Food processing influences metabolism and brain activity
news.vt.edu
news.vt.edu
But something that is different is how much of the food is prepared at the vendor from whole ingredients. Ingredients often acquired whole day-of from nearby markets. Ingredients that have a shorter supply chain and higher freshness due to the smaller geography.
Reading this study, I wonder how much cheap ease of access to less processed foods contributes to the lower level of obesity and higher lifespans.
>In 2017–March 2020, non-Hispanic Black adults had the highest obesity prevalence (49.9%) followed by Hispanic (45.6%), non-Hispanic White (41.4%), and non-Hispanic Asian (16.1%) adults.
That site does control for diet. E.g., my Korean-born wife has always had home-cooked Korean food growing up in North America.
Which is the second argument of OP, regional/fresh/not long distances etc.
> Do Taiwanese get as fat on average as African Americans on average when they eat an average American diet?
Average American diet is problematic, especially if you control for family background
There are 3 options in order of effort: eat the next snack from a pack in your hand, decide and stop eating the cookie that is in the pack; get another pack to continue eating.
It requires more effort to get another pack and that biases towards the “stop eating” outcome. If packages are large the the easiest action is continue eating.
Dieting as a bachelor presented challenges. Your frozen meals and pizzas are often one size that's too large or small. Your recipes are not going to be calibrated for one person, one meal, one sitting. Literally, every can in my pantry is too much soup or fruit to prepare for a single meal...
Restaurant eating makes portion control so difficult. Delivery, doubly so. The only recourse is to find a place that has tapas, appetizers, small plates that can be likewise doled out.
And yes, I am certain that food is engineered to foster addiction and dependencies. It's right there in the slogans, yes? "Once you pop, you can't stop!" "Betcha can't eat just one!"
Dinner plates have gotten huge, historically speaking.
This shouldn't even be a remarkable POV - the industry has been open about it for decades[1]
My diet would verge on the definition of extreme by most people given the lengths I go to avoid UPFs, additives and microplastics but that doesn't mean I don't like eating. If I have a bag of chips I'll easily gorge the whole thing before even making it back to the couch so keep them out of the house, out of sight and out of mind.
Snacks are truly a sin - they're just seasoning sprinkled on empty calories, engineered to deliberately leave you not satiated. Such a waste to blow your calorie budget on them while also eating a laundry list of chemicals - I'd rather hold off and eat more pasta or steak at dinner.
And if I really can't hold off, there are plenty of easy snacks you can prepare at home like eggs or toast. "a slice of buttered toast" is rated pretty high as a final meal...
An apple, banana or nuts also does pretty well if you can deprogram yourself from the conditioning of the snack industry.
I also think people forget that there are several regions in the US where keeping a couple weeks of food on hand is not just a choice, it's a realistic smart decision because of the common occurrence of natural disasters.
I think >90% of people live in an urban area where that is not the case so I don’t think it would make sense to massively shape policy for those few that live in the country.
Actually (again n=1) the people that I met that lived in the country had vastly better and cheaper access to unprocessed food than those in urban areas.
I reckon it’s more a culture thing than anything based on “cold logic”
The government subsidizes the crops used in processed foods, specifically corn, soybeans, wheat, sugar crops.
But these crops also supply animal feed, fuel, exports, and ordinary foods.
Most people don’t grocery shop for base ingrediants in the US. Produce section and base ingredients are like a small fraction of the grocery store by shelf area. Most people don’t know how to cook for themselves. Price out lean chuck from costco and estimate how many 1/8th lb big mac patties you can make from that.
whole and fresh prepared foods are pricey in the US.
FWIW there are four categories:
1 is whole foods (eg fruits, nuts)
2 is stuff that is processed but still basically an ingredient (eg flour, maple syrup)
3 is combinations of 1 and 2 (most restaurants are here)
4 is ultraprocessed food (UPF): things that were not food that have been turned into food (e.g. modified starches, artificial flavors). Also, anything containing UPFs is a UPF, so e.g. most breakfast cereal (food coloring, flavors)
The basic thesis (which this research challenges, interestingly) is that UPFs aren’t inherently bad, but food scientists are shockingly good at creating highly specific and desirable flavors and textures (the book gives the example of a food company creating "ice cream" out of various modified starches and flavors so that it doesn't melt during shipping), and foods that come out of this process have generally been engineered to overwhelm our natural feedback mechanisms against overeating in order to sell more product.
