I would encourage everyone to read Ultra Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken which goes into a lot of detail about why UPFs are bad and also why the industry promotes them and funds the vast majority of studies on food habits.
Most independent studies conclude that making food easier, sweeter and faster to consume harms us in terms of weight, combined with unknown side effects of additives (more so for the US than European countries) means we should be trying to reduce UPF intake and replace with more non-UPFs.
The Nova system is just one method of identifying UPFs, adding vitamins such as B, D etc. that are readily available in fruit is fine as opposed to sucralose for example. They are not being added to change the flavour, consistency or breakdown of the food, rather just to support general health. So a sourdough loaf made with fortified flour is fine, but a loaf of branded bread in most shops will contain preservatives in addition to the fortified flour
I agree with what you’re saying there. But it’s interesting that you single out sweeteners.
That leads nicely onto my next question, what’s wrong with products such as sucralose? We know people want a palatable diet, and so providing reformulated products is in a way meeting them half way. We can reduce the energy density of a product, whilst maintaining the consumer desired palatability. And sweeteners don’t encourage future consumption, they don’t increase cravings or appetite etc and likely have a minimal effect on microbiome if any effect at all. So reformulated (ie ultra processed foods) are advantageous if we’re realistic.
> whilst maintaining the consumer desired palatability.
I think this is part of the problem. Companies are trying to change what is desired palatability so we become 'addicted' to their foods.
Generally our tastes are manipulatable.
Sucralose or any artificial sugar isn’t great for your kidneys or your inflammation levels in your body. Studies have been done on Diet Coke and it’s just as addictive as coke that used to have real sugar in it.
I was also told at 16 from a rheumatologist that artificial was terrible for inflammation and arthritis, so to stay away from it and that was 20 odd years ago.
Cite these studies then, because to say a food is addictive is hugely controversial.
I think you may be getting confused with food reward. Diet vs full sugar beverages are both rewarding, but full sugar actually is more rewarding because of the accompanying energy density. Using fMRI we see greater BOLD signalling with the full sugar beverages than with the reformulated products. (See: brain activity and connectivity changes in response to nutritive natural sugars, non-nutritive natural sugar replacements and artificial sweeteners, Van Opstal 2021).
If a beverage were addictive, people would go through withdrawal (which they don’t do) following restriction.
TLDR: just because it’s rewarding doesn’t mean it’s addictive. It’s a highly contentious discussion in the area.
> And sweeteners don’t encourage future consumption, they don’t increase cravings or appetite etc and likely have a minimal effect on microbiome if any effect at all.
Actually, they do. Sweeteners cause insuline release, which causes cravings, and may even be linked to diabetes. Sweeteners make you eat more. And sweeteners do affect the gut biome, especially complex sugars like sucralose.
No they don’t - this was the topic of my entire PhD.
Insulin is secreted in response to an increase in blood glucose, which sweeteners do not and cannot increase. There’s no evidence of an increase in cravings from using sweeteners, and instead there’s evidence demonstrating a reduction in cravings. Same for the evidence making you eat more, in populations with obesity their use leads to a reduce in sugars and carbs (although in lean populations they’ll increase their intake of protein and fats to compensate for the reduce energy intake). There’s no causal relationship between sweeteners and diabetes, there’s a correlation because people with diabetes use them in place of sugars for sweet tastes. The evidence about the microbiome primarily comes from animal models or in vivo, which cannot be extrapolated to human populations. The emerging evidence from human studies shows a negligible effect on the microbiome.
And sucralose isn’t a complex sugar, it’s a high intensity sweetener. Sugar is a mono or disaccharide, which is a carbohydrate molecule with one or two molecular bonds, which makes it a simple carbohydrate, in other words, a sugar. Calling a sugar complex is an oxymoron, sugars by their very definition are simple. If a sugar were complex, it would be a complex carbohydrate with multiple molecular bonds. But that aside, sucralose is most definitely not a sugar, it is an artificially made sugar substitute which is not metabolized by the body and cannot directly contribute to net energy intake.
The book by Van Tulleken is full of scare mongering and is very thin on the ground in terms of scientific backing and citations. It's hard to see much value in a system of categorisation that places fish fingers in the same 'box' as Maltesers. If people have excess energy consumption, surely any focus then should be on high energy foods. I'd wager that very few people are obese due to their consumption of fish fingers.
UPF causes you to eat more vs non-UPF. (I’m just saying this because you conclude yourself that excess eating is the problem and we should focus on the bad foods. Well yes exactly, isn’t that UPF as its recently being shown to be digested differently, disrupt the gut microbiome and cause overeating?)
"UPF causes you to eat more Vs non-UPF"
There really isn't enough evidence for that to be stated as though it were the unquestionable truth. Firstly because there isn't enough research. But secondarily because the category is too broad to useful for such purposes.
I said we could focus on calorie dense foods to address excess consumption of calories. This would include foods that can be clearly identified as having high calorie density. For example, butter, oils, cheeses, chocolate, crisps, cakes, biscuits.
These items are classified specifically because of their calorie density. This enables any interventions to be also targeted and specific.
There is no value in using vague, scientifically dubious terms like 'UPF' to inform policy as (amongst many other reasons) it captures foods that have no role in excess calorie consumption. Brown bread and fish fingers should not be labelled as part of an attempt to drive down calorie consumption. Aside from being without justification, it increases the chance of deterring consumption of foods that are broadly healthy despite their irrelevant classification as 'UPF'.
It's nice to see a comment from an actual expert on this. I see this claim about sweeteners repeated all the time and have always doubted its validity.
It's especially funny as we definitely *know* sugar can cause obesity, diabetes and tooth decay (which is the primary source of bacteria that cause heart disease).
Inventing lesser risks for sweeteners that aren't supoort d by evidence is just bit strange.
I think it comes from this weird mentality that chemicals = bad even though everything is made from chemicals. An apple is only ever understood to be "an apple" yet is made up of hundreds of constituent chemicals whereas when something is man made the individual ingredients have to be listed which looks a lot more scary.
PhDs are always uber specific, i’m sure you’re correct in whatever you researched. But from googling I can find other PhD articles that say sweeteners cause a spike in insulin, not in response to increased blood glucose levels, which is your entire premise, but because of the body’s response to the taste.
And lets not talk about the microbiome because no one(?) knows either way. Lots of sugar (or additionally tricking the body into thinking its having lots of sugar) without the natural accompaniment (fibre) that the human body has been subjected too for a millennia is bound to have effects. Its very easy to claim there’s no effect when there’s no scientific data.
If you share these articles I’ll pick them apart for you. Sweeteners provided without any energy load do not increase insulin in any meaningful way - I guess you may be referring to the cephalic phase insulin response though, which if you go into it and look at the values, isn’t a significant effect. It’s not an action with any meaningful consequences. I published a systematic review on this, so I’m not just referring to my research btw.
And I was not saying there’s no effect because there’s no data. So putting aside your assumption which doesn’t have anything backing it up (because sugar doesn’t always have fibre accompanying it, and that’s not just a recent thing either) - there is data there about the biome. It’s emerging data and so has to be acknowledged as such, but conclusions can be drawn with an awareness of the caveats of the data.
And the body isn’t tricked into thinking it’s receiving sugar. The body detects when it receives a sweetener relative to a sugar, fMRI data shows different brain regions are activated. Which wouldn’t be the case if it was being hoodwinked.
There’s a looooooot of misinformation about sweeteners out there.
>making food easier, sweeter and faster to consume
This has nothing to do with UPF though? Bananas are sweet and fast to consume. As are sweet potatoes, etc.
>combined with unknown side effects of additives (more so for the us than European countries)
The first problem is the myth that America is bad because it uses additives that are banned in Europe. Did you know the opposite is true as well? America has banned some ingredients that Europe uses! It comes down to a difference in criteria, not that America=bad.
The glaring problem is that you mentioned the ‘unknown side effects’. That means nothing. You cannot invoke an unknown as part of your claim. The most you can say is let’s do more research on the effects.
Sorry if I come across as rude- I’m just frustrated with how prevalent black and white thinking has become with food. It stems from fear, but ends up as misinformation, guilt, and at worst orthorexia.
UPF has become the newest demon of food - before it was fat, then sugar. There will always be a new fad.
> This has nothing to do with UPF though? Bananas are sweet and fast to consume. As are sweet potatoes, etc.
It said *making* them faster and sweeter. Those are all naturally sweet and easy to eat.
Ok, too much sugar (or anything) is bad. I think that’s been established but I don’t see the link with ultra processing which is what they’re focusing on
The bananas and sweet potatoes that we eat are that way through selective breeding. Maybe we don't process them in the lab but they have been processed in the field.
That sounds a lot like moving the goalposts lol, and that’s not what processing means at all. But if it makes you happier, sugary fruits exist in nature without human intervention too
Literally every single food crop we consumer has been intensively selectively bred though, often over thousands of years. The corn, wheat, rice and potatoes that humanity requires to survive are all very different from the original wild crops they were derived from.
Without selective breeding, we would not be able to grow enough food to survive as a species. All basic crops have been heavily modified by humanity and that is a good thing.
As for 'processing' peeling a potato is processing it, any form of cooking is processing food. People saying that is bad, they're just idiots, don't listen to them.
> America has banned some ingredients that Europe uses! It comes down to a difference in criteria, not that America=bad.
Normally in the US it depends on who's lobbying. Aspartame was banned largely because they pay their farmers shed loads to produce HFCS.
>The glaring problem is that you mentioned the ‘unknown side effects’. That means nothing. You cannot invoke an unknown as part of your claim. The most you can say is let’s do more research on the effects.
Actually you can. Especially with food, something having unknown side effects tells me it should be completely banned until proven safe.
More research, sure, all for it. Shouldn't be up for sale until research is concluded though.
Is there a particular ingredient that hasn’t been tested? Afaik food standards are very stringent and while not perfect, require a demonstration that they’re safe for consumption and at which dosage it is safe to do so
So is it just convenience and how we consume them? I can’t understand why if I eat 500 calories of something that has (just making up an example here) 50g carbs, 20g of protein and 20g fibre, it would make any difference to my health whether it was UPF or not.
