Better cognitive ability from less snacking of processed carbohydrates
studyfinds.org
studyfinds.org
here's a counterpoint:
> Nutrition has made no progress. It has discovered no stable facts. Everything nutritionists have said, they have said the opposite ten or twenty years later (if not much sooner). They literally know nothing. After a century of countless experiments, the most common, most basic problem they’ve addressed—the optimal ratio of fat, protein, and carbohydrate—is completely unsolved. If they can’t figure that out, anything more sophisticated seems hopeless.
Why do you think there is any confusion about the overall health effects of eating meat, eggs, and dairy? With $ billions at stake - of course they find unethical ways to find some statistical anomaly to make their products good along some narrow dimension - and then have their money-funded media stories amplifying the lies.
I strongly recommend https://nutritionfacts.org/ - a non-profit focusing on finding the signal through the noise.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/death-as-a-foodborne-illnes...
Because I have genuinely no idea whether you think that meat, eggs, and dairy have positive or negative overall health effects.
Meat consumption has reliably been found to have bad effects on health.
You're pretty much saying that, as long as you ignore the studies which you consider to be illegitimate, then the outcome of the science is clear.
The fact of the matter is that research showing that eating meat has a negative impact on health also suffers from conflicts of interest. Now, those conflicts of interest come from many researchers compassion for animals - and there's a big moral difference between that and conflicts of interest which come from the greed of the meat industry. But from a scientific perspective, it's not legitimate to simply dismiss one side and accept the other.
Not everything has to be a both sides equivocation . Degree and severity matter. "Compassion for animals" and "receiving funding from a party with a vested interest in the outcome" are not equivalent conflicts of interest.
But from the scientific perspective, there is a specific factual question: what are the effects of meat consumption on human health? Nutrition research is super finicky. Even absent any conflict of interest, it's unclear that nutrition results are trustworthy. So I don't think it's fair to throw out every study which says meat is healthy and just focus on the studies that say meat is unhealthy.
That's not what we're talking about, however. We're talking about what level of suspicion is appropriate in various scenarios. It's unlikely we can _know_ if results were purposefully sabotaged or not. We have to make some best guess. Interested parties funding studies is deeply suspicious, and should be treated with a hefty dose of skepticism. Hand waving that "maybe the researchers were motivated by empathy?!" is not at all equivalent. That is a incredibly low bar that, itself, undermines trust in science, as one could trivially make up similar excuses to distrust virtually any study ever conducted. Oh, researchers found declining sources of fresh water year over year? Biased. They probably just like cheap drinking water. Better ignore it. An Aquafina-backed study shows the opposite. That study is biased, too. But they're both equally morally reprehensible.
Person A sees someone torturing a dog and kills them out of indignation.
Person B is a hitman-for-hire who doesn't know who he's killed or why.
Are person A and B really morally equivalent?
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/190362/total-us-wheat-pr... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1167209/leading-global-c... [3] https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/05/12/266748.... [4] https://www.statista.com/outlook/cmo/food/fruits-nuts/fresh-...
[1] https://www.statista.com/outlook/cmo/food/vegetables/fresh-v...
I feel like it is beyond the "replication crisis" of any other science when your replication crisis involves potential war crimes. (p-hacking looks so quaint in comparison.)
If any other science had that sort of foundation and its replication problems that entire science would likely have been thrown out by now. A lot of people still think that there must be some sort of baby in all that extremely tainted bathwater and are afraid to throw it out.
(I have come to believe that nutrition science has become the last bastion of Phlogiston Theory in any of the sciences, and that is more damaging than people realize.)
Associations with cancer risk or benefits have been claimed for most food ingredients. Many single studies highlight implausibly large effects, even though evidence is weak. Effect sizes shrink in meta-analyses.
Is everything we eat associated with cancer? A systematic cookbook review; Jonathan D Schoenfeld 1, John P A Ioannidis. 10.3945/ajcn.112.047142
Eating less reduces your need for food ('adaptive thermogenesis'), and hence total oxidative stress load. This almost certainly reduces your risk of cancer and also more than likely slows aging. [4]
[1] https://journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/jappl.1958.1...
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27136388/
At a minimum, you would need to force people to eat a certain diet, with no option to sneak in a few snacks while the researchers aren't watching.
And you probably need to do this for a whole generation (ie. from birth until death) to really get good data to prove that diet X leads to better outcomes than diet Y.
But they certainly have some advantages over, say, studies based on food frequency questionnaires.
