Study Finds Ultra-Processed Foods Drive Weight Gain | Hacker News Reader

Study Finds Ultra-Processed Foods Drive Weight Gain

npr.org

181 pointstshannon208 comments

This is pretty interesting, the paper is here: https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(19)...

I liked the experimental method, two weeks on one diet the two weeks on the other without restricting food intake.

I've been doing some dieting of late and made the facetious conclusion that if you limit your diet choices to only foods you don't particularly like to eat, you lose weight :-). But the converse of people working very hard to make their food really tasty (generally by adding sugar and salt according to the paper) people consume more than they need.

I'm not sure what we could do about it though, we can encourage better eating choices but there is a limit on how much that works.

Well yes, that's kind of the problem.

Our monkey brains go mad for energy dense food ie sugar and fat. That's a good motivator to stick your bare hand in a bee hive, or hunt down a Mammoth with a pointy stick. Doesn't work so well in the modern day, when a salad is what we should really be eating.

Not just sugar and fat though; eat plain bread made without any salt or seasoning; you will eat less than bread made other ways. Same for unseasoned potatoes.

And there is a really interesting effect I've noticed which I think of 'sugar blindness' which is that when I stopped eating a lot of sweet things my taste buds became more attuned to the taste of sweet. So things that weren't sweet before, are now. Its really an odd thing to experience.

Anedoctically, it's a thing the other way around too. When I moved to the UK from Italy, lots of foods tasted too sweet to me. After a year here, I don't feel that any more.

Uhh, there was a story on HN stating exactly that a few days ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19858762

There was that russian cosmonaut study that consuming salt got you to consume more calories:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/health/salt-health-effect...

I mostly agree, but I've never spared the fat when dieting, just the carbs. You can make a highly varied diet of delicious food if you're cool with fat (you have to be very conscious of how many calories you're consuming, though, because it's very easy to go overboard). A Kale salad with an oil-based dressing and absolutely loaded with nuts and cheese is not something I would consider a chore to eat.

A Kale salad with an oil-based dressing and absolutely loaded with nuts and cheese is not something I would consider a chore to eat.

That depends. Eat anything a bit too often, and it becomes a chore. As you note above, the diet being "highly varied" is very important.

Hence the trendy term, intuitive eating.

There are people who eat literally the same meals every day, for years, and the opposite would stress them for a number of reasons. There was a recent article about it linked in HN too, I think ?

there is some anec-data that very repetitive diet, as long as it actually covers all your nutritional needs, is actually better for you, health-wise.

Some guess it has to do with immune system activation, GI biome optimized for digestion of these repetitive specific foods you eat, etc.

I often wonder if benefits of keto actually come not only from ketones themselves, but also from the fact that keto diets are often very limited, and often to often (relatively) hypoallergenic foods.

i am surprised that the physical aspect of digesting the processed vs unprocessed food doesn't seem to really matter for that study. i'd have naively thought that chewing and swallowing a chick pea would result in lower nutrient uptake than eating an equal amount of besan. instead it seems a calorie is a calorie and the weight difference is entirely due to less consumption. even if nutrient uptake is the same, i think it's clear the stomach and intestines are designed for dealing with unprocessed foods.

> I'm not sure what we could do about it though, we can encourage better eating choices but there is a limit on how much that works.

I think the key is to realize that their is no sort of natural limit anymore and to actually enforce one that is sustainable.

Study participants on the ultra-processed diet ate an average of 508 calories more per day and ended up gaining an average of 2 pounds over a two-week period.

Is this a fair trial? Popular science [0] claims that ~3500 calories equals a pound. Well, 508 extra calories a day for 14 days = 7112 calories, or about 2 pounds worth of calories.

Edit: whoops! I was missing the fact that the people in the trial controlled how much they ate themselves. I incorrectly assumed that they were given the food.

0 - https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/in-...

Isn't that the point? Calories are calories, ultra-processed or not. But people eating processed foods will end up eating more calories over all.

Point of the study was to show that "eating a diet made up of ultra-processed foods actually drives people to overeat and gain weight compared with a diet made up of whole or minimally processed foods".

Eating easy to acquire, tasty food drives weight gain over more difficult to prepare, more expensive, less tasty food.

It is calories in calories out, as always, but the point is that the processed diet drives more calorie consumption. The same people were given both diets and told to eat as much or as little as they wanted. They consumed more calories when given the processed diet, and thus gained weight.

"calories in calories out"

That's too simple. Some foods digest better than others. I can eat the same calories from potato chips or a lentil dish but my digestion and later on weight change will be very different.

I once tried to look up on google scholar what difference different digestibility made, and if I remember correctly with respect to fiber (the main kind of thing that reduces digestibility) you have to eat like twice the recommended amount of fiber just to reduce the total calories by like a 100. It was something like 80g of fiber, which isn't something you can easily eat without restructuring your whole diet. So the effect is there, but the way you explain it neglects to ask how big the effect is.

Food is much more complex than fiber vs. calories. I am not a scientist there but I observe myself and others a lot. When I eat certain foods I can eat a lot without weight gain, my digestions works, my mind works, I go to the bathroom regularly. When I eat junk food, I gain weight, I feel sluggish and I often get constipated. Unless I am very special, which I don't think I am, I assume other people experience the same thing.

>Some foods digest better than others. I can eat the same calories from potato chips a lentil dish but my digestion and laster on weight change will be very different.

The food that exits your body without being digested falls into the "calories out" category. "Calories in calories out" does indeed represent a simple thermodynamic truth, although unfortunately the "calories out" component can be rather difficult to determine in practice.

That way makes sense but I don't think the people who use that phrase mean it that way. Usually they seem to say "a calorie is a calorie no matter where it comes from".

While no individual person may deliberately do this, the gestalt does a motte & bailey with this, where "calories in = calories out" means that people are wrong to think about how different calories affect the body differently and interact with all the feedback loops in the body and dieting is just a matter of applying willpower harder and eating less, until you challenge it, at which point it's suddenly just a tautological thermodynamic truth that apparently is being thrown into the discussion for basically no reason and with no particular purpose in mind.

It really needs to just be retired. At its best its an unhelpful tautological statement, at its worst, inflammatory and thought-terminating. Not much reason to keep dragging it in to every diet discussion.

calories out in a nice consistency and fragrance can make my day

poo's consistency, regularity, and odor, matter

Yep. Very true.

There are additional factors on both the in and out side, but they all work in favor of losing weight. In other words, there is a maximum amount of energy in the food you eat, and a minimum amount of energy required for sustaining your being and physical activity. There simply is is no way around this.

> but the point is that the processed diet drives more calorie consumption

My main gripe with this line of argument is that people rarely take price into account. It's pretty expensive to eat 2,000 calories of fresh food vs. 2,000 calories of junk food. I don't think it's some intrinsic quality of the food that's causing people to gain weight. I think many people who struggle with weight will eat as much as their money can get them, and your dollar goes a lot farther when you're buying junk food.

I also think we have a serious affordability problem when it comes to things like fruits, vegetables, lean meat, etc. People say fruit is cheap and sure, you might be able to get an Apple for $1, but that doesn't get you many calories. You need to fill out your diet with a lot of stuff like rice and beans if you're trying to eat cheap AND healthy. It's even worse if you look at prepared food, e.g. $11 for a 400 calorie salad at Panera. Assuming all your calories come at the same cost, you're spending $1,600 per month on food.