My reading of Ultraprocessed People was more that the author was very careful to only pin on UPF's what could be proved to be true. The between the lines read certainly felt like "you should probably not eat UPFs".
I would humbly add that any of Michael Pollan's books, especially "In Defense of Food" are a good answer to how we should eat if we can't eat McDonald's. I have certainly found restarting the dining table tradition to have incalculable benefits for my family.
I would love to hear more of your experiences here if you would care to share? It is something I have been thinking about a lot recently (the slow erosion of this practice and its benefits that we're giving up)
I’d find it hard to believe there are evil food scientists in big food companies who are nefariously designing food for overeating.
What is more likely is they are creating food that taste good, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Now if the claim is they work towards this goal without much concern about things like sugar content or glycemic index, I could believe that.
But at the same time nobody thinks eating a whole bag of five servings of Doritos is a healthy food choice. If you’re designing good tasting food and assuming people will eat one serving as a part of a healthy diet, then no nefarious goals are required.
You really find it hard to believe that profit making companies that engineer food would engineer food for profit?
What about if they advertised it with a catchy phrase like "once you pop you can't stop"? Would you still shake your head and say "not credible"?
That's not what I said is it?
I said "I said I find it hard to believe food scientists are devising addictive food".
Clearly they are trying to make their food taste food (LOL, do you want them to make it taste bad?).
There doesn't have to be any conspiratorial evil food scientists to get where we are.
"The difference between a watermelon and something processed by a large company is that, for the latter, those foods are altered in ways to make them literally irresistible. This happens when companies use a combination of salt, sugar and fat to create foods that overstimulate the taste buds — and yet are designed to never quite leave you feeling satisfied. Even though saturating foods in salt, sugar and fat fuels the obesity epidemic — and does not necessarily provide consumers with the best culinary experience — it guarantees that customers will keep coming back for more by overstimulating one's feeling of taste pleasure in exactly the right ways. Since the companies' view their foremost responsibility as being to their shareholders, that is in itself a good enough reason to continue preparing foods with excessive salt, sugar and fat."
https://lsa.umich.edu/psych/news-events/all-news/faculty-new...
I agree that no conspiracy is necessary, basic market incentives dictate that addictive "once you pop you can't stop" food is just good business.
GP missed the major point. Its not even about engineering tastier food. Its about shelf stable food that isn’t going to give you botulism in 3 weeks.
"The difference between a watermelon and something processed by a large company is that, for the latter, those foods are altered in ways to make them literally irresistible. This happens when companies use a combination of salt, sugar and fat to create foods that overstimulate the taste buds — and yet are designed to never quite leave you feeling satisfied. Even though saturating foods in salt, sugar and fat fuels the obesity epidemic — and does not necessarily provide consumers with the best culinary experience — it guarantees that customers will keep coming back for more by overstimulating one's feeling of taste pleasure in exactly the right ways. Since the companies' view their foremost responsibility as being to their shareholders, that is in itself a good enough reason to continue preparing foods with excessive salt, sugar and fat."
https://lsa.umich.edu/psych/news-events/all-news/faculty-new...
You know cigarette companies have existed for 100 years and bought food companies right? You know their stuff is blatantly toxic and kills millions of people a year and they advocated ads and stuff and paid doctors to say it's not harmful right?
Like what world do you live in?
You really think hanlon's razor or any other thing like that remotely applies here?
"I’d find it hard to believe there are evil food scientists in big food companies who are nefariously designing food for overeating."
For one, for achieving fat loss, it's surely simpler to focus on factors like calories & how full the food makes you. -- With that perspective, yeah it's obvious that fried chicken and sugary chocolate aren't great for your health when eaten frequently.
For another, e.g. it seems that nutritionally, something like "diet coke" is strictly better than the sugar drinks it replaces: you get the same taste, but zero calories. -- I mean, zero-calorie drink is clearly UPF but also nutritionally beneficial. I don't see "UPF" as a practical way to look at it.
My understanding is that he would probably make similar predictions about your examples: people who eat fried chicken and chocolate as part of a mostly home-cooked diet are less likely to be obese than people who drink diet coke as part of a diet that mostly comes out of wrappers. He would probably also say that there's nothing inherently bad about diet coke, but there is something bad about getting all your food from people trying to make money instead of from people who love you.
e.g. obviously not practical for everyone but Taub's "Twinkie Study" showed fat 27 lbs of fat loss even from a diet of decidedly calorie-dense food like twinkies and doritos. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/comfort-cravings/201...
