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"Ultra-processed foods" isn't a scientific concept. It's like "organic". Too many variables are conflated to make any of this reasonable.

wryoak 8mo ago
The Nova framework for classifying processed foods was created in 2009 by a Brazilian epidemiologist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification Presumably, since the first citation in the paper is said epidemiologist (Monteiro), this is the framework they rely on. Unless you’re intent on scientific gatekeeping, in which case having actually read the reported study (it’s linked in the article fyi) would have offered much more effective methods of rebuttal than semantic quibbles.
- staticassertion 8mo ago
  It's not gatekeeping to point out that multiple studies have shown that Nova is a perfect example of "no one agrees on what processed foods are". Even when given Nova criteria, nutritionists repeatedly, across studies, fail to agree on categorization. Nova also does not even attempt to categorize in terms of health because "processed" has nothing to do with "healthy" despite being used in conversations about public health. Absolutely perfect example of how bad the term "processed" is.
bryanlarsen 8mo ago
Yes, I've begun translating "ultra-processed foods" to "junk food". It's roughly the same meaning and roughly the same amount of scientific rigor. UPF sounds scientific and specific but it's neither. OTOH everybody intuitively understands junk food is bad for you, has a rough idea of what it is and that the definition is circular.
- xracy 8mo ago
  Anything this terribly defined, makes a poor candidate for "being treated like cigarettes"
staticassertion 8mo ago
Agreed. I hope these terms go away. I think what people tend to mean is "calorie dense, low in nutrients, low in fiber", or something along those lines, and the term "processed" makes it far more confusing. "Processed" ends up meaning anything from "high in sugar" to "long shelf life" or "one of a dozen kinds of artificial sweetener" etc. It does more harm than good. I can have an extremely high fiber, high protein, nutritionally well rounded meal that's also "ultra processed". Someone mentioned Nova. Nova is a PERFECT example of how god awful the term is. When asked to classify foods into Nova categories there is almost no agreement amongst nutritionists. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-022-01099-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-022-01099-1 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8181985/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8181985/ Time after time, Nova is shown to be more confusing than helpful, with worse than random results. Nova itself doesn't even attempt to correlate with "healthy".
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
  > there is almost no agreement amongst nutritionists Neither is there for speciation. Doesn’t make the term or concept useless. And doesn’t mean we can’t make useful statements about one species versus another, even if it gets blurry at the edges.
  - staticassertion 8mo ago
    What is helpful about Nova? What are the useful statements we can make? I would argue that Nova makes it more difficult to make useful statements. For example, someone who follows Nova would believe that taking a fiber supplement, or a multivitamin, is "ultra processed" and if they equate "ultra processed" with bad... well, they'd skip those. Meanwhile, they could eat raw mean morning to night, or drink their own urine, and they'd be on a totally unprocessed diet. What framework has Nova helped develop for eating healthier?
    - kelseyfrog 8mo ago
      > someone who follows Nova would believe that taking a fiber supplement, or a multivitamin, is "ultra processed" No one believes that. We're all adults and not looking for loopholes or edge cases to exploit. A system can be generally good even if it has inconsistent edge cases, which is basically all systems that have ever existed.
46493168 8mo ago
Here’s a scientific paper written by scientists that defines UPFs: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0009.70066 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0009.70066 Which variables are conflated?
- bryanlarsen 8mo ago
  That's a perfect example of the problem. It's overgeneralized to the point of meaninglessness. It asserts that UPF is bad because they tend to result in quicker absorption, amongst many other things. So why not say quick absorbing food is bad for you, and why use a definition that also includes food that is processed to absorb slower? Then repeat across several other characteristics. Few UPF foods will bingo on all characteristics and a lot of non-UPF foods will bingo on many of the same characteristics.
  - xg15 8mo ago
    How do you show that a certain food is quickly absorbing or slowly absorbing? Would you require that every food item is evaluated on each individual characteristic?
    - bryanlarsen 8mo ago
      You measure and report the glycemic index.
JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
> "Ultra-processed foods" isn't a scientific concept This is like arguing astronomy isn’t real because colloquial definitions of space are ambiguous. The study [1] uses a definition that finds a significant effect. We should investigate that further. If it pans out and the term ultra-processed food triggers people, we can rebrand it. (Did the cigarette lobby ever try muddying the water on what cigarettes are?) [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0009.70066 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0009.70066
fhdjfjkafk 8mo ago
Ever notice how you semantic junkies always end up defending entrenched financial interests? Redirect your energy toward something useful.
rsanek 8mo ago
This is giving the "ultra-processed" term too much credit. Organic is at least pretty explicitly specified by the USDA (even if that definition is perhaps not what most people think or expect when they read the term). Ultra-processed doesn't even have a single, consistent definition.
kelipso 8mo ago
“Healthy”, “non addictive”, “hyper palatable” are much more unscientific concepts than for example the NOVA definitions for ultra processed foods.
tim333 8mo ago
I was thinking of the example of crisps which are basically potatoes with oil and salt, baked. If you are going to call baking ultra processing then it would include rather a lot of things.
michaelhoney 8mo ago
And yet you would have little trouble distinguishing between those two categories if a range of food was put on a table in front of you

wryoak 8mo ago

The Nova framework for classifying processed foods was created in 2009 by a Brazilian epidemiologist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification Presumably, since the first citation in the paper is said epidemiologist (Monteiro), this is the framework they rely on. Unless you’re intent on scientific gatekeeping, in which case having actually read the reported study (it’s linked in the article fyi) would have offered much more effective methods of rebuttal than semantic quibbles.

