Conversations about processed, heavily processed, and ultra-processed foods always trigger people who recognize that it’s an imperfect measure. It should be interpreted as a heuristic, not a perfect 1D measure of a food’s healthiness.
As a heuristic it correlates quite well to many measures. The more someone’s diet falls on the ultra-processed end of the spectrum and the less they eat of unprocessed foods, the higher the rate of health problems.
A simple example of the effects of processing would be considering an apple: Eating a whole apple is the healthiest because you consume all of the fiber and the digestion process is slowed because you have to break it down. Crushing it into something like apple sauce preserves much of the structure but now it absorbs faster and it’s easier to overeat it before your body can recognize it’s full. Processing it further to apple juice removes the fiber and now makes it spike your blood sugar and it’s easy to consume a lot of sugar.
Ultra processed would take this even further, packaging it in a container with added sugar and some preservatives for shelf life. This is where it enters kids (and adults) diets, where it is far removed from the unprocessed Apple it started as.
kingstnap · 2h ago
It triggers people because it's dumbing down something to the point of near uselessness. It's very much similar to the nonsense that is telling people not to eat "chemicals."
Congrats, you found an example involving a basic item that works. I suppose that means something, and now people should go drink unpasteurized milk and RFK Jr. was right all along.
The reason telling people not to eat chemicals is dumb is precisely because you lose the richness of the structure of the argument by taking the category of chemicals and casting them all in the same 1 dimension. Like saying, "Pharmaceuticals are dangerous."
Proponents of the dumbing down basically suggest just memorizing all the counter examples. Congratulations, you successfully reduced the problem of recognizing junk food down the problem of recognizing junk food. I'll avoid processed food except the processes that are good, like baking bread instead of eating raw flour, and it's good when it is bread but bad when it's cookies.
In reality, the measures that people need to legitimately follow aren't actually all that complex. You don't need to reduce it down to one dimension. You would be much better off if you just kept track of these 3 or 4 dimensions.
1. How many calories do you eat in a typical day.
2. How satiated they are after a reasonable number of calories.
3. If they aren't pooping well, eat more fibre.
4. If you really want to get nerdy about it, track macros.
Doing so isn't actually all that complicated. In fact, I don't think a lack of knowledge or recognition of the issues in their diets is the issue. It's really the harsh reality that people struggle to manage the vices they already are fully aware of, and telling them about the dangerous of "processed" foods doesn't meet this issue in any way.
Aurornis · 1h ago
This is a bad characterization of the processed food scale which suggests you haven’t actually read any of the research or the processed food criteria, you’re just assuming what it means.
Equating the research to RFK Jr is a strange attack, given that this is actual research that you’re dismissing and replacing with your own idea that you can sense if your food is healthy by some arbitrary criteria you came up with.
It’s also ironic that you dismiss it as a dumbing down and then propose your own extremely reductive criteria as a replacement which completely misses the issues being studied. It’s possible to have a eucaloric diet and eat enough fiber while also having significant negative health effects ranging from glycemic control issues to rapidly progressing cardiovascular disease.
amelius · 1h ago
But in your examples you might as well say "low-fibre" instead of "ultra-processed" and you would be closer to the truth.
randomcarbloke · 1h ago
>The more someone’s diet falls on the ultra-processed end of the spectrum and the less they eat of unprocessed foods, the higher the rate of health problems.
False, based publicly available data, even data pushed by the UPF cultists there is no correlation between UPF consumption and 'Life Expectancy at Birth', 'CVD Deaths per 100K', 'Heart Disease Deaths per 100K', 'Cancer Incidence Rate per 100K', 'Stroke deaths per 100k', '%age Population with High Blood Pressure ISCED standard', 'Mean Systolic Blood Pressure (mmHG)', or shockingly 'BMI'.
In fact, in some cases there is an anti correlation such as life expectancy, now it would be absurd to suggest UPFs increase longevity of course but the reality is richer countries eat more processed foods and richer countries live longer.
Aurornis · 1h ago
This is completely false and easily refuted. I don’t understand how you’re calling the processed foods research a “cult” while also making sweeping claims without any sources.
> Overall, direct associations were found between exposure to ultra-processed foods and 32 (71%) health parameters spanning mortality, cancer, and mental, respiratory, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and metabolic health outcomes. Based on the pre-specified evidence classification criteria, convincing evidence (class I) supported direct associations between greater ultra-processed food exposure and higher risks of incident cardiovascular disease related mortality (risk ratio 1.50, 95% confidence interval 1.37 to 1.63; GRADE=very low) and type 2 diabetes (dose-response risk ratio 1.12, 1.11 to 1.13; moderate), as well as higher risks of prevalent anxiety outcomes (odds ratio 1.48, 1.37 to 1.59; low) and combined common mental disorder outcomes (odds ratio 1.53, 1.43 to 1.63; low). Highly suggestive (class II) evidence indicated that greater exposure to ultra-processed foods was directly associated with higher risks of incident all cause mortality (risk ratio 1.21, 1.15 to 1.27; low), heart disease related mortality (hazard ratio 1.66, 1.51 to 1.84; low), type 2 diabetes (odds ratio 1.40, 1.23 to 1.59; very low), and depressive outcomes (hazard ratio 1.22, 1.16 to 1.28; low), together with higher risks of prevalent adverse sleep related outcomes (odds ratio 1.41, 1.24 to 1.61; low), wheezing (risk ratio 1.40, 1.27 to 1.55; low), and obesity (odds ratio 1.55, 1.36 to 1.77; low).
I’m amazing how anti-science this conversation always becomes on HN, with those who don’t understand the research claiming to have the scientific upper hand.
randomcarbloke · 1h ago
I'm staring at the scatter plots right now.
