Part Two of the Ultra processed people book is titled, but "Cant I just Control what I eat?" One section of this is “why isn’t it about sugar…"

It is an effective review of the best recent studies that counter the "carbohydrate insulin model" in 13 pages. "Studies seem to support the generally held belief that varying fat and carbs in the diet, doesn’t significantly change energy expenditure." Though LC often at 3 months shows more weight loss, by 12 months LC and LF have consistently shown about the same weight loss. He had a 3 hour video conversation with Gary Taubes about these studies, the conflict with Kevin Hall, etc.

His conclusion seems a good explanation of why low carb diets stop working for most people. In the end, the Carbohydrate insulin model is incomplete and must include the energy balance model as well.



This forum shows there are some individuals who can control their weight forever by cutting out all carbs, but we often see stories of those who do well two to five years and then regain due to carb hunger. The "I’m Back after x years", "one holiday I fell off the wagon and regained 30 pounds" or "stopped losing weight 30 pounds above a healthy BMI".. all happened to me when trying to stay on Very Low Carb diets. Think this is also happening with carnivore and fasting now, there are some spectacular stories of healing health issues, but many also "tried it for x weeks and didn’t lose any weight." In the end, you have to eat enough nutrients and also eat fewer calories than you burn.




As WearBear stated in the first post…this is a fun read. As he meets with scientists he brings it back to his family's meal, what UPF items are in the ingredients. I was interested in the comment made in the interview Demi posted. That he gives no instructions how to quit eating UPF, except read this book while eating your normal UPF Diet, a concept is based on a best-selling Allen Carr book The Easy Way to stop Smoking. The idea is that you keep smoking/eating processed food while you read about how bad UPF is, eventually the processed food begins to seem disgusting.

I've come to appreciate how even I, for whom carbs was key, still had to figure out my food sensitivities, which is another way UPF is a health hazard. I can look back and see moments of confusion where it all added up on paper, but it wasn't working. We all learned how Frankenfoods don't work according to the labels.

We hadn't eaten fast food in years, but during Lockdown we had to try a McD breakfast before DH's Dr appt, because it would be a while in the waiting room. But he didn't eat much because "it tastes like dirt."

Staying away from junk breaks its spell. People need to know that.

Footnote to the conversations with Gary Taubes:


Avoid the UPF, and it becomes a defacto elimination diet…those food sensitivities become more pronounced if you go back to them. …and don’t taste great.

Good point, JEY, but then the Keto diet became convenient. With artificial sweeteners and binders and the rest.

Low carb was always supposed to be about eating real food. Didn't the low carb community invent the term Frankenfoods? We knew that this would stall people and spark cravings. None of those rules have changed.

Keto shifted to incorporate super-plants and then the bars appeared and now it's plastered all over snack food. And people will "eat keto" for a couple of weeks and give up.

The best way to handle the relentless surge of marketing, at least to children, used to be a thing when Saturday morning cartoons were a thing. It was around the time the cartoon was solely invented to sell a cereal or something mercenary like that, and marketing to children had some rules applied.

Which is why so many keep struggling to change the US government definition of healthy long after reasonable standards of science have been met. Now, perhaps it's time to clean up science and academics, as well. The sugar industry alone gets government grants and funds favorable research.

It's like hiring one's own hit man. When you don't want to.

A shorter interview with the Author on NPR. He describes the larger study on Processed Foods in the works, recruiting participants in the UK.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health...es-studying-why

From the npr article......





What qualifies as UPF is wider than it seems.

When I added deli ham to two meals on one day, my weight jumped UP significantly.

Keeping a food journal helps ID these tricky Items that cause upset. The minimally processed food are the easiest to identify, until they are not.

My rule defining whole foods is a bit stricter now: as picked for veg,nuts and fruit, and as sliced off a cut of meat. And herbs and spices. One ingredient foods. Then combined in my own kitchen.

Bacon and ham cause me problems: bacon still worth occasional indulgence. 😁

A lot of people report trouble with ham, I think it's the salt content? And if I gained 2 pounds of water weight, I don't weigh myself, and might not notice?

On the other hand, I have no trouble with salt. I crave it, sprinkle freely, and don't notice it having any ill effects. The nitrites are actually higher in celery, so I don't know why they carry on about that when every dieter in the last few decades carries around little bags of cut up celery... apparently it's only red meat that is deadly? Seems absurd.

Here's the NOVA scoring scale and here's the results:



of eating processed food. Ham is cured using a really old process. Not as far back as fire, but pork of all kinds is the meat highest in thiamine, which powers the mitochondria.

