As a European who moved to Canada and spends a fair amount of time in the States, one thing that really surprised me is how hard it is to find healthy food options compared to the unhealthy ones. Food was a bit of a concern before moving, but I didn't know just how frustrating it would be.
Even something as simple as Yogurt is usually insanely sweet / sugary compared to European variants. Ingredients that are banned in Europe are regularly found in products, and something as simple as bread has a ton of preservatives (as the article shows).
And I'm vegetarian, I assume for people who eat meat there's the additional concern of antibiotics resistance due to the antibiotics given to livestock.
All the milk I've seen in New Orleans is ultra-pasteurised) to increase its shelflife (in fridge), even expensive organic stuff. I haven't yet looked in speciality groceries.
I've just given up on milk while I'm here, because it tastes disgusting (reminds me of " UHT long-life milk sold uncooled in tetrabrick within New Zealand). Apparently normal pasteurised is available from local dairy brands, but I haven't seen any yet.
Quality foods in general seem hard to find here - although some of that is because of unfamiliarity - and it isn't cheaper either. I'm looking forward to getting home to better food.
With grocery prices going up, what little progress has been made might get reversed, unfortunately. Making America healthy again means making non-ultraprocessed groceries available to everyone & cheaper, and ensuring that working families have time to cook. Pressuring Coke to create a new product with sugar is not going to move the needle.
I don't get the rice cooker hype. Its so easy to make rice in the pot already. Cup of rice. Cup and a half of water. Pinch of salt. Bring to boil then set to simmer. Put lid on. 15 min timer. Perfect rice.
The way people talk about making rice online and having to seek out a rice cooker makes me wonder what they are even doing when they fail at making rice.
Due to the paywall I couldn’t get beyond the first image claiming convenience. I’ve no idea what the rest says so I’ll speak disconnected from the content and just to the concept.
People assume ultra processed came about due to demand side factors but it’s actually more about supply side supply chain management and the scale in size of the US. By processing the food into more constructed ingredients they always enter a state where they’re easy to package and distribute across vast distances in that state. They can then be combined into food that is palatable through additives. Indeed the process disrupts the natural structure and content of the food - but that was necessary to feed everyone at a reasonable price a variety of foods grown across a vast distance at a reasonable price.
Obviously this led to demand because the food was more complete and varied than was generally available at the fresh grocer. Convenience was a side effect as well that was well capitalized.
These arguments actually hold until pretty recently. Even in my lifetime grocery stores growing up were pretty stark affairs with a few expensive fresh products that you splurged on for a special dinner like thanksgiving. Daily food was basically processed rations with a fancy box. It’s only in my adulthood, and the lifetime of the millennials, that there was really much optionality as supply chains globally and fresh food distribution with widely available refrigerated trucking with ethylene gas storage proliferated, free trade opened, etc.
Before all this, in my parents generation, the other option for ultra processed foods was malnutrition and wide spread rickets. It was when we tried to draft for WWII and the majority of rural young men were so malnourished as to be unfit for war that things really changed.
To sit today and compare the options of fresh food available and wonder how we got here ignores the reality of how we got here. But we are here so indeed, eat fresh and be happy we have free trade!
I grew up with a lot of ultra-processed foods and these days have found several places where I can get good quality food. I am fortunate to live in an area with a decent farmer's market "community" and some bespoke shops. Generally, I've found that mixing farmers market with ethnic markets (for meat) seems to provide significantly better quality than your average chain.
I suppose that the article hits on it a bit but a lot of the popular brands were great depression era hits. Most of us grew up on various forms of slop: hamburger helper, velveeta mac n cheese, spam, etc. The common link between everything I ate was it was easy, and allowed you to significantly stretch the meat in a dish. These days, now that we can afford more, it's most likely a matter of simplicity and brand affiliation. When you have 2/3 of an average store stuffed with ultraprocessed crap and even in the remaining 1/3 you have to be careful it's pretty easy to eat poorly. A perfect example would be "wheat" or "rye" bread which is basically the same as white bread with a little extra added. Though, these days, many even major supermarket chains offer reasonably high quality bread.
