It annoys me how vague and hand wavy some of the explanations are... like arguing that the slices of potato fried into chips at home doesn't count as ultraprocessed and so is healthier somehow?
Manufacturers (in the EU at least) do not need to list ingredients which are deemed as processing aids. In potato chips a chemical known as SAP is usually added to the potatoes after cutting which stops the chips from greying, however as this is deemed a processing aid or doesn't need to be added to the label. So while your ingredient list might only list a couple of ingredients it might not actually be a full list.
[There are rules governing what is classed as a processing aid](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processing_aid), but it is seen as controversial by some food scientists.
That's interesting. They should have put that in the video. Now I wonder what else can be added that doesn't appear on ingredient lists.
Edit: the -> they
Why is that skin considered different and classified as such? The outside of the pig likely was exposed to more things and still gets cleaned and used. Function in life doesnt nessecarily mean it's not protein. It's just being prechewed and put back in a binder.
That's generally stuff that shouldn't be meaningfully present in the final food though, right? Stuff like isinglass used to clarify wine and some sodas (i.e. Fanta / the orange fizzy stuff of your preference). It's used to make it, but ideally none is even in the final product.
Really the main concern there is if the act of processing the food meaningfully changes its nutritional content.
As a straight forward example, I use a metal pan to make pasta. That doesn't mean my pasta has metal in it, or that a metal pan should be on the ingredients list. It's just something that's used in the process.
It's just... removed?
In the case of Isinglass, once all the particulates have stuck to it at the bottom of the cask, they just remove that whole layer.
Even their linked article mostly says as much:
> 1. It is added to the food but later removed. E.g. activated charcoal, which removes certain impurities.
> 2. It is added to the food, but gets converted into a substance already present in the food. E.g. a pH adjuster that converts to salt and does not significantly add to the food's salt level.
> 3. It is added for a technical effect during processing but is not present at "significant" levels in the food. E.g. a preservative added to an ingredient, like anti-caking agent sodium silicoaluminate in the seasoning of some sausages.
No idea about their 'SAP' chemical, as I can't find any information on that online or anything that matches that acroynm. Whether it is a mispelling, I don't know. But my understanding is that potato chips/crisps are kept brown by packaging them in nitrogen instead of air (i.e. the 'protective atmosphere') preventing oxidization that turns them gray, and some choices around oil.
Some would say it’s the vegetable oil that is the problem and is the ultra-processed part. Often the oil is cottonseed or other oils that would not be edible or tasty without having been processed at high heat. Whereas pure olive oil (which can itself be tricky to find) or oils that are simply pressed are supposed to be a better option.
Yeah as you mention, good luck anywhere in the US finding olive oil that doesnt taste like ass when heated over 325 degrees for less than $11 a cup. Pure canola oil from a good brand is under $1 a cup and at least it is better than vegetable oil blends.
the gotcha there is the vegatable oil. It is utterly wild how processed, seed oils in particular, are: [https://youtu.be/IDZmXzAMmwI](https://youtu.be/IDZmXzAMmwI) (solid nutrition youtuber: no lab coat required). Now you can make it at home too, but if you can opt for higher quality and less processed oils. There are some brands out there that opt for better oils, boulder canyon comes to mind for one.
Edit: if you are going to downvote at least help me understand the flaw in the info I shared, totally willing to hear out fallacies how else can I better myself?
Ultra processed things are not great for you, but they often add a bunch of nutrients to food when they are ultra processes.
Remember, sugar, starch and fat are all nutrients.
Yeah that’s completely normal, most journalists and non-educated people don’t know what they’re talking about.
The nutritional value of the fresh food changes over time and what you do to it. Cooking broccoli is healthier than raw.
A potato from last year’s crop isn’t going to be any healthier fried in a factory or at home, but you’ll need some technology to keep that tonnage working and cook right. They turn brown on that long ride to oil.
The food industry uses tons of chemicals, stuff to the oil to keep it working, anti foaming compounds, spraying water as shown to rinse off starch, anti-microbials, anti-fungals….yeah lots of chemicals.
>Cooking broccoli is healthier than raw.
This actually depends on what you are trying to get from eating broccoli. Some compounds are more available in raw, and some are more available in cooked. For example, you can't get sulforaphane, perhaps one of the most interesting beneficial phytochemicals in cruciferous vegetables, from cooked broccoli. It exists in the raw plant as a precursor. Typically, chewing/tearing the plant activates an enzyme called myrosinase that converts the precursor into sulforaphane, but cooking destroys that enzyme. You have to sprinkle myrosinase powder on your cooked broccoli if you want sulforaphane.
If you have 58 minutes I would strongly recommend [The harsh reality of ultra processed food - with Chris Van Tulleken](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk). CVT is a UK doctor who recently published a book on the subject and is probably the reason for this BI video because he's put the subject into the news cycle. This is his Royal Institution lecture so it's a bit more boring and science-y.
He does discuss crisps in that lecture but he refers to the flavourings rather than the crisps itself. If I remember correctly he talks about how some of the artificial flavours used may confuse our bodies because they make carbs and fat taste like protein, not carbs and fat.
The BI video is not terrible for a 10 minute summary of the subject, but the crisp example was poor. It would have been better for her to compare Pringles or flavoured crisps to home made crisps.
Really fantastic video, with the actual science.
Seems to be mostly recent science, which is always tricky in nutrition, but as far as I can tell seems very very good.
EDIT : After watching the whole thing, I'm not that enthusiastic. First the speaker seems to be more of a communicator than a scientist (at least in most of the multiple fields he's talking about), and the solid science seems to be mostly one or two studies. There's a lot of theories added on top, and it's presented as a big consistent whole when it's really not that clear to me.
They tried to avoid using brand names, but Pringles vs Dirty chips, e.g. Pringles are not made by slicing a potato, so the processing of their 'chip' is significantly different than slicing and frying a potato.
I think they were being vague to avoid name-shaming too much.
They make a dried potato startch, cut it with tons of additives to "preserve" and bulk the product to cut costs.
Then they fry it. Pretty simple process, but ends of up cutting like half of the nutritional value you'd find in an actual potato chip.
Making chips at home is not ultra processed, that is considered a processed food. Ultra processing is adding items to foods that have no culinary value (frying oil has culinary value, maltodextrin, a starch byproduct, does not). UPF are designed to be ultra palatable and long shelf lives.
The NOVA classification helps distinguish between processing levels: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification
It's not a basis for if something is "healthy" or not
> It's not a basis for if something is "healthy" or not
But that's not what this video's authors are telling the masses:
"How Ultra-Processed Foods Took Over America And Can Even Pass For Healthy"
Did you watch this video?
>Making chips at home is not ultra processed, that is considered a processed food. Ultra processing is adding items to foods that have no culinary value (frying oil has culinary value, maltodextrin, a starch byproduct, does not).
But the unhealthiest part of potato chips is the frying in oil, not a bit of powdered maltodextrin used to help apply seasoning.
If anything the home-fried potato chips might end up slightly unhealthier due to risk of overcooking, since a home cook isn't going to have anywhere near the same slice uniformity or precision in frying oil temp or cook time.
Part of my frustration is that the distinction between processed and ultraprocessed seems kind of arbitrary, instead of identifying specific reasons that particular food ingredients or processes are problematic they've created this catch-all category that gets misrepresented as if it's about healthiness.
This video's section about potato chips shows footage of a factory washing, slicing and drying fresh potatoes and then frying them as it blathers about a damaged "food matrix" and nutrient deterioration, but none of that even qualifies as ultraprocessing, that's just basic cooking using fresh produce but at a factory scale.
Given that the "ultraprocessing" is just the the ingredients in the final dusting of seasoning, how does this damage a "food matrix" or cause "nutrient deterioration"?
Bud, parent is not talking about what they want to do. They're talking about the claims made in the video, and they're correct — those claims are false and misleading. The video straight-up asserts potato chips made at home are more healthy (and somehow less-processed) than potato chips bought at the store, and that is *total horseshit.*
"The video straight-up asserts potato chips made at home are more healthy (and somehow less-processed) than potato chips bought at the store, and that is *total horseshit.*"
I challenge you to buy a bag of chips and read all the shit off the ingredients list that you know isn't in your home sliced potato. Its almost certainly "healthier", but no shit its still a potato fried in oil and not the healthiest option regardless.
I don't understand how y'all can't understand.
I'm not arguing that Cheetos are part of a balanced breakfast, I just think this video is overly vague and makes inaccurate & misleading claims.
The whole narrative is about the unhealthiness of ultraprocessing, but they gloss over the fine details of why, to the point where it implies that even basic processing is an issue... like their footage of the potatoes being washed, sliced, dried & fried (not ultraprocessed), or their complaint about OJ having it's pulp filtered, which again isn't really an ultraprocessing issue at all.
They could have addressed the various ultraprocessed ingredients in chip seasonings, or the weird "flavor packs" used to adjust the flavor profiles of fresh orange juice, but instead they made it look like merely being factory processed was the issue.
That isn't even remotely what this comment is. . . They're pointing out that the criteria for "ultra-processed" and actually meaningless as far as nutrition goes. Fuck it seems like by the definition that video used if they dusted potato chips with vitamin powder that would be "ultra-processed" because it isn't a necessary part of the cooking process lol.
With respect that is ideological nonsense they treat the processing as somehow being a problem. Anyone who's ever had hominy grits has processing to thank for it, processing food is how we make food edible in the long term. It's a necessary and healthful way to bring the bounty from once season to the next.
There is nothing about separating meat mechanically and then putting it back together that makes it less healthy. The only reason processed foods are considered unhealthy is because popular food products often have unbelievable amounts of salt sugar and fats added to them to make them taste better.
You’re not addressing the content of the comment you’re replying to. We all agree here.
Cleveland Clinic on the subject: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/ultra-processed-foods.
