I really think we need to come up with separate words for<p>"Healthy because it isn't very fattening"<p>and<p>"Healthy because it's nutritious and doesn't contain stuff that damages your body"<p>The amount of confusion this generates is enormous, and leads to things like people eating peanut butter to lose weight, or eating synthetic junk because it has low calories.<p>Cookies are unhealthy because they are very fattening. But if you are normal weight, it's not that big of a deal.<p>Sausage is unhealthy because it contains nitrates. Overweight or underweight it's not good to consume.
I enjoyed this article, and it mostly confirms my mental model: the worst part about processed foods is how easy and enjoyable they are to eat. Avoiding them may have ancillary benefits for health (like fiber or vitamin intake), but mostly it's about being satiated and not overconsuming.
I started a small beverage company focused on the athletic market in my local area. The main drawback to my product is that it's not shelf-life stable - it's only good for a few days (weeks if kept frozen).<p>Some love my stuff and swear by it. However, one of my big issues when talking to investors, even health-obsessed ones is "well, Pepsi makes stuff that lasts years on the shelf, so why can't you?" or "I'm not even considering this as a product until I can buy it in bulk at CostCo". They don't understand that there's literally no comparison when you're comparing:<p>1. A product made in a lab with almost zero natural ingredients, and designed to last years on the shelf without refrigeration and be shipped all over the world.<p>and<p>2. A product made in a local professional kitchen, with natural ingredients, designed to be consumed quickly by a very specific demographic of people.<p>It's maddening, even though my sales are pretty damn good. Some people just have this mentality that "if it doesn't last long, and I can't buy it in bulk, it's not good".<p>Because our entire food industry has been co-opted by profit-first corporations (who work from a profitability standpoint versus a health standpoint), nobody seems to want to understand that stuff that lasts long and can be kept in heat without going bad is probably not healthy.
Not too great, coming from the NYT.<p>The angle is "Ultraprocessed Foods" are bad but skirts around the issue that some are <i>not</i> bad, such as multigrain bread and plant milks. Further, Ultraprocessed Foods tend to be very inexpensive from a cost and time perspective.<p>The proposed solutions - cooking everything from scratch, cutting out processed pasta, going down to buy fresh bread from a bakery "if you can afford it" - are unworkable for millions of people living paycheck to paycheck.<p>Maybe it would have been better to frame this as junk food/high calorie/high sugar/high sodium/high carb/high saturated fats are the main problem from a public health perspective. And that's already widely known.
I get a sense this whole "ultra-processed foods" meme is a giant distraction from some actual culprit.<p>No doubt it's unhealthy to eat an unbalanced diet represented by UPFs, with lots of carbs, fat, sugar and additives, etc, but I think there are likely some specific ingredients that differentiate between a simple unbalanced diet, and a UPF diet.<p>Sugar was a perfectly fine ingredient until fairly recently, and I suspect vegetable oil, perhaps some specific oils, might be the next revelation.
Best analogy for me is juice vs fruit. Its easy to gulp down 2 glasses of Orange juice, but cannot eat 8 oranges. Unprocessed food usually is more wholesome and makes you feel satiated.
Surprised not seeing a reference to the book "Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn't Food" by "Chris van Tulleken". The article looks like it comes straight from the book.
Related to obesity<p>Are plastics killing us?<p><a href="https://senecaeffect.substack.com/p/are-plastics-killing-us" rel="nofollow">https://senecaeffect.substack.com/p/are-plastics-killing-us</a><p>I think very highly of ugo bardi
Relevant:<p>Eating for Two: Nourishing Yourself and Your Gut Microbiome<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l4ofIBJ0GQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l4ofIBJ0GQ</a>
Does this paywalled article even contain a definition of "processed" in this context?<p>I've never understood what that word means in the context of food. I have something in my kitchen called a "food processor". It spins around and chops things with a blade. Is the product of a "food processor" not "processed food"?<p>The closest I can figure to the media definition is that it is food that contains a lot of salt. Perhaps also preservatives. So are we really talking about the health effects of salt and preservatives?