4 ms·

What I absolutely don't get is: Processed food is mostly junk food. How does this approach account for that? They don't control for junk food (at least not men

What I absolutely don't get is: Processed food is mostly junk food. How does this approach account for that? They don't control for junk food (at least not mentioned in the abstract). Noone would argue that junk food is bad for you and if 90% of UPF is junk food then please spare me the article. For a good study shouldn't you have an index of "hypothetical healthiness" and have two groups (Proccessed and non-processed) that are the same in "hypothetical healthiness" and see the results? This shows that junk food == bad and not processed == bad imo.

zaptheimpaler 3y ago
The specific factors that cause ultra processed food to be bad are already understood and no one is attempting to claim that there is something inherently wrong with them. The point of the classification is to give people a simple rule of thumb on what to eat. It’s much easier to understand “avoid processed foods” than the hundred factors that go into a good diet. In other words processed food is a classification system the same way junk food is, but more rigorously defined.
- delichon 3y ago
  A diet that restricts "processed" rather than "ultra processed" food is quite limited, since that includes a large majority of items in the grocery store. IMHO there are many healthy foods in this category, e.g. lentils for vegetarians or ground beef for carnivores. But there are few healthy ultra processed foods, if any.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    Yesterday saw video about cheese... And I started to wonder is all cheese "processed" food... I mean you do stuff to milk... And then on other hand, is milk as in semi-skimmed or skimmed also processed? UHT must certainly be... So where is the line truly?
    - thisislife2 3y ago
      Sometimes, yes, it is. Real cheese is in a way a creation of a new food item as one raw ingredient (milk) is used by microorganisms to create another food product. Skimmed milk though can be considered a processed food item as it is a "waste" by-product of extracting cream from it. Cooking is also "processing" raw ingredients. But we know that "processing" by cooking raw ingredients to prepare dishes is beneficial for us despite the slight loss of nutrition (it allows our body to digest food more easily, and thus absorb nutritions better). We also know over-cooking (burning) food makes them carcinogenic. Factory "processing" of food essentially tends to strip off nutrition from food, in favour of taste (and sometimes digestibility). Ultra processed food tends to do this to an extreme. (For example, fruit juice seem more tastier because when we eat fruit the fibres slow down the release of sugar to our body. Fruit juice essentially strips of this fibre allowing our body to absorb sugar faster.)
- notTooFarGone 3y ago
  But I can still be healthy with ultra processed food. It's doing it a disservice imo and focusing on the entirely wrong things regarding nutrition.

zaptheimpaler 3y ago

The specific factors that cause ultra processed food to be bad are already understood and no one is attempting to claim that there is something inherently wrong with them. The point of the classification is to give people a simple rule of thumb on what to eat. It’s much easier to understand “avoid processed foods” than the hundred factors that go into a good diet. In other words processed food is a classification system the same way junk food is, but more rigorously defined.

delichon 3y ago
A diet that restricts "processed" rather than "ultra processed" food is quite limited, since that includes a large majority of items in the grocery store. IMHO there are many healthy foods in this category, e.g. lentils for vegetarians or ground beef for carnivores. But there are few healthy ultra processed foods, if any.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  Yesterday saw video about cheese... And I started to wonder is all cheese "processed" food... I mean you do stuff to milk... And then on other hand, is milk as in semi-skimmed or skimmed also processed? UHT must certainly be... So where is the line truly?
  - thisislife2 3y ago
    Sometimes, yes, it is. Real cheese is in a way a creation of a new food item as one raw ingredient (milk) is used by microorganisms to create another food product. Skimmed milk though can be considered a processed food item as it is a "waste" by-product of extracting cream from it. Cooking is also "processing" raw ingredients. But we know that "processing" by cooking raw ingredients to prepare dishes is beneficial for us despite the slight loss of nutrition (it allows our body to digest food more easily, and thus absorb nutritions better). We also know over-cooking (burning) food makes them carcinogenic. Factory "processing" of food essentially tends to strip off nutrition from food, in favour of taste (and sometimes digestibility). Ultra processed food tends to do this to an extreme. (For example, fruit juice seem more tastier because when we eat fruit the fibres slow down the release of sugar to our body. Fruit juice essentially strips of this fibre allowing our body to absorb sugar faster.)
notTooFarGone 3y ago
But I can still be healthy with ultra processed food. It's doing it a disservice imo and focusing on the entirely wrong things regarding nutrition.