I just opened up www dot amazon dot com and filled my cart with $50 worth of food that will be delivered to my door in a few hours: rice, potatoes, farro, beans, peppers, ginger, onions, garlic frozen peas, frozen carrots, plain low-fat yogurt, chicken thighs, and good bread. I don't want to hear anyone telling me that American capitalism has robbed us of real food. If anything, American capitalism has heaped upon us the cheapest and most convenient selection of food imaginable, but some people just can't stop shoveling down Flamin' Hot Froot Loops.
This all has very big "uncured bacon" energy to me (if you didn't already know: there's no such thing; vendors of uncured bacon performatively drive the same chemical nitrite reaction using vegetable extracts). For example: yogurt becomes a UPF simply by dint of adding carrageenan, which is on the order of calling dashi a UPF because of the kombu.
It's not that there isn't a very legitimate issue underneath all this: packaged, hyperpalatable, low-nutritional-density low-satiety foods are probably a major driver of health problems. It's just that "UPF" isn't the right metric for isolating those foods, and with the wrong metrics you end up in a similar place as California does with the Prop 65 warnings.
We went through a similar thing with "pink slime" (transglutaminase preservation techniques).
A really nice brand of healthy foods that are trustworthy and less processed is Primal Kitchen. I have zero affiliation with them, just is a brand I trust. Its so hard to shop for things that are healthy. For example, their Ketchup is just Tomato, Vinegar, Salt, Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, and Spices. No sweetener substitutes needed. https://www.primalkitchen.com/products/organic-unsweetened-k...
People in the US are so trained by the food industry, that they do not know what good food is. Yogurt for example. Here is an experiment you can do at home if you want to disbelieve my statement.
Step #1 Make good yogurt and eat it.
1. Go buy a quart of milk, full fat.
2. Buy some yogurt culture. Bulgarian preferred.
3. Follow the directions. You need to keep the temp at around 110F, warm water bath, heating pad, hot water bottles, put it in a cooler, whatever.
This is one of the best foods there is.
Step 2.
Go to your grocery store or stores and try to find some yogurt that is as good.
You can repeat these steps for other foods. Coffee - roast your own. Cheese. Just go to a gourmet cheese store. Get something that does not come in a plastic bag.
Or go to Europe and try real croissants. Everyone in Paris can get real croissants almost anywhere every day. And not to mention real bread - again the plastic bag.
We are so used to what is available here that we have come believe it is "food" when really it is just adulterated to have a long shelf life. Sorry, but really just try it.
Not sure this is a good post, but might be so taking the risk. I am snacking right now on some UPF - my 10% vice. However, my 90% is pretty good. One NOT-UPF staple is steel cut oats that are slow cooked. Very easy, healthy and likely as NOT-UPF as you can get. Recipie: 3 cups steel cut oats (I use Bob's Red Mill Organic), 1+ Qt water, 1 Qt Skim Milk, 1+ Teaspon salt. Combine everything into a suitable pot. Slow cook at 150F for six hours. Stir occasionally. Explore ways to eat. E.g. warm in microwave with some blueberries, and a bit of brown sugar. Stores in the Fridge for a long time. HTH, NSC (+ means "a bit more than")
My ancestors are from Asia. Over there, a saying goes something like this if I can translate it without the color of the language: "Give a man a solid breakfast and he will not make noise around the kitchen rest of the day". Even less colorful way to say it is if you want to be healthy, start with a healthy breakfast.
As much as there are all the science around low carb diet and optimizing calories, macros and what not, I think there are some wisdom to it in the long game view.
Someone that had a good nutritious breakfast (you will notice every major culture has its variant of breakfast akin to "English breakfast"), would have less difficulty resisting food with empty calories and doing frequent snacking. Contrary, if you had packaged "cereal" with questionable ingredients and nutrition density, no wonder by 11 you will feel the need to snack. And then if you happen to have a lunch in one of the typical take out restaurants optimized for cost at the expense of quality, a 3pm snacking is more likely than not.
By the end of the day, you had racked up calories intake with bunch of empty calories from those snacking episodes that could be entirely prevented with a solid dense breakfast.
