This is the first time I actually see an article that goes into "what" processed foods and ultra process foods actually mean. In the past I have mentioned that, at least in common day use, it...
This is the first time I actually see an article that goes into "what" processed foods and ultra process foods actually mean. In the past I have mentioned that, at least in common day use, it seems to have a very fluid meaning.
In 2009 Dr Monteiro came up with a classification system, called Nova, that sorts foods into four buckets depending on the degree of processing they undergo.
The first group includes minimally processed foods like fruit and milk.
The second covers basic ingredients like butter and sugar.
Next are foods like canned vegetables, bread, and cold cuts.
The last group, UPFs, represent heavily processed items like fizzy drinks, sugary cereals and frozen pizzas. These are made with ingredients not typically found in a home kitchen, such as hydrogenated oils, high-fructose corn syrup, flavouring agents and emulsifiers. UPFs are made industrially by breaking down whole foods into components like sugars, proteins, starches, and fibre. These are chemically modified and reassembled along with additives like artificial colours and sweeteners to make the food more appealing.
I still think this is a bit vague, but it is clear that the fourth and last group are those that are problematic. What I am missing here is if it is the processing itself that is bad (which is implied by the name) or the ingredients used as part of that processing. I guess the combination of those is what makes it a UPF? But now I am wondering how a freshly baked pizza compares to a frozen pizza. Both are not exactly healthy to begin with, but I am more or less wondering if there truly is a difference between the two.
I think it’s very hard to separate the class and money dimensions from the actual impact of the UPFs. My bet is that there’s very little about the food mechanistically, but the flavor profiles,...
I still think this is a bit vague, but it is clear that the fourth and last group are those that are problematic. What I am missing here is if it is the processing itself that is bad (which is implied by the name) or the ingredients used as part of that processing. I guess the combination of those is what makes it a UPF? But now I am wondering how a freshly baked pizza compares to a frozen pizza. Both are not exactly healthy to begin with, but I am more or less wondering if there truly is a difference between the two.
I think it’s very hard to separate the class and money dimensions from the actual impact of the UPFs. My bet is that there’s very little about the food mechanistically, but the flavor profiles, consistency, and balance of fats + carbs + salts in these foods are just more addictive and/or less satiating than less processed or home cooked food which is where more of the issues come from. The article called this making the foods “hyper-palatable” but I think what’s actually at work is that they’re super consistent. Every bite tastes the same as the one before it. Compare this with buying organic berries where one can be tart and another one sweet, one can be mushy and another firm. All in one basket. The experience of eating is just a lot less mindless when it’s a variety like that.
Another the article does not mention, which I find surprising, is any references to dietary fiber. Processed foods tend to have a lot less. Fresh foods, especially fruits and veggies, have quite a bit and this is a big part of what contributes to both satiety and slowing down absorption so even a very sweet fruit isn’t just hitting your metabolism all at once.
Both are not exactly healthy to begin with
Honestly it’s just bread + vegetables and/or meat + cheese. Having it assembled in a pie doesn’t make it much less healthy than having those ingredients next to each other on a plate. What generally makes it unhealthy when you order out is the volume of cheese, the oil in the dough, and the amount of sugar (a shockingly high amount in the tomato sauce for some reason). But if you do it Neapolitan style with a fairly dry and crispy crust and smaller but much tastier amounts of mozzarella it’s really not that bad for you.
I know no one wants to hear this but white flour, eaten daily or in significant quantities, is incredibly bad for your health. Refined carbohydrates contribute to diabetes, cardiovacular disease,...
Honestly it’s just bread
I know no one wants to hear this but white flour, eaten daily or in significant quantities, is incredibly bad for your health. Refined carbohydrates contribute to diabetes, cardiovacular disease, gut inflammation and a host of other things including most autoimmune problems and many cancers. White flour is right behind sugar among the worst of the refined carbs.
I'm diabetic and my endo has told me the same thing. Also my personal experience with it screwing up my blood sugar just as bad as candy. I have to avoid a lot of breads entirely because of it.
I'm diabetic and my endo has told me the same thing. Also my personal experience with it screwing up my blood sugar just as bad as candy. I have to avoid a lot of breads entirely because of it.
Agreed. The process of refining white flour removes the most nutritious components, while whole wheat retains those beneficial nutrients, making it a healthier choice
Agreed. The process of refining white flour removes the most nutritious components, while whole wheat retains those beneficial nutrients, making it a healthier choice
Yeah all good points as far as I am concerned. Just wanted to touch a little bit on the context of why I mentioned pizza. You are right that it isn't outright bad for you. I was more or less...
Yeah all good points as far as I am concerned. Just wanted to touch a little bit on the context of why I mentioned pizza.
But if you do it Neapolitan style with a fairly dry and crispy crust and smaller but much tastier amounts of mozzarella it’s really not that bad for you.
You are right that it isn't outright bad for you. I was more or less thinking about the fact that, for a meal, the proportions aren't right. Because the main ingredient is bread, it is heavy on carbohydrates and light on most other things, including dietary fiber.
So maybe not bad, but not really a balanced meal either.
The problem with hyperpalatable foods is not that they are super consistant, it's that they're surprising. They have a deep rich flavor that is varied enough that you want to keep eating it. One...
The problem with hyperpalatable foods is not that they are super consistant, it's that they're surprising. They have a deep rich flavor that is varied enough that you want to keep eating it. One of the big things you'll notice about them is that they tend to transition in flavor or texture as you eat it. One of the reason why people are so big on fried foods is that it starts off crunchy and then "melts" as you chew it into something pasty or smooth that coats the mouth.
The natural variation in flavor between natural ingredients is actually one of the big reasons why manufacturers add in extra sugar, salt, and oil into their products - to equalize the flavor. You'll find a lot of honey-flavored snacks, for instance, that if you look at the ingredients list you'll find that there is less actual honey in them than there are sugar or other sweeteners. The reason why prepared tomato sauce is because they are made with commodity tomatoes they buy in bulk; they can't select for the best tomatoes so they just add in sugar to get that natural sweetness. Or just to make it sweeter because people prefer it that way!
I agree with you that it's a shame that the article doesn't mention fiber, but no news article will have enough time to go into all the details of why UPFs are bad for you. I'd recommend reading a book like Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss, which goes into more detail.
