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I don't think Americans eat healthy, but "ultra processed" not defined by any metric is in favor of the manufacturer. Something can be unprocessed and unhealthy and vice versa. Better regulation would help.
The article claims instant oatmeal is bad because it's sugary, salty, and has other additives then goes on to recommend eating oatmeal and adding sugar yourself. I'm not sure I understand why it's much better for you.
Agreed. Early on, the article points to burgers as a main culprit. I just happened to make myself a burger yesterday. Other than coarsely grinding the cut of beef (chuck), what was so ultra processed here? Was the beef so very different than the steak I could have made instead? I would imagine that the authors had envisioned a more heavily processed, meat from a tube sort of burger than mine, but that's the problem with communicating information like this. The imprecision of the language is killing the messaging and undermining the research.
Other than coarsely grinding the cut of beef (chuck), what was so ultra processed here?
Lol
Are you really this ignorant of meat production in the United States, or are you just playing dumb?
There's a world of difference between a ground, pre-made frozen burger patty, ground beef, and even a run of the mill steak in the US.
Take a look at the fucking package on the product you're buying. Frozen burger patties come with ingredient lists a mile fucking long, and ground beef packages usually come with an origin marker saying how the cattle in the package might have originated from three different continents.
At one point, I gave enough of a shit about this stuff to bother going to a butcher and getting them to give me a stink eye while they ground up a low quality steak so I could at least be reasonably assured that it came from one cow. Ultimately, I mostly just gave up on beef burgers.
Nearly every even partially processed product in the United States is like this. For example, pre-cut romaine lettuce is much more likely to make you sick, because it's like sampling lettuce from twenty area factory farms downstream from the meat factory.
The bun, any pickle and your sauces and relishes would be the places to look for ultra processed food ingredients.
Pickle: cucumber (or other vegetable), salt, vinegar, seasonings.
“seasonings” has a lot of wiggle room to it.
The cheese and the bread are almost certainly ultra-processed, as would be the condiments.
Again, though, burgers vary. Yesterday, mine included sliced red onion, arugula, and a slice of swiss. No ketchup, no mustard, etc. I did put dab of olive oil based herb sauce (that I had made prior to this) on it. Yes, I'd say that the bread was by far the most processed part of the meal. I'm just not convinced that this burger was worlds away from a steak and a side salad.
I know not all burgers are the same, but that is the point isn't it? I found my meal hyperpalatable, but should it be considered ultra processed? If it should, then how should we distinguish it in discussion from even more processed versions? I don't have an easy answer for this.
I don't know if you're intentionally being contrarian or you legit aren't comprehending the story.
Are you taking offense that your home made meal is being called out in this one line, "The top sources included burgers and sandwiches, sweet baked goods, savory snacks, pizza and sweetened drinks."?
Are you not comprehending that this is referring specifically to the total calories coming from ultra processed foods and that these foods include burgers? It is not saying that all burgers are ultra processed. It's saying that the category of highly caloric ultra processed foods includes, among many other things, burgers.
The same could be said for pizza. If I make a pizza at home - flour, yeast, tomatoes, mozz, oil - it's not going to have any ultra processed ingredients. If I go to Pizza Hut and get a meat lovers pizza with a stuffed crust and ranch dressing, that's going to be ultra processed.
These are simple words used to broadly define categories of foods with the assumption that people understand they're not going to list out every fast food and restaurant burger in the United States sorted by calories and ultra processed ingredients.
These are simple words used to broadly define categories of foods with the assumption that people understand they're not going to list out every fast food and restaurant burger in the United States sorted by calories and ultra processed ingredients.
Yes, and these are the words that most likely appear in the retrospective survey results on which these studies are undoubtedly based. My point was that equating a set of words that describe end products (like 'burgers', or 'chicken soup') with a set of words that describe preparation ('ultra processed', or 'minimally processed') is not at all straightforward. Any word (or at least many) in one set could be mapped to almost any in the second set. I just chose 'burger' out of convenience. If you told me you had chicken soup for lunch, could I automatically know if it was ultra processed or not? Would a researcher know?
If you told me you had chicken soup for lunch, could I automatically know if it was ultra processed or not?
I have a feeling people can tell the difference between home made chicken soup and Campbell's if they really try hard.
If you buy arugula, that's an unprocessed ingredient. If you buy ready-made pickles, that's a processed product.
From my short visit to north America, I was shocked how little people made from ingredients and how much from ready-to-eat instant stuff.
From my short visit to north America, I was shocked how little people made from ingredients and how much from ready-to-eat instant stuff.