A fresh salad shouldn't be a luxury that only the rich can afford, but that seems to be the current state of affairs.

> I don't think it's some intrinsic quality of the food that's causing people to gain weight.

This study seems to suggest that there is some intrinsic quality that causes them to eat more of it, and thus gain weight.

I'm not saying that money isn't a concern (it is). But the money concern doesn't negate the intrinsic qualities.

I actually used to lose more weight when I was really poor than I am now. I'd buy like a single Totino's pizza at 660 calories for around a $1 and I could make that plus maybe a sandwich or a burrito from Taco Bell or something last me all day. Probably had about 1200-1400 calories a day most days, and spent $3 or less.

Now I'm spending like $10-20 a meal for two meals, and I'm probably consuming well over 2000 calories a day, probably 3000 a lot of days, eating things like Poke and Mediterranean salads and the like (not exclusively, I have unhealthy meals also).

I realize I am just anecdata and not representative of poor eating habits in general. Studies seem to suggest that was an anomaly.

I had Totino's pizza again the other day. Still good, still can get them for $1.50 or less. Just seems like I need to eat a lot healthier as far as food quality now, at least on average.

On the other hand, your body seems to want to eat more junk food.

So your body wants 1492 calories of fresh food, and wants 1492 + 508 = 2000 calories of junk food.

I also think there are obvious optimizations you can do.

compare whole food vs junk calories for say frugal lentils vs expensive chocolate and you might invert your formula.

Reminds me of the time I was eating whole plant vegan food. We went to Nandos Peri Peri, a famous Peruvian chain. I ordered salad for like 8 or 9 bucks, but was extremely hungry when I got back to my desk. So I checked the calories on their menu, and the salad had 40 calories.

Not so much it seems [0]. The actual consumption of calories appears dependent on the source of the calories and what you eat those with.

0: https://www.1843magazine.com/features/death-of-the-calorie

> Popular science [0] claims that ~3500 calories equals a pound.

Kevin Hall, one of the people behind this study, goes to some length explaining why he thinks it's a bad rule. He came up with another that he likes explaining, IIRC it's 10 calories per pound per day. I can't remember where I heard him talk about this, it might have been this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPi1LQHBWBk, he's pretty good at public speaking and explaining.

I don't think your whoops is that much of a whoops.

Many things tend to have natural portion sizes.

People will tend to go for 1 burger, or 1 chicken breast.

I suppose processed food would be more likely to have a natural portion size, could the weight loss then be explained by that portion size being too large, and the natural diet allowed people to better choose their own portion?

I'm not a scientist, and my experience is anecdotal. But there is something very very wrong with most of the food in our grocery stores. I had nearly debilitating GI issues and body composition problems until I completely cut out processed foods and started cooking from scratch. My symptoms cleared up within weeks, I lost 35 lbs almost effortlessly, and I've never felt better.

I think what we're feeding the general public is a health hazard and should be much more strongly regulated.

Similar here. For me I was able to correct most GI issue and lost 16lbs just by cutting out gluten. I don’t have celiac, but the effect was undeniable.

It’s very hard to just cut out gluten since almost no one eats straight gluten as a major part of their diet, unless they really really love tempeh. My personal hypothesis is that most non-celiac people who do this and get a major benefit actually get the benefit from removing wheat from their diet.

This is consistent with people who entirely incorrectly claim that sourdough bread is GF. Traditional sourdoughs give bacteria and yeasts a lot of time to eat various sugars and starches.

Tempeh isn't gluten, you might be thinking of seitan.

Indeed. Whoops!

Tempeh is fermented soybeans; seitan is wheat gluten.

non-celiacs who this inadvertently benefit from cutting down on easy calories. no matter the theory, it's still just about energy in vs energy out

Huh? This discussion is about GI issues, not weight gain/loss. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that GI issues are about energy in vs energy out.

There is a moderately well supported theory that most "gluten intolerance" issues are actually intolerance of FODMAPs: certain fermentable sugars and short-chain starches found in a wide range of foods, most notably wheat. If you remove gluten from diet, you have likely also significantly reduced your FODMAP consumption. But gluten itself isn't a FODMAP, and I once baked an experimantal loaf of low-FODMAP bread using spelt flour and vital wheat gluten. (It wasn't very good.)

Went gluten free at my house for quite a while. Nobody lost weight. Ice-cream, chocolate, potato chips, GF pizza crust, all kind of GF junk food out there if you look for it.

Yes indeed. A lot of commercial GF food is, if anything, higher in fat and sugar than the "regular" gluten-containing equivalent. Just because a product is "free from" something-or-other (whether gluten, lactose, nuts, whatever) doesn't mean it's healthy.

We've gone GF at our house because my wife has coeliac disease. But we use very few commercially-prepared GF products; we cook at home from basic ingredients, and simply avoid the gluten-containing grains.

If you basically went gluten free by relying on products from the supermarket "free from" section, I can imagine it's easy to gain rather than lose weight.

Not going to say it works for everybody. I was having a lot of GI issues and was diagnosed with IBS. Decided to try GF before committing to taking medicine 4 times a day, indefinitely...and it just happened to work.

The weight loss was an unexpected side effect.

You can drop the "if". Almost everything sold by a supermarket is junk food. Avoiding junk food at the supermarket is almost impossible.

A lot of it is that processed foods are cheaper since they're more shelf stable, but to be more shelf stable you add either a lot of fat (which isn't currently consumer desirable) or a lot of other crap (which consumers don't seem to mind as much). Plus color preservatives and everything else, and you end up with a weird food facsimile.

I buy raw meats, cheese, some yogurt and a bit of bread and that's about it. Sometimes I break down and get some hot sauce. It's cheap, I eat like a king, and I'm effective at weight management aside from the occasional restaurant visit or party with friends. The only downside is the time I spend cooking - while it's an enjoyable hobby for me, I suspect most people can't dedicate that kind of time to meal prep or dinner.

If you’re worried about the hot sauce from processing or preservative standpoint it’s shockingly easy (and fun) to make yourself [0].

Jam a bunch of peppers of your desired heat, a few cloves of garlic, and salt water in a mason jar. Close it and keep it on the counter and it will lacto-ferment. Let the CO2 out every morning for a couple weeks, then just let it hang out.

They’ll become delicious pickled peppers after a couple weeks, and become unbelievably complex and delicious after a couple months. When they taste how you want, blend it up for sauce or eat the peppers whole (I’d do a couple jars at once so you don’t have to choose)

You can add a little bit of vinegar at the end to stop the fermentation and make it shelf-stable—and maybe a little xantham gum to thicken if you’d like—or just keep it in the fridge.

Great for your gut flora and you’ll be shocked it came out of your kitchen with such little effort.

[0] http://phickle.com/we-can-phickle-that-hot-pepper-sauce/

This is terrific and I can't wait to try it. Thanks!