I think that UPF mostly aligns with that in that the food that's "UPF" is generally calorie dense, highly palatable, low satiation.
But...
> He would probably also say that there's nothing inherently bad about diet coke, but there is something bad about getting all your food from people trying to make money instead of from people who love you.
At this point, it seems more a discussion of morals and social values rather than a scientific "how to lose fat".
He uses language like that in the book (and I was speculating about “what he would say”).
I think the reason is that when people hear the theory “UPFs caused the obesity epidemic,” their brain sometimes goes to “well what is in UPFs that causes obesity?” His answer is “nothing.” He’s trying to emphasize that the issue isn’t some toxic ingredient, but that UPFs are a technology that are being used in a way that leads to this outcome.
(though the research in TFA might actually challenge the “nothing,” by showing that there is some kind of toxicity)
Last time I looked into this, the strongest research showed "we looked and couldn't find any evidence it's not associated with cancer".
That is, to hear "artificial sweeteners = cancer, I'm better off with the sugary drinks" was the wrong conclusion to take.
1. Sucralose increases peak insulin response when co-ingested with carbs: "Sucralose Affects Glycemic and Hormonal Responses to an Oral Glucose Load" (Pepino et al., 2013, Diabetes Care) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23633524/ Finding: Consuming sucralose 10 minutes prior to an oral glucose tolerance test increased peak plasma insulin levels by ~20% and decreased insulin clearance compared to water.
2. Microbiome-driven glycemic & insulin dysregulation: "Personalized microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance" (Suez et al., 2022, Cell) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35987213/ Finding: A randomized trial showing saccharin and sucralose alter gut microbiota composition, leading to personalized impairments in glucose tolerance and postprandial insulin responses.
3. Reduced insulin sensitivity from daily intake: "Sucralose decreases insulin sensitivity in healthy subjects: a randomized controlled trial" (Romo-Romo et al., 2018, AJCN) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30535090/ Finding: 14 days of daily sucralose intake significantly decreased insulin sensitivity in healthy young adults compared to placebo.
4. Direct pancreatic beta-cell mechanism: "Sweet Taste Receptor Expressed in Pancreatic β-Cells Activates the Calcium and Cyclic AMP Signaling Systems and Stimulates Insulin Secretion" (Nakagawa et al., 2009, PLoS ONE) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19352508/ Finding: Sweet-taste receptors (T1R2/T1R3) expressed on pancreatic beta-cells bind sweeteners (sucralose, Ace-K, saccharin), mobilizing intracellular cAMP and Ca2+ to stimulate insulin secretion.
> I mean, zero-calorie drink is clearly UPF but also nutritionally beneficial.
What nutrition do zero-calorie manufactured drinks like Coke Zero provide?
If you habitually drink 3 cans of coke a day, and want to lose weight, then switching to coke zero is practically the same benefit, but consumes 430kcal less. Since coke zero is like a zero sugar replacement for typical coke, it makes sense to use "compared to coke" as the baseline.
That's what I meant by "clearly .. nutritionally beneficial". If you'd prefer a different term, then sure.
(I think the proposed alternative of "just eat whole foods and water" is surely going to be even more beneficial, but also requires a change in habits. If "change habits" was easy, I don't think there'd be any discussion around "Ultra Processed Food")
That's the point at which it becomes highly speculative.
It seems to invoke an assumed knowledge of human biology that either does not exist or is known by some select few in some form of conspiracy (somewhat unlikely)
It reminds me of raw foodists that argue that cooking is bad because humans harnessed fire only after we'd mostly evolved. Or a magnet bracelet peddler claiming that since we started wearing shoes, that separation from the earth's magnetic field means we need the bracelets now.
The “…in order to sell more product” part is scientifically speculative, I agree—the book makes the claim, but the scientific research it references does not, IIRC. The book’s author imputes it from interviews and the like.
The “overwhelm…feedback mechanisms” part is mainly substantiated by a 2019 study by Kevin Hall where, similar to TFA, they had people essentially live inside a calorimeter and eat calorie- and nutrient-matched meals that were UPF or not. They found that when given UPF, the same people ate more and faster, and gained weight at a pace that surprised the study authors (who were initially skeptical of the theory and had constructed the study to try and disprove it. The study author is interviewed and explains why he found it compelling).
