>They say "dietitians scrupulously matched the ultraprocessed and processed meals for calories" but also that people were told to each as much as they like. Wha

>They say "dietitians scrupulously matched the ultraprocessed and processed meals for calories" but also that people were told to each as much as they like. What does that even mean? The calories can only be the same if you fix the quantity. It looks like they were going for energy density (and composition, for that matter). BUT: They absolutely botched that one. While overall density was the same between the two groups, the energy density without beverages was almost twice as high in the ultraprocessed group. TBH, I'm a bit baffled how this huge discrepancy managed to remain in there. I mean, they even admit as much: However, because beverages have limited ability to affect satiety(DellaValle et al., 2005), the ~85% higher energy density of the non-beverage foods in the ultra-processed versus unprocessed diets (Table 1) likely contributed to the observed excess energy intake (Rolls, 2009). Edit: Looking at the referenced paper (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182946/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182946/), it directly supports both these points: that food energy density quite significantly impacts total intake, and that using beverages instead doesn't (even in contrast to using liquid ingredients which _does_ work). Hoo boy.