Large-scale high-quality research on humans isn't possible.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/records-found-in-...
The optimal diet for someone who is completely sedentary is going to be completely different to the optimal diet for someone who gets a reasonable amount of exercise, and it's not going to be a flat multiplier.
The protein needs of an athlete are completely different. Simple carbohydrates are processed differently if eaten prior to heavy exercise. That's just the basic stuff.
The best advice I've read is to just eat and move like a mature adult.
That doesn't necessarily mean never having a sweet or a beer, but it does mean prioritising full real meals over stuff like donuts, cakes, 50g sugar "coffee" drinks etc.
Nutrition facts that have been known for 20+ years:
1. Increased calorie consumption causes weight gain.
2. Diabetics are unable to properly metabolize carbohydrates without insulin.
3. Fat is necessary to hormone production.
4. Protein is necessary to create or maintain muscle mass.
5. Carbohydrates with high glycemic index cause fluctuations in blood sugar and energy levels.
6. Fiber promotes bowel regularity.
7. People with Celiac diseases have an autoimmune response to gluten, a protein found in grains.
8. Iron is necessary to cognition, motor development, and energy levels.
9. Vitamin A promotes eyesight.
10. Calcium is necessary for bone strength.
11. Vitamin D promotes Calcium absorption.
Not a comprehensive list, just what I could think of off the top of my head.
Nutritional science is roughly concerned with the question, "what constitutes a healthy diet?", and it has failed to produce even partial answers at every turn.
Please cite your source.
Just one source of many: https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h3580 (2015)
(I was concerned you'd say that's so obvious it doesn't count, not the opposite...)
> 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 come from cellular and molecular biology, not nutritional science.
These have all have nutritional studies.
For example, #7 dates back to the late 19th century, decades before molecular biology.
Another vastly replicated result you can find quite easily: low-glycemic-index diets and ketogenic diets can produce weight loss despite caloric excess.
And lastly, a reasoning from first principles reveals a prima facie credible flaw in the caloric balance hypothesis: the body is not a closed system, ergo the law of conservation of energy does not apply. More vulgarly: you can do things like "work up an appetite" or "shit excess food".
Google Scholar is positively littered with relevant literature, so I'm somewhat surprised by your skepticism. Good key words to enter are: "carbohydrate-insulin model" vs "energy balance model". The carbohydrate-insulin model is also credibly debated, of course, but the question of whether this is the right alternative is distinct from the question of whether the energy-balance model is correct.
In no specific order, here is a pair of completely arbitrary papers, intended only to show that relevant papers can be found with minimal effort:
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002604...
- https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/115/5/1243/6522166
I'm not objecting to the energy-balance model, which may well be correct in an important way. I am merely pointing out that nutritional science has not managed to reach consensus on this fundamental issue.
>These have all have nutritional studies.
The nutritional studies did not produce these initial findings. Without pointing to specific papers, it's hard to be very precise, but I would be willing to bet that these are either dietary studies building off of biological first principles, or replication-checks in broader studies. Both are totally fair practices, but can't be considered as an indication that nutritional science is a fruitful field.
If you run 20 more miles every day and eat 100 more calories, I suspect you won't gain weight.
The banality of your arguments speaks for itself.
I disagree. What seems simple enough may actually be the last piece to be figured out. We don't have as much knowledge about the fundamental blocks, atoms, as we would like, but that has seldom stopped us from building sophisticated applications using it. If anything, us not figuring out could only be an indication of how inherently complex nature can be.
In the early days of AI, before the winter, people thought that getting computers to play chess would be hard but walking or recognizing faces would be easy. Turns out that difficulty is often not where we expect, except for a general tendency for more complex more macro-level things to be harder. Even then there are exceptions, but nutrition has not shown any signs of being one.
Anyone who makes this statement and doesn't understand that this ratio depends on personal behavior is a flat out absolute idiot and shouldn't make any public facing statements. No way to sugar coat it.
This is regardless of whether nutritionists made any progress.
Nutrition is the smaller field about about what to eat, but it still can't say what to eat!
You can spot them in the comment section being upset about the page on how probability theory doesn't actually let you replace all human thoughts.
I think the basic Michael Pollen formulation, which is "Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants" has held up pretty well.
Why do you think that said optimal ratio even a thing? We are omnivores evolutioned to be able to survive on any type of food.
