Consuming large amounts of ultra-processed food (UPF) increases the risk of an early death, according to a international study that has reignited calls for a crackdown on UPF.
Each 10% extra intake of UPF, such as bread, cakes and ready meals, increases someone’s risk of dying before they reach 75 by 3%, according to research in countries including the US and England.
UPF is so damaging to health that it is implicated in as many as one in seven of all premature deaths that occur in some countries, according to a paper in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
They are associated with 124,107 early deaths in the US a year and 17,781 deaths every year in England, the review of dietary and mortality data from eight countries found.
“the sky is blue” according to new report!
It’s astonishing to me that scientists are using such unscientific terms like “ultra processed food”. What is it about these foods that is unhealthy?
It’s like saying “sports are dangerous” while including football and golf in your definition.
Scientists only use terms like ultra processed food after defining them in their scientific papers. The problem here is that the media find it difficult to write a short article for the general audience if they have to define things scientifically.
What specifically is bad about UPF foods is still being researched. A few leading ideas are:
- Very little fibre
- Starches are all immediately accessible to digestion and so blood glucose spikes much more than for the non-UPF equivalent
- UPF foods are soft and dry (so weigh less) making it very easy to eat a lot very fast, so you eat too many calories.
- Relatively high in salt and sugar
- Use of emulsifiers. These may change your gut microbiota and also make your gut more leaky causing inflammation
- Use of preservatives and artificial colours
- Frequently have a lot of oil
Low fibre, emulsifiers and preservatives, while lacking variety of phytochemicals found in fresh food is known to change your gut health. People on UPF diets tend to eat more and have higher blood glucose spikes leading to heart disease and diabetes.
Altogether this is a recipe for a shorter, less healthy life
Is UPF food with ultra high fibre bad? Is UPF with ultra high vitamin A bad?
Is UPF food with ultra high fibre bad?
I don’t know.
My thoughts are that your total daily intake is more important than considering any single food item. As such, having some UPF in your diet is ok. The problem becomes epidemiologically measurable when, like the UK and US, 60% of calories consumed by some demographics are from UPF food.
And there are almost certainly multiple different things ‘wrong’ with UPF and so if you fix one problem, you may still be at risk from another. For example in your question, there are a lot of studies showing the importance of fibre in the diet, including those that add bran to whatever the person normally eats. So UPF with lots of fibre, all things equal, is likely less bad than UPF without.
Is UPF with ultra high vitamin A bad?
Fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K) are interesting in that they don’t show benefits above RDA, and in high doses cause a long list of nasty symptoms. In particular, vitamin A in excess is correlated with increased risk of multiple major diseases and even death.
Those are shit definitions that come from pop-science not real science. They’re so broad as to be functionally useless.
The NOVA classification system is “real” science, but in my opinion the arbitrary and vague definitions make it so that it’s not very good or very robust science.
I think there’s a bit of a political drive to try to label chronic conditions as “lifestyle” diseases tbh, hence the loose definitions.
There is no single definition of ultra-processed foods, but in general they contain ingredients not used in home cooking.
Many are chemicals, colourings and sweeteners, used to improve the food’s appearance, taste or texture.
Fizzy drinks, sweets and chicken nuggets are all examples. However, they can also include less obvious foods, including some breads, breakfast cereals and yoghurts.
A product containing more than five ingredients is likely to be ultra-processed, according to public health expert Prof Maira Bes-Rastrollo of the University of Navarra in Spain.
Ultra-processed foods are often high in salt, sugar and saturated fats. In the UK, look out for a “traffic light” label on the packaging.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/what_is_ultra-processed_food
A product containing more than five ingredients is likely to be ultra-processed
Ugh. No. That amounts to saying “anything that contains five spice is ultra-processed”. Why do you hate Chinese cuisine.
The “not used in home cooking” rule of thumb is way better though you can certainly make absolutely filthy dishes at home. Home cooking also uses “chemicals, colouring and sweeteners”, and also home cooks care about appearance, taste, and texture.
What I’d actually be interested in is comparing EU vs. US standards UPC. EU products use colourings such as red beet extract, beta-carotene, stabilisers, gelling agents etc. like guar gum or arrowroot, when they use fully synthetic stuff then it’s generally something actually found in nature. Companies add ascorbic acid as antioxidant, grandma added a splash of lemon juice, same difference really.
A EU strawberry yoghurt which says “natural aroma” is shoddy, yes, you’re getting fewer strawberries and more strawberry aroma produced by fungi, but I’m rather sceptical when it comes to claims that it’s less healthy.
In this reply you you talked about “some breads”, the OP Post only talks about bread - and that for sure had only ingredients in using at home.
Same for French fries: potato, salt, fat .
