How a scientist is pushing to supersize research into ultra-processed foods

I welcome some research in to this if only to put some credible evidence behind whether or to what extent processing of foods affects their nutritional value. I constantly see assertions that highly processed foods are killing us and causing obesity, but I&#x27;ve yet to see any credible evidence for it.<p>Even reading the Nova classification, the scientific verbiage describing the ultra processed category could easily describe making egg noodles at home. Extrusion is how we get noodle shapes. Molds are how we get cakes and muffins. Emulsifiers are everywhere and are a common reason for adding egg to a recipe. Specific protein isolates less so, but we isolate compounds all the time when brewing and stewing. The only significant difference I see between group 3 and 4 is that they are spoken about in completely different registers that make one sound familiar and the other foreign.<p>So please, put some sincere research behind this so we can finally get useful clarification on this subject.

I really hate the notion of &quot;ultra-processed&quot; foods. The NOVA food classification system[1], which established the term, is loose and unscientific about what &quot;ultra-processing&quot; means, and different articles use the term interchangeably with different types of foods, many of which could barely be considered to be processed beyond what a home cook might do.<p>For example, pictures of potato chips or bacon are often pictured and vilified as ultra-processed foods. The NOVA system describes these as &quot;processed&quot; (but not &quot;ultra-processed&quot;) foods, and that&#x27;s almost certainly the case. A home cook can make bacon by curing pork belly in salt and natural spices and then cooking it in a conventional fashion, or frying potato slices in oil and then salting them. Many bacons and potato chips list few ingredients beyond pork or potatoes, salt, and in the case of chips, oil. These can hardly be considered &quot;ultra-processed&quot;, even if the American diet of cured and smoked meats may not be optimal for cardiovascular health. These are things people were eating for centuries, long before modern grocery stores and preparations.<p>But even then, the NOVA system is obtuse. Ice cream is listed as an ultra-processed food, even as you can pick up Haagen Dazs vanilla at Walgreens with only &quot;cream, milk, eggs, sugar and vanilla.&quot; You can certainly make a simulacrum of it of similar quality at home using the same ingredients and an ice cream maker. Is it &quot;healthy&quot;? Almost certainly no! Is it ultra-processed? Also, almost certainly no!<p>Other &quot;ultra-processed&quot; foods according to NOVA are &quot;sweetened and flavored yogurts including fruit yogurts&quot; which again can be made at home using no artificial ingredients with... sugar and fruit, hardly ultra-processing. Chocolate milk is an ultra-processed food according to NOVA, consisting of... milk, cocoa and sugar, which again, you can certainly make at home and is not some sort of industrial concoction.<p>We are all well aware of the issues with excessive sugar and salt in the diet, and this was established long before any of us were born.<p>Everything you read about &quot;ultra-processed foods&quot; is junk science. There may well be certain preservatives or preparations that aren&#x27;t good for us, but the classifications in place are total garbage, and don&#x27;t point us to any actual risks beyond the natural ingredients we have all known to be problematic from time immemorial.<p>[1] The NOVA classifications: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ecuphysicians.ecu.edu&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;pv-uploads&#x2F;sites&#x2F;78&#x2F;2021&#x2F;07&#x2F;NOVA-Classification-Reference-Sheet.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ecuphysicians.ecu.edu&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;pv-uploads&#x2F;sites&#x2F;78...</a>

