Labelling soya foods as ultra-processed is unhelpful
alprofoundation.org
alprofoundation.org
Quote: > In an era of urgency to move populations towards more environmentally and nutritionally beneficial plant-based diets, making a simple switch to soya meat replacements and milk alternatives is a realistic and easy dietary change for most consumers to achieve
As far as I'm concerned, almost all highly-processed food "alternatives" consist of abundantly cheap ingredients (mostly based on soy, rice or corn), sold at a price of labor intense organic products. I think this is just profit driven greenwashing, nothing more.
Maybe McKinseyfication would have been better…
Edit: Added missing word.
Food processing isn't evil, it's to a large degree a necessity. The alternative to processed food isn't everyone eating the mythical, health and happiness-granting fresh produce - it's population dropping to levels from early 20th century, and most people working on a farm.
Food processing is what allows for both variety and for most of us to live far from where the food is grown. It does come with health costs, but you need to evaluate those in context of health impact of everything developed in the last 100 years, all of which depends on having most people doing something other than working the land. Or better yet, let's focus on specific processes, categories of food products, and corporations, instead of making a blanket "processed = bad" judgement.
Processed food is bad food. Bad food is better than no food.
“Your money or your life” makes it look like losing all your money is good because it kept you alive.
[0] Worked in the food industry at some point. I’ve seen how the sausage is made literally and figuratively.
If you buy pre-cooked chicken breast, for instance, that's 'processed' in at least three ways: it was cut up, it was seasoned (including with salt, which is a preservative,) and it was cooked. Is that bad for you? Maybe, if they add too much salt. Otherwise, it is probably indistinguishable from the chicken breast you might cook at home.
Pasteurization reduces food waste, but it also improves food safety. Are you better off without 'processed' (i.e., pasteurized) eggs if you're making something like Caesar dressing? I'd rather have the 'processed' eggs.
I try not to eat Twinkies, not because they are 'processed' (home-made, scratch-made cake is also 'processed',) but because they contain a lot of sugar and high level of saturated fat. Personally, I try to avoid sugar as much as possible, and if I'm consuming something with saturated fat, like beef, I want to have a meaningful amount of protein.
*Edit*
Before anybody WELL, ACKSHUALLYS my definition of processed here, please refer to page 5 of this[0] document from the US Federal Government which includes the USDA definition of processed food:
A processed food is “any food other than a raw agricultural commodity, including any raw agricultural commodity that has been subject to washing, cleaning, milling, cutting, chopping, heating, pasteurizing, blanching, cooking, canning, freezing, curing, dehydrating, mixing, packaging, or other procedures that alter the food from its natural state” (Dwyer et al. 2012).
Also note their (US Aid) definition of 'Ultra Processed Food':
Ultra-processed foodstuffs are marked by the addition of other ingredients (e.g., preservatives, flavors, nutrients, or other additives or substances, such as salt, sugars, and fats) (Dwyer et al. 2012; Martínez Steele et al. 2016; Monteiro et al. 2019).
So, if I take tomatoes, add even a minimal amount of salt and basil, and can them, that's an 'ultra processed food'. This is what the fancy San Marzano tomato sauce you buy at Whole Foods is. If you think canned tomatoes are fundamentally unhealthy in some way, I cannot help you.
In common dietary discussions, 'ultra-processed' foods are often understood as products that not only undergo extensive processing but also tend to have a low nutritional value and are associated with health concerns. While canning tomatoes with minimal salt and basil involves processing, it typically wouldn't be categorized as 'ultra-processed' because these additives are relatively simple and not intended to enhance the taste or shelf life to the same degree as many highly processed products.
>I think the disconnect here is that people don't consider that almost any action (process) applied to food post-harvest is 'processing' and it is difficult to draw meaningful distinctions between healthy and unhealthy foods based on the 'processed' description.
What often distinguishes healthier foods from less healthy ones is the presence of certain ingredients and additives. For instance, excessive salt, sugars, unhealthy fats, and artificial additives in processed foods can be detrimental to health when consumed in excess. A little bit of salt added to a can of tomatoes isn't that unhealthy. Adding flavour enhancer, thickeners and stabilisers, color additives, texturizers etc would make it a ultra processed food.
