Ultra-processed food

[shpalman]

The Guardian links to the study which shows that people who eat more tend to become obese and obesity is linked to negative health outcomes or maybe it really is the case that not being able to recognise the ingredient makes it worse for you.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C4SwShToJsn/

We all know that all natural things are good, apart from palm oil of course, but chemicals are bad.

https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-077310

I'm willing to accept that certain ways of processing food may make the calories more accessible to your digestive system than they naturally would be.

[Grumble]

I'm willing to accept that certain ways of processing food may make the calories more accessible to your digestive system than they naturally would be.

Like cooking, for example?

[science_fox]

The biggest issue is that UPF is a vaguely worded term that incorporates foods the author dislikes and excludes those they like with little consistency and indeed great variability between commentators. Bread is merely one contentious example.

The whole thing is a ridiculous fad, that's probably made someone rich, and will die out by next year like all of these diets.

[bob sterman]

I notice that the Nova Food Classification system mentioned in that BMJ article - notes that one distinction between "processed foods" and "ultra-processed foods" is that the former are processed using "artisanal" methods while the later are processed using "industrial" methods.

Basically, if it would look good in a photo spread in the Observer Sunday magazine, it's going to be better for you than if you would find it on a shelf above a freezer in Iceland.

[IvanV]

Our favourite source has a discussion as to whether UPF is a meaningful concept. The definitions mostly follow Monteiro (2009). This has been criticised as lacking a clear distinction. Monteiro argues that the difference between ultra-processed and lightly processed is generally large enough that it is mostly clear whether something is or not. He and others have subsequently done a lot of work operationalising the definition.

In summary, what goes on in some food factories in terms of processing techniques and ingredient selection is so far from what goes on in anyone's kitchen, including Heston Blumenthal's, that most of the time there is no comparison.

[hakwright]

The biggest issue is that UPF is a vaguely worded term that incorporates foods the author dislikes and excludes those they like with little consistency and indeed great variability between commentators. Bread is merely one contentious example.

The whole thing is a ridiculous fad, that's probably made someone rich, and will die out by next year like all of these diets.

Very much this. The NOVA group definitions are fuzzy and inconsistent and, as other articles have pointed out, are not created from a nutritional or scientific basis - they are created from a social/cultural/political basis. I fear it may take a few years for the UPF fad to fade, but let's hope it is heading that way.

There are endless discussions on social media about whether item X is UPF or not. And even reading the NOVA doc carefully, there are many grey areas. There are long lists of ingredients that are "indicative" of UPF food, but it doesn't explicitly say if it contains X it is UPF. I wonder how well the UPF classification decisions made in different scientific studies would agree with each other?

To make any progress, the science has to move away from trying to find causal links between the "UPF foods category" and health - because the category encompasses a massive number of very different foods (e.g. golden syrup, marmite, red Leicester cheese, early grey tea - all UPF, so these must be as bad for you as chicken or veggie nuggets pumped full of preservatives, flavour enhancers, emulsifiers etc, right?).

It would be much more sensible to focus on individual additives, and try to understand any associated health risks - rather than studying a group of foods that may contain any number of those additives (or just one) and in hugely varying amounts.

[dyqik]

Golden syrup is UPF?

I can make it at home from two ingredients in a couple of hours, almost all hands off.

It's just white sugar plus an acid (lemon juice will do) dissolved in a little water and heated to 240°F for two hours.

Tea is leaves fermented and dried.

Red leicester is just milk left to culture, with a bit of cow stomach juice and annatto seed added, and then pressed. It doesn't even have to be pasteurized milk.

[shpalman]

Screenshot_2024-03-11_14-49-47.png (231.19 KiB) Viewed 784 times

Clearly the problem is not being able to recognise ingredients. Previously it was ingredients you can't pronounce.

Maybe if you don't know what it is, your body can't digest it properly, and the key is to shove this Guardian Instagram post up your arse so that your gut can learn directly.

[IvanV]

Golden syrup is UPF?

I can make it at home from two ingredients in a couple of hours, almost all hands off.

It's just white sugar plus an acid (lemon juice will do) dissolved in a little water and heated to 240°F for two hours.

But that is not how the stuff you buy is made. Commercially the sugar is inverted with the enzyme invertase, which enables the inversion to happen at 50C, and hence less energy intensive. And HCl would be used rather than lemon juice.

Tea is leaves fermented and dried.

Red leicester is just milk left to culture, with a bit of cow stomach juice and annatto seed added, and then pressed. It doesn't even have to be pasteurized milk.

