Washington Post had an article about this with a lot more facts, a couple days ago:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/06/27/ultra-processed-foods-predigested-health-risks/
(temporarily free article on a mostly-paywalled site.)
@sinnerman That article is much better, thanks for sharing it! I'd never thought of ultraprocessing as predigestion before.
For a time, Kevin Hall, a nutrition and metabolism scientist at the National Institutes of Health, was also skeptical that ultra-processed foods were harmful.
To test the idea, he designed a study that compared what happened when men and women were recruited to live in a lab and fed different diets. In one phase of the study, the participants ate mostly ultra-processed foods for two weeks. Their daily meals consisted of things like honey nut oat cereal, flavored yogurt, blueberry muffins, canned ravioli, steak strips, mashed potatoes from a packet, baked potato chips, goldfish crackers, diet lemonade and low-fat chocolate milk.
In a second phase of the study, the participants were fed a diet of mostly homemade, unprocessed foods for two weeks that was matched for nutrients like salt, sugar, fat, and fiber. Their meals consisted of foods such as Greek yogurt with walnuts and fruit, spinach salad with grilled chicken, apple slices, bulgur and fresh vinaigrette, and beef tender roast with rice pilaf, steamed vegetables, balsamic vinaigrette, pecans and orange slices.
In both cases, the participants were allowed to eat as much or as little of the foods and snacks as they wanted.
“If it was really about the nutrients — and not about the processing — then there shouldn’t be any major difference in calorie intake between these two diets,” said Hall. “I thought that was going to be the result of the study.”
But, he added, “I was hugely wrong.”
When people ate the ultra-processed diet, they consumed substantially more calories — about 500 more calories a day compared to when they ate the mostly unprocessed diet. The result: They gained weight and body fat.
The researchers also noticed a difference in how quickly the participants consumed their food. They ate the ultra-processed meals significantly faster, at a rate of about 50 calories per minute, compared to just 30 calories per minute on the unprocessed diet.
Fascinating.
To say that this makes processed foods bad for you however is kinda ridiculous imo. Might as well tell people to only eat raw things because it has the least calories / most filling.
Bad food is bad for you, eating junk food is known to be a giant waste of calories and how it's prepared doesn't make it better or worse.
Outside of increased calories I have not seen any evidence that food being more "processed" is actually bad for you.
I'm not sure when this movement against junk food became a movement against processed foods but it's moving in the wrong direction. Plenty of shitty junk foods can have very little processing involved. And I'm convinced it's exactly those "low processed" junk food providers that are pushing all this bullshit.
With respect, I think you're ignoring the facts. How it's prepared absolutely makes a difference in how it tastes, how easy it is to eat, etc. and there is a resulting effect on how much people eat.
Freshly grilled chicken and frozen chicken patties are both chicken. But the chicken patty is ground, pre-seasoned, pre-cooked, etc. This makes it easier to get ready and easier to eat than a fresh chicken breast.
The poison is in the dose, as they say. 500 calorie surplus every day is a pound a week of weight gain.
And as dieticians have shown us over and over again, you can eat shitty food and be healthy, you just have to eat an appropriate amount of it. There are diets based on cookies and snack cakes, if you eat at your maintenance and cover a few basics with supplements, you can easily thrive on them.
If that's true, then the issue isn't that processed foods are bad on their own, but a side effect of the processing is that they are easier to overeat on. That's a very different issue that what type of food is being eaten. It's possible to overeat on grilled chicken and vegetables, it's just that it's harder to do.
"High consumption of ultra-processed foods has been linked to health concerns ranging from increased risk of obesity, hypertension, breast and colorectal cancer to dying prematurely from all causes."
Hall recruited 20 healthy adult volunteers to stay at an NIH facility for a four-week period
Wake me up when an actual legit study shows it. And yes obesity is bad and does all the negative things you put in your comment. So does eating too much red meat or consuming too much sodium or.... so on and so forth.
The 2nd article goes into more details
"Ultra-processing degrades the internal structure or “food matrix,” the complex internal structure that not only holds the corn together, but influences the bio-availability of the nutrients, how our bodies use the food and whether we feel full after eating it."
