A long, exploratory article by Anahad OConnor in the Washington Post.

Melted, pounded, extruded: Why many ultra-processed foods are unhealthy.

Quote:

Would you eat food that’s been predigested? Experts say that’s what we’re doing when we consume many popular packaged foods — those breads, cereals, snack chips and frozen meals that have been refined, pounded, heated, melted, shaped, extruded and packed with additives. A growing body of research suggests that the extent of industrial processing that your food undergoes can alter its effects on your body, determining its impact on your appetite, hormones, weight gain, and likelihood of developing obesity and chronic diseases. This extreme processing creates foods that are so easily absorbed by the body that they’re essentially predigested. Many foods also are engineered to overcome our satiety mechanisms, which drives us to overeat and gain weight, experts say. In recent years, scientists have adopted a new name for foods that are intensely manipulated by food manufacturers: ultra-processed.

Industrial processing changes the structure of food. Experts say it can affect how much you eat and absorb, your weight and risk for chronic disease.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/well...ctLZAtiSGioNGRQ

[Believe this link as a "gift" will open for non-subscribers].
Animated sketch of a strawberry becoming a fruit candy and a 13 minute audio. The food industry isn’t even trying to claim what remains is as healthy as the product it started with, but ultra-processing is more economical. "Added nutrition" would be spray on vitamins that our bodies likely cannot recognize.

"“Processed foods in general help create a more affordable, available, and accessible food environment,” said Bryan Hitchcock, chief science and technology officer for the Institute of Food Technologists, in an email. “Processing technologies, particularly at the industrial scale, add value, safety and nutrition while reducing costs and food loss and waste.”

Yup. Too true.

No boxes of "food" in my house.

Would like gasses eliminated from beef cuts/ hamburger. Would like chicken to not be soaked in chlorinated water or injected/ salt brined.

Eating as close to whole foods as I can get. One ingredient 😄 items.

Dairy requires reading labels. Anything bottled needs careful scrutiny. If its boxed, you know its a problem.

We minimize processed foods in our house. We'd like to get completely away, but it's something that's very difficult to do, and still stay on the low carb diet. Stevia extract for example is processed. Nuts are roasted in peanut oil. And so on.

It's working, I'll be 77 next month, and I'm on zero prescription medications, and can't remember when I got sick last.

Ted Naiman's Twitter response to Anahad's article:



[ I am concerned that there are some exceptions, and a few rare categories of ultra-processed foods are quite good — which is why SPC might be a slight improvement over NOVA classifications. 🤔 ] Example given, Protein powder is Group 4 in Nova, white flour is Group 1. Satiety Per Calorie fixes that.

We've been processing food since we hustled some meat over to where the lightning hit. I agree with JEY that some processed foods are highly beneficial.

Heck, my homemade protein smoothies are demonstrably better for me than even the best-sourced commercial shake mixes. Shoutout to Bob-a-rama's tip about Naked Whey. All the stuff they add was not working for me, though it did give work to the plumber who came to snake out the sink. The goop he cleaned out was the same as the goop that remained in the bottom of my cup when I did a HOT protein smoothie. I think people who do them traditionally would not have a clue.

Now, instead of adding stuff like sweeteners, binders, bulkers, and emulsifiers to the real food, they just... increasingly leave out the real food. Profit!

From the article, this hit me in particular:



So, when do I get my medal? For making bunless hamburgers at home. Which is apparently beyond someone influential about health at the NIH.

These weasel words show us the uphill battle. Because it's easy to avoid UPF with zero nutritional value. All one has to do it be convinced that it's dangerous.

He's not helping.

Appalling attitude conveyed in a veiled attempt to justify why these poisons have merit. Preparing whole foods is hardly rocket science and those resourceful people are able to save time by preparing more for multiple meals. How did society accept this myth that healthy meal prep is so difficult and time consuming? Right, by reading articles like the one referenced.

From the beginning, industrial foods were rationalized as creating more cheap food. Which I admit is better than no food at all.

But now, they've created foods which crowd out the real ones. This is messing up the delicately balanced chemistry developed over millions of years. We're killing our pets with it, too, along with wearing out the soil with these plant-based obsessions.

Washington Post continues its Fake Food, Real Risk series with

What’s in your food? Find the artificial sweeteners in these sugar-free grocery items.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...bstitutes-food/

Nothing epitomizes how bizarrely distorted our food marketplace has become than the constant stream of plant-based meat and cheese substitutes. The conceit that matching crude macros will "duplicate" a real food is some peak of arrogance.

I have real sympathy for the addictive nature of this stuff. A lot of expensive science went into that. Whenever I venture into vegans sharing what they eat, it's not some virtuous salad or nut casserole. It's not like they cook or even prepare, like old school vegetarians. It's all stuff from the vegan bakery and soy substitutes to mimic favorite fast food.

"It's vegan, it's good for me, it's pure uncut sugar now!"

They are defending a sand castle with the tide coming in.

Trader Joe's now has a separate vegan refrigerator case. I must venture there to buy organic hummus, some of the rest of the items there are bizarre.