I’m with the poor downvoted fellow, I don’t understand where the risk comes from when it’s described this vague.
Are home made burgers better? Is it the freezing process and I should lower my meal prep? Is it additives?
Thank you for the details - as you point out this is a functionally useless definition.
It reeks of “You know what I mean - that bad stuff”. And that’s not a good scientific definition.
A product containing more than five ingredients is likely to be ultra-processed
Curry is “ultra-processed” - you heard it hear first.
Like I said - “Sports are dangerous” is a very bad way to try to categorize risky activity. Golf and football are very different as are Curry and Twizzlers.
Yea the 5 ingredient stuff is weird, what if I make a 5 fruits salad. To me the number of unnatural processing steps (processes that don’t occur regularly in nature) makes more sense.
Yes, curry is processed food. It goes through the unnatural process of high heat cooking. I’m not sure about healthy-ness, I think a lot also depends on dosage. I don’t see processing as always being bad.
To me, Dosage makes the poison.
Drinking 4 gallons of curry in 1 sitting is probably bad, same as drinking 4 gallons of unprocessed water in one sitting.
“An ultra-processed food (UPF) is a grouping of processed food characterized by relatively involved methods of production. There is no simple definition of UPF, but they are generally understood to be an industrial creation derived from natural food or synthesized from other organic compounds.[1][2] The resulting products are designed to be highly profitable, convenient, and hyperpalatable, often through food additives such as preservatives, colourings, and flavourings.[3] UPFs have often undergone processes such as moulding/extruding, hydrogenation, or frying.[4]” Wikipedia
I don’t know why it is not defined as such. It’s easy to understand to me anyway. Flour has been ground up by humans for centuries, and has gone through a process, but the end product still at least resembles what you find in nature. Glycerides however, need to be explained and created using chemistry through indusrial processes.
I don’t know if I could have picked a better example I am no expert. I’m simply disheartened so many struggle to distinguish between processed and ultra processed.
Olive oil is processed; if then, in an industrial process they extract the glyceride from that process and isolate it to its chemical form, to only then inject it into another food stuff product, that’s ultra processed.
Im not that smart, anyone feel free to holler at me for being incorrect. This is my understanding however.
I gave up Ultra-processed foods 15-20 years ago and lost a lot of weight, and maintained that weight loss for years only using the avoidance of ultra-processed foods. Of course when I got slack, I gained again. So to me it seems obvious the harms. However, one could argue injecting vitamin c to a food is healthy, and would be defined as going through ultra process to isolate the vitamin compound.
But there is, to me, something sinister to have food scientists engineer food to be highly palatable and addictive, while also being detrimental to our health. Looking at you hot cheetos.
The fuck does “ultra processed food” mean? Isnt upf defined by it harming you? Its like saying weapons harm you when weapon is the name for something that is used to harm others.
The difference between doritos and bread is merely the cooking temperature and the flavoring content… One is supposed to be cheesy and salty the other sweet and greasy/moist.
“Real bread” meets that definition of ultra-processed. It’s a bunch of individual constituents (flour, water, yeast, etc.) that are mixed together.
Yes, also the glycemic index and nutrient availability changes, so it is processed from wheat seed.
When we eat raw wheat seed, we can’t absorb any of the nutrients. Artificial grinding into powder and applying artificial heat and adding water break/weaken the cell walls, making the sugars and nutrients more available, it also raising glycemic index. So there is difference between how much the body can absorb from the unprocessed seed and processed version.
It should be more appropriately labeled Junk Food. Everyone’s trying to make it sound official and it just ends up more vague.
If we were eating Seafood, Chicken, Beef, Vegatables, Salads and Whole Grains, we’d live longer.
In the end, we need to stay away from non-naturally occurring carbs and refrain from mixing naturally occurring carbs with tons of fat/salt to make them more palatable.
Muffins, Doughnuts, French Toast, Submarine Sandwiches, Pizza, Pasta, all have to be super portion controlled, we we just don’t seem to have that kind of willpower.
Not even. The NOVA system has been tested and doesn’t function as a system of classification. Experts cannot consistently classify things into UPF/not UPF. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-022-01099-1
So it’s more like “there’s this food and it’s bad for you but idk what it is :/”
The infuriating thing is that I believe that nutrition is more than just a linear addition of all the constituent ingredients (kinda the default view of nutrition science up through the 90’s), but addressing the shortcomings of that overly simple model shouldn’t mean making an even more simple model.
NOVA classification is the wrong answer to a legitimate problem.
It’s a shame that bread and donuts are de facto considered ultra processed foods now. Done right, they totally aren’t.
The pictures also shows french fries and popcorn. In my house those are literally just potatoes and olive oil and popcorn and olive oil respectively, maybe some salt. Bad for me? Maybe, but ultra processed?