...
"But the process also appears to accelerate the speed at which our digestive tracts absorb glucose and other nutrients from food, causing greater spikes in blood sugar and insulin levels, studies show."
...
“"Extrusion cooking at very drastic pressures and temperatures is a kind of predigestion of your food,” said Anthony Fardet, a nutrition scientist at the French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment who studies the effects of food processing on health."
Source
I also agree that a study of 20 adults is absurd.
So, what? They just ate more? That's the big reveal?
EDIT: People already have enough trouble feeding themselves without the government looking for excuses to make food more expensive and even harder to get.
I say this in jest: but as someone who has run the gamut between elaborate home cooking and "fuck it, it's frozen pizza night" I can't help but laugh that people who eat unprocessed meals eat more slowly. I've often realized I can't scarf down my delicious home cooked meal in 10 minutes since it took me 90+ minutes to make it! Just wouldn't be right!
So, it has literally nothing to do with being "processed", a vague term in the first place. It has to do with one group of foods having a lot of extra added sugar, salt, and other such things that, in moderation would be fine, but are in excess in these cases.
Processed is a useless word. You gonna get sick from the pre-chopped broccoli?
Hence, they use the term ultra processed.
What about riced cauliflower? The issue is the type of processing, but I'd submit that is a distractio to the bigger issue. The problem is that the processing often results in foods that are easier and tastier to eat, resulting in over consumption.
I'm also wondering if portioning isn't also at play here with ultra processed foods.
For a snack, I might eat a bag of baked potato chips (pulling this from the above quoted article) or apple slices. I think for many people, it's natural to eat the whole portion in front of you, even past the feeling of satiated (not to be confused with the feeling of being full). Like, I don't know many people who throw away a bag of chips with just 2 chips left in it. So even if the flavoring of the chips is no longer even appealing to me (I got just enough saltiness fix), I'm likely to finish the bag because it seems weird to "waste" those last 2 chips. And now, I've consumed an extra 15+ calories that I didn't even enjoy. Compare to an apple for which, even if I'm kind of sick of it but still feel compelled to eat the whole thing, may be an extra +2 calories.
Multiply over multiple snacks per week.
I'm sure that factors in as well.
and that's a made up term they forgot (or probably cant) define.
It's a well defined term:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-processed_food
which the also take some time discussing in the beginning of the article.
It absolutely addresses this difference in the first minute or so reading the article.
To their credit, they say "ultra-processed" to capture this distinction.
They use another vague term with little to no meaningful distinction in order to avoid the actual problem, which in this case is overeating and, in general, is foods having too much sugar, salt, and others things added. Additives that are fine in moderation, but are way higher and outside the daily recommended value in these cases.
It's a well defined term:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-processed_food
which they also take some time discussing in the beginning of the article.
what distinction is that? What point does a food become ultra-processed? Do foods like kimchi, or honey, or canned or dried beans count?
Foods like pre chopped broccoli are still a problem. Just not as big of a problem.
The fresher and less processed the food the better off you are. There are things we do to food that are okay and things we do that aren't. For shipping fruits and vegetables ethylene is controlled to time the ripening of the fruit. This is perfectly safe. They are also sprayed with fungicides, this is less safe.
There is also the problem of centralized food production being a national security/food security issue. More decentralized food production would reduce this issue, and increase access to fresher, less processed foods.
Even the way mass produced food is grown is worry some. Something like 60% of the land food is grown on is completely denuded and relies on artificial fertilizers for 100% of its growth. This results in less nutrious food.
Decentralized food production leads to better land management. Which will fight climate change. There is also a massive water crisis brewing that is the result of water tables not being properly recharged. This can only be solved by wide scale land management, and a lot of the methods revolve around growing food at the same time.
One more thing, fast. Food that is eaten with in hours of picking results in better gut health. There are a load of benefits to that.
how is chopped broccoli a problem?
How do you reconcile that with the push toward urbanization, the near sexual urge of planners and citizens alike to have every single human living stacked and packed? Most of us would go on stabbing sprees if forced to live off the land in Bumbelch, Nebrahoma longer than a week.
