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Comment by dolni | Hacker News Reader

The complete lack of rigor and the use of shock-headlines around "ultra-processed" foods drives me nuts. It conveys very little useful information.

Pharmaceuticals are ultra-processed and completely unnatural, yet many of them are life-saving. Clearly then, mere act of processing something doesn't make the thing bad for you.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody that constantly horking down Mountain Dew, Little Debbie snack cakes, and Doritos isn't good for you. We all know this, we don't need a headline for it.

Give me some useful information. What are reasonable thresholds for these junk foods? How about for specific ingredients?

Ranting and raving out of the way, do yourself a favor and skip to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization classification document [1] linked in the article. It actually answers some of the questions I posed.

[1]: http://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf

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> Pharmaceuticals are ultra-processed and completely unnatural, yet many of them are life-saving. Clearly then, mere act of processing something doesn't make the thing bad for you.

I have to admit though, I'm not aware of any food that would be considered "ultra-processed" yet known to be good for people.

> I'm not aware of any food that would be considered "ultra-processed" yet known to be good for people

What does "ultra processed" mean? Cheese, bread, olive oil and most vegetables require processing to be made or nutritionally useful. Freeze-dried vegetables are quite processed and quite good for you.

> What does "ultra processed" mean? Cheese, bread, olive oil and most vegetables require processing to be made or nutritionally useful.

I don't have a scientific definition for you. Just use your common sense to figure out what average people would intuitively call ultra-processed, whatever it means to them. I'm pretty darn sure you would not arrive at the conclusion that ordinary people consider bread and most vegetables "ultra-processed foods".

Why is bread not considered ultra-processed?

I am trying to use my common sense here. To create it, you must apply mechanical processing to grind wheat. Chemical processing for the yeast to reacting to the sugars. thermal processing to cook the bread. There is evaporation of the liquid in the bread.

This seems like a lot of processes required to create this.

Bread could be classified as either processed or ultra-processed depending on ingredients and manufacturing techniques.

Ultra-processed bread would probably be made to have a longer shelf life and likely have more additives and preservatives.

if you buy (from a bakery, probably not from the grocery store) or make bread made from minimally processed to processed flour, water, salt and yeast it would probably be considered minimally processed or processed. When I make homemade bread, those are literally all the ingredients. It has a very different texture, chewiness, and taste from something storebought. They're basically different things. And it doesn't last more than a day or two after cutting it open.

If you buy bread made from bleached white flour, sugar (in pretty much any white bread you buy from the supermarket), bread conditioners, preservatives, etc, it's probably considered ultraprocessed. It can also sit in your pantry for weeks.

Bread can be ultra-processed. It can also be made with ground wheat grains that don't remove the germ or get bleached.

> Why is bread not considered ulta-processed?

Even traditional bread is certainly highly processed, undergoing mechanical (milling), biochemical (fermentation), and thermal (baking) processing. It doesn't quite meet the definition of ultra-processed though as all these technologies are readily available to unsophisticated producers.

I think ultra-processed is some sort of proxy for hyperpalatable here.

Indeed, there's a definition but this just adds the the starting comment's point that "ultra-processed" barely means anything in relation to how healthy something is to eat (and at what quantities).

Wouldn't most supermarket bread flour by itself meet the definition of ultra-processed, because it is bleached and enriched with micronutrients in a way that almost no consumer can do in the kitchen?

> because it is bleached and enriched with micronutrients in a way that almost no consumer can do in the kitchen?

What gave you that idea?

Bleached flour and various additives (such as ascorbic acid) are routinely used in home kitchens:

https://thebreadguide.com/using-ascorbic-acid-when-baking/

What, exactly, do you think goes into making a loaf of mass-produced bread?

The bleaching is what makes the flour, and by extension the bread made from it, ultra-processed, even if the bread is baked in a home setting. You misread.

Yes, I 100% did misread! My bad!

