In other news, the definition of ultraprocessed remains all over the fucking place with little consistency and rooting in logic. It’s a term that grew out of marketing and ended up being defined by non-scientists/non-doctors.
raw oats in a bag: unprocessed
rolled oats: processed
rolled oats spun in a blender, instant oatmeal: ultra processedCookies made from unprocessed ingredients: minimally processed put them in a bag and sell them on a shelf: ultra-processed
Same nutritional value. Doesn’t require additives.
Raw Milk: unprocessed Fresh, pasteurized milk : “minimally processed”
Brown Sugar: unprocessed white sugar: processed
white sugar and pasteurized milk mixed together: processed
Freeze that mixture? Ultra processed.
Again, same nutritional value.
Going from raw to pasteurized, has a substantial change in nutrition, yet, it’s minimally processed.
We need, as a society, for scientists and doctors to agree on processing and food values, not on the general public’s consensus. Certainly, some foods lose their value or are handled differently by the body. Some things, like nitrates, earn an easy bad-for-you label.
As is stands now, home made cookies are seen as more healthy, than if put them in a bag and sell them. We need to trigger on nutrition loss, and added ingredients, not if wheat was put through a blender or berries were frozen unless it has a meaningful loss on actual health.
Really interesting. I often thought “what is actually so bad about processed food?” because in the end everything we eat is just chemicals in different mixtures, so as a nerd it makes me skeptical of most food health advice. There doesn’t seem to be an easily explainable understandable theory or scientific model model behind this.
I could have sworn I read “hyperpalatable food” in the blurb but I can’t find it now. Maybe I dreamed it lol. But that would be a good objective issue with ultraprocessed food, triggering the brain’s reward system and encouraging excessive eating. The ability to split ingredients into separate parts and then recombine them to be too palatable, and/or not balanced enough in the sense that e.g. fibers or proteins or vitamins that would naturally occur in raw food.
I read the hyper-palatable thing when it came out. We can actually jam on it. To my memory, there are a couple of foods that really trigger that concept, one of them being Doritos. The other being Diet Coke.
The regular red bag of Doritos, it’s not hard to sit down and eat an entire bag.
Getting used to Diet Coke even if you exclude the caffeine by getting it from other sources, still drinking a Diet Coke or two will trigger you to drink a lot more Diet Coke.
But I’d say the absolute vast majority of UPF is less palatable than other food. That pack of donuts with the waxy chocolate and they’ve done everything possible to extend shelf life on it. Doesn’t taste as good as fresh donuts. (assuming you can even find fresh donuts anymore.)
All those snack cakes and shelf stable lunch items are unpleasant when compared with anything made fresh.
And the stuff they put on the Doritos, it’s not the add-ons that make it good. I took a shot at making Dorito cheese once and was wildly successful. Try out some yellow cheddar and turn it into powder. Add garlic powder, onion powder, Salt, yeast flakes, except for the coloring being a little blonder than it should be. It’s a dead ringer for Doritos.
I don’t think that UPF foods that are borderline addictive are addictive because of the UPF. I think they’re addictive in spite of it.
As of 2024, research into the effects of UPFs is rapidly evolving… The specific mechanism of the effects was not clear.
This processed / nova label basically seems to be a crude scientific cudgel because we just know too little about the health effects of nutrition.
It basically bundles the influence of the food industry on food. Taken by the dark powers, tortured and mutilated. A ruined and terrible form of food lol.
All those snack cakes and shelf stable lunch items are unpleasant when compared with anything made fresh.
I don’t think that UPF foods that are borderline addictive are addictive because of the UPF. I think they’re addictive in spite of it.
I suspect the addictiveness is mostly about the hyperpalatable food. Maybe both a biochemical thing and a intensity thing.
“Hyperpalatable foods can stimulate the release of metabolic, stress, and appetite hormones that play a role in cravings and may interfere with the body’s ability to regulate appetite and satiety.”