staticassertion 8mo ago
It's not gatekeeping to point out that multiple studies have shown that Nova is a perfect example of "no one agrees on what processed foods are". Even when given Nova criteria, nutritionists repeatedly, across studies, fail to agree on categorization. Nova also does not even attempt to categorize in terms of health because "processed" has nothing to do with "healthy" despite being used in conversations about public health. Absolutely perfect example of how bad the term "processed" is.

bryanlarsen 8mo ago

Yes, I've begun translating "ultra-processed foods" to "junk food". It's roughly the same meaning and roughly the same amount of scientific rigor. UPF sounds scientific and specific but it's neither. OTOH everybody intuitively understands junk food is bad for you, has a rough idea of what it is and that the definition is circular.

xracy 8mo ago
Anything this terribly defined, makes a poor candidate for "being treated like cigarettes"

staticassertion 8mo ago

Agreed. I hope these terms go away. I think what people tend to mean is "calorie dense, low in nutrients, low in fiber", or something along those lines, and the term "processed" makes it far more confusing. "Processed" ends up meaning anything from "high in sugar" to "long shelf life" or "one of a dozen kinds of artificial sweetener" etc. It does more harm than good. I can have an extremely high fiber, high protein, nutritionally well rounded meal that's also "ultra processed". Someone mentioned Nova. Nova is a PERFECT example of how god awful the term is. When asked to classify foods into Nova categories there is almost no agreement amongst nutritionists. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-022-01099-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-022-01099-1 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8181985/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8181985/ Time after time, Nova is shown to be more confusing than helpful, with worse than random results. Nova itself doesn't even attempt to correlate with "healthy".

JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
> there is almost no agreement amongst nutritionists Neither is there for speciation. Doesn’t make the term or concept useless. And doesn’t mean we can’t make useful statements about one species versus another, even if it gets blurry at the edges.
- staticassertion 8mo ago
  What is helpful about Nova? What are the useful statements we can make? I would argue that Nova makes it more difficult to make useful statements. For example, someone who follows Nova would believe that taking a fiber supplement, or a multivitamin, is "ultra processed" and if they equate "ultra processed" with bad... well, they'd skip those. Meanwhile, they could eat raw mean morning to night, or drink their own urine, and they'd be on a totally unprocessed diet. What framework has Nova helped develop for eating healthier?
  - kelseyfrog 8mo ago
    > someone who follows Nova would believe that taking a fiber supplement, or a multivitamin, is "ultra processed" No one believes that. We're all adults and not looking for loopholes or edge cases to exploit. A system can be generally good even if it has inconsistent edge cases, which is basically all systems that have ever existed.

46493168 8mo ago

Here’s a scientific paper written by scientists that defines UPFs: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0009.70066 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0009.70066 Which variables are conflated?

bryanlarsen 8mo ago
That's a perfect example of the problem. It's overgeneralized to the point of meaninglessness. It asserts that UPF is bad because they tend to result in quicker absorption, amongst many other things. So why not say quick absorbing food is bad for you, and why use a definition that also includes food that is processed to absorb slower? Then repeat across several other characteristics. Few UPF foods will bingo on all characteristics and a lot of non-UPF foods will bingo on many of the same characteristics.
- xg15 8mo ago
  How do you show that a certain food is quickly absorbing or slowly absorbing? Would you require that every food item is evaluated on each individual characteristic?
  - bryanlarsen 8mo ago
    You measure and report the glycemic index.

JumpCrisscross 8mo ago

> "Ultra-processed foods" isn't a scientific concept This is like arguing astronomy isn’t real because colloquial definitions of space are ambiguous. The study [1] uses a definition that finds a significant effect. We should investigate that further. If it pans out and the term ultra-processed food triggers people, we can rebrand it. (Did the cigarette lobby ever try muddying the water on what cigarettes are?) [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0009.70066 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0009.70066

fhdjfjkafk 8mo ago

Ever notice how you semantic junkies always end up defending entrenched financial interests? Redirect your energy toward something useful.

rsanek 8mo ago

This is giving the "ultra-processed" term too much credit. Organic is at least pretty explicitly specified by the USDA (even if that definition is perhaps not what most people think or expect when they read the term). Ultra-processed doesn't even have a single, consistent definition.

kelipso 8mo ago

“Healthy”, “non addictive”, “hyper palatable” are much more unscientific concepts than for example the NOVA definitions for ultra processed foods.

tim333 8mo ago

I was thinking of the example of crisps which are basically potatoes with oil and salt, baked. If you are going to call baking ultra processing then it would include rather a lot of things.

michaelhoney 8mo ago

And yet you would have little trouble distinguishing between those two categories if a range of food was put on a table in front of you