Slicing them to vastly multiply their surface area so that more Maillard reaction can occur, and it’s that Maillard reaction that causes the yummy browning, and causes the proteins and starches to change and become potentially harmful/carcinogenic, plus yes the addition of fatty oil that wasn’t present at all.
A lot of us think of “processing” as like, something a food processor does - reducing and changing the form. But it’s also the chemical changes that occur during cooking as a result of the physical processes. When you look at the before/after of a potato and an equal volume of fries, it’s apparent you’ve drastically changed the base food.
Yeah, cutting, cooking, chemically altering, and dehydrating foods are all forms of processing them. There are very few foods people can actually eat without any form of processing, and the ones that we can offer basically no protein, fat, or complex carbohydrates, mostly just sugar, fiber and vitamins (not necessarily bad, but you need more)
I think they might be referencing the pre-packaged-already-popped popcorn or the microwavable version.
I’m rather surprised you are able to pop corn with olive oil. Temp-wise you would hit the smoke point well before the oil was hot enough to pop the kernals, which would be smoky misery in the kitchen.
Nope works fine. But you can’t use extra virgin olive oil. It has a lower smoke point. Also I’ve found you can do a small bowl or a regular bowl but a large one is best done in two shots.
I used to just use a brown paper bag. Put about a teaspoon of olive oil in the bottom and a little less than a 1/4 cup of popcorn in the bottom (it will start to bleed through, so I put it on a paper towel), put a couple staples in the top (no they won’t spark) and nuke for maybe a couple of minutes.
This did not produce enough popcorn for my addiction, so I started using as plastic microwave popcorn bowl someone gave me. It was more or less the same recipe but I was able to up the quantity a little bit. I didn’t like cooking in plastic though, so now I use a Pyrex bowl with a square plate over the top. The square plate is too keep the popcorn in but still have a little space for the steam to escape. I like not having plastic in the equation anymore but there are some drawbacks.
-
It takes about 5.5 minutes now(1st world problem).
-
The bowl gets really hot so you MUST use oven mitts to handle it.
-
The salt, which I put in before popping, seems to stay more in the bowl than on the popcorn.
-
I’m constantly worried that at some point the bowl is just going to explode.
What is considered an ultra-processed food? Like… Cheese is processed (all cheese; it isn’t just found, it’s made by processing milk). Is it ultra processed? What about a hot dog?
How is milk processed? It’s pasteurized, which means it’s heated to kill bacteria. Nothing is added to the milk … so no, it is NOT considered a ‘pprocessed’ food.
I’m not sure about milk, but high temp heating is not something that occurs naturally. I am pretty sure heating kills both good and bad stuff so it chemically alters milks, even if minimally. If it is altered chemically or it’s nutrient profile changes or it goes through a process that doesn’t occur regularly, naturally in nature, I consider it processed.
Some form of processing is necessary to prevent disease, i am not against processed stuff to prevent disease.
Eating raw wheat seed, our body can’t absorb anything, eating powered wheat we still can’t absorb much nutrient. The moment we add water and heat and make bread, we break the cell walls, and now we can absorb most of the nutrients. It also raising the glycemic index of wheat.
I don’t consider fermented (decomposition) stuff like yogurt as processed since it can occur naturally, I just see it as a different food, like a seed is a food that can naturally become a plant that is also a food.
Grass is highly processed.
It’s carbon dioxide, dihydrogen monoxide and photons that have gone through photosynthesis.
Firstly, pasteurisation is most definitely a process.
Secondly, it’s very unlikely you are buying milk which has only been pasteurised, it has very likely at least also been homogenised, after being mixed from various different sources in order to produce a mill standardised fat & milk solids. The vast majority of the time rather than just being blended, it has been centrifugally separated into fractions that are then recombined in order to create a standard product.
None of this is really bad, btw, but it is 100% processing.
It seems cheese just missed the mark for ultra status according to this specification I found on webMD.
a quick summarisation is that there are 4 groups:
- Unprocessed or minimally processed foods (berries, nuts etc).
- Processed culinary ingredients (oils, butter, sugars etc).
- Processed foods (cheese, bread. Stuff with 2+ ingredients).
- Ultra-processed food and drink products (preservatives, additives, all the bad -ives).
So I’m guessing a hot dog would be ultra processed due to preservatives and additives often found in the ‘meat’.
That was an interesting rabbit hole to go down. Feels as though what is considered ultra-processed by the experts, is what us laymen tend to refer to as processed foods. I suppose technically their terminology is correct (the best kind of correct ofc), but it just feels like an exaggeration due to everyday usage of the term being what it is.
Edit: formatting.
