13 ms·

>Even packaged breads, including those high in nutritious whole grains, qualify as ultra-processed in many cases because of the additives and preservatives they

>Even packaged breads, including those high in nutritious whole grains, qualify as ultra-processed in many cases because of the additives and preservatives they contain. However much I'd like to alter my diet to be more healthy, including flavored nuts or bread as ultraprocessed means I have nearly zero chance avoiding a sizable portion of what academic scientists label as ultraprocessed. These studies and press releases seem counterproductive. If sliced bread or fancy nuts is in the same category as aerosol cheese or high calorie soda, a lot of people are going to struggle to understand what isn't ultraprocessed and give up trying to select better items at the grocery store.

hombre_fatal 4y ago
Then again, the advice really just cashes out into buying whole foods like produce, beans, frozen bags of veggies, etc. Better food items will get caught in the crossfire of someone naively avoiding the worse "processed foods", but maybe that's still a net win. Even your fancy nuts example, if one of the main problems with ultra-processed foods is that they are hyperpalatable, then I see good reason to avoid fancy nuts (nuts with an oil + salt coating) and eating raw nuts instead. It's easy enough to overeat raw nuts!
- yurishimo 4y ago
  If you like eating nuts, I suggest buying them with the shells. Pecans, pistachios, walnuts, heck even peanuts. You can still roast them so they taste better, but the shell slows you down a lot. Get a small bowl and when the bowl is full of shells, you stop eating them.
earlyam 4y ago
Sounds like you'd be better off finding a local bakery that doesn't sell bread which is shelf stable for a month or more.
forgetfulness 4y ago
I'm not sure what the situation in many parts of the US is, but is not freshly baked bread, the kind with unsurprising ingredients and that goes stale when you'd expect it, not an option? The stuff made to sit on the supermarket's shelf for long times has such an odd consistency and flavor, very spongy and very tangy and sweet, you can't spread anything on it without toasting it first. I wouldn't take it as the standard for bread.
- sometimeshuman 4y ago
  "that goes stale when you'd expect it". Super dumb question, but would fresh baked bread placed in the freezer last a few weeks ? I don't buy fresh baked out of concern most of it will get thrown away.
  - WaitWaitWha 4y ago
    Fresh (& commercial ultra-processed) baked bread can be frozen. You will lose the crunch of the crust, but freezing will prolong the shelf life. Additionally, you can buy sourdough, which tend to have longer shelf life then yeast breads.
  - hallidave 4y ago
    I only eat homemade bread. I slice unused bread and put in the freezer after a day or two. Thaw it out with a toaster. It will easily keep a few weeks.
  - analog31 4y ago
    Yes. My family bakes our own bread, and we freeze it all the time. Also, rolls seem to take less skill and attention than loaves, and are super convenient to freeze.
- vlod 4y ago
  Agreed. I just can't eat the bread in stores (for me to too sweet) and I'm a big bread person. It's remarkable easy to bake your own bread (as many tried in during the pandemic). Yeah, it takes time, but it's a good way to reduce your carbs intake. i.e. if you don't bake it, you can't eat it.
  - GloriousKoji 4y ago
    Counterpoint to the carb reduction is fresh baked bread is so delicious and scaling bread recipes is easy so you end up eating twice as much bread compared to store bought.
    - 4y ago
anonymouskimmer 4y ago
Then you'd want to buy the already baked bread that's in the freezer section. Other than that I agree with your critique. It's as unhelpful as a typical California proposition 65 warning.
beambot 4y ago
Just an aside: countertop bread machines are amazing these days. You can control the ingredients (i.e. eliminate preservatives) and have wildly inexpensive, fresh bread since you can buy breadflour in bulk (e.g. 50-lb bags).
- 7speter 4y ago
  The researchers would probably say breadflour is ultraprocessed as well.
- brnt 4y ago
  Isn't flour highly processed?
  - loeg 4y ago
    No one knows! "Processed" doesn't have any objective definition.
  - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
