Ultra processed food is shelf stable, often cheaper overall per unit serving (not always, but consider time poor working poor, cost of cooking in the broad sense as well as raw input costs if you want to criticise this) easy to heat, and so attractive for all kinds of reasons to disadvantaged people. Aside from their amazingly addictive effect on us as mouth feel, taste, fat salt and sugar reactions kick in.
For many people, "good calories" are a luxury, unless you mean "cold calories" because high quality can demand prep. Banging an ultra processed package straight out of a box into a microwave which didn't have to be refrigerated is doable.
dlcarrier•5mo ago
It seems I'll be healthier if I stop eating traditional homemade Mexican food and start consuming French fries, pulled pork, potato chips, and orange juice.
NoPicklez•5mo ago
I don't understand how you got to your last point.
dlcarrier•5mo ago
For example, regular-processed foods includes "freshly made breads". Does that mean that some time period after coming out of the oven, it becomes ultra-processed? I like to make homemade whole-wheat bread, and I freeze anything I'm not going to eat in a few days, then toast it and eat it later. There used to be a Hostess bakery near me that would get bread to grocery stores on the same day. Would my frozen and thawed homemade whole-wheat bread be ultra-processed, but Wonder Bread eaten the same day I bought it be just regular-processed? That's assuming I don't add vital wheat gluten to my bread, which presumably makers it automatically ultra-processed.
It also says "ultra-processed products also include other sources of energy and nutrients not normally used in culinary preparations". Does that mean fortifying foods with vitamins and minerals makes them ultra processed? Is white rice unprocessed unless it's fortified, then its ultra-processed? Does iodizing salt make it ultra-processed?
Speaking of salt, when I grow cucumbers and eggplants in my garden, they sometimes come out bitter. Adding salt always enhances flavor, and in this case it also covers up the bitterness, or as the ultra-processed foods description puts it, the salt is added to "enhance the sensory qualities of foods or to disguise unpalatable aspects of the final product", so my raw cucumber salads and freshly roasted vegetables are ultra-processed because I add salt? Doubly so, if the salt is fortified with iodine?
On the other hand it says that ultra-processed foods are "formulations made mostly or entirely from substances derived from foods and additives". Does that mean that if food isn't at least half extracts or refined or synthesized ingredients that it isn't ultra-processed? This would basically exclude everything except vegan meat alternatives like seitan and some verities of candies, like hard candy or gummies.
Reconstituting meat products makes them ultra-processed, but drying foods is minimal processing, so the freeze-dried chicken I take on hiking trips is minimally processed, if I eat it dry, but if I prepare it as instructed, by simply adding hot water, that reconstitutes it, making it ultra-processed?
The page concludes by stating that 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". Apple growers in my area often grow Cripps Pink apples, but some pay for trademark rights to sell them under the Pink Lady brand, which allows them to sell at a higher margin. The Cripps Pink apples are bread to be much more durable and attractive than older cultivars (e.g. Red Delicious), and can even be branded as Pink Lady, adding to the profit margin. Does that mean that unprocessed Pink Lady apples fulfill all of the purposes of ultra-processing foods?
NoPicklez•4mo ago
Case in point if you search freshly baked breads and pink lady apples they aren't marked as ultra-processed under the NOVA classification. With Pink Lady apples considered a NOVA score of 1 which is "Unprocessed or minimally processed foods". It legitimately says that freshly baked bread would be considered processed but not ultra-processed, also just because it says its processed doesn't mean its unhealthy, its just classified as such.
In the case of your reconstitued meat in the way that you prepare it would not be considered ultra-processed because majority of the food still comes from Group 1, as it says.
Its not a scale of unprocessed through to ultra-processed, there's a scale here. Search a few foods in the database and have a look. There's nothing there that says your home grown cucumbers with some salt are considered ultra-processed.
dlcarrier•4mo ago
Pink Lady apples are clearly in the lowest category of processing, but the reason I brought it up is that they more comprehensively meet the "overall purpose of ultra-processing" more than anything I've found, while TVP patties and candy canes are most clearly in the highest category of processing, but are usually unbranded, inconvenient, unappetizing, low margin products that are entirely antithetical to the "overall purpose of ultra-processing".
I searched through the database and most junk food I found was not ranked as ultra-processed, except for chips made from potato flour, which listed the addition of Annatto as a marker for being ultra-processed. I have Annato in my kitchen right now, because it's a traditional ingredient in Mesoamerican foods that has been used for thousands of years, and there's many dishes I couldn't make without it. It's a whole fruit that dries on the plant and it's only processing is grinding, which should put it in the lowest category, but somehow adding it to foods puts them in the highest category. It has been shown to fight cancer (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26875492/) but the page suggests that ultra-processed foods increase the risk of cancer.
The breads that show up don't look fresh at all, and crispbread, which I've never seen delivered fresh is still not categorized as ultra-processed. (https://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/7300400481588/fine-r...) Meanwhile I did find a bread product where fortifying with vitamin C was the sole reason it's categorized as ultra-processed: (https://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/01318180/multiseed-w...) The same seems to be true of vital wheat gluten, a traditional food in China.
NoPicklez•4mo ago