What makes ultra-processed foods so bad for your health?
Not too much has changed in the process food industry. Baloney, salami, hot dogs, sweet rolls, etc. are still the same. Process foods consists of any “raw agricultural commodities that have been washed, cleaned, milled, cut, chopped, heated, pasteurized, blanched, cooked, canned, frozen, dried, dehydrated, mixed or packaged or anything done to them altering their natural state.”
It also includes adding preservatives, flavors, nutrients and other food additives, or substances approved for use in food products, such as salt, sugars and fats.
Ultra-processed foods are made mostly from substances extracted from foods, such as fats, starches, added sugars, and hydrogenated fats. Also included are 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.
A quick example of the differences as they read mostly alike. A pizza from scratch contains minimally processed food (wheat turned into flour, tomatoes into sauce, milk into cheese). The pizza in the freezer, with its thiamine mononitrate and sodium phosphate, is Ultra Process Food (UPF).
Ultra-processed foods are the main source (nearly 58%) of calories eaten in the US. They contribute ~90% of the energy we get from added sugars.
The above is a brief introduction to the differences between process foods and ultra-process foods. The article I pulled from the Economist does a deeper dive into UPFs and the dangers. Keep in mind, there is less spoilage with processed foods and it is less costly to bring them to market. Ultra-Processed foods have a longer shelf-life than natural foods. There is a cost motive to this too.
What makes ultra-processed foods so bad for your health? economist.com
Food shopping is becoming a dangerous pursuit. For example, nutritional issues are lurking on every shelf.
- Ready-meals are packed with salt and preservatives,
- Breakfast cereals are sweeter than chocolate bars, and
- Processed meats are packed with nitrite-preservatives, which can form harmful compounds when cooked.
A new term is catching on to describe these nutritional bad guys: ultra-processed foods (UPFs).
In his new book, doctor and television presenter, “Ultra-Processed People”, Chris van Tulleken, argues that UPFs dominate the food supply in rich countries. They are also creeping into diets in low-and middle-income countries. As they proliferate so do the concerns about their effects on human health.
Just how bad are UPFs, and what do they do to us?
The concept of UPFs was devised by Carlos Monteiro, a Brazilian scientist. In 2009. His team of nutritionists observed the people in Brazil were buying less sugar and oil> However the rates of obesity and type-2 diabetes were rising. It was due to their eating more sugar, fats and additives in packaged snacks and pre-made meals. In response, Mr. Monteiro proposed a food classification system to take into account the degree of processing involved in the food supply.
The processing of healthy foods can make them unhealthy. Fruit for instance goes from healthy to unhealthy as it is desiccated, squeezed or sweetened. Mr. Monteiro’s system, Nova, puts foods into four “buckets”: unprocessed and minimally processed foods; processed culinary ingredients; processed foods; and ultra-processed foods. This allows more fine-grained distinction between different degrees of processing. Thus staples such as rice, oil or flour, which all require minimal processing for consumption, do not belong in the same category as a Twinkie.
Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) often go through many sophisticated industrial processes. Those processes do not make them all unhealthy by default. For example, a soya-based meat substitute can be part of a balanced meal. However, the frequent consumption of UPFs causes a constellation of issues. Most contain a blend of artificial ingredients, plenty of salt and sugar, and few nutrients. Arguably, some UPFs are more akin to industrial products than food.
By dialing up their flavours and palatability, UPFs are engineered to be easier to eat in large amounts than whole foods (try leaving crisps at the bottom of the packet). The extent of the problem was revealed in 2019 by researchers at the National Institutes of Health in America. The project sequestered volunteers and offered two groups as much food as they wanted. Over a fortnight those on an ultra-processed diet ate some 500 more calories each day, roughly equivalent to a McDonald’s Big Mac. The lead them to gain weight.
Those on the unprocessed diet ate less and slimmed down.
Eating UPFs have been linked to poor health more broadly. One study in 2019 found an association between intake of UPFs and overall risk of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases affecting the brain, causing strokes. Another recent study showed eating fewer UPFs was linked with lower risk of a number of cancers. A UPF-heavy diet also seems to affect the gut microbiome, the trillions of bacteria that contribute to health in a range of ways. These sorts of association studies cannot prove causality. Randomized-controlled trials would be ideal, but more ambitious tests may not be ethically possible given the suspected deleterious effect of these kinds of diets. That said, there is plenty of evidence linking many ingredients in UPFs, such as sugar, salt, refined carbohydrates and saturated fats, to negative health outcome.
Yet UPFs are cheap, tasty and abundant, and for those on a tight budget or on specific diets, such as vegan, there are often few available alternatives. It is possible to eat well by selecting the right upfs, such as whole-grain cereals, which are often fortified, or by incorporating protein powders into your diet for added nutritional value.
Government scientists at the American government’s Agricultural Research Service showed it was possible to build a healthy diet with 91% of calories from selected upfs. But Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University, criticized the study, saying the researchers had a conflict of interest through their links to the food industry. It is best to stay vigilant in those treacherous supermarket aisles and read the labels.