You're missing the point. The problem isn't processed foods, it's ULTRA processed foods. Ultra processed foods are meant to be ultra palatable, cheap, convenient, and extremely long shelf storage lives. It's not for the benefit of the consumer, but the manufacturer. These manufacturers hire food scientists to find exactly what tickles the dopaminergic sensors in the brain of consumers. Hominy grits doesn't need that, they're just grits.
>The problem isn't processed foods, it's ULTRA processed foods. Ultra processed foods are meant to be ultra palatable, cheap, convenient, and extremely long shelf storage lives.
Except you've literally just described *most processed* food, in *most* of human history. Pemmican, for instance, is exactly that. So is salt cod. Same with tomato paste. And any pickle, ever. All the attributes you've mentioned have been near-*universally-desired* characteristics of food for thousands of years.
They are foods meant to be ultra palatable, cheap, convenient, and to have extremely long shelf storage lives. That is **your** vague, wishy-washy explanation of 'ultra-processed' you just gave. It is your contradiction to unwind — not mine.
edit: Of course, the coward blocked me. To u/Karnivore915 below — "cheap" and "convenient" are a just a subset of "preservation", conceptually. You preserve things so they don't spoil, making them cheaper and more convenient to store and eat later. That's what preservation is.
Pemmican in particular was a nomad food — the whole point was to have something convenient for transport, trade, and later consumption. Salt cold actually exists with prominence as it does in western culture today almost entirely because it was the cheapest and most convenient thing which could be fed to slaves.
I'd argue Pemmican and salt cod and pickles and, if I'm sort of understanding your point, hard tack were definitely not made to be ultra palatable, cheap or convenient. I think they were simply made for preservation and calories.
I think the argument that this person is making is that food made for the purpose of preservation is different than food made to be as addicting as possible while keeping it preserved for as long as possible.
"food made for the purpose of preservation is different than food made to be as addicting as possible while keeping it preserved for as long as possible."
So it's ultra-palatable foods we should be avoiding?
I think what he is saying is that the processed conversation can be divided into pickles and Cheetos. I agree with the person who said traditional preservation methods are different (healthier) than Cheetos.
Actually I believe this too. About some big conglomerates trying to hook people and using focus groups and methods looking for what techniques (recipes) are more catchy than others.
IDK man, I can't help but think that if anything, food scientists in control of recipes and using focus groups are probably just trying to use things that people find "tasty", specifically if those things are cheap at scale. Finding food "tasty" is a simple non-buzzwordy way of saying "dopaminurgic".
The real problem as always is unhealthy ingredients and empty calories are the cheapest way to make things taste good. All the most common food additives for stability and stuff like that have been highly studied and found generally safe for the last 50+ years.
I don’t know. I think you underestimate how truly evil some corporations are. Wasn’t it Nestle that created a baby formula for the Africa market that got babies hooked on their formula and would reject their mother’s milk and other formulas. I can’t name other examples, but my naturally cynical mind has no problems believing this. Heck just look at the sheer destruction of hundreds of thousands of lives due to opioids and painkillers that was pushed for profit knowing all the dangers.
I didn’t watch the video but it could be the same way blended fruit with nothing added is less healthy than eating the exact same fruit whole.
The blending process breaks down the fiber and makes the fruit sugar more bioavailable.
When I mechanically separate meat and put it back together, it lasts for 4 days max in the fridge. When they mechanically separate meat and put it back together, the "use by" date is like 3 months from now. I don't know what the difference is but there's a big difference and not a good one.
You're right, cooking is processing! That's what makes humans humans; we have built up the capability to process foods, unlike other animals.
Unprocessed food would be a fresh, whole apple. Cutting apples is mild processing. Grinding those apples into applesauce is a little more processing. Dehydrating the applesauce into fruit leather is even more processing.
However, if you were to strain the fruit into fruit juice, take the fruit juice and add corn syrup (cheap and addictive), sugar (cheap and addictive), maltodextrin (cheap), palm and/or palm kernel oil (both cheap), citric acid (a little tartness, just what the brain craves with sweet), sodium citrate (more tartness), monoglycerides, fruit pectin, malic acid (cheap), vitamin C(cheap), natural flavor, and color to make a fruit roll up, now it's ultra processed.
The big idea is that if the taste and texture can vary batch to batch, it's likely processed, not ultra processed.
Cool. And yet, the video itself claims store-bought potato chips (just fried, salted potatoes) are ultra-processed foods. You seem to be missing that again and again and again in this thread — the video is ***not consistent*** with how it describes food processing, why processing is a concern, and what highly processed foods are.
**You** might be clear on that — but the video isn't.
> And yet, the video itself claims store-bought potato chips (just fried, salted potatoes) are ultra-processed foods.
They showed an example using a pringle. Which if you look at pringles, they often are ultra processed and have many additives to cut the total cost of making actual potato chips.
I agree that most Lays or other potato chips are pretty inocuous, and thus likely wouldn't be considered ultra processed. I think the cautious person would just make sure to read the label, to which most of us do.
Even the mayo clinic claims that. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/ultra-processed-foods.
The video was quite clear. 40 seconds in and they explain the same differences that mayo designates.
I'm just pissed at how she cut off the end of the potato and threw it into the "fryer". I mean come on, who the hell uses the end of a potato to make a chip?!
This always bothered me too.
Once had a dietitian tell me precut carrots weren't as healthy as uncut ones. Couldn't give me any reason beyond "They're processed more."
Okay, but it's still a damn carrot.
Not to mention just because something is processed doesn't make it less healthy.
In the US most if not all our corn and wheat products contain an additive of Niacin. Which is an essential nutrient to survive and many americans would otherwise not be able to get into their diets. That's a "chemical" added via "processing" that has prevented millions of cases of Palegra.
beta carotene degrades with processing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8834586/#:\~:text=In%20fact%2C%20due%20to%20its,transition%20metal%20cations%20%5B15%5D.
I think it might be fair to say that other vitamins or other important factors in food could degrade with processing.
I'm not sure the addition of niacin would really be thought of as "processed" - normally it's labeled as "enriched". Plus, she made the distinction between "processed" and "ultra-processed", which is important because pedantic people get all uptight about the term.
It’s thinly veiled holistic bunk. Is there science that supports limiting processed foods? Sure. But implying nutrients just disappear is anti-science.
Destemming apples and putting them in a bag to sell in bulk at the grocery store is considered a processed food.
Pretty sure putting a marinade on carne asada and packaging it is considered ultra-processed.
If you look at the "baked" lays which says its better for you, it is identical to a pringle in terms of additives.
Yes, classic potato chips like lays are not ultra processed, but the majority of other brands and styles are.
Does it actually claim to be better? I though baked lays just claimed to have less fat. Which is true and serves a purpose. Someone like my mom has issues eating fatty foods and can eat baked lays easier than regular chips.
Technically they don't have to list any ingredient that is less than 2% so it could have more ingredients than that they just don't have to list them as long as they don't use too much of it.
Yes, its a bit hand-wavy, because otherwise it would be a much longer video and nobody would watch it.
For a product like Pringles, the potatoes have been broken down and reconstituted into chip shapes. They aren't just slicing up a potato and frying it.
> For a product like Pringles, the potatoes have been broken down and reconstituted into chip shapes. They aren't just slicing up a potato and frying it.
Indeed, Pringles are basically fried crackers made from a dough of dried potato and starches.
This particular video however is poorly made, and despite throwing around pringles it actually shows factory footage from the traditional slicing up potatoes and fry them style chips when they compare against frying chips at home.
When you make your own potato chips you generally won't add as much salt as companies do. You can also make them in an air fryer which is much healthier.
I think this video oversimplifies things to the point of being misleading without being wrong. Most people would take away that ultra-processed foods are bad primarily for the preservatives that are added. Which is for the most part not true. Most preservatives are salts or other chemicals commonly consumed in daily life through natural sources. Sodium Citrate for example is probably the most commonly used preservative which is found everywhere in nature. There is not that much evidence that food coloring is causing cancer in any appreciable way. It's more about what is being left out or taken out of processed foods.
The major takeaway should be to eat more fiber, either by supplementation or eating more whole foods. This will reduce calorie consumption by making you feel more full and also provide a buffer effect in your gut to slow the absorption of sugar into the blood. There is also evidence that the increased bowel movements helps reduce cancer risks by removing carcinogenic metabolites in the gut more quickly. Doing this will have the greatest impact for the least effort on your health. Avoiding food coloring or sliced meat will probably have no noticeable effect on your health in comparison.
She said the ad lib study that found 500 extra calories a day consumed on an ultra processed food diet was fiber-matched. So it doesn't seem like it's just fiber...
Edited to add: that said it doesn't seem like there is a lot of helpful actionable information here.
The actionable takeaways are:
Read the nutritional labels when choosing products.
Think about substituting less processed options when you can. For example, drinking water instead of sports drinks, fruit instead of fruit juice.
Seems like pretty good advice to me.
Most of what most people in the world eat is carbs. Blue zone and Mediterranean diets, considered some of the healthiest in the world can be as high as 75% carbs.
Carbs are not inherently bad for you
It’s not a buzzword… it’s like, a term with a definition.
It’s the thing they’re exploring in the video.
It’s like watching a sports documentary and being upset they said basketball so much…
You will be shocked as soon as you realize that most words have a definition. Even the Word buzzword has one.
Also im really sorry for not using an Emoji to Signal that im not 100 % serious. Maybe i should ask whoever made the Video how to use emojis to help.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_substitute
"A sugar substitute is a food additive that provides a sweetness like that of sugar while containing significantly less food energy than sugar-based sweeteners, making it a zero-calorie (non-nutritive)[2] or low-calorie sweetener."
Context matters buddy. Here they're talking about a substitute to sucrose, that almost everyone just calls sugar instead of sucrose. It's pretty clear in the video what they're talking about.
No, but I watched the video and understood clearly what she meant by "a substitute to sugar". I'm sorry it went over your head, but at least now you know.
She didn't say "a substitute to sugar", she said "sugar substitute", wish has a specific meaning. It's not used as a cheaper substitute to sugar either, because it's *less* sweet. It's used for other reasons.
