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U.S. Kids Are Getting Nearly 70% of Their Calories from 'Ultra-Processed' Foods

102 points by onychomys 5y ago

mark_l_watson 5y ago
Sad news. Anecdotal: 5 years ago I went on the Dr. Fuhrman diet (no processed foods). Within 6 weeks I felt better than I had in a decade: everything was better: clearer thinking, inflammation and bodily discomfort gone, longer hikes without getting tired, and better sleep. I hate to think of the costs to society and personal costs of people not getting healthy food to eat.
onychomys 5y ago
So at first glance it seems like there's no way this is actually possible. There are 21 meals a week, plus enough snacking that we could probably just think of it as 28 meals a week. Kids just eat constantly, it's bonkers. Anyway, with 28 meals a week, you'd need about 20 of them to be ultra-processed in order to meet this. That's a lot! Except that it's actually really not. If we take my 5 year old son as a normal kid, a bowl of cereal for breakfast and then whatever random food they feed him for school lunch and we're already 2/3rds of the way to the goal. He snacks on fruit and stuff, but also on pretzel sticks and honey roasted peanuts and all sorts of other kind of junky things. I make dinner from scratch very nearly every night, and my kid still falls into this 70% bucket! And so I really don't have a good idea about how to change that. Maybe make our own bread and have them have toast for breakfast every day? That's going to get old quick.
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  Another angle is that junk tends to be more caloric, so even if kids actually did eat their fruits and veggies, even say with 21 of those meals, they'd still only make up a comparatively small portion of all the calories in their diets. But given that they're full of other nutrients (and esp. fiber) I don't think that's so bad.
  - ffggvv 5y ago
    yeah a bag of cheezits is ~200 calories. An orange is ~50 calories. So if you ate one of each youd have 80% of calories from ultraprocessed food.
  - taylodl 5y ago
    My wife likes to joke no one ever got fat eating carrots and celery. The calorie dense foods kids enjoy tend to have a lot of refined sugar. Heck, that goes for most adults too. I can eat a bag of carrots and a bag of potato chips and I'll have gotten more than 70% of my calories from the chips.
- throwaway1777 5y ago
  Breakfast is definitely a good place to start. We eat eggs for breakfast nearly every day in my home. It’s not as simple as cereal but scrambling a batch of eggs is not too bad.
  - xenonite 5y ago
    Not surprisingly the taste of eggs depends on the chickens' meal. For example, the protein demand is often fulfilled by fish powder or soy flour.
- causi 5y ago
  Pack him a lunch instead of letting him eat cafeteria food. A ham sandwich is a lot healthier than a slice of school pizza.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
    I'd be surprised if commercially made ham didn't fall into the ultraprocessed category! Saying this as someone who's curing his first ham in the fridge rn :-)
  - sjwalter 5y ago
    I run a chicken farm so I'm biased but for my family I grow out a bunch of birds to be bigger than typical (9-10lbs). Roast one of these and it sits in the fridge providing sandwich meat for a week, plus the occasional plate of hot sauce and cold meat. Super delicious and healthful.
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      My parents did this for most of my childhood. They weren't farmers, so the meat came from the supermarket – but larger cuts of meat (or whole chickens) are much cheaper than buying jointed, pre-cut or cooked meat anyway.
  - fancifalmanima 5y ago
    The bread (made from processed wheat, probably bleached flour, and containing bread conditioners, preservatives) would almost surely fall into the ultra processed category, unless homemade from minimally processed whole wheat flour. The ham and cheese could as well, unless they were made with fairly traditional processes (and probably more expensive than what the typical person is buying at walmart, target, etc). They'd all probably be considered processed foods, at minimum.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  This is perhaps a good indicator that “processed versus unprocessed” isn’t a great signal for whether a particular fooditem should be part of one’s diet. Using your cereal example: I grew up eating grape nuts[1], which are probably in the ultraprocessed category. But it’s just barley flour and I ate it like most people eat muesli (with fresh fruit) — what should that count as? [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grape-Nuts https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grape-Nuts
  - fanf2 5y ago
    Grape nuts count as "processed" because of the added salt and vitamins
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      Right, which begs the question: if processing includes ostensibly beneficial (or at least neutral) processing as well, how important is the 70% in TFA? My intuition is that it’s still pretty important (since most people are probably eating Frosted Flakes, not grape nuts, for breakfast), but that we need a better way to talk about healthy eating habits and proportions than “most of our foodstuffs are processed.”
      - Symbiote 5y ago
        "Processed" and "ultra-processed" are two different things: the latter goes beyond the former. Grape Nuts might could as processed, and Frosted Flakes as ultra-processed.
- sosuke 5y ago
  Good healthy food costs more money. We've done a great job about putting the most amount of calories and flavor into cheaper than dirt forms. I think a breakfast of oats and lunch of a tuna sandwich would work. Most lunch meats are probably considered Ultra-Processed. I think the only ways out of this are as you said fixing everything yourself. Most things you can eat raw that isn't packaged would probably be safe. Then cooking your own meats. But pasta is considered Ultra-Processed, packaged bread is ultra-processed. I thought those were some of the most basic foods with the smallest number of ingredients. Maybe home made versions as you suggested are not considered Ultra-Processed.