They're processed foods, but not ultra-processed. Generally that means advanced factory processes and chemicals that are only used in industrial settings. Factory made bread is likely to be ultra-processed, however.

Can you provide an example of a factory process that is only performed in a factory (and not in the kitchen + grocery store, e.g. flour is preprocessed wheat)? bonus points if this process applies to bread making.

Compare the Chorleywood process to the way you would make bread at home https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorleywood_bread_process

If I'm reading this right, literally the only difference between this process and the one used in a home kitchen is "intense mechanical working by high-speed mixers, not feasible in a small-scale kitchen".

Otherwise the raw materials are the same:

> Flour, water, yeast, salt, fat, and, where used, minor ingredients common to many bread-making techniques such as Vitamin C, emulsifiers and enzymes are mechanically mixed for about three minutes.

In what way does this represent "processed" food in any material sense?

If anything, this sounds like a perfect example of the kind of fear mongering associated with the "processed food" label...

> Otherwise the raw materials are the same

Edit: I misread, sorry

> one uses dissolved co2 and low protein wheat and the other high protein wheat. One also goes through a fermentation process while the other does not. Salt content also varies

You've misread the Wikipedia page.

What you're describing is Dauglish's process that preceded CBP. Here's the key bit from the introduction:

> In 1862 a radically new and much cheaper industrial-scale process was developed by John Dauglish, using water with dissolved carbon dioxide instead of yeast, with no need for an eight-hour fermentation. Dauglish's method, used by the Aerated Bread Company that he set up, dominated commercial bread baking for a century until the Chorleywood process was developed.

Notice that last part of the sentence.

CBP, as described in the Wikipedia article, "is achieved through the addition of Vitamin C, fat, yeast, and intense mechanical working by high-speed mixers".

In particular, no CO2 is used with CBP. Bread is proofed by "[placing the dough] in a baking tin and [moving it] to the humidity- and temperature-controlled proofing chamber, where it sits for about 45–50 minutes", with the process aided through the use of dough conditioners like ascorbic acid.

My bad, thanks for the info

Not bread but... instant coffee, refined sugar.

Instant coffee is simply coffee that is freeze-dried. That is the only step added above and beyond normal coffee-brewing. It is likely one of the least processed foods one can buy.

Ok instant granulated coffee.

> Just use your common sense to figure out what average people would intuitively call ultra-processed

How do I do that? Are we averaging the opinions of other people, or taking the opinion of the average person? By what metric?

> I'm pretty darn sure you would not arrive at the conclusion that ordinary people consider bread and most vegetables "ultra-processed foods".

That depends on what you mean by bread. The sourdough loaf that I make out of flour straight from the grinder is a far cry from cheap white bread.

Well according to the UN document linked in the article a loaf of bread is ultra-processed

"Another example of how broadening the initial definition of a highly or ultra-processed food may create confusion is the use of terms that, in themselves, are not precisely defined. For bread, initially defined as such in the NOVA food classification, examples might be the use of terms such as sliced, mass-produced, or sweetened. Their exact interpretation is not self-evident. [...]" [1]

Again, there's no unambiguous definition here. The UN has drawn one line out of many potentially valid ones. My point here isn't to argue word semantics. I'm just saying look at what the average person would consider "ultra-processed", whatever their definition (or lack thereof) might be.

P.S. I'm not even sure what you consider "ultra-processed bread" is good for people in any case.

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

I mean the whole wheat bread I eat everyday is sliced, mass produced, and sweetened a little bit (as are almost all whole wheat breads, regardless of whether they’re mass produced) - I’m pretty sure it’s as good for me as any other whole grain.

For me it is the grinding and removal of fiber.

This is a very important distinction as it changes the glycemic index and will cause blood sugars to rise much faster on consumption than an unground food with its entire fiber content.

The fiber commonly becomes animal feed.

In my opinion, ultra-processing requiring equipment, procedures or chemicals found only in a laboratory or factory, not a typical home kitchen from the past century or so.