Mortality Europe: Sweden, Norway, UK, Finland, Belgium, Austria, Germany, all the highest consumers of UPFs and by far the longest lived, France somewhat on the fence for UPF consumption only at 30%, Malta and Switzerland comparable to France for longevity and UPF consumption.
Croatia, Lativa, Hungary, Estonia, Romania, have the lowest consumption and the shortest lives. Cancer incidence rate is lowest in Sweden - the country in Europe that consumes the most processed foods, cvd deaths (and incidence rates) peak in Romania, Hungary, Lithuania, Slovakia, heart disease is the same story but we add in Czechia (30% of diet is UPF like the middling France group).
Stroke deaths lowest in Ireland, Norway, UK, Austria, Switzerland, highest (by miles) in Romania, Latvia, then Croatia, Lith.
Romania has relatively low blood pressure (survivorship bias?) but again it's the same story, rich countries have it better despite high UPF consumption.
UK and Ireland are admittedly pretty fat, but so are Greece, Slovenia, Cyprus and besides Sweden, Norway, Germany, Netherlands are not.
Even these diseases of affluence are uncorrelated on a national scale, you are being fed a lie that seems palatable because it makes sense on paper that "weird chemicals must be bad for you" you cultists are indistinguishable from RFK to me.
Lets see who is anti-science, do you believe aspartame leads to cancer?
llm_nerd · 51m ago
>I'm staring at the scatter plots right now.
Yet you cite nothing beyond country level data that you seem to be teasing the conclusion you want out of, when really you're just comparing income levels.
>"weird chemicals must be bad for you" "cultists"
Such a strange, profoundly unconvincing screed. Processed foods usually have high levels of salt, high levels of sugar, and usually an extremely high GI coupled with very low fibre. This is about as pro-science and demonstrated medically and scientifically that it makes your posts look absolutely insane.
randomcarbloke · 37m ago
On the contrary, I'm using the same data (including the monteiro set) as the cult and reaching different conclusions, alas I'm not published so if you want to see reality you'll need to do the analyses yourself if you're capable.
You seem exasperated by HN's general reaction to UPF myths and fables because you've previously been shown up on the same alarmist nonsense.
No answer on the aspartame question?
llm_nerd · 33m ago
Ah, you're doing your own research. Okay. Super convincing.
>You seem exasperated by HN's general reaction to UPF myths
Huh? Bizarre. You are seeing factions that don't exist, and maybe HN isn't for you if you can't see people having a discussion/debate without veering into this extremist polarized nonsense.
Can you tell me what I've said that is "alarmist nonsense"? Can't wait to be educated.
>No answer on the aspartame question?
This conversation has absolutely nothing to do with aspartame, so I've ignored your cheap trolling and distractions. You were soundly debunked, yet you keep on with this bizarre, hyper polarized nonsense. If this site had a block feature I would absolutely just block your worthless noise.
randomcarbloke · 16m ago
How was I debunked, by you, the amateur using a paper by a psychologist and a nutritionist because you cannot do the work yourself?
Maybe HN isn't for you, Reddit's probably more your speed.
Aspartame is absolutely relevant to the discussion, but here especially because you broadly accused HN of being anti-science on this subject, I want to know your stance on aspartame to know how thought out your position is on UPFs or if you just consume the literature unquestioningly, I'll assume from your avoidance that you would answer in the affirmative?
llm_nerd · 7m ago
Here on HN there are actually multiple people, and I wasn't the one that replied earlier with a specific citation (versus your ridiculous claim of cooking your own numbers, which you should understand convinces absolutely no one).
But a general observation that the more processed a product is the more likely it is nutritionally garbage is pretty universally accepted and is generally valid, however vague and debatable the specific tiers might be.
>but here especially because you broadly accused HN of being anti-science on this subject
Do you imagine yourself to be the universal "HN"? I made no such claim. Nor is there some pro-UPF faction dominating HN that you seem to imagine. Seems to be a pretty mixed group, many legitimately curious and learning and coming at it from different perspectives and levels of knowledge.
Then there's you, spouting nonsense and looking for an argument while you muddy the waters.
Again, though, your shrieking about artificial sweeteners again just betrays that you're a hyper-polarized person just looking for an argument at whatever cost. Humorously I've defended and encouraged artificial sweeteners on this very site many times.
kelipso · 22m ago
I think the guy read somewhere that not wanting to eat UPF is right wing aligned and then the politics brain took over.
randomcarbloke · 13m ago
Politics has nothing to do with it, it's about data.
I'm right of centre and think RFK is a fruitcake, I have no idea how the guy above is aligned politically but I do know he doesn't know wtf he's talking about.
jimlawruk · 2h ago
Fiber is also beneficial for the "good" gut bacteria, as it feeds on fiber. Fiber also binds to your LDL "bad" cholesterol in the digestive system and helps to eliminate it.
vorpalhex · 1h ago
Any system that can't tell the difference between a nutrigrain bar (which is a candy bar basically) and a turkey sandwich (which is fine) is gimped and useless and no longer has value.
Even your apple example is lacking! There's a difference between unsweetened apple sauce which is crushed and the most common applesauces which have juice and sugar added.
lemoncookiechip · 2h ago
Ultra-processed doesn't automatically mean unhealthy. It's what it's made of and how it's processed, and the quantities you ingest that can make it unhealthy, just like some unprocessed foods can still be unhealthy depending on what they are.
Whole grain cereal with low sugar contents fall under ultra-processed, and it could still be more nutritious and less sugary than freshly squeezed OJ.
simmerup · 2h ago
Whole grain cereal with sugar would be classed as 'processed' food as I understand it.
