7 ms·

How processed foods became so unhealthy

open-source-ux 5y ago
Somewhat related...a 2018 study of 19 European countries ranks countries by how much 'ultra-processed' food is purchased by households in those countries. The UK takes first place, followed by Germany, Ireland, Belgium and Finland. Countries that purchase the least amount of 'ultra-processed' food include Portugal, Italy, Greece and France. See the map listed in this article for the full country ranking: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/02/ultra-processed-products-now-half-of-all-uk-family-food-purchases https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/02/ultra-proces...
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
Can someone explain to me how the difference of a molecule of some protein is any different when it's processed? How does my body know when I'm eating processed foods vs non processed? I'm under the impression that when I eat food, my stomach converts it to a liquid, which then gets further "processed" through my digestive system, eventually absorbed in my blood stream. Is it the residual stuff that my body cannot break down but was unable to convert to fecal matter along the way that feeds into my blood stream the bad thing? Or is it still just straight up ignorance because people are afraid of having yet another process abstracted from their daily lives?
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > how the difference of a molecule of some protein is any different when it's processed? Not a nutritionist, but I believe the answer falls into two broad categories. One, chemical: processed foods frequently contain additives, e.g. preservatives, that less-processed food doesn't. Two, physical: a peach smoothie is digested and hits your bloodstream differently from a whole peach. They're chemically identical but physically different, and that changes everything from how quickly you ingest it, how much of it you ingest, how it hits the stomach and how it hits your gut.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    But why does that matter? Assuming the caloric intake is the same, how does eating a peach smoothie differ from eating a peach? They are the same and get liquified the same. I mean technically when you eat you're supposed to have it mashed up enough that your stomach has to do little as little work as possible (so equivalent to a smoothie as possible). I still don't see how that makes a difference. Back to the additives, what difference does it make if your body properly disposes of it because it can't break it down and it doesn't get absorbed by you? Or...does it get absorbed by you (which is what I'm partially asking)?
    - path2power 5y ago
      > Assuming the caloric intake is the same, how does eating a peach smoothie differ from eating a peach? Increasing the number of masticatory cycles is associated with reduced appetite and altered postprandial plasma concentrations of gut hormones, insulin and glucose [0] [0]https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/9C0F012DB821E1A3D10996F744AFC0ED/S0007114512005053a.pdf/increasing_the_number_of_masticatory_cycles_is_associated_with_reduced_appetite_and_altered_postprandial_plasma_concentrations_of_gut_hormones_insulin_and_glucose.pdf https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c... TL;DR It's not just about calories, it's about what the food makes you do later.
    - notshift 5y ago
      If you made a peach smoothie out of nothing but pure peaches, it would be identical to eating the peaches, I'm sure. I am also not a nutritionist, but from my reading processed foods are bad because (1) they just have far fewer nutrients, vitamins and minerals that our body needs to function, (2) the additives and chemicals that are added sometimes harm our body directly and/or require the body to dedicate resources towards removing, or (3) they harm our microbiome by feeding bad bacteria which similarly produce stuff that isn't good for your body and damaging the good bacteria which we need.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- dtech 5y ago
  Multiple reasons, among the most important: Modern processed foods have very little fiber and other non-processed parts, making you full slower causing you to overeat. A glass of coke has 140 calories, and so has 2-3 apples. You'll stop eating after 3 apples but can easily have 2 glasses of coke. The above also causes blood sugar to spike drastically immediately after eating processed foods, causing you to create a high amount of insulin, drastically lowering blood sugar and creating fat. Low blood sugar then causes you to become hungry soon after. This is the famous "hungry 2 hours after eating McDonalds" efffect. Non-processed foods are digested much more gradual. The calories are more empty. Lots of sugar and fat, not much protein and micro-nutrients like minerals and vitamins. They are made so you can't stop eating them, e.g. bliss point [1]. They hack our reward centers to so it feels so good to eat you'll overeat. You wouldn't eat 20 sugar cubes in one sitting but will eat a tub of Ben and Jerry's. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food)
