Ultra-processed foods: largest ever review shows many ill effects on health
theconversation.com
theconversation.com
Like sure, maybe it doesn’t make sense for most people to put so much focus on something they have little control over, but disgusting? Nah.
Also trusting science is a complete misunderstanding of science. That’s how religion operates.
Edit: Also also, I have some faith in the scientific process, as soon as business and money enters the picture though all trust goes out the window. Corporations do not care what poison they give you, as long as it does not affect their bottom line. Have no doubt that they will ignore their scientists if they can get away with it.
> it’s disgusting
Massive contradiction here.
there is good science and bad science. there is also bad or malicious application of good science.
i trust independent scientists and a scientific consensus. but that does not imply that all use of that science is good. what's happening in the industry is often not good as they use science to further their own goals and not in the interest of society
In my experience bread makes me feel tired and anxious. Do I really need science to tell me that I should or shouldn’t eat bread? I hypothesized that bread is making me feel like crap and have confirmed it many times. I don’t believe there is a local bread scientist in my small town so I’m just going to go with my gut on this one.
Large multi-national profit-focused companies are responsible for your food. (To be more precise, something like 60% of calories consumed by western nations is produced by a small number of international companies... I think my point is clear enough.)
Their overriding goal is to make money. It is not to make healthy food.
They do not comprehensively test new ultra-processed ingredients before using them in foods. This is partly why there is a cycle of "oh no, X is bad for you" and "don't worry, we can fix all of this by using Y" and "oh no, Y is bad for you". The test is live, on everyone, happening right now.
There are no general regulations preventing them to do whatever it takes to reduce the cost of "food", so long as they are not obviously killing people. There are many "slightly bad" side effects of this that will pass unnoticed until investigated with great effort and cost.
That's what this review is.
You are finding out now, after the fact.
Don't misjudge the cause though. It's not the ingredients. It's the system that underpins the entire (food) industry.
Some medications are also human carcinogens but tend to only be accessible through a doctor where the benefits are thought to outweigh the risks in a professional capacity. It's not like you can just go out and buy a box of azathioprine because you feel like your immune system is being a bit overdramatic lately.
According to the WHO, there is increasing evidence that aspartame may be carcinogenic, a sweetener which has been on the market for decades at this point. Here in the UK even, government interventions to reduce sugar in products have even encouraged manufacturers to include this in even more products.
The real problem is that discovering health risks is a hard problem which often don't appear for decades.
As opposed to the medical industry which has the health of the consumers at it's heart. Which is manifest that so few medical companies have been issued multimillion fines for malpractice. Like we see so few companies like GlaxoSmithKline and Phizer having record breaking fines levied against them. I mean GSK didn't get a whopping 3 billion fine or something. Hmm, you know what. I think you have convinced me. Thank you.
A mostly plant based Whole Foods diet with small amounts of fish.
There’s a whole lot of nonsense that food industry scientists will try and spread to confuse the issue but the science is pretty clear on this.
Lately we also have a whole class of “influencers” who jump onto the latest trend because they can make hundreds of millions selling supplements.
Finally, there’s also a class of doctors, who are driven heavily by anecdotes and ignore the actual science. Doctors are not scientists people. For one thing, doctors, almost by definition in the minds of most people, deal with people who are sick. For another they deal almost entirely with anecdotes. Unfortunately a lot of doctors let these anecdotes and a few cases of possible genuine anomalies due to allergies, etc drive their opinions about nutrition which isn’t based on actual science.
I miss the fat and salt manifestos of the old days. And by miss I mean, those that explain how fat and salt is actually needed and sugar, milk, and wheat not so much.
* Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review of epidemiological meta-analyses (2024): https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/384/bmj-2023-077310.full.pdf
* New study finds poor diet kills more people globally than tobacco and high blood pressure(2019): https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/newsroom/news-release...
* Health effects of dietary risks in 195 countries, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 (2019): https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2819...
* Processing the evidence to evaluate mechanisms, costs and future solutions (editorial, 2023): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/nbu.12623
* Speed limits: the effects of industrial food processing and food texture on daily energy intake and eating behaviour in healthy adults (2023): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-023-03202-z
* Ultra-processed foods and food additives in gut health and disease (2024): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41575-024-00893-5
I eagerly await your sparkling insights on the subject.
I do love how you assumed I was talking about you in my reply, though. Sounds like something you should work on.
Good day.
Good day.
Processed food is mostly junk food. How does this approach account for that? They don't control for junk food (at least not mentioned in the abstract).
Noone would argue that junk food is bad for you and if 90% of UPF is junk food then please spare me the article.
For a good study shouldn't you have an index of "hypothetical healthiness" and have two groups (Proccessed and non-processed) that are the same in "hypothetical healthiness" and see the results?
This shows that junk food == bad and not processed == bad imo.
The point of the classification is to give people a simple rule of thumb on what to eat. It’s much easier to understand “avoid processed foods” than the hundred factors that go into a good diet. In other words processed food is a classification system the same way junk food is, but more rigorously defined.