It sounds like we pretty much eat the same way, although I also eat a lot of eggs. Every Sunday, I make a huge beef/random meat stew and eat it all week, sometimes three meals a day. I put it into glass containers and freeze them.

i can eat chicken hearts for every meal.. and they're pretty cheap

I think what people choose to eat is extremely personal to them. I'm glad you made a lifestyle choice that benefitted you, but I would shudder the thought of living in a society where the government tells you exactly what you can and can't eat.

Education, public awareness, these kind of initiatives I can get behind. Regulation of food intake, is a step too far.

FWIW, I've eaten processed, fried, GMO foods my whole life (and consume fast food drive thru at least 5-6 times a week) and have no health issues whatsoever. But I try to not eat to excess and I exercise regularly.

Don’t we already regulate what can be put in foods via the FDA?

"Don't we already" is an excuse, not an argument.

There were food and drug products that were unsafe, “adulterated” and mislabeled. This created health problems in the United States so we created the FDA to regulate food and drugs.

Do you have any argument why they shouldn’t do this?

Toxicity and fraudulent misadvertisement is a far cry from sugar being bad for you if you choose to eat too much of it.

And to reiterate my point, advocating X based on "don't we already Y" instead of the actual merits of X is a big part of how dangerous slippery slopes occur, even if Y was a good thing.

In this case, the poster said:

"Education, public awareness, these kind of initiatives I can get behind. Regulation of food intake, is a step too far."

I merely pointed out that the thing identified as "a step too far" already exists. I wasn't advocating for anything so there isn't a slippery slope to fear.

You might be surprised to learn the government does “tell us” what we can eat by defining what can be sold.

Thanks for keeping us safe from government boogeymen though

I doubt the GP is unaware of food regulations. Like pretty much everything else in life, what matters is degree and nuance. The government saying that e.g. milk must meet a minimum level of XYZ is not the same as the government telling us that we can no longer drink milk at all.

We already regulate dangerous, addictive products like cigarettes. Why not regulate dangerous, addictive products like potato chips or soft drinks?

My body, my choice? Or is that only for some things?

But that’s the point: your choices are food products that are allowed under regulations.

People are dragging out this paranoid fantasy where Uncle Sam is literally spoon feeding you.

When tacitly he’s enabling you to spoon feed yourself his choices.

People seem really convinced the next step is a government assigned personal health manager.

We don't really regulate the number of cigs that someone can smoke a day.

Trying to understand how they got onto the government forcing us to eat a specific set of foods from the original comment which to my read was about food regulations (the food supply chain being a byproduct of those).

I mean just cause you CAN view it from the perspective of concern that some G-man will show up every morning to check your pantry doesn’t mean one is on topic, or peddling reasonable discourse.

Yes, be on the lookout for government overreach. Sure. Immediately invoking paranoid nonsense and individualism (which ends being heavily constrained by social norms anyway) is just bizarre

Regulations about preservatives and sugar added to bread would fall under the first category: minimum level of XYZ, not the second category: banning bread.

Education, as you suggest only works for some percentage of the population who have the time and wealth to learn what is good for their body and pay for it. Without government regulation you’re basically abandoning some percentage of the population to eat whatever crap has the lowest price and highest margins. We already accept and benefit from regulation on what can be put in food - insect parts, inorganic additives, etc. - but those regulations have not kept up with advances in food tech.

>but I would shudder the thought of living in a society where the government tells you exactly what you can and can't eat.

I agree, but the government can use softer nudges like taxes and subsidies to help encourage healthier eating. A good start would be to examine existing farm subsidies and ask whether they encourage unhealthy dietary choices.

>I think what people choose to eat is extremely personal to them. I'm glad you made a lifestyle choice that benefitted you, but I would shudder the thought of living in a society where the government tells you exactly what you can and can't eat.

This canned "the government shouldn't choose what I eat" argument is reductionist to the point of deficiency at best, and disingenuous at worse.

The fact is an unregulated free market forces choices on us no different than government regulation. The quality and type of food a consumer has access to is highly dependent on market decisions — that is the food demanded by other consumers — not individual decisions. The problem is consumers in the US at large are either ignorant about health/nutrition or just plain don't prioritize the future (sustainable health) over the present (what I'm eating was iteratively designed in a lab to maximize my immediate dopamine hit).

Good regulation isn't binary. You can regulate the food industry to protect consumers from predatory/harmful practices (such as engineering food so that consumers overeat by "growth hacking" food via salt/sugar/fat in order to drive revenue growth) while still allowing an abundance of dietary choices.

>FWIW, I've eaten processed, fried, GMO foods my whole life (and consume fast food drive thru at least 5-6 times a week) and have no health issues whatsoever. But I try to not eat to excess and I exercise regularly.

Some people smoke two packs a day and die at the ripe old age of 100. The vast majority of smokers die significantly earlier than average. Much like you wouldn't consider a lottery ticket a wise investment even if it pays off, you shouldn't interpret your personal health and dietary experience to much other than good fortune. Your experience is an outlier in the face of mountains of data that tell a different and honestly quite depressing story.

Lastly, I know sometimes tone can be misinterpreted easily in text. So if my comment came off as brash or an attack etc, please re-read it with a polite and friendly tone in mind. I'm passionate about this topic because I want to help.

Don't equivocate eating food to smoking. There is no evidence that someone who consumes a healthy level of calories (whether those calories are wheat-based, meat-based, potato-based, etc) are putting themselves on any kind of path to cancer or heart disease.

Carbs are carbs. Protein is protein. Fat is fat. Sure, some types of foods (including fried foods) have excessive calories for the average American lifestyle. That's been known for decades. But there is no evidence that calories from broccoli are any less or more cancerous than calories from potatoes or bread or vegetable oil.

My experience is not an outlier.

This guy has eaten 30,000 Big Macs, perfectly healthy: https://people.com/food/mcdonalds-big-mac-supersize-me-don-g...

Studies on diets with a variety of macros (but the same calories): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19246357 CONCLUSIONS: Reduced-calorie diets result in clinically meaningful weight loss regardless of which macronutrients they emphasize.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17413101 CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide more detailed evidence to suggest that diets differing substantially in glycemic load induce comparable long-term weight loss.

Carbs are not carbs (high vs low GI, for example), and fat is not fat (trans fats vs MCT, for example). Many other factors go into whether or not input calories are digested, whether or not input calories are stored (and whether or not as glycogen), and whether or not input calories end up as long-term fat.

It isn’t that simple.

That said, that’s absolutely no argument for regulation. People should be free to entirely destroy themselves seeking short-term dopamine hits—if they so choose. It is staunchly immoral to impede them.

>That said, that’s absolutely no argument for regulation. People should be free to entirely destroy themselves seeking short-term dopamine hits—if they so choose. It is staunchly immoral to impede them.

This ignores the entire premise of my comment, which is that people's choices in this context are not made in a vacuum.

If the market demands unhealthy food, then that is what the food industry will supply, and thus be the option made generally available to all.

The food industry has exploited human evolutionary traits (cravings for salt/sugar/fat and other nutrients that are high-value in moderation but detrimental in excess) to push the market in a direction that boosts consumption (and thus revenue growth) at a cost to our health.

The cost to people’s health is not caused by “the food industry”. It is caused, moment by moment, by those same people choosing to harm themselves.