This entire article reads like someone only understand the field by reading clickbait headlines about nutrition (“Eggs are good for you now”) and then assumes the scientists and journalists are one and the same.
It also sets up a lot of straw man arguments that rationalists are likely to come up with but that you would hear from actual science, such as the idea that they’re searching for a rationally perfect diet.
I don’t know what’s going on with that site but it’s not really a good resource. Identifying some areas where the science isn’t clear or where observations has changed and then trying to use that to dismiss an entire field is a classic anti-science trope used by people who prefer to feel superior to scientists and to downplay science. It’s most commonly used on topics like climate science or anti-vaccine research.
Only if one looks any deeper they find that the journalists printed the summary provided by the researchers. That they accurately captured the message the researchers were pushing. Researchers want eyeballs, and they want the funding that comes with attention, along with the personal prestige, and this has proven incredibly corrupting. Add that a pretty good percentage of nutrition research is funded by parties with deeply conflicted interests.
In any case, the site is largely accurate. The nutrition field has made extraordinarily little progress. Right now, in 2023, pretty much the only solid nutrition conclusion is "don't eat too much. Eat a variety". Almost everything else does not stand any scrutiny at all. It seems entirely valid to dismiss the nutrition field given the past forty years.
It's actually interesting watching a subreddit like /r/nutrition. The place could as easily be people discussing their healing crystals and chakras. That's where we're at right now.
The parent comment is trying to dismiss an entire field and also preemptively dismiss new studies based on some past anecdotes.
It's the exact same trick used by climate science deniers who go back and cherry pick some old studies where the conclusion changed: Pick some old studies where the conclusion changed, announce that science is fallible, then dismiss the entire field.
It's ridiculous logic to anyone who understands how science works, but it's very appealing to people who like to be contrarian.
If they're observational or survey based studies, they should be dismissed generally, or at least given incredibly little attention. Even worse they're usually 2nd order "I took some terrible observational studies, put them in a pile, and now I have a study of studies" bit of bunk that is a bit like CDOs: Just layer the junk and pretend it has value all together. We have decades of doing this now to have learned that it is extremely low value, and simply repeating the same pattern again with new biases and assumptions is not going to improve the situation.
Nutritional studies are really, really hard, short of creating concentration camps and assigning diets to sections for decades.
If you were studying physics by doing a survey on what people's opinion of gravity is or what their recollection of their acceleration rates for the past year, you'd probably not have great results.
What is your point? Are you suggesting that they are not to blame? They certainly write the articles. They may even be a part of juicing up the headline sufficiently to become a perfect clickbait.
Only few months ago, an article was written about recovering in 'no work' spaces, which happened to include cars. Fortune title? Scientists say car is your meditation spot ( I am paraphrasing a little since I am quoting from memory ).
When they're literally quoting almost verbatim the claims of the researchers, no they aren't to blame. And the vast majority of the time you see an article with some breathless claim, it is capturing the essence of the research summary, or the press release put out by the university or think tank.
See, journalists like their jobs to be easy. They generally aren't spinning whole wool. As Graham's The Submarine describes, often they're basically reprinting something sent to them with minor wording changes.
That's my point. And my point was amply clear in my original post. Blaming the journalists is often nonsensical sophistry. A hail mary to try to recover some semblance from busted research, as if it's the messenger who is to blame. The worst part is that the blame the journalist people create a vacuum in which even worse sources of information grow.
Not sure the vaguely remembered, poorly communicated anecdote (which I can find zero references for) supports your point.
You do have a point.
I feel vaguely attacked. See article[1]. Original title that you can still see in search engines, because it was only changed after pushback:
>>You need to detach and 'psychologically recover' from work, professors say. The solution: commuting<<
What I appear to be getting from your post is: 'No one is to blame. No one could be held liable for their actions. It is all sophistry.'
Which is funny, because I am willing to agree the system has perverse incentives to mess with things at numerous checkpoints, but you cannot realistically claim this, because researchers ( and indeed all humans ) like their jobs easy as well.
[1]https://fortune.com/2023/02/02/remote-work-why-do-i-miss-com...
I am quite specifically hanging the blame on researchers who are perpetrating junk science. Most observation / survey based science is junk science. Most "study of studies" research is junk science. It's lazy science to get media attention, and the more salacious or contrarian the outcome, the more appealing it is for some subset of researchers.
This isn't an attack on science or scientists in the whole, clearly. But when you see some breathless article exclaiming that eating an olive pit twice weekly makes you live twenty years longer, blaming the columnists seems foolish. In almost every case they're simply repeating the claims of bad science.