These experiments really show the unexpected effect of "destroying the matrix" of a natural food. CICO? Smashed here.

I can easily gain 2 lbs of water weight that hangs on for 2-3 days after eating bacon or ham, but I can roast plain pork and add a lot of salt but don't retain water for more than a day.

Now you can get bacon & ham "naturally" cured with "no added nitrates" but they use celery seed/juice that contains as much or more nitrates as the unnatural chemical curng process. Since nitrates are toxic to humans, I would not be surprised if it was the nitrates causing inflammation that appears as water weight gain. But I do have and enjoy bacon a few times a year, usually when other people are doing the cooking. Even when I don't weigh myself, my legs feel heavy with each step, which reminds me not to make a habit of it.

Part of me thinks it might be fun to participate in the study, but really, why would I want to subject my body to such abuse, even for a short time.

Especially since, as the UK author put it, once you are used to real food, the UPF "tastes like dirt."

That's why I can honestly tell people I don't mind passing up the hundreds -- probably thousands -- of donuts in office break rooms over the years. Once my brain realized how short a time that made me feel good, and how long a time I felt bad after I ate it, a lot of the impetus to eat it was gone.

Now, I mentally recoil, especially when it's the bottom of the barrel stuff they have perfected lately. Like why are their salads so high in carbs? Why do they bread a meat patty, and put it in a bun? And of course, breaded fries.

That's where all those grains are going.

Thanks for this. I keep hearing about how people are "confused" when it's not confusing at all.

If it were a game show, everything in the supermarket would be there, and if we asked about whole foods, everyone would hit the buzzer for raw meat, seafood, poultry and fruits and vegetables and herbs. Maybe they would hesitate at the herbs.

It's not confusing at all, is it? Even the Four Food Groups let me eliminate one, the grains, and have the meat/dairy/produce categories. It didn't seem so drastic and yet everyone was horrified at what Dr. Atkins has been saying since 1972.

It's worse now. But the "confusion" is entirely a matter of education, and people "can't live without bread." At least, they think they can't, and make it so.

This:



Part of the problem really is that the definition of UPF is extremely lengthy and includes all kinds of descriptors that may or may not mean they're truly ultra processed. Certain aspects of the definition encompass many unprocessed or minimally processed foods and culinary ingredients.

For instance if I buy an English cucumber from the Amish farm stand down the road, those are wrapped in plastic. They do that because the skin is very delicate on English cucumbers, and the plastic wrap helps maintain the proper moisture levels while sitting on their farm stand on a hot summer day.

But they don't have one of the other indicators of a UPF: A label.

However, if I buy an English cucumber at a grocery store, it will also be wrapped in plastic, and have a label on it.

Same kind of cucumber - and only a very slight difference in UPF packaging indicators, but aside from the timeline between when it was picked and purchased, the same thing.

They also sell home baked goods at the Amish farm stand - They're made the same as if you'd baked them in your own kitchen from the same culinary ingredients, but things like cookies are arranged on a Styrofoam tray, wrapped in plastic, and include a handwritten label with the name of the baked good.

They're not made in a factory though - even though they may make enough of them that it's essentially an in-home factory process.

Some Amish even have huge power-mixing vats for the baked products they make to sell. (They're powered either by solar panels or by a diesel powered generator.)

I know of one Amish in-home factory set up that uses a factory style power-mixing vat (✅) to make whoopie pie cream filling (a fluffy frosting type product). They sell it in plastic buckets(✅) that have a label (✅) on the lid, complete with ingredient list, their business name, and their address. This ticks several boxes for what constitutes a UPF, but it's not intended to be a food that's eaten as-is (so not considered to be UPF). It's expected that you'll bake your own whoopie pie "cookies" from scratch (not UPF) using culinary ingredients, then use that filling between the cookies. It's essentially a UPF product made from typical UPF culinary ingredients (crisco type shortening, artificial vanilla flavoring, and powdered sugar) using factory style machinery, that you use to make a "homemade" (not UPF) product. All the ingredients are culinary ingredients that you would have found in most typical kitchens, even 50 years ago.

Oh and they are extremely addictive - which should make them obviously UPF.

That's just one set of the many problems with the UPF descriptors that creates even more confusion when it comes to what constitutes a UPF.





The "fuzzy definition" is a big part of the problem. There are foods that are pretty obviously UPF, but because they're made from typical culinary ingredients, but just happen to be made in a factory, packaged in plastic, and have a label, they're considered UPF. You're going to have companies insist that their product that ticks a dozen boxes that indicate what they're making is UPF - but because they're making it in small batches or it's made with "clean" ingredients, it's not a UPF.