Grocery stores still sell broccoli and chicken. People choose to buy oreos and croissants and other refined carbs. That’s not “the food industry”.

It’s variously described, but “consumer choice” and “market demands” don’t really capture it. It boils down to other adult humans, just like you and I, choosing what they want to spend their money on, choosing what foods they want to eat.

It is nobody’s place but the eater to tell them what they should or should not be doing. Full stop.

> That said, that’s absolutely no argument for regulation. People should be free to entirely destroy themselves seeking short-term dopamine hits—if they so choose. It is staunchly immoral to impede them.

i could agree with you for individuals

but for corporations who are making money off of (and actively marketing) certain things (that indeed do harm people) i would say regulations should exist to at the very least mark thier products so the consumer is informed “this will most likely kill you if you take more than once a day” or “there are no proven claims in this product” etc...

after working at a few very large firms, i have little faith in companies being genuine about their products’s safety, and if one was to leave things to “the market” then being informed is the absolute minimum in my opinion... idk though maybe i am missing something...

> consume fast food drive thru at least 5-6 times a week

> have no health issues whatsoever

That you're aware of. What's your fasted glucose level, or A1c? What about inflammation markers? Given your lifestyle you should probably know your calcium score (heart) too.

You could be pre-diabetic and not even know it, which means without intervention, you'll be really screwed in your not so distant future. You might already have plaque and scars accumulating in your heart. Or elevated inflammation slowly damaging organs in your body. Know your numbers if you're going to eat fast food every day of the week.

>You could be pre-diabetic and not even know it

That can be said about anyone.

"pre diabetic" is a clinical designation. You can be or not be it, and know it, with blood tests.

What's "GI"?

Please don't use acronyms that people might not understand.

Gastro-intestinal.

gastro-intestinal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastrointestinal_tract

It took me some time to figure it out, but I think it's "gastrointestinal".

GI is a pretty common acronym for 'gastro intestinal'

'The GI Doc', 'I have GI issues', etc

First time I've seen it. If it weren't for this discussion, my first thought on a GI Doc might be that it's a doctor in a military zone or is otherwise related to the military.

The first 5 results on

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gi

say that it's either "Government Issue" or "General Infantry". Gastrointestinal isn't even among the results.

Google's first few results are likewise about the military.

Keep in mind that HN is a global community.

General Infantry.

Matches my experience cutting out "white carbs" completely. Now I get all my carbs from raw plant sources. After a few months, the bread aisle in the grocery store smells like a hardware store. I'm leaner, stronger and faster than I've been my entire life. And I eat more than I've ever eaten in my life. I probably eat double what I used to.

Bread in "bread aisles" also feels and tastes very different from bread from a bakery or home made. It's so weird and soft.

You can make bread from scratch that pretty much feels like store bought. As far as light and fluffy. But it definitely won't stay soft and fluffy for nearly as long without the preservatives.

If you miss bread occasionally I can only recommend this recipe https://nordicfoodliving.com/stone-age-bread/

Seems to be down. Here's a snapshot: https://web.archive.org/web/20181005033813/http://nordicfood...

When I think of "bread", I think of something light and fluffy, with large bubbles in the structure and a good bit of chew.

The "stone age bread" looks more like a granola bar. Not bad, mind you, but I don't think it would fulfill that craving very well.

What's considered a 'white carb'? I eat rice a couple times/week with veggies and a protein. I've never seen the need to cut carbs completely. What I did cut out though was things like French fries and potato chips.

Sometimes I think people just overthink it. Stop eating food that is clearly junk, and enjoy all the health benefits.

White rice is pretty much the definition of "white carbs". Its glycemic index is only just behind white bread and brown rice isn't far behind it.

Is there a handy chart or reference for this you could share?

People have been eating white rice for millenia. I don't believe white rice is as bad for you as white bread.

People have also been dying young for millenia. Not really a good measure of how healthy things are.

And people have been dying in general since the dawn of humanity. Dying young is the effect of far more than food. So I would argue dying young is an equally bad metric to make your case.

Come on. Rice is the staple crop for most of Asia. If it is so unhealthy why is there no galloping obesity across Asia?

The Japanese Naval fleet was once almost completely ruined by beri-beri due to diets of polished white rice.

I am not claiming rice is a nutritionally complete food, I'm saying it is a perfectly fine part of a healthy diet.

Fun fact. Asian people suffer the health effects from high body mass (such as diabetes) sooner than people of other ethnic groups, and because of this their obesity BMI cutoff is actually lower. So, while you may not see Asians that look huge compared to what you're used to seeing, they do in fact have trouble with obesity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#International_...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2939400/

>Rice is the staple crop for most of Asia. If it is so unhealthy why is there no galloping obesity across Asia?

See that's a much better line of reasoning than the one I was objecting to.

As for obesity in Asia. My main question there would be total calories intake. I mean you can stay thin on McDonalds if you calorie count it...

If you think there's no obesity problem in "Asia", visit the Philippines. Now, a lot of the current obesity epidemic there is caused by the introduction of Western-style junk food, but it's also caused by eating too many carbs (rice) and combining that with unhealthy amounts of soft drinks and processed food, so I'm not saying it's all because of processed, high glycemic index white rice. But if they switched to brown rice it would help a lot. Easier said than done, because it's a cultural thing. Almost all of the good stuff in natural rice (the bran and chaff contain many vitamins and a lot of fibre) is stripped off in making commercial white rice.

I'm not sure how you can say that changing from white to brown rice is the cure when people are consuming 'unhealthy amounts of soft drinks and processed food'.

To bring it back to HN, switching rice types is optimizing an already fast function to make it a bit faster while leaving the obvious bottleneck untouched.

This is thought process is exactly what my earlier comments were addressing. Worrying about white rice when consuming cookies and soda all day. A person should worry about things like rice and fresh potatoes after getting rid of all the garbage from their diet.

I'm not sure how you can say that changing from white to brown rice is the cure when people are consuming 'unhealthy amounts of soft drinks and processed food'

But I didn't say that. In fact, I carefully qualified my statement, saying that the majority of the obesity problem is caused by junk food. And note, I never said brown rice is a "cure", I actually said it would help. The implication was clearly that by itself (without reducing a diet of processed foods and soft drinks), it's not going to be effective. I just can't fathom how you got "cure" out of my comment.

You know, I'm getting a bit tired of commenting here on HN if this is the sort of conversation I'm going to have, where I'm cautious about making sweeping and unsupported statements, and where I take pains to qualify my comments so that people don't get the wrong idea. It's too bad that no matter how much I try to head such comments off at the pass, someone will reply reflexively without reading carefully.

You didn't say cure. I apologize for jumping way too far.

> But if they switched to brown rice it would help a lot.

I don't think changing rice colors is going to help at all if they are eating like crap. That was my point. White/brown rice is the least problematic part of their diet.

If you were implying that cleaning up the rest of their diet and then switching rice would help, then yeah we are in agreement.

rice is one of the most hypoallergenic foods. GI index isn't everything.

White rice is bad. Brown rice is better. A mix of rides and other grains is even better.

It not so simple. Arsenic bad too.

Yes, arsenic concentration in rice is a consideration. However, this is not germaine to the discussion of what constitutes a healthy rice intake from the carbohydrates:fiber ratios.