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    > [...] very little fiber [...] making you full slower [...] You'll stop eating after 3 apples [...] Every time someone repeats this sort of thing I have to laugh to myself a little. If only it were so easy to keep my body from constantly craving more calories!
    - acchow 5y ago
      > If only it were so easy to keep my body from constantly craving more calories Try protein shakes. Or other high-protein foods. But if you've made your body accustomed to a diet high in simple carbs (esp sugars), you need to break that cycle as well.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        Do you think that in my decade or so of experience in losing about half my body weight, I never thought to try changing my diet? It is very irksome to me when people try to hand out nutrition advice on the internet like they know goddamned anything about it. I successfully lost over 150lbs and I never found a solution to not craving food constantly.
- munk-a 5y ago
  The main difference between processed foods and fresh foods are 1) preservatives and 2) flavour enhancement - for the first goal we use things like salt to increase the shelf life of the product which has the side effect of shifting most folks over to having a higher expectation of salt content in their food in general - for the later salt is also useful (along with specific flavour enhancers like MSG), but sugar is far easier to throw in and get more bang for your buck. I can cook a meal and freeze it for a while reheat it and enjoy it - to allow it to survive (with a decent taste) long bouts of freezer burn and going stale I need to load that sucker up with a bunch of salt and sugar so that I don't care that the food tastes like cardboard. I can't speak to any molecular effects - those may also exist - but most of why processed food is bad for you is just to make it taste really really good so you'll come back for more - even if you're not hungry! Yay obesity! I imagine at some point in the future folks are going to look at the diet of the late 20th century like we look at covering your baby's crib with lead based paint.
  - worik 5y ago
    ????? There is a lot more than flavour and preservatives in processed food. The difference in texture The refined sugars in processed are nothing like natural sugars in raw food Industrially hydrogenated fats are not the same as naturally hydrogenated fats (margarine is not coconut oil) Additionally there are the traces of the machines used in the processing. The chemicals that make the plastic hoses soft (who's name escapes me) are coming under scrutiny now for being very bad for us.
    - munk-a 5y ago
      I am quite unfamiliar with the machinery traces and won't comment on that - but, to your point, it's not that other issues don't exist - it's that these issues are enough to show how harmful processed food can be.
    - moistly 5y ago
      Phthalates. Hormone disrupter. Bad news over the long term.
- retzkek 5y ago
  It's not so much that the food molecules are different, but the amounts that ultimately makes something "unhealthy." It's right there in the first paragraph: > high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt diets Much like how the attention industry has refined advertisements, games, news, etc to become exceedingly effective at targeting the pleasure areas of the brain, making us want to consume more, so too has the food industry. Humans have evolved to find pleasure in eating fat, sugar, and salt, as the former are excellent sources of energy, and the latter is required by many processes ("Brawndo, it's got what plants crave!"). Processed food has optimized, distilled, and combined these components into foods that could never be found in nature, and which our bodies are ill-equipped for.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mlboss 5y ago
  I have a hypothesis (which might be false) that chemicals in a natural food developed through evolution to work together nicely when a fruit/vegetable is consumed raw. In last 100 years we started adding lot of chemicals to our food without knowing what long term effects they produce. Thats why fortified bread is not same as whole wheat bread. Maybe in future we will make the ideal food in a lab or our gut will get adapted to process highly processed food.
the-dude 5y ago
I think the article is pretty thin on the low fat foods.
- worik 5y ago
  Which generally substitute sugar. Read the nutrition labels
crazygringo 5y ago