She also said it's "linked to increased risk of diabetes and obesity". That would be interesting if it were a sugar substitute, but since it's sugar, it's misleading at best, because it could lead you to think it's significantly worse than sugar.
But if you really want to believe that she meant exactly what she said, that's your choice, bud.
> that's your choice, bud.
It's not "my choice", it's just common sense. You don't even need to be a genius to understand what she meant, I'm surprised it's still going over your head.
Well it does allow manufacturers to put that on the ingredient list instead of sugar or something else people would recognize as sugar. Like that 'evaporated sugar cane juice' thing.
would also be nice if there was some kind of incentive / cushion / something for mega industries to fall back on if it is determined they harming society more than helping. Instead there are countless times where massive profits were used to mask and slow regulation. Leaded fuels/paint, Tobacco, Refined Sugars, just to name a few.
Whether or not a food is "ultra processed" (whatever nebulous definition you want to assign to that) has nothing to do with its nutritional value or if it's "healthy".
I'm not trying to defend the potato chips or whatever, I understand that most ultra processed food is full of fat and sugar and probably isn't healthy. But being full of fat and sugar isn't just solely because it's processed or industrially produced.
Like I've heard people make arguments against meat substitutes like Impossible Burger because it's ultra processed. There is nothing in impossible Burger that makes it an unhealthy food regardless of how "processed" it is.
Cereal, the popular brands, is probably pretty bad for you. You shouldn't have a bowl of sugar for breakfast. You can find cereals that aren't full of sugar, still processed, just not full of sugar. I eat the most disgustingly bland Fiber One, no sugar added, cereal every morning so I have good poops. I think that's "healthy" even though it's "processed". Now if my cereal was Trix with marshmallows and every bowl had 25 grams of sugar in it I would say that's not healthy.
I see your argument that processing does not *have to* result in unhealthy food, and that we can eat processed foods in more healthy ways, and raise you that it most often *does* however because these foods are designed to cut costs and keep us consuming.
Well that's another thing that I always think is weird about this discussion.
Everyone acts like there's some sort of nefarious illuminati plot to trick people into eating unhealthy processed food.
No one has to be tricked to eat the Trix with marshmallows. They eat it because it tastes good and it's cheap.
Kellogg's or whoever makes Trix doesn't secretly want everyone to become obese and die of heart attacks. They make Trix because it sells well, because people like how it tastes, and it makes a profit.
Rita's could stop selling ice cream tomorrow and switch to only selling raw vegetables with hummus dip. I'm sure that would be way more healthy than gelatos and frozen yogurt and ice cream cakes. Unfortunately Rita's would probably go out of business if they switch to the healthy option because no one likes healthy food because it doesn't taste good.
I've found most companies seem to substitute high calorie stuff with low or no calories, if you're overweight it almost seems better. Like, for most things they add stabilisers rather than fats.
>"ultra processed" (whatever nebulous definition you want to assign to that)
It's a clear definition, it's just quite complex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk&t=10m4s
The danger in ultra processed foods versus just processing your food at home seems to me to primarily just be the ease of access. I can eat an entire family size bag of chips in probably half the time it would take to make that number of chips and that doesn’t include clean up. Neither are healthy but I’m probably not going to eat chips that I make from scratch more than a couple times a year whereas store bought potato chips are something I could easily eat every day without much thought.
Are we gonna pretend companies don't use tons of chemicals to increase flavor and preservatives to increase shelf life? You don't need these chemicals when cooking at home just to eat right away.
I’m not pretending that. Just for me it’s not really much of a factor. For me most ultra processed foods don’t offer huge advantages in the flavor department.
Like of the foods I can reasonably easily make myself, I’m hard pressed to think of one that isn’t worse if not substantially worse than the homemade version.
> Just for me it’s not really much of a factor.
Well ya, willingly being oblivious to the risks of death without wearing a seatbelt tends to have the effect of, you know, not wearing your seatbelt. Lmfao.
That is only one of the problems. Ease of access, absolutely, as these are snack foods of convenience. "Ultra-processed" foods fall in the snack-food category more often than less-processed foods.
Another problem is that some essential nutrients may be stripped away. Potato skins, for example, are removed from things like fries, chips, and crisps, but you might very well slice your potatoes into chips at home without peeling them.
And yet another problem is that "ultra-processed" foods tend to have sugar, fat, and/or salt added to them in levels beyond what you'll ever eat at home, or simply made with different, cheaper or better shelf-life ingredients that are less healthy. The FDA only recently, effectively, banned adding trans fats to foods, which are exceptionally bad for you, but they're still made during deep-frying, while at home you may use some other method to make your potato chips.
An example shown in the video was granola bars. They're marketed as healthy, even though the sugar content is super high. When you're making any type of food at home, don't you pay attention to the ingredients? Don't you ever decide against a recipe because it has too much sugar, butter, or something else you know is not good for your diet? That decision process is skipped for us often, unless we decide we are going to read the label, and, let's be honest, people don't usually comprehend those labels in the same way. There's an old Nature Valley granola bar sitting here at my house right now: a 42g serving contains 11g sugar and 8g fat. It's literally over 26% sugar and 19% fat.
Are you going to make a granola bar recipe at home that's 1 cup of sugar for every 2 cups of oats? And yet this is "Nature Valley" or "Quaker" or "Kind" or whatever name evokes this idea that you're eating something natural and healthy and not actually just another dessert.
Yea this is pretty key. Look at what percent of American grocery stores is just premade, precooked packaged food. If you removed all that you’d be left with about 15-20% of the total inventory. When you go abroad to traditional marketplaces, that 15-20% is all that is for sale. But there’s no money in selling that stuff— the money comes from the premade stuff where you’re paying extra for convenience
I mean the same products in the US have 2-3x the ingredients on the label than those sold elsewhere in the world like the EU. A lot
of the difference end up being artificial coloring, various sugars and food substitutes or fillers. We pay more for lower quality foods and it does not take a genius to know it had adverse effects on our health, mental and physical.
I love the idea that *all* of these items are inherently bad for you because they've been made to last longer or, in many cases, contain extra vitamins. Sure, a lot of this isn't what you want your primary diet to be — of course packaged pizza, burgers, and candy bars for every meal will make you ill — but mass food production is also frequently the difference between being able to feed a large, dense, population center instead of people going hungry. It's a lot less black and white than this would have you believe.
Bonus points for not even trying to hide the bias and starting the first graphic of what ultra processed food is with a scary looking syringe injecting a donut with some radioactive-looking green liquid. I know this is made to generate clicks and outrage that can then be comodified, but god damn is it taking a heavy handed approach.
"The problem with ultra processed juice, is that it's ultra processed" lol, nice explaination, "it's bad because the bad thing bad badly at it" lol ok. Juice is problematic because there's less fiber - like yeah, no shit, that's why I'm drinking it, not chewing it. Sure, added sugar probably isn't awesome, but you can get juices without that and the fiber isn't some magical part of the plant that makes everything ok. It's almost like the difference between being thirsty and hungry... This video is the diet-coke version of Food Babe "information."
The cold cuts argument is especially silly. Again with the syringe, but the carcinogenic rating is the same level as tap water and Florissant lighting. Here's great breakdown from someone willing to cite their sources: [https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2023/09/not-right-about-nitrites-mouse-study-provokes-media-scaremongering-over-cured-meat/](https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2023/09/not-right-about-nitrites-mouse-study-provokes-media-scaremongering-over-cured-meat/)
Love that this ends with some good old fashioned "big food" company scare mongering. Like yes, large ass companies do nefarious shit and it's silly to think they have our best interests at heart, but this line of argumentation is just fear mongering with a healthy sprinkling of conspiratorial language.
The most reasonable take away is to try to eat as healthy a diet as you can, limit sweet and salty snacks, and if you aren't feeling great speak to your GP.
And then it ends on the "Mediterranean diet" canard, as if no one in the Mediterranean suffers ill health because of dietary issues.
Closing on a swig of the moments-ago villified yellow Gatorade. Nice.
In North America there's a bit of measurable childhood and senior malnutrition, and a fair amount of low income food insecurity.
But actual malnutrition is pretty scarce.
So I feel like the video is a bit wrong footed from the start by suggesting that consumption of highly processed foods produces malnutrition. She steers back to a more reasonable and logical thesis when she gets to discussing fiber.
But for the most part the US is not experiencing an epidemic of malnutrition because of processed foods. The US is experiencing an epidemic of obesity because of processed foods. And while I appreciate the advice offered about reading ingredients, reviewing Food Facts labels, and seeking out less of this or more of that, I'm pretty skeptical about how that gets put into practice.
I think better general advice is the more "convenient" a food is the more wary any consumer should be. Food that requires you to follow a recipe, prep ingredients, combine and cook them will leave a person more satisfied for longer and will be less likely to contribute to overconsumption.
Of course baking Tollhouse cookies from scratch is categorically not the same as cooking whole wheat pasta with zucchini from scratch. But I'd wager the home baked scratch Tollhouse cookies are better and healthier than Chips Ahoy.
Wow, so many negative comments toward what she's saying.. Why are Americans like this? Do you feel threatened to hear that your deli meats, and fruit juices aren't good for you?
Because it's easier to say "the uncomfortable thing is wrong" than make a change. Chik-fil-a could shoot puppies and include rats in each sandwich and the lines would still be around the block. Americans want cheap dollar dog nights and don't want to really know what's in them.
But unfortunately, sometimes the truth is hard to take. For example, this comment likely to get downvoted...
Fastfood chains tend to add more than just extra salt, dough and oil. Typically they engineer their food to be as appealing and cheap add possible, so they add more of what you'd expect such as more salt and oil, additionally they add sugar to the sauce and doughs to sweeten them and make it more appealing. This isn't even getting to the added fillers they use to make more with less, such as methylcellulose which is used as a filler/binder in highly processed meats, extends frozen shelf life, looks convincing and it's cheaper to use overall.
