4 ms·

This product is the sort of product I suspect the fad blitz against "ultraprocessed foods" is really targeted at.

literalAardvark 10mo ago
Not necessarily. It might be some Big Meat conspiracy to combat these upstarts, but there's also reasonable data indicating that less processing results in better health outcomes.
- padjo 10mo ago
  I’ve seen very little that isn’t just correlation of highly processed food consumption and generally poor lifestyle
  - literalAardvark 10mo ago
    Here, this is a solid intro you can thread out of at your leisure. There's really no controversy around this at a scientific level, only on social media: https://www.thelancet.com/series-do/ultra-processed-food https://www.thelancet.com/series-do/ultra-processed-food
    - padjo 10mo ago
      I think my counter position is well explained here https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002916523036845?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000291652... Edit to add: I think it’s also clear from this that there isn’t anything like the scientific consensus you believe there is on this issue.
      - literalAardvark 10mo ago
        That paper unequivocally states in the beginning that the authors aren't trying to contradict that food processing affects health outcomes, they're just dissatisfied with the low quality of the classification system. So there's no debate that ultra processed foods affect health, there's only debate on whether the category itself is good enough. And if you go deeper into the subject, it becomes pretty obvious that the Nova system is a pretty bad model. But it's a simple model that can be easily communicated to Doomscroll Sally. The better models we have haven't caught on anywhere near as well. "The participants in this debate agree that food processing vitally affects human health, and that the extent of food processing significantly affects diet quality and health outcomes. They disagree on the significance of ultra-processing, as defined within the Nova food classification system."
        padjo 10mo ago
        “The NO position argues that the concept of UPF is poorly defined; gives rise to misclassification of foods; is without clear mechanisms of action; and that the observed associations with obesity are likely confounded.“ Is my point. There’s a lot of correlation but whole classification system is poorly designed and mechanisms are not really explained. The whole idea of labelling foods as ultra processed as a proxy for bad seems poorly conceived. If I was to go further I’d say it has a whiff of naturalistic fallacy about it.
- vintermann 10mo ago
  But of course there is! That's not the point. You could also probably produce reasonable data indicating that food starting with the letter F results in worse health outcomes. But if you then avoid fenugreek, fava beans and fiddlehead ferns, you're not making up for the fried potatoes, fried cheese and fudge sundaes which really carried the correlation! We want causal correlations. Someone decided that instead they wanted to divide food into categoried in this specific way, and then rank categories. And I don't think all of them were naive about what they were doing. I've read Merchants of Doubt, I don't give harmful industries the benefit of doubt when it comes to things like this.
  - kelipso 10mo ago
    You can wait for causal connections forever while reasonable people take precautions when seeing strong correlations.
    - op00to 10mo ago
      Start sailing the high seas to reduce global warming.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 10mo ago
    It's certainly not the food industry that decided to brand some of its own foods as Ultra-Processd and harmful for health. That kind of categorisation is the work of nutrition researchers of various kinds. The way I understand it the food industry's interests trend the opposite way, trying to convince you that everything they sell you is good for you.
- happosai 10mo ago