> "The problem is that, in the past half century, a different type of food processing has been developed," says Fernanda Rauber, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, about what we now call "“ultra-processed foods”. "These substances would not be found in our kitchen. Usually, they contain little to no proportion of real foods." This is ridiculous. Processed (or "ultra-processed") foods are mainly flour (wheat, corn, etc.), sugar (sugarcane, sugar beet), and refined oils (soy, canola). All of these are found in the kitchen and are very much "real foods". Yes, processed foods include small amounts of ingredients like emulsifiers and natural flavors, but by weight they're a tiny proportion. The idea that they make up most or all of a product by weight is utterly ludicrous. It's fine and good to be aware that processed food doesn't contain the "antioxidants and phytochemicals" found in unprocessed foods, and they may be calorie-dense and low in fiber. But it's unhelpful and utterly dishonest when nutritionists or scientists make absurd claims about processed foods being made mostly out of ingredients not found in our own kitchens.
- creamynebula 5y ago
  > Processed (or "ultra-processed") foods are mainly flour (wheat, corn, etc.), sugar (sugarcane, sugar beet), and refined oils (soy, canola). All of these are found in the kitchen and are very much "real foods" I wouldn't say so, sugar and the oils don't exist in nature on their own, and primates can't really eat wheat, corn and other grains.
- dilap 5y ago
  Refined seed oils contain polyunsaturated fats (and more specifically, omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, and more specifically yet, linoleic acid) in far higher concentrations than traditional foods. I believe this is the main thing that makes processed food unhealthy, and, indeed, is the main driver of the epidemic of the so-called "diseases of civilization" (obesity, diabetes, cancer, etc) that most of the world is experiencing. This series of blog posts does an excellent job of summarizing the evidence: https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/what-causes-chronic-disease https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/what-causes-chronic-disease
  - 5y ago
t0mbstone 5y ago
This rambling article talks about the earl of sandwich and the origins of soda and some early food processing methods for things like chocolate. The article doesn't say anything meaningful or interesting about how processed foods actually became unhealthy, though, and it also doesn't even talk about modern processed food. What a waste of time.
- bitexploder 5y ago
  Not to be pessimistic, but this is very typical of most food science + health journalism. The odds someone really did their research and didn't just start with whatever the current food and health trends are and work an article (poorly) backwards from there is very low.
- reedjosh 5y ago
  Well, it is the BBC.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
stakkur 5y ago
Processed food isn't food at all, it's a 'food product' make to resemble food.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Please explain the preservatives found in a can of tomato paste. Lets take... Hunt's tomato paste, a popular brand. Hint: the preservative is "Citric Acid", also known as lemon-juice. A wee bit more acidity negates any chance of botulism (which just barely can live in the PH of Tomato-acid. But add a squeeze of lemon to it and make it slightly more acidic and this rare bacteria is taken care of). Otherwise, you're looking at just mashed up tomatoes + a squeeze of lemon inside of a can. No joke, nothing else is in there. ------- The other aspect of "preserving" is the airtight can, which prevents other organisms (other bacteria, mold, fungus) from entering the can. Any tomato paste can you find is basically using this technique. -------- Other canned veggies are even more pure. Canned corn is just heated (at the factory) to a temperature that kills botulism spores. A lot of cans add salt for flavor, but you can easily buy salt-free cans and get pure corn if that's your preference.
  - kinkrtyavimoodh 5y ago
    I think when people say processed food they are referring more Doritos than canned corn.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      You have a reasonable assumption. Unfortunately, these 'ultraprocessed' journalists commonly refer to canned corn as processed food. Doritos, frozen pizza, cup noodles are clearly unhealthy. And I think most reasonable people know that. But these 'ultra' journalists have... Questionable... discussion points when you dig into the articles.
      - 5y ago
symlinkk 5y ago
Processed foods aren’t unhealthy. Unhealthy foods are unhealthy. The latter is a subset of the former.
mahgnous 5y ago
And people think this lab grown meat and artificial meat is gonna be any better nutritionally...
99_00 5y ago
The article isn't worth reading. The reason is simply economics. Low cost, consumer demand, and one magical ingredient. Sugar is cheap. Less than a dollar a pound, makes unpalatable low quality ingredients palatable, adds texture, volume, moisture, colour, and might be addictive. Sugar production was also a major driver of slavery.

