Mon, Sep-02-24, 09:51
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Senior Member
Posts: 2,205
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Plan: Atkins-ish (hypoglycemia)
Stats: 000/000/000
BF:
Progress: 50%
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Quote:
A man on a quest to find the best diet tried eating only ultra-processed foods for a month. He quit after five days.
A food-policy expert who challenged himself to eat only ultra-processed foods for a month as part of an experiment gave up after just five days.
Gavin Wren, a TikToker from the UK who shares insights about food policy, is on a quest to find the best diet for him; one that makes him feel good, allows him to socialize, and is good value for money. He has tried following popular diets, including veganism, the paleo diet, the Mediterranean diet, and only ultra-processed foods, for a whole month each.
He told Business Insider that the vegan and Mediterranean diets were his favorite but that the all-UPF diet was the worst.
Many people eat UPFs every day. A 2023 study published in The BMJ found that UPFs made up almost 60% of people's diets in the UK and the US. And a 2023 study published in Nature Communications found that 73% of the US food supply was ultra-processed.
While it's hard to avoid UPFs because they're so ubiquitous, experts advise people to cut down as much as possible. This is because UPFs are linked to health issues, such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancers, and mental-health issues.
It's easy to eat too many ultra-processed foods
Wren typically eats a mostly whole-food diet and cooks all his meals from scratch. At first, it was "great fun" to indulge in foods he wouldn't typically eat, such as chips, fast food, and cake, he said.
But in the first few days of the experiment, Wren said, he found himself eating "an excessive amount" of calories and "sky high" levels of fat and sugar.
"A tube of Pringles is just addictive," he said. "So I'd just eat half of it, put it on the side, say, 'Right, I'll leave that for another time,' and then half an hour later I'm there finishing the tube."
A scientist previously told BI how UPF companies make their food irresistible.
Wren's experience of eating more on the UPF diet chimes with the results of a 2019 study published in the journal Cell Metabolism, which found that people ate about 500 kilocalories more a day when eating only UPFs versus whole foods. The researchers also matched the calories, energy density, macronutrients, fiber, sugars, and sodium of the processed and whole-food meals participants ate but found that the UPFs still had more added sugar and saturated fats.
Kevin Hall, the lead author of the study, previously told BI how his team was trying to figure out exactly why UPFs make people overeat.
His mood, energy, and mental health went 'down and down and down
'On day three of the diet, Wren woke up feeling something "akin to a hangover," he said, even though he hadn't drunk any alcohol. His energy was low, he felt sluggish, and he "didn't feel very good" in himself, he said.
"After a few days, my mood, my energy, and my mental health were just going down and down and down, and it was a real struggle," Wren said.
His experiences reflect the findings of a 2021 study published in BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health that found strong links between eating more fruits and vegetables and better mental well-being. And a 2019 study by researchers at the University of Paris suggested that the more UPFs people ate, the higher their risk of depression.
Work and going to the gym became harder
"My brain was really struggling to do normal things," Wren said, meaning his work really suffered on the UPF diet. There isn't much research into eating UPFs and concentration, but a 2022 study published in JAMA Neurology found a correlation between consuming more UPFs and having worse brain function and a faster rate of cognitive decline in a six-to-10-year period.
Wren also struggled to do his usual workouts at the gym.
"I went to the gym, and I was just dead, just like no energy or anything. I felt terrible," he said.
He said he was "struggling to operate normally," so he quit the UPF diet. Wren quickly realized that an all-ultra-processed diet was definitely not for him.
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https://www.businessinsider.com/bes...ive-days-2024-8
As we've pointed out on here before, there's addictive UPF's that are the same as what you'd make an eat at home - some of them, like cookies or cake can be just as addictive whether made at home (and therefore not considered to be a UPF) or factory made (and therefore considered to be a UPF). The main difference would be the ability to just grab another package of cookies to eat, as opposed to going through the multi-step, and sometimes multi-hour process of needing to measure, mix, and bake another batch before you could even begin to satisfy that craving. When you need to do all that just to get another "fix", it takes so long that you can get to the point where you feel like it's not worth it to spend hours just to have a couple dozen cookies or another cake. (Especially if you need to go to the store and buy all those ingredients again before you can start another batch)
Then there's foods that meet several of the processing definitions of UPF's (factory processing, plastic packaging, label, mass produced) which do NOT have addictive qualities to them, such as a styrofoam tray with 3 or 4 fresh zucchinis, wrapped in plastic, with a label denoting the packaging plant, and another label with the weight, price per pound, and total price of the package, plain meat from a meat processing plant with similar labeling, plain yogurt in a plastic carton, or canned unsweetened applesauce. Those all tick enough of the boxes to make them fit the UPF profile - but none of them sparks the kind of addictive response and cravings that a package of pringles or a Big Mac can spark - and even if they do, there's such a long process involved in getting more of the homemade version of a can of pringles or Big Mac that it hardly seems worth the time and effort involved, especially compared to just grabbing 2 or 3 containers of pringles from the store next time so you can eat them more often, or swinging through the McD's drive in to pick up another Big Mac.
Since he was eating chips, fast food, and cake, he was eating foods that are designed to be inherently addictive on their own. He may have been consuming oodles more fat, salt, and sugar than usual, but that was because he was intentionally choosing UPFs that were high in sugar salt and fat - when clearly he could have been choosing highly nutritious foods (meats, vegs, fruits) that are processed and packaged in such a way that they could be considered UPF, but it's only an arbitrary term that has nothing to do with their nutritional quality.
Once again, I think the term UPF is doing us a serious disservice. Not everyone has access to a butcher shop that cuts all their own meat. We have a butcher counter in a local grocery store here that used to cut or weigh everything to your specification - and wrapped everything in butcher paper, writing the price on the butcher paper. They switched to plastic bags and a label printer for the pricing quite a few years back at the custom butcher counter, and added in a separate counter with the same meats pre-wrapped in their butcher shop and packaged on styrofoam trays with plastic wrapping, cut and pricing labels, which brings this a step closer to what would make that meat a UPF, but it's still the same cuts of meat and handled the same way. The packaging involved is not changing the fact that it's still basic cuts of meat.
Not everyone has access to a store that has fresh un-packaged produce either - a lot of produce keeps better if it's wrapped in some way. For that matter, a bag of apples or peaches is no less healthy than the apples and peaches from the display where you pick each individual piece of fruit you want to buy.
We need to dump the definition of UPF and start over, more clearly defining what it is that makes a food problematic and addictive. (Of course that would start with admitting that it's not salt and animal fats that are the primary problems, so I guess I can just dream on.)
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