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Ultraprocessed Food Consumption and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes
- cik 7y agoI have this theory - and it's completely untested on my side. There's no data, there's just a feeling. It's qualitative, based on my own anecdote only. People were bred to eat specific foods. I gave up manufactured food. Then I gave up North American food - in exchange for eating the food my ancestors grew up with. My IBS disappeared in two weeks - I haven't had any of the debilitating pain I had, eating North American foods. Going back to hamburgers and crisps - my stomach felt like it was ready to jump out my sides. I vowed to stick to what was prevalent as a kid, not what I have access to now.
- uwuhn 7y agoWhat do your meals throughout the week consist of? I'm curious to know. I'd also like to know if you think ground meat itself is problematic, or if it's the preservatives and seasonings that are added to fast-food burger meat.
- chrisco255 7y agoI would be more concerned about the fries and the bread. The fries are cooked in vegetable oils that are high in Omega-6s and low in Omega-3s. Prior to modern American diet, most diets had high Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratio and now that's been flipped. There are some studies to back this up: "Marked elevations in pro-inflammatory polyunsaturated fatty acid metabolites in females with irritable bowel syndrome" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2853445/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2853445/
- mrandish 7y agoI had chronic IBS, GERD and other inflamatory-related issues resolve almost immediately upon transitioning to a ketogenic (ultra-low carb) diet. The transition to keto can be hard due to lifelong habits but once I got through the first month, it started getting easier and now I love what I eat and I'm the best shape of my life.
- uwuhn 7y agoI've done keto three times now. It's the only way I can lose weight and eat healthy. I've always ended up breaking after 3-4 months due to missing Chinese & Japanese food too much.
- nightski 7y agoI'll chime in that I have experienced exactly the same effects on keto, going several years on the diet now.
- cik 7y agoSo to be fair - I'm vegetarian. But my foods mostly consist of cooked vegetables that we had in the middle east (peppers, tomatoes, onions, leaks, etc) and not things that are here now such as sweet potato. Chickpeas (hummous), Sesame seeds (tahina), and various combinations of all these things with the nuts we had (walnuts) means.. well I feel amazing. I've never had a fast food burger in my life.
- allovernow 7y ago>It's qualitative, based on my own anecdote only. People were bred to eat specific foods. Makes sense considering humans diverged into vastly different environments thousands of generations ago. Compare the food available to, say, Inuit tribes vs groups living in a jungle. No reason we couldn't have specialized, particularly given genetic links to gut biota [1] (I'm sure there are more pertinent sources). Meanwhile globalization has rapidly exposed all of us to foods from corners far away from the lands of our ancestors. 1. https://m.phys.org/news/2019-10-survive-human-gut-bacteria-genetic.html https://m.phys.org/news/2019-10-survive-human-gut-bacteria-g...
- Sabinus 7y agoI have Crohn's disease and I've wondered the same thing. Crohn's is affected by diet but triggering foods vary wildly by patient.
- bumby 7y agoIt appears like this is true for some foods at least, dairy in particular. I believe Scandinavians have a much lower rate of lactose intolerance than equatorial cultures
- hderms 7y agoYes lactose intolerance rates in northern Europe are extremely low and they increase as you go further south or east. Looking at a map of the rates is quite telling. I guess it figures that it's thought to be a mutation that conferred benefits during harsh winters
- Ididntdothis 7y agoI hope that as society we will at some point accept that quality of food is really important and you shouldn’t just eat whatever tastes good. This together with the growing acceptance of things like the microbiome make me hopeful that we slowly may be moving towards a more holistic view of health and not putting a lot of effort into treating symptoms while ignoring the big picture.
- xmichael999 7y agoI haven't taken Omeprosol once since I started eating my homemade fermented kimchi daily. Totally anecdotal, but it works for me!
- cactus2093 7y agohow much of it do you eat per day?
- xmichael999 7y agotwice a day, not much, like a few chop stick grabs. Since I am slow to respond and the post is a bit old, this is what I said to the guy who asked me how I make it Pretty basic, I buy 3 or 4 heads of chinese cabbage. Dice it up in to 1 inch squares roughly. Add grated carrots, ginger and onion (and garlic, 2 or 3 whole heads, forgot to mention this to other poster). I then soak that all in salty water (about the same saltyness as the ocean) for about 4 hours. Then I rinse it all twice. Finally I add three or four table spoons of dried red peppers finely ground, three or four table spoons soy sauce, three or four table spoons fish sauce. Finally I put it in a big pot and let sit at room temperature in a dark room for 48 hours. After that into jars and into the fridge. I eat it twice a day usually breakfast and dinner, not even that much. After years and years of lansoprosol, omeprosol and xantac, and tums tums tums, not one hint of heart burn since.