For cigarettes vs vaping for example, nicotine vaporized by cigarettes immediately breaches the blood brain barrier and has an immediate effect. While vaping (non-nicotine salts) has a much slower and smoother and delayed absorption curve, similar to nicotine patches. And what makes cigarettes much more addictive is the intermediateness of the reward.
So just the optimization process to make some “donuts with the <censored>” palatable at all while minimizing cost involves so much tweaking that it sort of ends up optimized to fuel the biochemical and intensity addictiveness response. Basically the expected or predictable outcome of capitalism is cheap food sold at premium with addictive properties.
So while fresh made quality food is more tasty, this doesn’t matter for the addictiveness. Of course I’m just speculating here.
I’d love to know if replacing sugars and salt partially artificial sweeteners or salt replacements has any real health benefits in this context. And I definitely want to make some Doritos air-fried soybeans lol
I think is true that the idea of ultraprocessed food is not totally well defined, but I think there are some clues that help to at least identify the most important or more ultraprocessed ones. I think one tip is: industrial manufactured ingredients that can’t be find in a regular home would potentially fall in the ultraprocessed category, so from your list:
rolled oats spun in a blender, instant oatmeal: is processed not ultraprocessed, unless the instant oatmeal it comes with ultraprocessed ingredients.
Cookies made from unprocessed ingredients, put them in a bag and sell them on a shelf: processed. The problem here is a lot of cookies that say that they use unprocessed ingredients is just not true, but if we are talking about home made cookies with basic unprocessed ingredients they would fall as just processed.
*Raw Milk: unprocessed Fresh, pasteurized milk : “minimally processed”
Brown Sugar: unprocessed white sugar: processed
white sugar and pasteurized milk mixed together: processed
Freeze that mixture? Ultra processed.* Not true, the fact of freezing doesn’t make it ultraprocessed.
I think the corporations are also trying to make this distinction more confusing to make the idea of ultraprocessed food les guilty, because if everything it may be ultraprocessed then none it is.
Not true, the fact of freezing doesn’t make it ultraprocessed.
Therein lies the rub; in some lists, it doesn’t, in other lists, it does. Your list is handled in what you wrote here, it’s not the same as everyone’s list.
The concept that it’s hyper bad for them to throw cellulose in with grated parm is insane. It’s just some fiber to keep it from turning into brick. Or that any food preservative is detrimental, we’re already wasting 40% of our food.
The entire processed fad has gone so far from reality that it holds no concrete meaning to actual health
That dough stabilizer in that bread that makes it stay soft instead of the starch crystallizing and turning it to trash in 3 days, can you point to an actual fact of how it hurts you?
There are plenty of things on the UP list that are allowed the world over. The whole thing is performance art at this point.
I used to really piss hippies by telling them that anything food put in a food processor is processed food. This includes your homemade hummus & raw smoothies.
And now the whole crunchy revolution is running with that, and a few dieticians in prestigious places, looking for views, are trying to build studies on it.
Why feed your children that shit.
I prefer to buy Gerber canned banana instead of simply banana. It’s the American way.
It’s a brave new world. Reminds me of this
The western world needs to reintroduce “home economics” back into the curriculum, nobody knows how to cook their own food anymore, managing a kitchen is half of it not just putting stuff onto a stove.
My Boomer mom microwaves water to make tea… with the teabag in it.
It’s a wonder I survived to become the handsome and successful person I am.
Americentrism at it again.
4/5, in the USA, the rest of the world have such a thing as Government Mandated Food Standards that ban or discourage this shite.
Ultra processed food isn’t just an american thimg. It’s normalised to take cgildren to a McDonalds and feed them garbage has also become normalized all over the place. Ever seen a menue in a average restaurant? The kids menu isn’t just a smaller version of a normal menu, it’s chicken nuggets and fries, hamburger and fries and something else that has been tortured and processed
It’s normalised to take cgildren to a McDonalds and feed them garbage has also become normalized all over the place.
I didn’t know going to McDonald’s once in a blue moon was killing children.