  - ogwh 5y ago
    They're made with ingredients that are processed. The flour that goes into the bread and pasta has been stripped of all fibre and micro nutrients, then some vitamins might be added back if you're lucky. The bread is full of refined sugar. You need to look at the ingredients recursively. If you eat wholegrain everything you're half way there. Same applies to rice etc. The reason they remove the good stuff is so it doesn't spoil, if you remove the nutrients it's less appetising to microbes and pests.
  - sosuke 5y ago
    Answering my own question: Industrial breads made only from wheat flour, water, salt and yeast are processed foods, while those whose lists of ingredients also include emulsifiers or colours are ultra-processed. Plain steel-cut oats, plain corn flakes and shredded wheat are minimally processed foods, while the same foods are processed when they also contain sugar, and ultra-processed if they also contain flavours or colours. From http://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf http://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf
  - ev1 5y ago
    They are small (flour, yeast, salt, etc) number of ingredients if you shop for bread at specialty, expensive, organic shops or make it yourself. At the supermarkets 99% of the US uses, even the high end bread is 15-25 ingredients at eyeball. The ingredient list for one of the most expensive packaged whole wheat bread that would show up at a regular non-Whole Foods-style place: Whole Wheat Flour , Water , Sugar , Wheat Gluten , Yeast , Wheat Bran , Salt , Soybean Oil , Raisin Juice Concentrate , Enrichment ( Calcium Sulfate , Vitamin E Acetate , Vitamin A Palmitate , Vitamin D3 ) , Calcium Propionate ( Preservative ) , Datem , Grain Vinegar , Monoglycerides , Soy Lecithin , Citric Acid , Potassium Iodate .
- alex504 5y ago
  Dont feed him processed food for breakfast and pack him lunch.
  - elliekelly 5y ago
    This is one of those things that’s easy to say but way harder for parents to actually do. You’re suggesting someone make time to prepare not one, but two homemade meals as they’re trying to get their kid (and probably themselves) out the door in the morning.
    - paulryanrogers 5y ago
      Kids learn quickly which foods have the most sugar and get stuck on them. I tried to prevent ours from ever tasting junk until they had broader palettes, but the moment grandparents have the kids alone or SO has a bad day... it's over.
    - slothtrop 5y ago
      Overnight oats take seconds to prepare.
      - handrous 5y ago
        ??? How? I'm looking at a good 15 minutes, almost all hands-on time, from the moment I decide to go make overnight oats, using either of what I'm pretty sure are normal methods (crock pot, boil-briefly-and-leave-covered stovetop). That's assuming I don't discover that something I need is dirty. I'm not saying that's a ton of time, but seconds? Quick oat packets (awful stuff, full of sugar unless you get really expensive ones, cutting it 50/50 with rolled or plain quick oats helps a little and also makes up for the fact that one packet isn't, realistically, an entire serving) aren't even seconds. Talking maybe 2-3 minutes hands-on to lay out a bowl for each kid, rip and pour the packets, set the electric kettle going, then pour some on each when it boils (microwaving it with cool water is even slower once you're past a single serving—kettle saves time)
        5y ago
- sparrc 5y ago
  Does cereal count as "ultra-processed"? Things like Cheerios don't seem much more processed than bread from what I can tell. Also honey-roasted peanuts? My understanding of ultra-processed would be things more like candy, cheetos, pringles, oreos, soda, etc.
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    Check the nutrition facts on honey roasted peanuts. I was shocked at how many carbs a serving includes. Now I just eat dry roasted peanuts, and not too many since they too have plenty of carbs. It's hard to find a simple rule that isn't subverted. Though simpler more primitive diets (mostly low carb vegetables and high protein foods) seem best all around. It's sad to see folks think they've leveled up enough to 'cheat' after loading up on yams ("veg!"), carrots ("veg"), and beans ("protein!").
    - asdff 5y ago
      What is wrong with carbs? If I don't have carbs while working all day I get tired. That stuff is brain fuel.
      - paulryanrogers 5y ago
        Carbs themselves are fine. It's the quantities, especially those in the form of sugars, that are excessive. All that said you can live without carbs and just digest fats instead. Hence the whole ketosis and low-sugar diets.
  - deep-root 5y ago
    Check out the ingredients of Cheerios, which says a bit about the process of making them and the attempt to restore some nutrition: https://www.wdbqschools.org/Downloads/Cereal-Cheerios.pdf https://www.wdbqschools.org/Downloads/Cereal-Cheerios.pdf Probably Wonder Bread would look similar, but homemade bread quite different. All are processed foods of some level due to flour.
    - 5y ago
- bell-cot 5y ago
  A bread machine can make the "make our own bread...toast" less laborious. (Recipes printed in bread machines' instruction booklets tend toward the less-healthy, but with some experimenting...) Commercial breakfast cereals vary, though the least-healthy are probably the most tuned to appeal to kids. Home-cooked cereal can be far better. And easy to mix nuts, frozen berries, etc. into. If a bit of dressing up (squirt of mustard, bit of mayo, etc.) makes hard-boiled eggs acceptable to him, those can be made once a week and kept in the fridge. An old friend perfected a fairly-healthy, filling stew recipe (some meat, mostly veggies, etc.) that he could make up in large batches and keep in the fridge. As a teenager, his son consumed an enormous quantity of that over time.
- taylodl 5y ago
