Ultraprocessed Food Consumption and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes | Hacker News Reader

Ultraprocessed Food Consumption and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes

jamanetwork.com

50 pointsvo2maxer50 comments

In case anyone else is wondering what ultraprocessed food is, I found this in an NPR article [1]:

> And ultra-processed foods include more than just the obvious suspects, like chips, candy, packaged desserts and ready-to-eat meals. The category also includes foods that some consumers might find surprising, including Honey Nut Cheerios and other breakfast cereals, packaged white bread, jarred sauces, yogurt with added fruit, and frozen sausages and other reconstituted meat products. Popkin says ultra-processed foods usually contain a long list of ingredients, many of them made in labs. So, for example, instead of seeing "apples" listed on a food label, you might get additives that re-create the scent of that fruit. These are foods designed to be convenient and low cost and require little preparation.

1. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/05/16/723693839/it...

Where do synthetic meats and other goods fall in all this? The beyond meats, impossible ‘burgers, as well as soylent and soylent-like drinks.

Those seem even more processed than many of the examples above.

given the nature of the product, is it possible to create a 'meat-alternative' product like the Beyond products without processing?

Although 'processed' seems to be pretty ill-defined, the fact that the entire category of food could not exist without lab-style production efforts seems to me to indicate its' processed nature.

It's pretty tough to make something that tastes like meat and has the same texture even if you use all tricks available. So to me almost by definition these products have to be extremely processed.

lab meat would fit the bill I think ?

I am absolutely not an expert on that topic though.

In my view fake burgers are definitely in the ultraprocessed category.

It’s easy to imagine the amounts of pesticides, etc in those “foods.”

Yes. The best ingredient list is limited to, or as close as possible to the thing you think you're holding.

Yogurt is "milk cream and cultures." What could be wrong with fruit added to yogurt? Nothing if you add it yourself. But if it comes in the package then it has high fructose corn syrup, the poster child of highly processed food.

A good review of the definition of Ultra-Processed Foods:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6389637/

Here is the full study[1]. The authors refer to a previous study to define ultraprocessed foods (UPF)[2], which in turn used the NOVA classification system to define UPF, which says

"Ultra-processed foods are industrial formulations made entirely or mostly from substances extracted from foods (oils, fats, sugar, starch, and proteins), derived from food constituents (hydrogenated fats and modified starch), or synthesized in laboratories from food substrates or other organic sources (flavor enhancers, colors, and several food additives used to make the product hyper-palatable). Manufacturing techniques include extrusion, moulding, and preprocessing by means of frying. Beverages may be ultra-processed."

Examples from [3]:

• fatty, sweet, savory or salty packaged snacks • pre-prepared (packaged) meat, fish and vegetables • biscuits (cookies) • pre-prepared pizza and pasta dishes • ice creams and frozen desserts • pre-prepared burgers, hot dogs, sausages • chocolates, candies and confectionery in general • pre-prepared poultry and fish ‘nuggets’ and ‘sticks’ • cola, soda and other carbonated soft drinks • other animal products made from remnants • ‘energy’ and sports drinks • packaged breads, hamburger and hot dog buns • canned, packaged, dehydrated (powdered) and other ‘instant’ soups, noodles, sauces, desserts, drink mixes and seasonings • baked products made with ingredients such as hydrogenated vegetable fat, sugar, yeast, whey, emulsifiers, and other additives • sweetened and flavored yogurts, including fruit yogurts • breakfast cereals and bars • dairy drinks, including chocolate milk • infant formulas & drinks, and meal replacement shakes (e.g., ‘slim fast’) • sweetened juices • pastries, cakes and cake mixes • margarines and spreads • distilled alcoholic beverages such as whisky, gin, rum, vodka, etc.

[1]https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar... [2]https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/public-health-nutrit... [3]https://educhange.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/NOVA-Classi...

Why is liquor ultra processed?

Go to Kentucky and look at any still. Look at the inputs and the outputs. Does the liquor look anything at all like the corn or rye that went into it?

When I was in Butte they had a random distillery that opened into the street.

Damnit I love Honey Nut Cheerios. Damnit.

Yep, some of those foods taste good in part because of how they've been processed.

Essentially, stuff that's been heavily deconstructed, assembled or which has gone through a phase change should be suspect, including shredded, pressurized, high temp, oxygenated, puffed, textured, etc.

What's it made of, wheat? Does it look like wheat? No? Then it's been ground up and reformed. And there's a bunch of other ingredients, but the grinding is the major culprit. It's basically predigested, and slams glucose into your blood quickly, over time promoting insulin resistance, eventually wearing out your pancreas.

Less processed food requires your body to spend time and energy breaking it down.

