I think something people don't understand about these companies- both processed food and fast food companies- is that they hire a huge number of scientists, from people who design custom artificial flavors and odors to psychologists who understand how to best design packaging to appeal to certain demographics.

They are using their understanding of human psychology and human sensory input to make these products appeal to us as much as they ever possibly could.

And both that understanding and the technology itself keeps improving.

So this will only get worse.

Just remember that every time you see anything advertised to you from a major food company or restaurant chain that they are using your brain against you and doing it well. And it will still work. It works with me despite knowing it.

Nestlé, PepsiCo, Mars, and Kraft Heinz

These are some serious, evil, greedy motherfuckers that will never allow UPFs to be regulated in the U.S. It's vitally important that people take personal responsibility to learn about the dangers of UPFs and eliminate them from their diet.

For a few years now I've thought that the food industry will feature as the next controversy as tobacco has been. Years ago I read an article about High Fructose Corn Syrup, its history and its negative effect on the liver. I can't find the original but this one comes close. Ever since I've avoided HFCS.

We then have hydrogenated fats that are considered bad for the body.

The bottom line is that these ingredients are produced to make food production cheaper but at the expense of a healthy diet. Industry sector lobbying helps these ingredients to the market.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/generivory

I'm still a skeptic of the Nova system into the 4 categories (1: unprocessed or minimally processed, 2: processed ingredients, 3: processed foods, 4: ultra processed foods), because it's simultaneously an oversimplification and a complication. It's an oversimplification because the idea of processing itself is such a broad category of things one can do to food, that it isn't itself all that informative, and it's a complication in that experts struggle to classify certain foods as actual prepared dishes being eaten (homemade or otherwise).

So the line drawing between regular processed food and ultraprocessed is a bit counterintuitive, and a bit inconsistent between studies. Guided by the definitions, experts struggle to place unsweetened yogurt into Nova 1 (minimally processed), 2 (processed culinary ingredients), 3 (processed food) or 4 (ultra processed food). As it turns out, experts aren't very consistent in classifying the foods, which introduces inconsistency in the studies that are performed investigating the differences. Bread, cheese, and pickles in particular are a challenge.

And if the whole premise is that practical nutrition is more than just a list of ingredients, then you have to handle the fact that merely mixing ingredients in your own kitchen might make for a food that's more than a sum of its parts. Adding salt and oil catapults pretty much any dish to category 3, so does that mean my salad becomes a processed food when I season it? Doesn't that still make it different than French fries (category 3 if I make them myself, probably, unless you count refined oil as category 4 ultra processed, at which point my salad should probably be ultra processed too)? At that point, how useful is the category?

So even someone like me, who does believe that nutrition is so much more than linear relationships between ingredients and nutrients, and is wary of global food conglomerates, isn't ready to run into the arms of the Nova system. I see that as a fundamentally flawed solution to what I agree is a problem.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

When the Brazilian nutritional scientist Carlos Monteiro coined the term “ultra-processed foods” 15 years ago, he established what he calls a “new paradigm” for assessing the impact of diet on health.

Studies of UPFs show that these processes create food—from snack bars to breakfast cereals to ready meals—that encourages overeating but may leave the eater undernourished.

Hall found that the subjects who ate the ultra-processed diet consumed around 500 more calories per day, more fat and carbohydrates, less protein—and gained weight.

In part it has used the same lobbying playbook as its fight against labeling and taxation of “junk food” high in calories: big spending to influence policymakers.

In an echo of tactics employed by cigarette companies, the food industry has also attempted to stave off regulation by casting doubt on the research of scientists like Monteiro.

“There’s scientific agreement on the science,” says Jean Adams, professor of dietary public health at the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge.

The original article contains 581 words, the summary contains 161 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Just don't replace this with paleo diet bullshit.