Yup we eat a lot of ultra processed nonsense because we waste hours a day everyday just getting around the country and then even more time listening to pointy headed bosses. Our lives kinda suck it and most of it revolves around our jobs. The US is basically an industry-run dystopia.
My wife and I try to be better and buy real ingredients to make food, but after a long day at a shitty job it's hard to find the energy to make a real meal instead of throwing some frozen rubbish into the oven for a few minutes.
but “ultra processed” not defined by any metric
This is the shit that grinds me. You have the world's information at your finger tips and you're making a wild claim that there isn't a definition for something and basing your argument around that. You have gone this far in your life with the belief that there is no definition "but any metric" for Ultra Process foods?
Don't you think that's a little absurd to think this? I mean, it's literally in the word. Not processed – ultra processed; meaning, roughly, that the food or ingredients in that food are processed again after initial processing.
What I will grant you is that this word is sometimes thrown around inappropriately. You (and us all) have every right to be upset by this confusion and misrepresentation.
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/what-know-about-processed-and-ultra-processed-food
Category 4: Ultra-processed foods are industrial formulations made from food components. They include additives that are rare or nonexistent in culinary use, like emulsifiers, hydrogenated oils, synthetic colors, texture improvers or flavor enhancers. Think chips, soda, instant soup, pastries and mass-produced breads.
Ultra-processed foods, such as soft drinks, sweet or savoury packaged snacks, reconstituted meat products and pre-prepared frozen dishes, are not modified foods but formulations made mostly or entirely from substances derived from foods and additives, with little if any intact Group 1 food.
Ingredients of these formulations usually include those also used in processed foods, such as sugars, oils, fats or salt. But ultra-processed products also include other sources of energy and nutrients not normally used in culinary preparations. Some of these are directly extracted from foods, such as casein, lactose, whey and gluten. Many are derived from further processing of food constituents, such as hydrogenated or interesterified oils, hydrolysed proteins, soya protein isolate, maltodextrin, invert sugar and high-fructose corn syrup.
Additives in ultra-processed foods include some also used in processed foods, such as preservatives, antioxidants and stabilizers. Classes of additives found only in ultra-processed products include those used to imitate or enhance the sensory qualities of foods or to disguise unpalatable aspects of the final product. These additives include dyes and other colours, colour stabilizers; flavours, flavour enhancers, non-sugar sweeteners; and processing aids such as carbonating, firming, bulking and anti-bulking, de-foaming, anti-caking and glazing agents, emulsifiers, sequestrants and humectants.
A multitude of sequences of processes is used to combine the usually many ingredients and to create the final product (hence ‘ultra-processed’). The processes include several with no domestic equivalents, such as hydrogenation and hydrolysation, extrusion and moulding, and pre-processing for frying.
The overall purpose of ultra-processing is to create branded, convenient (durable, ready to consume), attractive (hyper-palatable) and highly profitable (low-cost ingredients) food products designed to displace all other food groups. Ultra-processed food products are usually packaged attractively and marketed intensively.
Is it wrong for me to want my own extruder to make puffed starchy treats? I have a hankering for chile lime ginger corn puffs but no one makes them.
I also want a solar powered freeze drier/sublimator.
Well said!
Ya, agreed.This is the same thing as "natural" foods. Just doesn't make much sense in any context that matters from a health perspective.
Ideally, the food consists exclusively of the ingredients you intend to consume. "Ultra processed" as I understand it means the ingredients list contains many things that "have" to be there due to the intermediate steps to get it into your mouth (including marketing/presentation).
The most obvious ones are things that make it shelf-stable for months or years, but the less obvious ones are additives that mask flavors that were inadvertently added by the machines responsible for cooking, cutting, and packaging the food. Apparently they figured out decades ago that salt is good at hiding the taste of metal...
So if you instead just buy some oats and sugar and put it together yourself, you circumvent all of that tomfoolery.
"Ultra-processed food" is a meaningless phrase. The definitions for it are so broad as to cover everything from kimchi to Snickers.
Define the ingredients that are bad ffs. Stop with this ridiculous bs.