  Try to minimize the amount of refined sugar and white flour in your diet. That'll get you below the 70%. As you're probably suspecting, it isn't easy! Refined sugar is in almost everything you buy at the grocery store, save for fresh produce and meat. White flour is present in many breads - even whole wheat bread! Yes - whole wheat bread oftentimes means there's whole wheat flour used in making the bread, it doesn't mean only whole wheat flour was used. And breakfast cereal? Yeah, that's going to be hard to replace, especially for a five year old! Oatmeal is a good alternative but unless you're buying a box of old-fashioned oats and making it yourself you're likely to be buying a lot of refined sugar. Those healthy granola bars? Lots of refined sugar. Trail mix, especially the ones with the M&M's? Ungodly amounts of refined sugar. To be honest I'm kinda surprised that it's only 70% of calories coming from refined foods.
  - handrous 5y ago
    > Yes - whole wheat bread oftentimes means there's whole wheat flour used in making the bread, it doesn't mean only whole wheat flour was used. Part of the reason is that it's really hard—way more work, way more time—to get a fluffy sandwich loaf out of just whole wheat flour. Or anything that's not kinda dense and focaccia-looking, really.
    - taylodl 5y ago
      You're not wrong! When I make home made bread I don't use only whole wheat flour - it's really difficult to work with and hard to get a good loaf, and I've been making bread on a regular basis for over 30 years! The 'whole wheat white' flours (fine ground 100% whole wheat flour) coming out are really good and allows for an excellent loaf.
- armchairhacker 5y ago
  Sometimes I eat shredded wheat and bananas, yogurt and fruit, or shredded wheat + yogurt + fruit. That takes 0 effort and can be packed for breakfast or lunch. Also carrots and hummus, dry roasted nuts, cheese and wheat thins, PB and apple slices, are all good snacks for a kid.
nate_meurer 5y ago
Pizza alone accounts for a large fraction of junk food consumption. I was shocked to learn that more than one in five kids and teens eats pizza on any given day. https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/80400530/pdf/DBrief/11_consumption_of_pizza_0710.pdf https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/80400530/pdf/DBrief/11... Overall, 13% of the U.S. population aged 2 years and over, consumed pizza on any given day. The percentage consuming pizza ranged from approximately 22% among older children (6-11 years) and adolescents (12-19 years) to less than 6% among older adults, 60 years and over
- baal80spam 5y ago
  Curious - what makes pizza a junk food?
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > what makes pizza a junk food? Most pizza in America has sugar in the sauce and dough. The sauce, moreover, tends to be fatty. And the toppings are processed meats, et cetera. If the pizza is prepared in anything but a pizza oven, it's likely also pan fried.
    - tootie 5y ago
      Fruit has a lot of sugar too.
      - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
        > Fruit has a lot of sugar too It does. We are not fruit bats. Eating a diet of just fruit is not healthy. But the fructose in fruits is digested and absorbed differently from the free sugar in processed foods.
        olau 5y ago
        I once looked up what big apes are eating and found out that they eat very little meat and lots of fruit. Like half of the diet could be figs.
TillE 5y ago
I've recently been cutting back on salt, and it's crazy how difficult that is. Even something seemingly benign like a bag of mixed frozen vegetables has so much salt added, a few hundred grams (a reasonable portion) would be almost my entire daily sodium intake. And for all that, it doesn't even taste well seasoned. Gotta be careful and stick with the frozen vegetables which have nothing added.
- sumthinprofound 5y ago
  I gave up sugar in my coffee ~4 teasoons a day without any problems, but salt I am finding is more difficult to avoid.
  - X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
    How much salt do you put in your coffee?
    - OldTimeCoffee 5y ago
      Probably a bit to counteract the bitterness they were trying to avoid with the sugar
- axaxs 5y ago
  I've definitely noticed this. As a kid we ate mostly natural food, as my parents had a decent sized farm. We always had salt on the table, and went through a lot of it. As an adult without a farm, I cannot remember the last time I even touched the salt shaker. I've actually made spaghetti once that was near inedible because the sodium in the sauce, cheeses, and meat made it incredibly salty tasting.
- cameronh90 5y ago
  "Even something seemingly benign like a bag of mixed frozen vegetables has so much salt added" Have literally never experienced this except if it's something that's meant to be ready to eat or is a base mix with its own seasoning. Is it a US thing?
carabiner 5y ago
Good: https://goactualize.com/blogs/news/the-cure-for-obesity-is-processed-food-when-the-poison-is-the-antidote-part-1 https://goactualize.com/blogs/news/the-cure-for-obesity-is-p...
dolni 5y ago
The complete lack of rigor and the use of shock-headlines around "ultra-processed" foods drives me nuts. It conveys very little useful information. Pharmaceuticals are ultra-processed and completely unnatural, yet many of them are life-saving. Clearly then, mere act of processing something doesn't make the thing bad for you. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody that constantly horking down Mountain Dew, Little Debbie snack cakes, and Doritos isn't good for you. We all know this, we don't need a headline for it. Give me some useful information. What are reasonable thresholds for these junk foods? How about for specific ingredients? Ranting and raving out of the way, do yourself a favor and skip to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization classification document [1] linked in the article. It actually answers some of the questions I posed. [1]: http://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf http://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf
- dataflow 5y ago
  > Pharmaceuticals are ultra-processed and completely unnatural, yet many of them are life-saving. Clearly then, mere act of processing something doesn't make the thing bad for you. I have to admit though, I'm not aware of any food that would be considered "ultra-processed" yet known to be good for people.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > I'm not aware of any food that would be considered "ultra-processed" yet known to be good for people What does "ultra processed" mean? Cheese, bread, olive oil and most vegetables require processing to be made or nutritionally useful. Freeze-dried vegetables are quite processed and quite good for you.