Examples of processed food:
> Canned or bottled vegetables and legumes in
brine; salted or sugared nuts and seeds; salted,
dried, cured, or smoked meats and fish; canned
fish (with or without added preservatives); fruit
in syrup (with or without added anti-oxidants);
freshly made unpackaged breads and cheeses.
IME "Processed" in popular usage means "ultraprocessed" so the "your bread is processed haha" people are muddying the waters.
vjvjvjvjghv · 2h ago
It doesn’t necessarily mean unhealthy but in reality there is a very strong correlation between food being processed and having too much sugar, salt , fat or other stuff. A lot of these foods are designed for addictiveness .
lemoncookiechip · 7m ago
It depends on the classification system, but yes, whole grain cereal with added sugar and preservatives for shelf-life is often classified as ultra-processed.
That said, I think framing all UPFs or processed foods as "bad" misses the point. What really matters is the nutritional value of the food itself. A food being ultra-processed doesn’t automatically make it less healthy than a minimally processed one.
We should focus more on what’s actually in the food: the sugar content, fiber, protein, fat, micro-nutrients, rather than just whether it’s been processed or not.
TLDR: It's the label telling what is in the food that matters, not the processes it underwent, although that can be VERY helpful for certain people who value how their food is made for moral/ethical/health reasons.
fundad · 2h ago
This podcast had an excellent discussion of how “ultraprocessed” means whatever authors want. It seems like people who pay for expensive maple syrup, oils, tallow and butter are put on some pedestal and everyone else lives under the cloud of “ultra” something.
I've not listened to the podcast, but please note that processed/ultraprocessed have formal definitions that are followed by many studies.
These are the NOVA classifications, where processed and ultraprocessed are groups 3-4 respectively. These definitions have evolved over time [1], which means that it can be confusing to read different studies, when the formal definitions have changed after publication. So the best thing is to ignore the "ultraprocessed" category as a general term and instead read what the methodology was in any given study.
What researchers mostly don't do is lump all sorts of things into an undefined bucket of whatever processes and ingredients they think are unhealthy that day. This is what pop-sci media does, and may be what the podcast is railing does. But studies on ultraprocessed foods tend not to do this.
I'd recommend "Ultra processed people" be van Tulleken. He references the relevant studies, doesn't try to convince you to change your diet but gives enough food for thought. ;)
arccy · 2h ago
but that food for thought has been processed by others already...
cpursley · 2h ago
What really amazes me is seeing little kids at the playground etc, walking around and eating things like Cheetos. Not only is this ultra-processed junk terrible for them, it's programming them bad habits (and manners) to just free feed and roam around like that. Is it any wonder why America is so fat and unhealthy and so many struggle with eating issues? You don't see this behavior nearly as often in Europe, Asia, etc and it should come at no surprise that those kids are more mature and have better self control over American kids.
vjvjvjvjghv · 2h ago
My casual observation is that a lot of Americans are obsessed with snacking. They can’t imagine going without food for a few hours.
Xenoamorphous · 2h ago
Honest question (and I’m not from the US), do you have kids?
Milpotel · 22m ago
Question as a parent: kids do need constant snacking now? I know some kids who do but they are overweight.
i_am_proteus · 2h ago
Gentle reminder that while the US is somewhat more overweight than most of Europe, most of Europe is still pretty overweight!
72% overweight rate for US adults, 45-60% for most European countries.
Which excludes the massive difference in obesity. No Wal-Mart motorized shopping carts in Europe.
> The color-coded visualization shared by Brilliant Maps shows that in many U.S. states, obesity rates exceed 30 percent, with some surpassing 40 percent. Southern and Midwestern states, such as Mississippi and West Virginia, report the highest levels, while Western states like Colorado and Hawaii have comparatively lower rates, though still above most European nations.
> Comparatively, obesity rates in most European countries remain below 25 percent, with some nations, particularly in Southern and Western Europe, reporting levels under 15 percent.
That's a binary, right? Either you're overweight or you're not. What about the magnitude of the overweight? (Asking because I'm curious about the data, not because I necessarily disagree with you)
a_shovel · 2h ago
"Ultra-processed food" is the new term for "junk food" for people who thought it needed three more syllables.
They're both vague you-know-what-I-mean terms, and don't have any place in research papers, which really ought to be asking more specific questions. Are ultra-processed foods bad for you? You might as well ask whether "yucky foods" are good for you, or what the health effects of "appetizers" are.
If you want to know if white bread or artificial colors or emulsifiers are unhealthy, ask that question directly instead of using this vague proxy category.
atombender · 33m ago
This is false. Research papers use formal definitions of what ultraprocessed means. The most common classification criteria are called Nova [1].
> They're both vague you-know-what-I-mean terms, and don't have any place in research papers
This is false. There are specific criteria for these categories in the research papers.
It’s also acknowledge that it’s not a 100% perfect objective all-encompassing measure, but it is a very good heuristic.
I don’t know why some people read a headline and think they know more about the topic than the research papers (which they clearly also have not read)
xandrius · 3h ago
Only surprised it is not higher to be honest.
v5v3 · 2h ago
Is it because its an average and the Gwyneth Paltrows have 0%.
If they broke it down to demographics then would show a divide depending on income/education levels, area and so on.
xandrius · 1h ago
The math doesn't add up: even if the top 10% of US kids ate 0% of ultra-processed foods and the rest have 80+% in their diet, it would still be a larger average than the one reported.
sokoloff · 2h ago
> highly processed foods like burgers, pastries, snacks and pizza
Is a burger highly processed? Home-made burgers seem not to fall into that bucket. (Hot dogs, I can buy as being it, but burgers not.)
senko · 2h ago
From the article:
> If the ingredients include artificial colors and chemicals that aren’t normally found in the kitchen, the item is likely ultra-processed.