In short. It seems that the body doesn't really recognise UPFs and doesn't know what it's processing. UPFs are generally food that was once a combination of plants, ground down to near molecular level, split up, then reformulated with emulsifiers/flavours to make 'food'. Your body has all sorts of mechanisms for food that seem to get confused when eating UPF and can send off misleading signals. Causing overconsumption.
There are other problems as well such as emulsifiers suggested to harm the microbiome which is intertwined with us when it comes to food.
This comment is so full assumptions, opinions and hyperbole that it’s hard to parse any actual information out of it. In short, UPF is scary because it’s bad and weird.
There's lots of scientists saying this sort of stuff now.
Solid evidence might take 20 years. But there is probably a reason why countries who eat more UPFs are fatter, unhealthier and less happy.
It just so happens that a lot of UPFs are very calorie dense and that's likely the causative part behind the issues as they won't make you feel full. Where they are not as calorie dense, plant based meat for example, they will make you feel just as full as real meat I believe.
I feel with a lot of these claims, a lot is being taken out of context to make causative claims, when there's no real proof, just possible correlations. The body is very complicated but also resilient. Main thing that matters is that you have a good diet with all the macro and micro nutrients and you exercise regularly. UPFs can form a part of that but as with anything, just have to have in moderation.
I don't get these claims about the body not recognising things as food as well. The stomach doesn't really discriminate, but it will react to how full it feels, which is where bulky less energy dense foods like fruit and veg come in that help you feeling fuller. If all you eat are things like crisps and nuts, you're of course just going to get fat as they're so energy dense and not filling.
Yeah by saying the body doesn't recognise it as food I don't mean it will completely ignore it. But likely to be confused because it's in a form it doesn't recognise or evolved with over human history. Although calorie density is a factor I also don't think it's the complete picture. I heard a study that shows that zero sugar coke makes blood sugar go up, despite it having 0 sugar and scientists don't really know why.
I think food the relationship between food and our body is far more complicated than people think and scientists are aware that they don't fully understand it. Food is complicated. Our bodies are complicated. I have the stance that it's better to let the body seal with things it knows rather than add confusion with UPF to the mix. I do eat them on occasion sure, but treat them for what they are which for me is more of a treat.
Yeah that's a fair enough stance. Why reinvent the wheel.
I think the other thing is that it's incredibly hard to conduct reliable studies when it comes to food as you simply cannot control for all other factors such as socioeconomic status and lots of other things. It's therefore really hard to then make claims.
There's still suggestions out there that high salt is bad for you for example and tbh, unless there's something wrong with your kidneys, your body just filters it out unless you're having stupid amounts, which your taste buds wouldn't tolerate anyway. There's poor evidence for those with high blood pressure as well, unless of course there's something wrong with the kidneys again. This is just one of many examples where bad science is being applied and the reality is far more nuanced.
To be honest part of me thinks we'll never get to the bottom of food scientifically. It's bizarre to me that some scientists say carnivore is the healthiest then back it up with all these studies, while others are saying carnivore is the worst and a vegan 100% unprocessed diet is the best, as well as showing studies that back it up. Those diets couldn't be further from each other. How is someone meant to come up with any reasonable conclusion?
Edit: I'll add that thinking about it I've seen scientists advocate for all sorts of diets, carnivore, keto, paleo etc but I've never seen any advocate for a UPF centred diet. Adds to the theory that your body is naturally adaptable to deal with real food but UPFs cause a bit of a meltdown.
Completely agree with that we'll never get to the bottom of food scientifically. Not in this lifetime anyway. It's just far too nuanced. It's just something you can't be black and white on, yet a lot of the "experts" are. That's what rings alarm bells for me. Your example about 100% carnivore vs 100% plant based is spot on.
I think it's always been well known that processed foods are not the healthiest, but probably should be okay as long as it's part of a balanced diet. There's some okay ones and some really bad ones, but it's nothing new, so it makes me wonder what's giving it all the attention lately.
I remember it clicking when somebody pointed out how you generally wouldn't eat two apples (you eat one and are happy with that, don't think about it anymore) but can eat a whole huge bag of crisps (much more calories, volume) without even noticing, and maybe you'd even eat more.
What about that ‘clicks’ though? Firstly I have and will eat multiple apples, or any fruit, because they taste nice. Generally cost prohibits me from eating a whole pack of apples, not that it’s unprocessed.
I don’t know what the above person what rambling about molecules and emulsifiers but that’s also irrelevant (and hyperbole). Crisps taste nice because they contain fat and salt. This whole ‘ultra processed’ discussion is just the boogeyman.
I don’t know on what basis they’re claiming that the body ‘gets confused’ and sends off ‘misleading signals’. If we’re being that vague it’s meaningless from a scientific perspective
The point they're making is that UPFs mess with your body's feeling of satiety (when your body sends signals of "we've eaten enough, we don't eat to eat more" - and in fact it would be counter-proeductive to do so). The combination of flavour blends and lack of fibres (potatoes in crisps are pulverizes, re-hydrated, things are added) makes the body not "recognize" it's actually already full, and you'll end up eating more of these foods than you originally need.
With apples it tends not to happen, because the sugar that makes it taste nice is balanced out by the fibre content, so your body feel full and doesn't eat say, 5 apples in a row.
That’s not the fault of UPF though, that’s just any food with lower fibre and high sugar/fat/salt content which we already crave. There may be an overlap, but there are surely unprocessed foods with the same problems, and processed foods which are acceptable by the same metrics.
To me it’s just a red herring to focus on the processing part. It plays heavily into disordered eating, where some ingredient or process is heavily demonised, avoided, and associated with guilt/greed/negativity
I have made my own crisps, I have made my own pizzas, I have made my own pasta with zero ultra processing, and the "you're full" signal is faulty on them as well.
So much of this stuff sounds science-y and common sense but there's never any actual science to back it up.
So for the first bit on over eating, if I am tracking calories/macros, it doesn’t seem to matter whether those are UPF or not, if I am still within my goals. But the second bit, other problems, is where the issue could be.
Like any diet counting calories does work for some, just like keto works for some, as do extreme diets like shake replacements etc.
If it works for you, great.
But again the fundamental problem with CICO diets is that although technically correct on a laws of physics level humans aren't just calorie burning machines.
If you do it on UPFs the chances are your body will be confused and send hunger signals out which are incredibly powerful and exactly why it's very difficult to lose weight. Also if you eat high fibre real foods the chances are your body isn't going to fully take in all the calories. For example studies on nuts show that you don't absorb up to 30% of the calories shown on the back of packet and they leave your body in the toilet bowl. Nut butters however, 100%. Presumably because they have been basically molecularly destroyed to a level our teeth could never achieve, breaking all the high fibre cell walls and releasing the fats. Without sounding too grotesque I've seen it myself when I've eaten a lot of beans. I've seen whole beans in the toilet bowl although that might be a problem with me! So these high fibre real foods can satisfy your body with fullness with some of the calories not actually being processed.
On top of that many 'real' foods are high in water which again bulks out your stomach but is 0 calories. UPFs tend to have the water and fibre stripped of them creating a much more calorie dense product that is faster to digest due to being basically pre chewed by a machine and flimsily stuck together with emulsifiers.
Again, if simple CICO works for you great but for most people it will just leave them fighting their own body which will almost never work.
>PFs are generally food that was once a combination of plants, ground down to near molecular level, split up, then reformulated with emulsifiers/flavours to make 'food'.
You realize you've just described how bread and pasta are made? What do you think flour is?
Yea of course but bread and pasta, especially white flour versions are also not particularly synonymous with health and nutrition. Then the added emulsifiers are thought to cause problems.
I appreciate there is generally nothing else added to pasta. But pretty much all supermarket breads are UPFs
Does milk make up 80% of your diet? If so it's probably not a healthy diet.
The point is the diet of young people in this country is around 80% UPF, for adults it's around 60%.
Endlessly pumping emulsifiers day in day out through your body is thought to cause ill health benefits. That's just what the current science suggests...
UPF is just totally meaningless. There's nothing wrong with bread, pasta, dairy and other processed foods. You're looking for a magic bullet, there isn't one.
This nature good, industry bad shit? it's just the unibomber manifesto.
Pasta and dairy aren't necessarily UPF, neither is bread although the majority of store bought is.
And it's not a case of nature good and industry bad but the problem with industry is that they want us to eat more food than we need so they make more money. UPF is a good way to do it as it causes excessive consumption.
>I would encourage everyone to read Ultra Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken
Holy Shit, watched his Royal Institutes lecture on YouTube which was a real eye opener.
Who'd of figured Trump would of been right.
Yeah. I mean I didn’t eat much before so I haven’t had to make a massive change. But there are some things in the book that once you’ve seen you can unsee. Like the idea that a lot of upf is essentially pre chewed. And if something catches my eye in the supermarket all these things that I read bounce around my head. I highly recommend the book tho, it’s one thing to know that ‘upf is bad’ but reading all the studies and such is incredibly interesting. And the book is a really easy read.
\> Like the idea that a lot of upf is essentially pre chewed
I saw a similar comment made on a Michael Mosley doc a few years back that stuck with me and changed my buying habits, in that the body burns calories by breaking down food and upf has it all broken down for you so it removes that benefit, or something similar to that effect.
Yessss exactly. Also stuff about how upf can contain additives that are edible but they’re not things that we have traditionally eaten. So they’re not good for us as our body doesn’t recognise them as food.
'Processed food' is just food that isn't a raw ingredient. By peeling a carrot you turn it into processed food. Van Tulleken's book is popular right now because 'industrialism bad, nature good' gets held up as some universal order, but it's based on a series of stupid and unserious premises.
The entire thing is very middle class and quite embarrassing. It's just the latest version of the [Jamie Oliver nuggets thing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-a9VDIbZCU), where the aesthetics and vibes of food are more important than actual nutrition.
'UPF' is honestly such a hilarious stupid acronym to come up with, how many stages does it need to go thought before it's a UFP? is pasta ultra processed? you've got to mill the flower, make the dough, dry it then cook it. That's a lot of processing, which is super dangerous.
Go read the unibomber manifesto if you're into this stuff, it's at least honest about what it is.
