thanks for the tip. The text is not on that page, but here's a link to it if anyone else is curious:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
> (3) (A) High amounts of saturated fat, sodium, or added sugar, as defined respectively as follows:
> (i) The food or beverage contains 10 percent or greater of total energy from saturated fat
I feel like the saturated fat limit would be the most impactful restrictions.
However right after it's entirely opened up again:
> (b) “Ultraprocessed food” or “UPF” does not include any of the following:
> (1) Commodity food specifically made available by the United States Department of Agriculture.
> (2) A raw agricultural commodity as defined in Section 110020.
> (3) An unprocessed locally grown or locally raised agricultural product as defined in paragraph
Excess sugar and simple starches tend to get absorbed more completely than excess fat, I'm not sure added fat is the biggest issue.
However, there is a preponderance of real data that fats have been demonized by the sugar industry in the past, and HGI foods (high-carb, generally) are a bigger issue.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
But the jury is still against too much saturated fat, since the lymphatic system doesn't handle it in the healthiest of ways. So limiting saturated fats is still the WHO recommendation.
“ultraprocessed food” or “UPF” means (any food or beverage that contains a substance described in paragraph (2) and either high amounts of saturated fat, sodium, or added sugar, as described in subparagraph (A) of paragraph (3), or a nonnutritive sweetener or other substance described in subparagraph (B) of paragraph (3)).
or
“ultraprocessed food” or “UPF” means (any food or beverage that contains a substance described in paragraph (2) and either high amounts of saturated fat, sodium, or added sugar, as described in subparagraph (A) of paragraph (3)), or a nonnutritive sweetener or other substance described in subparagraph (B) of paragraph (3).
or
“ultraprocessed food” or “UPF” means (any food or beverage that contains a substance described in paragraph (2)) and either high amounts of saturated fat, sodium, or added sugar, as described in subparagraph (A) of paragraph (3), or a nonnutritive sweetener or other substance described in subparagraph (B) of paragraph (3).
wonder who'll be the first to argue that HFCS isn't sugar.
That aside, I think the law is a great step in the right direction for the US.
Hopefully it can be expanded across the US.
Also as quoted elsewhere: Deep frying is ultra-processing?
If the thing that is bad for us is the processing and preservatives then we can pursue that... but if you want to count things like potato chips then we need to be honest about what the label actually means. The UPF label adds a veneer of scientific precision that isn't actually present in any guidelines surrounding it.
The seed oil panic is even more ridiculous than the UPF panic.
Potato chips are junk food. The important thing is that they aren't ultra-processed in a meaningful sense. What people want to mean when they say "ultra-processed" is actually "junk food." This is why people end up bending over backwards to find a reason to label ice cream and potato chips as "ultra-processed" so it can be a cure-all solution when reality isn't so simple.
In the case of potato chips though, I specifically disagree that they aren't ultra processed - look into the process for creating soybean or canola oil and try to explain how that isn't "ultra processed".
further thinking along these lines:
Consider a boiled potato. That would generally be considered healthy.
Now add butter to it. Those who think saturated fat is unhealthy would say it's unhealthy, I'd say it's healthy - though sure, fat generally has more calories per micronutrients so you also need to get your micronutrients somewhere, like by eating lots of greens too. And with caveat that butter from conventional cows can have issues like the hormones or medications but I haven't dug deep into that. And there are people who have sensitivity to dairy, etc. But for a normal healthy person, adding lard, or butter, or real unrefined coconut oil, or real unrefined olive oil to one's potato while increasing the calories doesn't itself make it junk food or unhealthy.
Frying it could be an issue, proportional probably to the amount and intensity of frying, though I'd argue much more so in cases where the frying oil is reused, as reused frying oil is going to be much more oxidized and thus cause more oxidative stress / free radicals in the body which are understood to be a big cause of metabolic / mitochondrial damage which lead to diseases like diabetes.
And there's one of the nuances - different fats are more or less easy to oxidize. Specifically, saturated fats are the hardest to oxidize, omega 3s are a little easier to oxidize, and omega 6 (polyunsaturated fats / PUFAs) are much easier to oxidize. You can verify this by looking into the chemistry a bit. That's one of the key mechanisms of action as I understand it.
Still, deep frying in tallow that has been reused for a week is still going to be really bad because tallow does still oxidize, just much less readily than PUFAs.
Refined PUFAs are heated several times during the processing, which causes oxidation. Not to mention antioxidants are removed by the process, and also the PUFAs themselves are more prone to oxidize in the first place.
So to recap: 1. boiled potato = fine 2. boiled potato with added butter = more calories per micronutrient, but still real food and no particularly bad thing in it 3. potato pan fried in [butter, lard, tallow, coconut oil] = more oxidative stress than above, but still probably not terrible considering pan frying food is very normal. 4. potato deep fried in [butter, lard, tallow, coconut oil] that has been used repeatedly = significantly more oxidative stress, would not recommend, maybe I'd call it junk food 5. potato deep fried in [soybean oil, canola oil, etc] = significantly more oxidative stress again than #4
This does not yet get into the other potential issues with refined oils: - hexane residue (people eat average of 25 to 250mg per year of hexane in the US in refined oils) - may not matter at all but still something weird about the food. - other chemical residues from the other processes
People do studies on hexane residue in canola oil. We don't find it in our bodies. "This sounds weird to me" is indeed how a lot of this panic works. Vibes.
And, what is it then that makes potato chips junk food compared to a baked potato with butter? The potato? The oil? The salt? The frying? The fact that the oil was fried in many times over and not fresh? A combination of these - but which specifically?
You called potato chips junk food but seem unwilling to say what about them makes them junk food, compared to, for example, a boiled potato.
I assume junk food means unhealthy and a likely contributor to chronic disease.
If it's spread on bread, the jellied bread is the food. (As that still is probably mostly carbs, it's still not a good lunch item for kids.)
Brilliant sleight of hand by the processed food industry.
Of the fats one can eat, saturated fat is generally the least processed and most natural.
Humanity has eaten saturated fat for ever. Refined/processed oils are a completely new thing that has become a staple of the modern industrial diet. Under this law kids will be made to eat more of the ultra processed literally refined oils and less natural fat.