The funny thing about honey is that the market is so poorly regulated that there’s no real way to know how much actual honey (from honeybees) is in there versus corn syrup and food coloring. It...
The funny thing about honey is that the market is so poorly regulated that there’s no real way to know how much actual honey (from honeybees) is in there versus corn syrup and food coloring. It gets adulterated at every leg of the supply chain from the apiary down to finally being bottled and sealed. I don’t even think the final bottlers know. Olive oil has a similar issue. You gotta pay dearly to get stuff you know is pure.
You can’t know but you can at least get an idea of how much there is relatively by the order it appears in the ingredients list, which is in order of greatest to least in every country that I am...
You can’t know but you can at least get an idea of how much there is relatively by the order it appears in the ingredients list, which is in order of greatest to least in every country that I am aware of.
Yeah, my previous conception of "processed foods" was way broader than what the UPF label identifies. I thought the anti processed foods thing extended to things like flour and white rice. Which...
Yeah, my previous conception of "processed foods" was way broader than what the UPF label identifies. I thought the anti processed foods thing extended to things like flour and white rice. Which as an Indian was a hard pass for me.
I think the examples of high fructose corn syrup and adding a bunch of sugar to stuff to make it "palatable" are good for qrapping your head around the idea. You dont feel like youre eating a lot of sugar because it doesnt taste super sweet, but there's acrually a ton of sweetener in stuff just to make it taste average.
I think a lot of the work sugar does is just covers up the off flavors. I remember reading a while ago that chocolate and coffee flavored ice creams actually have a lot of surplus of other ice...
I think a lot of the work sugar does is just covers up the off flavors. I remember reading a while ago that chocolate and coffee flavored ice creams actually have a lot of surplus of other ice cream flavors in them because those flavors (and colors) are so strong that they basically overwhelm whatever other tastes are blended into a batch.
A lot of ingredients will degrade to still be edible but just less palatable over time, like citrus oils eventually end up tasting piney instead of citrusy. I expect a lot of the reason the sugar is there is to just cover those sorts of things up and improve shelf stability.
The NYTimes had some good articles on the topic this year that cleared a few things for me. I'm not sure if it's the answer you're looking for but it should help. There are some other articles as...
The NYTimes had some good articles on the topic this year that cleared a few things for me. I'm not sure if it's the answer you're looking for but it should help. There are some other articles as well if you want to keep reading.
Thanks! This is actually very informative and helpful, as it goes into much more detail than the article linked in this post. It does confirm what I already expected to be the case. It isn't the...
Thanks! This is actually very informative and helpful, as it goes into much more detail than the article linked in this post.
It does confirm what I already expected to be the case. It isn't the processing alone or itself that is necessarily harmful, there are examples of healthy UPFs named in the article. But it is difficult to make that distinction as a consumer. So the advice seems to be to avoid UPFs where you can.
While research continues, expert opinions differ on how people should approach UPFs. Dr. Monteiro said that the safest course is to avoid them altogether — to swap flavored yogurt for plain yogurt with fruit, for example, or to buy a fresh loaf from a local bakery instead of packaged bread, if you can afford to do so.
Dr. Vadiveloo suggested a more moderate strategy, focusing on limiting UPFs that don’t provide valuable nutrients, like soda and cookies. She also recommended eating more fruits, vegetables, whole grains (ultraprocessed or not), legumes, nuts and seeds.
Cook at home as much as you can, using minimally processed foods, Dr. Davy said. “We can’t really say a whole lot beyond that at this point.”
The explicit mention of whole grains ultra processed or not also drives through the point of dietary vibers being important.
We actually have had a good understanding of why UPF is bad for you for quite some time. But it's important to realize that "processed food" is an umbrella term that contains multitudes of...
We actually have had a good understanding of why UPF is bad for you for quite some time. But it's important to realize that "processed food" is an umbrella term that contains multitudes of processing techniques, and so does "ultraprocessed food". The thing that makes food ultraprocessed is the removal of nutrients or chemical alteration, and we know the reasons why they're bad for you are largely (but not exclusively) because they make you eat too many calories.
Freezing food generally has little effect on the nutritional profile of most food. So there is effectively no difference between a freshly prepared and a frozen pizza. But the problem with frozen pizzas you buy in the market is that they're not made the same way as you would make a pizza. They have added stabilizers, conditioners, oils, and maybe even artificial colorants.
But even so that may not mean that your pizza by itself is great either. Are you using a canned sauce? What's in that sauce and how was it processed? Did you make the cheese? It probably has been processed or added ingredients as well. What kind of flour did you use? Did you use oil, which is processed vegetables, or butter, which is processed milk, or perhaps a processed meat like pepperoni or ham?
Ultimately the most healthy food is the food that is processed as little as possible. A pizza is not going to be as healthy as a meal made up of raw tomato, cooked wheat berries, and milk.
Yes, it's true that cooking involves some degree of processing you do at home, but the devil is in the details. Milk comes to you pasteurized, and that's a great thing because it kills bacteria that could kill you. Wheat cannot be digested if eaten raw, so it needs to be cooked until soft and chewable at the very least. Beans also need to be cooked because they have toxins that can seriously hurt you if you don't cook them through all the way, and meat will almost certainly have bacteria that will also hurt you. All of these processing techniques are good things, for the most part. But the things you do at home are also very different from the kinds of processing that scientists are warning about. You are not squeezing the oil out of vegetables and throwing out the pulp. You are not hydrogenating fats. You are not ultrafiltering milk to change it's texture. You are not removing the hulls from wheat groats before milling the remains into flour. These are the things that are bad for your health.
As a general rule, whole foods are going to be better for your health, and so you should make them the majority of what you eat. Plant sources are preferable.
Yeah, the replies so far already made it pretty clear that it is specifically is the ingredients used in UPF causing most issues, not necessarily processing itself. The article @geiko linked here...
Yeah, the replies so far already made it pretty clear that it is specifically is the ingredients used in UPF causing most issues, not necessarily processing itself. The article @geiko linked here really paints a more complete picture and actually clarifies the different categories quite well.
As far as pizza goes, my main thinking was where frozen pizza is functionally the same as non-frozen freshly made pizza as I explained here.
