The sliced and bagged bread on the shelves is also more processed than the bread you might make at home or even buy from the bakery section of the grocery store. There's a reason it maintains perceived freshness much longer than bread you might make yourself.
I don't think their definition is a reason to discard the study. Drop the word "ultra" and it's still true that more than 2/3 of calories being consumed are from processed foods.
EDIT: The term "ultra-processed" isn't meant to be a perfect ordering of all foods' nutritional properties. That said, they didn't come up with arbitrary designations. They confirmed that the nutritional value of the foods deemed "ultra-processed" by their methodology was, on average, lower:
> “In additional analyses, we compared the composition of ultraprocessed foods to non-ultra processed foods using data from the 2017-2018 period. We found that ultraprocessed foods contain a substantially higher percent of calories from carbohydrates and added sugars, and higher levels of sodium, but also had less fiber and a lower percentage of calories from protein,” said the study’s first author, Lu Wang, a postdoctoral fellow at the Friedman School.
Trying to identify edge cases where their designation might fail doesn't invalidate the study. The foods in their ultra-processed category were confirmed to be, on average, nutritionally worse.
The bakery section bread is sometimes sliced too.
Using slicing and bagging to distinguish ultra-processing is not a good idea, even if it sometimes correlates.
> I don't think their definition is a reason to discard the study. Drop the word "ultra" and it's still true that more than 2/3 of calories being consumed are from processed foods.
Processing can also mean so many different things. Sliced up raw ingredients to make a salad? Now it's processed.
"Ultra" seems subjective, but sliced bread is objectively more processed.
The mistake is assuming that "processed" is necessary a good measure of nutritional merit. A freeze dried turnip is more processed than a piece of raw honeycomb, but I'm pretty sure you'd give yourself diabetes eating honeycomb all day long while binging on turnips should be fine.
That's what the headline is implying.
But it's also that "ultra" sounds like it means a lot more than "also sliced it."
Either way, if we would all agree that it has nothing to do with nutritional merit, then go ahead and call the sliced bread whatever you want. But I don't think that was the intent of the study!
The definition of "ultra-processed" is in https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...
They covered that. It's in the linked article:
> “In additional analyses, we compared the composition of ultraprocessed foods to non-ultra processed foods using data from the 2017-2018 period. We found that ultraprocessed foods contain a substantially higher percent of calories from carbohydrates and added sugars, and higher levels of sodium, but also had less fiber and a lower percentage of calories from protein,” said the study’s first author, Lu Wang, a postdoctoral fellow at the Friedman School.
I think too many people are getting hung up on the technicalities of processed versus ultra-processed. The distinction isn't meant to be a perfect ordering of all foods on a scale of unprocessed to ultra-processed. It's a rough spectrum with helpful, though not necessarily 100% perfect, classification guidelines.
Regardless of what you think about their classification techniques, they also showed that the nutritional composition varied significantly with the ultra-processed foods in ways that are known to be unhealthy, so it's not completely useless.
Considering the vast majority of Americans get enough protein, I'm not sure why this specific observation is considered bad. Calories from carbohydrates (including sugar) aren't intrinsically worse than calories from protein. That's not to say most ultraprocessed foods are healthy, just that the observation doesn't imply they aren't.
For comparison, here's what the CDC has to say about added sugar[1]:
> Added sugars contribute calories to your diet, but no essential nutrients. Eating and drinking too many added sugars makes it difficult to achieve a healthy eating pattern without taking in too many calories.
The important thing is that ultraprocessed foods tend to have less micronutrients and encourage eating too many calories.
[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/healthy_eating/sugar.html
Some level of processing is unavoidable if your dinner is anything other than a foraged or garden salad. Many of our "processing" methods were once rudimentary preservation methods: pickling, curing, fermenting, etc.
The image of the greasy Costco-style pizza slice is usually held up as the poster-child for "ultra-processed" food, but they never go into great detail about which elements are particularly harmful. What if I make my pizza from scratch? Is natural-casing pepperoni still an "ultra-processed" ingredient simply by being cured? Or only if it's cured by nitrites and pumped full of preservatives? Is there any cheese that qualifies as minimally-processed versus ultra-processed?
The message gets muddled by being vague, because it always seems to come across as just "Eat healthier!", which is not terribly helpful.
