"Ultra-Processed Junk Food Put to the Test"
In the U.S., the term "junk food" is often used to describe commonly
known less-healthy food categories such as candy, ice cream, and chips.
However, there's no consistent definition, so nutrition researchers came up
with the concept of ultra-processed.
The term ultra-processed "food," if you want to call it that,
describes industrial formulations that are typically seen in those long lists
of ingredients, which besides salt, sugar, and fat, aren't typically found
in any cookbook, like the various flavors, colors, sweeteners,
emulsifiers, and other additives used to imitate real foods
or to disguise undesirable qualities of the final product.
This roughly corresponds to my idea of red light foods
in my traffic light system.
And indeed, most of what people eat are in the red: soda, ice cream, candy,
cakes, most bread and breakfast cereals, TV dinner-type ready-to-heat products,
chicken nuggets, fish sticks, sausages, burgers, hot dogs...
There's been a dramatic rise in ultra-processed foods.
In fact, the U.S. food supply is dominated by it.
More than 200,000 products were assessed
and 71% were classified as ultra-processed.
And, of course, they aren't only in grocery stores.
Sugary drinks and processed junk are ubiquitous even at non-food retailers,
providing pervasive cues to consume products
that are dense in calories, but poor in nutrition.
As a former president of Coke put it,
they want to keep Coca-Cola within an "arm's reach of desire."
Another major candy brand boasted, "We put them everywhere:
grocery stores and supermarkets, gas stations and chiropractors offices,
bowling alleys and grocery stores— which we already mentioned.
Not sorry."
So this is where we are today. What is the proportion of food
consumed by U.S. children and adolescents that's classified as junk?
An unbelievable 56% to 70% of what our children and teens eat
over the entire day is junk. Okay, yeah, but kids will be kids.
In the United States of America, more than half of the calories
taken in across the board is junk. In fact, around the world
ultra-processed foods consistently account for more than 50%
of the dietary caloric intake in higher-income countries.
No wonder that unhealthy diets are humanity's greatest killer,
the leading risk factor for death on Planet Earth.
What exactly are the health consequences?
The biological effects of modern foods have been studied on rats,
showing they gorge themselves into dramatic weight gain, inflammation,
and metabolic and cognitive abnormalities.
And just as ultra-processed foods were taking over,
a new eating disorder was recognized, binge eating, which grew into
the most common form of eating disorder.
And not surprisingly, binge foods were found to be 100% ultra-processed.
And I mean, I say no surprise because these foods are engineered
so you can't have just one. People don't tend to binge on broccoli.
About 9 out of 10 studies found that ultra-processed food consumption
was associated with adverse health outcomes, and
not just obesity but cancer, type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases,
irritable bowel syndrome, depression, frailty,
all-cause mortality, meaning living a shorter life.
Studies on youth add asthma to the list, as well as higher DNA damage.
Not a single study reported an association between
ultra-processed foods and beneficial health outcomes.
In contrast, populations with low meat consumption and higher fiber
and minimally processed food intake have far less chronic diseases,
enjoy lower obesity rates, and live longer disease-free.
But most findings were derived from observational studies.
You don't know for sure if ultra-processed foods themselves
are to blame, until you put it to the test.
There's never been a randomized controlled trial on ultra-processed
food until now. Twenty people were essentially locked in a hospital ward
and received both ultra-processed and unprocessed diets for 14 days each.
And here's the kicker: diets were matched for presented calories,
sugar, fat, fiber, and macronutrients.
See, in response to criticism, manufacturers are now proposing
reformulating their products, keeping them ultra-processed,
but just tweaking them by adding some fiber, for instance,
or reducing the sugar, fat, or salt.
So that's why the researchers wanted to give the study subjects
the same amount of calories, sugar, fat, fiber, carbs, and protein in each of
the two diets in order to try to tease out the effect of ultra-processing.
So, for instance, instead of giving people Cheerios and a muffin
for breakfast in the ultra-processed weeks, or a cheese and egg
McMuffin with turkey bacon and OJ,
they gave people oatmeal with blueberries and almonds.
Both meals had the same amount of overall sugar and fat,
but the unprocessed option was presented more in whole food form.
For lunch, the ultra-processed group might get a turkey sandwich
with nonfat Greek yogurt, canned peaches, baked potato chips,
and sugar-free Crystal Light lemonade, versus a Southwest entrée salad
with black beans, avocados, and nuts, and grapes and apples
on the unprocessed diet. The same amount of calories offered,
with the instruction to eat as much or as little as they wanted.
So what happened?
On the ultra-processed diet, they ate about 500 more calories a day,
so, no surprise, they gained about two pounds on the processed diet,
or actively lost two pounds on the less processed diet.
So it wasn't just the unbalanced nutrient profile of ultra-processed foods,
so simply tweaking them wouldn't magically make them healthy.
But that's what the industry would rather do. Reformulation is referred to
as an unobtrusive strategy, creating the prospect of nutritional improvement
without dietary change. What this study showed, however, is that it may be better
to limit the consumption of ultra-processed foods altogether.
Why does the industry love them so much? They're made
with dirt-cheap ingredients, like taxpayer-subsidized corn syrup,
allowing for huge corporate profit margins. But at what cost?
The food industry takes in more than a trillion dollars, yet most
of our healthcare dollars go to treat chronic disease exacerbated
by these very same foods, like diabetes and heart disease;
so you could argue we lose triple what the food industry pockets.
The industry argues that in modern societies it's unrealistic
to advise people to avoid ultra-processed foods
given societal time constraints and the difficulties of food prep.
But this may just be acquiescing
to the same propaganda and disinformation campaign
that the processed food industry has used to co-opt families for decades.
Those who think healthy foods can't be convenient
have never met an apple.
That was a response to Dr. Lustig's essay on processed food
as a failed experiment. I don't like his mother-blaming,
but I do appreciate his prescription. "There's only one recourse—real food."
We need to start thinking outside of the box.