    - dataflow 5y ago
      > What does "ultra processed" mean? Cheese, bread, olive oil and most vegetables require processing to be made or nutritionally useful. I don't have a scientific definition for you. Just use your common sense to figure out what average people would intuitively call ultra-processed, whatever it means to them. I'm pretty darn sure you would not arrive at the conclusion that ordinary people consider bread and most vegetables "ultra-processed foods".
laydn 5y ago
Maybe we can put distinctive, unmistakeable labels on food packaging that indicates that the candy bar you're about to eat is "ultra-processed" Maybe we can also tax "ultra-processed" food at a higher rate. I just think it is naive to believe that people will make the right decisions for themselves or their loved ones without any "incentives"
- NonContro 5y ago
  Without added sugar or artificial sweeteners, many of these ultra-processed foods are completely unpalatable. You could replace the sugar with fat, which would probably be healthier, but also reduce the shelf life due to rancidity. The solution is to tax added sugar (including for sub-ingredients) per gram, and a flat tax for any food containing artificial sweeteners. 1c per gram of sugar, or 20% for anything containing artificial sweeteners seems reasonable.
  - Gauge_Irrahphe 5y ago
    The problem is the lack of heavy metals (which are needed for glucose processing among other things) not sugar as such.
  - sjwalter 5y ago
    I don't think that solution makes any sense. To me, the solution has to be trying to get people to eat healthier things via education. I mean, the "incentive" is feeling good, looking good, being fitter and more capable. One thing I've found particularly motivating as a parent is that a good diet is a huge competitive advantage for my children. We live on a farm, so we've always got great, healthful things to eat, and since we harvest ingredients and not factory-processed stuff, they're always cooking--it's not just their health now, but their ability to be healthy adults.
    - NonContro 5y ago
      Actually, food habits in the USA are pretty consistent across educational, income, and racial lines: https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/146/9/1722/4630474 https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/146/9/1722/4630474 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5855172/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5855172/ I wish there were more giant community kitchens in the West, as are commonly seen across Asia. This is one extreme example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT-N5wl0l-s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT-N5wl0l-s And at a smaller scale in Melbourne, Australia: https://youtu.be/dG8hH8zE7ZI?t=169 https://youtu.be/dG8hH8zE7ZI?t=169
benlivengood 5y ago
Given mineral soil depletion it's probably a necessity for most people to eat fortified foods. Sugar and salt as primary flavoring is not the greatest, to be sure, but ultra-processing foods doesn't seem too bad considering that all the human body does is masticate food a bit to mix in some enzymes and dump it in a vat of acid and bacteria, pour in some more enzymes, and then stir it up for a day or so to get the nutrients out. It's not a boutique experience going on down there. The entire point is to reduce complex foods to simple component molecules that can be absorbed. EDIT: and of course there's complex interactions between some vitamins and minerals that influence absorption that calls for variety in diet throughout the day/week.
kenjackson 5y ago
> “Consumed in excess, these foods are linked to…” Won’t most things consumed in excess cause these problems? Is the issue is that it is easier to consume them in excess. One of the odd things among my son’s kids is that a lot of the kids who seemingly eat the worst seem the most fit and those who eat healthiest seem less fit (skinny unfit not obese unfit).
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  It's amazing how easy it is to exceed daily recommendations on sugar and salt. You basically have to eat only non-fruity produce and lean meat to get close to what our bodies evolved to thrive on. As to the not-yet-overweight kids, give it time. Genes are a lottery and the carbs get everyone eventually.
- pengaru 5y ago
  If you're active enough when young, you can be a trash can food-wise and still look fit. But it catches up with you, and those bad habits are tough to break, after the fountain of youth grinds to a halt.
open-source-ux 5y ago
For comparison: the consumption of ultra-processed food in selected European countries (from 2018): Top 3 European countries with the most household purchases of ultra-processed food: 1. UK 50.7% 2. Germany 46.9% 3. Ireland 45.9 Top 3 European countries with least household purchases of ultra-processed food: 1. Portugal 10.2% 2. Italy 13.4% 3. Greece 13.7% Source: 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...
- elliekelly 5y ago
  It’s interesting there seems to be a correlation between countries who purchase/consume the least “processed food” and countries who have a cultural reputation for enjoying long meals.
  - open-source-ux 5y ago
    Yes, in these countries it's common for people to cook meals from scratch without using any ultra-processed ingredients (e.g. not using a ready-made sauce). In the UK, convenience foods and ready-made ingredients (like sauces and condiments) are common and popular in supermarkets. It will be interesting to see if people's eating and cooking habits have changed during the pandemic and lockdown (i.e. more home cooking).
quattrofan 5y ago
Fat is not bad!!! Can we please stop repeating that dated nonsense. Sugar is evil incarnate however.
doit4thebitties 5y ago
I'm concerned about the hormonal effects of low-nutrition foods and plastic packaging. For example, my neighbor's daughter experienced precocious puberty passing Tanner V at 12, and looking 19. I suspect it's the diet and environment.