Somewhat related...a 2018 study of 19 European countries ranks countries by how much 'ultra-processed' food is purchased by households in those countries. The UK takes first place, followed by Germany, Ireland, Belgium and Finland. Countries that purchase the least amount of 'ultra-processed' food include Portugal, Italy, Greece and France. See the map listed in this article for the full country ranking: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/02/ultra-processed-products-now-half-of-all-uk-family-food-purchases https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/02/ultra-proces...

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

Can someone explain to me how the difference of a molecule of some protein is any different when it's processed? How does my body know when I'm eating processed foods vs non processed? I'm under the impression that when I eat food, my stomach converts it to a liquid, which then gets further "processed" through my digestive system, eventually absorbed in my blood stream. Is it the residual stuff that my body cannot break down but was unable to convert to fecal matter along the way that feeds into my blood stream the bad thing? Or is it still just straight up ignorance because people are afraid of having yet another process abstracted from their daily lives?

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> how the difference of a molecule of some protein is any different when it's processed? Not a nutritionist, but I believe the answer falls into two broad categories. One, chemical: processed foods frequently contain additives, e.g. preservatives, that less-processed food doesn't. Two, physical: a peach smoothie is digested and hits your bloodstream differently from a whole peach. They're chemically identical but physically different, and that changes everything from how quickly you ingest it, how much of it you ingest, how it hits the stomach and how it hits your gut.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  But why does that matter? Assuming the caloric intake is the same, how does eating a peach smoothie differ from eating a peach? They are the same and get liquified the same. I mean technically when you eat you're supposed to have it mashed up enough that your stomach has to do little as little work as possible (so equivalent to a smoothie as possible). I still don't see how that makes a difference. Back to the additives, what difference does it make if your body properly disposes of it because it can't break it down and it doesn't get absorbed by you? Or...does it get absorbed by you (which is what I'm partially asking)?
  - path2power 5y ago
    > Assuming the caloric intake is the same, how does eating a peach smoothie differ from eating a peach? Increasing the number of masticatory cycles is associated with reduced appetite and altered postprandial plasma concentrations of gut hormones, insulin and glucose [0] [0]https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/9C0F012DB821E1A3D10996F744AFC0ED/S0007114512005053a.pdf/increasing_the_number_of_masticatory_cycles_is_associated_with_reduced_appetite_and_altered_postprandial_plasma_concentrations_of_gut_hormones_insulin_and_glucose.pdf https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c... TL;DR It's not just about calories, it's about what the food makes you do later.
  - notshift 5y ago
    If you made a peach smoothie out of nothing but pure peaches, it would be identical to eating the peaches, I'm sure. I am also not a nutritionist, but from my reading processed foods are bad because (1) they just have far fewer nutrients, vitamins and minerals that our body needs to function, (2) the additives and chemicals that are added sometimes harm our body directly and/or require the body to dedicate resources towards removing, or (3) they harm our microbiome by feeding bad bacteria which similarly produce stuff that isn't good for your body and damaging the good bacteria which we need.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
dtech 5y ago
Multiple reasons, among the most important: Modern processed foods have very little fiber and other non-processed parts, making you full slower causing you to overeat. A glass of coke has 140 calories, and so has 2-3 apples. You'll stop eating after 3 apples but can easily have 2 glasses of coke. The above also causes blood sugar to spike drastically immediately after eating processed foods, causing you to create a high amount of insulin, drastically lowering blood sugar and creating fat. Low blood sugar then causes you to become hungry soon after. This is the famous "hungry 2 hours after eating McDonalds" efffect. Non-processed foods are digested much more gradual. The calories are more empty. Lots of sugar and fat, not much protein and micro-nutrients like minerals and vitamins. They are made so you can't stop eating them, e.g. bliss point [1]. They hack our reward centers to so it feels so good to eat you'll overeat. You wouldn't eat 20 sugar cubes in one sitting but will eat a tub of Ben and Jerry's. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food)