Curious to see sandwiches included in the list (and the top "offender", no less). Home-made ones can be pretty healthy!
Edit to add: the study says:
> "Ultra-processed foods tend to be hyperpalatable, energy-dense, low in dietary fiber, and contain little or no whole foods, while having high amounts of salt, sweeteners, and unhealthy fats".
The study page also contains a more precise definition (using something called Nova classification).
Aurornis · 2h ago
Highly processed flour bun. Slice of highly processed cheese. Highly processed ketchup sauce on top.
An unprocessed slice of tomato and lettuce if you’re lucky.
Conversations about processed foods reveal a lot about how our perspectives have shifted so much. Something like a burger is stacked with highly processed items.
dinfinity · 2h ago
Just like the term "ultraprocessed foods" the term "sandwich" is very badly defined.
I can't determine whether the study differentiates between healthy home made sandwiches and junk food that contains some kind of "bread".
Milpotel · 2h ago
> healthy home made sandwiches
That would include baking your own bread which is not common in the US afaik.
jltsiren · 2h ago
Or just buying decent bread. The selection of breads in the average American supermarket seems pretty bad compared to what I was used to in Finland.
Milpotel · 2h ago
Unfortunately, getting "decent bread" is not as easy as it has been years ago even in countries having the best bread and largest variety in the world such as Germany, Switzerland, Austria, ... Many small bakeries started adding artificial ingredients to extend shelf life, shorten production time or replace expensive ingredients.
arp242 · 1h ago
Pretty much anything you get in mainland Europe is still tons better than the vague bread-shaped organic matter they sell at supermarkets in Ireland or the UK. Seems to be an Anglo thing because my experience in New Zealand was similar (can't speak to the US though).
That doesn't mean you can't find decent bread even at supermarkets, but it's not the default and quite a lot more expensive. The main exception in Ireland is Lidl, which sells decent bread for a decent price.
Milpotel · 39m ago
> exception in Ireland is Lidl
Sorry but this is UPF bread and their rolls are sometimes made in China.
> sell at supermarkets in Ireland or the UK
At least in London there are many shops now that sell bread that at least looks like bread (Ole & Steen, Gail's, ...). I can't remember any ingredient lists, so likely UPF as well...
arp242 · 20m ago
Lidl has a bakery that sells fairly decent sourdough and some other breads. Definitely not made in China. Obviously I didn't mean that every single product at Lidl is good.
garbawarb · 2h ago
Is pizza? Basic pizza is just wheat, mozzarella, and tomato sauce. It's cooked, but I guess cooking is a process.
Aurornis · 2h ago
> Basic pizza is just wheat,
No, it’s flour, which is a heavily processed wheat product.
> mozzarella
Which is a heavily processed food that differs greatly from the input products.
> tomato sauce
Also processed. Likely has added sugar.
It’s interested to read these conversations and see that the frame of reference has shifted so much that obviously highly processed ingredients aren’t tripping people’s processed food detectors. Then the language used isn’t picking up on the processing (calling it wheat instead of flour).
a_shovel · 2h ago
Are we counting flour as ultra-processed now? Are we going to have a discussion on the ultra-processed diet of the medieval peasant?
simmerup · 2h ago
The type of bread a peasant was eating was far, far different to the bread we eat today.
Aurornis · 2h ago
My comment said higher processed. The enriched, bleached, white, non whole wheat flour is highly processed.
Putting it into bread products with flavor enhancing additives and shelf life enhancing preservatives like you see in the hamburger buns at the store would make it ultra processed.
> Are we going to have a discussion on the ultra-processed diet of the medieval peasant?
Are you intentionally missing the point? A medieval peasant processing whole wheat into flour and then making a recipe out of it without added sugar and preservatives is a lot less processed than modern white flour production that goes into hyper-palatable foods on the shelf.
The average pizza that kids or adults consume is not from fresh, hand-made flour like a medieval peasant. It’s from the industrial process and it generally has flavor enhancing additives (sugar). We’re talking Domino’s pizza for most people, not an artisanal handmade pizza with freshly ground flour.
llm_nerd · 2h ago
>It’s from the industrial process and it generally has flavor enhancing additives (sugar).
Just had to jump in on this. We have gotten way too accustomed to calling out sugar as a particular villain in stories like this, and it misses the forest for the trees. It makes it easy to think that removing sugar suddenly makes a product healthy. In the same way that we as a society went through that very foolish period where we thought "low fat" made a product healthy.
An average pizza dough for a large pizza has about 270g of 00 white flour. 75% of that flour is glucose chained into starches, or about 202g of glucose.
The same pizza dough will have around 1.5 tsp of sugar, or about 6g of sucrose. About 3g of that is glucose.
So in that pizza dough people will often shriek and point at the 3g of glucose courtesy of the sugar, blind to the fact that the flour added an enormous 202g of glucose. Glucose that will end up as blood glucose extremely rapidly (the body close to instantly cracks starches of refined flours into individual glucose molecules).
I've harped on here about this a lot, but sugar is simply not the big problem people think it is, at least relative to many diets where it is absolutely dwarfed by the glucose contribution of simple carbs. And to be extra clear, such a meal is perfectly fine if you're highly active and follow it up by a game of soccer or a hike or some other venture that uses that glucose to feed muscles. But for the average person it's followed by doing nothing, and their already insulin resistant body goes through trials to deal with the flood.
llm_nerd · 2h ago
Ignoring that medieval peasants were likely highly active and regardless had a short, brutish life, the flours at the time shared little in common with modern flours.
