I'd guess they wanted to include store purchased bread, hence the pb&j.
The other thought i had was that most peanut butter includes (at least) palm oil (ultra processed) and sometimes other emulsifiers to prevent separation. Though you can buy pb that is just peanut and salt.
The jelly would contain quite a bit more in the way of preservatives, regulators and flavour enhancers etc than the jelly i'd make at home (if i did such a thing)
I'd guess it's just regular cheese which does require quite some processing to make but unless it's got extra additives to extend shelf life, change texture or taste it's just processed.
And at least in America, most commonly-bought peanut butter has additives, and most store-bought bread has 40 different UPF ingredients. Even the jelly will often have “natural flavors” (intentional scare quotes) and pectin.
It’s possible to have a non-UPF peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I might have one today! It’s just that the default options for most Americans contain a ton of crazy ingredients.
Depending on the cheese you buy, many are very simple, and rarely have weird additives. But if you buy a block of cheese or even usually the sandwich-sized slices, it’s not ultra-processed.
So if you add enzymes that completely change the characteristics of the food (aka "industrial reformulation") that's perfectly fine but you add an emulsifier to improve the mouthfeel and texture now it's suddenly a "ultra processed" food and is pure evil and should be regulated like cigarettes? Now it has "crazy ingredients" and "weird additives"? I'm sorry but this stance is totally and completely illogical. You aren't going to convince me that this makes any sense.
>Even the jelly will often have “natural flavors” (intentional scare quotes) and pectin.
For fucks sake, jelly requires pectin to be jelly. Sure, you can rely on the naturally occuring pectin in fruit, but adding additional pectin makes it so you have a consistent product and can add less sugar and don't have to cook it as long - aka healthier and less processed.
I don't really have a horse in this race, I found the picture of the "highly processed meal" gross on a visceral level, I just hate the illogically of it all. This is a religious belief.
Type any enzyme or emulsifier off an ingredient list into Google and you can easily find a study about its health impact.
>including the study linked in this HN submission
This study proves absolutely nothing - the participants were not blinded to what they were consuming (and presumably could consume it at any speed/order). We already know how you perceive a food will effect hormones/biological response [1].
Avoid any food additives that you want; you just won't convince me 1) this framework is something logical or 2) cheese is a minimally processed food.
There is research for a lot of additives, but many have limited evidence or small studies that aren’t replicated. Usually the result is either “it doesn’t affect health either way” or “it is negative to health”. Very rarely is there an ultra processed ingredient with a large body of science that says “we should eat more of this specific thing, it has a positive effect on longevity!”. And if we do, it’s usually medicine rather than a food additive, which due to being heavily researched and tailored to individuals, prescription medications are healthy (obviously). But these aren’t that…
So I think you have to stretch your reasoning that the practice as a whole is probably negative, but I feel like I’ve personally seen enough negatives of certain UPF that I limit my intake whenever reasonably possible.
Obviously having small amounts isn’t going to be horrible but they’re in everything now
Why are they bad? What do emulsifiers do? They combine substances that don't want to be combined. What in your body might this affect? Your mucosal lining. Emulsifiers don't break down in your gut as they pass through. They just emulsify everything as they move through. Including your mucus. That layer is extremely important for a normally functioning gut. Lose it and then chime will contact the gut lining. This disrupts the microbiota and allows things to get through your gut that are not supposed to. It causes inflammation.
UPFs contain many bad things, but they HAVE to be categorized to fully appreciate the levels of badness. Some things are just not that big of deal, and the "health industry" does everyone a disservice by not clarifying it.
from bad to not as bad:
- Emulsifiers (e.g., Polysorbate 80/60/40, carboxymethylcellulose)
- some stabilizers/thickeners (e.g., carrageenan)
- artificial sweeteners
- refined sugars
- artificial colors/cosmetics
- other stabilizers/thickeners/emulsifiers (e.g., xanthan gum, guar gum, pectin, cellulose, lecithin)
By contrast cheese is completely natural outside of a few exceptions like American cheese. You take milk, add something to curdle it like an acid (e.g. vinegar) or rennet - an enzyme obtained from the stomach of young calves, separate the coagulated stuff, salt it, dry it, age it - you now have cheese. Ricotta can even be made straight from raw milk with no additives. Cheese's long shelf life is natural.
Peanut oil is commonly used for all kinds of frying. It's hilarious that you're trying to lecture people without knowing this basic fact.
False, peanuts contain their own oil. Nothing needs to be added, not even salt.
Anything containing more than peanuts and salt should be referred to as something else, like peanut spread.
Depends on how you make it - it's definitely trickier at home to get a creamy texture without extra oil, but with the right machine (i.e. peanut butter maker) it comes out smooth with just peanuts (and salt if you like); some wholefoods shops have the machine where you can make it yourself.
Many store-bought peanut butters use oil as an additive as the peanut oil is more expensive, so they remove that to sell as peanut oil, and replace it with cheaper oils