Are Ultra-Processed Foods All That Unhealthy?
openmindmag.org
openmindmag.org
The article uses a photo of what looks like fishball type products and imitation crab legs which illustrates the problem: while those are highly processed, they're made of fish that doesn't lose much nutritional value in the cooking and preserving process. They're nowhere near as bad as other processed foods like pasta or bread made from bleached flour where the germ and bran were discarded before milling.
what i've seen, is that UPF is usually defined as "a high proportion of the ingredients do not exist naturally in that form." so for example, the ingredients of an Oreo
> INGREDIENTS: UNBLEACHED ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE [VITAMIN B1], RIBOFLAVIN [VITAMIN B2], FOLIC ACID), SUGAR, PALM OIL, SOYBEAN AND/OR CANOLA OIL, COCOA (PROCESSED WITH ALKALI), HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, LEAVENING (BAKING SODA AND/OR CALCIUM PHOSPHATE), SALT, SOY LECITHIN, CHOCOLATE, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR.CONTAINS: WHEAT, SOY.
Of these arguably only salt really exists in its natural form with minimal processing.
Not doing food measurements by weight leads to shenanigans like the baker’s dozen, and volume is also affected by humidity.
according to one of the most used classifications there are four levels of processing:
* unprocessed/minimally processed food, where the food is either in its natural state or the processing has not added anything to it
* processed culinary ingredients, where the foods are extracted directly from natural state
* processed foods, which are natural foods plus processed culinary foods,
and
* ultra processed food, which are industrial formulations made with minimal amounts of base natural foods.
Humans have always done some processing of food. The ultra processed food since the industrial revolution has been identified as very unhealthy. That doesn't make the other foods not unhealthy; even foods in their natural state can be unhealthy.
https://ecuphysicians.ecu.edu/wp-content/pv-uploads/sites/78...
It’s also confusing because I’ve had lentil or chickpea pasta which is ultra processed but has higher fiber and protein and is probably healthier than wheat based traditional pasta.
That's why I think the nutrition value is the right way to look at it. The lentil pasta I've seen usually still has all its protein and fiber content like whole wheat pasta, but semolina pasta and white bread are made by first removing the bran and germ from the wheat which removes a lot of the nutritional value. That's why I'm arguing that white bread and pasta are ultra processed, whereas other foods like whole wheat and lentil pasta are highly processed, but not UPF.
IMO removing the bran and germ and milling it is taking the materials down to constituent parts and Frankensteining a new food item out of it. It's not as extreme as getting down to basic chemistry but it's still ultra processing.
The (sliced) potato chip is an interesting outlier. I don't think they're particularly processed but they're not very healthy to begin with. Focusing on UPF to the exclusion of nutrition value is a trap though.
The Nova classification is a framework for grouping edible substances based on the extent and purpose of food processing applied to them. Researchers at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, proposed the system in 2009. Nova classifies food into four groups:
Group 1: Unprocessed or minimally processed foods - Unprocessed foods are edible parts of plants and animals, along with algae, fungi, and water...
Group 2: Processed culinary ingredients - Processed culinary ingredients are derived from group 1 foods or else from nature by processes such as pressing, refining, grinding, milling, and drying. It also includes substances mined or extracted from nature....
Group 3: Processed foods - Processed foods are relatively simple food products produced by adding processed culinary ingredients (group 2 substances) such as salt or sugar to unprocessed (group 1) foods. Processed foods are made or preserved through baking, boiling, canning, bottling, and non-alcoholic fermentation...
Group 4: Ultra-processed foods - Ultra-processed foods are formulations of ingredients, mostly of exclusive industrial use, typically created by series of industrial techniques and processes. Unprocessed (group 1) foods often compose a small proportion of their ingredients or are even lacking entirely. Ultra-processing often introduces food substances of little or no culinary use, such as hydrogenated oil, modified starch, protein isolate, and high-fructose corn syrup. The manufacturing processes for ultra-processed foods typically involve techniques such as extrusion, moulding, and pre-frying, along with the addition of various cosmetic additives, including those for flavour enhancement and colour...