In that interview with Dr Chris Van Tulleken, he was mentioning to the interviewer of a "certain age" that they likely both ate CocoPuffs when they were kids. The problem with buying the "same"coco-puffs is that every year the food scientists tweak the formula, have taste tests, then maybe add a more processed corn meal, or corn syrup, add artificial sweeteners to super sweet the sugar.

The US ingredient list for Cocoa Puffs (regular, not the Nesquick or super chocolate flavor) is "whole grain corn, sugar, corn meal, corn syrup, cocoa processed with alkali, canola oil, fructose, salt, caramel color, refiner's syrup, baking soda, natural flavor. vitamins and minerals: tricalcium phosphate, calcium carbonate, zinc and iron (mineral nutrients), vitamin c (sodium ascorbate), a b vitamin (niacinamide), vitamin bs (pyridoxine hydrochloride), vitamin b2 (riboflavin), vitamin b, (thiamin mononitrate), vitamin a (palmitate), a b vitamin (folic acid), vitamin b12, vitamin d3."

Good too know they sprayed on all those vitamins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRRGyy5nNlk

Added to my Youtube queue this morning, thanks!

I had a chat with a friend yesterday, sharing their struggle with junk food, because it "tastes so good." I said, "What if I told you, in utter sincerity, that a medium rare ribeye with butter and sour cream tastes better than any fast/junk/convenience food I ever ate."

And... they didn't believe me. Not that I wasn't speaking the truth, but that they just couldn't wrap their mind around it.

But I also wonder if we haven't been ramping up our own cooking styles to compete, you might say. I am a fan of the prefab meals I see in the meat case, as something a beginning cook can handle. Like a Cajun spiced entree with flavored butter on some asparagus. That's a nice meal, but the coatings are really heavy. And this is prep even I can manage on my worst day.

Now, I do wonder how much of that coating really is spice.

I'm waiting for meat-based veggies.

Farm to table is best, but we can't all do that. So the closest we can get to that, the better off we'll be. The perimeter of my grocery store is my aim. And organic when I can get it.

Only vegans are real vegetarians, no matter what people say. What plant (vegetable) did that egg or milk come from? Those lacto-ovos are just picky eaters who want to be included into what they think is the elite veggie club.

IMO, a vegan diet is not a healthy one.

I don't care how many studies try to complicate this. In simple terms:

• I have the alimentary canal length and function of an omnivore
• I have the digestive enzymes of an omnivore
• I have a need for the nutrients only available in animal products, or manufactured supplements to mimic those nutrients

Therefore, I should eat an omnivorous diet.

Plants are very hard to digest. Horses have a mile long digestive tract, and plenty of animals get nutrition from their feces because the food is only partially digested. Rabbits, deer and others eat their own feces to run it through again. Cows and other have several stomachs so they can ferment their food before digesting it. I am not eating my feces, and I have only one stomach. The only fermented food I drink is wine.

If I wasn't supposed to eat meat, why equip me with enzymes to digest meat, and why do I have a need for heme iron, vitamin b12 and 5 other nutrients only found in meat?

I think the problem is corporate food. When you look at the ingredients in most packaged food, a lot of what you read isn't food. But it increases shelf life, in some cases makes storage easier, and makes profits for corporate food.

A small business only needs to make enough profits to pay employees, and have enough left over for the owners to make a living. Profits only need to increase by the inflation index. More is good, but not necessary.

A corporation needs perpetually growing profits. If the profits are only keeping up with inflation, the stockholders will jump ship. Stockholders want to make more profit than the inflation index, that is why they own the stock in the first place.

To keep the stockholders, the corporation needs to increase it's profits by the next quarter, then increase profits even more by the next one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that, ad infinitum. If not, the stockholders won't be making profits and they will sell.

There are many ways to do this, make cheaper food using filler instead of real food, adding ingredients that will extend shelf life, 'kill the competition' which of course is meat and dairy, grab more market share by putting more tasty sugar in the product, and so on.

Thus - you need a plant-based corporate diet and we have a plant based version of the meat your body is craving. It isn't as nutritious for you as the real meat, but it makes a profit for us, and we don't care about you, only profit. So you need to quit eating meat (kill the competition) and enjoy this tasty frankenfood that looks a little like meat and tastes a little like meat, and makes us a lot of money.

At least that's the way I see it.

So I ignore all the press because it's all advertisements.

I pay attention to what my body is built to eat, an omnivorous diet. In addition, I know that for me (perhaps not for you) if I eat more than 20 net carbs a day, I gain weight so I cut the sugars and starches to a minimum.

I've done this since Keto was called Atkins. I turn 77 this month and am on zero medications. I don't catch colds or the flu, never-ever miss work due to illness, my bloodwork is all in the normal zone, and once a year my doctor tells me that I'm an easy patient, and to just keep doing what I'm doing.

So you can have your fake meat, you can have your plant-based diet, you can have your frankenfood, I'll eat what my body was designed to eat, and omnivorous diet, and I'll watch what each food does to me, and learn how to maintain a healthy weight.

Sure I miss huge desserts, donuts, apples, corn on the carb, french fries, and other high-carb foods, but I'm healthy. Without your health, nothing else matters.

Bob