In other news, the definition of ultraprocessed remains all over the fucking place with little consistency and rooting in logic. It’s a term that grew out of marketing and ended up being defined by non-scientists/non-doctors.
raw oats in a bag: unprocessed
rolled oats: processed
rolled oats spun in a blender, instant oatmeal: ultra processedCookies made from unprocessed ingredients: minimally processed put them in a bag and sell them on a shelf: ultra-processed
Same nutritional value. Doesn’t require additives.
Raw Milk: unprocessed Fresh, pasteurized milk : “minimally processed”
Brown Sugar: unprocessed white sugar: processed
white sugar and pasteurized milk mixed together: processed
Freeze that mixture? Ultra processed.
Again, same nutritional value.
Going from raw to pasteurized, has a substantial change in nutrition, yet, it’s minimally processed.
We need, as a society, for scientists and doctors to agree on processing and food values, not on the general public’s consensus. Certainly, some foods lose their value or are handled differently by the body. Some things, like nitrates, earn an easy bad-for-you label.
As is stands now, home made cookies are seen as more healthy, than if put them in a bag and sell them. We need to trigger on nutrition loss, and added ingredients, not if wheat was put through a blender or berries were frozen unless it has a meaningful loss on actual health.
Really interesting. I often thought “what is actually so bad about processed food?” because in the end everything we eat is just chemicals in different mixtures, so as a nerd it makes me skeptical of most food health advice. There doesn’t seem to be an easily explainable understandable theory or scientific model model behind this.
I could have sworn I read “hyperpalatable food” in the blurb but I can’t find it now. Maybe I dreamed it lol. But that would be a good objective issue with ultraprocessed food, triggering the brain’s reward system and encouraging excessive eating. The ability to split ingredients into separate parts and then recombine them to be too palatable, and/or not balanced enough in the sense that e.g. fibers or proteins or vitamins that would naturally occur in raw food.
I think is true that the idea of ultraprocessed food is not totally well defined, but I think there are some clues that help to at least identify the most important or more ultraprocessed ones. I think one tip is: industrial manufactured ingredients that can’t be find in a regular home would potentially fall in the ultraprocessed category, so from your list:
rolled oats spun in a blender, instant oatmeal: is processed not ultraprocessed, unless the instant oatmeal it comes with ultraprocessed ingredients.
Cookies made from unprocessed ingredients, put them in a bag and sell them on a shelf: processed. The problem here is a lot of cookies that say that they use unprocessed ingredients is just not true, but if we are talking about home made cookies with basic unprocessed ingredients they would fall as just processed.
*Raw Milk: unprocessed Fresh, pasteurized milk : “minimally processed”
Brown Sugar: unprocessed white sugar: processed
white sugar and pasteurized milk mixed together: processed
Freeze that mixture? Ultra processed.* Not true, the fact of freezing doesn’t make it ultraprocessed.
I think the corporations are also trying to make this distinction more confusing to make the idea of ultraprocessed food les guilty, because if everything it may be ultraprocessed then none it is.
Not true, the fact of freezing doesn’t make it ultraprocessed.
Therein lies the rub; in some lists, it doesn’t, in other lists, it does. Your list is handled in what you wrote here, it’s not the same as everyone’s list.
The concept that it’s hyper bad for them to throw cellulose in with grated parm is insane. It’s just some fiber to keep it from turning into brick. Or that any food preservative is detrimental, we’re already wasting 40% of our food.
The entire processed fad has gone so far from reality that it holds no concrete meaning to actual health
That dough stabilizer in that bread that makes it stay soft instead of the starch crystallizing and turning it to trash in 3 days, can you point to an actual fact of how it hurts you?
There are plenty of things on the UP list that are allowed the world over. The whole thing is performance art at this point.
I used to really piss hippies by telling them that anything food put in a food processor is processed food. This includes your homemade hummus & raw smoothies.
And now the whole crunchy revolution is running with that, and a few dieticians in prestigious places, looking for views, are trying to build studies on it.
… in the United States
This is the internet. Please consider the audience to be worldwide.
Unless your country has specific laws to the contrary or is too poor/civilized to have this sort of “lazy parent” food, presume that any of the factory-made shelf-stable food in your grocery aisle is as bad as the equivalent sold in the USA.
(And find out of your country’s food laws are actually better than the USA, or just “feel” better because the same exact product can just list fewer ingredients )
It isn’t.
That is not to say that the shelf stable food here in Europe is as good for you as a home cooked meal, but America allows ingredients which are literally illegal over here because they’re known to cause cancer or other health related issues.