    what do you mean by highly processed flour? whole wheat is not treated or anything, just dehusked if i remember and then ground down. is there something else they do to whole wheat flour these days?
    - pixl97 4y ago
      'Then ground down' is a much bigger statement then you may think. If we look at the particle size of flour via historic grinding processes what did it look like? I'm sure they were far less uniform and in general larger than what we have now, which should lead to differences in the glycemic index. CICO would have you believe there is no difference in 100 calories of coke and 100 calories of raw spinach, but the coke is going to have nearly instant uptake and the spinach will take hours to digest.
    - lq9AJ8yrfs 4y ago
      In the US it's allowed [1] to add bromate to the flour, which helps with the texture apparently. Brominated flour probably counts as highly processed. 1. https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/pro/reference/bromate https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/pro/reference/bromate
KingLancelot 4y ago
[dead]
vlod 4y ago
> I have nearly zero chance avoiding a sizable portion of what academic scientists label as ultraprocessed. You can, you've just prioritized taste/convenience over your health. Going into a supermarket and looking at what people put into their carts pretty much confirms this. > a lot of people are going to struggle to understand what isn't ultraprocessed Maybe read the labels? Also buying the cheapest thing there (w/o reading the labels) is also not a good idea. If you're buying nuts and it has nut-x, plus a whole bunch of salt, a whole bunch of sugar, plus a whole bunch of chemicals that one glosses over, then there's a big chance that it's ultra-processed and/or something you shouldn't eat/buy. Buying nuts in bulk is probably the best. Adding you're own spices/favors will make it super apparent on what you're consuming. Food companies are trying to maximize profits, shelf life by adding crap to make the cheapest product. It's been obvious for a very long time.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  I hate the COVID caused the removal of all bulk items in my area. The bulk has been replaced with prepackaged at a significant mark up.
DeWilde 4y ago
Making your own bread will have it qualify as non-ultra-processed. Now that might seem extreme for most folks or too cumbersome but today to avoid ultra-processed food or generally unhealthy food is pretty hard. And most people won't put in the effort no matter how well labeled it is. To me it is more counterproductive not to label it as such, regardless that it may be highly nutritional, due to the fact that people like me who are not able to eat processed food and information like this is a literal life saver.
voytec 4y ago
> However much I'd like to alter my diet to be more healthy, including flavored nuts or bread as ultraprocessed means I have nearly zero chance avoiding a sizable portion of what academic scientists label as ultraprocessed. How so? I eat organic veggies, organic meat, nothing with added sugars, from time to time I drink a glass of organic wine. It's absolutely not difficult to avoid anything "ultra-processed" (I dislike this term which is ehnancing something not strictly defined) or even store-bought "processed". In fact, the only, in any way, "processed" food I eat are things I make myself: veggies baked with turkey, chicken and beef, blended, portioned and frozen. No preservatives other than fat and reasonably small amounts of salt (and with sodium, I also ingest potassium). Eating healthy is fairly easy (although more expensive) and avoiding shitty food is really not hard to achieve.
- alanbernstein 4y ago
  That's commendable. It's "simple" as in not complicated and easy to understand. It's "difficult" as in it requires an incredible amount of discipline, and potentially time, compared to the alternative.
  - crazygringo 4y ago
    And as parent pointed out, more expensive. You can easily double or triple your food costs if you're getting most of your calories from organic veggies and non-grain-fed animals.
    - Tobias42 4y ago
      You don‘t have to do that. You can buy cheap meat and cheap vegetables. That way you will still eat much healthier than eating ultra-processed stuff, and probably even save money.
  - voytec 4y ago