It also made me realize that context matters a lot, I looked up frozen pizza ingredients from pizzas sold here. They contain barely if any additional ingredients, so they are mostly just pizza. I just went and had a look at frozen pizzas sold in the US and the ingredient list there is quite a bit more... exotic.
If anyone wants to dive deeper, there is an open access archive for industry documents made public through the university of California San Francisco library that has processed foods as one of its...
If anyone wants to dive deeper, there is an open access archive for industry documents made public through the university of California San Francisco library that has processed foods as one of its focus areas. Industry documents library UCSF
It's an interesting collection that originated with documents made public through the tobacco litigation process. There is also inside information on opioids.
There are some weird spaces on the website. One time I found a current bibliography of articles published using sources from this archive but I haven't been able to find it again.
Tobacco and processed foods actually have a surprising amount of overlap with tobacco. A large number of American processed food companies were at one time owned by tobacco companies - Kraft,...
Tobacco and processed foods actually have a surprising amount of overlap with tobacco. A large number of American processed food companies were at one time owned by tobacco companies - Kraft, General Mills, Nabisco, and Pillsbury were all owned by tobacco companies at one point.
A better way to assess the question is with a randomised controlled trial (rct), where researchers track a person’s food intake and control for all other variables. In one of the few such trials, published in 2019, Kevin Hall, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health (nih) in America, and his colleagues, admitted 20 adults to the nih Clinical Centre for four weeks. The participants received either ultra-processed or minimally processed foods for two weeks before swapping diet for the next fortnight. Participants in both diets had access to the same amount of calories and nutrients like sugars, fibre and fat. People were free to eat as much or as little as they wanted.
The results were striking. People on the ultra-processed diet ate about 500 more calories per day than those on the unprocessed one. They also ate faster and gained an average of 1kg (2.2 pounds) over two weeks. On the other diet, participants lost a similar amount of weight. Dr Hall says that, though the study was short and conducted in an artificial setting, the results suggest that excess amounts of salt, sugar and fats might not be fully to blame for the ill effects of processed food.
…
Dr Hall will run another study where 36 people check into his diet hotel for a month. They will be rotated through four different diets: two similar to those in his previous study and two new ultra-processed regimes. One of these is low in both energy density and hyper-palatable foods, while the other is high in energy density but low in hyper-palatable combinations. As before, all diets are balanced for key nutrients. By tracking changes in weight and other health measures, Dr Hall hopes to pinpoint whether it is high energy density, hyper-palatability or both that leads to overeating of upfs. The results of the study are expected next year, and Dr Hall is hopeful that it will help to move the conversation on upfs from opinion to science.
…
Even if the results show conclusively that processing, and not just nutrients, leads to poor health, policymakers will face another difficulty: the definition of upfs remains woolly. The Nova classification has no tolerance at all for artificial ingredients. The mere presence of a chemical additive classifies a food as a upf, regardless of the amount. This can lead to confusing health outcomes—a recent observational study from Harvard University, for example, found that whereas some upfs, such as sweetened drinks and processed meats, were associated with a higher risk of heart disease, others, like breakfast cereals, bread and yogurt, were instead linked to lower risks for cardiovascular disease. Dr Astrup warns that the current classification risks “demonising” a lot of healthy food. Insights from Dr Hall’s work could therefore help refine the understanding of upfs, paving the way for more balanced and useful guidelines.
I just read the book "Ultra Processed People" by Chris Van Tulleken so this couldn't be more timely. Along with referencing many studies done over the years he makes a few general points that...
I just read the book "Ultra Processed People" by Chris Van Tulleken so this couldn't be more timely.
Along with referencing many studies done over the years he makes a few general points that resonate with me. The biggest one being: "Was this food made to nourish you? Or was it made in a factory by a company who's main interest is making money?"
The book mentions the myriad of ways these companies hire scientists to alter the food to make it more appealing so you eat and buy more. It's all a scam. I don't care if I never have another Dorito ever again if it means more home cooked meals with fresh ingredients from the local farmers market.
Yes, the incentive argument really resonated with me, as did the evolutionary one (we have evolved with our food over millions of years, and selecting correct food is likely highly selected for...
Yes, the incentive argument really resonated with me, as did the evolutionary one (we have evolved with our food over millions of years, and selecting correct food is likely highly selected for evolutionarily).
The thing that's challenging for me is that you can't always tell. Simply Orange (made by Coca Cola) has "just one ingredient" But the way it is made is a highly complex process of blending juices...
The thing that's challenging for me is that you can't always tell.
There's also a lawsuit about forever chemicals in the juice (presumably a byproduct of the processing) that may or may not have merit, I didn't take the time to dig into it.
First of all, I want to say that I completely take your point about being unable to tell: the nutrition labels that seem so trustworthy (in the US, at least, I can't speak for other countries) are...
First of all, I want to say that I completely take your point about being unable to tell: the nutrition labels that seem so trustworthy (in the US, at least, I can't speak for other countries) are allowed to omit more info than we realize. For instance, the FDA allows labels to round down to 0 if the amount is "insignificant" -- e.g., if a serving size contains less than half a gram of fat, the label is allowed to say there is 0g of fat. I'm sure there are ways to massage the "serving size" so that some things are rounded to 0, when in reality you might eat enough of something over the course of your day to throw your calorie counts off with compounded rounding errors.
About the orange juice though, I'm not sure why they're dunking on Simply Orange in particular there. From what I understand, all orange juice has this problem. You can't make a long-lasting orange juice that will keep its flavor, so every producer has had to add flavoring back in at the very least.
Come to look at it some more, I don't really understand the article's fearmongering language when every step sounds reasonable to me. They pick the oranges when ripest; they juice them, pasteurize the juice, and remove oxygen so it won't spoil; they blend juice from different crops together for a consistent flavor profile; then they add flavoring previously extracted from their oranges in so it will taste fresher. It says these flavorings "resemble nothing found in nature" but don't actually elaborate on this point. (I'm reminded here of the ingredient list for a banana.)
I did look into the lawsuit, by the way, and the plaintiffs are only claiming that PFAS are found in one flavor: "Simply Tropical". No idea if it's true or not, but it's not about the plain orange juice.