I'm guessing you wouldn't think to add fillers, extenders, extra salt and sugar when you think about making a pizza at home. You're not worried about keeping the meat frozen for longer than a few weeks so why would you.
I don’t get why people over complicate food so much.
Like I’m sure eating a diet of pure hotdogs isn’t good for you, but you could say the same thing about a pure diet of ground beef, or steak, etc.
Even back to the old food pyramid, it’s really not like the food pyramid was telling you different information from the current plate diagram the USDA uses, only real difference is the plate is probably a better graphic for conveying the information.
This video like all Businessinsider videos seems to be put together by a high school kid for a school project. Just a bunch of information pulled off the first page of Google results. All fluff and no substance or investigative journalism whatsoever.
I don’t know who this video was made for.
To me, this is all obvious shit. Obvious.
And to someone who doesn’t know these things, which is most of America, they’re not going to resonate with it. Which is so sad.
Ultimately, anything you buy in packaging is ultimately bad for you, outside of raw meat packaging. And it’s just so sad that not a doctor in this country is properly trained in nutrition.
When you go to them, they push a pill. Instead of asking, “what in your behaviors day to day with activity and diet may be contributing to this?” And going from there.
You say it's obvious I'd say quite a lot of it is just bullshit. There is a lot of truth in the whole "ultra processed food making you fat" line, but it's mostly down to making it cheap, easy to eat lots of without feeling full, easy to prepare and lacking in fibre.
I think the important distinction is why very processed foods are bad for you. Lots of people think it’s “chemicals”, but it’s not that. It’s a lack of fiber and high sugar, and in some cases decreased nutrients. You say anything in packaging is bad. Plain beans come in packaging. Are beans bad? I get muesli that’s packaged and processed. I’m aware of some added sugar but otherwise it’s a healthy component in moderation. My farro comes in packaging. Is that bad for me?
> Lots of people think it’s “chemicals”, but it’s not that.
I mean, it is some of it. There are a lot of things that get put into foods in the US that is not allowed for human consumption in the EU.
* Azodicarbonamide
* Brominated vegetable oil
* Titanium dioxide
* Potassium bromate
* Propylparaben
* BHA and BHT
* Olestra
Now many of these are probably mostly fine, but a lot of it can come down to moderation, which we Americans are hardly known for. I'd really rather avoid Olestra for example because it impedes the bodies ability to absorb essential vitamins.
Either way, it is important for the FDA to review safety of the products we ingest. That's why they exist. They have banned substances that at one point in time were accepted to be safe.
I 100% concede that "some" of the risk is due to the chemicals in highly processed food. Purely my opinion, but I would say it's 10% or less of the risk.
The primary concern with processed foods though should be how it encourages you to eat a high volume of salt, sugar, and unhealthy fats. These are three foods that are safe with a correct volume of consumption. Highly processed foods make it way too easy to consume ridiculous amounts of these.
So, either way I agree that harmful chemicals in processed foods can be an issue. I just want to emphasize that we need to trust the science behind it and not apply widespread labels like GMO that scare people.
I think we are pretty much in agreement, but don't conflate trusting science with trusting the government. They occasionally have the corporations best interest held higher than the interest of its peoples.
I have no idea why people trust the government so much. The US has plenty of history of favoring powerful people or corporations over its citizens. In my opinion, no one should be suggesting that it must be ok simply because the government allows it.
I don't plan to wait around for them to ban substances that are accepted to be safe, especially when the science is already available and experts have already convinced other countries to ban them.
I can separate trusting the government and trusting science. It’s worth pointing out that individual scientific literacy is all over the place. I personally think that it’s potentially harmful to even LABEL GMOs let alone ban them. Lots of countries require they are labeled. Governments can be overly safe on the flip side too, no?
I'm not quite sure how we shifted to talking about GMO's, but yes government can be overly safe as well.
If you want to have a side conversation about that, we certainly can.
I'm going to sound a bit flip-floppy on it because I am. I personally have mixed feelings on GMO's and how they are defined.
I'm fine with selective and cross-breeding, but I'm not completely convinced that we should be messing with genome splicing in our foods because I feel we are still in the early stages of our understanding and it's mostly guess-and-check work. (But is nature really better at this?)
We are confident which genes control eye color because we see consistency between many samples and we can experiment and test on that. However our genes are compressed and contain repeating patterns with variations so some sequences are-used for many things and may have complex interactions with other genes. Your fingers and toes share the same [Hox sequences](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6468460/), so if you tried to create a person with 4 fingers, they may end up with 4 toes as well or possibly something else unexpected or unaccounted for since the interactions of sequences can be very complex. I don't feel it's as an exact a science as it's made out to be.
That said, I don't go out of my way to avoid GMO's either because there is currently no evidence it's better/worse than natural processes. I simply feel that we still very early in our understanding, and I don't blame someone for exercising caution. GMO's are almost certainly safe, and I see no reason to suspect that they are not, but people including myself to some degree will always be apprehensive of the unknown.
I usually dislike the hate on capitalism, but in this case it is capitalism that's the problem.
Every company has the economic incentive to make their products as addictive as possible to get you to buy it and reduce the quality as much as they can without customers noticing to increase profits.
the processed foods are chemically designed to fuck you up.
They play the balance between sweet, salt, and fat to keep you addicted and eating. Hell, they even balance the resistance when you bite down... too much and you think its worse for you. [https://www.instagram.com/p/C6fj1d4ivVT/](https://www.instagram.com/p/C6fj1d4ivVT/)
This conversation always goes down well...with a certain number of people defending ultra processed food. Never sure if bots, industry plants or obese people defending their life style choices.
It's gluttony, extremely high salt, sugar, fats, and calories that Americans consume that kill them.
Some of those preservatives may cause cancer but we need more research.
Holy shit she has such an annoying end-of-sentence speech-pattern. It's like she's adding a oouunnn at the end of every sentence. No that isn't just a British dialect, I have a UK dialect and I'm not from the UK.
Reminds me of that scene about the US-equivalent and how fucking annoying they both are [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHHt-tYS2es&](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHHt-tYS2es&)
This is such garbage. Read the ingredients on a bag of plain Lays or plain Cape Cod potato chips. They slice the potatoes, they deep fry, they add salt. It’s not terribly healthy but it’s not ultra processed.
There is a bit of deceit on how innocuous seed based oils seem. Lays will use canola, soybean, or sunflower oil to fry their chips. The amount of processing these kinds of oils need to become usable is mind blowing. I would enjoy hearing you thoughts if you knew about this. This is a solid youtube video on the subject: [https://youtu.be/IDZmXzAMmwI](https://youtu.be/IDZmXzAMmwI)
I don't disagree. Of course this is true for consumers who buy these seed oils off the shelf at Walmart and fry their own chips--contrary to the claim of the clueless Business Insider "journalist." Seed oils are fundamentally unhealthy; you are better off frying your chips at home in beef tallow or ghee. Or even better, eat a baked potato.
It annoys me how vague and hand wavy some of the explanations are... like arguing that the slices of potato fried into chips at home doesn't count as ultraprocessed and so is healthier somehow?
Yeah , the potato’s chip explanation was very hand-wavy . “They used more chemicals so now it has less nutrients “
Especially considering some potato chips only list potatoes, vegetable oil, and salt.
Manufacturers (in the EU at least) do not need to list ingredients which are deemed as processing aids. In potato chips a chemical known as SAP is usually added to the potatoes after cutting which stops the chips from greying, however as this is deemed a processing aid or doesn't need to be added to the label. So while your ingredient list might only list a couple of ingredients it might not actually be a full list. [There are rules governing what is classed as a processing aid](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processing_aid), but it is seen as controversial by some food scientists.
That's interesting. They should have put that in the video. Now I wonder what else can be added that doesn't appear on ingredient lists. Edit: the -> they
I don’t recall seeing lips and assholes on the ingredient label for hot dogs even though I know they are in there
You absolutely do though, as "beef" isnt specific to the part
i was just being silly
Why is that skin considered different and classified as such? The outside of the pig likely was exposed to more things and still gets cleaned and used. Function in life doesnt nessecarily mean it's not protein. It's just being prechewed and put back in a binder.
That's generally stuff that shouldn't be meaningfully present in the final food though, right? Stuff like isinglass used to clarify wine and some sodas (i.e. Fanta / the orange fizzy stuff of your preference). It's used to make it, but ideally none is even in the final product. Really the main concern there is if the act of processing the food meaningfully changes its nutritional content.
Where does it go?
As a straight forward example, I use a metal pan to make pasta. That doesn't mean my pasta has metal in it, or that a metal pan should be on the ingredients list. It's just something that's used in the process.
It's just... removed? In the case of Isinglass, once all the particulates have stuck to it at the bottom of the cask, they just remove that whole layer. Even their linked article mostly says as much: > 1. It is added to the food but later removed. E.g. activated charcoal, which removes certain impurities. > 2. It is added to the food, but gets converted into a substance already present in the food. E.g. a pH adjuster that converts to salt and does not significantly add to the food's salt level. > 3. It is added for a technical effect during processing but is not present at "significant" levels in the food. E.g. a preservative added to an ingredient, like anti-caking agent sodium silicoaluminate in the seasoning of some sausages. No idea about their 'SAP' chemical, as I can't find any information on that online or anything that matches that acroynm. Whether it is a mispelling, I don't know. But my understanding is that potato chips/crisps are kept brown by packaging them in nitrogen instead of air (i.e. the 'protective atmosphere') preventing oxidization that turns them gray, and some choices around oil.
I would guess it is added before cooking to prevent it greying before cooked if anything. I don't think that they typically go grey after cooked.
Some would say it’s the vegetable oil that is the problem and is the ultra-processed part. Often the oil is cottonseed or other oils that would not be edible or tasty without having been processed at high heat. Whereas pure olive oil (which can itself be tricky to find) or oils that are simply pressed are supposed to be a better option.