Which is also the NOVA definition. If you would have spent a minute looking at the sources in your document, it should be clear that a can of tomatoes with some salt and basil is not classified as ultra processed food.
>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10260459
>Generally, the practical way to identify if a product is ultra-processed is to check to see if its list of ingredients contains at least one item characteristic of the ultra-processed food group, which is to say, either food substances never or rarely used in kitchens, or classes of additives whose function is to make the final product palatable or more appealing (‘cosmetic additives’).
>The issue is not processing. It is ultra-processed foods, the fourth group in the NOVA system of food classification.
>Ultra-processed foods are not ‘real food’. As stated, they are formulations of food substances often modified by chemical processes and then assembled into ready-to-consume hyper-palatable food and drink products using flavours, colours, emulsifiers and a myriad of other cosmetic additives. Most are made and promoted by transnational and other giant corporations. Their ultra-processing makes them highly profitable, intensely appealing and intrinsically unhealthy.
The stuff you quoted is, for the most part, absolute nonsense. Ultra processed foods are characterized by the involvement of “transnational” companies? Some ingredients in processed foods can be detrimental to health when consumed in excess? Really? Water is detrimental to health when consumed in excess. What about ingredients in non- and minimally-processed foods? I can think of several you should only eat in minimal quantities. The USDA definition is “regulatory” in nature, but NOVA’s is — what, exactly? You didn’t really say, but I’m guessing something like “health-based.” Their “group 4” definition includes all pre-prepared frozen meals. How is that useful? A prepackaged meal could be unhealthy to eat, or it could be quite healthy. You’d have to look at the ingredients to know for sure.
That’s the thing - the only sensible thing to do is ignore the phrase and focus on individual ingredients and overall macro/micro nutritive content. Anti processed food advocates have rendered the phrase useless.
And, by the way, the only reasons to add salt to canned tomatoes are to a) enhance the flavor and b) increase shelf life of said tomatoes.
Nova defines 4 groups (https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova):
1. Unprocessed or minimally processed foods
2. Processed culinary ingredients
3. Processed foods
4. Ultra-processed foods
Research shows that ultra processed foods are usually linked with worse health outcomes. That doesn't mean that every single ultra processed food is bad, but it's enough to be cautious about it. It's better to buy minimally processed food, and cook it.
Neither one owns a substantially large amount of "low processed food brands" or processes significant amount organic produce. They may have a few products that are labeled organic, but that amount is neligible.
>Food processing isn't evil, it's to a large degree a necessity. The alternative to processed food isn't everyone eating the mythical, health and happiness-granting fresh produce - it's population dropping to levels from early 20th century, and most people working on a farm.
From your answer I gather that you do not know what ultra-processed food means.
>Or better yet, let's focus on specific processes, categories of food products, and corporations, instead of making a blanket "processed = bad" judgement.
Yeah, that... is what the category ultra-processed is for. It is not simply "processed" food. Ultra-processed foods are highly engineered products that go through extensive processing, created from inexpensive ingredients such as sugars, fats, starches and often contain a long list of artificial flavors, colors, emulsifiers, stabilizers, and preservatives. Processed foods on the other hand include canned vegetables, frozen fruits, and pre-packaged salads, with a shorter ingredient list and, usually, more nutritional value.
A simple oat milk contains maybe 2-3 ingredients, while e.g. Alpro not milk contains:
>Oat base (93.5%) (Water, Oat (8.3%)), Sunflower oil, Soluble corn fibre, Sugar, Pea protein, Calcium (Calcium carbonate), Acidity regulator (Potassium phosphates), Flavourings, Sea salt, Stabiliser (Gellan gum), Potassium iodide, Vitamin D2.
And that is the difference between processed (oat milk: oat, water, maybe some oil) and ultra processed food (soluble corn fibre, sugar, flavourings, stabiliser). None of this is necessary to obtain a tasty oat milk with a good shelf life.