I completely believe gigantic corporations do shady stuff for a quick buck, but I'll raise my pitchfork after I hear something solidly objectionable.
Yes, to me, it’s not particularly objectionable. it shows that industrialized food processing happens for pretty sound reasons because the goal is to feed hundreds of millions year-round. Also, it...
Yes, to me, it’s not particularly objectionable. it shows that industrialized food processing happens for pretty sound reasons because the goal is to feed hundreds of millions year-round.
Also, it shows how the food industry caters to our myths. There is the “not from concentrate” thing. I suspect that orange juice could be made from concentrate that’s just as good (it’s removing and adding water), but it’s a flex that distinguishes somewhat more premium orange juice. The one ingredient thing is also a flex - they can do all this processing while it’s still technically one ingredient.
There are other kinds of flexes that high-end restaurants do.
I think "resemble nothing found in nature" is a fair point to be concerned about. I absolutely see where you're coming from and appreciate your thoughts. At the same time I'm not inclined to give...
I think "resemble nothing found in nature" is a fair point to be concerned about. I absolutely see where you're coming from and appreciate your thoughts. At the same time I'm not inclined to give companies the benefit of the doubt without transparency to validate their claims. The opaque nature of how those oils are processed may be because they're processed in a way that alters their makeup (intentionally or unintentionally). They're not just capturing and re-adding the oils, otherwise they would confidently say that their juice is naturally flavored with orange essence and oil. But instead they describe deriving their flavoring using those. Which to be fair could just be about filtering and isolating the specific oils and flavors they want to avoid the bitter ones, but then why not just say that?
Which, taking a step out to the broader topic, is a fair concern regarding ultra processed food. We've mastered really complex industrial scale chemical processes for fundamentally transforming ingredients. So with food, where do we draw the line for calling something natural and safe because it's naturally derived when the end product is chemically not the same thing as the input? I'm not looking for an actual answer as much as theorizing that part of what could be creating health issues with some ultra processed foods (other than removing fiber, potentially being addictive, etc.) could be the actual processing may be altering the molecular structure of some ingredients in a way that changes how they're motabolized.
I get avoiding criticizing foods just because they're processed, or because they have carbs, or fats, or [insert trendy ingredient to dunk on]. And to be clear, I think the steps like using satellite data, a fancy algorithm for picking and blending, and data from research on customer flavor preferences are awesome innovations and uses of technology that I think should be applauded. I also suspect they help minimize food waste through the supply chain (would love data on that). However I'm not inclined to give companies benefit of the doubt on trade secret processing that we don't understand how they affect the make up of the food. They dont give us enough transparency to know how to criticise them and I think a safe default position to then take is "it's probably not health so I should only consume this in moderation at most."
For clarity: I was critiquing the article rather than defending the company. If someone has some real concerns about a company's practices, I want to hear them. But in the article itself, I...
For clarity: I was critiquing the article rather than defending the company. If someone has some real concerns about a company's practices, I want to hear them. But in the article itself, I couldn't find any. If they want to go into detail about why it's not natural and what that could mean, that's info I'd want to know. But the fact that they're so vague about it makes me suspect they're the sort of people who don't like when an ingredient has a scary chemical name. I could ask a similar question to yours: if there's something real to report, why didn't they actually report it?
I should mention that before I wrote my previous comment, I actually clicked through some links in that article and searched around for what I was missing. I didn't mention it because it really didn't turn up much that was new. I found a few articles, all written around the same time, all linking to each other and reusing the same wording, and all seemingly in promotion of a particular book about the orange juice industry. The one with the most detail was this one, written by the author of said book. Here's the most relevant part to me:
Yet those in the industry will tell you that the flavor packs, whether made for reconstituted or pasteurized orange juice, resemble nothing found in nature. The packs added to juice earmarked for the North American market tend to contain high amounts of ethyl butyrate, a chemical in the fragrance of fresh squeezed orange juice that, juice companies have discovered, Americans favor. Mexicans and Brazilians have a different palate. Flavor packs fabricated for juice geared to these markets therefore highlight different chemicals, the decanals say, or terpene compounds such as valencine.
So they "resemble nothing found in nature" yet all the chemicals listed are naturally occurring in citrus. (I looked into those, too, though it's oddly hard to find whether ethyl butyrate naturally occurs in oranges, despite that being the particular one highlighted as such.) I think the answer is pretty simple as to why the companies wouldn't advertise this even if the process is completely harmless (still not saying it is, incidentally). People only want simple answers -- myself included, the world is too complicated to digest, unless you get a particular itch to do some research -- and if given a little bit of info, will take the bit in their teeth and be only too eager to gallop down the wrong path. (When I poked around, I found it interesting that Tropicana actually does advertise this process in an extremely simplified and sanitized way, possibly in response to these articles that were written 15 years ago. I don't trust them either -- it's just meaningless PR speak-- but it's mildly interesting.)
Having said all that, I've looked around again, and the most info I could find, without actually reading the book, is in this review of the book. Key points:
"100% orange juice" only has to be 90% orange juice to acquire the label (can have tangerine or other added, apparently)
"Not from concentrate" orange juice is probably pasteurized more times than frozen concentrate
Most crucially, regulations about the processing of the flavor packs were unable to be found... and while nominally the third parties are only using the essences provided by the orange juice company, the orange juice company does not oversee the process either, and so there is plausible deniability if additional components sneak their way in
This, I can agree, is highly suspicious and worth knowing (though keep in mind the game of telephone we're playing here -- this is all at least third hand info by now). There is still no solid evidence, but it's a definite red flag. Where oversight is lax, you'll never be able to convince me that someone isn't getting away with something. I wish they'd put something similar in those articles that actually pinged as a real concern, rather than acting shocked that companies employ efficient practices and make their product taste good enough to incentivize purchases.
On the subject of ultra processed foods in general, I have not much of an opinion, currently. I believe everyone should incorporate whole food into their diet as much as they can, but their ability can be severely compromised by a number of factors. Plus, the research is still ongoing and has so many variables. I'll want to see it as it unfolds in the future. At the moment, I'd be happy with better transparency on nutrition labels and better oversight in the industry, but I doubt that's happening any time soon. We just got updated nutrition labels a few years ago, so it's not likely to happen again for at least a decade, if not more, in my opinion. And, well, try to convince me the upcoming government is going to add more regulations to big business.