"""Food substances not used in kitchens appear in the beginning or in the middle of the lists of ingredients of ultra-processed foods. These include hydrolysed proteins, soya protein isolate, gluten, casein, whey protein, ‘mechanically separated meat’, fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, ‘fruit juice concentrate’, invert sugar, maltodextrin, dextrose, lactose, soluble or insoluble fibre, hydrogenated or interesterified oil; and also other sources of protein, carbohydrate or fat which are neither foods from NOVA group 1 or group 3, nor culinary ingredients from NOVA group 2. The presence in the list of ingredients of one or more of these food substances identifies a product as ultra-processed."""
Clearly the act of separating parts of an animal is not adding unhealthy compounds to your food.
Which then makes me think: if they are willing to include that, how low is the bar for considering something "ultra processed"?
They remove most of the muscle meat, large fats, organs, and bones from a carcass, and then grind the carcass into a paste. The paste is then passed through a sieve under pressure.
nutritionally it likely has nothing to do with 'meat' as you know it from a grocery store or butcher.
I think they did the right thing in marking that as "ultra processed".
I am not willing to go into details on this. I will just say that "meat" does not mean the same for everyone.
Do your own research if you must. I don't recommend it.
It looks unpleasant. But the description of the process is no problem at all.
- hydrolyzed proteins: vegemite
- gluten: to make seitan or add to bread dough
- fructose: agave syrup
- high fructose corn syrup
- fruit juice concentrate
- invert sugar: golden syrup
- maltodextrin: in powdered soymilk
- dextrose: artificial sweeteners are mostly this by mass
- hydrogenated oil: vegetables shortening, no less healthy than butter (assuming no trans fat)
Yes they do. They put a short quote in the linked article and they expand on it further in the study:
> We found that ultraprocessed foods contain a substantially higher percent of calories from carbohydrates and added sugars, and higher levels of sodium, but also had less fiber and a lower percentage of calories from protein
This study was targeted toward food science, not the general public, but in my opinion they did a decent job of explaining the difference.
Really though, the defining line between processed and ultra-processed isn't a single ingredient that will make or break your health. It's a spectrum, and this study shows that the average dietary composition is shifting further to one end of the spectrum.
If you're trying to split hairs over the dividing line between processed and ultra-processed, you might miss the point. This isn't meant to be a guidebook about which ingredients are and aren't acceptable.
Sure, and maybe it's outside of the scope of the study, but if we want the pendulum to shift back the other way, we'll probably need to allow for some baby-steps. People won't give up their burgers, pizza, and microwave popcorn overnight. But you might be able to get some people to switch to a less-processed form of popcorn if you tell them, "Microwaved popcorn is problematic because it is coated in artificially-hydrogenated coconut oil. But popcorn made in a hot-air popper or on the stove with some regular vegetable oil does not have this problem."
Similarly, a person trying to make a "healthier", non-ultra-processed burger at home might be left wondering if such a thing is even possible, since hamburger buns and most commercially-available cheeses are ultra-processed by definition. I doubt that anyone at home has the inclination to try making cheese from scratch.
The industrial processes that make grocery store flour are not just the same old milling and sifting we've been doing for centuries, but a qualitatively different way to treat food.
Further, in the USA, several states still allow the use of bromate to speed up the flour aging process. Any industrial bread in those states will have this rather unhealthy chemical in it.
I'm not remotely surprised to see sliced bread count as "ultra processed".
Perhaps the human stomach needs to take its time digesting whole foods and fibers in their natural form to produce feelings of satiety for longer periods of time?
Not sure “slicing and bagging” is actually what would qualify it as ultraprocessed, but also not sure if those additional ingredients added actually are unhealthy.
In practice I find that white bread seems to lack whatever it is that makes me feel full. I can easily eat 2-4x the calories in white bread than I could eat from standard whole wheat baked bread.
I guess white bread, white rice etc are all fairly modern too.
It's fiber
Probably also has to do with the fact that bread has so little actual nutrition. The body isn't getting what it needs, so it prompts you to eat more.
For longevity, the best you can do is the right vegetables with meats and fruits in moderation.
I'm still looking for a good non-meta study on "processed" meats to see if anyone can identify a theory on the interaction between gut biomes and various food preparations. That could be some useful science for me.
[*] https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/what_is_ultra-processed_...
No. Stop making up lies about how ultra-processed has been defined.