You’re not come remotely close to understanding how something would be classified as UPF.
Go read the book (or perhaps the first chapter) and come back with a better argument.
No it would be. The guy just thinks industrialization is bad, like Jamie Oliver, because he hates poor people and is v. middle class.
The definition in the article is:
>Ultra-processed food items contain more than five ingredients and are often high in fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt
Which is laughable, that is pizza, pasta, many other dishes you would make at home. Something 'containing more than 5 ingredients' is bad? lol, sure, I will start cooking with less ingredients.
>But some UPFs were green and some minimally processed, such as nuts, seeds and whole milk, red
lmao, ultra processed hunter gatherers
For that to be your take away from the book, if you have read it, is bizarre.
He specifically talks about how poor and overweight people are vilified for their choices.
Green and red refers to the current traffic light system not UPF.
The five ingredients is a signifier, it’s not a rule. If you go around the supermarket and look at labels of course there will be exceptions.
You’re being wilfully ignorant.
No they aren’t. You are just plain wrong.
Group 1. Unprocessed or minimally processed foods
Unprocessed (or natural) foods are edible parts of plants (seeds, fruits, leaves, stems, roots) or of animals (muscle, offal, eggs, milk), and also fungi, algae and water, after separation from nature.
By the way Chris van Tulleken did not create the NOVA classification.
The idea that NATURAL = GOOD and the further you get from that, the worse something is, it is just stupid. Ultra processed is a competently meaningless category, his book will just make a bunch of people go raw vegan, because they've decided that progress is bad.
The issues with modern nutrition, they're mainly centered around people not being able to afford to cook or have any free time. The guy has looked at a political and social problem and seen the solution in his diet. It's meaningless.
You wanna fix nutrition in the UK, shorter working hours, nationalism supermarkets, ever everyone staple foods for free. All this 'oh they're eating something that's PROCESSED' it's nonsense.
What exactly are you basing your opinion on?
You clearly haven’t read his book so why do you feel so qualified to have an opinion on it? You are actually agreeing with him in many respects.
And yet, as the article goes on to say, there's not actually any evidence (yet) about whether UPFs are actually unhealthy. So maybe do those studies (which the article says they are doing) before giving this advice?
Perfect summary. It’s a total red herring to demonise the ‘processing’ as if the actual ingredients aren’t the problem. ‘Ultra’ Processed food can be absolutely fine to consume, and unprocessed food can have adverse health effects. I’m all for education but I’m worried this whole thing will only encourage more disordered eating, rather than people actually making informed decisions.
This black and white thinking just keeps repeating itself. At one point fat=bad, low fat= good, then sugar became the enemy, now it’s ’processing’. If people are choosing food based on how processed it is they’re not actually looking at the nutrition
Pretend meat is almost certainly unhealthy. But so is too much red meat.
There are much better things to eat if you want a meat free diet. Imho vegetarian food tends to be much healthier than vegan food because of the different cultures (nothing to do with dairy/egg etc).
A couple of studies on highly processed foods being unhealthy there are plenty more, I'm not sure why you find this hard to believe.
https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/pdf/S1550-4131(19)30248-7.pdf
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29444771/
Fake meat seems to always be made from highly processed ingredients though they vary depending on the brand but often include pea or soy protein for example.
I was hoping for a source pointing out specifically fake meat is unhealthy. I’m sure I do not need to explain why studies in which the plant based meat is categorised the same as crisps etc. is not likely to accurately reflect how healthy plant based meat is. Without that you are making some pretty heavy assumptions.
> plant based meat is categorised the same as crisps
Traditional crisps are not highly processed so are not the same. Comparisons to products like Pringles may be valid.
My point is that fake meat is highly processed and highly processed foods are found to be unhealthy. It is most likely that fake meats will be found to be unhealthy.
Part of the problem is that there is no one fake meat, so they are just in the highly processed food category. The companies such as beyond meat market them as healthy and try to minimise the information about how they are actually created. They use similar tricks to say kellogg's claiming cereals are healthy when they are not.
Processed meat is literally a class 1 carcinogen, it is known to cause cancer. I'm not saying vegan meat is good for you, but the products they're made to replicate (burgers, sausages, bacon etc) are literally giving people cancer.
> I'm not saying vegan meat is good for you, but the products they're made to replicate
True, but there is plenty of vegan food that is not highly processed. I find the whole plant based meat copy a strange concept. I've been veggie for years, the last thing I want to eat is something that is meat-like. I know others feel different.
I guess it's just personal preference but I tend to agree with you, been vegan 7/8 years and eat very little processed food. I guess they help people make the switch and they wind up relying on them too much.
Honestly I think to eat healthily you need to do mostly your own cooking from basic ingredients. I think it's a shame so many people have never been taught how to cook.
Yeah I was pretty lucky in that regard, even just having a basic knowledge of cooking before I went off to uni saved me a lot of money and formed some really good habits.
It doesn't quite say that. It says 'And there was too little research into the effect of UPFs on general health'. And there is research. There are several systematic reviews too which demonstrate adverse health outcomes.
They can feel it in their hearts that processing is scary and bad
Plot twist: it’s not the processing that makes the food unhealthy. It’s the unhealthy ingredients. So all they’re saying is bad food is bad for you
…and the ingredients would classify it as UPF. The is a significant difference in the classification of highly processed vs ultra processed.
And those ingredients…are highly processed. How do you make, for example, modified maize starch at home?
Actually it is.
Why do they add this stuff? Reduce cost, increase shelf life, increase palatability, increase sales and profits.
Dunno if you’re intentionally missing the point or you have some other agenda
You don't need to wait for a study. If you're concerned about UPFs, just quit them.
I did last year and found weight loss to be ridiculously easy now. I used to be a waking zombie as I struggled with sleep and snoring prior to this to the point where I'd need a nap in the middle of the day. In hindsight, I likely had sleep apnea which is now gone and I can get a full 8 hours of uninterrupted bliss.
My skin is clearer, my hair is thicker and healthier, my mood has improved and my energy levels are through the roof.
I've changed nothing else about my lifestyle other than the food.
I've been trying to lose weight this year and I feel better as well. But I've not consciously been avoiding "UPFs", just reducing the amount I eat (especially the amount of sugar) and snacking less.
Saying that there is a link doesn't really mean anything though.
You can probably link obesity and heart disease with anything if you wanted.
Is it causal? Correlation? Is there evidence? Etc.
> Saying that there is a link doesn't really mean anything though.
Ah the smoking is good for you because we don't know exactly why smokers get cancer more argument.
Sure people with Coeliac disease tend to avoid it. Some cultures diets also are not very bread based.
I know you think you're being clever but you are just showing your lack of ability to reason.
The problem is the entire definition of ultra processed is a wooly bookkeeping exersize. Some things that you might put there due to the sheer amount of processes aren't because it would make the results look like a total mess. The studies also usually dont properly compare like for like groups. Upf intake is also associated with being less well off which has a whole bunch of other cancer and heart disease risks.
I think they're fundamentally correct. Eating the least crap food possible is always going to be good for you but the industry that's popped up to sell you the solution at the same time as telling you the problem is usually not to be trusted.
There's interesting charts floating about that correlates the rise of UPFs, obesity and all the ailments that come with it in the western world. Same goes for Brazil and Mexico - since UPFs became more wide spread obesity has sky rocketed.
As for the actual evidence, it's rapidly growing.
I think a consensus is beginning to emerge, but we need a lot more detailed studies to figure out what exactly makes them bad. Having 50 ingredients is not in itself bad, but the chance of one of them being bad for you is just a lot higher.
I think the key problem is that UPF are designed not to fill you up, so that you eat more. Bland texture, swallowable, sweetness, salt, easy to digest, those are probable the main features. But it could also be that specific substances like sweeteners or emulsifiers are a problem in itself.
I mean I get the sense of it, but I worry it is tautological. If we end up saying that anything that is processed and is bad for you is UPF, we're not really identifying what makes something bad for you, we're just saying bad foods are bad for you because they're bad for you
That is exactly the point. Our current definition of UPF is probably too broad.
Or: it would be possible to make UPF that is not as harmful, but it may not be as profitable. So we need a better definition to drive change, because getting rid of UPF seems unlikely.
So we can work in two directions: reduce processing where we can, and identify what exactly is bad, so we can specifically avoid it.
There is no financial incentive for these companies to produce food that you eat less of.
They exist to sell food and so they sell food that people buy more of.
> I worry it is tautological.
Don't. As the word 'ultra' here means 'overly', the most sensible criterion for whether a food is excessively processed is if eating it has become relatively deleterious to one's health in comparison to less processed versions of the same foodstuff.
And yes, as the health benefits of e.g. intermittent fasting have been demonstrated, once the necessary macro-and-micronutrients are covered, anything in excess is to be considered more likely to harm than help.
Without actively approving the philosophy behind the 'paleo' diet and its ilk, it is only right to place the burden of proof upon the processor of food to show that its wholesomeness has been improved thereby; because it is demonstrably very easy to make something worse for you, but very, very difficult to come up with an additive that makes already innocuous food more healthy.
In fact, none come to mind. We have texture and flavour enhancers, colourants and preservatives; but I know of no health enhancers, beyond things fortified in silly attempts to ward against a deficiency that may or may not exist in the consumer, and which will be of no benefit if it does not; that is approximately the same as saying preservatives make a food healthier, as it might be bad for you if eaten after it had gone off.
Of course, it is possible that processing might, despite the difficulty of mere additional ingredients making a food more wholesome, alter its matrix so that it was, say, more readily assimilated. But, as before, the onus should be on the manufacturer to demonstrate any claims to wholesomeness, and prior to this processing should be, if only slightly, so as to offset convenience, cast in a negative light.
But then that’s no help in determining what’s an ultra processed food. If what we decide a priori is that ultra processed food is food that is bad for you, what’s the point in researching the if ultra processed foods are bad for you? We’re just assuming the conclusion
We should either decide a grouping independent of effects so we can analyse the effects, or form categories based on the effects in terms of the specific ingredients or processes
There’s no research value in calling food that is bad for you bad, because we know that to begin with
The whole traffic light system is flawed anyway. Usually based on 'a portion size of 'x'' which would hardly be a child's portion let alone an average adult.