    > It's "difficult" as in it requires an incredible amount of discipline Maybe at the beginning of this lifestyle it was somewhat difficult and there was some fight inside me (hard not to buy sweets at the store counter etc) but it fairly quickly turned into subconscious, almost mechanical way of doing things. It's similar to addiction detox: when I ditched smoking (after 20+ years), it was hard at the beginning, there was this feeling of lacking something "important" but it diminished over time. There's no way I'd even consider smoking a cigarette or eating sugary and fatty sweets after few years. I stopped being compatible with those things.
loeg 4y ago
I think the major problem is that no one can define what "processed" means in any consistent or objective sense. It's just a retcon'd category of things people already think of as unhealthy.
- dangwhy 4y ago
  > no one can define what "processed" means this is 'ultra processed' food that is defined by NOVA classification system.
  - sqeaky 4y ago
    Links to that? I am entirely unfamiliar and could easily find the wrong item.
    - loeg 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-processed_food#NOVA_food_classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-processed_food#NOVA_food... https://educhange.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/NOVA-Classification-Reference-Sheet.pdf https://educhange.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/NOVA-Classi... It's a classification system promoted by a single research group in Brazil (Monteiro et al).
  - loeg 4y ago
    "NOVA classification system" by Monteiro et al's description of ultra-processed food is more or less exactly what I've described: > A singular feature of NOVA is its identification of ultra-processed food and drink products. These are not modified foods, but formulations mostly of cheap industrial sources of dietary energy and nutrients plus additives, using a series of processes (hence ‘ultra-processed’). All together, they are energy-dense, high in unhealthy types of fat, refined starches, free sugars and salt, and poor sources of protein, dietary fibre and micronutrients. Ultra-processed products are made to be hyper-palatable and attractive, with long shelf-life, and able to be consumed anywhere, any time. Previously we would just call this "junk food" rather than make some insinuation about "processing," which is still undefined and without meaning.
outworlder 4y ago
> These studies and press releases seem counterproductive. If sliced bread or fancy nuts is in the same category as aerosol cheese or high calorie soda, a lot of people are going to struggle to understand what isn't ultraprocessed and give up trying to select better items at the grocery store. Well, that's because they are. The question is why they are unhealthy. Take an Apple. You eat it, it is healthy. Slice it. You eat the slices, it's not making much of a difference. You are still eating whole chunks. Make juice out of it. NOW it is no longer healthy. Not only because you have shredded fibers (so the fructose will absorb faster) but you are probably going to drink many more apples than you otherwise would. And your gut bacteria will be unhealthy. You are probably still fine if you drink a small amount. Add sugar to it - now it's extremely unhealthy and it's basically a coke but with more nutrients and it's not healthy in any amount. Or take rice. Cook the rice - fine. Polish the rice before cooking so you have white rice: no longer fine. Food that's unprocessed, there's very little restrictions. You are going to get full eating them anyway, so it's fine. As you increase the amount of processing, you should eat less and less of them. > high calorie soda Note that calories are only relevant to laboratories. Living organisms work very differently. Calories are not fungible. An almond has a similar calorie content as a soda can, but it doesn't matter: we do not absorb all the calories in an almond. It's a similar thing when you eat an avocado: it's very calorie-dense, but a lot of it is in fats that will be absorbed very slowly. Even simple sugars work very differently from one another. Our cells can readily use glucose(that will require insulin). Our cells, with very few exceptions, cannot use fructose. It goes straight to your liver to be processed by fructokinase. Most of it will actually become triglycerides and you will only burn that when you are burning fat. That process also takes a lot of energy(basically you get into debt to be repaid later). There's also a limited amount your liver can process and that's why people are getting fatty livers even without drinking - from the point of view of your liver, you might as well be drinking.