In. The. States.
The problem is not new. Just that the stuff is more expensive than just steaming vegetables and meats then put them through the blender, and in some developing countries, for poor families it’s rice or wheat gruel.
Let me see if I can translate this article to a less trendy version:
.About 80% of the packaged foods marketed for children between 6 and 30 months include ingredients only used when creating packaged food at scale. Half of these either contained more fat, sugar, and salt than the WHO recommends or did not abide by the WHO’s advice to eliminate food coloring.
Those packaged toddler foods are expensive as well. I’d wager most parents are simply giving their toddlers portions of foods they eat themselves over buying this crap.
That’s how we fed kids before corporations convinced us that kids need packets of pureed veggies in a single use plastics
Baby food jars are typically glass
Most of the baby food in my area is plastic pouches
They certainly used to be. And probably fancier brands may still use glass.
When they’re that age, you don’t have time to make good financial decisions unless you’re killing it or one of you gets to be stay at home. Even then it’s rough.
I disagree. I went back to work when my baby was 5 months old.
I have always, always been poor. However, my sister had gotten me a blender for christmas the year prior. I made, all my sons food. His diet was maybe 15% baby food pouches, over estimating this I think.
An example is, a sweet potato, a carrot and an apple, peeled, cooked and blended. There it is. I would see the pouches and what blends they were labled as, and just buy the whole produce and make my own. I was a single mom, worked 40, nursing on top of this, and I dont remember this being difficult, even poor and working full time. Its all about the parents’ priorities.
To be more modern, those little mesh sucker things were great. I would freeze grapes or other fruit, and stick them in that mesh contraption for my baby. frozen fruit makes teething lil ones happy, the mesh part kept the choking hazards at bay, he could hold it himself and chew on frozen fruit. bloody magical tool.
I understand, my kid isn’t that many years from when he was a toddler. These particular processed meals aren’t any easier to prep than some cheese and crackers or portioning some from the parent’s plate of food.
I just read the exact same headline about prison food. Assuming that’s because 80% of food in Magastan is ultra-processed, I guess we’re gonna get the same headline for every possible institution now over the coming days.
For prisons, my fellow Americans immorally view prisoners as less than human and not deserving of the basic elements of life – poll a large swath of everyday Americans and I’m convinced 6+/10 will agree that prisons should serve intentionally unpleasant and non nutritious food as part of the punishment process. It’s sad.
I think that’s a global trend of humanity falling for populists, and morally back into the stone age (although I might be doing prehistoric humans injustice here). I really believe in the saying (paraphrasing because I don’t recall the exact wording) that if you want to assess the degree of civilization in a society, you should look how it treats its prison inmates.
Someone tell RFK. It might be this instead of tylenol or circumcision that causes autism. /s
Yes, as we all know, infants should be fed a steady diet of raw milk and steak. All the better if the steak is from road kill. And eat it directly from a toilet seat. Germs can only hurt you if you’re afraid of them!
… in the United States
This is the internet. Please consider the audience to be worldwide.
Unless your country has specific laws to the contrary or is too poor/civilized to have this sort of “lazy parent” food, presume that any of the factory-made shelf-stable food in your grocery aisle is as bad as the equivalent sold in the USA.
(And find out of your country’s food laws are actually better than the USA, or just “feel” better because the same exact product can just list fewer ingredients )
The former. In about 75% of the world.
American unable to imagine a part of the world where things are better, typical
They’re legally mandated to have a table for every type of nutrient ( fats, trans fats, carbohydrates - split into subcategories of carbohydrate and carbohydrate sugars, salts, etc) in every packet of things sold as a Edible Product in which it has 2 rows - in a serving, v daily recommendation. In all of EU, and also in the UK. Asia is if anything even more stringent about it then we are and culturally prefer things as unprocessed as possible.
We don’t ban unhealthy foods as long as they’re not literally toxic, but this makes it so everyone makes informed decisions, and over time it has effected sales for unhealthy food, they have worse sales than healthier options
Consumer protection laws are really alien to folks from the states it seems.