Whether you find the evidence compelling is, of course, up to you :-), but I felt the book did a good job interviewing members of the obesity research community and tracing the history of the theory.
> The non-UPF and UPF test meals were closely matched on meal weight, energy, energy density, macronutrients, available carbohydrate, glycaemic index and load, total dietary fibre, sodium and water (all ≤1.6% deviation between meals; Fig. 1b).
So they did match glycemic index, which the article omits.
I bet a lot of this is psychosomatic, you expect some food will give you fast energy so your body thinks that means you need it and releases insulin.
But these examples have different glycemic indexes, which the study matched for.
plus all of the options that are complete unknowns which, in biology, is probably close to 99.999%
I know somebody who got really into blood glucose monitoring, and she tells me that the order in which she eats a meal affects how much it spikes her glucose. So if she eats a piece of toast followed by a piece of cheese, it causes her a bigger glucose spike than she'd get if she eats the cheese first and then the toast.
Looking at the two meals in the study: if I sat down to eat the processed one, I'd probably start with the veggie straws. If I saw down to eat the unprocessed one, I'd almost certainly start with the egg or the cheese.
edit: and here are some other options: I notice that the unprocessed one is grain-free, vegetarian and has significantly less sucrose. I don't know if any of that makes it more or less healthy, but they're significant differences nutritionally.
But the above example shows that the body doesn't treat food in that manner - the relatively low carb, higher fat cheese didn't smooth out the higher proportion carb count of the toast.
In the paper, the largest carbs for the ultraprocessed meal was instant mashed potatoes, while the non-processed meal had bananas as the largest carb source followed by craisins/cranberries.
The high carb foods in the unprocessed meal are paired with fiber.
The high carb foods in the ultraprocessed meal are NOT paired with fiber.
The fiber slows the rate of carb intake.
Same thing occurs with protein - same amount of ground beef and steak, ground beef meal will result in faster amino acid ingestion than the steak meal. No idea if there are any pros/cons of the faster ground beef ingestion, but there is a difference in how the digestive system processes the two meals.
This is what I read in a book about glucose. So I went ahead and measured. I found it not true, at least in my case. The recommendations of eating salad before your meal do nothing measureable for my glucose spikes.
On the flip side I seem to gain the same amount of weight regardless of what my blood sugar does.
I'd guess they wanted to include store purchased bread, hence the pb&j.
The other thought i had was that most peanut butter includes (at least) palm oil (ultra processed) and sometimes other emulsifiers to prevent separation. Though you can buy pb that is just peanut and salt.
The jelly would contain quite a bit more in the way of preservatives, regulators and flavour enhancers etc than the jelly i'd make at home (if i did such a thing)
I'd guess it's just regular cheese which does require quite some processing to make but unless it's got extra additives to extend shelf life, change texture or taste it's just processed.
And at least in America, most commonly-bought peanut butter has additives, and most store-bought bread has 40 different UPF ingredients. Even the jelly will often have “natural flavors” (intentional scare quotes) and pectin.
It’s possible to have a non-UPF peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I might have one today! It’s just that the default options for most Americans contain a ton of crazy ingredients.
Depending on the cheese you buy, many are very simple, and rarely have weird additives. But if you buy a block of cheese or even usually the sandwich-sized slices, it’s not ultra-processed.
So if you add enzymes that completely change the characteristics of the food (aka "industrial reformulation") that's perfectly fine but you add an emulsifier to improve the mouthfeel and texture now it's suddenly a "ultra processed" food and is pure evil and should be regulated like cigarettes? Now it has "crazy ingredients" and "weird additives"? I'm sorry but this stance is totally and completely illogical. You aren't going to convince me that this makes any sense.
>Even the jelly will often have “natural flavors” (intentional scare quotes) and pectin.
For fucks sake, jelly requires pectin to be jelly. Sure, you can rely on the naturally occuring pectin in fruit, but adding additional pectin makes it so you have a consistent product and can add less sugar and don't have to cook it as long - aka healthier and less processed.
I don't really have a horse in this race, I found the picture of the "highly processed meal" gross on a visceral level, I just hate the illogically of it all. This is a religious belief.