Pardon my French, but I don’t know what the author of that article finds “easy” in that.
Soy milk tastes like s*t, as does soy meat, in fact one of the main reasons we, Romanians, deposed Ceausescu back in the day was because his technocrats had tried to impose on us to eat soy-based salami, all in the name of “rational eating”. In fact, one of the main complaints made against the returning diaspora after Ceausescu had already fallen was that said diaspora hadn’t really known the hardships of dictatorship, literally those guys were told that “you didn’t eat soy-based salami”.
Which is to say that I find all this present discussion about “rationalizing” our eating habits as highly dystopic, more dystopic still when seeing the discourse that goes against all this non-sense getting labeled as conspiratorial and thrown to the margins.
Plenty of great food made with tofu but I doubt that soy salami is any good.
In other words, if it's not highly processed...
You might want to look up the definition of highly processed foods. Hint: it's not the things you do in a normal kitchen.
No, it's something with much greater control over quality, safety and consistency than I could ever hope achieve in the kitchen. The difference between process chemistry and cooking is like between civil engineering and playing with mud in your back yard.
Now it's true that industrial processing of food optimizes for different features than my own cooking (e.g. shelf-stability, bacteriological safety, process consistency, and of course, cost, vs. taste customized to my liking) - but that alone does not warrant saying "highly processed = bad", or playing motte-and-bailey with the "definition" of the term.
EDIT: see also the edit to comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37632381 for an actual definition of "processed food" as this term is used in the industry and regulations, which reinforces my point, and happens to cover everything you do to food in your kitchen.
I guess I just assumed they were considered to be ultra processed since they're produced industrially.
I do believe the stuff you had in Romania at the time did.
But what is your base of comparison? I invite you to sample the produce a supermarket in a bigger German city has today in plant-based dairy/meat alternatives (soy and other). And then re-visit your opinion on this matter -- after bringing your taste bud's experience up to date, so to speak. ;)
> in fact one of the main reasons we, Romanians, deposed Ceausescu back in the day was because his technocrats had tried to impose on us to eat soy-based salami [...]
Yes, that surely was one of the worst things this "soy-dictator" and his henchmen did.
You, sir, must be joking. For if you don't, you do not know the the recent history of your peoples well.
Web search for “salam cu soia” and then try and use some google translate on the stuff you will have found, that way you’ll see that I wasn’t joking.
I'm going to guess the difference will boil down entirely to German soy milk being... <horror_movie_music.wav> an ultra-processed product :).
Meat replacement products are based on all kinds of plant proteins these days. Some of them taste pretty good, though the true meat lover won't be persuaded. Unfortunately they are still rather pricey compared to meat, even organic meat from the supermarket. Whether this is because of the small scale of production or because the target group can and will pay a Premium I can't say.
Can’t even buy bread now without it being bulked out with soya flour …
I think in breads case it does improve the softness and protein content but it’s really unnecessary and mainly in there as it shaves cost.
I found this somewhat disturbing and you appear to be mostly correct. I did find a few breads that don't list soy flour as an ingredient, mostly breads that specifically advertise a certain material like "100% whole wheat" or "Jewish Rye". (Oddly, the Jewish Rye didn't have soy flour, but it also didn't seem especially concerned about being a rye bread - it was made primarily of wheat.)
Thinking it over, I find it pretty unlikely that the soy flour is really hurting anything (people allergic to soy excepted), but it still feels wrong and I don't get the reasoning. The soy flour is always in the "2% or less" section of the ingredients, and even if it's cheaper than wheat flour, you could save even more money by just not including it at all.
Boudin Sourdough contains no soy while also not emphasizing that it's made from a weird material. It appears to be a mixture of wheat and barley: https://richmedia.ca-richimage.com/ImageDelivery/imageServic...
I can't figure out whether they are trying to adjust how credible the site appears / keep the broad public from looking at the site, or something else.