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  > [...] very little fiber [...] making you full slower [...] You'll stop eating after 3 apples [...] Every time someone repeats this sort of thing I have to laugh to myself a little. If only it were so easy to keep my body from constantly craving more calories!
  - acchow 5y ago
    > If only it were so easy to keep my body from constantly craving more calories Try protein shakes. Or other high-protein foods. But if you've made your body accustomed to a diet high in simple carbs (esp sugars), you need to break that cycle as well.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      Do you think that in my decade or so of experience in losing about half my body weight, I never thought to try changing my diet? It is very irksome to me when people try to hand out nutrition advice on the internet like they know goddamned anything about it. I successfully lost over 150lbs and I never found a solution to not craving food constantly.
munk-a 5y ago
The main difference between processed foods and fresh foods are 1) preservatives and 2) flavour enhancement - for the first goal we use things like salt to increase the shelf life of the product which has the side effect of shifting most folks over to having a higher expectation of salt content in their food in general - for the later salt is also useful (along with specific flavour enhancers like MSG), but sugar is far easier to throw in and get more bang for your buck. I can cook a meal and freeze it for a while reheat it and enjoy it - to allow it to survive (with a decent taste) long bouts of freezer burn and going stale I need to load that sucker up with a bunch of salt and sugar so that I don't care that the food tastes like cardboard. I can't speak to any molecular effects - those may also exist - but most of why processed food is bad for you is just to make it taste really really good so you'll come back for more - even if you're not hungry! Yay obesity! I imagine at some point in the future folks are going to look at the diet of the late 20th century like we look at covering your baby's crib with lead based paint.
- worik 5y ago
  ????? There is a lot more than flavour and preservatives in processed food. The difference in texture The refined sugars in processed are nothing like natural sugars in raw food Industrially hydrogenated fats are not the same as naturally hydrogenated fats (margarine is not coconut oil) Additionally there are the traces of the machines used in the processing. The chemicals that make the plastic hoses soft (who's name escapes me) are coming under scrutiny now for being very bad for us.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    I am quite unfamiliar with the machinery traces and won't comment on that - but, to your point, it's not that other issues don't exist - it's that these issues are enough to show how harmful processed food can be.
  - moistly 5y ago
    Phthalates. Hormone disrupter. Bad news over the long term.
retzkek 5y ago
It's not so much that the food molecules are different, but the amounts that ultimately makes something "unhealthy." It's right there in the first paragraph: > high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt diets Much like how the attention industry has refined advertisements, games, news, etc to become exceedingly effective at targeting the pleasure areas of the brain, making us want to consume more, so too has the food industry. Humans have evolved to find pleasure in eating fat, sugar, and salt, as the former are excellent sources of energy, and the latter is required by many processes ("Brawndo, it's got what plants crave!"). Processed food has optimized, distilled, and combined these components into foods that could never be found in nature, and which our bodies are ill-equipped for.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mlboss 5y ago
I have a hypothesis (which might be false) that chemicals in a natural food developed through evolution to work together nicely when a fruit/vegetable is consumed raw. In last 100 years we started adding lot of chemicals to our food without knowing what long term effects they produce. Thats why fortified bread is not same as whole wheat bread. Maybe in future we will make the ideal food in a lab or our gut will get adapted to process highly processed food.

the-dude 5y ago

I think the article is pretty thin on the low fat foods.