- jrsj 4y ago
  Is faster absorption really that big of a deal? Highly developed countries like Japan and South Korea that eat a lot of white rice seem considerably healthier than the U.S. as an example. I don’t really know much about this topic but I always assumed additives were a much greater problem than white rice, white bread, etc.
0x262d 4y ago
it seems like a lot of your problem here is being caught off guard that pre-sliced bread, which has been modified so that it does not go stale as it otherwise would, is a processed food. try buying bread from a bakery that goes stale. after recalibrating that expectation maybe this will make more sense overall?
idopmstuff 4y ago
I think you just need to avoid taking an all-or-nothing attitude here. Knowing that ultra-processed foods are bad is valuable, even if you can't totally eliminate them from your diet. I do agree it's an overbroad category with stuff that ranges from abysmally terrible to stuff that's just kinda bad, but it has the upside of relatively low complexity (if you had ten different categories of processed food, most people would probably just give up on understanding the concept in general). I eat mostly fish/veggies/fruit/rice, but sometimes I have pasta (and worse, sometimes I have cookies). In general, I've worked to shift my diet to unprocessed (or processed but not ultra) foods over time. Being cognizant of it is helpful at restaurants, too - I love all kinds of food, so more often than not, going with the least processed option is a helpful decider among menu items.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  Careful of your rice intake. Lots of rice has arsenic, cadmium, and lead. It is part of growth and nothing to do with processing or packaging. There are even warnings from the FDA not to feed babies baby food that contains rice products.
  - olddustytrail 4y ago
    This is scaremongering nonsense. Literally 30 seconds of Googling would have told you that. Make more effort.
    - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      It is not. Try googling this: https://www.google.com/search?q=rice%20heavy%20metals https://www.google.com/search?q=rice%20heavy%20metals https://www.google.com/search?q=rice+arsenic+lead+cadmium+fda https://www.google.com/search?q=rice+arsenic+lead+cadmium+fd... https://www.google.com/search?q=rice+arsenic+lead+cadmium+fda+baby+warning https://www.google.com/search?q=rice+arsenic+lead+cadmium+fd...
beeforpork 4y ago
> ... I have nearly zero chance avoiding a sizable portion of what academic scientists label as ultraprocessed. ... Can you explain a bit why? Isn't what you eat your choice? What's the problem, exactly, I really don't understand why you have nearly zero chance.
smallerfish 4y ago
You're going to struggle to give up anything your gut bacteria is tuned to being normal, so there is an effort associated with changing your diet - but once you have been on a new diet for a few weeks, assuming it is balanced enough to be sustainable, it becomes easy. You also have to want to do it; it's far easier to eat whatever is convenient than to put effort into finding ingredients and cooking them. The problem is that what is convenient is _not_ good for you long term, at least in the US (and at least several other western countries). A good diet is fundamental to good health (both physical and mental) - you'd think this would be axiomatic, but there are plenty of people who don't care enough for whatever reason.
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
Fresh fruit, vegetables, dried whole grain and beans, fresh meat and fish, fresh seashells, whole nuts, water. It's not that it's hard to understand, it's just hard to stick to it.
emodendroket 4y ago
It is interesting that "ultraprocessed" foods have all these effects but I think it seems necessary to try and tease out what about them is causing the effect because it seems like we're including wildly disparate foods, some of them not so different from something someone could plausibly make at home.
adrianN 4y ago
You could move to a country were bread has no additives or preservatives.

