It’s Time to End the Tyranny of Ultra-Processed Food

Haus@kbin.social to News@kbin.social – 194 points – It’s Time to End the Tyranny of Ultra-Processed Food
wired.com

Industrially processed pizzas, cereals, and convenience foods are responsible for a host of diseases. Policymakers and doctors need to lead the food fight.

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Processed is a useless word. You gonna get sick from the pre-chopped broccoli?

Hence, they use the term ultra processed.

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.

It absolutely addresses this difference in the first minute or so reading the article.

To their credit, they say "ultra-processed" to capture this distinction.

what distinction is that? What point does a food become ultra-processed? Do foods like kimchi, or honey, or canned or dried beans count?

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.

Foods like pre chopped broccoli are still a problem. Just not as big of a problem.

The fresher and less processed the food the better off you are. There are things we do to food that are okay and things we do that aren't. For shipping fruits and vegetables ethylene is controlled to time the ripening of the fruit. This is perfectly safe. They are also sprayed with fungicides, this is less safe.

There is also the problem of centralized food production being a national security/food security issue. More decentralized food production would reduce this issue, and increase access to fresher, less processed foods.

Even the way mass produced food is grown is worry some. Something like 60% of the land food is grown on is completely denuded and relies on artificial fertilizers for 100% of its growth. This results in less nutrious food.

Decentralized food production leads to better land management. Which will fight climate change. There is also a massive water crisis brewing that is the result of water tables not being properly recharged. This can only be solved by wide scale land management, and a lot of the methods revolve around growing food at the same time.

One more thing, fast. Food that is eaten with in hours of picking results in better gut health. There are a load of benefits to that.

How do you reconcile that with the push toward urbanization, the near sexual urge of planners and citizens alike to have every single human living stacked and packed? Most of us would go on stabbing sprees if forced to live off the land in Bumbelch, Nebrahoma longer than a week.