The portion sizes are that which am average adult should be eating, though. There's a reason the average adult (myself very much included) is significantly overweight.
The food is designed for you to eat way beyond the portion size. You would be severely unsatisfied eating this type of food but limiting to daily recommend calories. That’s why the put it in sizes of more than one portion.
I quit almost all UPF for health reasons and a few months later without intending to I had lost 6kg.
I never restricted my calories and I ate loads of bread, pasta, rice, butter, cheese, even sweet desserts and chocolate.
I thought my diet was quite healthy before but there was a surprising amount of UPF in there.
This is all well and good, but on a large scale I’m not sure adding MORE words ultra-processed food packaging is going to fix the issue. These foods are dietary staples for a large groups of people. This kind of food is appealing because it’s flavourful, readily available, generally very easy to store and prepare, and it’s perceived as affordable (and in terms of sheer calories per £, it is - in terms of micronutrients, not so much). NOT relying on them is time-consuming and requires a degree of admin that many people just don’t perceive they have capacity for (and the negative effects are probably compounded by the fact that the same people don’t feel they have the time/funds/ability to exercise, meaning that the caloric density of these foods is a real issue in combination with a very sedentary lifestyle). As long as people are pressed for time and money, and suffering the effects of shit food education in school and rampant, disordered diet culture information about food/diet/exercise I don’t think we can reasonably expect additional labelling to fix our obesity and heart disease problem.
The vast majority of people in this country have the culinary skills of a fish out of water and the nutritional knowledge of a wet cardboard box.
Suggesting sources of information to counteract that shouldn't be looked down upon.
At least UPF is slowly getting the media exposure it needs. No one likes to be told what to do, what to eat etc.
I'd be hopeful one day for unbiased information on the food we eat, but there is too much money to be made from UPF, low fat, sugar free, healthy foods etc.
The waters will remain muddy for years to come.
Their system isn't about quality, it's pulling all the different nutritional variables into one score.
What you don't get for example is the salt/sodium levels clearly displayed. A lot of people watch their sodium intake so it's very useful to have that clearly marked.
Perhaps what *you* eat, but not nearly so much money would be put into the matter of labelling if it were not material to enabling people to determine what they are to eat.
Is it really hard to work out? Just look at the ingredients, it it has 40 different things you have never heard of, it's shit and put it back. The less ingredients the better.
Of UPF? I don't think there's good public awareness at all, at least, not of the consequences nor the ethics behind it.
People are prepared to ignore it because they just think of it as a treat, or 'what's the worst that could happen? I gain weight?'
It's so much more than that. It's huge multinationals manipulating your brain to consume more, and more, and more of their product.
How long before unsufferable Vegans start crying that this is some sort of conspiracy against them? When I'm pretty sure they'd be all in favour of ultra processed animal derived products being labelled as ultra-processed.
Take cheese, non-vegan cheese only needs two or three ingredients: milk, cultures and rennet.
Tesco vegan cheese substitute: Water, Coconut Oil, Corn Starch, Modified Potato Starch, Modified Tapioca Starch, Sea Salt, Modified Maize Starch, Tricalcium Phosphate, Flavouring, Potassium Iodide, Olive Extract, Vitamin D, Vitamin B12, Colour (Beta-Carotene).
For the record I'm happy with ALL ultra processed products being labelled as such.
Vegan meat substitutes have been shown to be "healthier" than the meat they're aiming to replicate.
Just because the package just says "beef" or "milk", doesn't mean that beef isn't made up of harmful chemicals. They're still full of saturated fat, trans-fatty acids, and cholesterol. Red meat is a class 2 carcinogen. There have been no links to cancer, diabetes, or heart disease with vegan meat alternatives.
If you're eating cheese, vegan or dairy, for health, you're doing it wrong anyway. But you can't just say "more ingredients bad" when those ingredients might not actually be bad for you, whilst the shorter list could be. It's too reductive.
If you think red meat is a class 2 carcinogen you haven't read the 'evidence' that the WHO published, 3 years after they made the claim.
You don't have to read it though as 2 Drs have done the deep dive and reported what is said and the laughable study they used.
Georgia Ede and Paul Mason do effective teardowns of this 'evidence', both available on YouTube.
Fake meats haven't been out long enough to draw any conclusions about them, except whoever eats them is a guinea pig.
I'll have a look into those Drs and their videos, but the WHO's website still shows red meat as a class 2 carcinogen.
And mock meats haven't, but all the ingredients that are used in them have. The same ingredients are used in processed meats and other processed foods, but the lack of animal ingredients seems to make a big difference.
It's the way they mix the ingredients together, the body doesn't recognise them as food and doesn't know what to do with them, think someone said pretty much the same thing above.
I'm paraphrasing someone now regarding red meat but how can an ancient food be responsible for modern diseases?
Because people ate for survival in "ancient" times, not for longevity. You'd be able to reach reproductive age if you ate nothing but McDonalds every day, and thus it wouldn't force evolutionary selection, but in our modern age we should be seeking foods that promote longevity, because it is post-reproductive age that most of these disease occur.
Now obviously UPFs are not good for longevity either. I was just pointing out that the length of the ingredient list is not a good marker by itself to determine the comparative healthiness of two different food products.
>They're still full of saturated fat, trans-fatty acids, and cholesterol
Eating fat doesn't necessarily make you fat and eating cholesterol doesn't raise your cholesterol. I thought people already knew this.
>There have been no links to cancer, diabetes, or heart disease with vegan meat alternatives.
Because it's new. There's no way that ultra processed mash of random ingredients is healthy. The salt alone is harmful.
True (to a degree) but there are other harmful effects of saturated fat and dietary cholesterol that contribute towards chronic diseases and all-cause mortality from eating too much meat and dairy (which basically everyone in the UK does).
And they're relatively new, but the ingredients aren't. If you compare the ingredients list of a vegan mock meat to a supermarket bread, they're more or less identical. They're made up of an isolate protein (gluten in the case of bread, soy, corn, or pea for vegan meats), a fat in the form of an oil, some starchy carbs like cornflour or wheatflour, and emulsifiers. So if you eat supermarket bread, you're basically eating vegan mock meats.
Eating too much of anything is a problem, not really an argument.
>So if you eat supermarket bread, you're basically eating vegan mock meats.
I don't and people don't pretend supermarket bread is healthy??? Not sure what point you're trying to make here.
You said that we can't determine whether there are links to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc. for vegan meats because they're too new, but this is demonstrably false because they're essentially just supermarket bread, which, whilst not considered healthy, has been studied for such links.
>They're still full of saturated fat, trans-fatty acids, and cholesterol
Eating fat doesn't necessarily make you fat and eating cholesterol doesn't raise your cholesterol. I thought people already knew this.
>There have been no links to cancer, diabetes, or heart disease with vegan meat alternatives.
Because it's new. There's no way that ultra processed mash of random ingredients is healthy. The salt alone is harmful.
I suspect not, this comment was left an hour or two before mine (can't think of many meat eaters who'd use the term 'meat lobby'):
>Meat lobby found their preferred attack line against pretend meat.
Plus I had a slew of downvotes within about 10mins.
There's a joke about vegans I hear a lot. "How do you know someone's a vegan? Don't worry, they'll tell you"
But I hear people crying and whinging about vegans in online comments more than I see vegans themselves.
**Removed/warning**. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
But it’s really true. Ingredients on a chicken leg.
Ingredients: chicken.
Ingredients on any vegan substitute is like 5 pages of the Oxford dictionary. Sounds pretty ultra processed to me so get it labelled as such.
Yeah but if you listed the actual constituent chemicals of chicken it would look a lot more scary than it actually is. Just because they've been formed into chicken by nature rather than being manmade doesn't automatically make them more healthy
No. My point is that a list of chemicals on the ingredients of something shouldn't be automatically scary either. Every food is made up of chemicals, it's just when the food is manmade the individual chemicals have to be listed whereas when it's naturally occurring they aren't.
But vegan bacon or vegan chicken for example just doesn’t exist. It’s completely man made from start to finish. It’s about as real food as a Mars bar. Therefor ultra processed. If they want to put a label on ultra processed foods then all this fake vegan stuff should be included. I don’t see why not.
I'm not sure I understand your point. I agree that these things are ultra processed but I don't see why something being highly processed automatically means that it'll be unhealthy for you.
I would encourage everyone to read Ultra Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken which goes into a lot of detail about why UPFs are bad and also why the industry promotes them and funds the vast majority of studies on food habits. Most independent studies conclude that making food easier, sweeter and faster to consume harms us in terms of weight, combined with unknown side effects of additives (more so for the US than European countries) means we should be trying to reduce UPF intake and replace with more non-UPFs.
What’s your stance on fortified foods, which are also categorised as UP according to the Nova system.
The Nova system is just one method of identifying UPFs, adding vitamins such as B, D etc. that are readily available in fruit is fine as opposed to sucralose for example. They are not being added to change the flavour, consistency or breakdown of the food, rather just to support general health. So a sourdough loaf made with fortified flour is fine, but a loaf of branded bread in most shops will contain preservatives in addition to the fortified flour
I agree with what you’re saying there. But it’s interesting that you single out sweeteners. That leads nicely onto my next question, what’s wrong with products such as sucralose? We know people want a palatable diet, and so providing reformulated products is in a way meeting them half way. We can reduce the energy density of a product, whilst maintaining the consumer desired palatability. And sweeteners don’t encourage future consumption, they don’t increase cravings or appetite etc and likely have a minimal effect on microbiome if any effect at all. So reformulated (ie ultra processed foods) are advantageous if we’re realistic.
> whilst maintaining the consumer desired palatability. I think this is part of the problem. Companies are trying to change what is desired palatability so we become 'addicted' to their foods. Generally our tastes are manipulatable.
Sucralose or any artificial sugar isn’t great for your kidneys or your inflammation levels in your body. Studies have been done on Diet Coke and it’s just as addictive as coke that used to have real sugar in it. I was also told at 16 from a rheumatologist that artificial was terrible for inflammation and arthritis, so to stay away from it and that was 20 odd years ago.