I think the problem is deeper than what food is available. It’s in what time is available. We have to work so many hours to be able to afford to live. At the end of the day I am tired. My spouse is tired. We end up choosing something we can make quickly that’s affordable. Oftentimes, that’s something with processed ingredients, because we aren’t eating a salad every meal. You want a healthier population? Give them time to cook without losing all their free time.
Yeah, the most effective factor for weightloss for me hasn't been CICO. It's been time. Having the time to plan food, research the macros, record them, weigh out the specific portions, then cook it, weigh out the servings and then I get to eat...
It 100% works, and the diet doesn't feel bad when it's well supported with generous protein, fiber, and carb timing. But it takes a lot of time. Sometimes I might find myself with too few carbs and I'll be left lethargic and too tired to calculate something within my macro/cal budget to eat, but too stubborn to just eat junk. Takes me a long time just to summon the will to make something macro friendly that won't leave me starving later for having blown the budget too early in the day.
Even just eating a smaller portion of a macro-friendly meal means I need to weigh out the individual components of it. A big part of it is just lack of experience, not having a more flexible meal prep system that allows me to quickly throw together pre-portioned snacks in addition to my usual meal prepping. But that takes time, since I've also had to throw out every recipe I know and research a new portfolio of macro-friendly food. I also have to cook both normal food for the family, plus macro-friendly food just for me! All the top fitness channels only feed themselves, nobody is feeding a family simultaneously.
Plus the time to shop just about every day. Fresh food spoils, and fast. Good luck choking down that 6 day old bag salad without half a gallon of dressing.
I work in this space (food processing) and deal with this negative public perception all the time. I really think it’s misplaced. The degree to which something is processed is not a good indicator of it’s healthfulness. Tomato paste is a highly processed food, those tomatoes go through the ringer to end up in a little can you can use year round. Those little packs of peeled and sliced apples they sell to put in lunch boxes are a incredibly “processed”; in order to keep them fresh the entire composition of the atmosphere inside those little bags has to be modified, and the bag itself has to be semi-permeable so it can deal with the ethylene gas that the apple slices release.
All that to say that processing makes ultra-unhealthy foods possible, but I don’t think it’s a good metric that we should base policy off of. If we want to regulate the area it should be of the nutritional value of the products. Of course that’s harder to legislate because people get mad when you try to restrict what they can eat, unlike restricting processing which most people don’t know anything about.
Couldn't agree more. The processing is a distraction. Good food can be heavily processed and bad food can lightly processed. The issue is that the processing of food makes some foods easier for overconsumption. That's not an issue than can be legislated at the root cause and anything else will have unintended side effects.
Sure. How much do the alternatives cost?
It's all well and good to cry for getting rid of XYZ, but if there's no good alternative (or in this case, cheap), it's just not going to happen.
Also without even reading any of the related research, I know they didn't take things like poverty and marginalisation that many of the people eating "ultra processed" (the new meaningless buzz-phrase) foods deal with, and the impact those have on the body and mind (I guarantee their impact overshadows that of the food by multiple factors, never mind that multiple millions of people also struggle to access healthcare), as well as why those circumstances might leave people very little choice but to eat this kind of food, not to mention the government policies (and lobbying profits) that (quite intentionally) created this whole mess in the first place (from labour laws to education to economy to food and even media regulations).
I'm so sick of this bullshit where every few months there's a new media campaign to blame those at the very bottom for all of the ills of the world (many of which we will be the first victims of and most impacted by) instead of on the actions and profiteering of those at the very top. I know it's a feature of the system not a bug, but I wish more people were aware of just how they're being manipulated to maintain the status quo by those exploiting us all.
Yes!!!!!! I find it hard to generalize ANY scientific study to a population. All of the factors cannot be considered in a lab setting. And a lot of the time, the context of capitalism, white supremacy, and imperialism is not mentioned. The opposite of the diet talk is the conversation about food access. Detroit and so many cities like it are a food dessert. There will always be organizations and farmers who can change that, but you won’t see a Kroger open in Detroit. Eating food is always better than not eating food. I believe it doesn’t matter what you eat.