Bread is the same, it's ground and reformed grain. It doesn't matter if it's organic, or "whole grain," or Famous Dave's, it's still ground grain.

Of course we’ve been grinding and reforming grain into bread for 10,000 years so it’s a lot more complicated than you lay out

It's funny ultraprocessed is just a scare word the anti-science crowd uses.

But we understand what it means, and it is true as a very good rule ultraprocessed is bad for you.

But we could have ultraprocessed food that's good for you. The benefit is, if you need to eat ultraprocessed food you could pick something healthy.

But it seems under capitalism/evolution/society food gravitates towards either religion or unhealthy.

Without the religious side under the $, cheap fillers like sugar and highly refined flour will of course fill out our meals to save companies money.

But you get conflicts with something like MSG which is actually very healthy, it makes salad, vegies and almost anything taste better but because of religion it only gets used to make a small about of flavour shine in ultraprocessed food over the sugar and flour fillers.

I, and most, eat plenty of MSG, however they want to call it or label it [1]. Flavor enhancers abound. Not sure the point of this comment.

Many salad dressings contain MSG or something like it. Makes things taste good, as you say.

Healthful eating habits is not "religion," it's knowledge + discipline.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/msg-goes-by-many-different-n...

high-carb foods increase risk of type 2 diabetes. news at 9.

The carbs are stripped of fiber and nutrients, which make them even more dangerous. Your comment is dismissive of what we are still learning.

Dietary science struggles, this comment does not help.

I don't think it is fair to say high-carb as a blanket increases the risk. Our diets are supposed to be 50% carbs. Just not the type of carbs found in these products. I think the culprits are the relatively simple carbs (or sugars) which are not intertwined with various less digestible fibres.

> Our diets are supposed to be 50% carbs.

No, they don't. We are very adaptable in that respect.

The issue is we depend on our intestinal bacterial populations to help digest food, and we can't change diet too fast, we need to give time to the bacteria to adapt.

I stopped eating more than 10% of carbs and if I eat too much of them now then I don't feel well until next day.

I think you might be able to go further and say carbs or without without fiber themselves are not necessarily bad in the absence of excess calories/overweight condition. Look at Japan or France where they consume relatively large amounts of white rice or white flour but lower calories and they have about half the diabetes of the US.

... Also predominantly different genetics than the rest

>Our diets are supposed to be 50% carbs.

Please don't lump everyone together like that.

Some folks do better on low carb, some folks do better on very high carb, everyone has different gut bacteria, different digestive enzyme efficiencies, and so on.

This might support the use of the "Perimeter Diet".

In US supermarkets, the outside aisles of the stores are typically stocked with produce, meat, dairy, and bread. The center aisles are stocked with commercially processed food ("comes in a box"). The perimeter diet plan says not to buy anything from the center aisles, and that your diet should be items found on the perimeter of the store.

This is pretty much exclusively what I do. I almost never go into the center isles. Everything I buy is fresh/real unprocessed foods.

The center of a mass market grocery store is terrifying. Safeway carries something like twenty different kinds of marshmallows, but only one kind of, for example, ground corn. They don’t sell food.

I hope that as society we will at some point accept that quality of food is really important and you shouldn’t just eat whatever tastes good. This together with the growing acceptance of things like the microbiome make me hopeful that we slowly may be moving towards a more holistic view of health and not putting a lot of effort into treating symptoms while ignoring the big picture.

This whole issue is strange to me.

There's an obvious link between 'ultraprocessed' food and just crap / barely-qualifies-as-food.

Barely anyone here is talking about like, blending a salad up and drinking it for example. Theoretically, yes, you could extract all of the sugar out of lettuce and make something unhealthy.

The typical stuff you think of is full of preservatives, is probably something quite sugary/wheaty to begin with (i.e. low nutritional content), etc.

Is anyone _really_ surprised that honey nut cheerios are crap food? It's blatantly obviously a treat. I can't seriously consider that anyone would think it's a component of a healthy diet - you might want to eat it because it tastes nice and is fun, like a bag of crisps.

It's the classic treat that a 5 year old might want.

A simple rule of thumb is just that the further you get from a natural state, the worse it is. Fruit from a tree beats fruit in a smoothie. Grains in a whole state (i.e. oatmeal) are better than flours (i.e. oat flour). A whole chicken is better than nuggets. It’s really not that hard of an idea to grasp, as long as you assume that everything that’s written on food packaging is meant to deceive you.

Some things need to be processed to a point where they are edible, but not more than that. And before anyone goes there, yes, cooking is essential — that’s not considered “processing”.

I haven't taken Omeprosol once since I started eating my homemade fermented kimchi daily. Totally anecdotal, but it works for me!

How do you prepare it?