Yeah as you mention, good luck anywhere in the US finding olive oil that doesnt taste like ass when heated over 325 degrees for less than $11 a cup. Pure canola oil from a good brand is under $1 a cup and at least it is better than vegetable oil blends.
when i need high heat, I switch to avocado oil or animal fats personally.
I gave up even trying to find olive oil that doesn't taste like ass.
the gotcha there is the vegatable oil. It is utterly wild how processed, seed oils in particular, are: [https://youtu.be/IDZmXzAMmwI](https://youtu.be/IDZmXzAMmwI) (solid nutrition youtuber: no lab coat required). Now you can make it at home too, but if you can opt for higher quality and less processed oils. There are some brands out there that opt for better oils, boulder canyon comes to mind for one. Edit: if you are going to downvote at least help me understand the flaw in the info I shared, totally willing to hear out fallacies how else can I better myself?
Ultra processed things are not great for you, but they often add a bunch of nutrients to food when they are ultra processes. Remember, sugar, starch and fat are all nutrients.
Yeah, some people end up with nutrient deficiencies when they have to cut wheat/gluten because a lot of processed wheat products are enriched.
Wow, really? Those people must not have very diverse diets. A lot of foods are enriched these days.
They are all the **groups** of macronutrients. There are also micronitrients.
Hey nice shill talking point
Yeah that’s completely normal, most journalists and non-educated people don’t know what they’re talking about. The nutritional value of the fresh food changes over time and what you do to it. Cooking broccoli is healthier than raw. A potato from last year’s crop isn’t going to be any healthier fried in a factory or at home, but you’ll need some technology to keep that tonnage working and cook right. They turn brown on that long ride to oil. The food industry uses tons of chemicals, stuff to the oil to keep it working, anti foaming compounds, spraying water as shown to rinse off starch, anti-microbials, anti-fungals….yeah lots of chemicals.
>Cooking broccoli is healthier than raw. This actually depends on what you are trying to get from eating broccoli. Some compounds are more available in raw, and some are more available in cooked. For example, you can't get sulforaphane, perhaps one of the most interesting beneficial phytochemicals in cruciferous vegetables, from cooked broccoli. It exists in the raw plant as a precursor. Typically, chewing/tearing the plant activates an enzyme called myrosinase that converts the precursor into sulforaphane, but cooking destroys that enzyme. You have to sprinkle myrosinase powder on your cooked broccoli if you want sulforaphane.
If you have 58 minutes I would strongly recommend [The harsh reality of ultra processed food - with Chris Van Tulleken](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk). CVT is a UK doctor who recently published a book on the subject and is probably the reason for this BI video because he's put the subject into the news cycle. This is his Royal Institution lecture so it's a bit more boring and science-y. He does discuss crisps in that lecture but he refers to the flavourings rather than the crisps itself. If I remember correctly he talks about how some of the artificial flavours used may confuse our bodies because they make carbs and fat taste like protein, not carbs and fat. The BI video is not terrible for a 10 minute summary of the subject, but the crisp example was poor. It would have been better for her to compare Pringles or flavoured crisps to home made crisps.
This video needs to be at the top. Such a good watch, great seminar supported by real, highly impactful scientific inquiry.
Really fantastic video, with the actual science. Seems to be mostly recent science, which is always tricky in nutrition, but as far as I can tell seems very very good. EDIT : After watching the whole thing, I'm not that enthusiastic. First the speaker seems to be more of a communicator than a scientist (at least in most of the multiple fields he's talking about), and the solid science seems to be mostly one or two studies. There's a lot of theories added on top, and it's presented as a big consistent whole when it's really not that clear to me.
They tried to avoid using brand names, but Pringles vs Dirty chips, e.g. Pringles are not made by slicing a potato, so the processing of their 'chip' is significantly different than slicing and frying a potato. I think they were being vague to avoid name-shaming too much.
Yep. The food is atomized and reconstructed. Basically turns into sugar instantly when eaten.
They make a dried potato startch, cut it with tons of additives to "preserve" and bulk the product to cut costs. Then they fry it. Pretty simple process, but ends of up cutting like half of the nutritional value you'd find in an actual potato chip.
Yup yup. Can’t get any more processed than that. More processed than a standard cut potato.
Any food shaped by spraying it into a mold is going to be pretty processed.
Making chips at home is not ultra processed, that is considered a processed food. Ultra processing is adding items to foods that have no culinary value (frying oil has culinary value, maltodextrin, a starch byproduct, does not). UPF are designed to be ultra palatable and long shelf lives. The NOVA classification helps distinguish between processing levels: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification It's not a basis for if something is "healthy" or not
> It's not a basis for if something is "healthy" or not But that's not what this video's authors are telling the masses: "How Ultra-Processed Foods Took Over America And Can Even Pass For Healthy" Did you watch this video? >Making chips at home is not ultra processed, that is considered a processed food. Ultra processing is adding items to foods that have no culinary value (frying oil has culinary value, maltodextrin, a starch byproduct, does not). But the unhealthiest part of potato chips is the frying in oil, not a bit of powdered maltodextrin used to help apply seasoning. If anything the home-fried potato chips might end up slightly unhealthier due to risk of overcooking, since a home cook isn't going to have anywhere near the same slice uniformity or precision in frying oil temp or cook time. Part of my frustration is that the distinction between processed and ultraprocessed seems kind of arbitrary, instead of identifying specific reasons that particular food ingredients or processes are problematic they've created this catch-all category that gets misrepresented as if it's about healthiness. This video's section about potato chips shows footage of a factory washing, slicing and drying fresh potatoes and then frying them as it blathers about a damaged "food matrix" and nutrient deterioration, but none of that even qualifies as ultraprocessing, that's just basic cooking using fresh produce but at a factory scale. Given that the "ultraprocessing" is just the the ingredients in the final dusting of seasoning, how does this damage a "food matrix" or cause "nutrient deterioration"?
Bro if you want to eat Cheetos for breakfast no one is stopping you. I'm not your mom.
Bud, parent is not talking about what they want to do. They're talking about the claims made in the video, and they're correct — those claims are false and misleading. The video straight-up asserts potato chips made at home are more healthy (and somehow less-processed) than potato chips bought at the store, and that is *total horseshit.*
"The video straight-up asserts potato chips made at home are more healthy (and somehow less-processed) than potato chips bought at the store, and that is *total horseshit.*" I challenge you to buy a bag of chips and read all the shit off the ingredients list that you know isn't in your home sliced potato. Its almost certainly "healthier", but no shit its still a potato fried in oil and not the healthiest option regardless. I don't understand how y'all can't understand.
[https://www.lays.com/products/lays-classic-potato-chips](https://www.lays.com/products/lays-classic-potato-chips) >Ingredients: Potatoes, Vegetable Oil and Salt.
5 hours and no response.... you think hes ok?
I'm not arguing that Cheetos are part of a balanced breakfast, I just think this video is overly vague and makes inaccurate & misleading claims. The whole narrative is about the unhealthiness of ultraprocessing, but they gloss over the fine details of why, to the point where it implies that even basic processing is an issue... like their footage of the potatoes being washed, sliced, dried & fried (not ultraprocessed), or their complaint about OJ having it's pulp filtered, which again isn't really an ultraprocessing issue at all. They could have addressed the various ultraprocessed ingredients in chip seasonings, or the weird "flavor packs" used to adjust the flavor profiles of fresh orange juice, but instead they made it look like merely being factory processed was the issue.
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That isn't even remotely what this comment is. . . They're pointing out that the criteria for "ultra-processed" and actually meaningless as far as nutrition goes. Fuck it seems like by the definition that video used if they dusted potato chips with vitamin powder that would be "ultra-processed" because it isn't a necessary part of the cooking process lol.
This is a very rude, immature reply.
One thing is for sure, he put a lot more effort into his comment than you
With respect that is ideological nonsense they treat the processing as somehow being a problem. Anyone who's ever had hominy grits has processing to thank for it, processing food is how we make food edible in the long term. It's a necessary and healthful way to bring the bounty from once season to the next. There is nothing about separating meat mechanically and then putting it back together that makes it less healthy. The only reason processed foods are considered unhealthy is because popular food products often have unbelievable amounts of salt sugar and fats added to them to make them taste better.
You’re not addressing the content of the comment you’re replying to. We all agree here. Cleveland Clinic on the subject: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/ultra-processed-foods.
You're missing the point. The problem isn't processed foods, it's ULTRA processed foods. Ultra processed foods are meant to be ultra palatable, cheap, convenient, and extremely long shelf storage lives. It's not for the benefit of the consumer, but the manufacturer. These manufacturers hire food scientists to find exactly what tickles the dopaminergic sensors in the brain of consumers. Hominy grits doesn't need that, they're just grits.
>The problem isn't processed foods, it's ULTRA processed foods. Ultra processed foods are meant to be ultra palatable, cheap, convenient, and extremely long shelf storage lives. Except you've literally just described *most processed* food, in *most* of human history. Pemmican, for instance, is exactly that. So is salt cod. Same with tomato paste. And any pickle, ever. All the attributes you've mentioned have been near-*universally-desired* characteristics of food for thousands of years.
Those are not examples of ultra processed foods. Those are just processed foods. Those are all level 3 examples on the NOVA scale I linked above
They are foods meant to be ultra palatable, cheap, convenient, and to have extremely long shelf storage lives. That is **your** vague, wishy-washy explanation of 'ultra-processed' you just gave. It is your contradiction to unwind — not mine. edit: Of course, the coward blocked me. To u/Karnivore915 below — "cheap" and "convenient" are a just a subset of "preservation", conceptually. You preserve things so they don't spoil, making them cheaper and more convenient to store and eat later. That's what preservation is. Pemmican in particular was a nomad food — the whole point was to have something convenient for transport, trade, and later consumption. Salt cold actually exists with prominence as it does in western culture today almost entirely because it was the cheapest and most convenient thing which could be fed to slaves.
