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Comment by apwell23 | Hacker News Reader

Everytime there is a post about upf, there is always someone trying some pedantic " but what exactly is processing"

Article acknowleges the issue with definition and there a section titled 'Identifying ultra-processed foods'. Why not just run with it .

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The UN FAO definition cited above still at the very least sounds like a slightly dressed up version of "industrialized food production bad" (nevermind that it is responsible for all of the wins against malnutrition in the world). "a series of industrial processes, many requiring sophisticated equipment and technology" - like literally any industry? "fractioning of whole foods into substances" - like milling flour or extracting corn or potato starch from said plants? "assembly of unmodified and modified food substances using industrial techniques such as extrusion" - like extruding pasta? "use of additives at various stages of manufacture whose functions include making the final product palatable" adding stuff to make taste more godder describes literally any kind of food preparation? "sophisticated packaging, usually with plastic and other synthetic materials"?

Hello, are you describing oreos or dried pasta from 1950 here?

Because the definition given is useless. Additives I wouldn't use as a home-cook, thickener or emulsifier make it ultra-processed.

So anything with a thickener or emulsifier is ultra-processed? So now my potato-soup is ultra-processed because potato-starch acts as both (same with any kind of beans/lentils/starchy things)? What about that sauce where I intentionally add starch or flour? That pasta, where the cooking water emulsifies the sauce? That mayonaise where mustard and egg yolk act as an emulsifier? Risotto, where the rice starch thickens? What about roux? Reductions? Blood? Thickening with paprika powder?

By definition practically everything home-cooked is also ultra-processed. Anything containing any kind of starch is ultra-processed. This is either a completely useless definition, or the actual message is "don't cook food, ever".

You do list things that are not that good. As someone pointed out when you limit yourself to one thing it is usually not good. Potato starch is great but not if you only use that, and there is a problem of eating processed potatoes instead of unpeeled.

More greens and more fibers is a good thing, but also takes more work to cook well. The definition is not useless if you just use it as one part of understanding your ingredients, not the only way.

The definition given there is pretty useless, imo:

> In the Nova system, a food product is considered ultra-processed if at least one of its ingredients is a substance that home cooks generally don't use (such as high-fructose corn syrup or hydrolysed protein), or is an additive designed to increase the product's appeal (such as a thickener or emulsifier).

Whether or not home cooks use an ingredient has little to do with the health of that ingredient. And, at least from the abstract of the linked article, the additional details don’t inspire confidence that this is a meaningful category.

“Processed foods” is yet another example of the trend of giving something vague a name, attaching an emotional valence to the name and then using that anti-scientific emotional valence to influence public policy. (See also the politics of nuclear power)

The scientific thing to do would be to only use novel food additives when they have been proven to be safe, when they've been tested for toxicity, effects on the microbiome and the digestive tract specifically.

Many of the additives people complain about aren’t particularly novel.

Such a dogshit definition makes it impossible to target any specific chemical or process. With that definition and a meal, I can't tell you whether that meal is "ultra-processed" or not. Just tell me the processes, and show me the studies on them. If there aren't studies on them, do studies on them. But talking about "processed" foods actually seems to use generalization as a smokescreen that somehow still allows deceptive labeling, an enormous number of chemicals, and no specific criticism of the industry.

Food preservation is important, Fortifying foods with vitamins can be awesome. It's good when foods are cheap, food "preparation" and food "processing" are the exact same thing in English. There's always going to be processing. Finding out which processes can cause disease or ill-health is reasonably straightforward, if you want to do it rather than throw around political and marketing rhetoric.

72% less processed!

> Why not just run with it .

Because it is a waste of time at best, and disinformation at worst.

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