeating."
That's the point at which it becomes highly speculative.
It seems to invoke an assumed knowledge of human biology that either does not exist or is known by some select few in some form of conspiracy (somewhat unlikely)
It reminds me of raw foodists that argue that cooking is bad because humans harnessed fire only after we'd mostly evolved. Or a magnet bracelet peddler claiming that since we started wearing shoes, that separation from the earth's magnetic field means we need the bracelets now.
The “…in order to sell more product” part is scientifically speculative, I agree—the book makes the claim, but the scientific research it references does not, IIRC. The book’s author imputes it from interviews and the like.
The “overwhelm…feedback mechanisms” part is mainly substantiated by a 2019 study by Kevin Hall where, similar to TFA, they had people essentially live inside a calorimeter and eat calorie- and nutrient-matched meals that were UPF or not. They found that when given UPF, the same people ate more and faster, and gained weight at a pace that surprised the study authors (who were initially skeptical of the theory and had constructed the study to try and disprove it. The study author is interviewed and explains why he found it compelling).
Whether you find the evidence compelling is, of course, up to you :-), but I felt the book did a good job interviewing members of the obesity research community and tracing the history of the theory.
> The non-UPF and UPF test meals were closely matched on meal weight, energy, energy density, macronutrients, available carbohydrate, glycaemic index and load, total dietary fibre, sodium and water (all ≤1.6% deviation between meals; Fig. 1b).
So they did match glycemic index, which the article omits.
I bet a lot of this is psychosomatic, you expect some food will give you fast energy so your body thinks that means you need it and releases insulin.
But these examples have different glycemic indexes, which the study matched for.
plus all of the options that are complete unknowns which, in biology, is probably close to 99.999%
I know somebody who got really into blood glucose monitoring, and she tells me that the order in which she eats a meal affects how much it spikes her glucose. So if she eats a piece of toast followed by a piece of cheese, it causes her a bigger glucose spike than she'd get if she eats the cheese first and then the toast.
Looking at the two meals in the study: if I sat down to eat the processed one, I'd probably start with the veggie straws. If I saw down to eat the unprocessed one, I'd almost certainly start with the egg or the cheese.
edit: and here are some other options: I notice that the unprocessed one is grain-free, vegetarian and has significantly less sucrose. I don't know if any of that makes it more or less healthy, but they're significant differences nutritionally.
But the above example shows that the body doesn't treat food in that manner - the relatively low carb, higher fat cheese didn't smooth out the higher proportion carb count of the toast.
In the paper, the largest carbs for the ultraprocessed meal was instant mashed potatoes, while the non-processed meal had bananas as the largest carb source followed by craisins/cranberries.
The high carb foods in the unprocessed meal are paired with fiber.
The high carb foods in the ultraprocessed meal are NOT paired with fiber.
The fiber slows the rate of carb intake.
Same thing occurs with protein - same amount of ground beef and steak, ground beef meal will result in faster amino acid ingestion than the steak meal. No idea if there are any pros/cons of the faster ground beef ingestion, but there is a difference in how the digestive system processes the two meals.
This is what I read in a book about glucose. So I went ahead and measured. I found it not true, at least in my case. The recommendations of eating salad before your meal do nothing measureable for my glucose spikes.
On the flip side I seem to gain the same amount of weight regardless of what my blood sugar does.
The minimally processed food consisted mainly of cheese, egg, and pieces of whole fruit: No unbound simple carbohydrates.
The ultra processed food included jelly, turkey, chips, a cookie, cereal, instant mashed potatoes: Lots of unbound simple carbohydrates and much less fiber.
Of course insulin would spike higher with such a meal. There’s nothing at all non-obvious about that.
Also, the protein wasn’t equivalent. The turkey roll is meat protein and cheese is dairy protein. Also, the salt content was probably higher in the ultra processed foods, and that was not controlled for.
If this could be replicated using exact equivalents that are either processed or not processed, I would be more convinced. But I really doubt that it would replicate.
You cant have a non mediated cause according to our current model of physics.
Salt is listed as among the things that was matched between the two meals.
I'd guess they wanted to include store purchased bread, hence the pb&j.
The other thought i had was that most peanut butter includes (at least) palm oil (ultra processed) and sometimes other emulsifiers to prevent separation. Though you can buy pb that is just peanut and salt.
The jelly would contain quite a bit more in the way of preservatives, regulators and flavour enhancers etc than the jelly i'd make at home (if i did such a thing)
I'd guess it's just regular cheese which does require quite some processing to make but unless it's got extra additives to extend shelf life, change texture or taste it's just processed.