I can elaborate on their behalf. The first problem is that the pasteurization process involved is high heat which refines the sugars. Combine that with most of the fiber and other solids being...
They pick the oranges when ripest; they juice them, pasteurize the juice, and remove oxygen so it won't spoil; they blend juice from different crops together for a consistent flavor profile; then they add flavoring previously extracted from their oranges in so it will taste fresher. It says these flavorings "resemble nothing found in nature" but don't actually elaborate on this point.
I can elaborate on their behalf. The first problem is that the pasteurization process involved is high heat which refines the sugars. Combine that with most of the fiber and other solids being removed by juicing and that in itself is a good reason to avoid store bought juice.
Next step is to store it in a vat and pump out all the oxygen, which also removes most of the flavor.
Then the flavor has to be added back in via "flavor packs" which are contracted out to specialists. Flavor packs are made from VOCs and other chemicals that originally came from oranges (thus bypassing the need to go on the ingredients list). Sometimes these are captured during the pasteurization process, meaning that they can be post heat reaction compounds. The goal is not to reproduce the taste of the original batch of oranges, but rather to create a consistent flavor that the juice company's research tells them will appeal to the target market. This is the part where you end up with collections of molecules that you won't find in nature.
Technically all the individual chemicals are sourced from an orange, but what you get isn't the same as what you get from juicing your own orange. It's an industrial product that should be mentally classed with sodas and other treats rather than nutritious food.
I appreciate the elaboration. Some of the specifics are new info to me, thank you. I guess I still don't personally understand the particular demonization of the consistent flavor. If I bought a...
I appreciate the elaboration. Some of the specifics are new info to me, thank you.
I guess I still don't personally understand the particular demonization of the consistent flavor. If I bought a brand of OJ the first time and it was sweet, and then the second time it was sour, I wouldn't buy that brand again. I wouldn't put a great deal of thought into it; I'd just know that I want juice that tastes good. Most people shop like that, I think.
I guess I always just subconsciously assume that complicated industrial things are happening to deliver a product that sells. I have to accept that I'll never know about it, if I want to stay sane while grocery shopping. But now I get why I didn't start off on the same page as others did. I needed to remember that in an ideal world, a product would match its carefully crafted image, and it's not wrong to want that.
It's an industrial product that should be mentally classed with sodas and other treats rather than nutritious food.
This is a very good point. Even if you juice at home, you're still more likely to end up with something that's more of a dessert. As far as store-bought goes, I've never even trusted it to have the nutrients that a fruit product ought to have. It really is just an unhealthy treat.
Yeah, I was not trying to particularly say that Simply Orange is better or worse than the others. It's just an example I was already aware of where my mental model (you crush a fruit and put the...
Yeah, I was not trying to particularly say that Simply Orange is better or worse than the others. It's just an example I was already aware of where my mental model (you crush a fruit and put the juice in a bottle) is way off from the reality.
That rounding thing is really irritating to me. I have a bottle of cooking spray that has hundreds of "servings" that are measured in sprays of approximately 1/4 second and contain "zero...
That rounding thing is really irritating to me. I have a bottle of cooking spray that has hundreds of "servings" that are measured in sprays of approximately 1/4 second and contain "zero calories". But that's bullshit - 1/4 second of spray isn't going to coat any pan, and any spray containing oil as it's number one ingredient is not going to be zero calories!
Really, the entire concept of a serving needs to be done away with, or at least the US needs to get with the previous century and force labels to use "per 100g" measurements on them like most of Europe does.
Honestly, most fruit juices aren't all that good for you anyway, regardless of the process they go through: Most juice have been filtered to remove any of the pulp, so they lack any dietary...
Honestly, most fruit juices aren't all that good for you anyway, regardless of the process they go through:
Most juice have been filtered to remove any of the pulp, so they lack any dietary fibers.
These fibers are important to slow down digestion, so the sugars don't hit your metabolism all at once. This means that it can spike blood sugar levels and increase your appetite.
It also means that some other nutrients aren't processed and in turn aren't as beneficial (think vitamins).
If you freshly juice anything, you know how much fruit goes into one glass. Which might seem healthy until you consider the caloric intake in the form of sugars you have now concentrated in one glass.
There are more claims about fruit juice not being good for you. I mainly kept it to the main ones. If possible, it is best to simply eat fresh fruit. Second to that is to blend fruits and vegetables in smoothie form. But there you also do need to keep an eye on the amount of produce you include. It is quite easy to overshoot your caloric intake if you don't.
Agree with you that juice is not a healthy food! It reminds me of the extremely hard marketing push that Sunny Delight did when I was a kid. Glad we don't see as much of that these days.
Agree with you that juice is not a healthy food! It reminds me of the extremely hard marketing push that Sunny Delight did when I was a kid. Glad we don't see as much of that these days.
This is the first time I actually see an article that goes into "what" processed foods and ultra process foods actually mean. In the past I have mentioned that, at least in common day use, it seems to have a very fluid meaning.
I still think this is a bit vague, but it is clear that the fourth and last group are those that are problematic. What I am missing here is if it is the processing itself that is bad (which is implied by the name) or the ingredients used as part of that processing. I guess the combination of those is what makes it a UPF? But now I am wondering how a freshly baked pizza compares to a frozen pizza. Both are not exactly healthy to begin with, but I am more or less wondering if there truly is a difference between the two.
I think it’s very hard to separate the class and money dimensions from the actual impact of the UPFs. My bet is that there’s very little about the food mechanistically, but the flavor profiles, consistency, and balance of fats + carbs + salts in these foods are just more addictive and/or less satiating than less processed or home cooked food which is where more of the issues come from. The article called this making the foods “hyper-palatable” but I think what’s actually at work is that they’re super consistent. Every bite tastes the same as the one before it. Compare this with buying organic berries where one can be tart and another one sweet, one can be mushy and another firm. All in one basket. The experience of eating is just a lot less mindless when it’s a variety like that.
Another the article does not mention, which I find surprising, is any references to dietary fiber. Processed foods tend to have a lot less. Fresh foods, especially fruits and veggies, have quite a bit and this is a big part of what contributes to both satiety and slowing down absorption so even a very sweet fruit isn’t just hitting your metabolism all at once.