Edit: arsenic concentrations in rice has more to do with where the rice is geown than the type of rice. For example, I don't buy rice from Arkansas.

I didn't realize only macros were germaine. In that case yes, it is as simple as you make it sound.

White rice is not dangerous per se. Eating it won't kill you. The problem is that people nowadays move much less than they used to do it for millennia, because of changes in the way people get around (cars), entertain themselves (TV/internet), and work (office/knowledge work). Carbs provide high calories which made them popular in the times where any work was mostly physical work and people needed more calories. Nowadays, the modern lifestyle requires less calories therefore meals that served people well for millennia are no longer suitable as they provide too much calories.

There are other factors -- dramaticaly increased affordability and abundance of food, and mass use of taste enhancers in food (such as sugar and salt) that make people overeat, but that's another story.

Worrying about the glycemic index immediately makes things complicated. People with certain conditions may need to worry about it, but a normal person can easily get caught in analysis paralysis and lose the forest through the trees.

It's not the people eating a chicken breast, mixed veggies and a side of rice who are obese and unhealthy.

I see people go through all sorts of rationalizations to eat a cookie, and then stress over the glycemic index of a bit of rice. Sigh.

I'm not sure I agree that GI makes things complicated. I suspect it's sort of essential to proper hunger management. Blood sugar deltas seem to be a pretty major predictor for how strong the urge we have to snack is. That while we may feel yucky for having too high a blood sugar, when it starts to come down we still want to put fast carbs into our mouth (ironically perpetuating the yucky feeling from high blood sugar). By maintaining blood sugar through lower glycemic index foods, I suspect more people would find it easier to avoid snacking when they would prefer not to eat as many calories in a day. I know I personally liken eating fast carbs to "breaking the seal" when I haven't eaten for hours, particularly when last I had a good satiating meal with high nutritional content. I know that once I eat that first potato chip or cookie that I'll have a harder time not feeling the urge to continue snacking, so I like to put it off as long as my impulse control will allow it. Worse is when I'm not even hungry, but want the emotional rise of a fast carb. I can undo hours of good satiation from a meal with one slip...

But I suppose, your general assertion is fair. People who don't have a good sense of GI for food can't easily make some more complex decisions around food. For those people I tend to tell them to avoid processed ingredients. Anything that makes it easier for your body to digest, probably isn't helping with weight.

I've done something similar cutting "white carbs." For me that means grains & starches. I avoid bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, etc.

From most "white" to least "white":

Fructose. HFCS. Sucrose. Enriched wheat flour. Polished white rice. Potato.

Basically, anything with a high glycemic index and little nutritional value beyond the carbohydrate macronutrient.

So, if you're vegetarian and cut out everything you've just mentioned, what's left, exactly?

Everything green. Beans. Fruits. Whole Grains. Nuts. Dairy.

Um, vegetables, fruits, nuts, dairy, soy, etc.? I've been eating a vegetarian keto diet for a while now and have not been lacking due to a loss of sugar, grains, and starch.

Indeed. I like to think that pretty much any food with a marketing budget falls into the "clearly junk" category. Food is 100% vital to everyone's survival. It doesn't need marketing. If a lot of effort was put into selling it to you, it's probably not good for you.

Come to think of it, this probably applies to more than just food.

Avocados from Mexico have a marketing budget (see https://avocadosfrommexico.com). Are they "clearly junk" ?

I think this depends on your genetics a bit.

I personally start putting weight on very quickly with even pretty minimal amounts of carb, natural or processed. My wife is more tolerant of processed carbs, and in fact needs more natural carbs than I can personally tolerate.

You're right that 'white carbs' should be pretty much eliminated. However, 100% whole grain bread is still valid and has a good amount of fiber, which white carbs lack.

In theory you’re right but bread makes me really hungry later. When I stopped eating bread I stopped getting hangry between meals

shrug I eat a ton of sandwiches and avocado toast and have absolutely no problems with hunger between meals, I usually eat one meal a day.

My hunger level has much more to do with amount of food consumed and timing than anything else.

a ton is a big meal

I've read that modern "dwarf wheat" has an enzyme that interacts with the same neurotransmitters as opiates, prompting withdrawal symptoms if one doesn't have it again in a few days.

I've got strong source amnesia and am probably misremembering details: maybe it was from "Grain Brain"? [0]? At any rate, my experience has been pretty similar to yours.

[0] https://www.drperlmutter.com/about/grain-brain-by-david-perl...

But watch out for "enriched".

I'm stealing this from somewhere, and I don't recall the source. But someone said "enriched" flour is like this: You're walking down the street. A mugger steals your watch, your wallet (including credit cards), your belt, and your glasses. Then he gives you back your belt and $20 from your wallet, and says, "There, I've enriched you".

> Now I get all my carbs from raw plant sources.

It's important to know what works for you, other people eat the exact opposite with similar results: https://www.onnit.com/academy/the-carnivore-diet/

The principal "weird ingredients" in our food can be largely segregated into preservatives, thickeners, and emulsifiers. Preservatives have been very heavily scrutinized because their purpose is, essentially, to kill things or stop them growing, so they're obviously potentially dangerous. The list of acceptable preservatives has been essentially whittled down to sorbate, propionate, sulfite and benzoate, and propionate might get the axe pretty soon.

Thickeners and emulsifiers are subject to basic biochemical tests in vivo and in vitro before being allowed in food, and those tests have generally proven them to be safe. But what worries me sometimes is that people focus too much on the chemistry of these compounds and not so much on the mechanics. Thickeners thicken liquids and emulsifiers mix them. The gut is not just a reaction flask; it's sheathed in muscle and innervated in such a way as to be responsive to the forces within it -- to continue peristalsis.

Then again, a surprising amount of irritation can be traced back to a single, innocuous, natural and very popular ingredient that happens to be a lot more irritating -- specifically, it produces gas -- than people give it credit for: garlic powder.

https://www.monashfodmap.com/blog/cooking-with-onion-and-gar...

You were able to stop eating things that made you feel badly. Why do you assume that others cannot reach the same conclusions given the same circumstances? Why do you believe that people must be forced to have fewer options?

Give them some credit. Regulation (threat of force) is not the answer, unless you consider yourself inherently superior to the next guy, who couldn’t possibly figure out what you managed to.

Years ago I was in my mid 20s and out of shape with a history of failing to lose weight, I went to a trainer who worked with bodybuilders, my logic at the time was "I should get guidance from people that dedicate their lives to controlling how they look and get so much from their diets".

The no. 1 piece of advice he gave me.... "If you can't grow it or kill it, don't eat it". I've been in incredible shape for over a decade following this simple rule and its also exposed to me just how hard it is to follow this rule when traveling in the US.

I lost 35 lbs effortlessly by drinking protein shakes which are about as processed as you can get. We both have fine anecdotes.

The other day I did a quick experiment, and checked all the available loaves of bread at my grocery. There was not a single loaf that did not contain added sugar.

I imagine most people buy bread thinking that it's healthy, but they're basically just buying candy in bread form.

It bums me out.

Mmm. Adding a tiny amount of sugar is pretty common to improve the rise and texture of bread.