Confronting the dangers of ultra-processed food, economist.com
I have two thoughts. Nitrites are dangerous (some react and become nitrosamines which are carcinogenic). That does not mean that preservatives in general are bad for our health.
There are in fact two healthy eating maxims which are
1) preservatives are bad
2) antioxidants are good
this is odd, because, in the context of food, “preservative” and “antioxidant” are synonyms.
I think that BHA and BHT are good for our health and caused part of the huge increase in life expectancy in the 70s. I also have 0 interest in organic or natural food. I guess that the really dangerous additives are salt and sugar. Note there is no reason anyone should care about my nonexpert guesses.
rice crispies are not as sweet as chocolate bars and I am now about to eat some.
Robert:
I watch the Sodium (salt) content. They really laden food with high levels of salt.
@Robert,
Baked goods have acrylamide, which is a neurotoxin. Grilled meats have heterocyclic aromatic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, both of which are carcinogens. A transatlantic flight exposes you to the ionizing radiation equivalent to five chest X-rays. The dose makes the poison, my friend.
Dietary sodium is only dangerous if you have genetic mutations that impair your kidney’s ability to pee it out. These mutations are fairly common in Americans, but if you don’t have them, “salt” isn’t a problem.
It’s harvest season when I spend a good deal of time drying fruit. My googling suggests other sources believe drying does not remove nutrition. I would be interested in understanding the above a bit more.
Me too. It may be that drying removed certain health-promoting stuff, but that doesn’t make it “unhealthy,” only less healthy.
Drying removes the water, which reduces the bulk. The lack of bulk means it will take more before you feel full and you may overeat without realizing it.
Drying fruit will concentrate the sugars, which can be a problem for some diabetics. The same applies to juicing or pureeing for smoothies. Few people would sit and eat all the fruit/veg they throw in a blender for one smoothie.
It is not that the food itself is unhealthy now, but overeating it may make you unhealthy.
Jane:
Thank you.
“A pizza from scratch contains minimally processed food (wheat turned into flour, tomatoes into sauce, milk into cheese)”
What about the pepperoni? Is it actually pizza without meat?
@Dave,
Yes. My chairman, who is Sicilian, always orders a Pizza Bianca for his lab meetings. It has neither meat nor tomato sauce, and is delish.
Regardless if it’s meat or veggie, all sausage by its nature is processed, pepperoni probably qualifies as ultra
That said, there are some darn good veggie pepperonis and passible grain sausages out there
Nitrites.
Nitrates in food and medicine: What’s the story?
Harvard Heart Letter – Feb 1, 2022
Look up Blue Baby Syndrome. Nitrates are particularly unhealthy for the very young.
Unmentioned the possibility of some of those additives having an addictive quality which brings them back for more, potentially a contributor to the obesity problem
I am Mr Natural, right down to the beard; spent many years avoiding taking nescient chemicals into my body, something I learned in the sixties. Kinda’ like my philosophy of running, or doing crunches (situps), if you’re running or doing crunches you’re in a hurry, and if you’re in a hurry you’re not doing something right. Same with what we consume and it’s usually part of the reason you’re running, or doing crunches ~ diet and exercise
Grant, some of it is unavoidable …
We’re into the food snob diet, so we eat very few ultraprocessed foods. Our theory is that ultraprocessed foods don’t induce satiety. The body may get the nutrients, but it doesn’t get the “you are satisfied” cue that makes it easier to stop eating. From a commercial point of view, this is a good thing for food processors. They can sell more, so it makes sense that they want to sell foods that are pleasing but that don’t satisfy.
There’s a difference in how one feels after eating french fried potatoes, for example, that have been fried in olive oil, tallow or lard as opposed to some industrial fat product. It isn’t about the calories. Your body can’t sense calories. It’s about the satisfaction factor of the fat. Tallow fries are particularly satisfying, sometimes overwhelmingly so. It can be hard to finish more than a modest portion.
This goes for things like sweets, meats and even fruits and vegetables. The industrial practice is to process the ingredients to make them malleable. Then the precise flavor is adjusted, usually amped up with fat and salt, and the texture is adjusted for the appropriate mouth feel using various gums, fats, starches and so on. It’s mouth feel and mouth taste are synthetic constructs.
Processed foods have always had various nitrates, sorbates and other agents and preservatives added, but starting around the 1970s food science went overboard. They realized that they could make anything taste, at least vaguely, like anything and feel like any other thing in the mouth. The underlying ingredient was almost irrelevant. If it was biological, it was bred to have as little flavor as possible. In terms of information science, the food itself became the carrier and the signal was the flavoring and texturing agents.
In our food snob diet, we avoid what we call pseudo-food as best we can. It has definitely made it easier to keep our weight under control. Since we’re snobs, we barely consider food-style products to be food at all. I’m sure we’d eat whatever we found in an abandoned supermarket after the zombie apocalypse, but that’s only if we found zombies unpalatable.
@Kaleberg,
Yeah, obesity is a risk factor for cancer, heart disease and joint problems. Calories in, calories out. There isn’t any real magic here.