Medieval flour would have had the entire grain -- the bran, germ and endosperm -- ground into the resulting product. The product would be high in fibre and nutrients, and with a ratio of good fats as well.
Modern flour separates out just the starch endosperm and discards the rest, then refining it to an ultra digestible product.
Nutritionally the former is healthy. The latter is not great, especially for people with a caloric surplus and a sedentary lifestyle, where it's just a massive glucose blast as that flour is 75% almost immediately turned into blood glucose.
Milpotel · 2h ago
The article is abut "ultra-processed" food. It's fairly easy still to get non-UPF flour, mozzarella and tomato sauce at least in my country. Try the same with candy, ice cream, frozen pizza, cookies, fast food...
Aurornis · 2h ago
> The article is abut "ultra-processed" food.
I was responding to a comment that said “highly processed”.
Regardless, the mozzarella and tomato sauce purchased from the local store inside of a package or jar with long shelf life is likely to be ultra-processed.
Milpotel · 2h ago
Luckily, Mozzarella here only contains milk, salt, bacteria and rennet and many tomato sauces are free from UPF ingredients.
Aurornis · 2h ago
You can find the same here.
But discussing the best-case scenario where all ingredients are sourced perfectly is missing the point. When someone says pizza or hamburger they’re not talking about the theoretically optimal perfectly produced pizza to minimize processed food content, they’re talking about what people are really buying and eating.
Milpotel · 28m ago
> When someone says pizza or hamburger they’re not talking about the theoretically optimal perfectly produced pizza
I don't know what "garbawarb" meant with "basic pizza", a frozen one or pizza in general? I just argued that flour, mozzarella and simple tomato sauce are not the best examples for UPF.
cpursley · 2h ago
Check what's in the tomato sauce and dough (hint: sugar)
Milpotel · 2h ago
"Simple" sugar doesn't make it ultra processed, it's the modified starch, glucose syrup, emulsifiers, ...
owebmaster · 2h ago
Pizza is processed. Frozen pizza is ultra proccessed
vjvjvjvjghv · 2h ago
Home made pizza is fine. The frozen stuff is mostly terrible with too much salt, sugar and god knows what else.
oblio · 2h ago
I imagine low quality burger meat contains a lot of stuff, not just lean muscle.
Horse tastes fine and I'd prefer it over UPF crap all the time.
rsynnott · 2h ago
The _real_ scandal in that horse meat thing wasn't so much the fact that it was horse, but the fact that, clearly, the traceability system had utterly broken down.
amelius · 2h ago
Why are we calling it processed foods when it is not necessarily the processing of the foods that makes it bad?
kristjank · 2h ago
Because a big majority of bad food is extensively processed.
buran77 · 2h ago
Part of the processing is to add something harmful or remove something useful either as the target of the process, or as a byproduct.
I give you a tomato, that's unprocessed. I squash it a bit and maybe add some salt? That's processed. I boil the hell out of it and mix it with 30 other ingredients (like salt, sugar, flavoring, preservatives, other additives, etc.), especially in large quantities? That's heavily processed or above. As you can see, the processing is what made a tomato worse for the health.
The term is perfectly apt.
amelius · 2h ago
But there is a widely supported hypothesis that humans evolved bigger brains because they started to cook their food.
Hence "processed" is not necessarily bad. And thus the term, imho, is not suitable.
buran77 · 35m ago
Not "necessarily", but "realistically". I think we need to start by clarifying what "processed" means from a practical (legal/commercial) perspective rather than common sense. What you call "processing" as a normal person, like boiling, frying, smoking, canning, fermenting, baking aren't necessarily even considered "processed" in the commercial sense. They're considered "preservation" (e.g. smoked fish) or "cookery" (e.g. bread). So almost every process that humans applied to food until the 19th-20th century was basic cooking and preservation, with a few exceptions of convoluted foods.
The modern interpretation of "processing" only begins at the next level. When the process has a lot more added steps and ingredients which in practice are almost guaranteed to be less healthy. But when we say "ultra-processed" it's guaranteed that it has significant health downsides. Ultra processed food has decreased nutritional content due to the processing, and high levels of unhealthy ingredients or components (like sugar, salt, trans fats, preservatives, and all kinds of other additives). Many ultra processed foods have more sugar, salt, or trans fats than they have the purported main ingredient. I'm just looking at a jar of "pistachio cream" that has 50% more sugar than pistachio.
So for all intents and purposes, in practice, processed food makes it less healthy and ultra-processed is synonymous with very unhealthy.
AJ007 · 2h ago
Corn syrup is just a vegetable?
amelius · 2h ago
Yeah, so don't call it a vegetable either if you want to focus on its nutritional defects.
Here is where Robert can come in and do something good by disincentivizing ultra-processed foods with the tools he has available at the FDA. Sure, getting bad color ingredients out is good --now go for the gusto and disincentivize ultra-processed foods.
shigawire · 2h ago
He could, but he's more focused on decreasing vaccine usage.
evaXhill · 2h ago
The quantity & quality of a child's diet determines how fast they age & their health later in life, its just crazy that US children now get 2/3rds of their energy from ultra-processed foods that are designed to be hyper-palatable & maintain hunger. Unfortunately, there’s just a lot of misinformation out there as it relates to diet (food pyramid being one of the most egregious examples). For one, although most ultra processed foods are bad, some can be actually beneficial for those with medical issues.
As a heuristic it correlates quite well to many measures. The more someone’s diet falls on the ultra-processed end of the spectrum and the less they eat of unprocessed foods, the higher the rate of health problems.