Alpro is obviously doing its share of lobbying, but here in France a law was passed to forbid the term "milk" for plant based milk. Soya "milk" isn't allowed on labels for instance. All across Asia everyone knows what it is, us French are apparently too dumb and would be confused. Almond "milk" is ok but only for cosmetics, so is coconut milk I believe.
All this is just the result of intense lobbying and, likely, corruption.
Good. I'm all for such laws. Soya "milk" isn't "milk" as the term has been culturally understood for millennia. It's not that people are dumb, but rather that words have connotations, and plenty of people, who don't happen to be nerds of fields adjacent to chemistry or dietetics, will assume that "soy milk" is like normal milk because it's called "soy milk". Same stuff with juices and other foodstuff types. And this stuff has consequences, often health consequences, especially for innocent people like children being fed wrong stuff by confused parents and grandparents (the latter you should excuse for not being able to keep up with the fast-changing landscape of marketing bullshit).
Or, looking from the opposite end - the companies introducing soy "milk" could've named it any way they wanted. They chose to call it "milk" to confuse customers. Well, fuck those companies if you ask me.
Are you sure?
- Almond Milk - Over 1,000 years (Middle Ages)
- Soy Milk - Over 2,000 years (China)
- Rice Milk - Centuries (Asia)
- Coconut Milk - Millennia (Southeast Asia)
- Oat Milk - Centuries (Nordic countries)
- Hemp Milk - Late 20th and 21st century
- Cashew Milk - Late 20th century onwards
- Poppy Seed Milk - Centuries (Eastern Europe)
- Tigernut Milk - Ancient Egypt to present (Spain)
- Walnut Milk - Consumed for centuries
https://www.google.com/search?q=vegan+baked+rice+cake+recipe
https://www.google.com/search?q=vegan+soy+milk+icing+recipe
> not by exchange-ability
Milk is often used in recipes for its fat, moisture, and flavor. Many plant-based milks can serve as effective substitutes, depending on the dish. Just ask any vegan.
Well maybe it's just me but "cakes using rice powder" are not rice cakes... rice cakes is wax-like material made from mashed steamed rice, used both as meal or dessert ingredients in warm softened state.
TLDR; You have it upside down. Any white liquid would usually be called "X milk" or "milk of X". In English and other languages. Provably so since centuries (see below).
Quoting from [1]: "Recipes from the 13th-century Levant exist describing almond milk Soy was a plant milk used in China during the 14th century. In Medieval England, almond milk was used in dishes such as ris alkere (a type of rice pudding)"
When humans discover something their language doesn't have word for, a common pattern is to use an existing word for something you know that looks/behaves/tastes similar and alter it to make the distinction clear.
In the case at hand the distinction is made by the prefixed noun. "Coconut milk" was used in the English language for yonx (1698)[2]. As was "almond milk" (14th century)[3].
Millennia? My brother is a linguist. Mainly Sanskrit, Latin, ancient Greek. He said he was really, really curious how you would back up this "[...] since millennia" statement.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_milk#History
[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coconut%20milk
[3] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/almond%20milk
I may be elitist, but I'd put that in the "dumb" category. I'm also not a parent so didn't look into babies nutrition yet, but I suspect feeding them anything but infant milk as a replacement for the mother's milk isn't going to do much good. Going in this direction, let's remove "milk" from all the products that aren't suitable. "skimmed milk", "chocolate milk", etc. ;)
Think about a canned coffee drink with 'milk' added, but then in very small letters on the side of the can it says *soy milk as an example
If it were for the reasons you listed, they'd require labeling it as "cow's milk" instead of just "milk".
Maybe the whole processed food labelling is unhelpful also in other products? Or maybe there is point in targeting some use of things like soya in certain ways...
Narratives are how markets work. Money itself is a simple narrative with complex dynamics.
I rather like https://www.epsilontheory.com/ for exploring markets from this perspective.
In case of tofu, even if you manage to invest the time to make it at home, you still need to marinate it so it tastes like something (adding all kinds of things here)… and then fry/cook it into a meal. Maybe you control everything that goes into it (“ultra processed by hand”?), but not in a very sustainable approach in terms of water and energy that goes into it.