As long as the bread dough is proofed for at least a couple hours, the vast majority of added sugar in non-sweet bread recipes will be consumed by the yeast leaving little residual sugar.

Yeast will consume sucrose, glucose and fructose first before moving onto the maltose from the broken down flour starch.

(In sweet breads where added sugar >5%, the sugar actually retards the fermentation process leaving a considerable amount of residual sugar, but you can't easily tell how much residual sugar from added sugar is in bread from the list of ingredients)

The US food supply in general needs to be cleaned the hell up...but, I think people ascribe way too much agency to "processed foods" and not enough to the fact that all the lifestyle changes they say definitely worked for them probably also just resulted in them eating a lot less food.

Convince yourself you absolutely shouldn't eat pre-packed whatever, and then if your kitchen's empty you're pretty likely just to power on through it on less.

I agree. And look at what's marketed as for children as well. It's disgusting. All different sugar waters and processed packaged foods. Get children hooked early on these sugar-infused dopamine hits. It's one of those things that once you notice it you start noticing it everywhere and it's quite upsetting. It's hopeless.

Many Study Says that Ultra Processed Foods Drive weight gain, but according to BMJ published processed foods contain 90% Added sugar, and that increase type 2 diabetes or heart disease. Here is https://www.fitnesshealthforever.com/ many health awareness tips for people.

Ultra Processed Foods Lists 1. Boxed cake mix 2. Soft drinks 3. Packaged bread and buns 4. Fast food burgers 5. Instant noodles 6. Energy bars

that is some ultra processed food list that is also shown on NOVA report.

Here is two pieces of diet advice:

1) At the grocery store, shop the edges (Fruit, Vegetables, Meat, Fish) just stay away from things with a nutrition label.

2) Don't drink calories. Water, Tea, Coffee (no artificial sweeteners).

Fixes most peoples problems.

stevia should be fine, imo

I agree, but I wanted to give advice that is healthy and easy to follow. You don't need to look at any labels. Just eat real food.

The basic problem with processed foods is that they mimic the qualities of natural foods.

If you leave kids to eat whatever they want with an abundance of food, they will create a perfectly balanced, healthy diet. They did a study of this in the 1950s and the kids who had certain vitamin deficiencies would naturally even go for the fish oil they needed to supplement their levels back up.

Take something as simple as bacon flavored potato chips: you eat them, and your body thinks it's getting the protein it needs, but it's not, it's getting something that mimics protein. But your body's kind of dumb, so it wants more chips, because they should have protein in them!

Almost every obese person out there is someone who's had their natural feedback loop completely destroyed by learned behavior. They don't feel "full" the way people without eating issues do.

Add to that our sedentary but stressful lifestyle. When I am backpacking for a few days I don't eat much and have almost no food cravings. But as soon as I am in the office I start eating all kinds of crap I would normally never touch. I think the same happens to kids in school being forced to sit still for hours.

"Almost every obese person out there is someone who's had their natural feedback loop completely destroyed by learned behavior. They don't feel "full" the way people without eating issues do. "

I am really sorry for kids that grow up on frozen dinners and junk food. I have read that your food tastes develop in the first few years so if your parents have bad food habits you have a very good chance to be imprinted with them for a life time.

I have had some mild success with "do not talk to me about food except at mealtimes" in conjunction with "canonical mealtime is between 6 and 8 PM, and absolutely nothing past 10 PM".

What I really need now is an AR ad-blocker--like Joo-Janta context-sensitive sunglasses--that will detect food-related advertisements and displays in the real world and blot them out with black rectangles and/or white noise.

Being hungry stimulates appetite, but so too does just thinking about food. And after priming my awareness of it, nearly everyone around me does something or other to make me think about food, and quite a lot are doing it intentionally, to get at my money. (Even just reading this thread is sort of screwing me up for the rest of the day.) I get the sense that Pavlov's dogs might get fat if someone followed them around all the time, continually ringing that bell.

Even my office has that stupid kitchenette right outside the door, with people frequently in there messing with the coffee and fridge and microwave. So then I close my door and blot out the world, and I can easily ride out hours 11 through 20 of fasting. Unless someone sends "donuts in the lab" over e-mail, or "Food Truck X is in the parking lot until 12:00". Aargh.

So now I'm sitting here with one part of my brain telling itself, "No, you are not really hungry. That's the spoiled punk asshole part of your brain trying to get you to eat by injecting obsessive thoughts about food." Any little thing can set that douchebag off, and then it's a fight for the entire rest of the day. When out alone in the wild, or isolated in a sealed box, no one cares whether you eat or starve, so that "go eat something" lobe never gets triggered externally. But the instant you're back, there's that 20-foot-tall Big Mac on a billboard telling you what exit to take. Even if you don't get off and buy one, it wakes up the appetite jerk, who starts offering unhelpful alternative suggestions. And it only shuts up after continuously whining for many hours, or when sleeping.

Would you mind linking this study?

I tried quite a bit of searching for it under the keywords you mentioned but nothing came up.

It's probably not the study he was thinking of, as this one is from the '30s, not the '50s, but search for the work of Clara M. Davis. Here's an article about it [1]. She did an experiment involving letting babies largely choose their diet.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626509/

I sometimes get cravings for salt, or milk, or OJ, which I indulge on the basis you've stated. It isn't clear I could fool my body with the wrong thing though.

My milk cravings for example, I don't know what nutrients my bodies after, but my body does, and presumably my body will know when it's got it, so the fact that I've recently drunk some white liquid shouldn't matter.

I assume that as I don't consciously know what my body is after, my body also isn't influenced by what my conscious thinks its consuming.

Is that what it is?

Every time I see some rant or new study on "processed" foods I really ask what it means for food to be "processed". There's a huge difference between a cooked slab of meat and a meal in a frozen box, but both are "processed".

I'm not really sure why quesadillas or muffins are "ultra processed".... what gives them an "ultra processed" nature? If you took a pile of steak chunks and a pile of cheese that would be way better than combining it with a tortilla? I have to doubt that.

If what you're saying is true the examples are very misleading; it really applies more to artificial flavors and things that change the texture of food and so on than it applies to specific food types.

While I'm sure they're considerably better than processed foods, I wonder how the whole fruits, grains, and vegetables that have been selectively bred, or genetically modified to be all about tastiness(or growth speed, shelf life, etc) would stack up against other strains. All tomatoes can't possibly be equal, so it'd be interesting to see studies like this, but comparing a roma tomato, vs heirloom or something.

I have also been wondering how this revolution of ethical imitation meat products is going to play with processed foods... as these are also quite processed foods.

ingredient list from a mock salami product:

water, vital wheat gluten, isolated soy protein, tofu (water, soybeans), spices, natural flavors (including autolyzed yeast extract), salt, wheat starch, garlic and onion powder, evaporated cane juice, vitamins & minerals (dipotassium phosphate, dimagnesium phosphate, zinc oxide, ferric orthophosphate, calcium panthothenate, thiamin hydrochloride, cyanocobalamin, iron oxide), carrageenan, beet powder and extractive of paprika (for color).

You can make seitan from scratch. I start with vital wheat gluten (and chickpea flour and nutritional yeast), which is technically a processed product. But you could start with flour if you wanted to.

