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There’s an excellent discussion of the most recent RCT on UPF foods with its author here (https://sigmanutrition.com/episode577/ https://sigmanutrition.com/epis
by KempyKolibri 1y ago
There’s an excellent discussion of the most recent RCT on UPF foods with its author here (https://sigmanutrition.com/episode577/ https://sigmanutrition.com/episode577/).
Not only is the study itself very interesting, but it does a great job going over the evidence landscape on UPFs and food at the current point in time.
Dr Dicken is very clear that at the moment, in his view, they have insufficient evidence to make policy decisions like this, a view that has been echoed by pretty much all academic institutions when they’ve helped inform recent dietary guidelines.
Making big sweeping moves based on flimsy evidence is a good way to make people wary of following dietary guidance at all. After all, what’s the point of listening to “the science” if they turn around in 5 years and say “whoops, turns out we were wrong”?
This is a misstep IMO.
- baq 1y agoand yet when Americans set foot on European soil the first thought they have is 'everyone is so thin'. if there's any misstep here, it's not focused enough on sugar (which is a hard drug for kids) .
- KempyKolibri 1y ago> and yet when Americans set foot on European soil the first thought they have is 'everyone is so thin'. I’m not sure how this interacts with the point I’m making. > if there's any misstep here, it's not focused enough on sugar (which is a hard drug for kids) . Sure, free sugars are associated with risk (which is reflected in dietary guidelines). Plenty of UPFs are not (which is why they generally aren’t flagged as a concern in dietary guidelines).
- HDThoreaun 1y agoBeing thin is cultural. If your society shames you for being fat you are less likely to be fat. Has nothing to do with ultra processed food
- chneu 1y agoBe aware that the science on this is evolving pretty quickly. A study came out recently that showed when folks ate a designed diet, one with and one without UPFs, they found the UPF diets resulted in a few additional lbs of weight gain. The study accounted for a ton of variables. It showed that UPF calories lead to weight gain when consuming the same number of unprocessed calories. https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(25)00360-2 https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(25)... I think, at the current moment, there is enough evidence to support guidelines to avoid UPFs for the most part. Idk about banning but I do think it'll eventually get there, at least in schools. But who knows? American lunches are garbage in the first place
- KempyKolibri 1y agoI’m not an absolutist on this myself, if convincing evidence comes out then I’m happy to change my mind. I have no horse in this race besides wanting people to stay healthy. I’m just not currently convinced the UPF category adds much to our existing dietary guidelines. Avoiding UPFs can serve as a reasonable heuristic as it can help you avoid HFSS foods, but you could also easily make some adverse switches following such advice. I’m not sure that study really supports the inference you’re making re: calories and weight gain. The UPF diet had ~15g fibre/1000kcal less than the MP diet, so for an individual consuming 2500kcal/day there’s a 150kcal difference of energy per day that doesn’t seem to be accounted for by the studies methods (could be missing this in their calcs though?). So yeah, if we don’t equate things like this, things look bad for UPFs. But what is the “UPF” category adding here. We don’t need it to know that if more calories are consumed as fibre in an otherwise calorie-equated diet, you’ll lose weight relative to the low fibre diet.
- UncleMeat 1y agoIt is worth viewing the actual meals here in "Data S2" in their supplemental materials. Do these look like 1:1 substitutions where the only controlled variable is processing?
- KempyKolibri 1y agoExactly. This isn’t a study that shows us UPF adds anything over what we already understand about dietary composition.