102 points by onychomys 5y ago

Sad news. Anecdotal: 5 years ago I went on the Dr. Fuhrman diet (no processed foods). Within 6 weeks I felt better than I had in a decade: everything was better: clearer thinking, inflammation and bodily discomfort gone, longer hikes without getting tired, and better sleep. I hate to think of the costs to society and personal costs of people not getting healthy food to eat.

onychomys 5y ago

So at first glance it seems like there's no way this is actually possible. There are 21 meals a week, plus enough snacking that we could probably just think of it as 28 meals a week. Kids just eat constantly, it's bonkers. Anyway, with 28 meals a week, you'd need about 20 of them to be ultra-processed in order to meet this. That's a lot! Except that it's actually really not. If we take my 5 year old son as a normal kid, a bowl of cereal for breakfast and then whatever random food they feed him for school lunch and we're already 2/3rds of the way to the goal. He snacks on fruit and stuff, but also on pretzel sticks and honey roasted peanuts and all sorts of other kind of junky things. I make dinner from scratch very nearly every night, and my kid still falls into this 70% bucket! And so I really don't have a good idea about how to change that. Maybe make our own bread and have them have toast for breakfast every day? That's going to get old quick.

blacksmith_tb 5y ago
Another angle is that junk tends to be more caloric, so even if kids actually did eat their fruits and veggies, even say with 21 of those meals, they'd still only make up a comparatively small portion of all the calories in their diets. But given that they're full of other nutrients (and esp. fiber) I don't think that's so bad.
- ffggvv 5y ago
  yeah a bag of cheezits is ~200 calories. An orange is ~50 calories. So if you ate one of each youd have 80% of calories from ultraprocessed food.
- taylodl 5y ago
  My wife likes to joke no one ever got fat eating carrots and celery. The calorie dense foods kids enjoy tend to have a lot of refined sugar. Heck, that goes for most adults too. I can eat a bag of carrots and a bag of potato chips and I'll have gotten more than 70% of my calories from the chips.
throwaway1777 5y ago
Breakfast is definitely a good place to start. We eat eggs for breakfast nearly every day in my home. It’s not as simple as cereal but scrambling a batch of eggs is not too bad.
- xenonite 5y ago
  Not surprisingly the taste of eggs depends on the chickens' meal. For example, the protein demand is often fulfilled by fish powder or soy flour.
causi 5y ago
Pack him a lunch instead of letting him eat cafeteria food. A ham sandwich is a lot healthier than a slice of school pizza.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
  I'd be surprised if commercially made ham didn't fall into the ultraprocessed category! Saying this as someone who's curing his first ham in the fridge rn :-)
- sjwalter 5y ago
  I run a chicken farm so I'm biased but for my family I grow out a bunch of birds to be bigger than typical (9-10lbs). Roast one of these and it sits in the fridge providing sandwich meat for a week, plus the occasional plate of hot sauce and cold meat. Super delicious and healthful.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    My parents did this for most of my childhood. They weren't farmers, so the meat came from the supermarket – but larger cuts of meat (or whole chickens) are much cheaper than buying jointed, pre-cut or cooked meat anyway.
- fancifalmanima 5y ago
  The bread (made from processed wheat, probably bleached flour, and containing bread conditioners, preservatives) would almost surely fall into the ultra processed category, unless homemade from minimally processed whole wheat flour. The ham and cheese could as well, unless they were made with fairly traditional processes (and probably more expensive than what the typical person is buying at walmart, target, etc). They'd all probably be considered processed foods, at minimum.
woodruffw 5y ago
This is perhaps a good indicator that “processed versus unprocessed” isn’t a great signal for whether a particular fooditem should be part of one’s diet. Using your cereal example: I grew up eating grape nuts[1], which are probably in the ultraprocessed category. But it’s just barley flour and I ate it like most people eat muesli (with fresh fruit) — what should that count as? [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grape-Nuts https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grape-Nuts
- fanf2 5y ago
  Grape nuts count as "processed" because of the added salt and vitamins
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    Right, which begs the question: if processing includes ostensibly beneficial (or at least neutral) processing as well, how important is the 70% in TFA? My intuition is that it’s still pretty important (since most people are probably eating Frosted Flakes, not grape nuts, for breakfast), but that we need a better way to talk about healthy eating habits and proportions than “most of our foodstuffs are processed.”
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      "Processed" and "ultra-processed" are two different things: the latter goes beyond the former. Grape Nuts might could as processed, and Frosted Flakes as ultra-processed.
sosuke 5y ago
Good healthy food costs more money. We've done a great job about putting the most amount of calories and flavor into cheaper than dirt forms. I think a breakfast of oats and lunch of a tuna sandwich would work. Most lunch meats are probably considered Ultra-Processed. I think the only ways out of this are as you said fixing everything yourself. Most things you can eat raw that isn't packaged would probably be safe. Then cooking your own meats. But pasta is considered Ultra-Processed, packaged bread is ultra-processed. I thought those were some of the most basic foods with the smallest number of ingredients. Maybe home made versions as you suggested are not considered Ultra-Processed.
- ogwh 5y ago
  They're made with ingredients that are processed. The flour that goes into the bread and pasta has been stripped of all fibre and micro nutrients, then some vitamins might be added back if you're lucky. The bread is full of refined sugar. You need to look at the ingredients recursively. If you eat wholegrain everything you're half way there. Same applies to rice etc. The reason they remove the good stuff is so it doesn't spoil, if you remove the nutrients it's less appetising to microbes and pests.
- sosuke 5y ago
  Answering my own question: Industrial breads made only from wheat flour, water, salt and yeast are processed foods, while those whose lists of ingredients also include emulsifiers or colours are ultra-processed. Plain steel-cut oats, plain corn flakes and shredded wheat are minimally processed foods, while the same foods are processed when they also contain sugar, and ultra-processed if they also contain flavours or colours. From http://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf http://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf
- ev1 5y ago
  They are small (flour, yeast, salt, etc) number of ingredients if you shop for bread at specialty, expensive, organic shops or make it yourself. At the supermarkets 99% of the US uses, even the high end bread is 15-25 ingredients at eyeball. The ingredient list for one of the most expensive packaged whole wheat bread that would show up at a regular non-Whole Foods-style place: Whole Wheat Flour , Water , Sugar , Wheat Gluten , Yeast , Wheat Bran , Salt , Soybean Oil , Raisin Juice Concentrate , Enrichment ( Calcium Sulfate , Vitamin E Acetate , Vitamin A Palmitate , Vitamin D3 ) , Calcium Propionate ( Preservative ) , Datem , Grain Vinegar , Monoglycerides , Soy Lecithin , Citric Acid , Potassium Iodate .
alex504 5y ago
Dont feed him processed food for breakfast and pack him lunch.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  This is one of those things that’s easy to say but way harder for parents to actually do. You’re suggesting someone make time to prepare not one, but two homemade meals as they’re trying to get their kid (and probably themselves) out the door in the morning.
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    Kids learn quickly which foods have the most sugar and get stuck on them. I tried to prevent ours from ever tasting junk until they had broader palettes, but the moment grandparents have the kids alone or SO has a bad day... it's over.
  - slothtrop 5y ago
    Overnight oats take seconds to prepare.
    - handrous 5y ago
      ??? How? I'm looking at a good 15 minutes, almost all hands-on time, from the moment I decide to go make overnight oats, using either of what I'm pretty sure are normal methods (crock pot, boil-briefly-and-leave-covered stovetop). That's assuming I don't discover that something I need is dirty. I'm not saying that's a ton of time, but seconds? Quick oat packets (awful stuff, full of sugar unless you get really expensive ones, cutting it 50/50 with rolled or plain quick oats helps a little and also makes up for the fact that one packet isn't, realistically, an entire serving) aren't even seconds. Talking maybe 2-3 minutes hands-on to lay out a bowl for each kid, rip and pour the packets, set the electric kettle going, then pour some on each when it boils (microwaving it with cool water is even slower once you're past a single serving—kettle saves time)
      - 5y ago
sparrc 5y ago
Does cereal count as "ultra-processed"? Things like Cheerios don't seem much more processed than bread from what I can tell. Also honey-roasted peanuts? My understanding of ultra-processed would be things more like candy, cheetos, pringles, oreos, soda, etc.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  Check the nutrition facts on honey roasted peanuts. I was shocked at how many carbs a serving includes. Now I just eat dry roasted peanuts, and not too many since they too have plenty of carbs. It's hard to find a simple rule that isn't subverted. Though simpler more primitive diets (mostly low carb vegetables and high protein foods) seem best all around. It's sad to see folks think they've leveled up enough to 'cheat' after loading up on yams ("veg!"), carrots ("veg"), and beans ("protein!").
  - asdff 5y ago
    What is wrong with carbs? If I don't have carbs while working all day I get tired. That stuff is brain fuel.
    - paulryanrogers 5y ago
      Carbs themselves are fine. It's the quantities, especially those in the form of sugars, that are excessive. All that said you can live without carbs and just digest fats instead. Hence the whole ketosis and low-sugar diets.
- deep-root 5y ago
  Check out the ingredients of Cheerios, which says a bit about the process of making them and the attempt to restore some nutrition: https://www.wdbqschools.org/Downloads/Cereal-Cheerios.pdf https://www.wdbqschools.org/Downloads/Cereal-Cheerios.pdf Probably Wonder Bread would look similar, but homemade bread quite different. All are processed foods of some level due to flour.
  - 5y ago
bell-cot 5y ago
A bread machine can make the "make our own bread...toast" less laborious. (Recipes printed in bread machines' instruction booklets tend toward the less-healthy, but with some experimenting...) Commercial breakfast cereals vary, though the least-healthy are probably the most tuned to appeal to kids. Home-cooked cereal can be far better. And easy to mix nuts, frozen berries, etc. into. If a bit of dressing up (squirt of mustard, bit of mayo, etc.) makes hard-boiled eggs acceptable to him, those can be made once a week and kept in the fridge. An old friend perfected a fairly-healthy, filling stew recipe (some meat, mostly veggies, etc.) that he could make up in large batches and keep in the fridge. As a teenager, his son consumed an enormous quantity of that over time.
taylodl 5y ago
Try to minimize the amount of refined sugar and white flour in your diet. That'll get you below the 70%. As you're probably suspecting, it isn't easy! Refined sugar is in almost everything you buy at the grocery store, save for fresh produce and meat. White flour is present in many breads - even whole wheat bread! Yes - whole wheat bread oftentimes means there's whole wheat flour used in making the bread, it doesn't mean only whole wheat flour was used. And breakfast cereal? Yeah, that's going to be hard to replace, especially for a five year old! Oatmeal is a good alternative but unless you're buying a box of old-fashioned oats and making it yourself you're likely to be buying a lot of refined sugar. Those healthy granola bars? Lots of refined sugar. Trail mix, especially the ones with the M&M's? Ungodly amounts of refined sugar. To be honest I'm kinda surprised that it's only 70% of calories coming from refined foods.
- handrous 5y ago
  > Yes - whole wheat bread oftentimes means there's whole wheat flour used in making the bread, it doesn't mean only whole wheat flour was used. Part of the reason is that it's really hard—way more work, way more time—to get a fluffy sandwich loaf out of just whole wheat flour. Or anything that's not kinda dense and focaccia-looking, really.
  - taylodl 5y ago
    You're not wrong! When I make home made bread I don't use only whole wheat flour - it's really difficult to work with and hard to get a good loaf, and I've been making bread on a regular basis for over 30 years! The 'whole wheat white' flours (fine ground 100% whole wheat flour) coming out are really good and allows for an excellent loaf.
armchairhacker 5y ago
Sometimes I eat shredded wheat and bananas, yogurt and fruit, or shredded wheat + yogurt + fruit. That takes 0 effort and can be packed for breakfast or lunch. Also carrots and hummus, dry roasted nuts, cheese and wheat thins, PB and apple slices, are all good snacks for a kid.