You really don’t know what you’re talking about.
I bet you’d also argue that there is “free speech” in the UK, where a billionaire can still literally sue someone into poverty for accurately describing them. Or the same in Germany, where an advocate against the Palestinian genocide was arrested for “denying Israel”
I’m not from either of those countries, are you a person that likes to put words in other people’s mouths? 'Cause it sure as fuck sounds like you do.
I tend to speculate negatively when people hurl unfounded insults without disclosing the reason for their perspective.
I encouraged people to not assume that their local regulation’s are “better than the USA” because the same greed that causes so much waste in the USA is also present in literally every human country. And you decided that this meant my country doesn’t have consumer protection of any kind.
If it makes you feel better, tell me what country you are from and I’ll take the time to look for an appropriate example of your country fucking up in a way that wouldn’t happen in the USA.
Belgium, good luck. I don’t need to know what country you’re from. Your ignorance is telling (but it’s also bliss, so lucky you).
You’re right, it’s hard to find distinct history for a middle European country that was a footnote for most of your small and young country’s history.
But the internet provides.
Even if we exclude both your country’s precursor states and the various wrongs attributsble to the European Union you were substantially responsible for, Belgium:
- has a literal king
- didnt ban slavery until decades after the USA
- lagged similarly in gay rights (albeit you’re easily on par with the bluest stars in the USA)
- let your king annex part of a foreign continent as a subservient colony (and kept that colony until the 1960s!)
And, while I’m neither a lawyer nor sufficiently fluent in French or German to read your laws directly, it sure as fuck looks like you’ve got the same sort of repressive defamation laws that let JK Rowling bully Amnesry UK into apolgizjng for accuratky describing her.
http://legaldb.freemedia.at/legal-database/belgium/
Based on your country’s recent “hard-right” swing, you might acthally see your own neo-autocrat soon, who would absolutely weaponize those laws if they haven’t already started.
If truth and honesty are not both separately prefect defenses to accusations of defamation, you don’t have free speech in the ways that actually matter.
Holy shit, the propaganda has really done a number on your perspective and I’m tired to pretend it didnt.
It’s you, not the rest of the world, that is different.
It isn’t.
That is not to say that the shelf stable food here in Europe is as good for you as a home cooked meal, but America allows ingredients which are literally illegal over here because they’re known to cause cancer or other health related issues.
It took the US until two years ago to finally ban titanium oxide as a food additive. You still use horrible foaming agents in your bread, and ingredients derived from processed petroleum byproducts are allowed in your food.
Same here in New Zealand. We have very tight restrictions on food additives, particularly with baby food.
Your junk and nutritionally empty food is not a better option to feed to children just because it doesn’t have a certain yellow die.
If that certain yellow die is linked to health issues in children, yes I’d rather not have that in food.
You can keep that in America.
way to miss the point
It objectively is, as the former has no nutritional value, and the latter is actively trying to kill you.
Lmao. Ameribrain at work.
Four out of five foods sold for toddlers in the United States
MATKETED to toddlers. Nobody is advertising apples and whole wheat.
Again, I am glad I never procreated.
I’m glad I wasn’t born in burgerland.
Same. In hindsight, my parents raising me on McDonald’s was a terrible parenting choice.
Yes it was.
I’m sure they thought it wasn’t a big deal because I’ve been athletic my whole life, but I had a serious weight problem as an adult and lost 150 pounds. Probably wouldn’t have ended up that way if I didn’t have a taste for fast food.
Stay strong, man.
YSK: ultra-processed is not inherently bad. Bad food, though, is always bad.
Most people have time to make at least their evening meal at home from fresh food. They just don’t make that a priority. They’re holding the instructions in their hands, but instead of learning basic cooking skills, they’re ordering delivery and watching TikTok.
Yes, I’m blaming the parents for what they feed their kids. Big shock, I suppose.
What’s it feel like to be this out of touch?