That tracks, although I'd point out near-synonyms were already around quite a while before that, such as "heavily-" or "highly-" [0], and it's not guaranteed that everyone using "ultra-" knows or intends to refer to the Nova thing.
[0] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=ultra-processe...
> Frozen and canned vegetables are often classified as ultra-processed
I think this goes against the common usage of the term "ultra-processed".
But that’s not what the majority of yogurts sold in stores are, they are heated and pasteurized killing live cultures, and then loaded with sugar added. It’s this yogurt product that more closely resembles a desert than a healthy yogurt that is bought/consumed and marketed as a health food.
It’s very similar to the majority of breakfast cereals, probably never as healthy as yogurt to begin with, but a bastardization of the “cereal grains” they are named after.
They just genrally have too much sugar.
Take Yoplait, it is made with pasteurized milk, so it doesn’t have the naturally occurring cultures. Like the added sugar they just add cultures/probiotics in, what’s important in this is that there are 1000s of species of probiotics and “added probiotics” is not the same as naturally occurring probiotics, which are generally limited to just a few species. In other words it’s a marketing stunt to market “probiotics” as if it were natural, but to reuse the word it is a bastardization of naturally occurring cultures.
You can also just ask a dairy directly.
To answer your specific question, farmers that have dairy cows. It’s not so common these days, but neither is healthy yogurt. Another example of a probiotic food would be kimchi, which in the US most people probably purchase in stores (pasteurized), but in SKorea many make at home so it’s raw with naturally occurring cultures and enzymes.
And yes the pasteurization of milk is to make it safe and it’s required by law in the US (if the milk/yogurt crosses state lines, interstate commerce).
You are right in that yogurt made with raw milk, the bacteria of the raw milk will typically overtake the bacteria introduced for the fermentation. Now we have come full circle to the point that modern store bought yogurt doesn’t have the same health benefits.
This may all sound counterintuitive that milk is pasteurized for health/safety reasons but pasteurized milk/yogurt doesn’t contain the health benefits of raw milk, or yogurt made from raw milk, but it’s rather straight forward: it contains health benefits but simultaneously potential risks.
Like all dietary/nutrition sciences there are plenty of studies for both sides of arguments (e.g. coffee is healthy/unhealthy, eggs are healthy/unhealthy), so you can easily find studies that contradict the benefits of bacteria in raw milk (certainly there is a potential safety risk) but here’s an NIH study supporting raw milk’s association with promotion of bacteria in the microbiome beneficial to physical/mental outcomes: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7285075/
Apparently not, as per the study you linked to.
"To our knowledge, there are no studies exploring the impact of unpasteurised milk intake on the gut microbiome."
> here’s an NIH study
It isn't an NIH study, it was done in Ireland.
"This research received no specific external funding but authors are supported in part by the Science Foundation Ireland in the form of a center grant (Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre Grant number SFI/12/RC/2273)."
> raw milk’s association with promotion of bacteria in the microbiome beneficial to physical/mental outcomes
The study was selection of 24 people out of a group that paid to spend 12 days on an organic farm in Ireland learning how to cook from a celebrity chef. During the stay they drank unpasteurized milk and ate fresh farm food and at the end had more lactobacillus in their fecal matter and some of them reported less anxiety. Unfortunately, I don't see much value in this data.
Follow the logic for the specific examples I gave, you will find studies where eggs are healthy/unhealthy and coffee is healthy/unhealthy
I provided a study that concluded there’s an association between raw milk and microbiome health resulting in positive physical/mental outcomes.
You clearly asked in bad faith, as I said generally raw milk is nutrient dense a significant source of fat, protein, carbs, vitamins and minerals. Unlike pasteurized milk that kills the good bacteria and enzymes, store bought milk removes much of the fat and adds sugar, it’s not the same product from a nutrient perspective.
Regarding the microbiome study, based on your objections, you wouldn’t be satisfied with any microbiome studies, nearly every microbiome study will be funded by a source you would find objectionable to fit your narrative whatever that might be, so I fail to understand your point besides being strangely argumentative on HN. Feel free to search the plethora of studies yourself.
