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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 processed
Cookies 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 read the hyper-palatable thing when it came out. We can actually jam on it. To my memory, there are a couple of foods that really trigger that concept, one of them being Doritos. The other being Diet Coke.
The regular red bag of Doritos, it's not hard to sit down and eat an entire bag.
Getting used to Diet Coke even if you exclude the caffeine by getting it from other sources, still drinking a Diet Coke or two will trigger you to drink a lot more Diet Coke.
But I'd say the absolute vast majority of UPF is less palatable than other food. That pack of donuts with the waxy chocolate and they've done everything possible to extend shelf life on it. Doesn't taste as good as fresh donuts. (assuming you can even find fresh donuts anymore.)
All those snack cakes and shelf stable lunch items are unpleasant when compared with anything made fresh.
And the stuff they put on the Doritos, it's not the add-ons that make it good. I took a shot at making Dorito cheese once and was wildly successful. Try out some yellow cheddar and turn it into powder. Add garlic powder, onion powder, Salt, yeast flakes, except for the coloring being a little blonder than it should be. It's a dead ringer for Doritos.
I don't think that UPF foods that are borderline addictive are addictive because of the UPF. I think they're addictive in spite of it.
This processed / nova label basically seems to be a crude scientific cudgel because we just know too little about the health effects of nutrition.
It basically bundles the influence of the food industry on food. Taken by the dark powers, tortured and mutilated. A ruined and terrible form of food lol.
I suspect the addictiveness is mostly about the hyperpalatable food. Maybe both a biochemical thing and a intensity thing.
"Hyperpalatable foods can stimulate the release of metabolic, stress, and appetite hormones that play a role in cravings and may interfere with the body's ability to regulate appetite and satiety."
For cigarettes vs vaping for example, nicotine vaporized by cigarettes immediately breaches the blood brain barrier and has an immediate effect. While vaping (non-nicotine salts) has a much slower and smoother and delayed absorption curve, similar to nicotine patches. And what makes cigarettes much more addictive is the intermediateness of the reward.
So just the optimization process to make some "donuts with the " palatable at all while minimizing cost involves so much tweaking that it sort of ends up optimized to fuel the biochemical and intensity addictiveness response. Basically the expected or predictable outcome of capitalism is cheap food sold at premium with addictive properties.
So while fresh made quality food is more tasty, this doesn't matter for the addictiveness. Of course I'm just speculating here.
I'd love to know if replacing sugars and salt partially artificial sweeteners or salt replacements has any real health benefits in this context. And I definitely want to make some Doritos air-fried soybeans lol
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.
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.