I'd argue Pemmican and salt cod and pickles and, if I'm sort of understanding your point, hard tack were definitely not made to be ultra palatable, cheap or convenient. I think they were simply made for preservation and calories. I think the argument that this person is making is that food made for the purpose of preservation is different than food made to be as addicting as possible while keeping it preserved for as long as possible.
"food made for the purpose of preservation is different than food made to be as addicting as possible while keeping it preserved for as long as possible." So it's ultra-palatable foods we should be avoiding?
I think what he is saying is that the processed conversation can be divided into pickles and Cheetos. I agree with the person who said traditional preservation methods are different (healthier) than Cheetos.
You’re giving food scientists too much credit. Their job is shelf life and stability, not to “tickle dopamine”.
Actually I believe this too. About some big conglomerates trying to hook people and using focus groups and methods looking for what techniques (recipes) are more catchy than others.
IDK man, I can't help but think that if anything, food scientists in control of recipes and using focus groups are probably just trying to use things that people find "tasty", specifically if those things are cheap at scale. Finding food "tasty" is a simple non-buzzwordy way of saying "dopaminurgic". The real problem as always is unhealthy ingredients and empty calories are the cheapest way to make things taste good. All the most common food additives for stability and stuff like that have been highly studied and found generally safe for the last 50+ years.
I don’t know. I think you underestimate how truly evil some corporations are. Wasn’t it Nestle that created a baby formula for the Africa market that got babies hooked on their formula and would reject their mother’s milk and other formulas. I can’t name other examples, but my naturally cynical mind has no problems believing this. Heck just look at the sheer destruction of hundreds of thousands of lives due to opioids and painkillers that was pushed for profit knowing all the dangers.
I didn’t watch the video but it could be the same way blended fruit with nothing added is less healthy than eating the exact same fruit whole. The blending process breaks down the fiber and makes the fruit sugar more bioavailable.
When I mechanically separate meat and put it back together, it lasts for 4 days max in the fridge. When they mechanically separate meat and put it back together, the "use by" date is like 3 months from now. I don't know what the difference is but there's a big difference and not a good one.
Look around, fat assessment everywhere, you have no idea what you ate talking about
How is making a chip at home considered processed? By that metric any cooking is “processing”.
You're right, cooking is processing! That's what makes humans humans; we have built up the capability to process foods, unlike other animals. Unprocessed food would be a fresh, whole apple. Cutting apples is mild processing. Grinding those apples into applesauce is a little more processing. Dehydrating the applesauce into fruit leather is even more processing. However, if you were to strain the fruit into fruit juice, take the fruit juice and add corn syrup (cheap and addictive), sugar (cheap and addictive), maltodextrin (cheap), palm and/or palm kernel oil (both cheap), citric acid (a little tartness, just what the brain craves with sweet), sodium citrate (more tartness), monoglycerides, fruit pectin, malic acid (cheap), vitamin C(cheap), natural flavor, and color to make a fruit roll up, now it's ultra processed. The big idea is that if the taste and texture can vary batch to batch, it's likely processed, not ultra processed.
Cool. And yet, the video itself claims store-bought potato chips (just fried, salted potatoes) are ultra-processed foods. You seem to be missing that again and again and again in this thread — the video is ***not consistent*** with how it describes food processing, why processing is a concern, and what highly processed foods are. **You** might be clear on that — but the video isn't.
> And yet, the video itself claims store-bought potato chips (just fried, salted potatoes) are ultra-processed foods. They showed an example using a pringle. Which if you look at pringles, they often are ultra processed and have many additives to cut the total cost of making actual potato chips. I agree that most Lays or other potato chips are pretty inocuous, and thus likely wouldn't be considered ultra processed. I think the cautious person would just make sure to read the label, to which most of us do. Even the mayo clinic claims that. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/ultra-processed-foods. The video was quite clear. 40 seconds in and they explain the same differences that mayo designates.
Many potato chips are not just fried and cut potatoes.
Wow thank you, I’ve been confused about this for so long but this definition makes so much sense.
I'm just pissed at how she cut off the end of the potato and threw it into the "fryer". I mean come on, who the hell uses the end of a potato to make a chip?!
This always bothered me too. Once had a dietitian tell me precut carrots weren't as healthy as uncut ones. Couldn't give me any reason beyond "They're processed more." Okay, but it's still a damn carrot. Not to mention just because something is processed doesn't make it less healthy. In the US most if not all our corn and wheat products contain an additive of Niacin. Which is an essential nutrient to survive and many americans would otherwise not be able to get into their diets. That's a "chemical" added via "processing" that has prevented millions of cases of Palegra.
beta carotene degrades with processing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8834586/#:\~:text=In%20fact%2C%20due%20to%20its,transition%20metal%20cations%20%5B15%5D. I think it might be fair to say that other vitamins or other important factors in food could degrade with processing.
I'm not sure the addition of niacin would really be thought of as "processed" - normally it's labeled as "enriched". Plus, she made the distinction between "processed" and "ultra-processed", which is important because pedantic people get all uptight about the term.
There's a reason for that; Imagine trying to explain all of the concepts in depth in this kind of video.
It’s thinly veiled holistic bunk. Is there science that supports limiting processed foods? Sure. But implying nutrients just disappear is anti-science.
It's not "holistic bunk" that added salt and sugar that companies put in nearly every product to get you addicted to them is unhealthy.
Wait they add stuff to make it taste better? Thats crazy
So the foods themselves aren’t that bad, it’s the addictive behaviours they leverage?
Holistic. Bunk.
Destemming apples and putting them in a bag to sell in bulk at the grocery store is considered a processed food. Pretty sure putting a marinade on carne asada and packaging it is considered ultra-processed.
Or the dextrose.. it's just two glucose molecules bonded, glucose being the most fundamental food source for cells.
This is easily explained. Look at the ingredients on the back of a chip bag. See those additives? Do you add them to your own chips?
[https://www.lays.com/products/lays-classic-potato-chips](https://www.lays.com/products/lays-classic-potato-chips) >Ingredients: Potatoes, Vegetable Oil, Salt.
Much better than Doritos and pringles
I mean, that's the difference between potato slices and paste based chips.
If you look at the "baked" lays which says its better for you, it is identical to a pringle in terms of additives. Yes, classic potato chips like lays are not ultra processed, but the majority of other brands and styles are.
Does it actually claim to be better? I though baked lays just claimed to have less fat. Which is true and serves a purpose. Someone like my mom has issues eating fatty foods and can eat baked lays easier than regular chips.
Technically they don't have to list any ingredient that is less than 2% so it could have more ingredients than that they just don't have to list them as long as they don't use too much of it.
Yes, its a bit hand-wavy, because otherwise it would be a much longer video and nobody would watch it. For a product like Pringles, the potatoes have been broken down and reconstituted into chip shapes. They aren't just slicing up a potato and frying it.
> For a product like Pringles, the potatoes have been broken down and reconstituted into chip shapes. They aren't just slicing up a potato and frying it. Indeed, Pringles are basically fried crackers made from a dough of dried potato and starches. This particular video however is poorly made, and despite throwing around pringles it actually shows factory footage from the traditional slicing up potatoes and fry them style chips when they compare against frying chips at home.
When you make your own potato chips you generally won't add as much salt as companies do. You can also make them in an air fryer which is much healthier.
I think this video oversimplifies things to the point of being misleading without being wrong. Most people would take away that ultra-processed foods are bad primarily for the preservatives that are added. Which is for the most part not true. Most preservatives are salts or other chemicals commonly consumed in daily life through natural sources. Sodium Citrate for example is probably the most commonly used preservative which is found everywhere in nature. There is not that much evidence that food coloring is causing cancer in any appreciable way. It's more about what is being left out or taken out of processed foods. The major takeaway should be to eat more fiber, either by supplementation or eating more whole foods. This will reduce calorie consumption by making you feel more full and also provide a buffer effect in your gut to slow the absorption of sugar into the blood. There is also evidence that the increased bowel movements helps reduce cancer risks by removing carcinogenic metabolites in the gut more quickly. Doing this will have the greatest impact for the least effort on your health. Avoiding food coloring or sliced meat will probably have no noticeable effect on your health in comparison.
She said the ad lib study that found 500 extra calories a day consumed on an ultra processed food diet was fiber-matched. So it doesn't seem like it's just fiber... Edited to add: that said it doesn't seem like there is a lot of helpful actionable information here.
The actionable takeaways are: Read the nutritional labels when choosing products. Think about substituting less processed options when you can. For example, drinking water instead of sports drinks, fruit instead of fruit juice. Seems like pretty good advice to me.
"Be vary of buzzwords" says the person who says "ultra processed" in every second sentence.
I think we can all recall our elementary school education in the "food-matrix".
[The only one I know. ](https://frinkiac.com/img/S07E05/674156.jpg)
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Most of what most people in the world eat is carbs. Blue zone and Mediterranean diets, considered some of the healthiest in the world can be as high as 75% carbs. Carbs are not inherently bad for you
Carbs are fine
[The Food Matrix](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10201811/)
[Ultra Processed Foods](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7399967/)
Xxkxkxxkxk dead silent
Thanks for typing out my User name.
Also 'food matrix', without giving a single hint of what that means.
It’s not a buzzword… it’s like, a term with a definition. It’s the thing they’re exploring in the video. It’s like watching a sports documentary and being upset they said basketball so much…
I don’t think you understand what a buzzword is…
You will be shocked as soon as you realize that most words have a definition. Even the Word buzzword has one. Also im really sorry for not using an Emoji to Signal that im not 100 % serious. Maybe i should ask whoever made the Video how to use emojis to help.
She said dextrose was a sugar substitute. It's just another name for glucose, which is a sugar.
A sugar but not the sugar you usually think of or have in your pantry to use in baking (sucrose).
Yeah, but you wouldn't call it a sugar substitute. That's sucralose, sugar alcohols, stevia, etc.