Honestly it’s just bread + vegetables and/or meat + cheese. Having it assembled in a pie doesn’t make it much less healthy than having those ingredients next to each other on a plate. What generally makes it unhealthy when you order out is the volume of cheese, the oil in the dough, and the amount of sugar (a shockingly high amount in the tomato sauce for some reason). But if you do it Neapolitan style with a fairly dry and crispy crust and smaller but much tastier amounts of mozzarella it’s really not that bad for you.
I know no one wants to hear this but white flour, eaten daily or in significant quantities, is incredibly bad for your health. Refined carbohydrates contribute to diabetes, cardiovacular disease, gut inflammation and a host of other things including most autoimmune problems and many cancers. White flour is right behind sugar among the worst of the refined carbs.
Do you have a source for that?
That's a very long list of sources to compile. Fortunately it's not controversial or obscure so it's easy to find.
This search is a start.
Thanks
I'm diabetic and my endo has told me the same thing. Also my personal experience with it screwing up my blood sugar just as bad as candy. I have to avoid a lot of breads entirely because of it.
Found something to share with the group: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7557900/
Agreed. The process of refining white flour removes the most nutritious components, while whole wheat retains those beneficial nutrients, making it a healthier choice
Yeah all good points as far as I am concerned. Just wanted to touch a little bit on the context of why I mentioned pizza.
You are right that it isn't outright bad for you. I was more or less thinking about the fact that, for a meal, the proportions aren't right. Because the main ingredient is bread, it is heavy on carbohydrates and light on most other things, including dietary fiber.
So maybe not bad, but not really a balanced meal either.
The problem with hyperpalatable foods is not that they are super consistant, it's that they're surprising. They have a deep rich flavor that is varied enough that you want to keep eating it. One of the big things you'll notice about them is that they tend to transition in flavor or texture as you eat it. One of the reason why people are so big on fried foods is that it starts off crunchy and then "melts" as you chew it into something pasty or smooth that coats the mouth.
The natural variation in flavor between natural ingredients is actually one of the big reasons why manufacturers add in extra sugar, salt, and oil into their products - to equalize the flavor. You'll find a lot of honey-flavored snacks, for instance, that if you look at the ingredients list you'll find that there is less actual honey in them than there are sugar or other sweeteners. The reason why prepared tomato sauce is because they are made with commodity tomatoes they buy in bulk; they can't select for the best tomatoes so they just add in sugar to get that natural sweetness. Or just to make it sweeter because people prefer it that way!
I agree with you that it's a shame that the article doesn't mention fiber, but no news article will have enough time to go into all the details of why UPFs are bad for you. I'd recommend reading a book like Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss, which goes into more detail.
The funny thing about honey is that the market is so poorly regulated that there’s no real way to know how much actual honey (from honeybees) is in there versus corn syrup and food coloring. It gets adulterated at every leg of the supply chain from the apiary down to finally being bottled and sealed. I don’t even think the final bottlers know. Olive oil has a similar issue. You gotta pay dearly to get stuff you know is pure.
You can’t know but you can at least get an idea of how much there is relatively by the order it appears in the ingredients list, which is in order of greatest to least in every country that I am aware of.
It’s adulteration so it won’t show up in the ingredients list. The bottlers don’t know what they’re bottling.
Yeah, my previous conception of "processed foods" was way broader than what the UPF label identifies. I thought the anti processed foods thing extended to things like flour and white rice. Which as an Indian was a hard pass for me.
I think the examples of high fructose corn syrup and adding a bunch of sugar to stuff to make it "palatable" are good for qrapping your head around the idea. You dont feel like youre eating a lot of sugar because it doesnt taste super sweet, but there's acrually a ton of sweetener in stuff just to make it taste average.
I think a lot of the work sugar does is just covers up the off flavors. I remember reading a while ago that chocolate and coffee flavored ice creams actually have a lot of surplus of other ice cream flavors in them because those flavors (and colors) are so strong that they basically overwhelm whatever other tastes are blended into a batch.
A lot of ingredients will degrade to still be edible but just less palatable over time, like citrus oils eventually end up tasting piney instead of citrusy. I expect a lot of the reason the sugar is there is to just cover those sorts of things up and improve shelf stability.
The NYTimes had some good articles on the topic this year that cleared a few things for me. I'm not sure if it's the answer you're looking for but it should help. There are some other articles as well if you want to keep reading.
Gift link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/06/well/eat/ultraprocessed-foods-harmful-health.html?unlocked_article_code=1.dE4.PiSW.DZVTZEygDelM
Thanks! This is actually very informative and helpful, as it goes into much more detail than the article linked in this post.
It does confirm what I already expected to be the case. It isn't the processing alone or itself that is necessarily harmful, there are examples of healthy UPFs named in the article. But it is difficult to make that distinction as a consumer. So the advice seems to be to avoid UPFs where you can.
The explicit mention of whole grains ultra processed or not also drives through the point of dietary vibers being important.
We actually have had a good understanding of why UPF is bad for you for quite some time. But it's important to realize that "processed food" is an umbrella term that contains multitudes of processing techniques, and so does "ultraprocessed food". The thing that makes food ultraprocessed is the removal of nutrients or chemical alteration, and we know the reasons why they're bad for you are largely (but not exclusively) because they make you eat too many calories.
Freezing food generally has little effect on the nutritional profile of most food. So there is effectively no difference between a freshly prepared and a frozen pizza. But the problem with frozen pizzas you buy in the market is that they're not made the same way as you would make a pizza. They have added stabilizers, conditioners, oils, and maybe even artificial colorants.
But even so that may not mean that your pizza by itself is great either. Are you using a canned sauce? What's in that sauce and how was it processed? Did you make the cheese? It probably has been processed or added ingredients as well. What kind of flour did you use? Did you use oil, which is processed vegetables, or butter, which is processed milk, or perhaps a processed meat like pepperoni or ham?
Ultimately the most healthy food is the food that is processed as little as possible. A pizza is not going to be as healthy as a meal made up of raw tomato, cooked wheat berries, and milk.