Cite these studies then, because to say a food is addictive is hugely controversial. I think you may be getting confused with food reward. Diet vs full sugar beverages are both rewarding, but full sugar actually is more rewarding because of the accompanying energy density. Using fMRI we see greater BOLD signalling with the full sugar beverages than with the reformulated products. (See: brain activity and connectivity changes in response to nutritive natural sugars, non-nutritive natural sugar replacements and artificial sweeteners, Van Opstal 2021). If a beverage were addictive, people would go through withdrawal (which they don’t do) following restriction. TLDR: just because it’s rewarding doesn’t mean it’s addictive. It’s a highly contentious discussion in the area.
> And sweeteners don’t encourage future consumption, they don’t increase cravings or appetite etc and likely have a minimal effect on microbiome if any effect at all. Actually, they do. Sweeteners cause insuline release, which causes cravings, and may even be linked to diabetes. Sweeteners make you eat more. And sweeteners do affect the gut biome, especially complex sugars like sucralose.
No they don’t - this was the topic of my entire PhD. Insulin is secreted in response to an increase in blood glucose, which sweeteners do not and cannot increase. There’s no evidence of an increase in cravings from using sweeteners, and instead there’s evidence demonstrating a reduction in cravings. Same for the evidence making you eat more, in populations with obesity their use leads to a reduce in sugars and carbs (although in lean populations they’ll increase their intake of protein and fats to compensate for the reduce energy intake). There’s no causal relationship between sweeteners and diabetes, there’s a correlation because people with diabetes use them in place of sugars for sweet tastes. The evidence about the microbiome primarily comes from animal models or in vivo, which cannot be extrapolated to human populations. The emerging evidence from human studies shows a negligible effect on the microbiome. And sucralose isn’t a complex sugar, it’s a high intensity sweetener. Sugar is a mono or disaccharide, which is a carbohydrate molecule with one or two molecular bonds, which makes it a simple carbohydrate, in other words, a sugar. Calling a sugar complex is an oxymoron, sugars by their very definition are simple. If a sugar were complex, it would be a complex carbohydrate with multiple molecular bonds. But that aside, sucralose is most definitely not a sugar, it is an artificially made sugar substitute which is not metabolized by the body and cannot directly contribute to net energy intake.
The book by Van Tulleken is full of scare mongering and is very thin on the ground in terms of scientific backing and citations. It's hard to see much value in a system of categorisation that places fish fingers in the same 'box' as Maltesers. If people have excess energy consumption, surely any focus then should be on high energy foods. I'd wager that very few people are obese due to their consumption of fish fingers.
UPF causes you to eat more vs non-UPF. (I’m just saying this because you conclude yourself that excess eating is the problem and we should focus on the bad foods. Well yes exactly, isn’t that UPF as its recently being shown to be digested differently, disrupt the gut microbiome and cause overeating?)
"UPF causes you to eat more Vs non-UPF" There really isn't enough evidence for that to be stated as though it were the unquestionable truth. Firstly because there isn't enough research. But secondarily because the category is too broad to useful for such purposes. I said we could focus on calorie dense foods to address excess consumption of calories. This would include foods that can be clearly identified as having high calorie density. For example, butter, oils, cheeses, chocolate, crisps, cakes, biscuits. These items are classified specifically because of their calorie density. This enables any interventions to be also targeted and specific. There is no value in using vague, scientifically dubious terms like 'UPF' to inform policy as (amongst many other reasons) it captures foods that have no role in excess calorie consumption. Brown bread and fish fingers should not be labelled as part of an attempt to drive down calorie consumption. Aside from being without justification, it increases the chance of deterring consumption of foods that are broadly healthy despite their irrelevant classification as 'UPF'.
It's nice to see a comment from an actual expert on this. I see this claim about sweeteners repeated all the time and have always doubted its validity.
It's especially funny as we definitely *know* sugar can cause obesity, diabetes and tooth decay (which is the primary source of bacteria that cause heart disease). Inventing lesser risks for sweeteners that aren't supoort d by evidence is just bit strange.
I think it comes from this weird mentality that chemicals = bad even though everything is made from chemicals. An apple is only ever understood to be "an apple" yet is made up of hundreds of constituent chemicals whereas when something is man made the individual ingredients have to be listed which looks a lot more scary.
I only use natural products, like Wolfsbane and arsenic, and we should reject all artifical creations, like nylon and eye glasses.
Are you familiar with this study? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32130881/ Who funded your PhD and what filed do you work in now?
PhDs are always uber specific, i’m sure you’re correct in whatever you researched. But from googling I can find other PhD articles that say sweeteners cause a spike in insulin, not in response to increased blood glucose levels, which is your entire premise, but because of the body’s response to the taste. And lets not talk about the microbiome because no one(?) knows either way. Lots of sugar (or additionally tricking the body into thinking its having lots of sugar) without the natural accompaniment (fibre) that the human body has been subjected too for a millennia is bound to have effects. Its very easy to claim there’s no effect when there’s no scientific data.
If you share these articles I’ll pick them apart for you. Sweeteners provided without any energy load do not increase insulin in any meaningful way - I guess you may be referring to the cephalic phase insulin response though, which if you go into it and look at the values, isn’t a significant effect. It’s not an action with any meaningful consequences. I published a systematic review on this, so I’m not just referring to my research btw. And I was not saying there’s no effect because there’s no data. So putting aside your assumption which doesn’t have anything backing it up (because sugar doesn’t always have fibre accompanying it, and that’s not just a recent thing either) - there is data there about the biome. It’s emerging data and so has to be acknowledged as such, but conclusions can be drawn with an awareness of the caveats of the data. And the body isn’t tricked into thinking it’s receiving sugar. The body detects when it receives a sweetener relative to a sugar, fMRI data shows different brain regions are activated. Which wouldn’t be the case if it was being hoodwinked. There’s a looooooot of misinformation about sweeteners out there.
Also what other methods are there beyond Nova? I’ve never come across any others.
If a food has to have synthetic vitamins added then it is something I eat in moderation personally as it signals that the food is nutrient poor.
They’re particularly useful for specific groups, such as the elderly who are struggle to eat as much, or people with deficiencies
you got him.
>making food easier, sweeter and faster to consume This has nothing to do with UPF though? Bananas are sweet and fast to consume. As are sweet potatoes, etc. >combined with unknown side effects of additives (more so for the us than European countries) The first problem is the myth that America is bad because it uses additives that are banned in Europe. Did you know the opposite is true as well? America has banned some ingredients that Europe uses! It comes down to a difference in criteria, not that America=bad. The glaring problem is that you mentioned the ‘unknown side effects’. That means nothing. You cannot invoke an unknown as part of your claim. The most you can say is let’s do more research on the effects. Sorry if I come across as rude- I’m just frustrated with how prevalent black and white thinking has become with food. It stems from fear, but ends up as misinformation, guilt, and at worst orthorexia. UPF has become the newest demon of food - before it was fat, then sugar. There will always be a new fad.
> This has nothing to do with UPF though? Bananas are sweet and fast to consume. As are sweet potatoes, etc. It said *making* them faster and sweeter. Those are all naturally sweet and easy to eat.
Ok, too much sugar (or anything) is bad. I think that’s been established but I don’t see the link with ultra processing which is what they’re focusing on
The bananas and sweet potatoes that we eat are that way through selective breeding. Maybe we don't process them in the lab but they have been processed in the field.
That sounds a lot like moving the goalposts lol, and that’s not what processing means at all. But if it makes you happier, sugary fruits exist in nature without human intervention too
It wasn't that long ago that people on Reddit were calling selecting breeding "genetic modification".
Literally every single food crop we consumer has been intensively selectively bred though, often over thousands of years. The corn, wheat, rice and potatoes that humanity requires to survive are all very different from the original wild crops they were derived from.
Without selective breeding, we would not be able to grow enough food to survive as a species. All basic crops have been heavily modified by humanity and that is a good thing. As for 'processing' peeling a potato is processing it, any form of cooking is processing food. People saying that is bad, they're just idiots, don't listen to them.
> America has banned some ingredients that Europe uses! It comes down to a difference in criteria, not that America=bad. Normally in the US it depends on who's lobbying. Aspartame was banned largely because they pay their farmers shed loads to produce HFCS.
>Normally in the US it depends on who's lobbying. oversimplification
>The glaring problem is that you mentioned the ‘unknown side effects’. That means nothing. You cannot invoke an unknown as part of your claim. The most you can say is let’s do more research on the effects. Actually you can. Especially with food, something having unknown side effects tells me it should be completely banned until proven safe. More research, sure, all for it. Shouldn't be up for sale until research is concluded though.
Is there a particular ingredient that hasn’t been tested? Afaik food standards are very stringent and while not perfect, require a demonstration that they’re safe for consumption and at which dosage it is safe to do so
I'm just replying to what I quoted. If unknown side effects don't mean nothing. The side effects need to be known.
So is it just convenience and how we consume them? I can’t understand why if I eat 500 calories of something that has (just making up an example here) 50g carbs, 20g of protein and 20g fibre, it would make any difference to my health whether it was UPF or not.
If it makes you feel full you are unlikely to scoff more.
In short. It seems that the body doesn't really recognise UPFs and doesn't know what it's processing. UPFs are generally food that was once a combination of plants, ground down to near molecular level, split up, then reformulated with emulsifiers/flavours to make 'food'. Your body has all sorts of mechanisms for food that seem to get confused when eating UPF and can send off misleading signals. Causing overconsumption. There are other problems as well such as emulsifiers suggested to harm the microbiome which is intertwined with us when it comes to food.
This comment is so full assumptions, opinions and hyperbole that it’s hard to parse any actual information out of it. In short, UPF is scary because it’s bad and weird.
There's lots of scientists saying this sort of stuff now. Solid evidence might take 20 years. But there is probably a reason why countries who eat more UPFs are fatter, unhealthier and less happy.
