I think there's some fudging of the terms here. When the article is talking about "bread" being healthy- well, there's bread, and then there's bread. Supermarket bread (sliced, packaged) typically lists a couple dozen ingredients. Ordinary bread... you know, bread-bread, like the one some of us bake at home, is made of: flour, water, salt, leavening agent (yeast or sourdough for those as have the patience). Bread-bread is probably healthy especially if you make it with (expensive) wholemeal flours. But supermarket bread? I don't think so.

Same goes for breakfast cereals and breakfast cereals. e.g. there's oatmeal and weetabix that are basically just a bit of fiber, not the healthiest thing you can eat but won't kill you. And then there's ... well my favourite poison is Kellog's Smacks and it's basically just as nourishing as eating cardboard with sugar on top.

When Carlos Monteiro decided to operationalize UPFs by giving them a definition (laymans terms: UPF is one ingredient you wouldn't find in a traditional kitchen and wrapped in plastic) Kevin Hall from the US had the same reaction as you and decided to make a multi-million dollar experiment to disprove the definition proposed by Dr. Monteiro. Result: People who ate unprocessed lost weight, and the other group gained weight. (Groups were exchanged after 2 weeks and saw similar effects).

Obesity and diabetes are western societies biggest health issues and the best research we have is a small n for a 4 week trial. Clearly there’s regulatory capture at play here.

Once we better understand what is driving the poor health outcomes we can work back and better classify problem foods and ingredients. Right now it’s all a bit unknown and doesn’t seem to have the right resourcing. There’s research that shows that UPFs are so simple that the body gets all the bad stuff in all its unfettered glory. Compare that to a date fruit, very high in sugar, but packed with fiber, the body metabolizes the date much more slowly, no sugar spike and gets some nutrition

I agree it leaves a lot to be desired but i wouldn't say it's totally worthless. It's clearly identifying something and even a poorly understood adherence to avoiding UPFs would likely make the average person healthier. Overall though we obviously need to come up with better terms for this

> 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.

I highly doubt these extra sweetened breakfast cereals are a net positive for health. So perhaps they should be more specific when it comes to mentioning breakfast cereals.

Strong agree. The Nova classification is extremist and heavily useless. Yes if you come up with two classifications and one includes McDonalds burgers and the other doesn't you'll be able to show a health effect. Doesn't mean your categorisation is useful.

It's not hard to intuit, but yes it can be less useful owing to ambiguity and confusion. It would be less difficult to settle on a definition that does not lean so hard on "processing" and actually conveys what is problematic.

For example, "shelf-stable packaged foods with a large flour component, wherein the flour component is stripped of all fiber, with added fat, salt, and sometimes sugar". You can also include candy, soft-drinks and juice.

That doesn't tell you something is "ultra-processed", but it identifies more meaningful factors. These are typically non-satiating snack foods, very low in protein and fiber, but very savory with added salt and fat. The combination of refined flour, salt and fat seems to be of particular note (and sugar regardless).

Most bread and yogurt in the average grocery store is pretty bad stuff, full of HFCS, hydrogenated oils, and hydrolyzed proteins.

But yes, I'd rather have a classification that clearly separates Coke and Cheez Doodles from actual foods. There are some multi-billion dollar lobbies to prevent that happening, though.

> This to me is the most damning evidence against the current classification of 'ultra-processed foods' being absolutely, totally worthless.

It's quite funny that even 15 years after labeling UPF as such there's still a struggle to "officially" mark it as unhealthy and I don't understand why it should be challenged. I would think that most children growing up are being told that candy, fries and Gatorade aren't healthy foods. Most people I know consider E-numbers as dodgy ingredients.

As mentioned in the article there are statistics that under the UPF classifications people are way more unhealthy both physically and even mentally. Shouldn't that be enough? Now a new study is needed to benchmark UPF that is low in fat, sugar and salt. Basically against a product class that hardly exists. I mean nobody eats like that. Most people put extra salt on their food, the Mediterranean diet somewhat the gold standard in good yet healthy food contains tons of fat and various cuisines from the region have rather sugary desserts.

