Ultra-Processed People

[Fairislefandango]

Anyone read this? I'm currently listening to it as an audiobook and it's really enlightening, if depressing! After spending years on and off various diets and ending up back where I started, I'm thinking that cutting out UPF is the only sane thing left to try.

This is called the appeal to nature fallacy. Just because its natural it doesn't always mean better.

Stevia is natural but out of sucralose, aspartame and Stevia it appears that is the worst one for us.

Jason’s bread is good for shop bought but not UP

I'm not going to argue whole foods aren't better but people are not fat because of chemical compounds or additives.

According to the study quoted in the book, with the two groups, one eating a high UPF diet and the other eating a diet of foods of equal fat, sugar, protein, carbs and calories but unprocessed, where both groups were allowed to eat as much as they liked, the group on the UPF diet ate on average 500 more calories per day than the non UPF group.

So yes, the suggestion is that UPF foods make you fatter because they make you eat more (maybe due to the fact that they've been engineered with chemical compounds and additives to be super palatable and adddictive, or possibly because they don't make you as full or satisfied because they are nutritionally poor).

That's one reason why 'a calorie is a calorie' (though true on one level) doesn't tell the whole story, because it doesn't account for the effects that different kinds of food have on your appetite and eating behaviour.

Jason’s bread is good for shop bought but not UP.

I'd never heard of that brand. I shop in Aldi and Booths, which don't seem to stock it. Booths sell lovely sourdough from a local bakery company. It's pricey though!

They have Jason's bread in M&S which, for many things, is not as expensive as you might fear, so it's safe to go shopping there if you keep your wits about you.

I know it's because we've been conditioned to like our bread all soft and squishy, but I only like sourdough toasted, not for sandwiches, so I generally buy it when it is reduced and keep it in the freezer.

"To extract the plant's intense sweetness, stevia leaves are harvested and dried. The leaves are then steeped in hot water. After multiple stages of filtering and centrifuging to concentrate the sweetest components of the leaf, the resulting purified stevia leaf extract is ready to be sold commercially." That is an ultra processing process. Stevia leaf = natural. Stevia extract = UPF.

What is hard to get across unless you take the time to read the book, is it's not so much the specific ingredients, but that often they act as a proxy for the ultra-processing that happens during manufacturing, which changes the makeup of the base ingredients so fundamentally that they are no longer recogniseable to our bodies as food. Our bodies cannot extract nutrition from them.

But ofc, it's easier to snipe at people based on assumed knowledge than look into what we're actually talking about and engage with it (!)

I am aware that artificially sweetened drinks are lower calorie than sugar sweetened drinks hence I do drink Diet Coke rather than Coke, purely from that perspective as I am someone who is aware of the rough calorific content in things. However, sweeteners aren't good for you, so if you eat a diet food or drink high in sweeteners it can help towards a calorie controlled diet, but it won't give you much in the way of good nutrition.

I'm not looking to completely eliminate UPFs from my diet - that feels unrealistic with my lifestyle. I'm just cutting them where I can.

I'd be happy with under 20%.

That's just pure nonsense. The digestive system doesn't panic and shut down when it encounters an E number, additive or emulsifier, why then if the body cannot extract nutrients from them do you posit they're a contributor to the obesity crisis?

If we're talking about satiety then yes I agree. It's incredibly easy to overeat a pack of Oreos as opposed to a bag of apples.

I think the same.

I'm old enough to have seen all this before and have been rolling my eyes slightly at all the threads and posts on this subject. Call me cynical, but it's just the latest in a stream of fads. There will be something else after this.

I'm not going to type out the whole book - briefly; the body doesn't shut down when it encounters a single chemical, ofc, I'm not sure where I made that claim? The argument is that these things cause compulsive overconsumption (and obesity), partly because you can't get the nutrition you need from them, and so you're still hungry once you've eaten. Partly because the addictive qualities cause you to compulsively overeat. And partly because they're so soft, so they don't get digested in the same way as whole food, they don't interact with the gut in the same way. It's essentially a kind of mush that passes through your system, ladening you with calories and chemicals as it does so.

But again, I'm not "positing" anything, I'm passing on information from a well-researched and respected book. It's hard to debate the contents of a book with someone who hasn't read it!

I'm not reading it but have big phases of trying to eliminate all UPFs. I always used to be very healthy but I'm intolerant to a lot of fruit and veg these days so find it very easy to over calorie. I usually start reintroducing upfs to get the calories and the waistband under control again.

