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My correlation vs causation sense is kicking in here - people eating "ultra processed food" (whatever that means) in the U.S. are usually going to be lower inco

My correlation vs causation sense is kicking in here - people eating "ultra processed food" (whatever that means) in the U.S. are usually going to be lower income people who can't afford a fancy Whole Foods diet, or don't have the time to prepare those foods. People who are poor and short on time are probably also more likely to have stress/anxiety and poor health. Skimming through the article there's no mention of controlling for those factors. Lastly, Amazon sponsors NPR and owns Whole Foods. No footnote mentioning the conflict of interest in this article? :)

curiousllama 3y ago
Yea, the paper makes clear it's a associative meta-analysis, and the conclusion is basically "we should figure out what the mechanism is" Plus, even if it is causal, it's not really new information: we know high-salt, high-calorie, nutrient-deficient foods (which ultraprocessed foods tend to be) DO causally drive the negative health outcomes described in the paper. So like, this is basically a study that goes "yup, all the small studies are still saying this know-to-be-bad thing is still bad, despite recent interventions - let's go figure out if there's more mechanisms we missed here, or if it's just a matter of more interventions/individual choice at this point"
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dfxm12 3y ago
I disagree. We can only buy what's being offered. You joke about not knowing what ultra processed means, well, most consumers probably don't know orange juice from orange drink, the difference between chocolate candy and dark chocolate, etc. The question is, why is that stuff even available for sale if it is so bad? Even whole foods sells a lot of ultra processed stuff, believe it or not. I wish I could go to a store and be confident that the bottle of orange stuff I pick up is just freshly squeezed orange juice and not... something else. That's just not the world we live in though.

curiousllama 3y ago

Yea, the paper makes clear it's a associative meta-analysis, and the conclusion is basically "we should figure out what the mechanism is" Plus, even if it is causal, it's not really new information: we know high-salt, high-calorie, nutrient-deficient foods (which ultraprocessed foods tend to be) DO causally drive the negative health outcomes described in the paper. So like, this is basically a study that goes "yup, all the small studies are still saying this know-to-be-bad thing is still bad, despite recent interventions - let's go figure out if there's more mechanisms we missed here, or if it's just a matter of more interventions/individual choice at this point"

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dfxm12 3y ago

I disagree. We can only buy what's being offered. You joke about not knowing what ultra processed means, well, most consumers probably don't know orange juice from orange drink, the difference between chocolate candy and dark chocolate, etc. The question is, why is that stuff even available for sale if it is so bad? Even whole foods sells a lot of ultra processed stuff, believe it or not. I wish I could go to a store and be confident that the bottle of orange stuff I pick up is just freshly squeezed orange juice and not... something else. That's just not the world we live in though.