I'd be fine classifying UPF as unhealthy and calling it a day. If food businesses want to explore "healthy" UPFs they should probably do so and take the burden to re-classify it as healthy. This seems like a quite Kafka-esque endeavor.

I agree. Classification of UPFs seems more to be a "religious purity" discussion than actuall classification of good/bad

Univariable classifications are usually not helpful, and this seems to just confirm it. In the same way "sugar free" or "fat free" make little sense

Why on earth do they include the word "ultra" when the definition is "literally any amount of any additive"?

> others, like breakfast cereals, bread and yogurt, were instead linked to lower risks for cardiovascular disease.

This surprises me. A lot of breakfast cereals and sweetened yogurts are basically candy, and I would have assumed are heavy contributors to poor health.

40-60% of nutritional studies cannot be replicated.

You can't reliably draw any conclusions from them. You have to use common sense and rules of thumb.

What we need first is transparency. Complete information about every ingredient, its supplier, where it was grown, what process it went through, etc. then we can perform research without confusing and conflicting results. Unfortunately I’ve seen people fight state or local level labeling laws by falling for corporate propaganda, particularly from companies in the GMO industry.

People don't understand that basic task like washing is "processing" the food and can be frustrating when talking to them about this subject.

Brit here: the idea that "ultra-processed foods" are really bad for you is definitely something that's entered the general consciousness here, but I don't think I know anybody who has any kind of meaningful answer to what "ultra-processed foods" actually are.

> breakfast cereals, bread and yogurt, were instead linked to lower risks for cardiovascular disease

Breakfast cereals? That sugary stuff? Someone else said 40-60% of nutritional studies are not replicable. Sounds more like the whole field is BS.

Scream naturalistic fallacy all you like but I would absolutely avoid all chemical additives and go natural all the way. If humans haven't been eating it for thousands of years, I would absolutely avoid it.

> And so, they give the market what it buys. Simple as.

It's not this simple.

Marketing isn't just about making an existing product attractive to consumers - it's also about creating new products and even new product categories, and then creating a desire amongst consumers leading to purchases.

Where do you think all of the ultra-processed food has come from in the past decade? It didn't always exist...

This game theory problem, where consumers are buying unhealthier options because they're cheaper, and companies are producing unhealthier options because they're more profitable, is exactly what regulation is for. I don't understand why we've all collectively forgotten why regulation exists and become so cynical that it can actually work! Actually I do understand: it's industry interests spending hundreds of billions of dollars on intentional misinformation and government capture for a half century.

A reasonable counter-argument is "but the science is extremely muddy here, so effective regulation is especially difficult", which is unfortunately true, but I'd point out that the science is extremely muddy largely because of industry efforts to intentionally poison our understanding of nutrition.

It's not in the food industry's interest to harm us beyond pursing profit margin, but it is in the health and pharmaceutical industry's interest to harm us — treatable chronic disease is recurring revenue. The more chronic disease, the more revenue. Pharma companies are making fistfuls of money from GLP1 agonists.

This incentive to harm is translated into the food system when captured groups like the American Diabetes Association and the American Heart Association help write dietary guidelines (for school systems for example) that look good optically but actually create disease and future recurring revenue for the health industrial complex. Groups like the ADA and AHA are also captured by major funding from the food industry, so that cheap high margin food products fit into their dietary guidelines.

The incentives are synergistic and exactly aligned to push food products with a veneer of health that cause long term disease.

A side effect of maximizing profit is harming our health. Doesn't really matter to me whether it's malicious intent or in the pursuit of shareholder value.

In retrospect, I realize the food industry probably took a page out of the cigarette industry's playbook. Or was it the other way around?

> sold cheaper than an alternative like a healthy fruit and nut mix

Sorry for sniping, but the alternative is to not buy a snack. You don't have to eat snacks.