It just so happens that a lot of UPFs are very calorie dense and that's likely the causative part behind the issues as they won't make you feel full. Where they are not as calorie dense, plant based meat for example, they will make you feel just as full as real meat I believe. I feel with a lot of these claims, a lot is being taken out of context to make causative claims, when there's no real proof, just possible correlations. The body is very complicated but also resilient. Main thing that matters is that you have a good diet with all the macro and micro nutrients and you exercise regularly. UPFs can form a part of that but as with anything, just have to have in moderation. I don't get these claims about the body not recognising things as food as well. The stomach doesn't really discriminate, but it will react to how full it feels, which is where bulky less energy dense foods like fruit and veg come in that help you feeling fuller. If all you eat are things like crisps and nuts, you're of course just going to get fat as they're so energy dense and not filling.
Yeah by saying the body doesn't recognise it as food I don't mean it will completely ignore it. But likely to be confused because it's in a form it doesn't recognise or evolved with over human history. Although calorie density is a factor I also don't think it's the complete picture. I heard a study that shows that zero sugar coke makes blood sugar go up, despite it having 0 sugar and scientists don't really know why. I think food the relationship between food and our body is far more complicated than people think and scientists are aware that they don't fully understand it. Food is complicated. Our bodies are complicated. I have the stance that it's better to let the body seal with things it knows rather than add confusion with UPF to the mix. I do eat them on occasion sure, but treat them for what they are which for me is more of a treat.
Yeah that's a fair enough stance. Why reinvent the wheel. I think the other thing is that it's incredibly hard to conduct reliable studies when it comes to food as you simply cannot control for all other factors such as socioeconomic status and lots of other things. It's therefore really hard to then make claims. There's still suggestions out there that high salt is bad for you for example and tbh, unless there's something wrong with your kidneys, your body just filters it out unless you're having stupid amounts, which your taste buds wouldn't tolerate anyway. There's poor evidence for those with high blood pressure as well, unless of course there's something wrong with the kidneys again. This is just one of many examples where bad science is being applied and the reality is far more nuanced.
To be honest part of me thinks we'll never get to the bottom of food scientifically. It's bizarre to me that some scientists say carnivore is the healthiest then back it up with all these studies, while others are saying carnivore is the worst and a vegan 100% unprocessed diet is the best, as well as showing studies that back it up. Those diets couldn't be further from each other. How is someone meant to come up with any reasonable conclusion? Edit: I'll add that thinking about it I've seen scientists advocate for all sorts of diets, carnivore, keto, paleo etc but I've never seen any advocate for a UPF centred diet. Adds to the theory that your body is naturally adaptable to deal with real food but UPFs cause a bit of a meltdown.
Completely agree with that we'll never get to the bottom of food scientifically. Not in this lifetime anyway. It's just far too nuanced. It's just something you can't be black and white on, yet a lot of the "experts" are. That's what rings alarm bells for me. Your example about 100% carnivore vs 100% plant based is spot on. I think it's always been well known that processed foods are not the healthiest, but probably should be okay as long as it's part of a balanced diet. There's some okay ones and some really bad ones, but it's nothing new, so it makes me wonder what's giving it all the attention lately.
I remember it clicking when somebody pointed out how you generally wouldn't eat two apples (you eat one and are happy with that, don't think about it anymore) but can eat a whole huge bag of crisps (much more calories, volume) without even noticing, and maybe you'd even eat more.
What about that ‘clicks’ though? Firstly I have and will eat multiple apples, or any fruit, because they taste nice. Generally cost prohibits me from eating a whole pack of apples, not that it’s unprocessed. I don’t know what the above person what rambling about molecules and emulsifiers but that’s also irrelevant (and hyperbole). Crisps taste nice because they contain fat and salt. This whole ‘ultra processed’ discussion is just the boogeyman. I don’t know on what basis they’re claiming that the body ‘gets confused’ and sends off ‘misleading signals’. If we’re being that vague it’s meaningless from a scientific perspective
The point they're making is that UPFs mess with your body's feeling of satiety (when your body sends signals of "we've eaten enough, we don't eat to eat more" - and in fact it would be counter-proeductive to do so). The combination of flavour blends and lack of fibres (potatoes in crisps are pulverizes, re-hydrated, things are added) makes the body not "recognize" it's actually already full, and you'll end up eating more of these foods than you originally need. With apples it tends not to happen, because the sugar that makes it taste nice is balanced out by the fibre content, so your body feel full and doesn't eat say, 5 apples in a row.
That’s not the fault of UPF though, that’s just any food with lower fibre and high sugar/fat/salt content which we already crave. There may be an overlap, but there are surely unprocessed foods with the same problems, and processed foods which are acceptable by the same metrics. To me it’s just a red herring to focus on the processing part. It plays heavily into disordered eating, where some ingredient or process is heavily demonised, avoided, and associated with guilt/greed/negativity
I have made my own crisps, I have made my own pizzas, I have made my own pasta with zero ultra processing, and the "you're full" signal is faulty on them as well. So much of this stuff sounds science-y and common sense but there's never any actual science to back it up.
So for the first bit on over eating, if I am tracking calories/macros, it doesn’t seem to matter whether those are UPF or not, if I am still within my goals. But the second bit, other problems, is where the issue could be.
Like any diet counting calories does work for some, just like keto works for some, as do extreme diets like shake replacements etc. If it works for you, great. But again the fundamental problem with CICO diets is that although technically correct on a laws of physics level humans aren't just calorie burning machines. If you do it on UPFs the chances are your body will be confused and send hunger signals out which are incredibly powerful and exactly why it's very difficult to lose weight. Also if you eat high fibre real foods the chances are your body isn't going to fully take in all the calories. For example studies on nuts show that you don't absorb up to 30% of the calories shown on the back of packet and they leave your body in the toilet bowl. Nut butters however, 100%. Presumably because they have been basically molecularly destroyed to a level our teeth could never achieve, breaking all the high fibre cell walls and releasing the fats. Without sounding too grotesque I've seen it myself when I've eaten a lot of beans. I've seen whole beans in the toilet bowl although that might be a problem with me! So these high fibre real foods can satisfy your body with fullness with some of the calories not actually being processed. On top of that many 'real' foods are high in water which again bulks out your stomach but is 0 calories. UPFs tend to have the water and fibre stripped of them creating a much more calorie dense product that is faster to digest due to being basically pre chewed by a machine and flimsily stuck together with emulsifiers. Again, if simple CICO works for you great but for most people it will just leave them fighting their own body which will almost never work.
>PFs are generally food that was once a combination of plants, ground down to near molecular level, split up, then reformulated with emulsifiers/flavours to make 'food'. You realize you've just described how bread and pasta are made? What do you think flour is?
Yea of course but bread and pasta, especially white flour versions are also not particularly synonymous with health and nutrition. Then the added emulsifiers are thought to cause problems. I appreciate there is generally nothing else added to pasta. But pretty much all supermarket breads are UPFs
Milk is an emulsion...
Does milk make up 80% of your diet? If so it's probably not a healthy diet. The point is the diet of young people in this country is around 80% UPF, for adults it's around 60%. Endlessly pumping emulsifiers day in day out through your body is thought to cause ill health benefits. That's just what the current science suggests...
UPF is just totally meaningless. There's nothing wrong with bread, pasta, dairy and other processed foods. You're looking for a magic bullet, there isn't one. This nature good, industry bad shit? it's just the unibomber manifesto.
Pasta and dairy aren't necessarily UPF, neither is bread although the majority of store bought is. And it's not a case of nature good and industry bad but the problem with industry is that they want us to eat more food than we need so they make more money. UPF is a good way to do it as it causes excessive consumption.
>I would encourage everyone to read Ultra Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken Holy Shit, watched his Royal Institutes lecture on YouTube which was a real eye opener. Who'd of figured Trump would of been right.
\*have sorry
[Link to the video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk), if anyone is interested
Literally got the audiobook of this last week; not listened to it yet. Do you think it will change your habits after reading?
Yes. It has really had an impact on everyone I know who’s read it (myself included).
What the impact on you? Just to avoid UPF where possible or?
Yeah. I mean I didn’t eat much before so I haven’t had to make a massive change. But there are some things in the book that once you’ve seen you can unsee. Like the idea that a lot of upf is essentially pre chewed. And if something catches my eye in the supermarket all these things that I read bounce around my head. I highly recommend the book tho, it’s one thing to know that ‘upf is bad’ but reading all the studies and such is incredibly interesting. And the book is a really easy read.
\> Like the idea that a lot of upf is essentially pre chewed I saw a similar comment made on a Michael Mosley doc a few years back that stuck with me and changed my buying habits, in that the body burns calories by breaking down food and upf has it all broken down for you so it removes that benefit, or something similar to that effect.
Yessss exactly. Also stuff about how upf can contain additives that are edible but they’re not things that we have traditionally eaten. So they’re not good for us as our body doesn’t recognise them as food.
Yep. As an aside, it's incredible how much salt is in processed food that still tastes completely bland. That alone got me cooking all my own stuff.
'Processed food' is just food that isn't a raw ingredient. By peeling a carrot you turn it into processed food. Van Tulleken's book is popular right now because 'industrialism bad, nature good' gets held up as some universal order, but it's based on a series of stupid and unserious premises. The entire thing is very middle class and quite embarrassing. It's just the latest version of the [Jamie Oliver nuggets thing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-a9VDIbZCU), where the aesthetics and vibes of food are more important than actual nutrition. 'UPF' is honestly such a hilarious stupid acronym to come up with, how many stages does it need to go thought before it's a UFP? is pasta ultra processed? you've got to mill the flower, make the dough, dry it then cook it. That's a lot of processing, which is super dangerous. Go read the unibomber manifesto if you're into this stuff, it's at least honest about what it is.
You’re not come remotely close to understanding how something would be classified as UPF. Go read the book (or perhaps the first chapter) and come back with a better argument.
No it would be. The guy just thinks industrialization is bad, like Jamie Oliver, because he hates poor people and is v. middle class. The definition in the article is: >Ultra-processed food items contain more than five ingredients and are often high in fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt Which is laughable, that is pizza, pasta, many other dishes you would make at home. Something 'containing more than 5 ingredients' is bad? lol, sure, I will start cooking with less ingredients. >But some UPFs were green and some minimally processed, such as nuts, seeds and whole milk, red lmao, ultra processed hunter gatherers
For that to be your take away from the book, if you have read it, is bizarre. He specifically talks about how poor and overweight people are vilified for their choices. Green and red refers to the current traffic light system not UPF. The five ingredients is a signifier, it’s not a rule. If you go around the supermarket and look at labels of course there will be exceptions. You’re being wilfully ignorant.