That's overly simple though, the definition is here: https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova (this seems to be a summary of the definition in FAO document linked above).

The guy who invented Fritos made them at home- does that mean they're not ultra-processed?

Potato chips are another example. They can be made at home from ingredients that could otherwise be considered healthy. It's just that when you combine them in the right proportions, it can be hard to control how much you eat.

The other misnomer is labeling chips as "not nutritious." They're loaded in macronutrients. They often don't have many micro nutrients, but most people aren't actually short on those.

The main problem with some of these foods is they're calorically dense, but not filling.

And Kellogs now owns Pringles.

One definition of processed would be the amount of "steps" required to take from the base ingredient.

So if you make falafel for example, it's only two steps removed from chickpeas, as it's just mildly grinded and fried. That being said it's an exercise to the reader in determining if each "step" is equally bad. In general steps involving the destruction or heating of the food are worse than the "separation" (e.g. peeling or cutting vs frying or blending).

Ultra processed is defined by the FAO (The UN Food and Agriculture Organization) thusly:

> Formulations of ingredients, mostly of exclusive industrial use, made by a series of industrial processes, many requiring sophisticated equipment and technology (hence ‘ultra-processed’). Processes used to make ultra-processed foods include the fractioning of whole foods into substances, chemical modifications of these substances, assembly of unmodified and modified food substances using industrial techniques such as extrusion, moulding and pre-frying; use of additives at various stages of manufacture whose functions include making the final product palatable or hyper-palatable; and sophisticated packaging, usually with plastic and other synthetic materials.

Source: http://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf

I believe this is the widest standard used to define "ultra-processed", though there are more sentences and paragraphs in that doc explaining the definition more thoroughly.

Thanks! It seems like a two- or three-prong test: (1) cannot be made at home using commonly-available tools and ingredients, (2) uses "industrial techniques" and "additives" and (3) is packaged.

The second prong seems ambiguous to the point of uselessness. "Industrial techniques" are covered by (1); "additives" seemingly impossible to define within this context.

They also have a definition of "additive"

(a) food additive means any substance not normally consumed as a food by itself and not normally used as a typical ingredient of the food, whether or not it has nutritive value, the intentional addition of which to food for a technological (including organoleptic) purpose in the manufacture, processing, preparation, treatment, packing, packaging, transport or holding of such food results, or may be reasonably expected to result, (directly or indirectly) in it or its by-products becoming a component of or otherwise affecting the characteristics of such foods. The term does not include contaminants, or substances added to food for maintaining or improving nutritional qualities, or sodium chloride;

http://www.fao.org/3/Y2770E/y2770e03.htm

The FAO has a standards body that will give you tons of detail to back up their papers.

http://www.fao.org/fao-who-codexalimentarius/en/

That would still seem to cover the coagulants necessary to make tofu, the rennet used to make Gruyère or Parmigiano, or nitrates and nitrites for cured meats. I suppose "nor normally used as a typical ingredient" could be the turning point, but that does seem to acknowledge the question's complexity by, effectively, grandfathering in traditional additives.

That's pretty broad. Some of those things might be harmful, some might not be. I doubt extruding dough, cooking ("chemically modifying") it and wrapping it in plastic makes it any worse for you, for example. Whereas on the other side of the spectrum, there may indeed be food additives or chemical treatment process that _do_ make things worse.

Maybe it's not helpful to paint things with such a broad brush, and we should instead focus on specific substances or practices which might be causing problems?

Cooking can form many very bad things, e.g. neurotoxic heterocyclic amines.

Plastics commonly leach hormone disruptors to food.

As this document acknowledges, though, quite a few normal foods fall under their definition of "ultra-processed". Pasta sauce, sausages, ice cream, even bagged bread are all included.

So, almost all cow milk sold in supermarkets is ultra-processed by this definition: centrifuged, reconstituted in measured ratios of liquids and solids, and pasteurized. Likewise, non-dairy milk like soy milk, which additionally has gelling agents added to control mouthfeel.