Why are they bad? What do emulsifiers do? They combine substances that don't want to be combined. What in your body might this affect? Your mucosal lining. Emulsifiers don't break down in your gut as they pass through. They just emulsify everything as they move through. Including your mucus. That layer is extremely important for a normally functioning gut. Lose it and then chime will contact the gut lining. This disrupts the microbiota and allows things to get through your gut that are not supposed to. It causes inflammation.
UPFs contain many bad things, but they HAVE to be categorized to fully appreciate the levels of badness. Some things are just not that big of deal, and the "health industry" does everyone a disservice by not clarifying it.
from bad to not as bad:
- Emulsifiers (e.g., Polysorbate 80/60/40, carboxymethylcellulose)
- some stabilizers/thickeners (e.g., carrageenan)
- artificial sweeteners
- refined sugars
- artificial colors/cosmetics
- other stabilizers/thickeners/emulsifiers (e.g., xanthan gum, guar gum, pectin, cellulose, lecithin)
Type any enzyme or emulsifier off an ingredient list into Google and you can easily find a study about its health impact.
>including the study linked in this HN submission
This study proves absolutely nothing - the participants were not blinded to what they were consuming (and presumably could consume it at any speed/order). We already know how you perceive a food will effect hormones/biological response [1].
Avoid any food additives that you want; you just won't convince me 1) this framework is something logical or 2) cheese is a minimally processed food.
There is research for a lot of additives, but many have limited evidence or small studies that aren’t replicated. Usually the result is either “it doesn’t affect health either way” or “it is negative to health”. Very rarely is there an ultra processed ingredient with a large body of science that says “we should eat more of this specific thing, it has a positive effect on longevity!”. And if we do, it’s usually medicine rather than a food additive, which due to being heavily researched and tailored to individuals, prescription medications are healthy (obviously). But these aren’t that…
So I think you have to stretch your reasoning that the practice as a whole is probably negative, but I feel like I’ve personally seen enough negatives of certain UPF that I limit my intake whenever reasonably possible.
Obviously having small amounts isn’t going to be horrible but they’re in everything now
By contrast cheese is completely natural outside of a few exceptions like American cheese. You take milk, add something to curdle it like an acid (e.g. vinegar) or rennet - an enzyme obtained from the stomach of young calves, separate the coagulated stuff, salt it, dry it, age it - you now have cheese. Ricotta can even be made straight from raw milk with no additives. Cheese's long shelf life is natural.
Peanut oil is commonly used for all kinds of frying. It's hilarious that you're trying to lecture people without knowing this basic fact.
False, peanuts contain their own oil. Nothing needs to be added, not even salt.
Anything containing more than peanuts and salt should be referred to as something else, like peanut spread.
Depends on how you make it - it's definitely trickier at home to get a creamy texture without extra oil, but with the right machine (i.e. peanut butter maker) it comes out smooth with just peanuts (and salt if you like); some wholefoods shops have the machine where you can make it yourself.
Many store-bought peanut butters use oil as an additive as the peanut oil is more expensive, so they remove that to sell as peanut oil, and replace it with cheaper oils
Science can be patient but those of us who eat should act now. Something is making us fat, and it sure looks like its the UPFs.
A couple of years ago I lost 20kg (~40lb) of body weight.
I find this phrasing odd. -- Should I say "something made me lose 20kg of body weight", or should I say "I was able to improve the food I ate, and I lost 20kg of weight".
I tend to think that even without scientific literature, people know that e.g. lettuce is "healthier" than chocolate cake and fried chicken.
The term "UPF" seems like a weird term that puts the moral responsibility on the food manufacturers, rather than on "us" who are fat and want to lose weight.
From an epidemiological standpoint, something changed in the environment that caused obesity rates to start rising in the 70s and 80s. There are many theories as to exactly which environmental change is the cause. Figuring out what that change was would be a good thing.
If your concern is about your own health as an individual? I want to lose weight now? I think it's useful to say "I have agency, I can lose weight". If you have the agency to lose weight, it makes sense you can take on the responsibility for having gained weight.
"Why did society in general get fatter?" is a different question. And if your main concern is "how can I lose fat?" it's not directly interesting.
*assuming the same ingredients as your home cooked example, which i think is your point, right?
I guess i can see how packaging makes a difference to the desirability / convenience of the food.