nate_meurer 5y ago

Pizza alone accounts for a large fraction of junk food consumption. I was shocked to learn that more than one in five kids and teens eats pizza on any given day. https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/80400530/pdf/DBrief/11_consumption_of_pizza_0710.pdf https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/80400530/pdf/DBrief/11... Overall, 13% of the U.S. population aged 2 years and over, consumed pizza on any given day. The percentage consuming pizza ranged from approximately 22% among older children (6-11 years) and adolescents (12-19 years) to less than 6% among older adults, 60 years and over

baal80spam 5y ago
Curious - what makes pizza a junk food?
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > what makes pizza a junk food? Most pizza in America has sugar in the sauce and dough. The sauce, moreover, tends to be fatty. And the toppings are processed meats, et cetera. If the pizza is prepared in anything but a pizza oven, it's likely also pan fried.
  - tootie 5y ago
    Fruit has a lot of sugar too.
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > Fruit has a lot of sugar too It does. We are not fruit bats. Eating a diet of just fruit is not healthy. But the fructose in fruits is digested and absorbed differently from the free sugar in processed foods.
      - olau 5y ago
        I once looked up what big apes are eating and found out that they eat very little meat and lots of fruit. Like half of the diet could be figs.

TillE 5y ago

I've recently been cutting back on salt, and it's crazy how difficult that is. Even something seemingly benign like a bag of mixed frozen vegetables has so much salt added, a few hundred grams (a reasonable portion) would be almost my entire daily sodium intake. And for all that, it doesn't even taste well seasoned. Gotta be careful and stick with the frozen vegetables which have nothing added.

sumthinprofound 5y ago
I gave up sugar in my coffee ~4 teasoons a day without any problems, but salt I am finding is more difficult to avoid.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
  How much salt do you put in your coffee?
  - OldTimeCoffee 5y ago
    Probably a bit to counteract the bitterness they were trying to avoid with the sugar
axaxs 5y ago
I've definitely noticed this. As a kid we ate mostly natural food, as my parents had a decent sized farm. We always had salt on the table, and went through a lot of it. As an adult without a farm, I cannot remember the last time I even touched the salt shaker. I've actually made spaghetti once that was near inedible because the sodium in the sauce, cheeses, and meat made it incredibly salty tasting.
cameronh90 5y ago
"Even something seemingly benign like a bag of mixed frozen vegetables has so much salt added" Have literally never experienced this except if it's something that's meant to be ready to eat or is a base mix with its own seasoning. Is it a US thing?

carabiner 5y ago

Good: https://goactualize.com/blogs/news/the-cure-for-obesity-is-processed-food-when-the-poison-is-the-antidote-part-1 https://goactualize.com/blogs/news/the-cure-for-obesity-is-p...

dolni 5y ago

The complete lack of rigor and the use of shock-headlines around "ultra-processed" foods drives me nuts. It conveys very little useful information. Pharmaceuticals are ultra-processed and completely unnatural, yet many of them are life-saving. Clearly then, mere act of processing something doesn't make the thing bad for you. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody that constantly horking down Mountain Dew, Little Debbie snack cakes, and Doritos isn't good for you. We all know this, we don't need a headline for it. Give me some useful information. What are reasonable thresholds for these junk foods? How about for specific ingredients? Ranting and raving out of the way, do yourself a favor and skip to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization classification document [1] linked in the article. It actually answers some of the questions I posed. [1]: http://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf http://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf

dataflow 5y ago
> Pharmaceuticals are ultra-processed and completely unnatural, yet many of them are life-saving. Clearly then, mere act of processing something doesn't make the thing bad for you. I have to admit though, I'm not aware of any food that would be considered "ultra-processed" yet known to be good for people.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > I'm not aware of any food that would be considered "ultra-processed" yet known to be good for people What does "ultra processed" mean? Cheese, bread, olive oil and most vegetables require processing to be made or nutritionally useful. Freeze-dried vegetables are quite processed and quite good for you.
  - dataflow 5y ago
    > What does "ultra processed" mean? Cheese, bread, olive oil and most vegetables require processing to be made or nutritionally useful. I don't have a scientific definition for you. Just use your common sense to figure out what average people would intuitively call ultra-processed, whatever it means to them. I'm pretty darn sure you would not arrive at the conclusion that ordinary people consider bread and most vegetables "ultra-processed foods".