It took the US until two years ago to finally ban titanium oxide as a food additive. You still use horrible foaming agents in your bread, and ingredients derived from processed petroleum byproducts are allowed in your food.
Same here in New Zealand. We have very tight restrictions on food additives, particularly with baby food.
Your junk and nutritionally empty food is not a better option to feed to children just because it doesn’t have a certain yellow die.
It objectively is, as the former has no nutritional value, and the latter is actively trying to kill you.
way to miss the point
If that certain yellow die is linked to health issues in children, yes I’d rather not have that in food.
You can keep that in America.
Holy shit, the propaganda has really done a number on your perspective and I’m tired to pretend it didnt.
It’s you, not the rest of the world, that is different.
The former. In about 75% of the world.
American unable to imagine a part of the world where things are better, typical
They’re legally mandated to have a table for every type of nutrient ( fats, trans fats, carbohydrates - split into subcategories of carbohydrate and carbohydrate sugars, salts, etc) in every packet of things sold as a Edible Product in which it has 2 rows - in a serving, v daily recommendation. In all of EU, and also in the UK. Asia is if anything even more stringent about it then we are and culturally prefer things as unprocessed as possible.
We don’t ban unhealthy foods as long as they’re not literally toxic, but this makes it so everyone makes informed decisions, and over time it has effected sales for unhealthy food, they have worse sales than healthier options
They’re legally mandated to have a table for every type of nutrient ( fats, trans fats, carbohydrates - split into subcategories of carbohydrate and carbohydrate sugars, salts, etc) in every packet of things sold as a Edible Product in which it has 2 rows - in a serving, v daily recommendation.
Ww have all of that in America as well. I had a great deal of confusion on this subject until the specific definition of one of the words involved was given to me. The problem in discussion here isn’t labelling, or even ingredients, the problem is what’s DONE to the ingredients before they get in the food. While some degree of processing happens to most food (Chickens are deboned, corn is nixtamalized, tomatoes are stewed) the issue here is the extreme level of processing rhe ingredients go through. Corn and Cardboard are both high in carbohydrates and fiber, after all, cardboard is mostly plant matter rendered down and cooked/shaped, but one is food and the other has been processed so thoroughly that it’s not.
Many companies are rendering their ingredients so thoroughly before reassembling them that they’re resembling “food” less and less and not doing great things for us nutritionally even though they still measure at certain levels on the packaging. Maybe Jaffa Cakes retain more of the base nutrtion level of the flour in them than twinkies do, but it’s the same base processes occurring to both of their ingredients, just at different levels.
I’ve seen your ingredients lists.
We are legally required to resticker all American imports as they’re lacking in all the necessary requirements for sufficient information.
Your version of it is a joke
Consumer protection laws are really alien to folks from the states it seems.
You really don’t know what you’re talking about.
I bet you’d also argue that there is “free speech” in the UK, where a billionaire can still literally sue someone into poverty for accurately describing them. Or the same in Germany, where an advocate against the Palestinian genocide was arrested for “denying Israel”
I’m not from either of those countries, are you a person that likes to put words in other people’s mouths? 'Cause it sure as fuck sounds like you do.
I tend to speculate negatively when people hurl unfounded insults without disclosing the reason for their perspective.
I encouraged people to not assume that their local regulation’s are “better than the USA” because the same greed that causes so much waste in the USA is also present in literally every human country. And you decided that this meant my country doesn’t have consumer protection of any kind.
If it makes you feel better, tell me what country you are from and I’ll take the time to look for an appropriate example of your country fucking up in a way that wouldn’t happen in the USA.
Belgium, good luck. I don’t need to know what country you’re from. Your ignorance is telling (but it’s also bliss, so lucky you).
You’re right, it’s hard to find distinct history for a middle European country that was a footnote for most of your small and young country’s history.
But the internet provides.
Even if we exclude both your country’s precursor states and the various wrongs attributsble to the European Union you were substantially responsible for, Belgium:
- has a literal king
- didnt ban slavery until decades after the USA
- lagged similarly in gay rights (albeit you’re easily on par with the bluest stars in the USA)
- let your king annex part of a foreign continent as a subservient colony (and kept that colony until the 1960s!)
And, while I’m neither a lawyer nor sufficiently fluent in French or German to read your laws directly, it sure as fuck looks like you’ve got the same sort of repressive defamation laws that let JK Rowling bully Amnesry UK into apolgizjng for accuratky describing her.
http://legaldb.freemedia.at/legal-database/belgium/
Based on your country’s recent “hard-right” swing, you might acthally see your own neo-autocrat soon, who would absolutely weaponize those laws if they haven’t already started.
