7 ms·

> sweetened drinks and processed meats, were associated with a higher risk of heart disease, others, like breakfast cereals, bread and yogurt, were instead link

by hu3 2y ago

> sweetened drinks and processed meats, were associated with a higher risk of heart disease, others, like breakfast cereals, bread and yogurt, were instead linked to lower risks for cardiovascular disease. I highly doubt these extra sweetened breakfast cereals are a net positive for health. So perhaps they should be more specific when it comes to mentioning breakfast cereals.

mint2 2y ago
Likewise breakfast yogurt could be either yoplait “yogurt” or plain unsweetened actual yogurt, or anything in between. One is basically gelatinized sugar and the other is pretty healthy. If one’s classification doesn’t easily distinguish those two, that’s absurd.
- sabbaticaldev 2y ago
  one has added sugar and the other not, it’s clear which one is ultra processed
  - standardUser 2y ago
    That doesn't make any sense. If I have a bowl of oatmeal, and I sprinkle sugar on top, it does not magically become ultra-processed.
    - digging 2y ago
      Well if the sugar is ultra-processed, yes it does, doesn't it?
      - mecsred 2y ago
        Is the sugar ultra processed?
      - standardUser 2y ago
        No, it does not, since ultra-processed, though not a strictly defined term, does not include household ingredients like granulated sugar or brown sugar. If you happen to have a jar of HFCS in your cabinet then that would quality.
        roywiggins 2y ago
        it's pretty processed compared to sugarcane at least
        tourmalinetaco 2y ago
        So homemade bread is ultraprocessed because the wheat was processed into flour?
        d1sxeyes 2y ago
        From what I understand, technically yes. I think there’s a lot of work to be done on categorisation but the underlying principle tends to be fairly decent: the more stuff you do to your raw ingredients, the less healthy they become.
        marcus0x62 2y ago
        No, homemade bread would be NOVA group. 3. The flour itself is group 2 (processed culinary ingredients.) Mixing the group 2 ingredient (flour) with group 1 ingredients (water, yeast, salt) and baking it makes it group 3 (processed food.) If you added something like Xanthan Gum to your "homemade bread", that would make it group 4 (ultra processed foods.)
        d1sxeyes 2y ago
        Thanks for the correction! Homemade bread is a processed food, not an ultra processed food.
        johnyzee 2y ago
    - YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
      It does make sense if we're talking about yogurt. The sugary yogurts sold at super markets etc don't have sugar sprinkled on top, but mixed in. Normally, you can't do that. If you make yogurt the standard way [1] and try to add sugar to it while it's still a fluid, it will all sink to the bottom and then you'll just have some yogurt with a layer of sugar on the bottom. If you add it when it's not a fluid anymore, then you'll have a layer at the top. If you try to mix it up in between you'll break it up [2] and end up with mush; with sugar mixed in. The only way I can think of to add sugar to yogurt and ensure it is evenly mixed throughout its mass is to use some additive, probably some kind of stabiliser. I suspect that's what makes this kind of yogurt qualify for the ultra-processed category. Check the ingredients on your favourite yogurt. They should say: milk, yogurt culture. End of transmission. If there's anything else in it, then I would say there's a good claim it's been over-processed. ____________ [1] Bring milk to boil or use UHT. Let cool to 45° C (113° F). Add lactic ferments (Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus - readiest source: yogurt). Keep warm. Do not disturb. Wait. Enjoy. Scales up to industrial level (and is dirt cheap to boot). [2] That's called syneresis - that's when you put a spoon in and then find a little puddle of milky fluid in its wake a few hours later. You've broken apart the jell'0 like structure of the yogurt's curd, i.e. the coagulated milk solids, and caused the milk fluids to leak out.
      - standardUser 2y ago
        There are many brands of yogurt with "fruit on the bottom" or otherwise unmixed that use plain sugar. Not every store-bought product is the worst possible version of a store-bought product. There's a huge variation.
        YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