Pretty basic, I buy 3 or 4 heads of chinese cabbage. Dice it up in to 1 inch squares roughly. Add grated carrots, ginger and onion. I then soak that all in salty water (about the same saltyness as the ocean) for about 4 hours. Then I rinse it all twice. Finally I add three or four table spoons of dried red peppers finely ground, three or four table spoons soy sauce, three or four table spoons fish sauce. Finally I put it in a big pot and let sit at room temperature in a dark room for 48 hours. After that into jars and into the fridge. I eat it twice a day usually breakfast and dinner, not even that much. After years and years of lansoprosol, omeprosol and xantac, and tums tums tums, not one hint of heart burn since.

Edit: and garlic, 2 or 3 whole heads. I usually blend the garlic, as pieces of garlic turn blue or green and look odd

how much of it do you eat per day?

twice a day, not much, like a few chop stick grabs.

Since I am slow to respond and the post is a bit old, this is what I said to the guy who asked me how I make it

Pretty basic, I buy 3 or 4 heads of chinese cabbage. Dice it up in to 1 inch squares roughly. Add grated carrots, ginger and onion (and garlic, 2 or 3 whole heads, forgot to mention this to other poster). I then soak that all in salty water (about the same saltyness as the ocean) for about 4 hours. Then I rinse it all twice. Finally I add three or four table spoons of dried red peppers finely ground, three or four table spoons soy sauce, three or four table spoons fish sauce. Finally I put it in a big pot and let sit at room temperature in a dark room for 48 hours. After that into jars and into the fridge. I eat it twice a day usually breakfast and dinner, not even that much. After years and years of lansoprosol, omeprosol and xantac, and tums tums tums, not one hint of heart burn since.

I have this theory - and it's completely untested on my side. There's no data, there's just a feeling. It's qualitative, based on my own anecdote only. People were bred to eat specific foods.

I gave up manufactured food. Then I gave up North American food - in exchange for eating the food my ancestors grew up with. My IBS disappeared in two weeks - I haven't had any of the debilitating pain I had, eating North American foods. Going back to hamburgers and crisps - my stomach felt like it was ready to jump out my sides. I vowed to stick to what was prevalent as a kid, not what I have access to now.

>It's qualitative, based on my own anecdote only. People were bred to eat specific foods.

Makes sense considering humans diverged into vastly different environments thousands of generations ago. Compare the food available to, say, Inuit tribes vs groups living in a jungle. No reason we couldn't have specialized, particularly given genetic links to gut biota [1] (I'm sure there are more pertinent sources). Meanwhile globalization has rapidly exposed all of us to foods from corners far away from the lands of our ancestors.

1. https://m.phys.org/news/2019-10-survive-human-gut-bacteria-g...

What do your meals throughout the week consist of? I'm curious to know.

I'd also like to know if you think ground meat itself is problematic, or if it's the preservatives and seasonings that are added to fast-food burger meat.

I would be more concerned about the fries and the bread. The fries are cooked in vegetable oils that are high in Omega-6s and low in Omega-3s. Prior to modern American diet, most diets had high Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratio and now that's been flipped. There are some studies to back this up:

"Marked elevations in pro-inflammatory polyunsaturated fatty acid metabolites in females with irritable bowel syndrome" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2853445/

I had chronic IBS, GERD and other inflamatory-related issues resolve almost immediately upon transitioning to a ketogenic (ultra-low carb) diet. The transition to keto can be hard due to lifelong habits but once I got through the first month, it started getting easier and now I love what I eat and I'm the best shape of my life.

I'll chime in that I have experienced exactly the same effects on keto, going several years on the diet now.

I've done keto three times now. It's the only way I can lose weight and eat healthy. I've always ended up breaking after 3-4 months due to missing Chinese & Japanese food too much.

So to be fair - I'm vegetarian.

But my foods mostly consist of cooked vegetables that we had in the middle east (peppers, tomatoes, onions, leaks, etc) and not things that are here now such as sweet potato. Chickpeas (hummous), Sesame seeds (tahina), and various combinations of all these things with the nuts we had (walnuts) means.. well I feel amazing.

I've never had a fast food burger in my life.

It appears like this is true for some foods at least, dairy in particular. I believe Scandinavians have a much lower rate of lactose intolerance than equatorial cultures

Yes lactose intolerance rates in northern Europe are extremely low and they increase as you go further south or east. Looking at a map of the rates is quite telling. I guess it figures that it's thought to be a mutation that conferred benefits during harsh winters

I have Crohn's disease and I've wondered the same thing. Crohn's is affected by diet but triggering foods vary wildly by patient.

> Absolute T2D rates in the lowest and highest UPF consumers were 113 and 166 per 100 000 person-years, respectively.

Perhaps my love of potato chips is clouding my judgement, but on a personal level, that doesn't seem like a huge increase in risk.

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