Can we stop hyperventilating about processed foods?

When I was growing up, lots of adults smoked. My piano teacher smoked during my piano lessons. Cigarette commercials were on TV. Their jingles were so addictive, we in the trumpet section would play them before band practice. Airplanes used to have a smoking section and a no-smoking light that went on before take-off and landing.

Eventually, America turned against tobacco, although it’s still widely consumed in much of the rest of the world. There’s no real debate anymore—tobacco isn’t food, it’s poison.

Now, some folks are comparing processed food to tobacco. It’s true that the packaging and flavoring of both cigarettes and processed foods have been engineered to make them more attractive and more addicting. But let’s not get carried away, like RFK Jr:

“The US health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has called ultraprocessed food “poison” and, in at least one case, “genocide,” . . . “

You know what’s poison? Arsenic is poison. Most American rice has significant levels of arsenic.* And it is the least-processed rice that contains the most arsenic. Arsenic in rice concentrates in the outer layers, meaning the bran and husk have the most, which is why brown rice (with bran intact) has significantly higher levels of arsenic than white rice (where these layers are milled off).

You know what else is poison? Acrylamide. It’s a neurotoxin and a carcinogen. Most baked goods contain acrylamide.

Ethanol is poison. Beer, wine and spirits contain ethanol. We tried outlawing ethanol once. It didn’t work.

“A growing body of research suggests that [processed] foods are a major driver of the increase in myriad chronic health concerns including obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, and that processing may matter even more for health than foods’ nutrition content.”

That should read “. . . suggests that *excessive consumption of* such foods . . .” just like excessive consumption of alcohol can lead to obesity, diabetes, cancer, liver disease and alcoholism. It’s the dose that makes the poison, peeps.

Although I generally avoid ad hominem arguments, I have to consider the source here. RFK Jr is discouraging childhood vaccines and has embraced the notorious lies linking thimerosal preservatives and aluminum-based adjuvants to autism. There’s something about a clock striking thirteen that calls into doubt everything that came before.

“Marion Nestle, a preeminent nutrition researcher, gave the MAHA movement some credit. But she cited Kennedy’s embrace of substitutions that mask the actual unhealthy properties of food, such as swapping out artificial dyes for natural ones. She’s concerned that those false wins give a misleading sense of progress.

“Taking color out of ice cream, it’s still going to be ice cream,” Nestle said. “Switching from high-fructose corn syrup to cane sugar, it’s still going to be Coca-Cola. … All I can do is laugh.”

I’m a scientist. I follow the data. So far the data I’ve seen show that abusing processed food can be harmful, but if consumed in modest quantities, it’s harmless. If you’re really concerned about your health, maintain a healthy BMI and blood pressure, exercise regularly, get regular dental care, get your scheduled vaccines and colonoscopy.

*if you want to minimize your intake of arsenic from rice, cook it in an excess of water and pour off the water when it’s done cooking.

Is processed food the new tobacco?