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Comment by asciimo | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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.

lab meat would fit the bill I think ?

I am absolutely not an expert on that topic though.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

>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.

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.

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