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Comment by akira2501 | Hacker News Reader

It's an example list. It's not exhaustive nor is it exclusive. The hint is in the paragraph preceeding that section:

"Ultra-processed foods are industrial formulations made entirely or mostly from substances extracted from foods (oils, fats, sugar, starch, and proteins), derived from food constituents (hydrogenated fats and modified starch)"

> Haagen Dazs vanilla at Walgreens with only "cream, milk, eggs, sugar and vanilla."

Yes, that's an "ice cream" according to the FDA. The problem is the definition is so loose that any product with 10% milkfat or milkfat solids can be called ice cream. Which means that "ice cream" may or may not be highly processed.

You'll need to examine the ingredients to know. Which is why Ben & Jerry's can't call themselves "all natural" anymore, because, they happily include many more industrial ingredients over your Hagen Dazz.

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If the list contains preparations like ice cream and fruit-sweetened yogurt that have been made for centuries in non-industrial kitchens, perhaps the list is not only non-exhaustive, but it's also just not a very good list? Perhaps it should actually quantify the industrial ingredients or preparations that are problematic and evidence of the "ultra" in ultra-processed, rather than just wave its hands towards extracts or derived ingredients and include foods that are easily made at home (albeit in a time-consuming way)?

The only ingredients in Ben & Jerry's vanilla ice cream that aren't in Haagen Dazs are guar gum (which is a ground bean, and natural enough to be sold in a bag for your kitchen by Bob's Red Mill) and carageenan, which sure, can be considered a derived ingredient but is ultimately derived from seaweed and is almost certainly not the cause of any health issues. Those thickeners are a far cry from industrial concoctions like hydrogenated oils.

I mean, canned soups are on the list an ultra-processed food. Oh no!! I assure you we're not suffering a health crisis due to canned soups in the generic. It's all nonsense.

> it should actually quantify the industrial ingredients or preparations

As I pointed out it does.

> Ben & Jerry's vanilla ice cream

They make more than vanilla ice cream I presume.

> canned soups are on the list an ultra-processed food

Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup Ingredients:

"Chicken Stock, Enriched Egg Noodles (Wheat Flour, Eggs, Niacin, Ferrous Sulfate, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Chicken Meat, Contains Less Than 2% Of: Salt, Chicken Fat, Water, Monosodium Glutamate, Cornstarch, Modified Cornstarch, Natural Flavoring, Dried Chicken Broth, Sugar, Beta Carotene For Color, Onion Powder, Soy Protein Isolate, Sodium Phosphate, Yeast Extract, Dried Chicken, Garlic Extract."

This does not seem 'ultra-processed' to you? It even has MSG in it.

> It's all nonsense.

It's a guideline. You need to do the work and read the labels yourself. I cannot hand you a list of anything other than "whole foods" an expect it to be useful or accurate. I can give you a guide which may highlight some previously unexpected categories of food which you should now know to inspect carefully before assuming they aren't ultra processed.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Good luck with nuance here. Nutrition is challenging precisely because it isn't 1s and 0s, and the pedantry brigade struggles with that. Is one tub of Ben & Jerry's gonna kill you? No. Is it good for you? No. UPFs are a spectrum, and I don't see why folks here get so offended by the idea that maybe the healthiness of foods falls along a spectrum. The knee-jerk reactionary negativity is fascinating, but like... in a sad way. It's hard not to read it as the same anti-intellectualism that seems to permeate the more... persuadable parts of the tech community. "Scientists say UPFs are bad. Scientists are wrong. Therefore, UPFs are good, actually." It explains why there's so much anti-vax nonsense here (watch, my comment probably won't even get posted). Sad.

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