- AlexCoventry 7y agoHow do you prepare it?
- xmichael999 7y agoPretty basic, I buy 3 or 4 heads of chinese cabbage. Dice it up in to 1 inch squares roughly. Add grated carrots, ginger and onion. I then soak that all in salty water (about the same saltyness as the ocean) for about 4 hours. Then I rinse it all twice. Finally I add three or four table spoons of dried red peppers finely ground, three or four table spoons soy sauce, three or four table spoons fish sauce. Finally I put it in a big pot and let sit at room temperature in a dark room for 48 hours. After that into jars and into the fridge. I eat it twice a day usually breakfast and dinner, not even that much. After years and years of lansoprosol, omeprosol and xantac, and tums tums tums, not one hint of heart burn since. Edit: and garlic, 2 or 3 whole heads. I usually blend the garlic, as pieces of garlic turn blue or green and look odd
- chiph 7y agoThis might support the use of the "Perimeter Diet". In US supermarkets, the outside aisles of the stores are typically stocked with produce, meat, dairy, and bread. The center aisles are stocked with commercially processed food ("comes in a box"). The perimeter diet plan says not to buy anything from the center aisles, and that your diet should be items found on the perimeter of the store.
- thisisnico 7y agoThis is pretty much exclusively what I do. I almost never go into the center isles. Everything I buy is fresh/real unprocessed foods.
- seriesf 7y agoThe center of a mass market grocery store is terrifying. Safeway carries something like twenty different kinds of marshmallows, but only one kind of, for example, ground corn. They don’t sell food.
- asciimo 7y agoIn case anyone else is wondering what ultraprocessed food is, I found this in an NPR article [1]: > And ultra-processed foods include more than just the obvious suspects, like chips, candy, packaged desserts and ready-to-eat meals. The category also includes foods that some consumers might find surprising, including Honey Nut Cheerios and other breakfast cereals, packaged white bread, jarred sauces, yogurt with added fruit, and frozen sausages and other reconstituted meat products. Popkin says ultra-processed foods usually contain a long list of ingredients, many of them made in labs. So, for example, instead of seeing "apples" listed on a food label, you might get additives that re-create the scent of that fruit. These are foods designed to be convenient and low cost and require little preparation. 1. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/05/16/723693839/its-not-just-salt-sugar-fat-study-finds-ultra-processed-foods-drive-weight-gain https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/05/16/723693839/it...
- jtreminio 7y agohigh-carb foods increase risk of type 2 diabetes. news at 9.
- Arbalest 7y agoI don't think it is fair to say high-carb as a blanket increases the risk. Our diets are supposed to be 50% carbs. Just not the type of carbs found in these products. I think the culprits are the relatively simple carbs (or sugars) which are not intertwined with various less digestible fibres.
- porknubbins 7y agoI think you might be able to go further and say carbs or without without fiber themselves are not necessarily bad in the absence of excess calories/overweight condition. Look at Japan or France where they consume relatively large amounts of white rice or white flour but lower calories and they have about half the diabetes of the US.
- 7y ago
- orev 7y agoA simple rule of thumb is just that the further you get from a natural state, the worse it is. Fruit from a tree beats fruit in a smoothie. Grains in a whole state (i.e. oatmeal) are better than flours (i.e. oat flour). A whole chicken is better than nuggets. It’s really not that hard of an idea to grasp, as long as you assume that everything that’s written on food packaging is meant to deceive you. Some things need to be processed to a point where they are edible, but not more than that. And before anyone goes there, yes, cooking is essential — that’s not considered “processing”.
- AlexCoventry 7y ago> Absolute T2D rates in the lowest and highest UPF consumers were 113 and 166 per 100 000 person-years, respectively. Perhaps my love of potato chips is clouding my judgement, but on a personal level, that doesn't seem like a huge increase in risk.
- esotericn 7y agoThis whole issue is strange to me. There's an obvious link between 'ultraprocessed' food and just crap / barely-qualifies-as-food. Barely anyone here is talking about like, blending a salad up and drinking it for example. Theoretically, yes, you could extract all of the sugar out of lettuce and make something unhealthy. The typical stuff you think of is full of preservatives, is probably something quite sugary/wheaty to begin with (i.e. low nutritional content), etc. Is anyone _really_ surprised that honey nut cheerios are crap food? It's blatantly obviously a treat. I can't seriously consider that anyone would think it's a component of a healthy diet - you might want to eat it because it tastes nice and is fun, like a bag of crisps. It's the classic treat that a 5 year old might want.