Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

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Conversations about processed, heavily processed, and ultra-processed foods always trigger people who recognize that it’s an imperfect measure. It should be interpreted as a heuristic, not a perfect 1D measure of a food’s healthiness.

As a heuristic it correlates quite well to many measures. The more someone’s diet falls on the ultra-processed end of the spectrum and the less they eat of unprocessed foods, the higher the rate of health problems.

A simple example of the effects of processing would be considering an apple: Eating a whole apple is the healthiest because you consume all of the fiber and the digestion process is slowed because you have to break it down. Crushing it into something like apple sauce preserves much of the structure but now it absorbs faster and it’s easier to overeat it before your body can recognize it’s full. Processing it further to apple juice removes the fiber and now makes it spike your blood sugar and it’s easy to consume a lot of sugar.

Ultra processed would take this even further, packaging it in a container with added sugar and some preservatives for shelf life. This is where it enters kids (and adults) diets, where it is far removed from the unprocessed Apple it started as.

It triggers people because it's dumbing down something to the point of near uselessness. It's very much similar to the nonsense that is telling people not to eat "chemicals."

Congrats, you found an example involving a basic item that works. I suppose that means something, and now people should go drink unpasteurized milk and RFK Jr. was right all along.

The reason telling people not to eat chemicals is dumb is precisely because you lose the richness of the structure of the argument by taking the category of chemicals and casting them all in the same 1 dimension. Like saying, "Pharmaceuticals are dangerous."

Proponents of the dumbing down basically suggest just memorizing all the counter examples. Congratulations, you successfully reduced the problem of recognizing junk food down the problem of recognizing junk food. I'll avoid processed food except the processes that are good, like baking bread instead of eating raw flour, and it's good when it is bread but bad when it's cookies.

In reality, the measures that people need to legitimately follow aren't actually all that complex. You don't need to reduce it down to one dimension. You would be much better off if you just kept track of these 3 or 4 dimensions.

1. How many calories do you eat in a typical day. 2. How satiated they are after a reasonable number of calories. 3. If they aren't pooping well, eat more fibre. 4. If you really want to get nerdy about it, track macros.

Doing so isn't actually all that complicated. In fact, I don't think a lack of knowledge or recognition of the issues in their diets is the issue. It's really the harsh reality that people struggle to manage the vices they already are fully aware of, and telling them about the dangerous of "processed" foods doesn't meet this issue in any way.

This is a bad characterization of the processed food scale which suggests you haven’t actually read any of the research or the processed food criteria, you’re just assuming what it means.

Equating the research to RFK Jr is a strange attack, given that this is actual research that you’re dismissing and replacing with your own idea that you can sense if your food is healthy by some arbitrary criteria you came up with.

It’s also ironic that you dismiss it as a dumbing down and then propose your own extremely reductive criteria as a replacement which completely misses the issues being studied. It’s possible to have a eucaloric diet and eat enough fiber while also having significant negative health effects ranging from glycemic control issues to rapidly progressing cardiovascular disease.

But in your examples you might as well say "low-fibre" instead of "ultra-processed" and you would be closer to the truth.

>The more someone’s diet falls on the ultra-processed end of the spectrum and the less they eat of unprocessed foods, the higher the rate of health problems.

False, based publicly available data, even data pushed by the UPF cultists there is no correlation between UPF consumption and 'Life Expectancy at Birth', 'CVD Deaths per 100K', 'Heart Disease Deaths per 100K', 'Cancer Incidence Rate per 100K', 'Stroke deaths per 100k', '%age Population with High Blood Pressure ISCED standard', 'Mean Systolic Blood Pressure (mmHG)', or shockingly 'BMI'.

In fact, in some cases there is an anti correlation such as life expectancy, now it would be absurd to suggest UPFs increase longevity of course but the reality is richer countries eat more processed foods and richer countries live longer.

This is completely false and easily refuted. I don’t understand how you’re calling the processed foods research a “cult” while also making sweeping claims without any sources.

https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-077310

> Overall, direct associations were found between exposure to ultra-processed foods and 32 (71%) health parameters spanning mortality, cancer, and mental, respiratory, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and metabolic health outcomes. Based on the pre-specified evidence classification criteria, convincing evidence (class I) supported direct associations between greater ultra-processed food exposure and higher risks of incident cardiovascular disease related mortality (risk ratio 1.50, 95% confidence interval 1.37 to 1.63; GRADE=very low) and type 2 diabetes (dose-response risk ratio 1.12, 1.11 to 1.13; moderate), as well as higher risks of prevalent anxiety outcomes (odds ratio 1.48, 1.37 to 1.59; low) and combined common mental disorder outcomes (odds ratio 1.53, 1.43 to 1.63; low). Highly suggestive (class II) evidence indicated that greater exposure to ultra-processed foods was directly associated with higher risks of incident all cause mortality (risk ratio 1.21, 1.15 to 1.27; low), heart disease related mortality (hazard ratio 1.66, 1.51 to 1.84; low), type 2 diabetes (odds ratio 1.40, 1.23 to 1.59; very low), and depressive outcomes (hazard ratio 1.22, 1.16 to 1.28; low), together with higher risks of prevalent adverse sleep related outcomes (odds ratio 1.41, 1.24 to 1.61; low), wheezing (risk ratio 1.40, 1.27 to 1.55; low), and obesity (odds ratio 1.55, 1.36 to 1.77; low).

I’m amazing how anti-science this conversation always becomes on HN, with those who don’t understand the research claiming to have the scientific upper hand.

Any system that can't tell the difference between a nutrigrain bar (which is a candy bar basically) and a turkey sandwich (which is fine) is gimped and useless and no longer has value.

Even your apple example is lacking! There's a difference between unsweetened apple sauce which is crushed and the most common applesauces which have juice and sugar added.

Fiber is also beneficial for the "good" gut bacteria, as it feeds on fiber. Fiber also binds to your LDL "bad" cholesterol in the digestive system and helps to eliminate it.

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