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Comment by l5870uoo9y | Hacker News Reader

You can use the Nova classification[0] which has 4 groupings. First 3 are nutritionally harmless, the fourth is highly processed.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification

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You inserted a dichotomy that isn't present in that article. The article explicitly points out that it does not say anything about the nutritional value. It does not say that the first three are nutritionally harmless, nor does it say the implied opposite that ultra processed foods are nutritionally harmful.

Yes, and while there's a correlation that's worth noting, it really bugs me when people don't separate the concepts of processed vs unhealthy. If you refuse to tease these apart, you open up the door to marketing fruit smoothies and pizza and literal goddamn sucrose as health food on account of natural-ness or some inconsequential reduction in processing. I see this "health aesthetic" all over the place and conversations I overhear indicate that people go for it. This is not good and it's a direct consequence of fudging the distinction between processed and unhealthy.

I don't want to defend what's in those aisles of the grocery store I don't visit, but I have a problem with the definition. It amounts to a list of ick nobody should put in their mouth in any combination. The problem is that some of the supposed ick is marginal: Is a Pop Tart(tm) with a dyed HFC "berry" filling really, measurably, "worse" than a slice of toasted artisanal bread with farm to table butter and jam? You shouldn't eat either one in large quantities. One is obviously ickier, but, so?

Whey protein vs tofu? One is in your favorite Hunan dish, the other is sold in tubs next to dubious supplements. But, so?

Perhaps an urban myth but my general rule of thumb as a non-expert has been: more processed = more carcinogenic

Roughly speaking, if you remove Nova class 4 you are back at mid-century eating habits and I doubt anybody would dare to claim that they weren't much healthier than today with 2/3 of US population being overweight. "Unhealthy" groceries still existed, but the quantities consumed were much smaller.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#/media/File:Li...

> mid-century eating habits

So pies made with lard, sugar, and served with whole-milk ice cream?

pop Tart has literally tens of ingredients, toasted artisanal bread with butter and jam has at maximum 10, all natural. Seems quite obvious the diference.

He didn't ask if they were different, he asked if they were "worse". It is not obvious at all that having more ingredients equals worse.

I know there is a tendency to think of ultra-processed as bad, but perhaps a better way to think of these categories is that for the first two (or three) categories it is scientifically much easier to show that they are harmful. For the ultra-processed category there are so many chemical products inside the food, it is a lot harder to show harm or harmlessness.

Think of risk profiles rather than harm amounts.

Curious choice of mustard as main picture of the article. Dijon mustard has like 4 ingredients: mustard seeds, salt, vinegar and bisolfite. Among processed canned condiments it must be the healthiest one.

Dijon mustard is processed, not ultra-processed.

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