Industrially processed pizzas, cereals, and convenience foods are responsible for a host of diseases. Policymakers and doctors need to lead the food fight.
Industrially processed pizzas, cereals, and convenience foods are responsible for a host of diseases. Policymakers and doctors need to lead the food fight.
Processed is a useless word. You gonna get sick from the pre-chopped broccoli?
Hence, they use the term ultra processed.
and that’s a made up term they forgot (or probably cant) define.
It’s a well defined term:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-processed_food
which the also take some time discussing in the beginning of the article.
What about riced cauliflower? The issue is the type of processing, but I’d submit that is a distractio to the bigger issue. The problem is that the processing often results in foods that are easier and tastier to eat, resulting in over consumption.
I’m also wondering if portioning isn’t also at play here with ultra processed foods.
For a snack, I might eat a bag of baked potato chips (pulling this from the above quoted article) or apple slices. I think for many people, it’s natural to eat the whole portion in front of you, even past the feeling of satiated (not to be confused with the feeling of being full). Like, I don’t know many people who throw away a bag of chips with just 2 chips left in it. So even if the flavoring of the chips is no longer even appealing to me (I got just enough saltiness fix), I’m likely to finish the bag because it seems weird to “waste” those last 2 chips. And now, I’ve consumed an extra 15+ calories that I didn’t even enjoy. Compare to an apple for which, even if I’m kind of sick of it but still feel compelled to eat the whole thing, may be an extra +2 calories.
Multiply over multiple snacks per week.
To their credit, they say “ultra-processed” to capture this distinction.
They use another vague term with little to no meaningful distinction in order to avoid the actual problem, which in this case is overeating and, in general, is foods having too much sugar, salt, and others things added. Additives that are fine in moderation, but are way higher and outside the daily recommended value in these cases.
It’s a well defined term:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-processed_food
which they also take some time discussing in the beginning of the article.
It absolutely addresses this difference in the first minute or so reading the article.