Asking someone to a follow up for a statement of fact is not bad faith, and saying that it is, is just an attempt to shift me into some kind of villain so you get an escape hatch.
If you don't know what they are, say that. But to google a study that you don't bother to read and get super defensive when confronted about the fact that it is meaningless is childish.
* Is it the emulsifiers? Sounds plausible, but hasn’t been proven
* Is it the high calorie density/ease of chewing? Sounds plausible, but hasn’t been proven.
* Is it <insert pet theory here>? That, too, probably sounds plausible, but hasn’t been proven.
* Is it just the A/B testing? After a few rounds of optimizing for “do people eat more of substance a or substance b”, does it even matter what the ingredients are? Sounds plausible, but hasn’t been proven.
Meanwhile, to pick on one single example, you have jams in the Nova database that are “ultra processed” because they contain ”added” pectin.
The last time I brought this up, someone responded that they made homemade jam without adding any pectin at all, just by cooking the fruit for longer. So, clearly, Big Jam is making Frankenfood Jam by adding artificial pectin to thicken their product.
You’ll never guess how you extract pectin from fruit: apply heat.
While there is some processing, they typically aren't removing huge amount of material or being ground up into another form.
Trying to find out whether "Ultra Processed Food" is "unhealthy" then just becomes an excercise in unwrapping a tautology.
The problem either needs to be identified to specific ingredients, or just broadly to the group due to human tendencies (hyper palatable foods) that lead to the poor health outcomes so we can actually take action here. As it stands today, the nova classifications basically mean you’re just screwed if you want to truly avoid “ultra processed foods” today.
This is why there are now frameworks in place like the NOVA classification system to try break down and develop a degree to which something is considered processed.
Now that's some terrible logic coupled with a ridiculously handwavy statement.
What was the issue with low-fat recommendation? Why was it counter productive? Who messed up too many times? Who needs to make smarter changes? Smarter changes than what? More carefully than what?
I swear statements like that make my blood boil. Even if you replace either "we" with {"scientists", "nutritionists", "dietitians", "humanity"}, it's still a problematically sweeping generalization
AFAIK (not a dietitian), there's nothing inherently bad about lowering fat intake. I can imagine a low-fat diet that comes at the expense of increasing sugar intake could be bad, but that's because of the high sugar, not the low fat...
It seems pretty obvious that the "more careful" approach to ultra-processed foods seems is to avoid them? So long as you're not replacing them with something even worse.
AFAIK the issue wasn't with low-fat itself per se, but rather that fat was replaced with sugars for things to be palatable. This ended up being much more harmful than having fats, as sugar takes a toll on blood sugar levels and has high energy content itself.
As things got labeled low-fat, people thought this meant a healthier alternative, when in fact it was worse or similar. The view that it was more healthy led to higher rates of consumption.
I consider fats far more healthy than sugar, main issue with fats is their high amount of energy, but from blood sugar standpoint they're a non issue in my opinion.
So yeah there's nothing bad with say no sugar low fat yoghurt healthwise. I eat such yoghurt sometimes and find the taste refreshing. However most people would consider this totally unpalatable as the taste is bitter, not creamy at all and so on.
>Smarter changes than what?
Smarter changes than calling low-fat same as healthy I guess. Careful as in not labeling omission of some nutrient as healthy outright.
And when you get down to it, the palatable portion of the issue becomes the biggest problem. We suck all the fiber out of foods and feed it back to animals, and then leave the super high calorie portions to eat making it hyper easy to consume 10k kcals a day.
I don't think they forget, it's just not profitable to admit it or work it into their products.
That makes me think of a Pratchett quote:
> In fact, like a lot of [semaphore] towers, it was often manned by kids. Everyone knew it happened. Actually, the new management probably didn't, but wouldn't have done anything about it if they'd found out, apart from carefully forgetting that they'd known. Kids didn't need to be paid.
-- Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
For a bit more context, the semaphore towers in the plot are analogous to the early internet and issues of monopolies.
> They'd come and hang around and do odd jobs and maybe pick up the craft of semaphore just by watching. They tended to be bright, they mastered the keyboard and levers as if by magic, they usually had good eyesight and what they were doing, most of them, was running away from home without actually leaving.
I find palatability an odd thing in the sense that there's the phenomenon of acquired taste. In my experience acquired taste applies the most towards bitter foods and drinks.
I hated the zero-sugar low-fat yoghurt at first. It tasted horrible. The more I got into it however, the more I liked it's rather unique refreshing taste. It freshens the palate unlike any other food and as such I got used to the bitter taste and started to like it instead.
Same thing with beer, it seems everyone hates beer when they taste it the first time. The more you get used to it however, the more you find the taste refreshing I feel. Nothing more refreshing than a cold beer on a hot summer day.
>We suck all the fiber out of foods and feed it back to animals
Fiber for me is somewhat similar. I really love fibrous, almost rock hard, full-grain rye bread. My jaw will get sore from eating that, but there's something to it to really have to chew it down. However I used to hate it and love soft bread in the past: the texture and it's chewiness is akin to an acquired taste.
I remember one day I was walking through the grocery store, and was struck by the inanity of a package of candy-corn proudly declaring itself "Fat-Free!"
Two things:
- Why remove naturally occurring fat from a food? If to lower calories, why not remove total quantity of food, and fat in its natural proportion? Here's a fact: humans NEED dietary fat to survive. We don't need dietary carbs.
- When we remove fat, what is replacing it?
Dietary carbs are extremely valuable for energy purposes. Sure, you can be a keto nut and go completely no carbs, but extra carbs is valuable for energy reasons.
That said, ideally you should be replacing fat with more protein. Most folks get far far too little protein in their diet, and protein is necessary for maintaining and gaining muscle mass, which has a huge impact on obesity and body form. If you don’t have enough protein to maintain muscle mass but have excess calories then literally the only place for it to go is into fat stores…
Whether "extra calories" go to fat or are burned, is determined by your level of insulin. You can google this. As a starting point, I recommend any video or blog post by Dr. Jason Fung.
Eating a high protein diet is difficult to do, and also hard on the kidneys. It may work for teenagers and twenty-something males who want to unnaturally bulk up. It is not healthy for long life.
These days we have agro-tech out the wazoo and can, potentially, feed billions with fresh crops reliably and relatively cheaply, so the processed stuff doesn't have the advantages it once had and numerous disadvantages.
My diet's generally clean, but the book was a great reminder/jumpstart with clear guidance (eat less processed food) that's not preachy or prescriptive.
We still don’t understand how amino acids are able to perform such complex functions. We have zero understanding of how the same exact cell in every sense can evolve into different organs in the human body. We don’t even know how we fall asleep, or the complete role of serotonin and melatonin on sleep and mood - their interactivity (which influences which).
So who knows how the amino acids or whatever are the constituents of the foods we consume interact in our body. It’s definitely not a black and white answer. Depends on what exactly are we talking about and the physiology of the individual that likely influences it.
My hypothesis is that UPFs are not inherently less healthy, it's that they are cheap, convenient, and delicious, so it's easy to eat a little too much. I doesn't take much: fifty extra calories every meal is almost 20 pounds a year.
Other hypotheses I’ve seen include more sedentary jobs, endocrine disruptors, and cigarette smoking going away. Nicotine is a stimulant and an appetite suppressant.
I guess a combination of less nicotine and more sugar isn’t a bad one.
Of course it’s not that people were categorically more healthy back then. Heart disease was pretty rampant.
I can easily make cookies at home that are more palatable/cravable than anything I can buy at a store. And they don’t have any of those “other” ingredients. And let me tell you, 3 of those homemade cookies could easily be 1000 calories.
Fat to sugar was one of them, yet fat is very high calorie itself.
Another is that we've moved from jobs working on our feet to jobs sitting on our butts. Same with going outside and playing. Add to that in the US more people have moved to the southern part of the country with air conditioning and spend more time inside.