In the US, portion size, calorie density, frequency of eating high calorie foods are contributing to people getting a lot fatter a lot faster than before. We now have instant gratification in food delivery services. Get anything you want without leaving home.

In fast food, people are eating a day's worth of food in one sitting. Triple burger, large fries, large drink. People are doing this once a day every day of the week.Then they go home and order more high calorie food with high calorie drinks and constant snacking.

It is amazing to see how much more obese people have gotten in the last decade, and the % of fat people has gone up a lot, too.

Restaurants of all types serve massive portions, and people eat it without thinking or realizing they are eating a day's worth of calories in one meal, and I haven't touched on the amount of fat, sugar, and sodium they are packing away.

The fact that people today have shorter lifespans than their parents should be sounding alarms everywhere, but there is nothing but silence.

There have been experiments that control for portion size, processed food still spikes glucose more, etc.

Japanese people are much smaller so explains smaller portions.

But I am too surprised how processed (but tasty) their convini food is.

I honestly think stress and work obsession along with sedentary lifestyles has a lot more to do with anything health related than ultra processed foods.

What’s special about Japan in this context?

You cannot imo use Japan as an argument for anything. There are so many unique and localised factors at play in Japan, that it could be something as obscure as incredible self limiting eating due to fear of social stigma.

Japan is a basket case.

The lack of fibre also contributes to lack of satiety which is another driving factor that makes people eat more processed food.

The potato chip satiety issue is also investigated in a few studies. Baked potato is some of the most satiating foods. But when you fry it in oil it just does something to your brain that makes you crave for more

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324078#boiled-or-b...

I agree. I think there is a third thing: processed foods are more likely to contain additives like colorants, emulsifiers, preservatives and stabilisers that humans have been eating for decades rather than centuries so we don’t have the same body of knowledge about them or their health-related impacts.

The chips not satiating you is more likely to be the effect of the obligatory seed oils in chips; IIRC the linoleic acid that they are high in impedes satiety (and also promotes inflammation).

100% this. There is a wonderful book called The Dorito Effect that goes into this in more detail.

> when I eat potato chips I eat more because they never quite satisfy me.

This is why I have paper bowls. Pour out a portion of chips. Eat that. If you're not satisfied after eat something _else_. This is probably as much about ingredients as it is about packaging and delivery.

Agreed. It's clear that most people don't understand basic nutrition, and most people have a very distorted view of what the human body should actually look like. The average American is very overweight. If you raise your arm above your head in front of the mirror, you should see your ribs, and you should see the clear outline of your latissimus dorsi. If you can't see these two things clearly, you are overweight.

Here you go: https://imgur.com/M3xoe2c

My opinions:

The amount of "processing" or "chemicals" is a red herring and it really comes down to prepared meals and snacks that have been engineered to make people want to eat more of them. We've gotten so good at this that it seems to override the natural hunger/satiety system which causes people to gain weight.

I eat a mostly vegetarian diet with lots of protein, massive amounts of sugar in the form of fresh fruit, and lots of whole grains.

And what will it tell you? Let's say you have one guy who is morbidly obese, another who is visibly in top shape, a seriously underweight fashion model, and an average guy. Who are you going to trust the most?

The obese guy obviously has some problem with nutrition, but he may also the one who is most interested the subject and the most knowledgeable. Obesity is also a mental disorder and while he may know a lot about nutrition, he has trouble applying this knowledge.

The guy who is in top shape most likely has good nutrition, but he may also simply have good genetics, do a lot of physical activity, and not care much about what he eats.

The fashion model probably knows how to lose weight, which may be as simple as not eating enough. But how much she knows about health is completely unknown.

As for the average guy, that's the most "no idea" you can get.

Smokers are often experts on why cigarettes are bad for you.

Do you need the picture of the person speaking in front of you to "calibrate their opinions" very often?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_personam

Weight loss/gain is specifically tied to calories consumed vs calories burned, yes.