hombre_fatal 4y ago

Then again, the advice really just cashes out into buying whole foods like produce, beans, frozen bags of veggies, etc. Better food items will get caught in the crossfire of someone naively avoiding the worse "processed foods", but maybe that's still a net win. Even your fancy nuts example, if one of the main problems with ultra-processed foods is that they are hyperpalatable, then I see good reason to avoid fancy nuts (nuts with an oil + salt coating) and eating raw nuts instead. It's easy enough to overeat raw nuts!

yurishimo 4y ago
If you like eating nuts, I suggest buying them with the shells. Pecans, pistachios, walnuts, heck even peanuts. You can still roast them so they taste better, but the shell slows you down a lot. Get a small bowl and when the bowl is full of shells, you stop eating them.

earlyam 4y ago

Sounds like you'd be better off finding a local bakery that doesn't sell bread which is shelf stable for a month or more.

forgetfulness 4y ago

I'm not sure what the situation in many parts of the US is, but is not freshly baked bread, the kind with unsurprising ingredients and that goes stale when you'd expect it, not an option? The stuff made to sit on the supermarket's shelf for long times has such an odd consistency and flavor, very spongy and very tangy and sweet, you can't spread anything on it without toasting it first. I wouldn't take it as the standard for bread.

sometimeshuman 4y ago
"that goes stale when you'd expect it". Super dumb question, but would fresh baked bread placed in the freezer last a few weeks ? I don't buy fresh baked out of concern most of it will get thrown away.
- WaitWaitWha 4y ago
  Fresh (& commercial ultra-processed) baked bread can be frozen. You will lose the crunch of the crust, but freezing will prolong the shelf life. Additionally, you can buy sourdough, which tend to have longer shelf life then yeast breads.
- hallidave 4y ago
  I only eat homemade bread. I slice unused bread and put in the freezer after a day or two. Thaw it out with a toaster. It will easily keep a few weeks.
- analog31 4y ago
  Yes. My family bakes our own bread, and we freeze it all the time. Also, rolls seem to take less skill and attention than loaves, and are super convenient to freeze.
vlod 4y ago
Agreed. I just can't eat the bread in stores (for me to too sweet) and I'm a big bread person. It's remarkable easy to bake your own bread (as many tried in during the pandemic). Yeah, it takes time, but it's a good way to reduce your carbs intake. i.e. if you don't bake it, you can't eat it.
- GloriousKoji 4y ago
  Counterpoint to the carb reduction is fresh baked bread is so delicious and scaling bread recipes is easy so you end up eating twice as much bread compared to store bought.
  - 4y ago

anonymouskimmer 4y ago

Then you'd want to buy the already baked bread that's in the freezer section. Other than that I agree with your critique. It's as unhelpful as a typical California proposition 65 warning.

beambot 4y ago

Just an aside: countertop bread machines are amazing these days. You can control the ingredients (i.e. eliminate preservatives) and have wildly inexpensive, fresh bread since you can buy breadflour in bulk (e.g. 50-lb bags).

7speter 4y ago
The researchers would probably say breadflour is ultraprocessed as well.
brnt 4y ago
Isn't flour highly processed?
- loeg 4y ago
  No one knows! "Processed" doesn't have any objective definition.
- 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
  what do you mean by highly processed flour? whole wheat is not treated or anything, just dehusked if i remember and then ground down. is there something else they do to whole wheat flour these days?
  - pixl97 4y ago
    'Then ground down' is a much bigger statement then you may think. If we look at the particle size of flour via historic grinding processes what did it look like? I'm sure they were far less uniform and in general larger than what we have now, which should lead to differences in the glycemic index. CICO would have you believe there is no difference in 100 calories of coke and 100 calories of raw spinach, but the coke is going to have nearly instant uptake and the spinach will take hours to digest.
  - lq9AJ8yrfs 4y ago
    In the US it's allowed [1] to add bromate to the flour, which helps with the texture apparently. Brominated flour probably counts as highly processed. 1. https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/pro/reference/bromate https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/pro/reference/bromate

KingLancelot 4y ago

[dead]

vlod 4y ago

> I have nearly zero chance avoiding a sizable portion of what academic scientists label as ultraprocessed. You can, you've just prioritized taste/convenience over your health. Going into a supermarket and looking at what people put into their carts pretty much confirms this. > a lot of people are going to struggle to understand what isn't ultraprocessed Maybe read the labels? Also buying the cheapest thing there (w/o reading the labels) is also not a good idea. If you're buying nuts and it has nut-x, plus a whole bunch of salt, a whole bunch of sugar, plus a whole bunch of chemicals that one glosses over, then there's a big chance that it's ultra-processed and/or something you shouldn't eat/buy. Buying nuts in bulk is probably the best. Adding you're own spices/favors will make it super apparent on what you're consuming. Food companies are trying to maximize profits, shelf life by adding crap to make the cheapest product. It's been obvious for a very long time.

ROTMetro 4y ago
I hate the COVID caused the removal of all bulk items in my area. The bulk has been replaced with prepackaged at a significant mark up.

DeWilde 4y ago

Making your own bread will have it qualify as non-ultra-processed. Now that might seem extreme for most folks or too cumbersome but today to avoid ultra-processed food or generally unhealthy food is pretty hard. And most people won't put in the effort no matter how well labeled it is. To me it is more counterproductive not to label it as such, regardless that it may be highly nutritional, due to the fact that people like me who are not able to eat processed food and information like this is a literal life saver.