I was a bit confused by these. I suspect the problem lies with the journalists.

My suspicion is someone took some list of specific commercial products that are categorised UPF, saw there was something called Earl Grey Tea on it, and something called Red Leicester cheese on it, and they read these and then cited them as if they applied to everything of these names.

I would suspect the cheese was some processed cheese, which you can probably call red Leicester as it is an unprotected name. Similarly Earl Grey is an unprotected name. Maybe it isn't even tea leaves in the specific one that was identified as a UPF, but some powder mix. Or a bottled Earl Grey flavour "iced tea".

[dyqik]

Golden syrup is UPF?

I can make it at home from two ingredients in a couple of hours, almost all hands off.

It's just white sugar plus an acid (lemon juice will do) dissolved in a little water and heated to 240°F for two hours.

But that is not how the stuff you buy is made. Commercially the sugar is inverted with the enzyme invertase, which enables the inversion to happen at 50C, and hence less energy intensive. And HCl would be used rather than lemon juice.

I actually use lactic acid, since I have it. Golden syrup still has to be heated enough for maillard reactions to turn it a golden color - without that, you get Brewer's Invert #1 rather than Invert #2, which is basically golden syrup. I'm usually making Invert #3.

[Sciolus]

I saw an advert today saying don't buy those other highly-processed supplements, buy our all-natural vitamins instead. So clearly the marketers are well on with this fad.

[hakwright]

Golden syrup is UPF?

I can make it at home from two ingredients in a couple of hours, almost all hands off.

It's just white sugar plus an acid (lemon juice will do) dissolved in a little water and heated to 240°F for two hours.

Tea is leaves fermented and dried.

Red leicester is just milk left to culture, with a bit of cow stomach juice and annatto seed added, and then pressed. It doesn't even have to be pasteurized milk.

The classifications may seem surprising - and to me these are great examples of why the NOVA definitions are nuts - but yes, these are UPF. Items containing invert sugar (e.g. golden syrup), flavouring (e.g. earl grey tea) or colouring (e.g. red leicester cheese) will be UPF. You can use the Open Food Facts website to search and check items. It's not absolutely infallible, but it's accurate most of the time (and you can add/edit to improve the info).

UPF food items, according to NOVA, are identified by the ingredients they contain (colouring, flavouring, preservatives, emulsifiers etc), rather than the specific processes they have gone through. Although the UPF-making ingredients they identify are supposed to be "food substances of no or rare culinary use", and are supposed to be almost exclusively used in industrial processes, they still end up classifying things like golden syrup and marmite as UPF. The NOVA system needs a radical rethink - or perhaps it should just be ditched.

The main NOVA doc is https://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf for those who want to see how they define UPF.

[dyqik]

Most traditional British bitters have invert syrup in them, by the way.

[Chris Preston]

The nutritional value of food will be based on the amount and range of nutrients present, not on how the food is made. Astronauts seem to get by OK on their ultraprocessed food for example, but that is because it is developed with balanced nutrition in mind.

To simply declare artisanal preparation is good, but ultraprocessing is bad. I can easily whip up a dish full of fat and sugar in my kitchen (it is called cheesecake by the way) that is arguably a worse staple than what you can but in the processed food section of the supermarket.

[bob sterman]

To simply declare artisanal preparation is good, but ultraprocessing is bad. I can easily whip up a dish full of fat and sugar in my kitchen (it is called cheesecake by the way) that is arguably a worse staple than what you can but in the processed food section of the supermarket.

Indeed - one of the NOVA classification reports notes that even artisanally processed foods can become "nutritionally unbalanced" - which is exactly what makes them so tasty!!

[hakwright]

The nutritional value of food will be based on the amount and range of nutrients present, not on how the food is made. Astronauts seem to get by OK on their ultraprocessed food for example, but that is because it is developed with balanced nutrition in mind.

To simply declare artisanal preparation is good, but ultraprocessing is bad. I can easily whip up a dish full of fat and sugar in my kitchen (it is called cheesecake by the way) that is arguably a worse staple than what you can but in the processed food section of the supermarket.

It is often assumed that UPF items will typically have poor nutritional content, and non-UPF items will typically have better nutritional value, but this is not the case. And it was never the intention of the NOVA UPF definitions to categorise foods based on nutrition. It's a categorisation based on social/political values.

This is why studies hoping to show that all UPF foods are bad for your health tend to fail. Some UPF foods are bad for you, some are fine (just like non-UPF foods. Surprise!). And as you point out, it's very easy to have a "UPF free diet" that would be incredibly unhealthy (deep fry everything in lard, drown it in honey, over-season it with salt and you're well on the way...)

