Ultraprocessed foods aren't great, but it's yet another manufactured crisis to serve as a distraction from the Epstein files scandal and coverup, like the attack Iran will be next Thursday. What a horrible time.
And this administration rolled back existing standards to improve school lunch nutrition and their nutrition policy changes have not been science based, so they demonstrably don't care about the issue.
> From this perspective, homemade jam on pain de Gonesse would be fine; Smucker’s on Wonder Bread would not, even if it contained less sugar and fat. “The thesis is that we’ve been focussing too strongly on the individual nutritional components of food,” Hall told me. “We’re starting to learn that processing really matters.”
So the pain de Gonesse goes through lots of processing to get it's unique attributes, but is not "ultra processed" yet Wonder bread is. Or is it the Smucker's jam that makes it ultraprocessed? Is home made jam ultra-processed?
Or this distinction:
> “Preparing a day’s worth of ultra-processed meals might take an hour,” he said. “Unprocessed meals could take three or four times as long.” He brought his knife down forcefully, cleaving a carrot in two, and continued: “If I’m swamped, I’d rather make the ultra-processed menu. But if I had to pick one to eat for the rest of my life? Unprocessed, no question.”
As somebody who cooks a good chunk of my family's meals, cleaving a carrot in two and taking the example earlier of making a meal of vegetables and grilled chicken is not that time consuming compared to, what exactly? What takes 3-4 hours to prepare here?
Vagueness in articles like these reinforce the idea that there's no definiton of "ultra-processed" that a regular person can use, and that it's just based on vibes and vague feelings of "quality" that are at best defined by traditions rather than by choices that are made. Even the start of the article, that the immigrant noticed that American meals had far larger portions, more salt, and more sweetness than French food, does not comport to the definitons used here.
Maybe the definition is: the food can go bad in a short amount of time, except for staples like rice or flour. Would that work? I don't know. Can I simply switch to dry kidney beans rather than the canned kidney beans, because the canned kidney beans are "ultra-processed"?
I've read sooooo much about ultra-processed food but still don't know how to use it in daily life.
Edit: and to take an example from the "official" definition: "Group 1 foods are unprocessed or minimally processed: nuts, eggs, vegetables, pasta." When people hear pasta, they think it's going to be made in a factory. I occassionally make pasta, but honestly prefer the dry stuff for its texture in most dishes, and nobody is making dried pasta at home of any good quality (see for example this amazing series of YouTube videos of an attempt at such https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLURsDaOr8hWXz_CFEfPH2... )
Adding "pasta" to the group 1 list kind of upends any intuitive understanding of the groupings.
Perhaps I'm just looking for too sharp of an edge on the definition. It's just that the examples in the article are something that make me doubt the entire ontology.
A lot of processing is removing fiber so foods can be eaten faster and are less satiating. Eating more fiber automatically addresses most of the problems with he American diet.
When eating out, it's practically impossible to hit goals on macronutrient categories, much less fiber goals! The best one can do is try to count calories.
Michael Pollan offers [1] guidelines: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” This doesn’t talk about avoiding anything, instead chasing after known good things — food. Carrots. Steak. Wheat. Things you see in a children’s book labelled “food.” If it grows in the sun and the rain then it’s food.
Thinking in terms of “ultra-processed” still leaves you captive to industry. Buy some rice and beans and forget about it.
I asked this question Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini. None of them could give me a good explanation either. One of the themes that did come through was the agents seemed to land on the idea that if something is made purposefully to make you want more of it (in a sense crave it), then its "ultra processed" which is interesting.
I then asked them what the difference between Chipolte and Taco Bell was then. It said some of the ingredients that Chipolte uses are still designed with specific flavorings and salts which would then be considered ultra processed because the point is not to make it healthier. Its to make you want it over other things that would be considered healthy.
It was an interesting conversation, and in the end, I came to the same conclusion, its impossible to tell these days where the threshold is for something to go from processed to ultra processed is.
Cut sugar soda, cut beer, skip 1 meal a day.
Now.
“Is this processed or unprocessed?” I asked.
Kozlosky smiled. “Ultra-processed,” she said. “Lots of participants can’t tell the difference.”
I thought I understood the study but now I'm not sure. I thought the idea was to take the exact same thing you'd get in a tv dinner and make it fresh, so no freeze drying, no preservatives, etc. Then if that food on its own causes the same pattern of health issues, we know it's simply a diet problem. It sounds like they replicated that effect. So they got evidence that ultraprocessing doesn't actually matter all that much?
michaelsshaw•31m ago
wolvoleo•29m ago