Why is the onus always on the consumer? Regulators, mount up.
Some examples of ultra-processed foods are:
Chicken nuggets; Fast foods, including Pizza; Frozen meals; Deli rotisserie chicken; Mashed potatoe flakes; Hot dogs; Lunchables; Packaged soups; Packaged cookies; Jarred sauces; Potato chips; Crackers like Pringles and Cheez-Its; Soft drinks and Energy Drinks; Sweetened breakfast cereals and Flavored granola bars
including Pizza; Frozen meals
I have to wonder why that is or if it applies to everything in this category, because some frozen food is literally just normal food, only frozen. I recently bought and ate two cheap frozen pizzas and took a look through their ingredients to see what kind of crap I’m ingesting. One of the pizzas contained the same ingredients that a homemade pizza of a similar type would have, with only one exception, which was a tiny bit of citric acid. Harmless. The other contained added modified starch in the tomato sauce, and surprisingly a bit of dextrose in the dough and on the pieces of chicken meat. That is not great, but since it was listed in the last place and ingredients have to be sorted by the amount present in a descending order, I know that there was less dextrose than salt in the dough, which means the amount was quite small. Still, no preservatives, colorants or flavor enhancers.
There is one difference - making a homemade pizza takes me about an hour because there’s a lot of prep involved, whereas this is done in 15 minutes, so I eat it more often. But I have no need to restrict caloric intake, so that’s not an issue for me either unless there is some other way in which this is unhealthy.
Highly processed on its own doesn’t mean much without taking into account processing method and ingredients used to process them.
These processing methods used may include extrusion, moulding, chemical modifications and hydrogenation (turning liquid unsaturated fats into a more solid form).
In the case of frozen pizzas, the ingredients do not say much, but they are in fact considered a group 3 ultra processed food because of how they were made and the fact that manufacturers don’t need to state the processes foods undergo on the label… just that they are bread, cheese and sauce.
At the same time, we still have quite limited knowledge on what exactly makes ultraprocessed food so harmful. Is it the additives (and which additives exactly), the process (and which process exactly)? Ultraprocessed food is currently treated with a broad stroke, whereas the harm may well come from a very small fraction of additives and/or processes. All of this is very difficult to disentangle because our previous science indicated that the processes/additives now in use were safe.
Pretty much anything that isn’t in the meat, produce and milk areas. If it’s premade from a big corp, it’s bad for you.
Edit: Also, this…
A small but landmark randomized controlled study in 2019, led by the National Institutes of Health’s nutrition expert, Kevin Hall, found that when inpatient trial participants received diets with ultra-processed foods, they ate roughly 500 extra calories a day compared to a control group of inpatient participants who were served a diet that was matched in macronutrients but did not include ultra-processed foods.
Also, almost all sausages and other processed meats are considered ultraprocessed. Let’s not even consider vegan “meats”. For proteins you can essentially only eat chicken and eggs (though these obviously contain harmful antibiotics), and steak ( but red meat cause cancer).
This is why it’s so important to do more research to find out which processes and additives are harmful and which are not, so we can better distinguish between harmful and safe food.
I can’t touch vegan hamburgers unless I take a benedryl with it. I’m 100% in with your suggestion we do a lot of research for ourselves. If I eat poorly, it’s not just the allergies, I get down in the dumps. I always wonder if the food quality is making some people (not all, of course, but some) have a low quality of mental energy and mild depression.
Deli rotisserie chicken
Ah shit, turns out I actually needed the warning. You’d think it’d be hard for something to be ultra-processed without even being cut up, but apparently not!
Edit: wait a second, does it mean Costco-loss-leader-style whole chickens, sliced glued-and-formed spherical chicken breast lunch meat, or both?
Most likely it fits the definition because it contains MSG or some other additive ( though it’s clearly processed very similar to homemade chicken).
And we will promptly ignore those warnings, because freedom. 'MURICA!
*because a big chunk of you read at 4th grade level ftfy 😂
I’d be real mad at you if I could read. Thank God for voice-to-text.
In Europe and Mexico they’re just outright banned. But I’m glad that now American regulators are considering that it possibly could be important or at least maybe possibly a little bit relevant for some people to know if they bother to read some small text on a package
Uhm… What is considered ultra processed foods? Because you say in Europe is banned.
But then somebody else here is saying frozen pizza is ultra processed and I am telling you I have eaten them in Europe. There were other examples provided in the comments that also have in Europe. Are they just “processed”, not ultra? One wonders.
That’s a problem that’s talked about in the article, as well.
One key point of contention is that there is no exact or established definition of what counts as “ultra-processed.”
Hahahah where do people get these images of Europe from
Where in Europe are they banned? I’m in the UK, frequently travel across Europe, and have never seen them banned just for being ultra-processed.
All I’m going to say is that there are a lot of misconceptions about what processed food means and this is just a part of the war on fat people. If we don’t systemically change our food availability systems and how society is structured these problems will continue to exist.
But how will I keep my customers addicted to my food products?!?
They need to do what Europe did to cigarette packs
They need to do what Europe did and teach people that quality of life is about work-life balance and good public services, not about grinding and buying cheap shit in big quantities. People will not start cooking their meals because of warning labels. They will start cooking when they have enough time and money for it.
Minimal change in relation to the damage ulta-processed foods are causing our population but at least its a step in the right direction. As someone who suffers from a Crohns (likely induced by a combination of processed food and over stress/work) I’m very happy we’re finally taking a look at the food industry with more scepticism. I’ve done work inside food processing plants and it amazes me how they can justify manipulating our basic foods to ensure they are addictive and profitable at any cost.
Change does not happen overnight and hopefully this push to reevaluate our food practises will actually make it through the next election.
One day, I hope to be able to eat a food cooked by someone else without experiencing debilitating pain afterwards.
Food doesn’t have ingredients it is an ingredient.