  Processing itself doesn't make foods more or less healthier. Many highly processed foods are healthier than their unprocessed natural form. Yogurt is healthier than milk while butter isn't. It why people ultra process foods - to make them more tasty and addictive by processing in more fats, salts and sugars. Take soda for example. They added acidic CO2 bubbles so they can add more sugar . The problem with the term ultra processed has, it bags in huge amounts of different foods and classifies them all bad.
  - delichon 10mo ago
    Processing food doesn't necessarily make food less healthy, but it does it so often that it should not be considered neutral. * it frequently removes the fiber and structure, making it faster to eat, and easier to over consume. * it frequently adds sugar, salt, etc., not just making it easier to over consume, but with a payload that itself does extra damage. * simply changing the form of food, without changing the contents, itself can have serious nutritional consequences [0]. For my own choices ultra processing is guilty until proven innocent. Believing that implies a radical change to how most people eat. [0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-nutrition/article/dietinduced-obesity-in-ad-libitumfed-mice-food-texture-overrides-the-effect-of-macronutrient-composition/725D71275CF7399332CEC8C9C76BE23F https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-n...
  - pessimizer 10mo ago
    > to make them more tasty and addictive by processing in more fats, salts and sugars. This is a very specific definition of "ultraprocessed" that many people don't associate with the term at all. Most people are trying to avoid the strange chemicals and fillers used to market food (like color and shine), to preserve food (so it can last longer on the shelf/warehouse and travel farther), or fill food (to replace expensive fats, starches and sugars with cheap fats, starches and sugars, or even to add indigestible elements for bulk and texture.) We have no idea of a lot of the long-term effects of some of this stuff, and much of it has never been tested for safety, just assumed to be safe. Other people are trying to tell people to eat healthy food. This is your camp. You don't have to "ultraprocess" things to dump sugar into them. You can just dump sugar into them. I'm a home cook who doesn't really eat much processed food at all, but I certainly eat a lot of fats, salt, and sugar. I can tell you exactly how much. I put it in because I like it. I'm not interested in anybody's suggestion that I cut it other than my doctor. It's a public morals crusade disguised as a health crusade. "Ultraprocessing" often comes in when you dump some strange chemical in to disguise the lack of butter, the lack of a real sugar, or to lower salt content. But with the other stuff, I hate that it's all lumped together in an "ultraprocessed" category. Each of the types of processing that is done on food is different, each should be justified on its own merits, the process should be public, and things that are notable should be labeled so people who want to avoid them can. Lobbyists fight in order not to label things, and not to have to test things. I also don't mean to be overcritical about people who want people to eat healthier, but I believe that it undermines the fight to not have unknown dangers in food to turn it into an orthorexia crusade.
stubish 10mo ago
Any 'fad blitz' you see is just mindless flailing, trying to deal with a category of food we know is unhealthy but are still trying to work out the mechanisms and reasons why (which would enable improved categorizations). It doesn't seem particularly targeted at anything, and most industry players profit from ultra processed foods. I think the interesting edge case is soy milk and similar. Most brands including organic ones count as ultra processed by the nutritionists definition, with vitamins and calcium supplementation. And this very supplementation is how many vegans and vegetarians keep their calcium and B vitamin levels up, even if they don't always realize it.