Mass removal of fiber from foods (hence the ultra processed part) make it far easier to over consume thousands of extra calories per day.
Another is the amount we go out to eat in the US. When I was young we might eat out a few times a month at most. Now the average is 4-5 times a week! Most places offer very large serving sizes so it's very easy to consume over half your daily calories in one meal.
I'd have to add in better marketing and placement of high calorie impulse foods in stores of all types.
https://ourworldindata.org/obesity#obesity-varies-widely-wor...
I don't think we've figured out exactly what's causing it. The simplest explanation is an abundance of easy, cheap calories. Some think it's some unknown/unstudied environmental factor like PFAS. There are various other theories. It's another unsolved billion dollar question.
However of course some processed stuff can be healthy. A vitamin D capsule is super healthy if you are low on vitamin D!
Not to mention you need to consider quantities. A gram of refined sugar is OK, probably neutral.
Potatoes have a lot of fiber in the skin, but fries remove all that.
(I've also been told, eating potatoes are like eating a plate of sugar)
It's even been shown that just freezing and thawing vegetables can significantly break down the fiber and vitamins so your body doesn't get the benefits.
If you need calories to survive potatoes are a good option, once you've met those minimum requirements they are a pretty terrible food in the sense it's really easy to over consume them.
This takes a complex carbohydrate, strips it of most of its fiber content, adds sodium and then adds trans fats through the deep frying process.
Say you revert to home cooked meals. Not the worst thing in the world & unlikely to cause harm...
Note I am also not talking about weight or weight loss. I am talking about being healthy, generally in the "lives longer and lives better" deconstruction of "healthy".
A few things I notice:
- "Processed foods" are lumped together as if they're all the same. But they're not. Specifically, processed foods with high carbs and artificial sweeteners have a very different effect on insulin than no-carb processed meats like most luncheon meats and bacon. Yes, Coke and donuts are bad for you. That has nothing, zero, to do with bacon. (Maybe bacon is bad for you. I don't think so. But even if it is, that would be for reasons completely unrelated to cookies, Coke, etc.)
- A lot, and I mean a LOT, of nutrition research is done by vegans and sponsored by vegans. It's a cult. They have re-branded themselves "plant-based." You sometimes have to dig to find this. Recent Stanford twin study is a good example.
- For the vegan researchers, the big win is getting the headline. They know (and this is true for all "science") that 99% of consumers who see the initial headline will never see the rebuttals. Recent Stanford twin study is a good example.
It's kinda like all that BPA stuff... I skipped it completely with bottles by just using glass. Glass is pretty well understood, I don't want to put my trust into a newly invented thing that replaces the other newly invented thing that we didn't figure out was problematic until decades after the fact.
Also, I'm not religious about it. I just avoid these things where I can.
This cracks me up. Who do you think has more money and vested interest to spend on bs nutritional studies: the meat / dairy / egg industry or "vegans"?
> Maybe bacon is bad for you. I don't think so
Right. Yea. It's those vegans who are irrational cultists.
Don't lump bacon in with "processed foods" like all that sugary crap.
In 2015 the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified processed meats (including bacon, salami, etc.) as group 1 carcinogens.
And if you go back and dig through the original studies, not a single one of them is a controlled study. Not one.
They always require people to fill out cards of what they ate months or years ago. (This problem is well known - google: nutrition observational study problem)
AND there's the problem that people who eat bacon - which is "supposed" to be bad - often are overweight, and eat and drink way more other stuff that's bad, like tons of carbs, alcohol, etc. Which means that teasing out any actual harm from the bacon, is determined by a statistician. Not so obvious after all.
But if you or I exercise, are healthy weight, eat bacon in a low-carb way, don't drink or smoke, and consume lots of fiber (all of which are true for me, don't know about you) ... it's really not clear how serious a risk factor the bacon is. Compared to just - the risk of being alive.
That conclusion is unsupported by the evidence that you're offering. It could also be explained by vegans simply wanting more research on nutrition.