By this guys rules, nuts and seeds are ultra processed food. I just think he's really funny.
No they aren’t. You are just plain wrong. Group 1. Unprocessed or minimally processed foods Unprocessed (or natural) foods are edible parts of plants (seeds, fruits, leaves, stems, roots) or of animals (muscle, offal, eggs, milk), and also fungi, algae and water, after separation from nature. By the way Chris van Tulleken did not create the NOVA classification.
The idea that NATURAL = GOOD and the further you get from that, the worse something is, it is just stupid. Ultra processed is a competently meaningless category, his book will just make a bunch of people go raw vegan, because they've decided that progress is bad. The issues with modern nutrition, they're mainly centered around people not being able to afford to cook or have any free time. The guy has looked at a political and social problem and seen the solution in his diet. It's meaningless. You wanna fix nutrition in the UK, shorter working hours, nationalism supermarkets, ever everyone staple foods for free. All this 'oh they're eating something that's PROCESSED' it's nonsense.
What exactly are you basing your opinion on? You clearly haven’t read his book so why do you feel so qualified to have an opinion on it? You are actually agreeing with him in many respects.
And yet, as the article goes on to say, there's not actually any evidence (yet) about whether UPFs are actually unhealthy. So maybe do those studies (which the article says they are doing) before giving this advice?
Yeah I've always thought that the label is too broad. Sure, a lot of UPFs are unhealthy but I don't think that any UPF is automatically bad for you.
Perfect summary. It’s a total red herring to demonise the ‘processing’ as if the actual ingredients aren’t the problem. ‘Ultra’ Processed food can be absolutely fine to consume, and unprocessed food can have adverse health effects. I’m all for education but I’m worried this whole thing will only encourage more disordered eating, rather than people actually making informed decisions. This black and white thinking just keeps repeating itself. At one point fat=bad, low fat= good, then sugar became the enemy, now it’s ’processing’. If people are choosing food based on how processed it is they’re not actually looking at the nutrition
Meat lobby found their preferred attack line against pretend meat.
Pretend meat is almost certainly unhealthy. But so is too much red meat. There are much better things to eat if you want a meat free diet. Imho vegetarian food tends to be much healthier than vegan food because of the different cultures (nothing to do with dairy/egg etc).
> Pretend meat is almost certainly unhealthy. Source?
Most fake meat is highly processed which many believe is unhealthy.
That’s not a source.
A couple of studies on highly processed foods being unhealthy there are plenty more, I'm not sure why you find this hard to believe. https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/pdf/S1550-4131(19)30248-7.pdf https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29444771/ Fake meat seems to always be made from highly processed ingredients though they vary depending on the brand but often include pea or soy protein for example.
I was hoping for a source pointing out specifically fake meat is unhealthy. I’m sure I do not need to explain why studies in which the plant based meat is categorised the same as crisps etc. is not likely to accurately reflect how healthy plant based meat is. Without that you are making some pretty heavy assumptions.
> plant based meat is categorised the same as crisps Traditional crisps are not highly processed so are not the same. Comparisons to products like Pringles may be valid. My point is that fake meat is highly processed and highly processed foods are found to be unhealthy. It is most likely that fake meats will be found to be unhealthy. Part of the problem is that there is no one fake meat, so they are just in the highly processed food category. The companies such as beyond meat market them as healthy and try to minimise the information about how they are actually created. They use similar tricks to say kellogg's claiming cereals are healthy when they are not.
Processed meat is literally a class 1 carcinogen, it is known to cause cancer. I'm not saying vegan meat is good for you, but the products they're made to replicate (burgers, sausages, bacon etc) are literally giving people cancer.
> I'm not saying vegan meat is good for you, but the products they're made to replicate True, but there is plenty of vegan food that is not highly processed. I find the whole plant based meat copy a strange concept. I've been veggie for years, the last thing I want to eat is something that is meat-like. I know others feel different.
I guess it's just personal preference but I tend to agree with you, been vegan 7/8 years and eat very little processed food. I guess they help people make the switch and they wind up relying on them too much.
Honestly I think to eat healthily you need to do mostly your own cooking from basic ingredients. I think it's a shame so many people have never been taught how to cook.
Yeah I was pretty lucky in that regard, even just having a basic knowledge of cooking before I went off to uni saved me a lot of money and formed some really good habits.
That's one possibility for sure.
It doesn't quite say that. It says 'And there was too little research into the effect of UPFs on general health'. And there is research. There are several systematic reviews too which demonstrate adverse health outcomes.
Thank you for this. It’s classic fearmongering. Neither processing nor the number of ingredients make a food ‘bad’. It’s just the latest fad.
Obviously the "healthy food" lobby brigading this thread don't agree!
They can feel it in their hearts that processing is scary and bad Plot twist: it’s not the processing that makes the food unhealthy. It’s the unhealthy ingredients. So all they’re saying is bad food is bad for you
…and the ingredients would classify it as UPF. The is a significant difference in the classification of highly processed vs ultra processed. And those ingredients…are highly processed. How do you make, for example, modified maize starch at home?
There are many things I can’t make at home but that’s not an indication of how good they are to consume
Actually it is. Why do they add this stuff? Reduce cost, increase shelf life, increase palatability, increase sales and profits. Dunno if you’re intentionally missing the point or you have some other agenda
Yes those are all objectives of food manufacturers - still doesn’t make it bad to eat!
Apart from the studies that show that they are bad to eat
You don't need to wait for a study. If you're concerned about UPFs, just quit them. I did last year and found weight loss to be ridiculously easy now. I used to be a waking zombie as I struggled with sleep and snoring prior to this to the point where I'd need a nap in the middle of the day. In hindsight, I likely had sleep apnea which is now gone and I can get a full 8 hours of uninterrupted bliss. My skin is clearer, my hair is thicker and healthier, my mood has improved and my energy levels are through the roof. I've changed nothing else about my lifestyle other than the food.
I've been trying to lose weight this year and I feel better as well. But I've not consciously been avoiding "UPFs", just reducing the amount I eat (especially the amount of sugar) and snacking less.
says in the article that ultra proccessed foods are linked to obesity and heart disease...
Saying that there is a link doesn't really mean anything though. You can probably link obesity and heart disease with anything if you wanted. Is it causal? Correlation? Is there evidence? Etc.
> Saying that there is a link doesn't really mean anything though. Ah the smoking is good for you because we don't know exactly why smokers get cancer more argument.
Everybody who eats bread dies
Sure but do they die early or are more likely to get cancer/be a fatty?
Compared to who?
People who don't eat bread.
You know somebody that hasn't eaten bread?
Sure people with Coeliac disease tend to avoid it. Some cultures diets also are not very bread based. I know you think you're being clever but you are just showing your lack of ability to reason.
Bread makes you fat?
The problem is the entire definition of ultra processed is a wooly bookkeeping exersize. Some things that you might put there due to the sheer amount of processes aren't because it would make the results look like a total mess. The studies also usually dont properly compare like for like groups. Upf intake is also associated with being less well off which has a whole bunch of other cancer and heart disease risks. I think they're fundamentally correct. Eating the least crap food possible is always going to be good for you but the industry that's popped up to sell you the solution at the same time as telling you the problem is usually not to be trusted.
There's interesting charts floating about that correlates the rise of UPFs, obesity and all the ailments that come with it in the western world. Same goes for Brazil and Mexico - since UPFs became more wide spread obesity has sky rocketed. As for the actual evidence, it's rapidly growing.
Is there a consensus definition of ultra processed food?
It's like pornography. Quite difficult to define in words, but intuitively obvious when encountered.
That works for law but isn't really good enough for research
Start at hot dogs and stop when you reach refrigerated soups.
pornography is pretty easy to define though?
I think a consensus is beginning to emerge, but we need a lot more detailed studies to figure out what exactly makes them bad. Having 50 ingredients is not in itself bad, but the chance of one of them being bad for you is just a lot higher. I think the key problem is that UPF are designed not to fill you up, so that you eat more. Bland texture, swallowable, sweetness, salt, easy to digest, those are probable the main features. But it could also be that specific substances like sweeteners or emulsifiers are a problem in itself.
I mean I get the sense of it, but I worry it is tautological. If we end up saying that anything that is processed and is bad for you is UPF, we're not really identifying what makes something bad for you, we're just saying bad foods are bad for you because they're bad for you
That is exactly the point. Our current definition of UPF is probably too broad. Or: it would be possible to make UPF that is not as harmful, but it may not be as profitable. So we need a better definition to drive change, because getting rid of UPF seems unlikely. So we can work in two directions: reduce processing where we can, and identify what exactly is bad, so we can specifically avoid it.
There is no financial incentive for these companies to produce food that you eat less of. They exist to sell food and so they sell food that people buy more of.
> I worry it is tautological. Don't. As the word 'ultra' here means 'overly', the most sensible criterion for whether a food is excessively processed is if eating it has become relatively deleterious to one's health in comparison to less processed versions of the same foodstuff. And yes, as the health benefits of e.g. intermittent fasting have been demonstrated, once the necessary macro-and-micronutrients are covered, anything in excess is to be considered more likely to harm than help. Without actively approving the philosophy behind the 'paleo' diet and its ilk, it is only right to place the burden of proof upon the processor of food to show that its wholesomeness has been improved thereby; because it is demonstrably very easy to make something worse for you, but very, very difficult to come up with an additive that makes already innocuous food more healthy. In fact, none come to mind. We have texture and flavour enhancers, colourants and preservatives; but I know of no health enhancers, beyond things fortified in silly attempts to ward against a deficiency that may or may not exist in the consumer, and which will be of no benefit if it does not; that is approximately the same as saying preservatives make a food healthier, as it might be bad for you if eaten after it had gone off. Of course, it is possible that processing might, despite the difficulty of mere additional ingredients making a food more wholesome, alter its matrix so that it was, say, more readily assimilated. But, as before, the onus should be on the manufacturer to demonstrate any claims to wholesomeness, and prior to this processing should be, if only slightly, so as to offset convenience, cast in a negative light.