UPF&#x27;s in as much as they affect health and obesity rates are almost certainly just doing some combination of the following:<p>People eating more calories because it&#x27;s more calorie dense &#x2F; easier to digest&#x2F;eat<p>People eating more because of things like umami (has no protein but seems like it might be protein)<p>High GI foods causing blood sugar spikes<p>Weird E-numbery ingredients that aren&#x27;t well studied (e.g. are sweeteners actually healthy for human consumption as opposed to simply not causing acute issues)<p>General lack of nutrition (e.g. if you live on bread and meat with no vegetables things gon get bad)<p>etc.<p>There seems to be a huge aversion in mainstream society to accepting the basic fact that calories in calories out works. It&#x27;s used by millions and millions of athletes to hit weight classifications, to bulk and add muscle, to cut and reduce body fat, etc. It&#x27;s about as proven as gravity. You cannot be fat as an average height person if you eat 2000 calories a day consistently.<p>I really doubt that there is any magic here - based on the experience of everyone I know, the thin and fit people eat a certain diet and do certain exercises, the thin and semi-fat (e.g. powerlifter type) people eat a different diet and do certain exercises, and the fat people eat, well, they eat shit, they do not consciously think about what they are eating, in the same way that a well earning person living paycheck to paycheck doesn&#x27;t have a budget.

Tangential…Anyone from the HN community using Yuka app. (Scan barcodes to get info about dangerous additives and other health info about food and healthcare products.) I discovered it in France where it’s rather popular and continue to use it state side. Has changed a lot of my buying&#x2F;consuming decisions. No affiliation.

It is interesting to think of just how massive a shift the food industry, supermarkets and consumers would have to undertake to cut out high-processed foods (supermarkets would have to empty majority of their shelves).<p>And then additional strides would have to be made to be convert restaurants (not to mention school cantinas) into actually healthy dining places. I don&#x27;t think a single burger place would survive such an assessment.

I do think one day we’ll look back at the “best practices” of the processed foods industry as being fundamentally at odds with the best practices of nutritional ensemble signaling for our bodies.

Smart. Cash in on the fad while you can.

What defines an &quot;ultra-processed&quot; food?<p>Also, there are some amazing pictures in this article.

Compared to eating raw wheat, baked bread is an ultra-processed food…

Great to read someone wants to scale this!<p>It would be amazing if the tech to test samples of anything edible could become a target of the DIY &amp; Maker community. This has to be a citizen science effort.<p>Production results vary. Just recently an acquaintance who owns a small coffee shop in a small town got a visit form the local public health administration telling him that they got a notice from a company that he purchased a product that is being called back due to xyz.<p>We were all surprised that this system works so incredibly well.<p>But in terms of health, there are just too many factors that impact individual bodies and brains while being barely relevant in samples of the general population. We need to build a database of human profiles whose health was impacted by something in their food. Of course, there&#x27;s allergies, and nutritional coaches, and so on but those processes are incredibly long and people get lost and give up or often enough, nothing is found and the person is left to his or her own devices.<p>I have a friend who reacts bad to some dairy products, whipped cream for example, but the intensity varies with the producer! And he tried some of the most expensive products and some are &#x27;ok&#x27; while others produce pain. There must be traces of something that is simply not looked at when tested by food safety labs. And labs like that of the dude from the article are rare and cost a lot.<p>A couple of weeks ago someone mentioned fertility rates and why some generations had worse ones than others. Not birth rates, fertility rates. Apparently there are periods in time where causes for worse fertility can&#x27;t be deducted from research and economic data of the time. Microplastics and such didn&#x27;t play that big of a role back then and the water, soil weren&#x27;t even remotely as bad back then. Pre WW1 to post WW2. So I proposed it must be something that was in the food that nobody looked at. Might even be sabotage, who knows.<p>So yeah, I really hope the Maker community can up the game a little and pave the way for more citizen science in food safety and in the research of how different compounds &amp;&#x2F;or combinations impact energy metabolisms.

I find it interesting that a most of Vegan meat substitutes fall into the ultra-processed categories. It seems to be an issue across all diets.

ah yes, mention &quot;ultra-processed foods&quot; in the title and all of the comments are about the definition of ultra-processed foods and none about the article<p>which maybe would be fine, if people made a modicum of effort and researched the definition. Instead everyone is playing word games &quot;what about this, what about that&quot;, &quot;does it mean cheese is ultraprocessed&quot;, and implying a vague coverage at the edges means the whole concept is worthless