Addiction to Highly Processed Food Among Older Adults
 

https://www.healthyagingpoll.org/re...ng-older-adults

At least they are focusing on the source lately.

I'm thinking of the sugary "nutrition" drinks they give to the elderly, because food is tasteless to them. When they should get cheap but tender cuts like brisket. They could probably get better senses of taste and smell if they ate whole foods.

That's how it works for me, anyway. There's lots of studies showing seniors don't get enough protein. And how dramatically their health improves when they do.

I'm convinced processed foods are the root of some kinds of eating disorders. They are the drug.

.......bet this applies to all age groups......

That's what I was thinking. Why single out "older people"?

Thanks, Mike. Good article that accurately describes what I started experiencing when I reached my early 50s. That's when I started adding weight that normally I was able to manage, but as I ventured into my 50s, weight wasn't easy to reduce despite being physically active. In addition, I started getting cravings for crap foods with combined carbs and fats being the most desired. So, over 20 years ago, I knew I had a problem, and yet, didn't understand the full implications of that eating behavior's influence on my overall health. After a couple wakeup calls, I realized my WOE was not going to work long term, so I found and started low carb. The take away, and I don't believe it can be stated too strongly, is that poor eating behaviors from the early years of our lives add up over time and then the symptoms start. Today, symptoms like higher blood pressure, sleep apnea, skin tags, GERD, and most others are treated on their own islands and never as collective warning signs for Metabolic Syndrome caused by poor lifestyle. Thinking about this dynamic that many of us encounter as we age, I've concluded that the term "addiction" is on the mark. The worst part of this is that many of us in early years were purposely eating many things that are considered "healthy" and continue to be recommended for healthy diets to this day.

I just looked up the definition of "ultra-processed" and it seems they single out cookies as ultra-processed, but not bread. The difference between bread and cookies is just sugar, for the most part.

Ted Naiman on Twitter:
Convinced me that protein Powder was OK:
https://youtu.be/zCgDBd8FgvY

Lol

The bread flour used today are very processed compared to pre-1900.

Once hull is removed, the modern processing removes the germ and the bran. All purpose white flour is left. Great store potential for white flours, as this doesn't go rancid. It's the germ , with the fats, that goes rancid. Best kept in refrigerator, or freezer.

Love that I am surrounded by thinking people on this forum.

I wonder if part of the reason they use "ultra-processed" is because they don't want the blow-back of saying "sugar" or high carb? Most ultra-processed foods have a lot of sugar and carbs.

This is a good observation. It's almost as if anything "ultra-processed" has now become the new saturated fat as the target to demonize. Food assessment in these times has become very binary, and it's hardly close to that and not helpful at all. Bread is addictive, bread with butter or olive oil is even more addictive. To your point, bread, which was one of my previous addictions, is a processed food, and if I add peanut butter, honey, and any other fat, in my mind it becomes "ultra-processed" by today's definition. As I stated in my previous post:



What a world, what a world . . . .

There actually is a precise definition of "ultra-processed" foods per the NOVA Food Classification system:

Ultra-processed foods are industrial formulations made entirely or mostly from substances
extracted from foods (oils, fats, sugar, starch, and proteins), derived from food constituents
(hydrogenated fats and modified starch), or synthesized in laboratories from food substrates
or other organic sources (flavor enhancers, colors, and several food additives used to make
the product hyper-palatable). Manufacturing techniques include extrusion, moulding and
preprocessing by frying. Beverages may be ultra-processed. Group 1 foods are a small
proportion of, or are even absent from, ultra-processed products.

Processed foods:

Processed foods are products manufactured by industry with the use of salt, sugar, oil or
other substances (Group 2) added to natural or minimally processed foods (Group 1) to
preserve or to make them more palatable. They are derived directly from foods and are
recognized as versions of the original foods. They are usually consumed as a part of or as a
side dish in culinary preparations made using natural or minimally processed foods. Most
processed foods have two or three ingredients.

There's also Unprocessed or Natural foods, Minimally processed foods and Processed Culinary Ingredients.

I'm not sure who uses these definitions and why but some seem a little shaky to me. Soybean oil would be considered a "processed culinary ingredient" along with white sugar and maple syrup from trees.

I can't argue with their examples of "ultra-processed foods" though:

https://educhange.com/wp-content/up...rence-Sheet.pdf

The whole idea of processed is at least being discussed when it comes to food. I have gotten another remission in my autoimmune condition by staying away from all artificial sweeteners and flavors, binders and chemicals.

I also consider processed levels and sources. My body likes Naked Whey (mentioned on the board by Bob from Florida, I think) but not mixes which include whey isolate, for instance.

Thanks for the fun video, JEY. I think everybody should watch it because it has an excellent definition of what we should be looking for. (Keto ice cream.)

I invested in the new food science book, Unprocessed.

A few months ago I stopped improving, and the only thing I’d added was protein shakes, which brought great improvement. I found Naked Whey right here, switched to that, and continued getting better.

Then I found a paper on how common artificial emulsifiers are like taking Leaky Gut Pills. all shake mixes have emulsifiers. I have to use coconut oil, cold water, and a big whisk to make mine lump-free, and I try to have a NO cocoa version, but it acts as an emulsifier. So is that automatically bad?

I don’t know. Eggs are, too. So there you are.

Cocoa, I’ve decided, will be a dose makes the poison kind of thing. Like a tablespoon of coffee this morning was me being wildly indulgent. I use such to flavor my smoothies on my new low oxalate plan.

And all of this, even the whey, is not that processed, from her book. Whey is a good source and it is removing the water, which doesn’t seem to damage anything. I buy a brand which posts testing results on the website, which is impressive. I can also taste the difference, now.

I’m reminded of how I was suffering on the HRT pills until I could get the bio-identical and it was like night and day. Artificial things are not the same things.

Yes, but everyone "knows" cookies are junk food. They don't see bread as anything they can live without. :lol:

It's these unconscious biases that still mess up good science, and what the bad kind is based upon. Any of us who dealt with the shock and horror of our family and friends discovering we are low carbing can remember the difference from the turn of the century to... now. Now, at least everyone knows what it IS.

Reading Unprocessed, I see how low carb was dressed up and called KETO as a buzzword, and the result was an emphasis on plant-based treats because plants are our friends.

So yes, the soaking of kidney beans for three days so we don't kill our family is "processing." All those Weston A. Price Foundation traditional foodways were about the processing.

But ULTRA-processed is truly another beast. Traditionally it was efforts to take toxins from food. But Ultra means they have taken out the nutrition itself, the very substance of the "food" and now it's actively toxic, not a source of nutrients, and what people never seem to understand is how this makes it a poison, at any dose.

It's so unrecognizable as a food that it's not even a bad diet. It's more like starvation while putting on fat. And I think that's a concept not easily found in biased brains.

I'm reminded of the researcher Gary Taubes quoted in one of his books, talking about sugar in terms of, "It makes me feel so GOOD how can it be wrong!"

I get it. But it's not science, is it?