Yes, it's true that cooking involves some degree of processing you do at home, but the devil is in the details. Milk comes to you pasteurized, and that's a great thing because it kills bacteria that could kill you. Wheat cannot be digested if eaten raw, so it needs to be cooked until soft and chewable at the very least. Beans also need to be cooked because they have toxins that can seriously hurt you if you don't cook them through all the way, and meat will almost certainly have bacteria that will also hurt you. All of these processing techniques are good things, for the most part. But the things you do at home are also very different from the kinds of processing that scientists are warning about. You are not squeezing the oil out of vegetables and throwing out the pulp. You are not hydrogenating fats. You are not ultrafiltering milk to change it's texture. You are not removing the hulls from wheat groats before milling the remains into flour. These are the things that are bad for your health.
As a general rule, whole foods are going to be better for your health, and so you should make them the majority of what you eat. Plant sources are preferable.
Yeah, the replies so far already made it pretty clear that it is specifically is the ingredients used in UPF causing most issues, not necessarily processing itself. The article @geiko linked here really paints a more complete picture and actually clarifies the different categories quite well.
As far as pizza goes, my main thinking was where frozen pizza is functionally the same as non-frozen freshly made pizza as I explained here.
It also made me realize that context matters a lot, I looked up frozen pizza ingredients from pizzas sold here. They contain barely if any additional ingredients, so they are mostly just pizza. I just went and had a look at frozen pizzas sold in the US and the ingredient list there is quite a bit more... exotic.
If anyone wants to dive deeper, there is an open access archive for industry documents made public through the university of California San Francisco library that has processed foods as one of its focus areas. Industry documents library UCSF
It's an interesting collection that originated with documents made public through the tobacco litigation process. There is also inside information on opioids.
There are some weird spaces on the website. One time I found a current bibliography of articles published using sources from this archive but I haven't been able to find it again.
Tobacco and processed foods actually have a surprising amount of overlap with tobacco. A large number of American processed food companies were at one time owned by tobacco companies - Kraft, General Mills, Nabisco, and Pillsbury were all owned by tobacco companies at one point.
From the article:
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I just read the book "Ultra Processed People" by Chris Van Tulleken so this couldn't be more timely.
Along with referencing many studies done over the years he makes a few general points that resonate with me. The biggest one being: "Was this food made to nourish you? Or was it made in a factory by a company who's main interest is making money?"
The book mentions the myriad of ways these companies hire scientists to alter the food to make it more appealing so you eat and buy more. It's all a scam. I don't care if I never have another Dorito ever again if it means more home cooked meals with fresh ingredients from the local farmers market.
Yes, the incentive argument really resonated with me, as did the evolutionary one (we have evolved with our food over millions of years, and selecting correct food is likely highly selected for evolutionarily).
The thing that's challenging for me is that you can't always tell.
Simply Orange (made by Coca Cola) has "just one ingredient"
But the way it is made is a highly complex process of blending juices to achieve a consistent flavor profile.. So while it is technically just juice, the thing your getting is not what you're picturing when you squeeze an orange.
There's also a lawsuit about forever chemicals in the juice (presumably a byproduct of the processing) that may or may not have merit, I didn't take the time to dig into it.
First of all, I want to say that I completely take your point about being unable to tell: the nutrition labels that seem so trustworthy (in the US, at least, I can't speak for other countries) are allowed to omit more info than we realize. For instance, the FDA allows labels to round down to 0 if the amount is "insignificant" -- e.g., if a serving size contains less than half a gram of fat, the label is allowed to say there is 0g of fat. I'm sure there are ways to massage the "serving size" so that some things are rounded to 0, when in reality you might eat enough of something over the course of your day to throw your calorie counts off with compounded rounding errors.
About the orange juice though, I'm not sure why they're dunking on Simply Orange in particular there. From what I understand, all orange juice has this problem. You can't make a long-lasting orange juice that will keep its flavor, so every producer has had to add flavoring back in at the very least.
Come to look at it some more, I don't really understand the article's fearmongering language when every step sounds reasonable to me. They pick the oranges when ripest; they juice them, pasteurize the juice, and remove oxygen so it won't spoil; they blend juice from different crops together for a consistent flavor profile; then they add flavoring previously extracted from their oranges in so it will taste fresher. It says these flavorings "resemble nothing found in nature" but don't actually elaborate on this point. (I'm reminded here of the ingredient list for a banana.)
I did look into the lawsuit, by the way, and the plaintiffs are only claiming that PFAS are found in one flavor: "Simply Tropical". No idea if it's true or not, but it's not about the plain orange juice.
I completely believe gigantic corporations do shady stuff for a quick buck, but I'll raise my pitchfork after I hear something solidly objectionable.
Yes, to me, it’s not particularly objectionable. it shows that industrialized food processing happens for pretty sound reasons because the goal is to feed hundreds of millions year-round.
Also, it shows how the food industry caters to our myths. There is the “not from concentrate” thing. I suspect that orange juice could be made from concentrate that’s just as good (it’s removing and adding water), but it’s a flex that distinguishes somewhat more premium orange juice. The one ingredient thing is also a flex - they can do all this processing while it’s still technically one ingredient.
There are other kinds of flexes that high-end restaurants do.
I think "resemble nothing found in nature" is a fair point to be concerned about. I absolutely see where you're coming from and appreciate your thoughts. At the same time I'm not inclined to give companies the benefit of the doubt without transparency to validate their claims. The opaque nature of how those oils are processed may be because they're processed in a way that alters their makeup (intentionally or unintentionally). They're not just capturing and re-adding the oils, otherwise they would confidently say that their juice is naturally flavored with orange essence and oil. But instead they describe deriving their flavoring using those. Which to be fair could just be about filtering and isolating the specific oils and flavors they want to avoid the bitter ones, but then why not just say that?
Which, taking a step out to the broader topic, is a fair concern regarding ultra processed food. We've mastered really complex industrial scale chemical processes for fundamentally transforming ingredients. So with food, where do we draw the line for calling something natural and safe because it's naturally derived when the end product is chemically not the same thing as the input? I'm not looking for an actual answer as much as theorizing that part of what could be creating health issues with some ultra processed foods (other than removing fiber, potentially being addictive, etc.) could be the actual processing may be altering the molecular structure of some ingredients in a way that changes how they're motabolized.