Just because some food is organic, doesn’t mean it’s healthy, sufficient and sustainable to grow and eat. These “NOVA” labels feel like a response from meat/farmer organisations to try and keep the status quo for a while longer.
Of course plant based food requires processing because we want snacks to come looking as cheese, yoghurt, ham and steaks - it takes some doing to make soya beans look and taste the same way. So maybe there are degrees of processing (within plant based foods) that also create a range of what’s ok to eat and what’s been prepared in a way that’s unhealthy or unsustainable.
Here is one of the more recent meta studies:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S216183132...
There often seems to be some confusion about this. People often expect that vegan diet makes it harder to grow muscles. While all studies I found show the opposite.
But seriously thinking of more adulterated food than plant based meat and dairy substances is hard. And it's not like they're healthier than the unprocessed version. Tofu is not better for you than chicken breast
It takes less energy for me to not pay my mortgage. Let’s see how that works out.
Just like skim/low fat milk is bad.
Tofu has flavour. You have to remember soy milk is basically the left over shit from making tofu. All the healthy shit is left in the pulp including the flavour.
Not true.
First, you make soy milk by rehydrating soybeans, blending them with water, cooking the mixture, and then straining it. The remains are called okara. If you add a coagulant to the milk and cook it further, you'll get tofu curds, from which tofu is made. The remaining liquid is whey.
> Tofu has flavour
Flavour of raw tofu depends on the type of coagulant used.
> If it’s 100% national it’s disgusting. Most of what you buy in the super markets have added sugar.
Not all 100% natural soy milk is considered distasteful by everyone; taste is subjective.
Sugar is added for people who don't like the taste of a natural plant based milk - as a taste enhancement to make these milks taste sweeter and more palatable, akin to the naturally occurring lactose (sugar) in cow's milk. Sugar can improve the body, texture, and mouthfeel of plant-based milks, making them feel richer or creamier.
Not all plant-based milks contain added sugars. Many brands offer "unsweetened" versions for those who prefer no added sugar or are monitoring their sugar intake.
Obviously or they wouldn’t sell it. Doesn’t change the fact majority of it has added sugar and is unhealthy and worse than full cream milk.
Dairy is scary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcN7SGGoCNI
Derived from a bovine's udder, cow milk is essentially a white, viscous secretion containing fats, hormones, bioaccumulated pesticides and herbicides, and sometimes pus and blood from infected teats, all filtered through a mammary gland that often comes into contact with dirt and feces during the extraction process.
Cow milk, routinely touted as a wholesome beverage, can legally contain up to 400 million somatic cells (often referred to as pus) per milliliter in the U.S., and traces of blood, all originating from inflamed and possibly infected bovine udders, making one wonder about the purity of the seemingly innocent white liquid.
Cow's milk also naturally contains hormones, including Insulin-like Growth Factor-1, estrogens, progesterone, prolactin, and oxytocin; also some cows receive artificial hormones like rBST to enhance production; when consumed regularly, those hormones may impact the growth and reproductive functions of consumers.
In the relentless cycle of dairy production, cows endure forced impregnation and a shortened lifespan — typically 5 years instead of the potential 25+. The record lifespan for a cow is 48 years. Newborn males are typically culled immediately, while females are separated from their mothers shortly after birth, crying for each other usually for weeks.
And we haven't addressed the land needs and environmental impact of dairy production. This includes deforestation for pastures, high water use, greenhouse gas emissions from cows, runoff of pesticides and fertilizers polluting water, and contributions to soil degradation and biodiversity loss.
But sure, soy mik is worse ;)
It's the same almost everywhere.
- European Union: The limit set for raw cow's milk is 400,000 somatic cells per milliliter.
- Canada: The limit is set at 400,000 cells per milliliter.
- Australia: The limit is 500,000 cells per milliliter for milk intended for human consumption.
- New Zealand: The limit is 400,000 cells per milliliter.
- India: Standards can vary, but the limit often set is 500,000 cells per milliliter.
- Brazil: The limit is 500,000 cells per milliliter for Grade A milk.