worik 5y ago
Which generally substitute sugar. Read the nutrition labels

crazygringo 5y ago

> "The problem is that, in the past half century, a different type of food processing has been developed," says Fernanda Rauber, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, about what we now call "“ultra-processed foods”. "These substances would not be found in our kitchen. Usually, they contain little to no proportion of real foods." This is ridiculous. Processed (or "ultra-processed") foods are mainly flour (wheat, corn, etc.), sugar (sugarcane, sugar beet), and refined oils (soy, canola). All of these are found in the kitchen and are very much "real foods". Yes, processed foods include small amounts of ingredients like emulsifiers and natural flavors, but by weight they're a tiny proportion. The idea that they make up most or all of a product by weight is utterly ludicrous. It's fine and good to be aware that processed food doesn't contain the "antioxidants and phytochemicals" found in unprocessed foods, and they may be calorie-dense and low in fiber. But it's unhelpful and utterly dishonest when nutritionists or scientists make absurd claims about processed foods being made mostly out of ingredients not found in our own kitchens.

creamynebula 5y ago
> Processed (or "ultra-processed") foods are mainly flour (wheat, corn, etc.), sugar (sugarcane, sugar beet), and refined oils (soy, canola). All of these are found in the kitchen and are very much "real foods" I wouldn't say so, sugar and the oils don't exist in nature on their own, and primates can't really eat wheat, corn and other grains.
dilap 5y ago
Refined seed oils contain polyunsaturated fats (and more specifically, omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, and more specifically yet, linoleic acid) in far higher concentrations than traditional foods. I believe this is the main thing that makes processed food unhealthy, and, indeed, is the main driver of the epidemic of the so-called "diseases of civilization" (obesity, diabetes, cancer, etc) that most of the world is experiencing. This series of blog posts does an excellent job of summarizing the evidence: https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/what-causes-chronic-disease https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/what-causes-chronic-disease
- 5y ago

t0mbstone 5y ago

This rambling article talks about the earl of sandwich and the origins of soda and some early food processing methods for things like chocolate. The article doesn't say anything meaningful or interesting about how processed foods actually became unhealthy, though, and it also doesn't even talk about modern processed food. What a waste of time.

bitexploder 5y ago
Not to be pessimistic, but this is very typical of most food science + health journalism. The odds someone really did their research and didn't just start with whatever the current food and health trends are and work an article (poorly) backwards from there is very low.
reedjosh 5y ago
Well, it is the BBC.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

stakkur 5y ago

Processed food isn't food at all, it's a 'food product' make to resemble food.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dragontamer 5y ago
Please explain the preservatives found in a can of tomato paste. Lets take... Hunt's tomato paste, a popular brand. Hint: the preservative is "Citric Acid", also known as lemon-juice. A wee bit more acidity negates any chance of botulism (which just barely can live in the PH of Tomato-acid. But add a squeeze of lemon to it and make it slightly more acidic and this rare bacteria is taken care of). Otherwise, you're looking at just mashed up tomatoes + a squeeze of lemon inside of a can. No joke, nothing else is in there. ------- The other aspect of "preserving" is the airtight can, which prevents other organisms (other bacteria, mold, fungus) from entering the can. Any tomato paste can you find is basically using this technique. -------- Other canned veggies are even more pure. Canned corn is just heated (at the factory) to a temperature that kills botulism spores. A lot of cans add salt for flavor, but you can easily buy salt-free cans and get pure corn if that's your preference.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 5y ago
  I think when people say processed food they are referring more Doritos than canned corn.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    You have a reasonable assumption. Unfortunately, these 'ultraprocessed' journalists commonly refer to canned corn as processed food. Doritos, frozen pizza, cup noodles are clearly unhealthy. And I think most reasonable people know that. But these 'ultra' journalists have... Questionable... discussion points when you dig into the articles.
    - 5y ago

symlinkk 5y ago

Processed foods aren’t unhealthy. Unhealthy foods are unhealthy. The latter is a subset of the former.

mahgnous 5y ago

And people think this lab grown meat and artificial meat is gonna be any better nutritionally...

99_00 5y ago

The article isn't worth reading. The reason is simply economics. Low cost, consumer demand, and one magical ingredient. Sugar is cheap. Less than a dollar a pound, makes unpalatable low quality ingredients palatable, adds texture, volume, moisture, colour, and might be addictive. Sugar production was also a major driver of slavery.