That's a heck of a broad definition!

> soy milk, which additionally has gelling agents added to control mouthfeel

I'm sure all brands differ, but the box in my fridge says "Ingredients: Water, Organic Soybeans".

AFAIK, if the amount of an ingredient is small enough, it does not need to be listed on the packaging. The label is not authoritatively inclusive. Food for thought.

yes. very similar to how “organic” constitutes a range of acceptable values and does not mean all ingredients are organic (and organic itself does not mean zero pesticides/chemicals)

Example, Tic Tac mints are essentially entirely sugar yet fall under that threshold so the nutritional information reads '0g' of sugar per serving.

Yes. Coincidently, most modern cow milk is not really good for you.

That's right, paleo cows produced keto-friendly milk back in the stone age.

Ha ha, I maek funny coment.

You know cows didn’t change, we just started separating the milk and reconstructing milk-like products. The classic Simpsons ”Malk” gag is not far off.

And yet:

- Cold-pressed, extra virgin olive oil is considered to be the healthiest due to its fat and polyphenol content.

- Traditional cheeses are more nutritious than Kraft singles.

- Whole grain is more nutritious than Wonderbread.

- Freezing, cooking, and the passage of time all destroy vitamins and other micronutrients.

Protein powder?

Ensure / Boost? (important for people who can't chew food)

Canned or similarly preserved foods? (important for people without access to reliable refrigeration)

Even staple grains (wheat, rice, corn) are pretty highly processed. One can't exactly eat these raw, they need some machinery and sometimes chemistry to really get at the nutrients.

I guess this all depends on your definition of "ultra-processed" and "good for people." But the processing of food is a discovery that allowed for the civilizations to appear. Feeding people on fresh meat and veg doesn't scale.

> I'm not aware of any food that would be considered "ultra-processed" yet known to be good for people.

So, no meat substitutes for you, then? Because if Beyond Meat burgers aren't "ultra-processed", I don't know what is.

> So, no meat substitutes for you, then?

Is there something on my profile that indicates I only eat things that are good for me?

Yup, that was poorly phrased. My bad.

Let me try that again:

I'd say a lot of people view meat substitutes as a healthier choice. But the Beyond Meat burger is, to me, the very definition of an "ultra-processed" food.

"Ultra-processed => not good" does not imply "not ultra-processed => good".

And I'm pretty sure people who believe Beyond is healthier are wrong regardless of how we classify Beyond Meat. (Though I'm not even sure the majority of Beyond Meat eaters believe it's healthier in the first place.)

> Though I'm not even sure the majority of Beyond Meat eaters believe it's healthier in the first place.

I disagree. I suspect a lot of people believe Beyond's products are healthier simply by virtue of not being meat.

Heck, they might be right, though I tend to agree with you and suspect it's at best a wash.

Also, thanks for the refresher on modus ponens and the fallacy of the inverse. ;) It's been a long time since formal logic... not that I miss it...

Milk is ultra-processed. Lots of folks consider milk to be a healthy beverage option (in moderation, like everything else).

Vinegar is ultra-processed and is believed to have some health benefits. [1]

Coffee, same deal. Ultra-processed, believed to have health benefits. [2]

[1]: https://www.webmd.com/diet/vinegar-good-for-you#1

[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/well/eat/coffee-health-be...

I assume when people talk about “ultra-processed” they’re talking about foods which 90% would agree are bad for you: foods with a lot of added sugar or oil, or almost everything else taken out. e.g. candy, fried foods, chips, pizza on white bread, fruit juice. Is pasta ultra-processed? What about salami? Mashed potatoes? Cheese? Honestly, no. Actually, high-calorie foods like cheese or wheat pasta are very nutritious. Of course a diet consisting of pasta, salami, and cheese with a side of mashed potatoes is probably bad. But it’s better than the above.