And at least in America, most commonly-bought peanut butter has additives, and most store-bought bread has 40 different UPF ingredients. Even the jelly will often have “natural flavors” (intentional scare quotes) and pectin.
It’s possible to have a non-UPF peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I might have one today! It’s just that the default options for most Americans contain a ton of crazy ingredients.
Depending on the cheese you buy, many are very simple, and rarely have weird additives. But if you buy a block of cheese or even usually the sandwich-sized slices, it’s not ultra-processed.
So if you add enzymes that completely change the characteristics of the food (aka "industrial reformulation") that's perfectly fine but you add an emulsifier to improve the mouthfeel and texture now it's suddenly a "ultra processed" food and is pure evil and should be regulated like cigarettes? Now it has "crazy ingredients" and "weird additives"? I'm sorry but this stance is totally and completely illogical. You aren't going to convince me that this makes any sense.
>Even the jelly will often have “natural flavors” (intentional scare quotes) and pectin.
For fucks sake, jelly requires pectin to be jelly. Sure, you can rely on the naturally occuring pectin in fruit, but adding additional pectin makes it so you have a consistent product and can add less sugar and don't have to cook it as long - aka healthier and less processed.
I don't really have a horse in this race, I found the picture of the "highly processed meal" gross on a visceral level, I just hate the illogically of it all. This is a religious belief.
Why are they bad? What do emulsifiers do? They combine substances that don't want to be combined. What in your body might this affect? Your mucosal lining. Emulsifiers don't break down in your gut as they pass through. They just emulsify everything as they move through. Including your mucus. That layer is extremely important for a normally functioning gut. Lose it and then chime will contact the gut lining. This disrupts the microbiota and allows things to get through your gut that are not supposed to. It causes inflammation.
UPFs contain many bad things, but they HAVE to be categorized to fully appreciate the levels of badness. Some things are just not that big of deal, and the "health industry" does everyone a disservice by not clarifying it.
from bad to not as bad:
- Emulsifiers (e.g., Polysorbate 80/60/40, carboxymethylcellulose)
- some stabilizers/thickeners (e.g., carrageenan)
- artificial sweeteners
- refined sugars
- artificial colors/cosmetics
- other stabilizers/thickeners/emulsifiers (e.g., xanthan gum, guar gum, pectin, cellulose, lecithin)
Type any enzyme or emulsifier off an ingredient list into Google and you can easily find a study about its health impact.
>including the study linked in this HN submission
This study proves absolutely nothing - the participants were not blinded to what they were consuming (and presumably could consume it at any speed/order). We already know how you perceive a food will effect hormones/biological response [1].
Avoid any food additives that you want; you just won't convince me 1) this framework is something logical or 2) cheese is a minimally processed food.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21574706/
There is research for a lot of additives, but many have limited evidence or small studies that aren’t replicated. Usually the result is either “it doesn’t affect health either way” or “it is negative to health”. Very rarely is there an ultra processed ingredient with a large body of science that says “we should eat more of this specific thing, it has a positive effect on longevity!”. And if we do, it’s usually medicine rather than a food additive, which due to being heavily researched and tailored to individuals, prescription medications are healthy (obviously). But these aren’t that…
So I think you have to stretch your reasoning that the practice as a whole is probably negative, but I feel like I’ve personally seen enough negatives of certain UPF that I limit my intake whenever reasonably possible.
Obviously having small amounts isn’t going to be horrible but they’re in everything now
By contrast cheese is completely natural outside of a few exceptions like American cheese. You take milk, add something to curdle it like an acid (e.g. vinegar) or rennet - an enzyme obtained from the stomach of young calves, separate the coagulated stuff, salt it, dry it, age it - you now have cheese. Ricotta can even be made straight from raw milk with no additives. Cheese's long shelf life is natural.
Peanut oil is commonly used for all kinds of frying. It's hilarious that you're trying to lecture people without knowing this basic fact.
False, peanuts contain their own oil. Nothing needs to be added, not even salt.
Anything containing more than peanuts and salt should be referred to as something else, like peanut spread.
Depends on how you make it - it's definitely trickier at home to get a creamy texture without extra oil, but with the right machine (i.e. peanut butter maker) it comes out smooth with just peanuts (and salt if you like); some wholefoods shops have the machine where you can make it yourself.
Many store-bought peanut butters use oil as an additive as the peanut oil is more expensive, so they remove that to sell as peanut oil, and replace it with cheaper oils
Science can be patient but those of us who eat should act now. Something is making us fat, and it sure looks like its the UPFs.
A couple of years ago I lost 20kg (~40lb) of body weight.
I find this phrasing odd. -- Should I say "something made me lose 20kg of body weight", or should I say "I was able to improve the food I ate, and I lost 20kg of weight".