But that is not the purpose of the study.

2 groups of people, 2 diets, and the 1 group given an unlimited amount of relatively healthier food, chose to eat less of it and lost weight. The other ate more junk food and gained weight.

That implies that there are non-conscious factors at play and that diets may be more naturally successful if they are comprised of healthier less-processed food even without restriction.

Additionally, this implies that there must be an X factor that takes place in the processing of foods that causes overweight people to keep eating when they have met their caloric requirements.

For context, look at the data regarding nutrient density in vegetables over the last 60 years and see that the nutrients aside from fat/carbs/protein have been on a steady decline year over year.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10969708/

When I put these things into perspective, my hypothesis is this:

Being overweight, commonly viewed as a weakness of character or a sickness of the mind or body, is more likely a symptom of some larger issue.

Evidence of this can be found piecemeal from studies on human diets the world over.

The foods that are readily available to people are making them sick, my guess is that this is from some form of malnutrition. This may be a nutrient malnutrition or some compounding effect that the overprocessing of foods has on the human body that isn't trivial to differentiate from its non-processed counterparts.

I feel it is reasonable to assume that in general overweight and obese people on an ultra-processed diet are overeating in a non-conscious attempt to compensate for a lack of fundamental nutrition in the foods that are available to them.

Therefore, to test the hypothesis, the underlying nutritional issues should first be addressed by eliminating ultra-processed foods from the diet and replacing them with minimally processed foods, the higher in "quality" the better.

Theory: An overweight person will naturally reduce their caloric intake when their diet meets or exceeds their nutritional requirements.

The results, listed in the article above, seem to suggest that this theory is correct.

The Slime Mold Time Mold article is maybe an interesting starting point, but really not great analysis... see this thorough rebuttal around the Lithium stuff that has not been responded to: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7iAABhWpcGeP5e6SB/it-s-proba...

TBH a lot of the discourse around this annoys me because it ignores sort of fundamental obvious stuff like food/snacks got way tastier, access to unhealthier food is higher, we live a way more sedentary lifestyle, takeout got more affordable, studies show that people overall consume more calories from unhealthier sources, you can go to the grocery store and see you should basically avoid much of the food there, food spikes your glucose higher, more artificial ingredients, switch from fat to sugar, more processed ingredients, etc. and yet everyone says "well it can't just be that" because XYZ specific study of some quality and timeframe took one of those axis in some degree of isolation and showed that _maybe_ it's not that specific thing only. Kind of a missing the forest for the common sense trees aspect. Obviously we don't understand the whole picture of obesity, but there's a degree of denial around common sense health stuff that's really weird in the kind of "rationalists try to figure out obesity" writing. I really think we should work more from a place of "you don't see people who do moderately intense exercise regularly and eat healthily being overweight/obese" as a baseline...

This is a great point and one that I think would change many minds.

If you say "more calories" or "hyperpalatable", many people will think "I can control that with portion control - I just won't binge them."

But if you say "it changes the physical form of the food" or "it has contaminants in it," it's clear that no amount of portion control can fix that.

I always take "Nobody knows!" "Nobody could have predicted!" as a warning for either something really dumb, biased, or uneducated take is about to follow.

No you didn’t miss anything. Everyone is freaking out about “processed” and “chemicals” and ignoring the obvious answer: high calories and low nutrition.

I haven't read the article, but research has identified several components of processed foods that are detrimental to health beyond their caloric content. *Trans fats*, often found in hydrogenated oils, raise bad cholesterol levels and are linked to heart disease and diabetes[3]. *Added sugars* and high fructose corn syrup, prevalent in many processed foods, increase the risk of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease[1][3]. *Sodium* is another common additive that can lead to hypertension and cardiovascular issues[1][3]. Additionally, *refined carbohydrates* cause rapid blood sugar spikes, contributing to metabolic disorders[3]. These components collectively contribute to chronic health conditions and increased mortality risk[2][4].