A simple example of the effects of processing would be considering an apple: Eating a whole apple is the healthiest because you consume all of the fiber and the digestion process is slowed because you have to break it down. Crushing it into something like apple sauce preserves much of the structure but now it absorbs faster and it’s easier to overeat it before your body can recognize it’s full. Processing it further to apple juice removes the fiber and now makes it spike your blood sugar and it’s easy to consume a lot of sugar.
Ultra processed would take this even further, packaging it in a container with added sugar and some preservatives for shelf life. This is where it enters kids (and adults) diets, where it is far removed from the unprocessed Apple it started as.
Congrats, you found an example involving a basic item that works. I suppose that means something, and now people should go drink unpasteurized milk and RFK Jr. was right all along.
The reason telling people not to eat chemicals is dumb is precisely because you lose the richness of the structure of the argument by taking the category of chemicals and casting them all in the same 1 dimension. Like saying, "Pharmaceuticals are dangerous."
Proponents of the dumbing down basically suggest just memorizing all the counter examples. Congratulations, you successfully reduced the problem of recognizing junk food down the problem of recognizing junk food. I'll avoid processed food except the processes that are good, like baking bread instead of eating raw flour, and it's good when it is bread but bad when it's cookies.
In reality, the measures that people need to legitimately follow aren't actually all that complex. You don't need to reduce it down to one dimension. You would be much better off if you just kept track of these 3 or 4 dimensions.
1. How many calories do you eat in a typical day. 2. How satiated they are after a reasonable number of calories. 3. If they aren't pooping well, eat more fibre. 4. If you really want to get nerdy about it, track macros.
Doing so isn't actually all that complicated. In fact, I don't think a lack of knowledge or recognition of the issues in their diets is the issue. It's really the harsh reality that people struggle to manage the vices they already are fully aware of, and telling them about the dangerous of "processed" foods doesn't meet this issue in any way.
Equating the research to RFK Jr is a strange attack, given that this is actual research that you’re dismissing and replacing with your own idea that you can sense if your food is healthy by some arbitrary criteria you came up with.
It’s also ironic that you dismiss it as a dumbing down and then propose your own extremely reductive criteria as a replacement which completely misses the issues being studied. It’s possible to have a eucaloric diet and eat enough fiber while also having significant negative health effects ranging from glycemic control issues to rapidly progressing cardiovascular disease.
False, based publicly available data, even data pushed by the UPF cultists there is no correlation between UPF consumption and 'Life Expectancy at Birth', 'CVD Deaths per 100K', 'Heart Disease Deaths per 100K', 'Cancer Incidence Rate per 100K', 'Stroke deaths per 100k', '%age Population with High Blood Pressure ISCED standard', 'Mean Systolic Blood Pressure (mmHG)', or shockingly 'BMI'.
In fact, in some cases there is an anti correlation such as life expectancy, now it would be absurd to suggest UPFs increase longevity of course but the reality is richer countries eat more processed foods and richer countries live longer.
https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-077310
> Overall, direct associations were found between exposure to ultra-processed foods and 32 (71%) health parameters spanning mortality, cancer, and mental, respiratory, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and metabolic health outcomes. Based on the pre-specified evidence classification criteria, convincing evidence (class I) supported direct associations between greater ultra-processed food exposure and higher risks of incident cardiovascular disease related mortality (risk ratio 1.50, 95% confidence interval 1.37 to 1.63; GRADE=very low) and type 2 diabetes (dose-response risk ratio 1.12, 1.11 to 1.13; moderate), as well as higher risks of prevalent anxiety outcomes (odds ratio 1.48, 1.37 to 1.59; low) and combined common mental disorder outcomes (odds ratio 1.53, 1.43 to 1.63; low). Highly suggestive (class II) evidence indicated that greater exposure to ultra-processed foods was directly associated with higher risks of incident all cause mortality (risk ratio 1.21, 1.15 to 1.27; low), heart disease related mortality (hazard ratio 1.66, 1.51 to 1.84; low), type 2 diabetes (odds ratio 1.40, 1.23 to 1.59; very low), and depressive outcomes (hazard ratio 1.22, 1.16 to 1.28; low), together with higher risks of prevalent adverse sleep related outcomes (odds ratio 1.41, 1.24 to 1.61; low), wheezing (risk ratio 1.40, 1.27 to 1.55; low), and obesity (odds ratio 1.55, 1.36 to 1.77; low).
I’m amazing how anti-science this conversation always becomes on HN, with those who don’t understand the research claiming to have the scientific upper hand.
Mortality Europe: Sweden, Norway, UK, Finland, Belgium, Austria, Germany, all the highest consumers of UPFs and by far the longest lived, France somewhat on the fence for UPF consumption only at 30%, Malta and Switzerland comparable to France for longevity and UPF consumption.
Croatia, Lativa, Hungary, Estonia, Romania, have the lowest consumption and the shortest lives. Cancer incidence rate is lowest in Sweden - the country in Europe that consumes the most processed foods, cvd deaths (and incidence rates) peak in Romania, Hungary, Lithuania, Slovakia, heart disease is the same story but we add in Czechia (30% of diet is UPF like the middling France group).
Stroke deaths lowest in Ireland, Norway, UK, Austria, Switzerland, highest (by miles) in Romania, Latvia, then Croatia, Lith.
Romania has relatively low blood pressure (survivorship bias?) but again it's the same story, rich countries have it better despite high UPF consumption.
UK and Ireland are admittedly pretty fat, but so are Greece, Slovenia, Cyprus and besides Sweden, Norway, Germany, Netherlands are not.
Even these diseases of affluence are uncorrelated on a national scale, you are being fed a lie that seems palatable because it makes sense on paper that "weird chemicals must be bad for you" you cultists are indistinguishable from RFK to me.