The end result is a product with 3 or 4 simple ingredients, compared to that fairly large list of unknowns.

I think this is missing the point. Yes you can make seitan from scratch, but it's not necessarily going to be better since seitan with its main ingredient being gluten contains little fiber either way. On the other hand, chickpea flour may be processed, but if the process preserves the fiber, that's not really a problem.

The lack of fiber in /most/ processed foods makes you eat more of these.

Vegetables have been getting larger, but nutritional density is decreasing. I think I read vegetables are something like 20% less nutritionally dense than 50 years ago.

From what I have read they are selected for looks, taste and ease of storage and transportation. There is no consideration for nutritional value.

Consumers don't have tricorders to scan two tomatoes and compare their relative nutrition. Meanwhile, they are extremely sensitive to price and appearance differences in their groceries.

It's a bad situation for everybody. But, selecting for nutrition over appearance would go almost completely unnoticed by anyone except for how it made the accountants and shareholders sad.

I can dream about a marketing campaign focused on nutritional value. But, in the end, I expect consumers would brush it off as BS and buy up all the cheap, pretty, non-local, out-of-season produce anyway :/

This is one source corroborating your claim: https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/nutrient-densi...

But it's good to read that whole article, because in general the availability of fruits have gone up as well.

That's pretty much 'all food'. We've been cross-breeding and selecting fruits, grains, vegetables for thousands of years. None resemble what we started with. Corn was originally a small head of kernels like wheat. Melons were the size of oranges or tennis balls, with maybe 2-3 tablespoons of edible flesh. Vegetables were stingy small things packed with seeds and thin skins.

So the 'paleo diet' is really nothing close to what ancient ancestors ate. In fact, we'd likely not do well on that even if we could find those things? We've adapted more in the last 50,000 years (to cooked, selected foods) than in millions before that.

We've probably dug ourselves a hole, inventing agriculture and animal husbandry. It feeds more of us, but with a much narrower set of foods. Maybe some genetic engineering would put us back on a good path.

We've been cross-breeding and selecting fruits, grains, vegetables for thousands of years. None resemble what we started with...Vegetables were stingy small things packed with seeds and thin skins.

I can attest. Wild carrots are disturbingly close to sticks. (Also, they are disturbingly close in appearance to some significantly poisonous plants.)

I often wonder how much the difficulty of chewing a food effects how healthy its consumers are. Processed foods are "pre-chewed" and easy to eat very quickly.

A lot of foods that are really bad for you are kind of a pain to make. Potato chips. Fried chicken. Anything deep fried, really. Coffee cake. Chocolate chip cookies aren't hard but aren't exactly make-on-a-whim either and require resting the dough for a good long while if you want them to be really good. Most stuff that's easy to eat within minutes of a craving without having it prepared in advance are whole fruit or salads or something like that. Nuts are probably among the worst ready-to-eat foods but at least they're full of protein and vitamins, and arguably their eat-quickly-ability is well balanced with their nutrition level if you buy them in the shell, which prevents tossing back whole handfuls at once. The truly bad stuff takes planning, unless you buy it already made.

[EDIT] oh man, crackers! A fair amount of effort for a pretty small yield in a home kitchen, even using electric mixers and such. Enough of a pain you'd hesitate to just eat them as-is rather than using them as one part of a larger meal. But a whole box is a couple bucks at the store....

Fried chicken is not all that bad. Properly deep fried food absorbs a surprisingly small amount of oil.

My rule lately for junk/bad food: I only eat it if I take the time to make it myself. Works pretty well!

Processed food is not really food.

It’s just designed to be really, really cheap to make (so usually bad quality ingredients + sugar), sell for a premium based on marketing (often bullshit health claims like added vitamins c or just nice cartoons), sit on a shelf for ages without going rotten (lots of preservatives, or more sugar and definitely no fibre to help level out that sugar spike) and be very morish (more added sugar / caffeine / salt).

It’s a product designed by a big corporation to make them as much money as possible. At no point is anyone thinking about making food.

It’s hardly a surprise that it’s non-functional as actual nutrition, and equally unsurprising it’s going to make you ill.

But some of it does taste pretty good.

What's the measurable difference between "processed" and "ultra-processed" foods?

"Processed" doesn't sound bad enough.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...

See page 5 of the pdf.

Basically processed food is much more dense in calories so you can easily eat more calories than you need. You'd have to eat a lot of vegetables and salad to get calories. The study is new, but the conclusion is ' hacker diet' - people eating processed food ate more calories than they burned so they gained weight.

If you want to lose weight just burn more calories than you eat.

Usually the easiest solution is a mix of better diet and some moderate exercise regime that burns some calories and increases your metabolism.

I suspect emulsifiers are playing a bigger role than people realize. They wash away your gut mucus layer so that bacteria can't live there. This study didn't get much attention when it came out, but I think it will prove to be prophetic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5940336/

Refined sugar and alcohol are the worst for me. I can easily stay in my target BMI range without doing any diet plan apart from eliminating these two things.

The refined sugar especially seems to aggravate my appetite. It's been shown that drinking a sugared soft drink before a meal increases the amount of food you'll eat, and that's definitely been my experience. At the beginning of this month I eliminated sugar and alcohol from my diet. No other change, and I've lost 5 lbs so far. In the past I've used this diet hack for longer stretches and easily dropped ~30 lbs in four months.

Here is the paper:

https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(19)...

I'm comparing with the Nurses Health Study results:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Mozaffarian%2C+D.%....

Tastes good, cost less, uses substitute ingredients that is higher in calories but less nutrition, in turn it digests faster causing you to eat more. That’s processed foods.

This paper seems to assume that "ultra-processed" is a previously defined term. Is there an agreed upon definition somewhere?

There's a Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-processed_food

That links to a report from a United Nations organization that also uses the term:

http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4690e.pdf

On page 30, there's a section titled "Group 4: Ultra-processed food and drink products" which describes what an ultra-processed food or drink is.

That PDF also has 10 references to papers that use the term in their title.

Wikipedia article linked also says "As of 2018 the concept is loose and evolving" linking to a newer article than the UN report, so why would I think this paper used the UN definition?

The Wikipedia article further goes on to state "The utility of the NOVA classification has been subject to criticism. However, a 2018 publication from the founders of the NOVA classification uncovered misleading and incorrect statements in the critical appraisal, as well as non-disclosed conflicts of interest."

Basically, I don't see a terribly agreed upon definition. Things point several ways, and the GP's concern about definition is entirely valid.

> so why would I think this paper used the UN definition?

Because if you read the paper from the OP link, the authors cite that their definition of ultra-processed food is from Monteiro et al 2008 viz. the same UN definition the OP refers to which is widely agreed upon.

Isn't this study a bit unfair in that the ultra-processed diet was 508 calories more per day than the minimally processed one?

That's how many extra calories one group ate than the other. It wasn't prescribed.

The article explains reasons why, like how the appetite-suppressing hormone was found in much different levels between the two groups.

Including the effect of the choices people make is much more informative for deciding on public policy or personal food shopping choices. Imposing calorie restrictions in the experiment that wouldn't be there in real life would make the results much less applicable.

Easy to digest food for us ... is also easy to digest for bacteria, so they can forget about us and go straight to the source: https://phys.org/news/2019-05-overfed-bacteria-people-sick.h...