[IvanV]

The main NOVA doc is https://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf for those who want to see how they define UPF.

This says that Group 3 - processed foods, which are not ultra-processed - includes

freshly made unpackaged breads and cheeses

The implication is that the main thing that makes a block of cheese "ultra-processed" is the fact of sealing it in a long-life package. Which seems a pretty silly distinction to make. Often you can get exactly the same cheese both cut off a block at the counter, and in a sealed package. The former can last a long time in your cheese box in the fridge too.

When we read their list of typical ultra-processed foods, quoted below, we can recognise these as largely different from what you might cook in a kitchen. They seem to have gone badly wrong near the boundaries of the categories.

Many ready-to-consume products such as carbonated soft drinks; sweet or savoury packaged snacks; chocolate, candies (confectionery); ice-cream; mass-produced packaged breads and buns; margarines and other spreads; cookies (biscuits), pastries, cakes, and cake mixes; breakfast ‘cereals’, ‘cereal’ and ‘energy’ bars; ‘energy’ drinks; milk drinks, ‘fruit’ yoghurts and ‘fruit’ drinks; ‘cocoa’ drinks; ‘instant’ sauces.

Many pre-prepared ready-to-heat products including pies and pasta and pizza dishes; poultry and fish ‘nuggets’ and ‘sticks’, sausages, burgers, hot dogs, and other reconstituted meat products; and powdered and packaged ‘instant’ soups, noodles and desserts.

Infant formulas, follow-on milks, other baby products; ‘health’ and ‘slimming’ products such as meal replacement shakes and powders.

[Chris Preston]

When we read their list of typical ultra-processed foods, quoted below, we can recognise these as largely different from what you might cook in a kitchen. They seem to have gone badly wrong near the boundaries of the categories.

Many ready-to-consume products such as carbonated soft drinks; sweet or savoury packaged snacks; chocolate, candies (confectionery); ice-cream; mass-produced packaged breads and buns; margarines and other spreads; cookies (biscuits), pastries, cakes, and cake mixes; breakfast ‘cereals’, ‘cereal’ and ‘energy’ bars; ‘energy’ drinks; milk drinks, ‘fruit’ yoghurts and ‘fruit’ drinks; ‘cocoa’ drinks; ‘instant’ sauces.

Many pre-prepared ready-to-heat products including pies and pasta and pizza dishes; poultry and fish ‘nuggets’ and ‘sticks’, sausages, burgers, hot dogs, and other reconstituted meat products; and powdered and packaged ‘instant’ soups, noodles and desserts.

Infant formulas, follow-on milks, other baby products; ‘health’ and ‘slimming’ products such as meal replacement shakes and powders.

I make pies, pasta, and pizza in my kitchen from scratch (well not the pasta itself now, although I have done). Once they become leftovers in the fridge, they are basically ready to heat products. I have also made ice cream, cakes and cookies. In nutritional terms, my home made items might be slightly in front, but I doubt there is a whole lot in it. This distinction strikes me as more snobbery than anything else.

There are a few things that I refuse to make from scratch, because they take so much time and the product I make is inferior. Puff pastry is one of those as are tortillas, soy sauce, worcestershire sauce, yoghurt, I am known to use canned beans as an ingredient, and there are others. This list used to be longer, but Mrs P is known to intervene. For example, I am now required to make my own breadcrumbs from bread, rather then get them in a packet, because when once we ran out of breadcrumbs I made some to use and Mrs P thinks they taste better. I have developed a new rod for my back as Mrs P purchased extra sour cream last week (yet another processed item I buy) rather than the required salsa, so I made some salsa. I am now getting a small amount of nagging that the salsa I made is tastier than the bought stuff.

I think the trouble with their definition is that it has nothing to do with nutrition, but is entirely about how products are made.

[bjn]

I thought an issue with food is the structure of it, regardless of the nutrients. So you can eat an orange, or put it in a blender and drink the contents. Eating the unprocessed orange slows down absorption of the nutrients, especially sugars, and the coarse fibre is good for your guts. Drinking the blended equivalent is much easier to digest, you have no coarse fibre and get a blood sugar spike. All from the same thing.

Yes, we do cook vegetables so we can eat them in the first place, but too much of a good thing and all that.

I can’t find the reference to this, but I read/heard it somewhere reputable.

[kerrya1]

I thought an issue with food is the structure of it, regardless of the nutrients. So you can eat an orange, or put it in a blender and drink the contents. Eating the unprocessed orange slows down absorption of the nutrients, especially sugars, and the coarse fibre is good for your guts. Drinking the blended equivalent is much easier to digest, you have no coarse fibre and get a blood sugar spike. All from the same thing.