voytec 4y ago

> However much I'd like to alter my diet to be more healthy, including flavored nuts or bread as ultraprocessed means I have nearly zero chance avoiding a sizable portion of what academic scientists label as ultraprocessed. How so? I eat organic veggies, organic meat, nothing with added sugars, from time to time I drink a glass of organic wine. It's absolutely not difficult to avoid anything "ultra-processed" (I dislike this term which is ehnancing something not strictly defined) or even store-bought "processed". In fact, the only, in any way, "processed" food I eat are things I make myself: veggies baked with turkey, chicken and beef, blended, portioned and frozen. No preservatives other than fat and reasonably small amounts of salt (and with sodium, I also ingest potassium). Eating healthy is fairly easy (although more expensive) and avoiding shitty food is really not hard to achieve.

alanbernstein 4y ago
That's commendable. It's "simple" as in not complicated and easy to understand. It's "difficult" as in it requires an incredible amount of discipline, and potentially time, compared to the alternative.
- crazygringo 4y ago
  And as parent pointed out, more expensive. You can easily double or triple your food costs if you're getting most of your calories from organic veggies and non-grain-fed animals.
  - Tobias42 4y ago
    You don‘t have to do that. You can buy cheap meat and cheap vegetables. That way you will still eat much healthier than eating ultra-processed stuff, and probably even save money.
- voytec 4y ago
  > It's "difficult" as in it requires an incredible amount of discipline Maybe at the beginning of this lifestyle it was somewhat difficult and there was some fight inside me (hard not to buy sweets at the store counter etc) but it fairly quickly turned into subconscious, almost mechanical way of doing things. It's similar to addiction detox: when I ditched smoking (after 20+ years), it was hard at the beginning, there was this feeling of lacking something "important" but it diminished over time. There's no way I'd even consider smoking a cigarette or eating sugary and fatty sweets after few years. I stopped being compatible with those things.

loeg 4y ago

I think the major problem is that no one can define what "processed" means in any consistent or objective sense. It's just a retcon'd category of things people already think of as unhealthy.

dangwhy 4y ago
> no one can define what "processed" means this is 'ultra processed' food that is defined by NOVA classification system.
- sqeaky 4y ago
  Links to that? I am entirely unfamiliar and could easily find the wrong item.
  - loeg 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-processed_food#NOVA_food_classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-processed_food#NOVA_food... https://educhange.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/NOVA-Classification-Reference-Sheet.pdf https://educhange.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/NOVA-Classi... It's a classification system promoted by a single research group in Brazil (Monteiro et al).
- loeg 4y ago
  "NOVA classification system" by Monteiro et al's description of ultra-processed food is more or less exactly what I've described: > A singular feature of NOVA is its identification of ultra-processed food and drink products. These are not modified foods, but formulations mostly of cheap industrial sources of dietary energy and nutrients plus additives, using a series of processes (hence ‘ultra-processed’). All together, they are energy-dense, high in unhealthy types of fat, refined starches, free sugars and salt, and poor sources of protein, dietary fibre and micronutrients. Ultra-processed products are made to be hyper-palatable and attractive, with long shelf-life, and able to be consumed anywhere, any time. Previously we would just call this "junk food" rather than make some insinuation about "processing," which is still undefined and without meaning.

outworlder 4y ago

> These studies and press releases seem counterproductive. If sliced bread or fancy nuts is in the same category as aerosol cheese or high calorie soda, a lot of people are going to struggle to understand what isn't ultraprocessed and give up trying to select better items at the grocery store. Well, that's because they are. The question is why they are unhealthy. Take an Apple. You eat it, it is healthy. Slice it. You eat the slices, it's not making much of a difference. You are still eating whole chunks. Make juice out of it. NOW it is no longer healthy. Not only because you have shredded fibers (so the fructose will absorb faster) but you are probably going to drink many more apples than you otherwise would. And your gut bacteria will be unhealthy. You are probably still fine if you drink a small amount. Add sugar to it - now it's extremely unhealthy and it's basically a coke but with more nutrients and it's not healthy in any amount. Or take rice. Cook the rice - fine. Polish the rice before cooking so you have white rice: no longer fine. Food that's unprocessed, there's very little restrictions. You are going to get full eating them anyway, so it's fine. As you increase the amount of processing, you should eat less and less of them. > high calorie soda Note that calories are only relevant to laboratories. Living organisms work very differently. Calories are not fungible. An almond has a similar calorie content as a soda can, but it doesn't matter: we do not absorb all the calories in an almond. It's a similar thing when you eat an avocado: it's very calorie-dense, but a lot of it is in fats that will be absorbed very slowly. Even simple sugars work very differently from one another. Our cells can readily use glucose(that will require insulin). Our cells, with very few exceptions, cannot use fructose. It goes straight to your liver to be processed by fructokinase. Most of it will actually become triglycerides and you will only burn that when you are burning fat. That process also takes a lot of energy(basically you get into debt to be repaid later). There's also a limited amount your liver can process and that's why people are getting fatty livers even without drinking - from the point of view of your liver, you might as well be drinking.