Lets see who is anti-science, do you believe aspartame leads to cancer?
Yet you cite nothing beyond country level data that you seem to be teasing the conclusion you want out of, when really you're just comparing income levels.
>"weird chemicals must be bad for you" "cultists"
Such a strange, profoundly unconvincing screed. Processed foods usually have high levels of salt, high levels of sugar, and usually an extremely high GI coupled with very low fibre. This is about as pro-science and demonstrated medically and scientifically that it makes your posts look absolutely insane.
You seem exasperated by HN's general reaction to UPF myths and fables because you've previously been shown up on the same alarmist nonsense.
No answer on the aspartame question?
>You seem exasperated by HN's general reaction to UPF myths
Huh? Bizarre. You are seeing factions that don't exist, and maybe HN isn't for you if you can't see people having a discussion/debate without veering into this extremist polarized nonsense.
Can you tell me what I've said that is "alarmist nonsense"? Can't wait to be educated.
>No answer on the aspartame question?
This conversation has absolutely nothing to do with aspartame, so I've ignored your cheap trolling and distractions. You were soundly debunked, yet you keep on with this bizarre, hyper polarized nonsense. If this site had a block feature I would absolutely just block your worthless noise.
Maybe HN isn't for you, Reddit's probably more your speed.
Aspartame is absolutely relevant to the discussion, but here especially because you broadly accused HN of being anti-science on this subject, I want to know your stance on aspartame to know how thought out your position is on UPFs or if you just consume the literature unquestioningly, I'll assume from your avoidance that you would answer in the affirmative?
But a general observation that the more processed a product is the more likely it is nutritionally garbage is pretty universally accepted and is generally valid, however vague and debatable the specific tiers might be.
>but here especially because you broadly accused HN of being anti-science on this subject
Do you imagine yourself to be the universal "HN"? I made no such claim. Nor is there some pro-UPF faction dominating HN that you seem to imagine. Seems to be a pretty mixed group, many legitimately curious and learning and coming at it from different perspectives and levels of knowledge.
Then there's you, spouting nonsense and looking for an argument while you muddy the waters.
Again, though, your shrieking about artificial sweeteners again just betrays that you're a hyper-polarized person just looking for an argument at whatever cost. Humorously I've defended and encouraged artificial sweeteners on this very site many times.
I'm right of centre and think RFK is a fruitcake, I have no idea how the guy above is aligned politically but I do know he doesn't know wtf he's talking about.
Even your apple example is lacking! There's a difference between unsweetened apple sauce which is crushed and the most common applesauces which have juice and sugar added.
Whole grain cereal with low sugar contents fall under ultra-processed, and it could still be more nutritious and less sugary than freshly squeezed OJ.
Examples of processed food:
> Canned or bottled vegetables and legumes in brine; salted or sugared nuts and seeds; salted, dried, cured, or smoked meats and fish; canned fish (with or without added preservatives); fruit in syrup (with or without added anti-oxidants); freshly made unpackaged breads and cheeses.
https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/527...
That said, I think framing all UPFs or processed foods as "bad" misses the point. What really matters is the nutritional value of the food itself. A food being ultra-processed doesn’t automatically make it less healthy than a minimally processed one.
We should focus more on what’s actually in the food: the sugar content, fiber, protein, fat, micro-nutrients, rather than just whether it’s been processed or not.
TLDR: It's the label telling what is in the food that matters, not the processes it underwent, although that can be VERY helpful for certain people who value how their food is made for moral/ethical/health reasons.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1411126/episodes/17271368
These are the NOVA classifications, where processed and ultraprocessed are groups 3-4 respectively. These definitions have evolved over time [1], which means that it can be confusing to read different studies, when the formal definitions have changed after publication. So the best thing is to ignore the "ultraprocessed" category as a general term and instead read what the methodology was in any given study.
What researchers mostly don't do is lump all sorts of things into an undefined bucket of whatever processes and ingredients they think are unhealthy that day. This is what pop-sci media does, and may be what the podcast is railing does. But studies on ultraprocessed foods tend not to do this.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6389637/
72% overweight rate for US adults, 45-60% for most European countries.
https://genderdata.worldbank.org/en/indicator/sh-sta-owad-zs...
> The color-coded visualization shared by Brilliant Maps shows that in many U.S. states, obesity rates exceed 30 percent, with some surpassing 40 percent. Southern and Midwestern states, such as Mississippi and West Virginia, report the highest levels, while Western states like Colorado and Hawaii have comparatively lower rates, though still above most European nations.
> Comparatively, obesity rates in most European countries remain below 25 percent, with some nations, particularly in Southern and Western Europe, reporting levels under 15 percent.
https://www.newsweek.com/map-reveals-obesity-rates-us-compar...
They're both vague you-know-what-I-mean terms, and don't have any place in research papers, which really ought to be asking more specific questions. Are ultra-processed foods bad for you? You might as well ask whether "yucky foods" are good for you, or what the health effects of "appetizers" are.
If you want to know if white bread or artificial colors or emulsifiers are unhealthy, ask that question directly instead of using this vague proxy category.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification
This is false. There are specific criteria for these categories in the research papers.
It’s also acknowledge that it’s not a 100% perfect objective all-encompassing measure, but it is a very good heuristic.
I don’t know why some people read a headline and think they know more about the topic than the research papers (which they clearly also have not read)
If they broke it down to demographics then would show a divide depending on income/education levels, area and so on.
Is a burger highly processed? Home-made burgers seem not to fall into that bucket. (Hot dogs, I can buy as being it, but burgers not.)