Not necessarily. It might be some Big Meat conspiracy to combat these upstarts, but there's also reasonable data indicating that less processing results in better health outcomes.

padjo 10mo ago
I’ve seen very little that isn’t just correlation of highly processed food consumption and generally poor lifestyle
- literalAardvark 10mo ago
  Here, this is a solid intro you can thread out of at your leisure. There's really no controversy around this at a scientific level, only on social media: https://www.thelancet.com/series-do/ultra-processed-food https://www.thelancet.com/series-do/ultra-processed-food
  - padjo 10mo ago
    I think my counter position is well explained here https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002916523036845?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000291652... Edit to add: I think it’s also clear from this that there isn’t anything like the scientific consensus you believe there is on this issue.
    - literalAardvark 10mo ago
      That paper unequivocally states in the beginning that the authors aren't trying to contradict that food processing affects health outcomes, they're just dissatisfied with the low quality of the classification system. So there's no debate that ultra processed foods affect health, there's only debate on whether the category itself is good enough. And if you go deeper into the subject, it becomes pretty obvious that the Nova system is a pretty bad model. But it's a simple model that can be easily communicated to Doomscroll Sally. The better models we have haven't caught on anywhere near as well. "The participants in this debate agree that food processing vitally affects human health, and that the extent of food processing significantly affects diet quality and health outcomes. They disagree on the significance of ultra-processing, as defined within the Nova food classification system."
      - padjo 10mo ago
        “The NO position argues that the concept of UPF is poorly defined; gives rise to misclassification of foods; is without clear mechanisms of action; and that the observed associations with obesity are likely confounded.“ Is my point. There’s a lot of correlation but whole classification system is poorly designed and mechanisms are not really explained. The whole idea of labelling foods as ultra processed as a proxy for bad seems poorly conceived. If I was to go further I’d say it has a whiff of naturalistic fallacy about it.
vintermann 10mo ago
But of course there is! That's not the point. You could also probably produce reasonable data indicating that food starting with the letter F results in worse health outcomes. But if you then avoid fenugreek, fava beans and fiddlehead ferns, you're not making up for the fried potatoes, fried cheese and fudge sundaes which really carried the correlation! We want causal correlations. Someone decided that instead they wanted to divide food into categoried in this specific way, and then rank categories. And I don't think all of them were naive about what they were doing. I've read Merchants of Doubt, I don't give harmful industries the benefit of doubt when it comes to things like this.
- kelipso 10mo ago
  You can wait for causal connections forever while reasonable people take precautions when seeing strong correlations.
  - op00to 10mo ago
    Start sailing the high seas to reduce global warming.
- YeGoblynQueenne 10mo ago
  It's certainly not the food industry that decided to brand some of its own foods as Ultra-Processd and harmful for health. That kind of categorisation is the work of nutrition researchers of various kinds. The way I understand it the food industry's interests trend the opposite way, trying to convince you that everything they sell you is good for you.
happosai 10mo ago
Processing itself doesn't make foods more or less healthier. Many highly processed foods are healthier than their unprocessed natural form. Yogurt is healthier than milk while butter isn't. It why people ultra process foods - to make them more tasty and addictive by processing in more fats, salts and sugars. Take soda for example. They added acidic CO2 bubbles so they can add more sugar . The problem with the term ultra processed has, it bags in huge amounts of different foods and classifies them all bad.
- delichon 10mo ago
  Processing food doesn't necessarily make food less healthy, but it does it so often that it should not be considered neutral. * it frequently removes the fiber and structure, making it faster to eat, and easier to over consume. * it frequently adds sugar, salt, etc., not just making it easier to over consume, but with a payload that itself does extra damage. * simply changing the form of food, without changing the contents, itself can have serious nutritional consequences [0]. For my own choices ultra processing is guilty until proven innocent. Believing that implies a radical change to how most people eat. [0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-nutrition/article/dietinduced-obesity-in-ad-libitumfed-mice-food-texture-overrides-the-effect-of-macronutrient-composition/725D71275CF7399332CEC8C9C76BE23F https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-n...
- pessimizer 10mo ago
  > to make them more tasty and addictive by processing in more fats, salts and sugars. This is a very specific definition of "ultraprocessed" that many people don't associate with the term at all. Most people are trying to avoid the strange chemicals and fillers used to market food (like color and shine), to preserve food (so it can last longer on the shelf/warehouse and travel farther), or fill food (to replace expensive fats, starches and sugars with cheap fats, starches and sugars, or even to add indigestible elements for bulk and texture.) We have no idea of a lot of the long-term effects of some of this stuff, and much of it has never been tested for safety, just assumed to be safe. Other people are trying to tell people to eat healthy food. This is your camp. You don't have to "ultraprocess" things to dump sugar into them. You can just dump sugar into them. I'm a home cook who doesn't really eat much processed food at all, but I certainly eat a lot of fats, salt, and sugar. I can tell you exactly how much. I put it in because I like it. I'm not interested in anybody's suggestion that I cut it other than my doctor. It's a public morals crusade disguised as a health crusade. "Ultraprocessing" often comes in when you dump some strange chemical in to disguise the lack of butter, the lack of a real sugar, or to lower salt content. But with the other stuff, I hate that it's all lumped together in an "ultraprocessed" category. Each of the types of processing that is done on food is different, each should be justified on its own merits, the process should be public, and things that are notable should be labeled so people who want to avoid them can. Lobbyists fight in order not to label things, and not to have to test things. I also don't mean to be overcritical about people who want people to eat healthier, but I believe that it undermines the fight to not have unknown dangers in food to turn it into an orthorexia crusade.

stubish 10mo ago

Any 'fad blitz' you see is just mindless flailing, trying to deal with a category of food we know is unhealthy but are still trying to work out the mechanisms and reasons why (which would enable improved categorizations). It doesn't seem particularly targeted at anything, and most industry players profit from ultra processed foods. I think the interesting edge case is soy milk and similar. Most brands including organic ones count as ultra processed by the nutritionists definition, with vitamins and calcium supplementation. And this very supplementation is how many vegans and vegetarians keep their calcium and B vitamin levels up, even if they don't always realize it.