Yes, we do cook vegetables so we can eat them in the first place, but too much of a good thing and all that.

I can’t find the reference to this, but I read/heard it somewhere reputable.

Isn't this the reason that juices, smoothies, etc only count as one of your "5-a-day" regardless of how much of it you drink? I've been largely ignoring the whole UPF debate as yet more poorly defined, poorly evidenced, food snobbery that ignores entirely the complexities of how people access and consume food today.

I'm fortunate to have the time and money to make my own bread most of the time (strong flour, yeast, salt, water, and a splash of sunflower or olive oil), if I don't then I buy it from the local "artisanal" bakery which uses the same five ingredients - they just have a bigger mixer and oven.

I make much of our food from scratch, but I also work and have other responsibilites and sometimes I just can't be arsed so I buy a jar of pasta sauce and mixed it through some dried pasta from the supermarket, as do most of the families I know.

The only way I could achieve anything close to a UPF free diet for my family would be to give up work and become a stay at home Mum which I don't want to do and can't afford to do. Yet, I'm seeing more and more discussions in Mums groups with Mum's worrying about how they are feeding their kids, and if they need to start making their own chicken nuggets and baked beans in case this once a week easy meal is setting them up for a lifetime of ill health.

The whole thing just seems like another stick to beat people with when so many are already struggling just to afford the basics right now.

Sorry, that's become a bit of a rant.

[shpalman]

I thought an issue with food is the structure of it, regardless of the nutrients. So you can eat an orange, or put it in a blender and drink the contents. Eating the unprocessed orange slows down absorption of the nutrients, especially sugars, and the coarse fibre is good for your guts. Drinking the blended equivalent is much easier to digest, you have no coarse fibre and get a blood sugar spike. All from the same thing.

Yes, we do cook vegetables so we can eat them in the first place, but too much of a good thing and all that.

I can’t find the reference to this, but I read/heard it somewhere reputable.

I do think there's an element of this. It's part of why "added sugar" is a thing, as compared to fruit which is full of sugar anyway which doesn't seem to have the same effect.

But bear in mind that the calorie count on the packet is based on what the food is composed of, and the simple conversion factors of 4 cal/g for carbohydrate (minus the indigestible fibre) and protein, and 9 cal/g fat. It doesn't really take into account anything about bioavailability or digestibility beyond whether the carbohydrate is sugar/starch or fibre.

So it's possible that the processing changes these factors.

An example would actually be Chris's pasta left in the fridge to be eaten the next day: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29629761

In this case, the starch molecules line up together at fridge temperatures and even if you reheat the pasta, the starch is going to behave a bit more like fibre, which is good.

It works with rice too: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26693746/

Usual warning about not leaving cooked rice or pasta at room temperature: https://youtu.be/5ujTYLV2Qo4

[shpalman]

The other thing is that I just don't take seriously anything which says "people are getting more overweight and more obese despite not actually eating more" if it's based on self reporting. There's a reason that keeping a food diary seemed to actually be the single best intervention for moderate amounts of overweightisity. When people do actually report what they're eating, it turns out they've been eating more than they thought they were.

It's a bit like when the finance police show up in the nightlife district of Milan and suddenly all the bars report higher takings for that evening...

[shpalman]

... I'm fortunate to have the time and money to make my own bread most of the time (strong flour, yeast, salt, water, and a splash of sunflower or olive oil), if I don't then I buy it from the local "artisanal" bakery which uses the same five ingredients - they just have a bigger mixer and oven...

The packaged sliced supermarket own-brand bread I buy also only has those ingredients, but is "treated with ethanol" and that's maybe why it lasts for ages without getting either stale or mouldy in a way which fresh bread usually doesn't.* So yay for the ultraprocessing, leading to less food waste and a generally more pleasant experience all round.

* - no, I am not interested in freezing and reheating bread. I note the fresh bread from the supermarket says on the bag "you can freeze it" but what it doesn't say is that you can't defrost it without it being terrible.

[Boustrophedon]

Most of the burger rolls sold in Tesco seem to have added sugar, up to 8g per roll or 10g/100g.

Now in terms of carbohydrate it makes little difference, in terms of blood glucose spike it makes a lot.

[Boustrophedon]

Tonight I am cooking processing home made pizza. I shall be using ground wheat, pressed olive oil, pureed and cooked tomatoes and fermented cows' milk.
And fish fingers.

So ultra processed?

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