I am not automatically disagreeing, but that is a pretty strong claim. I am relatively certain that a well chosen survey participants ( that are not mturk or local body of students unless actually applicable to the study ) could make for a decent study. I can't really opine of observation, but on the surface it strikes me as a very strong claim as well.
<< But when you see some breathless article exclaiming that eating an olive pit twice weekly makes you live twenty years longer, blaming the columnists seems foolish. In almost every case they're simply repeating the claims of bad science.
And this is where it gets tricky. Do editors/publishers merely parrot it or add media cycle friendly spin on it?
<< I am quite specifically hanging the blame on researchers who are perpetrating junk science.
I think I am willing to mostly agree with that statement in a sense that they ultimately responsible.
That said, it is hard for me to believe that editors/publishers would publish it if standards were a tad higher and not chasing attention.
We've looked for those answers, and they don't exist. But the media has to deliver them anyway, so they do, and they cherry-pick and misinterpret studies to do so. Some attention-hungry researchers cater to them, and a lot of doctors with more ambition than shame try to get rich selling books and supplements.
We're not limited by our nutritional knowledge anyway. When it comes to eating and health, we have much bigger problems to solve than the current nutritional unknowns. Most individual members of society suffer from ignorance and false beliefs that are way, way worse than the uncertainties and false results in nutritional science, and most people feel psychologically incapable of acting on what they think they know anyway. Any forces trying to educate and empower people are massively outgunned by shamelessly unprincipled hucksters filling the air with whatever noise they can sell on one hand and blatantly evil food industry marketing on the other.
US nutrition advice is basically just a contest in how many carbs you can eat.
A very generic counterpoint.
Nutritional science has no such trophies
Study link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01918...
I'm not saying their hypothesis isn't plausible, their data just doesn't get us an inch closer to confirming it...
Then you would find that eating health food correlates with high-education. The correlation is real: if you see someone snacking cucumber, he is likely highly educated. It doesn't mean that eating more cucumber will make you smart though.
False. They found that when people's cognitive ability was starting to wane, they were more inclined to reach for processed carbs.
The novelty here is in misrepresenting that correlation as being causal in the reverse direction, in the absence of any real evidence to support this.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019188692...
A sudden blood glucose spike can do that. Source: Being a type 1 diabetic. Drawing conclusions from just eating/drinking is however a bit optimistic since many variables are at play.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/10/for-then-against-high-...
Maybe you're just sarcastic with calling it processed sugar because of dicing (and omitting apple's fiber, vitamins, amino-acids, minerals, enzymes and more)?
"Croissant diet" Croissant is actually the least nutritive food possible https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7498104/, You'd get issues eating that. I actually experimented something similar (white bread almost only for 2 years), started to have mental issues
Saturated fat is not specially an issue (it would maybe have prevented mental issues in my case, brain needs fat, croissant richer in sat fat than white bread, but I dislike butter), I don't know how you derived from processed sugar to saturated fat, many natural food contain small amount of saturated fat
(Yes, I might have narcolepsy, possibly induced by night-time medication that's still hanging around; I take morning modafinil at fairly high dosages and try to take breaks to interrupt the tolerance process. I'm also experimenting with yerba mate, but the overall effect of that seems more suited for late-night social situations than getting amped for work.)
On the other hand, I feel far less slugglish when I cut sugar. So fed, but less sugar (perhaps up to a point, not sure about ketones given the brain prefers sugars apparently)
Another thing that helps since I don't drink coffee anymore is eating veal liver for energy levels.
It's like an espresso shot, perhaps even better. Quick internet search showed me that it wasn't just an impression.
Something like 12 years ago I started fasting and training based on some of the regimes olympic marathon runners were putting out there at the time. I went 24 hours without food and did a set of leg workouts. Within minutes of leaving the gym I developed a fever and a pain in my back. When I checked myself into the emergency room I was expecting to hear that my appendix burst but had a serious conversation with the ER doctor about a giant tumor that they found in my retroperitoneal cavity. Wild shit.
Years later I found out that studies have shown that fasting causes "Autophagy". .."Autophagy allows your body to break down and reuse old cell parts so your cells can operate more efficiently. It’s a natural cleaning out process that begins when your cells are stressed or deprived of nutrients. Researchers are studying autophagy’s role in potentially preventing and fighting disease."