If truth and honesty are not both separately prefect defenses to accusations of defamation, you don’t have free speech in the ways that actually matter.
Lmao. Ameribrain at work.
Americentrism at it again.
4/5, in the USA, the rest of the world have such a thing as Government Mandated Food Standards that ban this shite.
Ultra processed food isn’t just an american thimg. It’s normalised to take cgildren to a McDonalds and feed them garbage has also become normalized all over the place. Ever seen a menue in a average restaurant? The kids menu isn’t just a smaller version of a normal menu, it’s chicken nuggets and fries, hamburger and fries and something else that has been tortured and processed
It’s normalised to take cgildren to a McDonalds and feed them garbage has also become normalized all over the place.
I didn’t know going to McDonald’s once in a blue moon was killing children.
The kids menu is cheap sisco crap. I’ve had the same exact kids menu chicken tenders in 10 different states, which was the same chicken tenders as on some bar menus.
The kids menu thing drives me fucking nuts. I’ll be at a Mexican restaurant and the kids options are hamburger, hot dog, buttered noodles or quesadilla. My kid eats everything because I always just shared my food with him, at least have some flipping tacos on the kids menu.
Four out of five foods sold for toddlers in the United States
MATKETED to toddlers. Nobody is marketing apples and whole wheat.
When will toddlers stop spending their money on this food?!
What about the Big Apple?
Im more partial to human music
I’m not disputing that, just the article is specifically about the United States, which I think is an important distinction to make. Not everyone reading this is from the US.
Why he eating the pizza backwards
Crust-first pizza eaters are sociopaths
Say that to Donatello (the ninja turtle)
What about a calzone?
Not a pizza. It’s the inverse, if you eat only the contents of the calzone and not the crust, your a sociopath
If it’s inverse they must eat it like reverse bread bowl. Eat only the crust then lick the contents off the plate. Or a spoon… If one were so civilized
Explains why Dwight Schrute ate his pizza crust first
Kids do all kinds of crazy things if left unattended.
The baby has issues
Possibly stuffed crust
In. The. States.
The western world needs to reintroduce “home economics” back into the curriculum, nobody knows how to cook their own food anymore, managing a kitchen is half of it not just putting stuff onto a stove.
My Boomer mom microwaves water to make tea… with the teabag in it.
It’s a wonder I survived to become the handsome and successful person I am.
The problem is not new. Just that the stuff is more expensive than just steaming vegetables and meats then put them through the blender, and in some developing countries, for poor families it’s rice or wheat gruel.
I think it is not only issue with the price but also with the time to prepare it. They do not survive using one salary to have more time to care of the children. Or lets say two salaries but 1/2 work time both.
Actually, there is no place on earth nowadays to have possibility like that, with one salary.
And people are wondering why young generations do not make children.
Gen Silent with one salary had 5 boomer children. I would love to have one salary and 2.5 children working half time
Someone tell RFK. It might be this instead of tylenol or circumcision that causes autism. /s
Yes, as we all know, infants should be fed a steady diet of raw milk and steak. All the better if the steak is from road kill. And eat it directly from a toilet seat. Germs can only hurt you if you’re afraid of them!
I just read the exact same headline about prison food. Assuming that’s because 80% of food in Magastan is ultra-processed, I guess we’re gonna get the same headline for every possible institution now over the coming days.
For prisons, my fellow Americans immorally view prisoners as less than human and not deserving of the basic elements of life – poll a large swath of everyday Americans and I’m convinced 6+/10 will agree that prisons should serve intentionally unpleasant and non nutritious food as part of the punishment process. It’s sad.
I think that’s a global trend of humanity falling for populists, and morally back into the stone age (although I might be doing prehistoric humans injustice here). I really believe in the saying (paraphrasing because I don’t recall the exact wording) that if you want to assess the degree of civilization in a society, you should look how it treats its prison inmates.
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I’ve never heard anyone say that.
Nestle
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It’s so hard to find foods that are convenient and not ultra processed. I don’t mean you can’t find them in the grocery store. They’re there, but just the actual integration of prepping and cooking those foods day to day is problematic. We do our best though.
I found this creator to do an excellent job breaking down this topic if anyone is interested in more information.
by Kiana Docherty “Baby Food Is TERRIFYING Now”
A bit of a clickbaity title, but the content is interesting.
Why feed your children that shit.
Oh man, my brain left out “foods” in the title. Read it as “4 out of 5 toddlers are ultra processed”. This thread turned out WAY different than I was expecting.