What I find interesting is the fact being a size 14/16 in the early 70s was considered fat.
That was the time freezers came into being as well as ready meals.

Sewing patterns haven't really changed as it's considered old fashioned and largely left alone.
It's noticeable that a Simplicity pattern for a size 16 in the early 70s would probably not fit a size 12 now.
It's also interesting to see posts from people who's children have ARFID and say that their children will only eat beige food .

This would not have existed before the late 60s.

That we have restaurants who provide excellent food but feel the need to provide a children's menu of fish fingers/chicken nuggets/burgers with chips is appalling.

I've recently spent some time in Spain and ate out for every meal at many restaurants. Not one offered a beige alternative for children.

Just more gimmicky bollocks to extract your money I'm guessing you bought the book? First it was all fats are bad then all sugar is bad now its UPF. Being fat for 99 percent of people is caused by eating too much and not enough exercise.

My grandma cooked in the old way , she made chips in the chip pan canned hot dogs , spam , ham, gammon eggs. The old days aren't the dream people are thinking of, there was definitely UPF back then. My grandma also smoked 60 cigs a day which helped her weight.

The point made (several times) is that UPFs are

a) not all that satisfying
b) have some dodgy ingredients health wise
c) can create cravings.

Thats all really.

Like a PP I always feel better eating good quality food - mostly from scratch, it’s very inconvenient but it’s the truth! Of course I could get fat doing that (20 lbs overweight and counting) but I still think it’s a different feeling in some ways - see a,b,c above. ENERGY-wise you feel different eating non-ultra-processed even if overweight.

Of course sometimes I eat processed foods, sometimes ultra processed. Either because im tired/ill/just fancy it and that’s okay too, I make no apology. But any walk down a supermarket aisle might make you wonder what planet you were on. Planet earth or planet chemical additive. Just worth thinking about without getting fanatical (is what I think).

Yep @Felicia00 I remember spam fritters at school for lunch. Pretty vile. But at home I wasn’t chomping on quite so much crap (still a lot though, at least in my home, but convenience food not got such a grip).

However, good point, Compared to some of the 70s and 80s stuff, it’s simply amazing the range delicious and healthy food you can buy in Supermarkets, quite incredible if you think about it.

Actually it is the opposite of extracting your money. UPF are designed to extract your money otherwise the food industry would not be so profitable. Low fat foods extract the fat, which is often the most expensive part and then use it in another product to extract more money from the consumer. It is then replaced with a cheap filler which has adverse health impacts.

UPF are designed for profit not health. There was one beer manufacturer who fried adding fibre for health benefits but then found out it made people drink 20% less which was bad for profits so removed it again.

My grandparents are still alive and still eat gammon chips, fully cooked breakfasts. They are in their late 80 and 90s still incredibly thin and still smoke 60 a day. I'm wondering if smoking had something to do with the slimness.

Did you pay for the book? Yes or no. Are there multiple meta-analyses and systematic reviews of UPFS? I don't believe it the Japanese and Chinese haven't exploded in weight. Many of their seasonings made and used by chefs are ultra processed. Its just another fad.

@Felicia00 here’s a paper on the risk of ultra processed food from the lancet, a scientific journal. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(23)00017-2/fulltext#:~:text=Evidence%20has%20been%20accumulating%20on,%2C%20and%20all%2Dcause%20mortality.

Indeed, I remember journalist Lynn Barber making a similar point about her own elderly parents, tucking into all sorts of old-fashioned food.

But - I still do t think their fry-ups (yum!) were NOT quite on the same level of ultra - processed foods that exist today - eg Pringles and Pizza.

As for fags, well yes, a complicated issues: maybe they keep you a bit slimmer but you also quite often feel dreadful (ex-smoker).

And for those with an aversion to reading material (a few on this thread today…):

”Besides their poorer nutritional composition, UPFs may additionally increase cancer risk through neo-formed contaminants during industrial processing, use of some controversial food additives, and certain materials of packaging implicated in exhibiting carcinogenic and/or endocrine-disrupting properties.13, 14, 15 Therefore, this study aims to provide a comprehensive assessment of the association between UPF consumption and risk of overall and 34 site-specific cancer incidence and mortality in a large and contemporary cohort of British adults, in a country with prominently high UPF consumption.”

@Felicia00 rct here
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31105044/

Article on the BBC website today about UPF, including another study with calorie and macro matched UPF and non UPF diets showing dramatic results. here