I'm of the opinion that had I not have fasted and did an intense workout I would have never have caught this stage II\III cancer in time. The malignant tumor's in that part of the body leave no physical symptoms. The next stop would have been the lungs and the brain...Take that for what it's worth.
Maybe/probably you just have carb withdrawal and can't feel the effects ?
My personal example is do keto. Stay some time in it so no carb withdrawal. Then try fasting on top. I see the difference, and is just like increasing fat ratio, so it's probably higher ketones in blood stream (too lazy to measure them during the day though).
The easiest to fix is DBT2, can use virtahealth.com for a prescription paid by insurance.
The other harder problems are serious mental illnesses, but only small trials are going on, see https://metabolicmind.org/
On the other hand, there exists evidence that hardcore keto just for weight loss doesn’t outperform non-ketogenic low carb, and you can even lose weight successfully on low fat, but these things are BIG whichever you choose:
1) lose all ultraprocessed and junk food, regardless of macros
The results from low fat and low carb groups are approximately the same in long term outcomes, as long as both groups stop consuming junk food.
2) fix your sleep hygiene ASAP
3) get movement during the day
4) stop eating before evening
About 3): my N=1 confirms that brisk walking even for 30 minutes does wonders to my blood glucose levels. There are also studies that confirm that long walks do lots of good and that it’s not just me. Hitting the gym is optional, and you can invent reasons to spend an hour a day or two walking.
I’m positive that keto should be more for those who find it improving their mental state and diabetes; general population, not so much.
5) Limit consumption of (mostly) omega-6 polyunsaturated vegetable oils. Use virgin olive oil (mostly monounsaturated) and saturated fats (butter, ghee, coconut oil, even lard) instead. The exception is: try to get as much omega-3 as possible.
6) Eat foods with high and diverse micronutrient content or use supplements. It's really easy to be slightly deficient in some essential micronutrients. Especially magnesium, which is really important and deficiency is really common.
Nuts and seafoods are good for both of these, but supplementation may be advisable. As for the fats, evidence continues to accumulate that contrary to "official" public health advise for the last 60 years or so, saturated fats are NOT harmful to cardiovascular health, certainly much less so than highly processed polyunsaturated fats (and almost all of them are processed in some way or other, because naturally they are hard to extract and spoil rapidly). Also saturated fats stand up much better to high heat, whereas polyunsaturated fats will always produce some trans-fats during pan or deep frying.
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> On the other hand, there exists evidence that hardcore keto just for weight loss doesn’t outperform non-ketogenic low carb > I’m positive that keto should be more for those who find it improving their mental state and diabetes; general population, not so much.
Good luck in practice though! Good luck being a doctor or a personal trainer and telling that to your patients/clients (just eat a small ice-cream bro! just suffer through it).
Not everybody is a body builder (they do the gain/cut thing).
> Hitting the gym is optional
This should not be optional. Unless you train in your job or something.
>2) fix your sleep hygiene ASAP
This and your other points should be unrelated to the diet.
> About 3): my N=1 confirms
Depends how "good" you want to feel and if you want to experiment with even better.
Feel free to N=1 on yourself by fixing everything first, and only then, try a very-high-fat keto diet (~80% fat). You might be wrong on this one (many people are, meaning starting keto when they're already done everything else).
You can ask your doctor or you can search online in a keto forum.
Things that have personally worked for me:
1. pour a lot of olive oil (say 10 tablespoons) on salads. After eating the salad I just drink the olive oil.
2. Get MCT oil during the day in tea spoons.
3. (best/cheapest for me and I currently do) Get beef fat trimmings and fry/air-fry/slow-cook them (see https://www.instagram.com/p/CrhH9CBo1mC/ for that and other high fat carnivore recipes)
It is. But you hopefully get used to it?
Other examples:
1. eat only egg yolks (i'm actually alergic to egg whites)
2. Eat the foods with most carbs before gym. This way you can utilise some carbs for gym and you'll still keep high levels of ketones (see /r/ketogains protocol)
3. See the instagram account I linked.
4. See what they do for epilepsy (hint: they kinda drink oil because they need 90%)
The beef fat trimmings are still kinda oil, just in nicer form and nicer taste. Literally eat 0.5kg-1kg of beef fat trimmings a day (they get 1/4 size after cooking)
Neither am I. I do modest workouts so I don’t lose muscle on keto, but it’s mostly to manage type 2 diabetes and lose body fat (which, again, is to manage the diabetes and maybe get some of my insulin sensitivity back).