I wonder whether kids are really getting fat off of even hot dogs, mac and cheese, steak and cheese subs, and corn. Or if it’s the added sugar and refined carbs - candy, soda, white bread, “snacks”. People say that kids’ diet in the 60s was the former, and they were fine.

Honestly “ultra-processed” can be misleading because it isn’t the processing which is bad, it’s the amount of fat and carbs vs. protein, fiber, water, and other nutrients. Maybe we could call it “junk” food but that’s even more ambiguous.

> I assume when people talk about “ultra-processed” they’re talking about foods which 90% would agree are bad for you

So then we should just call it what it is: junk food.

"ultra-processed" is no better than "gmo", i.e. a completely meaningless label designed to scare people because of spooky "technology", as opposed to actual information people can use to make informed decisions.

> Maybe we could call it “junk” food but that’s even more ambiguous.

LOL... damn, okay, I admit it, I didn't read all the way to the end before commenting. I'm leaving this here as it's a good reminder for myself to slow down...

Just as an aside. Is it really "added sugar" in candy where the entire point is that it's mainly made out of sugar?

"Ultra-processed" is a pretty meaningless standard. Pasta and Cheerios are very processed but part of the process is being fortified with loads of micronutrients. Cheerios are better for you than something like white rice which is almost pure starch. And high-fructose corn syrup has the same nutritional value as raw honey despite being processed. There's no substitute for just reading labels.

Flour is arguably "ultra processed."

Most flour should be classified as minimally processed by the FAO source others are referencing in the thread.

> Unprocessed foods altered by industrial processes such as removal of inedible or unwanted parts, drying, powdering, squeezing, crushing, grinding, fractioning, steaming, poaching, boiling, roasting, and pasteurization, chilling, freezing, placing in containers, vacuum packaging, non-alcoholic fermentation, and other methods that do not add salt, sugar, oils or fats or other food substances to the original food.

Source: http://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf

This whole argument strikes me as very similar to the "appeal to nature" fallacy

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

"Clearly then, mere act of processing something doesn't make the thing bad for you."

It bothers me too, but I think the problem right now is they don't exactly know what part of the "ultra processed" foods is harmful yet.

totally agree. i think there is no baseline at all for “healthy food.” it means different things to different people. even high calorie foods can be healthy for some groups.

i think this argument about processed foods tries to simplify it too much when there’s really a lot of different factors. high in calories? no vitamins? known carcinogens? individual allergies or trouble digesting? this one size fits all approach to labeling food good and bad ignores the details.

and the real issue is education: do you know what you’re eating? and how much? and what your body needs? i’d rather see answers there than “big soda bad” and “chips bad”

It becomes tougher when pizza or bread can exist in all of the NOVA food classifications.

http://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf

All this about a headline? What kind of nuance are you demanding with respect to the impact of ultra-processed food on health in a headline?

> We all know this, we don't need a headline for it.

The headline doesn't communicate that. It communicates that U.S. kids are consuming an abundance of calories from those foods.

> mere act of processing something doesn't make the thing bad for you.

It doesn't communicate that either. That is prior knowledge on your part.

> Pharmaceuticals are ultra-processed and completely unnatural, yet many of them are life-saving. Clearly then, mere act of processing something doesn't make the thing bad for you.

Is someone suggesting to get 70% of calorie intake from pharmaceuticals though ?

You've extended the analogy beyond its intent or demonstration to show what, exactly? "70% of calorie intake" is not some magic figure. There is nothing inherently important or mythical about that number.

This was not an analogy, it was a flawed comparison. Is OP supporting ultra processed food because pharmaceuticals are ultra processed ?

Food containing lots of sugar and no fibre is a good example of what people call “ultra-processed” food. Eating fructose without fibre is pretty bad.

> In other words, no doughnut is a minimally processed food.

Will someone please let me try a minimally-processed doughnut?

My mom used to make homemade doughnuts. That was a long time ago, but I don't think the process (heh) was much different from making other sweet baked goods and other fried food.

I've never tried making them because I think muffins or cookies are just as good without the hassle of frying.

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