I guess i'm less likely to eat chips if i have to make them myself compared to grabbing a bag and more likely to over eat them if it's super convenient.
Though I admit to being a bit lazy like that.
Note that fiber is not part of that list. Stripping out fiber essentially means that our gut microbiome is starved. Not coincidentally, it also means that these foods are much less prone to spoilage.
Also, from the study:
> The non-UPF and UPF test meals were closely matched on meal weight, energy, energy density, macronutrients, available carbohydrate, glycaemic index and load, total dietary fibre, sodium and water (all ≤1.6% deviation between meals; Fig. 1b).
The minimally processed food consisted mainly of cheese, egg, and pieces of whole fruit: No unbound simple carbohydrates.
The ultra processed food included jelly, turkey, chips, a cookie, cereal, instant mashed potatoes: Lots of unbound simple carbohydrates and much less fiber.
Of course insulin would spike higher with such a meal. There’s nothing at all non-obvious about that.
Also, the protein wasn’t equivalent. The turkey roll is meat protein and cheese is dairy protein. Also, the salt content was probably higher in the ultra processed foods, and that was not controlled for.
If this could be replicated using exact equivalents that are either processed or not processed, I would be more convinced. But I really doubt that it would replicate.
Salt is listed as among the things that was matched between the two meals.
You cant have a non mediated cause according to our current model of physics.
The human body is evidently not able to safely consume these products over the course of a lifetime and the ultimate toll on society and healthcare is already evident.
They are addictive and harmful to the body’s mechanisms.
It’s time to control the promotion, labelling and taxation of these products the same way we do cigarettes.
edit: see: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.16332 "US tobacco companies selectively disseminated hyper-palatable foods into the US food system: Empirical evidence and current implications"
The body evolved to eat foods that take a lot of chewing and digesting. As far as I can tell, one of the biggest problems with food that is “too” processed is that it’s absorbed far too quickly and early in the tract.
Food that makes it all the way through has a slower and more even absorption rate so we don’t get hungry again as fast.
There will likely never be a satisfactory definition, and doesn't need to be. Instead we define what foods are causing health problems and which aren't.
Look in this study, cheese is on the unprocessed side. That is an absurdity of language.
In the end they may figure out that the key difference here isn't processing at all, but fiber, or some particular ingredient added to floud based products on the processing side.
Many ultra processed ingredients have been so pulverised that there’s no structure left to help regulate the speed at which your body can break it down and absorb it.
So it absorbs nutrients too quickly, blood sugar spike, blood sugar crash, hunger pang, and you end up eating more than you would have otherwise during your waking hours.
Multiply that by years and you get metabolic issues.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3...
Does a cooked steak and a raw steak actually show different values when measured with a calorimeter?
their chosen dishes also seem to conflate a lot of factors, like processing, vs flavor. it's known that artificial sweeteners can elicit insulin responses despite not being a digestible sugar, I've heard studies showing that "Tasting" in the gut can perceive the sweetness.
They should have compared natural and ultra processed food matching the same glycemic indexes to understand if there is some kind of procedure in manufacturing that changes it significantly even the same amount of sugar and fiber
I noticed it keeps me less full than if I had the ingredients as a whole.
It's on par with "nutrition science" stating that potatos should be left out of meals, all the while you could _provable_ live the longest with just potatos (don't try it, just means the least deadly deficits).
Close to worthless.
Also, refer to the post on HN: Scandinavia's first farmers slaughtered hunter-gatherer population, DNA suggests. … "This transition has previously been presented as peaceful. However, our study indicates the opposite. In addition to violent death, it is likely that new pathogens from livestock finished off many gatherers".
I'd also wonder what would happen if they didint use heat treated carbs in the ultraptocessed one. If I were to guess I think they might be main offenders.
It's very likely you're not going to finish your plate.
You say "lines between get blurry" but I'm going to call it straight up meaningless bullshit since nobody agrees on anything or is talking about the same thing even when using the same framework. Once I read from an authoritative source that quesadillas are always ultra processed, like, by definition I realized that this whole concept is stupid.
Then you have weirdos coming in here talking about how "ultra processed food" is like tobacco and fraud, fucking hell, we've lost the plot.
It sounds like there are things left out of the article, probably click through and read the study itself to get the real definitions.
Example: five years, 10000 participants, $170 million https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-awards-170...
(Assuming a mechanical clock with a 12-h dial or flip display.)