I support and agree with criticisms about food deserts and how often lower income people who have the system stacked against them are most often blamed for the poor outcomes of bad nutrition.
There is an article someone copy and pasted from another news source above though, that shows this study was an experimental design in which test subjects weren't asked to self report their food intake, they were provided prepared meals from the research team and observed for two weeks.
None of the conclusions drawn were about sociological questions, but merely about the impact on a few health metrics for the test subjects such as caloric intake and the resulting weight loss/gain. In reality, a study like this can be in major support of advocates who want to demonstrate that food deserts and the negative health outcomes from only having ultra processed food will lead to greater health disparities cross-population. I don't think this study was trying to finger wag at consumers.
I didn't say the research was trying to finger wag consumers.
I did say they didn't take in to account significant parameters (and the excerpt of research/article that provides the details of the experiment supports this), so their research is lacking at best.
And even if their intentions were to support the kind of agenda you mentioned (and they might have been, I don't know), it doesn't matter, their research is still (and was always going to) be used by those in power to create a new scapegoat to victim blame and punch down at instead of addressing the actual causes of poor health as it relates to poor diet - capitalism and those who benefit from it.
Either way - research about the harms of poor diet that ignores both the circumstances and environment that leads to the poor diet, and the impacts said circumstances and environment have on health before you even look at the food aspect of it, isn't good research, no matter what you intend to do with it.
You can't research in to a problem that stems pretty much exclusively from how our society is designed and functions without looking at the sociological aspects of it. (E: well, clearly you can, but it's an exercise in futility at best)
Sometimes the best first step is making a healthier alternative at home. Few food items that are low cost, pre-packaged, ready to eat, will be healthy.
You could skip the frozen or restaurant pizza and make your own with low sodium sauce, use cheese lightly, add healthy toppings.
For cereal instead of the typical sugary stuff opt for oatmeal with whole fruit or nuts. Even Cream of Wheat is better than sugar flake cereals.
It's not that you have to get rid of all that you like but the goal is to find alternatives with healthier ingredients.
It will take effort on an individuals part to eat more healthy but it doesn't have to be more expensive. I like to make dinners that last a few days. I make a quinoa and bean chili that I really enjoy. It takes me about an hour an lasts for three days. It has quinoa, kidney beans, diced or crushed tomatoes (low sodium), onion, vegetable or chicken broth (low or no sodium), corn and a few spices.
The drive to do this has to be there. Healthy eating takes some time and effort but, at least from my experiences, it's worth trying. Once you know dishes you like and how to make them the easier it all gets.
Agree. Along with the overly high increase in the cost of living in almost every western society, processed food is responsible for the really low modern quality of life. The fact that both of these things are driven by short-sighted capitalism that doesn't consider the cost to the population or the world just makes it worse.
From the article:
People who live with diet-related diseases, especially obesity, usually have a strong feeling of guilt, thinking they are the problem due to their own lack of willpower. Researchers now know this isn’t true. This food has been engineered to be addictive. We need to shift the blame away from the population.
Just a detail, but yes! Legislators, please help our society to not suffer under the downsides of capitalism.
Ever try being poor? Pretty hard to eat well when you have zero time after working multiple jobs and dealing with all the expensive, time consuming hassles of not being wealthy.
There is neither time nor energy for meal prep. Making convenient food more expensive and less accessible won't make a difference from a health front, more people will just opt to unalive themselves earlier rather than struggle even harder. Far fewer will opt to buy luxury housing with a chef's kitchen and multiple high capacity fridges and freezers to fill with organic produce from farmer's markets.
I've had to make the choice between food and sleep in the past and always opted for sleep. But that's not a great choice for children whose bodies and minds are developing.
I also question the validity of processed = awful. Take a trip to rural areas and look at the populace there. We're not talking just high calorie humans here, we're talking "people experiencing prodigious caloric intake." And these are farmers growing and not processing their food, not much blame to be laid at the feet of Tyson.
Regulate yourself, I don't need your feel-good legislation.
Breaking news and current events worldwide.