After a rather surprising amount of digging, I found the underlying study and the menu they used, and it seems there was no set of rules or ingredients. The "u

After a rather surprising amount of digging, I found the underlying study and the menu they used, and it seems there was no set of rules or ingredients. The "ultra-processed" diet included: Canned corn Deli turkey Refried beans Sour cream Whole milk Canned peaches Scrambled eggs Sausages Blueberry yoghurt Bagels Cream cheeese Canned chili Frozen macaroni and cheese Canned green beans Peanut butter Non-fat greek yoghurt And so on. All major brands, but it's hard to detect a theme; a lot of the items are not especially "processed" in any way, and don't seem especially unhealthy. And many specific items seemed difficult to distinguish from items in the unprocessed menu. Is canned corn less healthy than fresh or frozen corn in some way? How? Some studies have shown that canned corn contains more available nutrients than fresh corn, so what is the theory here? For another example, the ultra-processed menu had scrambled eggs made with liquid, pasterurized eggs from a carton; the unprocessed menu had an omelette made from fresh eggs. Does pasteurizing eggs make them unhealthy? If so, how, and what studies support this? If not, why bother including different egg dishes in the menus? Or for another example, some of the ultra-processed meals used as a protein source Tyson brand steak; some of the unprocessed meals used Tyson brand "beef tender roast". What is the difference between these, and why do we think Tyson steak is bad and Tyson beef roast is good? Alternatively if we don't think there's a difference why use different products in the two menus? If if we accept that the study did show an effect, it almost seems designed to obscure the underlying cause, since it was so aggressively scattershot. One could also quibble about the choice of foods; the ultra-processed menu leaned hard into meat and carbs with little or no greens, while the unprocessed menu had lots of broccoli and other green veggies. But obviously you could construct a much healthier diet from the ultra-processed menu, or a much less healthy diet from the unprocessed menu. I love broccoli, but if you drown it in rich sauces, it's not going to do your diet many favours. Similarly, why is it the unprocessed diet snack selection had unsalted nuts? Salt doesn't count as processed (right?) so was this just picked to try and make the snacks taste less good so people would eat less, or...? The menu PDF is here if anyone is curious; https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cmet.2019.05.008/attachment/f7d43756-3f67-4557-8322-59a9d143d63c/mmc1 https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cmet.2019.05.008/attachme... The methodology here seems SUPER bad.