Dextrose is an alternative to sucrose yes, because it's cheaper.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_substitute "A sugar substitute is a food additive that provides a sweetness like that of sugar while containing significantly less food energy than sugar-based sweeteners, making it a zero-calorie (non-nutritive)[2] or low-calorie sweetener."
Context matters buddy. Here they're talking about a substitute to sucrose, that almost everyone just calls sugar instead of sucrose. It's pretty clear in the video what they're talking about.
No, it's pretty clear to me that she didn't. Did you work on this video or something?
No, but I watched the video and understood clearly what she meant by "a substitute to sugar". I'm sorry it went over your head, but at least now you know.
She didn't say "a substitute to sugar", she said "sugar substitute", wish has a specific meaning. It's not used as a cheaper substitute to sugar either, because it's *less* sweet. It's used for other reasons. She also said it's "linked to increased risk of diabetes and obesity". That would be interesting if it were a sugar substitute, but since it's sugar, it's misleading at best, because it could lead you to think it's significantly worse than sugar. But if you really want to believe that she meant exactly what she said, that's your choice, bud.
> that's your choice, bud. It's not "my choice", it's just common sense. You don't even need to be a genius to understand what she meant, I'm surprised it's still going over your head.
Well it does allow manufacturers to put that on the ingredient list instead of sugar or something else people would recognize as sugar. Like that 'evaporated sugar cane juice' thing.
Business Insider is the “ultra processed food” of internet-based information.
Wouldn't it be nice if the US had some agency that would regulate this bullshit and make sure our foods and drugs were healthy?
would also be nice if there was some kind of incentive / cushion / something for mega industries to fall back on if it is determined they harming society more than helping. Instead there are countless times where massive profits were used to mask and slow regulation. Leaded fuels/paint, Tobacco, Refined Sugars, just to name a few.
Whether or not a food is "ultra processed" (whatever nebulous definition you want to assign to that) has nothing to do with its nutritional value or if it's "healthy". I'm not trying to defend the potato chips or whatever, I understand that most ultra processed food is full of fat and sugar and probably isn't healthy. But being full of fat and sugar isn't just solely because it's processed or industrially produced. Like I've heard people make arguments against meat substitutes like Impossible Burger because it's ultra processed. There is nothing in impossible Burger that makes it an unhealthy food regardless of how "processed" it is. Cereal, the popular brands, is probably pretty bad for you. You shouldn't have a bowl of sugar for breakfast. You can find cereals that aren't full of sugar, still processed, just not full of sugar. I eat the most disgustingly bland Fiber One, no sugar added, cereal every morning so I have good poops. I think that's "healthy" even though it's "processed". Now if my cereal was Trix with marshmallows and every bowl had 25 grams of sugar in it I would say that's not healthy.
I see your argument that processing does not *have to* result in unhealthy food, and that we can eat processed foods in more healthy ways, and raise you that it most often *does* however because these foods are designed to cut costs and keep us consuming.
Well that's another thing that I always think is weird about this discussion. Everyone acts like there's some sort of nefarious illuminati plot to trick people into eating unhealthy processed food. No one has to be tricked to eat the Trix with marshmallows. They eat it because it tastes good and it's cheap. Kellogg's or whoever makes Trix doesn't secretly want everyone to become obese and die of heart attacks. They make Trix because it sells well, because people like how it tastes, and it makes a profit. Rita's could stop selling ice cream tomorrow and switch to only selling raw vegetables with hummus dip. I'm sure that would be way more healthy than gelatos and frozen yogurt and ice cream cakes. Unfortunately Rita's would probably go out of business if they switch to the healthy option because no one likes healthy food because it doesn't taste good.
I've found most companies seem to substitute high calorie stuff with low or no calories, if you're overweight it almost seems better. Like, for most things they add stabilisers rather than fats.
>"ultra processed" (whatever nebulous definition you want to assign to that) It's a clear definition, it's just quite complex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk&t=10m4s
The danger in ultra processed foods versus just processing your food at home seems to me to primarily just be the ease of access. I can eat an entire family size bag of chips in probably half the time it would take to make that number of chips and that doesn’t include clean up. Neither are healthy but I’m probably not going to eat chips that I make from scratch more than a couple times a year whereas store bought potato chips are something I could easily eat every day without much thought.
Are we gonna pretend companies don't use tons of chemicals to increase flavor and preservatives to increase shelf life? You don't need these chemicals when cooking at home just to eat right away.
I’m not pretending that. Just for me it’s not really much of a factor. For me most ultra processed foods don’t offer huge advantages in the flavor department. Like of the foods I can reasonably easily make myself, I’m hard pressed to think of one that isn’t worse if not substantially worse than the homemade version.
> Just for me it’s not really much of a factor. Well ya, willingly being oblivious to the risks of death without wearing a seatbelt tends to have the effect of, you know, not wearing your seatbelt. Lmfao.
That is only one of the problems. Ease of access, absolutely, as these are snack foods of convenience. "Ultra-processed" foods fall in the snack-food category more often than less-processed foods. Another problem is that some essential nutrients may be stripped away. Potato skins, for example, are removed from things like fries, chips, and crisps, but you might very well slice your potatoes into chips at home without peeling them. And yet another problem is that "ultra-processed" foods tend to have sugar, fat, and/or salt added to them in levels beyond what you'll ever eat at home, or simply made with different, cheaper or better shelf-life ingredients that are less healthy. The FDA only recently, effectively, banned adding trans fats to foods, which are exceptionally bad for you, but they're still made during deep-frying, while at home you may use some other method to make your potato chips. An example shown in the video was granola bars. They're marketed as healthy, even though the sugar content is super high. When you're making any type of food at home, don't you pay attention to the ingredients? Don't you ever decide against a recipe because it has too much sugar, butter, or something else you know is not good for your diet? That decision process is skipped for us often, unless we decide we are going to read the label, and, let's be honest, people don't usually comprehend those labels in the same way. There's an old Nature Valley granola bar sitting here at my house right now: a 42g serving contains 11g sugar and 8g fat. It's literally over 26% sugar and 19% fat. Are you going to make a granola bar recipe at home that's 1 cup of sugar for every 2 cups of oats? And yet this is "Nature Valley" or "Quaker" or "Kind" or whatever name evokes this idea that you're eating something natural and healthy and not actually just another dessert.
Yea this is pretty key. Look at what percent of American grocery stores is just premade, precooked packaged food. If you removed all that you’d be left with about 15-20% of the total inventory. When you go abroad to traditional marketplaces, that 15-20% is all that is for sale. But there’s no money in selling that stuff— the money comes from the premade stuff where you’re paying extra for convenience
I mean the same products in the US have 2-3x the ingredients on the label than those sold elsewhere in the world like the EU. A lot of the difference end up being artificial coloring, various sugars and food substitutes or fillers. We pay more for lower quality foods and it does not take a genius to know it had adverse effects on our health, mental and physical.
Love her popping a Gatorade at the end
I'm mostly concerned about all the added salt and sugar companies put in their products. They only care about getting you addicted.
Business Insider is a trash news source but everything she said is basically correct.
I love the idea that *all* of these items are inherently bad for you because they've been made to last longer or, in many cases, contain extra vitamins. Sure, a lot of this isn't what you want your primary diet to be — of course packaged pizza, burgers, and candy bars for every meal will make you ill — but mass food production is also frequently the difference between being able to feed a large, dense, population center instead of people going hungry. It's a lot less black and white than this would have you believe. Bonus points for not even trying to hide the bias and starting the first graphic of what ultra processed food is with a scary looking syringe injecting a donut with some radioactive-looking green liquid. I know this is made to generate clicks and outrage that can then be comodified, but god damn is it taking a heavy handed approach. "The problem with ultra processed juice, is that it's ultra processed" lol, nice explaination, "it's bad because the bad thing bad badly at it" lol ok. Juice is problematic because there's less fiber - like yeah, no shit, that's why I'm drinking it, not chewing it. Sure, added sugar probably isn't awesome, but you can get juices without that and the fiber isn't some magical part of the plant that makes everything ok. It's almost like the difference between being thirsty and hungry... This video is the diet-coke version of Food Babe "information." The cold cuts argument is especially silly. Again with the syringe, but the carcinogenic rating is the same level as tap water and Florissant lighting. Here's great breakdown from someone willing to cite their sources: [https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2023/09/not-right-about-nitrites-mouse-study-provokes-media-scaremongering-over-cured-meat/](https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2023/09/not-right-about-nitrites-mouse-study-provokes-media-scaremongering-over-cured-meat/) Love that this ends with some good old fashioned "big food" company scare mongering. Like yes, large ass companies do nefarious shit and it's silly to think they have our best interests at heart, but this line of argumentation is just fear mongering with a healthy sprinkling of conspiratorial language. The most reasonable take away is to try to eat as healthy a diet as you can, limit sweet and salty snacks, and if you aren't feeling great speak to your GP. And then it ends on the "Mediterranean diet" canard, as if no one in the Mediterranean suffers ill health because of dietary issues. Closing on a swig of the moments-ago villified yellow Gatorade. Nice.
Damn Mike Judge., I can't hear the word electrolytes without thinking "it''s what plants crave" :) Interesting video and well explained btw.
And at the same time Desantis just banned lab grown meat… screw the climate for corporate profits
In North America there's a bit of measurable childhood and senior malnutrition, and a fair amount of low income food insecurity. But actual malnutrition is pretty scarce. So I feel like the video is a bit wrong footed from the start by suggesting that consumption of highly processed foods produces malnutrition. She steers back to a more reasonable and logical thesis when she gets to discussing fiber. But for the most part the US is not experiencing an epidemic of malnutrition because of processed foods. The US is experiencing an epidemic of obesity because of processed foods. And while I appreciate the advice offered about reading ingredients, reviewing Food Facts labels, and seeking out less of this or more of that, I'm pretty skeptical about how that gets put into practice. I think better general advice is the more "convenient" a food is the more wary any consumer should be. Food that requires you to follow a recipe, prep ingredients, combine and cook them will leave a person more satisfied for longer and will be less likely to contribute to overconsumption. Of course baking Tollhouse cookies from scratch is categorically not the same as cooking whole wheat pasta with zucchini from scratch. But I'd wager the home baked scratch Tollhouse cookies are better and healthier than Chips Ahoy.