But then that’s no help in determining what’s an ultra processed food. If what we decide a priori is that ultra processed food is food that is bad for you, what’s the point in researching the if ultra processed foods are bad for you? We’re just assuming the conclusion We should either decide a grouping independent of effects so we can analyse the effects, or form categories based on the effects in terms of the specific ingredients or processes There’s no research value in calling food that is bad for you bad, because we know that to begin with
The whole traffic light system is flawed anyway. Usually based on 'a portion size of 'x'' which would hardly be a child's portion let alone an average adult.
The portion sizes are that which am average adult should be eating, though. There's a reason the average adult (myself very much included) is significantly overweight.
The food is designed for you to eat way beyond the portion size. You would be severely unsatisfied eating this type of food but limiting to daily recommend calories. That’s why the put it in sizes of more than one portion. I quit almost all UPF for health reasons and a few months later without intending to I had lost 6kg. I never restricted my calories and I ate loads of bread, pasta, rice, butter, cheese, even sweet desserts and chocolate. I thought my diet was quite healthy before but there was a surprising amount of UPF in there.
This is all well and good, but on a large scale I’m not sure adding MORE words ultra-processed food packaging is going to fix the issue. These foods are dietary staples for a large groups of people. This kind of food is appealing because it’s flavourful, readily available, generally very easy to store and prepare, and it’s perceived as affordable (and in terms of sheer calories per £, it is - in terms of micronutrients, not so much). NOT relying on them is time-consuming and requires a degree of admin that many people just don’t perceive they have capacity for (and the negative effects are probably compounded by the fact that the same people don’t feel they have the time/funds/ability to exercise, meaning that the caloric density of these foods is a real issue in combination with a very sedentary lifestyle). As long as people are pressed for time and money, and suffering the effects of shit food education in school and rampant, disordered diet culture information about food/diet/exercise I don’t think we can reasonably expect additional labelling to fix our obesity and heart disease problem.
If anyone's got an hour to kill I'd suggest watching the following talk about ultra processed foods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk
If you need to watch a hour video to know why UP foods are bad, then there isn't really much hope for you
The vast majority of people in this country have the culinary skills of a fish out of water and the nutritional knowledge of a wet cardboard box. Suggesting sources of information to counteract that shouldn't be looked down upon.
Hardly surprising though when there is so much focus on macros and CICO
At least UPF is slowly getting the media exposure it needs. No one likes to be told what to do, what to eat etc. I'd be hopeful one day for unbiased information on the food we eat, but there is too much money to be made from UPF, low fat, sugar free, healthy foods etc. The waters will remain muddy for years to come.
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Their system isn't about quality, it's pulling all the different nutritional variables into one score. What you don't get for example is the salt/sodium levels clearly displayed. A lot of people watch their sodium intake so it's very useful to have that clearly marked.
Yeah our system for that is better honestly, clearly labelled amounts, with a colour code so you can tell if something is not for you instantly
Labelling stuff doesn't do anything. Flavour, price and availability are what determines what we eat.
Perhaps what *you* eat, but not nearly so much money would be put into the matter of labelling if it were not material to enabling people to determine what they are to eat.
If you think the UPF disclosure is going to end up on front of pack I've got a bridge to sell ya!
Our country would be a lot healthier if people were open to eating some of the delicious foods that abound, naturally, on our island
Is it really hard to work out? Just look at the ingredients, it it has 40 different things you have never heard of, it's shit and put it back. The less ingredients the better.
Exactly mate, it’s common sense, something which is in very short supply nowadays.
Unfortunately, I'm still not convinced that this would make a difference to people buying it. There is already good public awareness.
Of UPF? I don't think there's good public awareness at all, at least, not of the consequences nor the ethics behind it. People are prepared to ignore it because they just think of it as a treat, or 'what's the worst that could happen? I gain weight?' It's so much more than that. It's huge multinationals manipulating your brain to consume more, and more, and more of their product.
How long before unsufferable Vegans start crying that this is some sort of conspiracy against them? When I'm pretty sure they'd be all in favour of ultra processed animal derived products being labelled as ultra-processed. Take cheese, non-vegan cheese only needs two or three ingredients: milk, cultures and rennet. Tesco vegan cheese substitute: Water, Coconut Oil, Corn Starch, Modified Potato Starch, Modified Tapioca Starch, Sea Salt, Modified Maize Starch, Tricalcium Phosphate, Flavouring, Potassium Iodide, Olive Extract, Vitamin D, Vitamin B12, Colour (Beta-Carotene). For the record I'm happy with ALL ultra processed products being labelled as such.
Oh wow, there's no milk in Vegan cheese? Man when the vegans find out they're going to be livid
Vegan meat substitutes have been shown to be "healthier" than the meat they're aiming to replicate. Just because the package just says "beef" or "milk", doesn't mean that beef isn't made up of harmful chemicals. They're still full of saturated fat, trans-fatty acids, and cholesterol. Red meat is a class 2 carcinogen. There have been no links to cancer, diabetes, or heart disease with vegan meat alternatives. If you're eating cheese, vegan or dairy, for health, you're doing it wrong anyway. But you can't just say "more ingredients bad" when those ingredients might not actually be bad for you, whilst the shorter list could be. It's too reductive.
If you think red meat is a class 2 carcinogen you haven't read the 'evidence' that the WHO published, 3 years after they made the claim. You don't have to read it though as 2 Drs have done the deep dive and reported what is said and the laughable study they used. Georgia Ede and Paul Mason do effective teardowns of this 'evidence', both available on YouTube. Fake meats haven't been out long enough to draw any conclusions about them, except whoever eats them is a guinea pig.
I'll have a look into those Drs and their videos, but the WHO's website still shows red meat as a class 2 carcinogen. And mock meats haven't, but all the ingredients that are used in them have. The same ingredients are used in processed meats and other processed foods, but the lack of animal ingredients seems to make a big difference.
It's the way they mix the ingredients together, the body doesn't recognise them as food and doesn't know what to do with them, think someone said pretty much the same thing above. I'm paraphrasing someone now regarding red meat but how can an ancient food be responsible for modern diseases?
Because people ate for survival in "ancient" times, not for longevity. You'd be able to reach reproductive age if you ate nothing but McDonalds every day, and thus it wouldn't force evolutionary selection, but in our modern age we should be seeking foods that promote longevity, because it is post-reproductive age that most of these disease occur. Now obviously UPFs are not good for longevity either. I was just pointing out that the length of the ingredient list is not a good marker by itself to determine the comparative healthiness of two different food products.
Completely agree.
>They're still full of saturated fat, trans-fatty acids, and cholesterol Eating fat doesn't necessarily make you fat and eating cholesterol doesn't raise your cholesterol. I thought people already knew this. >There have been no links to cancer, diabetes, or heart disease with vegan meat alternatives. Because it's new. There's no way that ultra processed mash of random ingredients is healthy. The salt alone is harmful.
True (to a degree) but there are other harmful effects of saturated fat and dietary cholesterol that contribute towards chronic diseases and all-cause mortality from eating too much meat and dairy (which basically everyone in the UK does). And they're relatively new, but the ingredients aren't. If you compare the ingredients list of a vegan mock meat to a supermarket bread, they're more or less identical. They're made up of an isolate protein (gluten in the case of bread, soy, corn, or pea for vegan meats), a fat in the form of an oil, some starchy carbs like cornflour or wheatflour, and emulsifiers. So if you eat supermarket bread, you're basically eating vegan mock meats.
Eating too much of anything is a problem, not really an argument. >So if you eat supermarket bread, you're basically eating vegan mock meats. I don't and people don't pretend supermarket bread is healthy??? Not sure what point you're trying to make here.
You said that we can't determine whether there are links to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc. for vegan meats because they're too new, but this is demonstrably false because they're essentially just supermarket bread, which, whilst not considered healthy, has been studied for such links.
>They're still full of saturated fat, trans-fatty acids, and cholesterol Eating fat doesn't necessarily make you fat and eating cholesterol doesn't raise your cholesterol. I thought people already knew this. >There have been no links to cancer, diabetes, or heart disease with vegan meat alternatives. Because it's new. There's no way that ultra processed mash of random ingredients is healthy. The salt alone is harmful.
Well apparently it takes longer than someone turning up to complain about vegans.
I suspect not, this comment was left an hour or two before mine (can't think of many meat eaters who'd use the term 'meat lobby'): >Meat lobby found their preferred attack line against pretend meat. Plus I had a slew of downvotes within about 10mins.
There's a joke about vegans I hear a lot. "How do you know someone's a vegan? Don't worry, they'll tell you" But I hear people crying and whinging about vegans in online comments more than I see vegans themselves.
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You missed most of the ingredients of mass produced cheese there
But it’s really true. Ingredients on a chicken leg. Ingredients: chicken. Ingredients on any vegan substitute is like 5 pages of the Oxford dictionary. Sounds pretty ultra processed to me so get it labelled as such.
Yeah but if you listed the actual constituent chemicals of chicken it would look a lot more scary than it actually is. Just because they've been formed into chicken by nature rather than being manmade doesn't automatically make them more healthy
Do you chemical constituents of a apple also scare you? Or any edible natural food for that matter.
No. My point is that a list of chemicals on the ingredients of something shouldn't be automatically scary either. Every food is made up of chemicals, it's just when the food is manmade the individual chemicals have to be listed whereas when it's naturally occurring they aren't.
But vegan bacon or vegan chicken for example just doesn’t exist. It’s completely man made from start to finish. It’s about as real food as a Mars bar. Therefor ultra processed. If they want to put a label on ultra processed foods then all this fake vegan stuff should be included. I don’t see why not.
I'm not sure I understand your point. I agree that these things are ultra processed but I don't see why something being highly processed automatically means that it'll be unhealthy for you.
Oh totally true and the vegan's know it which is why they seem to be downvoting my original comment.
It’s their life’s mission to claim to eat so natural but yet they eat some of the most unnatural foods known to man.