Is There Anything to the Panic Over Ultraprocessed Foods?
What we know about them, what we don’t—and how to think about breakfast in the meantime.
The short answer is yes, you should worry about them. Are they ok in moderation? Sure. Are they ok when they are the main staple of your diet? Absolutely not.
For those that don’t know what the term means:
Ultra-processed foods are made mostly from substances extracted from foods, such as fats, starches, added sugars, and hydrogenated fats. They may also contain additives like artificial colors and flavors or stabilizers. Examples of these foods are frozen meals, soft drinks, hot dogs and cold cuts, fast food, packaged cookies, cakes, and salty snacks. - source
Ultra-processed foods don’t really contain any actual food. They are derived from food, but they have basically been stripped of all of their naturally occurring nutrients.
There are quite a few studies out there that show that while eating an ultra-processed diet people tend to eat a fair amount more calories (I’ve seen multiple places say 500 more calories) per day than when eating whole foods, or minimally processed. They also tend to gain weight (over a surprisingly short period of time), have higher incident of cardiovascular disease, had higher increase in fat and carb consumption, but not protein, and high incident of some cancers.
I’d also add that most people probably feel A LOT worse when eating ultra-processed foods. Just observation on my part, but people who eat terribly seem to lack energy, and seem to struggle more with things like sleeping, exercise, etc.
A lot of ultra processed foods are also ultra palatable foods so they’re high in fat, sugar and salt and very hard to stop eating. They’re also calorie dense so you eat past the point where you might become full with less calorie dense foods. I read this article earlier today and really liked it except that I thought the author went a little light on the judgement against this type of food manufacturing. Yes, we really do live in a world where it can be hard to both find and prepare “real” food, but the consequences of a western or specifically American diet have proven to be pretty intense.
@lagomorphlecture Oh, there is TONS of science and research behind keeping people addicted to UPFs.
_"In a recent article in the New York Times Magazine, food scientist Steven Witherly describes Cheetos as “one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet, in terms of pure pleasure.”
The cheese puffs’ greatest quality, Witherly says in the article, is its ability to melt in your mouth. “It’s called vanishing caloric density…If something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that there’s no calories in it…you can just keep eating it forever.”
This deception, writer Michael Moss tells us, isn’t accidental: snack food companies do a lot of research in order to design foods that fool your mind and bewitch your taste buds into a constant state of craving–a state industry insiders call “the bliss point.” To achieve this “bliss point,” Moss writes, food designers pay close attention to something called “sensory-specific satiety.”
“In lay terms,” Moss says, sensory-specific satiety “is the tendency for big, distinct flavors to overwhelm the brain, which responds by depressing your desire to have more.” To avoid this, successful junk food products like Coca-Cola and Doritos consist of “complex formulas that pique the taste buds enough to be alluring but don’t have a distinct, overriding single flavor that tells the brain to stop eating.”_ source
I actually read Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss quite some time ago and it was really interesting. If this interests you and you haven’t read it, I suggest taking a look at it.
UPFs also mess with our gut bacteria and can cause bowel inflammation. Long term effects can include hypertension and Crohn’s disease. Changes to gut bacteria also affect the bioavailability of calories in food which means calories from UPFs are absorbed faster than calories from other foods.
Add to that the newly found evidence that many mental illnesses are related to the gut.
yes