Citations: [1] https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/processed-foods/ [2] https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/what-... [3] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/318630 [4] https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/ultraprocessed-foods-bad-f... [5] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6146358/ [6] https://www.afmc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3781462... [7] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10260459/ [8] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/06/27/ultra-pro...

Agree completely. "Processing" is mainly the act of removing fiber so more food can be eaten faster and more often. Fiber satiates, which is not a good thing for companies that are trying to sell as much product as possible.

> If I eat 1000 calories of whole oats, a lot of those calories are passing through my body.

Humans are extremely efficient at extracting energy from food, regardless of the fiber content. We owe our survival as a species to it, as food was much less plentiful in the ancestral environment.

I've heard of fiber meaningfully affecting insulin response to food, satiety, and some other things - perhaps even gut microbiomes - but not metabolic efficiency.

Another way to say this: Eat foods with low glycemic index. Avoid foods that spike blood-sugar levels.

Yeah this is wrong. Very little of oats and other grains is indigestible fiber. Otherwise you'd be shitting it out undigested.

This strikes at a problem with the definition of "processing" foods. Nixtamalization is "processing," but is mandatory to ensure one does not develop a vitamin deficiency on a maize diet.

WHO says "eat 30 grams of fibre every day". Which is a lot, unless you use whole grains without sweeteners, fat or meat on top (which reduces fibre per calorie). Or eat lots of roots or cabbage, and salads. Especially since you have to think of eating until 30 grams of pure fibre content is reached every. Single. Day. Of. A. Year.

>Now, what UPF foods are is foods that have had most of their non-caloric content removed or been processed to increase calorie content, triggering this gorging behaviour. This is probably 80% of the obesity epidemic today.

It's been possible to buy prepared pure sugar (even granulated) and pure oils and fats for centuries, and eat them straight out of the container if one wished. Yet the obesity epidemic is much newer than that, and hardly anyone gorges themselves in that particular manner even today. There is clearly far more to it than "had most of their non-caloric content removed".

Why the insistence that these foods are only unhealthy because of the calories?

Have you heard of poison? 0 calories. Can kill you in the right doses.

Food factories contain dozens of these toxins in the form of plastics, lubricants, agents, flavorings, colorings, etc.

Calories are important. But the insistence that it's simply calories feels almost conspiratorial to me.

was going to reference ultra-processed people. i walked away with some of the same general sentiments that are here -

1. nova classification is imperfect, but is better than what we had before it and i hope that we can iteratively find something more refined

2. so many nutrition studies are so woefully biased because of sponsorship (and antipathy) that it's laborious to extract meaning from them because much of the effort is tracing the money and potential bias.

The highlight of this article is the Randomized controlled trial:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31105044/

So yes, causal for obesity.

They were buying less sugar and oil as ingredients to cook at home with. They were substituting home cooking by buying more ready-made foods and snacks that contained fat and sugar as components.

The phrase as originally coined is from the Nova classification system, proposed in 2009 by researchers at the University of São Paulo, Brazil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification

There's currently a lot of DHMO in all of those foods, which can be quite dangerous for humans and has been a cause for numerous deaths in the World, including young children.

In that case we can just take Ozempic or whatever guys!

Just kidding, no that's not the problem. The problem is processing destroys/alter many molecules we do not even know about or know it's full "purpose"/role in nutrition and digestion. The commonly talked about vitamins and RDA and such are just the bare minimum so a broad population does not get sick, but does not mean optimum health for a given individual.

Cf. eating 10mg of iron in a steak, readily bioavailable vs eating 10mg of iron from cereal. One is bound in easily digestible compounds, the other is iron shavings or rust.

e.g The British Navy discovering that scurvy is fixed by eating fresh food; ensuring to add citrus to sailors diets, then forgetting about how it worked. Then retrying citrus, but cooking it one using copper vessels, which destroy much of the vitamin C content.