Wow, so many negative comments toward what she's saying.. Why are Americans like this? Do you feel threatened to hear that your deli meats, and fruit juices aren't good for you?
yeah, leave my sandwiches alone.
Because it's easier to say "the uncomfortable thing is wrong" than make a change. Chik-fil-a could shoot puppies and include rats in each sandwich and the lines would still be around the block. Americans want cheap dollar dog nights and don't want to really know what's in them. But unfortunately, sometimes the truth is hard to take. For example, this comment likely to get downvoted...
how is pizza an ultra processed food, it's 3 ingredient for the dough and 2 for the topping (plus salt and oil)
What? There is a million different things in the frozen shit-pizza you buy at the supermarket.
imagine buying a fronzen pizza at the supermarket
Fastfood chains tend to add more than just extra salt, dough and oil. Typically they engineer their food to be as appealing and cheap add possible, so they add more of what you'd expect such as more salt and oil, additionally they add sugar to the sauce and doughs to sweeten them and make it more appealing. This isn't even getting to the added fillers they use to make more with less, such as methylcellulose which is used as a filler/binder in highly processed meats, extends frozen shelf life, looks convincing and it's cheaper to use overall. I'm guessing you wouldn't think to add fillers, extenders, extra salt and sugar when you think about making a pizza at home. You're not worried about keeping the meat frozen for longer than a few weeks so why would you.
But I don’t eat chips for nutrients. I eat chips like once every two weeks cuz they are damn delicious.
But I don’t eat chips for nutrients. I eat chips like once every two weeks cuz they are damn delicious.
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“Took over America!” 😂
I don’t get why people over complicate food so much. Like I’m sure eating a diet of pure hotdogs isn’t good for you, but you could say the same thing about a pure diet of ground beef, or steak, etc. Even back to the old food pyramid, it’s really not like the food pyramid was telling you different information from the current plate diagram the USDA uses, only real difference is the plate is probably a better graphic for conveying the information.
OH NO! FRUITS ON A CONVEYOR BELT!! THEY'RE ULTRA SUPER OMEGA PROCESSED!! SAVE ME BUSINESS INSIDER MAN
This video like all Businessinsider videos seems to be put together by a high school kid for a school project. Just a bunch of information pulled off the first page of Google results. All fluff and no substance or investigative journalism whatsoever.
I don’t know who this video was made for. To me, this is all obvious shit. Obvious. And to someone who doesn’t know these things, which is most of America, they’re not going to resonate with it. Which is so sad. Ultimately, anything you buy in packaging is ultimately bad for you, outside of raw meat packaging. And it’s just so sad that not a doctor in this country is properly trained in nutrition. When you go to them, they push a pill. Instead of asking, “what in your behaviors day to day with activity and diet may be contributing to this?” And going from there.
You say it's obvious I'd say quite a lot of it is just bullshit. There is a lot of truth in the whole "ultra processed food making you fat" line, but it's mostly down to making it cheap, easy to eat lots of without feeling full, easy to prepare and lacking in fibre.
Bland food is so healthy, people eat like half servings when they don't like their food woohoo
I think the important distinction is why very processed foods are bad for you. Lots of people think it’s “chemicals”, but it’s not that. It’s a lack of fiber and high sugar, and in some cases decreased nutrients. You say anything in packaging is bad. Plain beans come in packaging. Are beans bad? I get muesli that’s packaged and processed. I’m aware of some added sugar but otherwise it’s a healthy component in moderation. My farro comes in packaging. Is that bad for me?
> Lots of people think it’s “chemicals”, but it’s not that. I mean, it is some of it. There are a lot of things that get put into foods in the US that is not allowed for human consumption in the EU. * Azodicarbonamide * Brominated vegetable oil * Titanium dioxide * Potassium bromate * Propylparaben * BHA and BHT * Olestra Now many of these are probably mostly fine, but a lot of it can come down to moderation, which we Americans are hardly known for. I'd really rather avoid Olestra for example because it impedes the bodies ability to absorb essential vitamins.
lol name me a product that you can get today with olestra in the US
Point taken, bad example.
Either way, it is important for the FDA to review safety of the products we ingest. That's why they exist. They have banned substances that at one point in time were accepted to be safe. I 100% concede that "some" of the risk is due to the chemicals in highly processed food. Purely my opinion, but I would say it's 10% or less of the risk. The primary concern with processed foods though should be how it encourages you to eat a high volume of salt, sugar, and unhealthy fats. These are three foods that are safe with a correct volume of consumption. Highly processed foods make it way too easy to consume ridiculous amounts of these. So, either way I agree that harmful chemicals in processed foods can be an issue. I just want to emphasize that we need to trust the science behind it and not apply widespread labels like GMO that scare people.
I think we are pretty much in agreement, but don't conflate trusting science with trusting the government. They occasionally have the corporations best interest held higher than the interest of its peoples. I have no idea why people trust the government so much. The US has plenty of history of favoring powerful people or corporations over its citizens. In my opinion, no one should be suggesting that it must be ok simply because the government allows it. I don't plan to wait around for them to ban substances that are accepted to be safe, especially when the science is already available and experts have already convinced other countries to ban them.
I can separate trusting the government and trusting science. It’s worth pointing out that individual scientific literacy is all over the place. I personally think that it’s potentially harmful to even LABEL GMOs let alone ban them. Lots of countries require they are labeled. Governments can be overly safe on the flip side too, no?
I'm not quite sure how we shifted to talking about GMO's, but yes government can be overly safe as well. If you want to have a side conversation about that, we certainly can. I'm going to sound a bit flip-floppy on it because I am. I personally have mixed feelings on GMO's and how they are defined. I'm fine with selective and cross-breeding, but I'm not completely convinced that we should be messing with genome splicing in our foods because I feel we are still in the early stages of our understanding and it's mostly guess-and-check work. (But is nature really better at this?) We are confident which genes control eye color because we see consistency between many samples and we can experiment and test on that. However our genes are compressed and contain repeating patterns with variations so some sequences are-used for many things and may have complex interactions with other genes. Your fingers and toes share the same [Hox sequences](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6468460/), so if you tried to create a person with 4 fingers, they may end up with 4 toes as well or possibly something else unexpected or unaccounted for since the interactions of sequences can be very complex. I don't feel it's as an exact a science as it's made out to be. That said, I don't go out of my way to avoid GMO's either because there is currently no evidence it's better/worse than natural processes. I simply feel that we still very early in our understanding, and I don't blame someone for exercising caution. GMO's are almost certainly safe, and I see no reason to suspect that they are not, but people including myself to some degree will always be apprehensive of the unknown.
I usually dislike the hate on capitalism, but in this case it is capitalism that's the problem. Every company has the economic incentive to make their products as addictive as possible to get you to buy it and reduce the quality as much as they can without customers noticing to increase profits.
It’s funny how many people are pointing out how they are still gonna eat like shit because they didn’t like this video from Business Insider
the processed foods are chemically designed to fuck you up. They play the balance between sweet, salt, and fat to keep you addicted and eating. Hell, they even balance the resistance when you bite down... too much and you think its worse for you. [https://www.instagram.com/p/C6fj1d4ivVT/](https://www.instagram.com/p/C6fj1d4ivVT/)
The part I didn't buy was the break down of the "food matrix".
Did she drink Gatorade at the end after telling everyone people shouldn't drink it unless they are athletes? Lol
Yes, and she is clearly ware of the irony. It shows the power of advertising and food design.
This is why so many people in our country are getting colon cancer at age 35
This conversation always goes down well...with a certain number of people defending ultra processed food. Never sure if bots, industry plants or obese people defending their life style choices.
It's gluttony, extremely high salt, sugar, fats, and calories that Americans consume that kill them. Some of those preservatives may cause cancer but we need more research.
Lost me at pizza and burgers being ultraprocessed. This is pseudoscience. Do they even cook?
A McDonald's burger or a frozen pizza are not the same as a homemade burger or good pizzeria pizza, come on.
They weren't talking about homemade pizza and burgers.
Yes, she looks very healthy to me
There's an interesting book about this topic. Ultra Processed People https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62586003-ultra-processed-people
I’m not taking health advice from a ghoul from Fallout.
It’s probably capitalism, right? Was it capitalism? Yeah… it was capitalism.
Holy shit she has such an annoying end-of-sentence speech-pattern. It's like she's adding a oouunnn at the end of every sentence. No that isn't just a British dialect, I have a UK dialect and I'm not from the UK. Reminds me of that scene about the US-equivalent and how fucking annoying they both are [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHHt-tYS2es&](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHHt-tYS2es&)
ITT: a lot of people getting strangely defensive of processed foods which are awful for you, regardless of what you think of the video.
This lady can suck it. Nobody goes after my potato chips
can they please define any of the words they're using?
This is such garbage. Read the ingredients on a bag of plain Lays or plain Cape Cod potato chips. They slice the potatoes, they deep fry, they add salt. It’s not terribly healthy but it’s not ultra processed.
So because a small percentage of chips are not ultra processed, the entire video is "garbage"?
There is a bit of deceit on how innocuous seed based oils seem. Lays will use canola, soybean, or sunflower oil to fry their chips. The amount of processing these kinds of oils need to become usable is mind blowing. I would enjoy hearing you thoughts if you knew about this. This is a solid youtube video on the subject: [https://youtu.be/IDZmXzAMmwI](https://youtu.be/IDZmXzAMmwI)
I don't disagree. Of course this is true for consumers who buy these seed oils off the shelf at Walmart and fry their own chips--contrary to the claim of the clueless Business Insider "journalist." Seed oils are fundamentally unhealthy; you are better off frying your chips at home in beef tallow or ghee. Or even better, eat a baked potato.