        >> Not every store-bought product is the worst possible version of a store-bought product. I agree with that for the general case but my intuition is that if someone's selling you something ready-made and pre-packaged, that you can easily make yourself (yogurt with fruit mixed in), then that's because they want to charge you extra and force you into a choice -of ingredients- you possibly wouldn't make. For example, the yogurts with fruit I've had in the UK were just not very good yogurts, and the fruit were just not very good fruit. The yogurts were the thin and tasteless stuff that seems to be typical of anywhere outside the Balkans (I'm Greek) and the fruit were basically preserve, with added sugar. Why do you need added sugar with fruit? Because the fruit is under-ripe and probably too sour to eat in the first place. You have to think of the economics a bit. Yogurt is cheap to make and most people won't pay a premium for it. Also it's sour and many people (again, outside the Balkans) don't like that. So companies will add sweeteners and sweet admixtures, like jam, honey or fruit to make it more palatable. And of course to make that financially viable they have to drop the quality of the ingredients. And that's where the additives come in: they improve packaging, transport and distribution, even as they degrade taste and nutrition.
    - leptons 2y ago
      Oats also don't grow as individual flakes, they are processed too. Separating and concentrating a single ingredient is "processing" it. If you want the healthiest oats, you probably need to grow them yourself and eat them directly off the stalk. I'm joking, of course - sort of.
      - navaed01 2y ago
        There is a difference between processing an oat and the derivative ‘ingredients’ that are used to simulate the mouth feel of ‘ice cream’ - which includes a type of mold. I agree the distinction is murky and can be easy to mock but at the end of the day something associated with these foods is making societies deeply sick and that should encourage us all to care about a solution. Even if you take a libertarian approach to diet, the economic cost of caring for a society with rampant obesity and diabetes impacts us all
PittleyDunkin 2y ago
> I highly doubt these extra sweetened breakfast cereals are a net positive for health. You can't really evaluate this outside of a metabolic context. That goes for a lot of things, but you're a lot more likely to burn the sugar more or less immediately early in the morning, particularly before a workout. Sugar is a necessary nutrient (i.e. healthy by any sane meaning of the word, if such a meaning exists) and we've gone much too far in demonizing it.
- marcuskane2 2y ago
  Sugar is absolutely not "a necessary nutrient" and we haven't gone far enough in demonizing it. Literally every study, from rats to humans and from obesity to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral health to chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar is harmful. Modern Americans eat unprecedented amounts of refined sugar compared to any point in history. Sugar should be consumed in moderation akin to alcohol, not pumped into every product at every meal.
  - com2kid 2y ago
    > Literally every study, from rats to humans and from obesity to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral health to chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar is harmful. Modern Americans eat unprecedented amounts of refined sugar compared to any point in history. Emphasis on refined sugar. Most food products, even meat in trace amounts, has some level of some form of sugar in it. Added sugars are not needed in mass amounts for sure.
  - cogman10 2y ago
    While I generally agree with the sentiment that we should be cutting added sugar. I have to point out that sugar is naturally occurring in most whole foods. Nearly everything will have at least a little sucrose, glucose, or fructose in it. Most of the body's natural way of generating energy involves turning macronutrients into glucose and later into ATP. sucrose and fructose just so happen to have very short and very fast routes to conversion. That fast path is what I think makes sugar particularly problematic (as well as honey and a whole lot of other "natural" sweeteners that are just repackaged *oses). That big jolt of energy which the body ends up converting to fat since it has nothing to do with it is (probably) where most of the problem lay.