I get avoiding criticizing foods just because they're processed, or because they have carbs, or fats, or [insert trendy ingredient to dunk on]. And to be clear, I think the steps like using satellite data, a fancy algorithm for picking and blending, and data from research on customer flavor preferences are awesome innovations and uses of technology that I think should be applauded. I also suspect they help minimize food waste through the supply chain (would love data on that). However I'm not inclined to give companies benefit of the doubt on trade secret processing that we don't understand how they affect the make up of the food. They dont give us enough transparency to know how to criticise them and I think a safe default position to then take is "it's probably not health so I should only consume this in moderation at most."
For clarity: I was critiquing the article rather than defending the company. If someone has some real concerns about a company's practices, I want to hear them. But in the article itself, I couldn't find any. If they want to go into detail about why it's not natural and what that could mean, that's info I'd want to know. But the fact that they're so vague about it makes me suspect they're the sort of people who don't like when an ingredient has a scary chemical name. I could ask a similar question to yours: if there's something real to report, why didn't they actually report it?
I should mention that before I wrote my previous comment, I actually clicked through some links in that article and searched around for what I was missing. I didn't mention it because it really didn't turn up much that was new. I found a few articles, all written around the same time, all linking to each other and reusing the same wording, and all seemingly in promotion of a particular book about the orange juice industry. The one with the most detail was this one, written by the author of said book. Here's the most relevant part to me:
So they "resemble nothing found in nature" yet all the chemicals listed are naturally occurring in citrus. (I looked into those, too, though it's oddly hard to find whether ethyl butyrate naturally occurs in oranges, despite that being the particular one highlighted as such.) I think the answer is pretty simple as to why the companies wouldn't advertise this even if the process is completely harmless (still not saying it is, incidentally). People only want simple answers -- myself included, the world is too complicated to digest, unless you get a particular itch to do some research -- and if given a little bit of info, will take the bit in their teeth and be only too eager to gallop down the wrong path. (When I poked around, I found it interesting that Tropicana actually does advertise this process in an extremely simplified and sanitized way, possibly in response to these articles that were written 15 years ago. I don't trust them either -- it's just meaningless PR speak-- but it's mildly interesting.)
Having said all that, I've looked around again, and the most info I could find, without actually reading the book, is in this review of the book. Key points:
This, I can agree, is highly suspicious and worth knowing (though keep in mind the game of telephone we're playing here -- this is all at least third hand info by now). There is still no solid evidence, but it's a definite red flag. Where oversight is lax, you'll never be able to convince me that someone isn't getting away with something. I wish they'd put something similar in those articles that actually pinged as a real concern, rather than acting shocked that companies employ efficient practices and make their product taste good enough to incentivize purchases.
On the subject of ultra processed foods in general, I have not much of an opinion, currently. I believe everyone should incorporate whole food into their diet as much as they can, but their ability can be severely compromised by a number of factors. Plus, the research is still ongoing and has so many variables. I'll want to see it as it unfolds in the future. At the moment, I'd be happy with better transparency on nutrition labels and better oversight in the industry, but I doubt that's happening any time soon. We just got updated nutrition labels a few years ago, so it's not likely to happen again for at least a decade, if not more, in my opinion. And, well, try to convince me the upcoming government is going to add more regulations to big business.
I can elaborate on their behalf. The first problem is that the pasteurization process involved is high heat which refines the sugars. Combine that with most of the fiber and other solids being removed by juicing and that in itself is a good reason to avoid store bought juice.
Next step is to store it in a vat and pump out all the oxygen, which also removes most of the flavor.
Then the flavor has to be added back in via "flavor packs" which are contracted out to specialists. Flavor packs are made from VOCs and other chemicals that originally came from oranges (thus bypassing the need to go on the ingredients list). Sometimes these are captured during the pasteurization process, meaning that they can be post heat reaction compounds. The goal is not to reproduce the taste of the original batch of oranges, but rather to create a consistent flavor that the juice company's research tells them will appeal to the target market. This is the part where you end up with collections of molecules that you won't find in nature.
Technically all the individual chemicals are sourced from an orange, but what you get isn't the same as what you get from juicing your own orange. It's an industrial product that should be mentally classed with sodas and other treats rather than nutritious food.
I appreciate the elaboration. Some of the specifics are new info to me, thank you.
I guess I still don't personally understand the particular demonization of the consistent flavor. If I bought a brand of OJ the first time and it was sweet, and then the second time it was sour, I wouldn't buy that brand again. I wouldn't put a great deal of thought into it; I'd just know that I want juice that tastes good. Most people shop like that, I think.
I guess I always just subconsciously assume that complicated industrial things are happening to deliver a product that sells. I have to accept that I'll never know about it, if I want to stay sane while grocery shopping. But now I get why I didn't start off on the same page as others did. I needed to remember that in an ideal world, a product would match its carefully crafted image, and it's not wrong to want that.
This is a very good point. Even if you juice at home, you're still more likely to end up with something that's more of a dessert. As far as store-bought goes, I've never even trusted it to have the nutrients that a fruit product ought to have. It really is just an unhealthy treat.
Yeah, I was not trying to particularly say that Simply Orange is better or worse than the others. It's just an example I was already aware of where my mental model (you crush a fruit and put the juice in a bottle) is way off from the reality.
That rounding thing is really irritating to me. I have a bottle of cooking spray that has hundreds of "servings" that are measured in sprays of approximately 1/4 second and contain "zero calories". But that's bullshit - 1/4 second of spray isn't going to coat any pan, and any spray containing oil as it's number one ingredient is not going to be zero calories!
Really, the entire concept of a serving needs to be done away with, or at least the US needs to get with the previous century and force labels to use "per 100g" measurements on them like most of Europe does.
Hard agree.
Honestly, most fruit juices aren't all that good for you anyway, regardless of the process they go through:
There are more claims about fruit juice not being good for you. I mainly kept it to the main ones. If possible, it is best to simply eat fresh fruit. Second to that is to blend fruits and vegetables in smoothie form. But there you also do need to keep an eye on the amount of produce you include. It is quite easy to overshoot your caloric intake if you don't.
Agree with you that juice is not a healthy food! It reminds me of the extremely hard marketing push that Sunny Delight did when I was a kid. Glad we don't see as much of that these days.
Archive link: https://archive.is/EfaFI