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WSJ: Is That Food Ultra-Processed? How to Tell
Related: atherosclerosis, dietary fats, health, How-To, metabolic syndrome, nutrition, PUFAs, The Wall Street Journal
Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty is not qualified to discuss it — Lloyd
This article is slightly less inane than non-GMO water.
WSJ: Is That Food Ultra-Processed? How to Tell
2023-12-06
...There is growing concern from nutrition researchers, public-health experts and parents about the amount of ultra-processed foods in the American diet. Recent research has linked diets high in ultra-processed foods to increased risks of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease and depression.
... To identify ultra-processed foods, nutrition researchers say to check the label and look for ingredients that you wouldn’t find in a home kitchen.
[WIND: eg seed oils which are found in just about every home kitchen?]To make ultra-processed products, companies usually break down whole foods and chemically modify them to create ingredients you don’t find in nature, like high-fructose corn syrup and soy protein isolate, derived from soybeans. These foods also often include ingredients that enhance a food’s flavor, color or texture, such as the emulsifier soy lecithin. If a food has one or more of these ingredients, they are generally considered ultra-processed, according to a widely used classification system created by scientists in Brazil.
...We compared ultra-processed and less-processed versions of several common foods, including oatmeal and crackers, using the classification system created by the researchers in Brazil...
[WIND: seriously? A classification system by “researchers”? OMG]...
WIND: first of all, framing the discussion as “ultra” vs not is a thinking-past-the-sale persuasion trick. If you didn’t catch that right away, start learning about persuasion or keep being a sucker. It’s your 'tell', your waving red flag, that the article is a careful framing of the narrative, to co-opt it and control it.
You can bet good money that the “researchers” with their classification system are protecting the interests of the sugar, seed oil, wheat industry and all the garbage “food” using them. I don’t even need to go look. I could be wrong of course, but go look and tell me.
Note the absence of added sugar and seed oils being called-out—yet these are likely the key drivers of metabolic disease today, which in turn drives the vast majority of other medical issues. Those two, along with wheat/grains.
The article studiously avoids the Nasty Three (sugar, seed oils, wheat), to protect the behomoth interests of those pushing them. It looks to me like a co-opting by special interests of the issue—embracing it to control it. So that we can soon have proud little Karen badges on products that exclaim “Minimally Processed!!” according to some carefully-designed bullshit “scientific’ system. Coming to a store near you before long.
The anti-processed-food movement may gain some traction, and if it does, Big Food and various medical associations will quickly co-opt it. “Scientific” debunks will follow. Actually, this article is already an example of co-opting the processed food issue.
If it bears no resemblance to real food, it’s processed food: think seed oils, sports drinks, health drinks, etc. If it has an ingredient list of any length, it’s a processed food (think “health bars”). If it’s been extracted in any way, it’s a processsed food (eg apple juice). If it’s at a restaurant, it’s probably highly processed, with certain exceptions like sushi.
* Definition based arguments generally are stupid eg arguing about abortion by defining what is life goes nowhere.