Check out the Stanford twin study. Check out the rebuttals. Nina Teicholz is a good place to start for that. (Obviously you don't have to take my word for it, or hers, but if you're motivated, you can watch the entire process - the vegans, the headline, the data, the rebuttal.)
And the people suggesting eating more foods you can literally grow yourself in your backyard are corrupted business scientists? Make it make sense.
Also, by your logic, almost all journalists (except those who happen to have a PhD in the relevant science) should be ignored. Is that what you believe?
I don't know anyone with a backyard capable of feeding their entire family. Do you?
Most of the people who make comments like this sound more religious than most.
> Maybe bacon is bad for you. I don't think so.
It's well established that processed meats containing nitrates, like bacon, are carcinogens.
> A lot, and I mean a LOT, of nutrition research is done by vegans and sponsored by vegans
That's completely backwards. Actually a lot of nutrition research is paid for by large multinationals who sell ultra-processed food. That's where all the cash is.
Who are these shadowy rich vegan organisations?
Food-processing itself is quite unlikely to the problem, it'll be some common additive, or the general balance of fats (and fat types), proteins, carbs, micronutrients, etc.
For my money, the big problem, after sugar, is vegetable oil.
I also think steering people away from salt is probably misguided. So, take my view with appropriate salt. :)
I'm probably more thinking on how folks were told to avoid fats at all costs. And I do think that has changed for a time now. Though I still know folks that avoid things we were told were bad years ago. Bacon and eggs being easy examples. Butter, too.
I'm not clear on sugar substitutes. Would help if I knew more people that used them without being severely unhealthy.
My accusations were mainly on trans fats. And I ack that we've largely moved away from them. My suspicion is it will take time for that choice to fully take.
WRT seed oils, here's an article from a Cleveland Clinic dietician acknowledging the issues. Doesn't get more mainstream than that: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/seed-oils-are-they-actual...
If you ever dive down the rabbit hole of seed oil health, the place to start is the distorted omega-3 vs omega-6 fatty acid ratio ("The omega-6 to omega-3 ratio should be ideally 2:1 or 1:1, but for most Americans, the ratio is actually a whopping 10:1 or even 20:1." from that article) and the downstream pro-inflammatory signaling resulting from omega-6 metabolites. Paleo and other alt health people say this causes low grade chronic inflammation, with inflammation mediated disease like arthritis, atherosclerosis, and depression as a further consequence.
I don't necessarily believe they are the only bad thing we used for a while. They were strikingly bad, though. Such that I do think it is likely a lot of other things were vilified with it.
Peanut Butter Twix -- the apotheosis of ultra-processed calorie-dense junk food -- isn't even close, at 536 calories per 100g.
One can easily gain lots of weight by eating too many nuts -- and it takes fewer of 'em than one might think.
You can get overweight by eating high fiber food, but it's way harder to do so then eating a few bites that have 500 cals in them. And yes, nuts fall into the high caloric density category.
This isn't just talking about obesity. But also talking about other additives that make foods less nutrient dense for you, eating foods that can cause other adverse health problems outside of just obesity. Additionally, UPF foods are engineered to make them hyperpalatable, meaning you want to eat more of them than you would a less processed food. Lastly, processed foods are often stripped of many micronutrients that in some cases are artificially added back in. These nutrients we would normally get from unprocessed foods in abundance.
But I'll tell you this, when I eat cheddar sour cream ruffles, I feel like @$$. Thy taste so good going down but I will feel gross .
In my non physical fitness day, eating these wouldn't make me feel gross.
Are ultra processed foods unhealthy? Probably, especially if they make someone who is a high performing athlete feel gross. A body at peak performance demands clean macros.
But even at the end of the day, calories in, calories out.
Remember, a lot of the big food people came from big tobacco once the government started cracking down and they're just running the same playbook.
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gunter-kuhnle-13aba0171_a-who...
[2] https://www.bristol.ac.uk/people/person/Peter-Rogers-be40b6c...
[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/study-that-said-d...