If you didn't cook it with your own hands - don't trust it. My mom was an old school Italian who made everything from scratch - including sauces. I was lucky enough to be raised in that environment. Bless that lady - she didn't teach me but I watched. Today I love to cook but it's difficult and yeah expensive... it's not that much more if you do wise things. Today the wife and I will buy 2 whole chickens from Sams club ( 18 to 20 $ ) and carve them up ourselves into 7 or 8 bags of breasts.. wings, etc ( 35 to 45 $ if you buy it individually ) . The remains will be saved for stock or broth and put in bags in the freezer. We've re- taken up pressure canning. Every veg we use, all the trimmings we would have thrown out is saved and used in the stocks. We got some 2.5 foot long pork tenderloins from the same place - like my forearm thick for maybe 22 $ and I cut chops and made packs of 4. I got maybe 24 chops which would have cost well over 100 $ just for the hassle of spending some time in the kitchen with some tunes and a knife. You can stretch a budget quite a ways if you don't rely on purely convenience.
I agree with you in general and recognize the validity of your point, but in this particular case we all know they mean a combination of 'meat, brain and bone slurry', 'HFCS-infused everything' and 'chlorine bleached <8% protein wheat flour'.
we all know they mean
This is my point. No, "we" don't.
combination of ‘meat, brain and bone slurry’, ‘HFCS-infused everything’ and ‘chlorine bleached <8% protein wheat flour’.
Thanks for proving my point. You just described everything from toast to sausages and even laced in some unscientific thoughts on HFCS (hint: it's sugar, sugar is bad but HFCS is no worse than sugar).
"You know - stuff I hear on Tik Tok is bad for you" is not a scientific conclusion.
I think you're myopically focusing on my humorous hyperbole and missing my point. Purely scientifically speaking you might well be able to subsist on SCoP, casein powder in water, a dry pack of chow mein noodles and a daily multi-vitamin pill and be perfectly fine. Hell, you can probably scientifically design some sort of nutritionally perfect human kibble that the peons can wash down with Real Water (tm), but is that desirable?
Now if you will excuse me, I have a sourdough bread to shove in the oven.
I think you’re myopically focusing on my humorous hyperbole and missing my point.
Ah - it seems I may have been.
It feels like your null hypothesis is to keep eating it, though. Your argument is, "you've indicated it's bad for me, but you aren't saying why, therefore I'm going to keep eating it."
But if you're interested in the scientific result here, your null hypothesis should be to stay away from it until you have enough data. Maybe you're not aware of the overwhelming amount of data that shows ultra processed foods are linked to all kinds of health disorders?
It's like someone in the 50s telling you that smoking is linked to cancer, and you're saying "yeah, but WHY? Until you tell me specifically what ingredient is harmful, there's no reason for me to stop smoking!"
Your argument is, “you’ve indicated it’s bad for me, but you aren’t saying why, therefore I’m going to keep eating it.”
That's not my argument at all.
You're spreading misinformation/FUD. At a minimum, Ultra Processed Food means it contains ingredients that are added because they "have" to to get it to your mouth, not because anyone wants you to put those ingredients in your body.
I agree that UPF is not rigorously defined yet, but to claim it is "so broad as to cover everything from kimchi to Snickers" is absurd. If it's literally just kimchi, it's not processed. If it's kimchi that has a shelf-stable additive, and a dye to make it look pleasing, and chemicals to hide the taste of the machines that made it, then it's processed.
If your FUD stems from your own ignorance about the subject matter, that's a you problem, quit flaunting it around. If it stems from being a hired shill of General Mills, et al., then I hope you're getting paid well.
If it stems from being a hired shill of General Mills, et al., then I hope you’re getting paid well.
OMG. 🤣
Hey, don't work for free, is all I'm sayin 😉
CDC director bouta get fired
Nope. They're bucking for a promotion. Ultra-processed foods is something RFK Jr. has been bitching about for a while. He thinks everyone should go back to a more natural diet. Like eating roadkill.
To be fair, I agree with RFK on this one. If we all started eating natural whole foods, instead of all the fast food and shit we eat, it'd fix a lot of problems.
I might be open to debate it if he had any sort of definition or clue of what Ultra-Processed means.
Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday praised a company that makes $7-a-pop meals that are delivered directly to the homes of Medicaid and Medicare enrollees.
...
But an Associated Press review of Mom’s Meals menu, including the ingredients and nutrition labels, shows that the company’s offerings are the type of heat-and-eat, ultraprocessed foods that Kennedy routinely criticizes for making people sick.
The meals contain chemical additives that would render them impossible to recreate at home in your kitchen, said Marion Nestle, a nutritionist at New York University and food policy expert, who reviewed the menu for The AP. Many menu items are high in sodium, and some are high in sugar or saturated fats, she said.
Everybody needs a brain worm
It shows in our cognitive abilities.
Hey now. Not all of us are dumb as fuck naturally. We defunded our education system for more than a generation too, we've been working for it.