> If the ingredients include artificial colors and chemicals that aren’t normally found in the kitchen, the item is likely ultra-processed.
Curious to see sandwiches included in the list (and the top "offender", no less). Home-made ones can be pretty healthy!
Edit to add: the study says:
> "Ultra-processed foods tend to be hyperpalatable, energy-dense, low in dietary fiber, and contain little or no whole foods, while having high amounts of salt, sweeteners, and unhealthy fats".
The study page also contains a more precise definition (using something called Nova classification).
An unprocessed slice of tomato and lettuce if you’re lucky.
Conversations about processed foods reveal a lot about how our perspectives have shifted so much. Something like a burger is stacked with highly processed items.
I can't determine whether the study differentiates between healthy home made sandwiches and junk food that contains some kind of "bread".
That would include baking your own bread which is not common in the US afaik.
That doesn't mean you can't find decent bread even at supermarkets, but it's not the default and quite a lot more expensive. The main exception in Ireland is Lidl, which sells decent bread for a decent price.
Sorry but this is UPF bread and their rolls are sometimes made in China.
> sell at supermarkets in Ireland or the UK
At least in London there are many shops now that sell bread that at least looks like bread (Ole & Steen, Gail's, ...). I can't remember any ingredient lists, so likely UPF as well...
No, it’s flour, which is a heavily processed wheat product.
> mozzarella
Which is a heavily processed food that differs greatly from the input products.
> tomato sauce
Also processed. Likely has added sugar.
It’s interested to read these conversations and see that the frame of reference has shifted so much that obviously highly processed ingredients aren’t tripping people’s processed food detectors. Then the language used isn’t picking up on the processing (calling it wheat instead of flour).
Putting it into bread products with flavor enhancing additives and shelf life enhancing preservatives like you see in the hamburger buns at the store would make it ultra processed.
> Are we going to have a discussion on the ultra-processed diet of the medieval peasant?
Are you intentionally missing the point? A medieval peasant processing whole wheat into flour and then making a recipe out of it without added sugar and preservatives is a lot less processed than modern white flour production that goes into hyper-palatable foods on the shelf.
The average pizza that kids or adults consume is not from fresh, hand-made flour like a medieval peasant. It’s from the industrial process and it generally has flavor enhancing additives (sugar). We’re talking Domino’s pizza for most people, not an artisanal handmade pizza with freshly ground flour.
Just had to jump in on this. We have gotten way too accustomed to calling out sugar as a particular villain in stories like this, and it misses the forest for the trees. It makes it easy to think that removing sugar suddenly makes a product healthy. In the same way that we as a society went through that very foolish period where we thought "low fat" made a product healthy.
An average pizza dough for a large pizza has about 270g of 00 white flour. 75% of that flour is glucose chained into starches, or about 202g of glucose.
The same pizza dough will have around 1.5 tsp of sugar, or about 6g of sucrose. About 3g of that is glucose.
So in that pizza dough people will often shriek and point at the 3g of glucose courtesy of the sugar, blind to the fact that the flour added an enormous 202g of glucose. Glucose that will end up as blood glucose extremely rapidly (the body close to instantly cracks starches of refined flours into individual glucose molecules).
I've harped on here about this a lot, but sugar is simply not the big problem people think it is, at least relative to many diets where it is absolutely dwarfed by the glucose contribution of simple carbs. And to be extra clear, such a meal is perfectly fine if you're highly active and follow it up by a game of soccer or a hike or some other venture that uses that glucose to feed muscles. But for the average person it's followed by doing nothing, and their already insulin resistant body goes through trials to deal with the flood.
Medieval flour would have had the entire grain -- the bran, germ and endosperm -- ground into the resulting product. The product would be high in fibre and nutrients, and with a ratio of good fats as well.
Modern flour separates out just the starch endosperm and discards the rest, then refining it to an ultra digestible product.
Nutritionally the former is healthy. The latter is not great, especially for people with a caloric surplus and a sedentary lifestyle, where it's just a massive glucose blast as that flour is 75% almost immediately turned into blood glucose.
I was responding to a comment that said “highly processed”.
Regardless, the mozzarella and tomato sauce purchased from the local store inside of a package or jar with long shelf life is likely to be ultra-processed.
But discussing the best-case scenario where all ingredients are sourced perfectly is missing the point. When someone says pizza or hamburger they’re not talking about the theoretically optimal perfectly produced pizza to minimize processed food content, they’re talking about what people are really buying and eating.
I don't know what "garbawarb" meant with "basic pizza", a frozen one or pizza in general? I just argued that flour, mozzarella and simple tomato sauce are not the best examples for UPF.
I give you a tomato, that's unprocessed. I squash it a bit and maybe add some salt? That's processed. I boil the hell out of it and mix it with 30 other ingredients (like salt, sugar, flavoring, preservatives, other additives, etc.), especially in large quantities? That's heavily processed or above. As you can see, the processing is what made a tomato worse for the health.
The term is perfectly apt.
Hence "processed" is not necessarily bad. And thus the term, imho, is not suitable.
The modern interpretation of "processing" only begins at the next level. When the process has a lot more added steps and ingredients which in practice are almost guaranteed to be less healthy. But when we say "ultra-processed" it's guaranteed that it has significant health downsides. Ultra processed food has decreased nutritional content due to the processing, and high levels of unhealthy ingredients or components (like sugar, salt, trans fats, preservatives, and all kinds of other additives). Many ultra processed foods have more sugar, salt, or trans fats than they have the purported main ingredient. I'm just looking at a jar of "pistachio cream" that has 50% more sugar than pistachio.
So for all intents and purposes, in practice, processed food makes it less healthy and ultra-processed is synonymous with very unhealthy.