> > 2) fix your sleep hygiene ASAP
> This and your other points should be unrelated to the diet.
But turns out, they are. The human organism is a complex thing, and it turns out that if your circadian clock and eating habits are out of sync, you’re royally screwed. Sleep is not an afterthought, it kinda all starts with it.
- 30 minute walk (or some exercise) after every meal. My mantra; if you're giving yourself fuel you need to use it. Otherwise it just stays in the bloodstream causing problems.
- No processed carbs.
- Limit fried fats.
- No eating for 2-3 hours before bedtime.
The way I feel is night and day than before I started this healthy lifestyle.
Though, as you said, happily that is changing.
(Edit to say, speaking as a certified ketobro, I don't think you should do keto all the time, forever. A break day or two every few weeks, and stretches of healthy mixed-diet eating, in my experience, gets you the same benefits)
Not just healthy, but essential. You need a certain amount of fats for your sex hormones to actually work, so unless you want to stop menstruating/not interested in having erections, keep eating healthy fats.
furthermore, we have sensors in our body to inhibit sugar craving in the presence of glucose or sucrose. we have no such sensor for fructose. so even if you did have 50% pure fructose in cane sugar, you would drink less real sugar coke because you'd feel satisfied after drinking a much smaller amount than those HFCS abominations.
Sudden jump off keto may cause inflammatory damage to the endothelium of your blood vessels, and while in that one study, effects had been “transient”, I wouldn’t risk cheat days without a very gradual reintroduction of carbs, and surely not repeated cheat days. (My personal fat diabetic ass says it had a lifetime of carbs, though, so that’s not happening for me until at least 20 kg later.)
I know it’s just one study, but I would rather be safe than sorry until we know more. Case in point: the study subjects were all young and healthy, and most people who really need to go very low carb are not.
So a 'cheat day' should probably be more like eating some wholegrain bread, lentils, some raw fruit of choice, or stuff like that. If you're on keto, that will almost feel like eating candy anyway :)
Why not? I eat proportionally an immense amount of cards. I also do long distance endurance events. No cards = no go.
Here's a study on the affects of nitrate's improving brain performance in older adults. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3018552/
Ketosis has had the opposite effect for me and I've never been able to balance the keto-flu with my normal day-to-day activities. I feel like garbage.
It's pretty easy to fix the flu. How long did it last for you?
Getting rid of most carbs and other inflammatory foods is the general theme of some diets.
AIP diet in particular.
I prefer to only do my endurance exercises in a fasted state, anywhere between 12-24 hours. The only thing i ingest is some salt, magnesium and potassium and water. I have no problem and I feel great. 30 minutes on the bike with resistence turned up or jogging 2-3 miles. Ketones burn cleaner than glucose with less reactive byproducts. There is a study on pubmed that found when the brain has the choice between glucose and ketones in the bloodstream it chooses ketones. You don't need dietary carbs, your body can make its own glucose from proteins if it needs. There's plenty of research on this.
Examples:
* White flour has the the germ and bran removed, leaving on the endosperm.
* Table sugar has everything filtered out from cane/beat except for the pure carbohydrate.
* Fruit juice has the fleshy parted removed, leaving only the liquid juice.
Obviously:
1. It's a spectrum. Some foods are more processed than others.
2. It's a heuristic to promote good nutrition. Processed doesn't necessarily mean bad, but 4/5 times it facilitates poor nutrition and/or overeating.
And besides food can be manipulated in not just factories. I know a lot of small places that cure meat and this is considered processed food, as it is high in salt and preservative.
For example, if you want to know how to maximize muscle growth through eating, ask a competition level bodybuilder. Yes, they'll be on gear, but they'll still be able to tell you how you should eat and with the proper ratios to maximize muscle growth. They'll also be able to tell you how to eat cleanly because cutting weight is part of their competitive training cycle.
Likewise, if you want to know how to eat healthy, ask a fitness model. They make their money by looking good for cameras and will want to maximize that through their diet.
These folks aren't looking for fads, they've already learned, implemented, and lived what actually works from others who were also competitive in these fields.
education is key to any endevour and knowing who to get yoru advice from is the first critical step.
(not a nutritionist)
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/10/for-then-against-high-...
"I think the most likely dietary change I make is to try to avoid foods with soybean, corn, or safflower oil, since this is probably a good stand-in for “foods processed enough that they count as processed foods and you should avoid them”