Reminds me of the manufactured sugar that feeds C Difficile strains in our guts and kills people. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/the-curious-case-of-...

I wondered what exactly they meant by "ultra-processed" foods. I looked into it, and found that they were using the NOVA classification system:

https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova

It has a reasonable explanation of what is meant by ultra-processed.

Note:

> "But is it something about the highly processed nature of these foods itself that drives people to overeat?"

It's still _overeating_ that drives weight gain. It's just easier to do with highly processed foods that are calorie dense and not "psychologically" filling....

"Overeating drives weight gain" is like "more movement on the gas pedal causes speeding". Yes, but uninteresting. "Loud rock music makes people drive faster" is not saying the same thing, and is interesting.

Even if it reduces back to "they're going faster because they move the gas pedal more".

It's interesting that the "ultra-processed" food example they give here is quesadillas, refried beans and diet lemonade. Not exactly the typical example of pre-packaged cookies and chips.

Another interesting thing is they're saying that stir-fried beef and veggies over basmati rice was not as processed. Both examples include meat, veggies and carbs (rice vs bread), is the simple addition of cheese enough to make quesadillas "ultra-processed"? The form factor? I certainly would never have come to that conclusion on my own. Is there a guide for this?

We need some better definitions here, maybe it's a little too cynical of me, but I'm wondering if all this study discovered is which foods tasted better.

The quesadillas have, like most frozen foods in the grocery store, their calories primarily come from highly processed corn/wheat. I suspect that's a big part of the issue.

They don't say anything about the quesadillas being frozen in the article at least - but regardless, I'd say it's probably a similar amount to the calories from rice in a stir fry on rice dish. I eat about 1/2 cup (uncooked) of rice with my stirfry typically, ~350 calories compare with the flour tortillas I normally use at under 200 calories each. Most basmati rice is white which I'd say is just about as "processed" as most flour.

I'm not sure what the exact definition of "processed" being used is though so I can't say for certain. But both are being stripped of outer layer, mixed with water and cooked. I suppose you need a tablespoon or so of oil to cook the tortillas but I'm assuming you're sautéing the veggies for the stir fry in oil too.

I just don't get what processed means in this context.

I would guess based on what I've read the absorption rate of energy is too fast with highly processed food, while the opposite, eating fibrous plant material seems to be very good for you as you have a far slower energy intake, in relative terms.

Working understanding at this point for me is highly processed food results in chronically high insulin levels.

Insulin signals your cells to convert glucose to fat and store it. Insulin also inhibits leptin receptors which tell your brain to keep your pie hole closed.

Likely your gastro-intestinal nervous system also has a good idea of how much reserves it has stored. Processed food confuses it.

So I like your details... so in this case, the "intake" being too fast results in the body storing the excess energy as fat. I noticed that I feel more tired in general when I eat this kind of fast food crap. Side note on top of this I started skipping breakfast now so have a built in fasting period each day and my energy has gone way up in terms of being present.

For a study that mentions keto/low-carb diets directly a few times I would've loved to see a group consuming these "ultra-processed foods" but selecting only from those with low glycemic index/carb count.

Me too, since keto wisdom is that highly processed oils (e.g. seed and "vegetable" oils) should be eliminated, presumably from some hormonal impact, but I've never seen any research on that. It's not hard to avoid canola oil usually, so I don't think much of it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11417387

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20930468

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4365303/

But processed foods taste so good...

It reminds me of what a friend, who'd been through AA said: She can abstain from alcohol, drugs, and sex. But she can't stop eating.

This should have been obvious to anyone for ages now.

Ultra processed foods are almost always significantly higher in calories.

Shouldn't the "obvious" conclusion be that you'd eat less of them, because you got enough calories sooner?

"Hyper-palatable" is probably a better label than "Ultra-processed". The problem isn't the processing, the problem is that its just hard to stop eating food like Doritos, chocolate chip cookies, etc. And while I love simple food like lentil soup, yet feel no compulsion to eat more than a serving.

the article points out that even foods that you might not consider hyper-palatable but are processed, like sausage still seem to follow the pattern.

I once read an article where they interviewed food scientists for something like Doritos and they had very intricate science around foods that don't satisfy you so you keep eating. In one sense it was really interesting how sophisticated these foods actually are but on the other hans it's amazing how much damage they are doing to the health of the country.

That's cause they taste so darn good you want to eat more of them.

> Study participants were allowed to eat as much or as little as they wanted, but ended up eating way more of the ultra-processed meals, even though they didn't rate them as being tastier than the unprocessed meals.

Tastier is pretty subjective, and they weren't comparing them side by side. But something can probably be said about shifting tastes as you eat a certain kind of food repeatedly. I know if I'm eating healthy for awhile, then have a super rich dessert, it overwhelms me, as if my taste buds have adapted towards the healthy food.

Sure, but the article also explains things like how the appetite-suppressing hormone was found in much higher levels in the group consuming unprocessed foods.

So I think I'd focus on facts like that before circling back to "well, it was probably tastier, they just didn't know it."

Similarly to how addictive products like cigarettes cause considerable harm to society, food with additives to make it "taste so darn good" can cause great harm.

As a simple example, potato chips are carefully engineered to cause overconsumption. Why is that not seen for what it is? Causing direct harm to consumers through the use of addictive products.

Could you say that comfortable chairs are causing direct harm to consumers by encouraging a sedentary lifestyle, and the more comfortable the chair is engineered to be, the worse this effect is?

Potato chips which aren't nice, won't be good potato chips. Potato chips which are as nice as they can be will be indistinguishable from engineered to be moreish potato chips.

Would America's love affair with cars be different if the government mandates that no car can cost more than $15,000 or be sold at a loss so they must all be small and basic, may not exceed 35mph, must be unheated, uncushioned and have no audio systems, but that public transport must be spacious, clean, well maintained, fast, on-time, subsidised, not overcrowded, etc.?

I don't think that's correct. For example if you go to a fast food joint you have high salt food that makes you thirsty and high sugar drinks to help it all go down. It's balanced in such a way to make you crave the other as you're seeking balance. Sodium benzoate in the soft drink will dry up your throat seconds after you swallow and make you want to drink even more to satisfy an unquenchable thirst.

Go instead to a quality French restaurant and the salt will be toned down in the dishes you eat. The wine will have low sugar (2g per liter) but the taste of the food will be amazing compared to what you get in a fast food joint. Because it will be nicely balanced you won't get thirsty and overdrink or try to balance the sweetness of what you drink with salty taste to contrast it.

Did they control for food taste and preferences ? It could simply be the processed food happened to taste better as well. Not sure if pleasantness and familiarity cover that.

20 people for 14 days on one diet then 14 days on another. I don't see how this is a terribly illuminating study. This is not sufficient time or statistical sample to extrapolate to, well, really anything. What confounding factors were unrevealed by the small sample size? What structural problems are introduced by such a short time span?

We need to either collectively start ignoring these studies on somebody's 5 fraternity brothers over a weekend, or we need to start demanding more people, longer time horizons and better controls for confounding factors. I'm pretty disappointed to see NPR hocking this crap or Cell publishing it.

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