Comment by gradientsrneat
2 days ago
I've seen ultra-processed food mentioned in other countries as well. It's a buzzword with no meaning.
Pasteurization saves lives. Flash-frozen foods retain more nutrition in transit, while freezing seafood kills parasites. And even the best bread and butter are as processed as food can get.
I'm reading the "chemical additives" list and it's a mix of obviously harmful things with known safe things added in trace concentrations - there's no intellectual rigor and a lot of fearmomgering.
When I hear "ultra-processed," here's what comes to mind:
- little Debbie snack cakes
- cereals
- white breads
- hot dogs
- chips
- pizza rolls
- Velveeta
- pop tarts
So I guess you're right, it has no meaning. But you're way off, I don't think anyone is talking about frozen raw fish as "ultra processed", or pasteurized milk.
How can be something simple as bread be ultra processed? We can prepare it at home.
Looking at the ingredients list on Wonderbread white bread, could you make that at home?
You can make bread with salt, flour, yeast, and water. Most breads in the grocery store, however, have considerably more ingredients, which are more in the purpose of treating the foodstuff as an industrial product rather than for nutritional purposes.
(That's not automatically bad btw. The amount of ultraprocessed food you can eat is actually probably quite a lot in relative terms before it starts causing health problems --- the problem is when it becomes 70-80% of your diet.)
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He's talking about "wonder bread" and other factory breads that have had much of their nutrients stripped and some put back, to the detriment of their absorption. Some also are concerned with artificially included preservatives and the unknown unknowns of putting them in places (even if there's a common natural source in another food).
Homemade bread is certainly not ultraprocessed (especially if made with unbleached flour or even better, whole wheat flour), but factory bread most certainly is considered ultraprocessed.
Yes and no. It's not a good word, but it has generally been defined in a way that wouldn't include any of the steps you mentioned.
One common description is that it includes lots of ingredients you wouldn't find in your kitchen.
It sometimes also includes ingredients that have been turned into extremely fine powder, and other very heavy industrial processing. My way of thinking of this is: adults shouldn't eat baby food. Some fast food essentially becomes way to easy to absorb.
I think this interview had a really good description about the problems of the "ultra-processed" label.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAPgzCiSk9Y&t=377s
But at least the label is triggering some interesting discussions and awareness about bad aspects of industrial fast food.
Even the original margarine (before the invention of hydrogenation) is more processed than the best bread and butter.
To quote from Ultra-Processed People:
Mège-Mouriès took cheap solid fat from a cow (suet), rendered it (heated it up with some water), digested it with some enzymes from a sheep stomach to break down the cellular tissue holding the fat together, then it was sieved, allowed to set, extruded from between two plates, bleached with acid, washed with water,warmed, and finally mixed with bicarb, milk protein, cow-udder tissue and annatto (a yellow food colouring derived from seeds of the achiote tree). The result was a spreadable, plausible butter substitute.