jrsj 4y ago
Is faster absorption really that big of a deal? Highly developed countries like Japan and South Korea that eat a lot of white rice seem considerably healthier than the U.S. as an example. I don’t really know much about this topic but I always assumed additives were a much greater problem than white rice, white bread, etc.

0x262d 4y ago

it seems like a lot of your problem here is being caught off guard that pre-sliced bread, which has been modified so that it does not go stale as it otherwise would, is a processed food. try buying bread from a bakery that goes stale. after recalibrating that expectation maybe this will make more sense overall?

idopmstuff 4y ago

I think you just need to avoid taking an all-or-nothing attitude here. Knowing that ultra-processed foods are bad is valuable, even if you can't totally eliminate them from your diet. I do agree it's an overbroad category with stuff that ranges from abysmally terrible to stuff that's just kinda bad, but it has the upside of relatively low complexity (if you had ten different categories of processed food, most people would probably just give up on understanding the concept in general). I eat mostly fish/veggies/fruit/rice, but sometimes I have pasta (and worse, sometimes I have cookies). In general, I've worked to shift my diet to unprocessed (or processed but not ultra) foods over time. Being cognizant of it is helpful at restaurants, too - I love all kinds of food, so more often than not, going with the least processed option is a helpful decider among menu items.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
Careful of your rice intake. Lots of rice has arsenic, cadmium, and lead. It is part of growth and nothing to do with processing or packaging. There are even warnings from the FDA not to feed babies baby food that contains rice products.
- olddustytrail 4y ago
  This is scaremongering nonsense. Literally 30 seconds of Googling would have told you that. Make more effort.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    It is not. Try googling this: https://www.google.com/search?q=rice%20heavy%20metals https://www.google.com/search?q=rice%20heavy%20metals https://www.google.com/search?q=rice+arsenic+lead+cadmium+fda https://www.google.com/search?q=rice+arsenic+lead+cadmium+fd... https://www.google.com/search?q=rice+arsenic+lead+cadmium+fda+baby+warning https://www.google.com/search?q=rice+arsenic+lead+cadmium+fd...

beeforpork 4y ago

> ... I have nearly zero chance avoiding a sizable portion of what academic scientists label as ultraprocessed. ... Can you explain a bit why? Isn't what you eat your choice? What's the problem, exactly, I really don't understand why you have nearly zero chance.

smallerfish 4y ago

You're going to struggle to give up anything your gut bacteria is tuned to being normal, so there is an effort associated with changing your diet - but once you have been on a new diet for a few weeks, assuming it is balanced enough to be sustainable, it becomes easy. You also have to want to do it; it's far easier to eat whatever is convenient than to put effort into finding ingredients and cooking them. The problem is that what is convenient is _not_ good for you long term, at least in the US (and at least several other western countries). A good diet is fundamental to good health (both physical and mental) - you'd think this would be axiomatic, but there are plenty of people who don't care enough for whatever reason.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

Fresh fruit, vegetables, dried whole grain and beans, fresh meat and fish, fresh seashells, whole nuts, water. It's not that it's hard to understand, it's just hard to stick to it.

emodendroket 4y ago

It is interesting that "ultraprocessed" foods have all these effects but I think it seems necessary to try and tease out what about them is causing the effect because it seems like we're including wildly disparate foods, some of them not so different from something someone could plausibly make at home.

adrianN 4y ago

You could move to a country were bread has no additives or preservatives.