I tend to think that even without scientific literature, people know that e.g. lettuce is "healthier" than chocolate cake and fried chicken.
The term "UPF" seems like a weird term that puts the moral responsibility on the food manufacturers, rather than on "us" who are fat and want to lose weight.
From an epidemiological standpoint, something changed in the environment that caused obesity rates to start rising in the 70s and 80s. There are many theories as to exactly which environmental change is the cause. Figuring out what that change was would be a good thing.
If your concern is about your own health as an individual? I want to lose weight now? I think it's useful to say "I have agency, I can lose weight". If you have the agency to lose weight, it makes sense you can take on the responsibility for having gained weight.
"Why did society in general get fatter?" is a different question. And if your main concern is "how can I lose fat?" it's not directly interesting.
*assuming the same ingredients as your home cooked example, which i think is your point, right?
I guess i can see how packaging makes a difference to the desirability / convenience of the food.
I guess i'm less likely to eat chips if i have to make them myself compared to grabbing a bag and more likely to over eat them if it's super convenient.
Though I admit to being a bit lazy like that.
Note that fiber is not part of that list. Stripping out fiber essentially means that our gut microbiome is starved. Not coincidentally, it also means that these foods are much less prone to spoilage.
Also, from the study:
> The non-UPF and UPF test meals were closely matched on meal weight, energy, energy density, macronutrients, available carbohydrate, glycaemic index and load, total dietary fibre, sodium and water (all ≤1.6% deviation between meals; Fig. 1b).
The human body is evidently not able to safely consume these products over the course of a lifetime and the ultimate toll on society and healthcare is already evident.
They are addictive and harmful to the body’s mechanisms.
It’s time to control the promotion, labelling and taxation of these products the same way we do cigarettes.
edit: see: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.16332 "US tobacco companies selectively disseminated hyper-palatable foods into the US food system: Empirical evidence and current implications"
The body evolved to eat foods that take a lot of chewing and digesting. As far as I can tell, one of the biggest problems with food that is “too” processed is that it’s absorbed far too quickly and early in the tract.
Food that makes it all the way through has a slower and more even absorption rate so we don’t get hungry again as fast.
There will likely never be a satisfactory definition, and doesn't need to be. Instead we define what foods are causing health problems and which aren't.
Look in this study, cheese is on the unprocessed side. That is an absurdity of language.
In the end they may figure out that the key difference here isn't processing at all, but fiber, or some particular ingredient added to floud based products on the processing side.
Many ultra processed ingredients have been so pulverised that there’s no structure left to help regulate the speed at which your body can break it down and absorb it.
So it absorbs nutrients too quickly, blood sugar spike, blood sugar crash, hunger pang, and you end up eating more than you would have otherwise during your waking hours.
Multiply that by years and you get metabolic issues.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3...
They should have compared natural and ultra processed food matching the same glycemic indexes to understand if there is some kind of procedure in manufacturing that changes it significantly even the same amount of sugar and fiber
Does a cooked steak and a raw steak actually show different values when measured with a calorimeter?
their chosen dishes also seem to conflate a lot of factors, like processing, vs flavor. it's known that artificial sweeteners can elicit insulin responses despite not being a digestible sugar, I've heard studies showing that "Tasting" in the gut can perceive the sweetness.
Also, refer to the post on HN: Scandinavia's first farmers slaughtered hunter-gatherer population, DNA suggests. … "This transition has previously been presented as peaceful. However, our study indicates the opposite. In addition to violent death, it is likely that new pathogens from livestock finished off many gatherers".
I noticed it keeps me less full than if I had the ingredients as a whole.
It's on par with "nutrition science" stating that potatos should be left out of meals, all the while you could _provable_ live the longest with just potatos (don't try it, just means the least deadly deficits).
Close to worthless.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42255-026-01619-4
It's very likely you're not going to finish your plate.
You say "lines between get blurry" but I'm going to call it straight up meaningless bullshit since nobody agrees on anything or is talking about the same thing even when using the same framework. Once I read from an authoritative source that quesadillas are always ultra processed, like, by definition I realized that this whole concept is stupid.
Then you have weirdos coming in here talking about how "ultra processed food" is like tobacco and fraud, fucking hell, we've lost the plot.
It sounds like there are things left out of the article, probably click through and read the study itself to get the real definitions.
I'd also wonder what would happen if they didint use heat treated carbs in the ultraptocessed one. If I were to guess I think they might be main offenders.
Example: five years, 10000 participants, $170 million https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-awards-170...
(Assuming a mechanical clock with a 12-h dial or flip display.)