I have no idea if this website is the least bit reliable, but I'd consider at least some of the information in the article to be utter bunk:



https://www.news-medical.net/news/2...px#commentblock

The comments on it are absolutely scathing - and with good reason! I only read as far as their claim that it costs so much more to eat a less processed diet than it does to eat a more processed diet before I knew it had to be absolute bull.

I can't even begin to imagine what unprocessed foods they were buying that cost nearly $35/day per person, while the processed foods cost less than $14/day per person.


And yet they failed to mention what foods were actually included in either diet. They only hint they gave was a short list of foods that could be considered ultra processed, but are not terrible for you - foods that could easily have been included in their 20% ultra processed diet.

I want to see what else was on the 2 diets, and what criteria they used to determine how healthy it was. Was it just macros with a low fat and cholesterol content? Low sodium? Percentages of the RDA for the few vitamins and minerals that are listed on food labels?

What about unprocessed foods that have no nutrition labels? Were they automatically considered low nutrition because there's no label declaring how good it is for you?

The study hasn't been published. It will be presented as a poster presentation.

Food Choice, Markets and Policy (Poster Session)

(P08-012-24) Unprocessed, but SAD: A Standard American Diet Made With Less-Processed Foods Is Still a Standard American Diet
Sunday, June 30, 202412:45 PM – 1:45 PM CTLocation: Poster Board 234

After I posted that, I remembered this part:



Reminds me a lot of the Guiding Stars healthy food rating system they implemented for foods at the grocery store where I worked.

https://guidingstars.com/

They rated each food as good (one star), better (two stars) or best (3 stars). If it wasn't low fat, low cholesterol, low sodium, low in added sugars, and high in fiber, it received no stars at all.

They also considered what percentage it had of the few micronutrients that are listed on the label (Vitamin D, calcium, iron, and potassium are the only micronutrients required to be on the food label)

That meant a lot of meats and dairy (minimally processed) received zero stars and were automatically considered to be unhealthy due to the saturated fat content.

On the other hand, those UPF toddler tubes of highly processed sweet fruit smoothie with a tiny bit of vegetable in them would get 3 stars, as would the toddler fruit and grain bars - because they had fiber, and no sugar added to them (even though some of them had fruit juice concentrates, but that's not considered to be added sugar)

Which got us where we are today.

I have reached the point where much of what the world regards as food I regard as a concocted travesty of delayed consequences.

I agree. I have always remembered what Richard Feinman said in his book “The World Turned Upside Down”: Nutrition science is an oxymoron.

UPF manufacturers are taking advantage of the DGAs.

If they can manufacture something with low enough overall fat content, sat fat content, sodium content and added sugar content for a stated serving size, then they get to claim that it's a healthy food. Never mind that the package contains 15 servings and most people would eat at least 3 servings - the nutrition stats for the stated serving size is what matters.

And the big thing is that having a carb count in the stratosphere is fine - as long as not too much of it is added sugars. But the higher the percentage of the RDA of total carbs, the better, especially if you can consider any of it to be fiber.

So if they can manufacture a product that uses a lot of grains/flour (cheap), vegetable oils (cheap, with none of that pesky sat fat or cholesterol), and come up with a serving size that gives a good percentage of the RDA of carbs, and maybe even provide some small amount of fiber (even if it needs to be pulverized so it's not discernible from the flour, because even a tiny bit of fiber looks good on that nutrition panel), but still keeps the overall fat and sodium content low, minimize added sugars by using something like maltodextrin or maltitol to help sweeten it - they will make a huge profit on it, while claiming it as a healthy food.

The manufacturers also know that between the addictive nature of starchy and sweet (with just the right amount of salty - mostly added to the outside of the product so it's perceived on the tongue as saltier), they'll achieve the addictive quality that will have consumers eating several times the stated "serving size" at one sitting... and heading back to the store for more, more, more for profits, profits, profits.



It reminds me of someone telling me about these wonderful frozen treats (some kind of popsicle type thing) and that they were sooo good, but had "almost nothing in them!" This person was looking at the percentage numbers, and of course it had no fat, sat fat, or cholesterol. It also had no sodium, and maybe a couple grams protein from non-fat milk (but protein doesn't have a number in the percentage column any more). It was all carbs, but the carb count was so low compared to the whopping 300 g of recommended carbs that even if it had been 30 g of carbs, that's still only 10% of the RDA for carbs so to this person it looked like "almost nothing in it!!!"

The junk manufacturers really do take advantage of the supposedly healthy dietary guidelines.

Omg. What crap.

Some 20 years ago I made simple meals foe my family because of the impact of 4 strokes.

Cook a meat. Unpackage, put on roasting pan, salt it. Put on oven 1 hour.

Microwave potatoes.

Microwave a bag of frozen vegetables. Add butter.

How easy is that?!?!

This is why I would really like to see what foods were on their lists - if you go by the list of things that make food ultra processed, the frozen vegetables and butter in your simple meals could be considered ultra processed.

(I was going to bring the list of what NOVA said are signs of ultra processing over here - the list was extensive, but I can't get back into the site again, so I'll just quote myself from a post about the list:




With that in mind, the frozen veggies would be blanched in a factory, then most likely flash frozen (a factory process), sent along the factory line and factory sealed in plastic bags with a label on it - that's enough processing to consider it to be a UPF, even though it's similar to home freezing methods.

The butter is also made in a factory - churned, salted, formed into sticks, wrapped in paper, and finally packaged in a multi-layer box with a label on it (which I would imagine the inner and outer layers of the cardboard box are plastic). Most of that process is the same you'd use to make butter at home - but because it's made in a factory, and goes through some extra steps with the packaging, labeling, and especially since the outer box of the packaging has plastic coatings on it - yep it could be considered to be UPF.

The meat might even be considered to be UPF, because it also goes through a factory, and generally ends up packaged in plastic with a label.


So while I suspect that's the kind of foods they chose to meet the criteria for healthy UPFs, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they sought out the most expensive versions they could find for the ridiculously expensive non-processed foods... $35 day... utterly ridiculous, unless you're going to exclusive specialty shops (a different one for each item) and buying the most expensive items available. And more than you can possibly use in a week of all those items, since they claimed there was so much waste with unprocessed food.

This is what I imagine they did:

Start with a custom cut, organic, grass fed Prime Rib from a butcher shop. If they have Wagyu steaks, those would be excessively expensive, so buy some of those too. Buy more organic meats - a whole turkey. And a chicken. Also get a pheasant if they have those. And a duck. That's enough meat for a few weeks, but remember we're trying to prove that fresh unprocessed foods cost a lot more and don't last as long as UPFs, so we're buying the most expensive fresh meat we can find, and buying more than we can possibly use before it goes bad. Next stop, buy a lot of out of season organic veggies and exotic organic fruit from the most expensive grocery store in town - make sure they don't look very good, because we want to prove they don't last as long as ultra processed...

And so on and so on...

They don't need to work hard to confuse people, because they can pay to flood the zone with their nonsense. They created this unhelpful system of nutritional information, because it serves their interests... which is now shown, like the tobacco industry, to be antithetical to the interests of the greater population.

One of the reasons they have to make so much money is that they need that much money to keep this giant bag of hot air afloat. Then deduct the "advertising" as a business expense.

It's not that people don't read the labels. When they try, they are still not getting the right information. Got to make that Carb Quota!