by hu3 2y ago

mint2 2y ago

Likewise breakfast yogurt could be either yoplait “yogurt” or plain unsweetened actual yogurt, or anything in between. One is basically gelatinized sugar and the other is pretty healthy. If one’s classification doesn’t easily distinguish those two, that’s absurd.

sabbaticaldev 2y ago
one has added sugar and the other not, it’s clear which one is ultra processed
- standardUser 2y ago
  That doesn't make any sense. If I have a bowl of oatmeal, and I sprinkle sugar on top, it does not magically become ultra-processed.
  - digging 2y ago
    Well if the sugar is ultra-processed, yes it does, doesn't it?
    - mecsred 2y ago
      Is the sugar ultra processed?
    - standardUser 2y ago
      No, it does not, since ultra-processed, though not a strictly defined term, does not include household ingredients like granulated sugar or brown sugar. If you happen to have a jar of HFCS in your cabinet then that would quality.
      - roywiggins 2y ago
        it's pretty processed compared to sugarcane at least
        tourmalinetaco 2y ago
        So homemade bread is ultraprocessed because the wheat was processed into flour?
        d1sxeyes 2y ago
        From what I understand, technically yes. I think there’s a lot of work to be done on categorisation but the underlying principle tends to be fairly decent: the more stuff you do to your raw ingredients, the less healthy they become.
        marcus0x62 2y ago
        No, homemade bread would be NOVA group. 3. The flour itself is group 2 (processed culinary ingredients.) Mixing the group 2 ingredient (flour) with group 1 ingredients (water, yeast, salt) and baking it makes it group 3 (processed food.) If you added something like Xanthan Gum to your "homemade bread", that would make it group 4 (ultra processed foods.)
        d1sxeyes 2y ago
        Thanks for the correction! Homemade bread is a processed food, not an ultra processed food.
        johnyzee 2y ago
  - YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
    It does make sense if we're talking about yogurt. The sugary yogurts sold at super markets etc don't have sugar sprinkled on top, but mixed in. Normally, you can't do that. If you make yogurt the standard way [1] and try to add sugar to it while it's still a fluid, it will all sink to the bottom and then you'll just have some yogurt with a layer of sugar on the bottom. If you add it when it's not a fluid anymore, then you'll have a layer at the top. If you try to mix it up in between you'll break it up [2] and end up with mush; with sugar mixed in. The only way I can think of to add sugar to yogurt and ensure it is evenly mixed throughout its mass is to use some additive, probably some kind of stabiliser. I suspect that's what makes this kind of yogurt qualify for the ultra-processed category. Check the ingredients on your favourite yogurt. They should say: milk, yogurt culture. End of transmission. If there's anything else in it, then I would say there's a good claim it's been over-processed. ____________ [1] Bring milk to boil or use UHT. Let cool to 45° C (113° F). Add lactic ferments (Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus - readiest source: yogurt). Keep warm. Do not disturb. Wait. Enjoy. Scales up to industrial level (and is dirt cheap to boot). [2] That's called syneresis - that's when you put a spoon in and then find a little puddle of milky fluid in its wake a few hours later. You've broken apart the jell'0 like structure of the yogurt's curd, i.e. the coagulated milk solids, and caused the milk fluids to leak out.
    - standardUser 2y ago
      There are many brands of yogurt with "fruit on the bottom" or otherwise unmixed that use plain sugar. Not every store-bought product is the worst possible version of a store-bought product. There's a huge variation.
      - YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
        >> Not every store-bought product is the worst possible version of a store-bought product. I agree with that for the general case but my intuition is that if someone's selling you something ready-made and pre-packaged, that you can easily make yourself (yogurt with fruit mixed in), then that's because they want to charge you extra and force you into a choice -of ingredients- you possibly wouldn't make. For example, the yogurts with fruit I've had in the UK were just not very good yogurts, and the fruit were just not very good fruit. The yogurts were the thin and tasteless stuff that seems to be typical of anywhere outside the Balkans (I'm Greek) and the fruit were basically preserve, with added sugar. Why do you need added sugar with fruit? Because the fruit is under-ripe and probably too sour to eat in the first place. You have to think of the economics a bit. Yogurt is cheap to make and most people won't pay a premium for it. Also it's sour and many people (again, outside the Balkans) don't like that. So companies will add sweeteners and sweet admixtures, like jam, honey or fruit to make it more palatable. And of course to make that financially viable they have to drop the quality of the ingredients. And that's where the additives come in: they improve packaging, transport and distribution, even as they degrade taste and nutrition.
  - leptons 2y ago
    Oats also don't grow as individual flakes, they are processed too. Separating and concentrating a single ingredient is "processing" it. If you want the healthiest oats, you probably need to grow them yourself and eat them directly off the stalk. I'm joking, of course - sort of.
    - navaed01 2y ago
      There is a difference between processing an oat and the derivative ‘ingredients’ that are used to simulate the mouth feel of ‘ice cream’ - which includes a type of mold. I agree the distinction is murky and can be easy to mock but at the end of the day something associated with these foods is making societies deeply sick and that should encourage us all to care about a solution. Even if you take a libertarian approach to diet, the economic cost of caring for a society with rampant obesity and diabetes impacts us all

PittleyDunkin 2y ago

> I highly doubt these extra sweetened breakfast cereals are a net positive for health. You can't really evaluate this outside of a metabolic context. That goes for a lot of things, but you're a lot more likely to burn the sugar more or less immediately early in the morning, particularly before a workout. Sugar is a necessary nutrient (i.e. healthy by any sane meaning of the word, if such a meaning exists) and we've gone much too far in demonizing it.

marcuskane2 2y ago
Sugar is absolutely not "a necessary nutrient" and we haven't gone far enough in demonizing it. Literally every study, from rats to humans and from obesity to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral health to chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar is harmful. Modern Americans eat unprecedented amounts of refined sugar compared to any point in history. Sugar should be consumed in moderation akin to alcohol, not pumped into every product at every meal.
- com2kid 2y ago
  > Literally every study, from rats to humans and from obesity to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral health to chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar is harmful. Modern Americans eat unprecedented amounts of refined sugar compared to any point in history. Emphasis on refined sugar. Most food products, even meat in trace amounts, has some level of some form of sugar in it. Added sugars are not needed in mass amounts for sure.
- cogman10 2y ago
  While I generally agree with the sentiment that we should be cutting added sugar. I have to point out that sugar is naturally occurring in most whole foods. Nearly everything will have at least a little sucrose, glucose, or fructose in it. Most of the body's natural way of generating energy involves turning macronutrients into glucose and later into ATP. sucrose and fructose just so happen to have very short and very fast routes to conversion. That fast path is what I think makes sugar particularly problematic (as well as honey and a whole lot of other "natural" sweeteners that are just repackaged *oses). That big jolt of energy which the body ends up converting to fat since it has nothing to do with it is (probably) where most of the problem lay.