laydn 5y ago

Maybe we can put distinctive, unmistakeable labels on food packaging that indicates that the candy bar you're about to eat is "ultra-processed" Maybe we can also tax "ultra-processed" food at a higher rate. I just think it is naive to believe that people will make the right decisions for themselves or their loved ones without any "incentives"

NonContro 5y ago
Without added sugar or artificial sweeteners, many of these ultra-processed foods are completely unpalatable. You could replace the sugar with fat, which would probably be healthier, but also reduce the shelf life due to rancidity. The solution is to tax added sugar (including for sub-ingredients) per gram, and a flat tax for any food containing artificial sweeteners. 1c per gram of sugar, or 20% for anything containing artificial sweeteners seems reasonable.
- Gauge_Irrahphe 5y ago
  The problem is the lack of heavy metals (which are needed for glucose processing among other things) not sugar as such.
- sjwalter 5y ago
  I don't think that solution makes any sense. To me, the solution has to be trying to get people to eat healthier things via education. I mean, the "incentive" is feeling good, looking good, being fitter and more capable. One thing I've found particularly motivating as a parent is that a good diet is a huge competitive advantage for my children. We live on a farm, so we've always got great, healthful things to eat, and since we harvest ingredients and not factory-processed stuff, they're always cooking--it's not just their health now, but their ability to be healthy adults.
  - NonContro 5y ago
    Actually, food habits in the USA are pretty consistent across educational, income, and racial lines: https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/146/9/1722/4630474 https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/146/9/1722/4630474 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5855172/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5855172/ I wish there were more giant community kitchens in the West, as are commonly seen across Asia. This is one extreme example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT-N5wl0l-s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT-N5wl0l-s And at a smaller scale in Melbourne, Australia: https://youtu.be/dG8hH8zE7ZI?t=169 https://youtu.be/dG8hH8zE7ZI?t=169

benlivengood 5y ago

Given mineral soil depletion it's probably a necessity for most people to eat fortified foods. Sugar and salt as primary flavoring is not the greatest, to be sure, but ultra-processing foods doesn't seem too bad considering that all the human body does is masticate food a bit to mix in some enzymes and dump it in a vat of acid and bacteria, pour in some more enzymes, and then stir it up for a day or so to get the nutrients out. It's not a boutique experience going on down there. The entire point is to reduce complex foods to simple component molecules that can be absorbed. EDIT: and of course there's complex interactions between some vitamins and minerals that influence absorption that calls for variety in diet throughout the day/week.

kenjackson 5y ago

> “Consumed in excess, these foods are linked to…” Won’t most things consumed in excess cause these problems? Is the issue is that it is easier to consume them in excess. One of the odd things among my son’s kids is that a lot of the kids who seemingly eat the worst seem the most fit and those who eat healthiest seem less fit (skinny unfit not obese unfit).

paulryanrogers 5y ago
It's amazing how easy it is to exceed daily recommendations on sugar and salt. You basically have to eat only non-fruity produce and lean meat to get close to what our bodies evolved to thrive on. As to the not-yet-overweight kids, give it time. Genes are a lottery and the carbs get everyone eventually.
pengaru 5y ago
If you're active enough when young, you can be a trash can food-wise and still look fit. But it catches up with you, and those bad habits are tough to break, after the fountain of youth grinds to a halt.

open-source-ux 5y ago

For comparison: the consumption of ultra-processed food in selected European countries (from 2018): Top 3 European countries with the most household purchases of ultra-processed food: 1. UK 50.7% 2. Germany 46.9% 3. Ireland 45.9 Top 3 European countries with least household purchases of ultra-processed food: 1. Portugal 10.2% 2. Italy 13.4% 3. Greece 13.7% Source: 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...

elliekelly 5y ago
It’s interesting there seems to be a correlation between countries who purchase/consume the least “processed food” and countries who have a cultural reputation for enjoying long meals.
- open-source-ux 5y ago
  Yes, in these countries it's common for people to cook meals from scratch without using any ultra-processed ingredients (e.g. not using a ready-made sauce). In the UK, convenience foods and ready-made ingredients (like sauces and condiments) are common and popular in supermarkets. It will be interesting to see if people's eating and cooking habits have changed during the pandemic and lockdown (i.e. more home cooking).

quattrofan 5y ago

Fat is not bad!!! Can we please stop repeating that dated nonsense. Sugar is evil incarnate however.

doit4thebitties 5y ago

I'm concerned about the hormonal effects of low-nutrition foods and plastic packaging. For example, my neighbor's daughter experienced precocious puberty passing Tanner V at 12, and looking 19. I suspect it's the diet and environment.