Why is someone so determined to force this "ultraprocessed foods" meme? Is it just so they can get a government definition of "ultraprocessed foods" that somehow doesn't include foods that are 1/3 teflon by weight?
There are plenty of specific processes that are extremely questionable and probably dangerous. Europe bans a lot of them, or to be fair almost everybody bans them but the US. But somehow, when the references to food additives and processes get specific, outlets like the NYT start using phrases that include "right-wing," "corners of the internet," "rant," "outburst," "conspiracy theories," "...but the science actually says...," "the consensus," "...that the vast majority of scientists agree to be safe..." etc...
Also, dangerous additives and processes are an entirely different question than talking about people eating fatty, sugary, salty foods because they like them. They're on the verge of turning "ultraprocessed foods" into a moral crusade against the tastes of the lumpen, which their upper-middle class audience loves because it allows them to feel superior (and deserving.)
Also, preservatives are good. They make food cheaper and make it last longer. I want dangerous preservatives banned.
This "meme" has been scientifically studied. Carefully defining a term so that the industry can't simply sidestep it ("no added sugar! - if you don't count apple juice) is difficult.
For anyone having gastrointestinal issues from processed foods in America, I implore you to take a trip to the EU and experience the lack of digestive issues their foods have on your gut.
It really changed my relationship with food knowing that it’s not my gut malfunctioning but stems from what I’m putting in me.
Do you know of any research showing that ultra-processed food in general is bad?
The only thing I found was comparing ultra-processed food with other food with the same nutritional value that concluded that people get fatter on UPF because they eat more of it.
The only conclusion I could draw from it is that UPF is just tastier. (or hyper palatable if you want to make it sound more sinister)
31 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 59.5 ms ] threadEven something as simple as Yogurt is usually insanely sweet / sugary compared to European variants. Ingredients that are banned in Europe are regularly found in products, and something as simple as bread has a ton of preservatives (as the article shows).
And I'm vegetarian, I assume for people who eat meat there's the additional concern of antibiotics resistance due to the antibiotics given to livestock.
I've just given up on milk while I'm here, because it tastes disgusting (reminds me of " UHT long-life milk sold uncooled in tetrabrick within New Zealand). Apparently normal pasteurised is available from local dairy brands, but I haven't seen any yet.
Quality foods in general seem hard to find here - although some of that is because of unfamiliarity - and it isn't cheaper either. I'm looking forward to getting home to better food.
With grocery prices going up, what little progress has been made might get reversed, unfortunately. Making America healthy again means making non-ultraprocessed groceries available to everyone & cheaper, and ensuring that working families have time to cook. Pressuring Coke to create a new product with sugar is not going to move the needle.
The way people talk about making rice online and having to seek out a rice cooker makes me wonder what they are even doing when they fail at making rice.
People assume ultra processed came about due to demand side factors but it’s actually more about supply side supply chain management and the scale in size of the US. By processing the food into more constructed ingredients they always enter a state where they’re easy to package and distribute across vast distances in that state. They can then be combined into food that is palatable through additives. Indeed the process disrupts the natural structure and content of the food - but that was necessary to feed everyone at a reasonable price a variety of foods grown across a vast distance at a reasonable price.
Obviously this led to demand because the food was more complete and varied than was generally available at the fresh grocer. Convenience was a side effect as well that was well capitalized.
These arguments actually hold until pretty recently. Even in my lifetime grocery stores growing up were pretty stark affairs with a few expensive fresh products that you splurged on for a special dinner like thanksgiving. Daily food was basically processed rations with a fancy box. It’s only in my adulthood, and the lifetime of the millennials, that there was really much optionality as supply chains globally and fresh food distribution with widely available refrigerated trucking with ethylene gas storage proliferated, free trade opened, etc.
Before all this, in my parents generation, the other option for ultra processed foods was malnutrition and wide spread rickets. It was when we tried to draft for WWII and the majority of rural young men were so malnourished as to be unfit for war that things really changed.
To sit today and compare the options of fresh food available and wonder how we got here ignores the reality of how we got here. But we are here so indeed, eat fresh and be happy we have free trade!
I suppose that the article hits on it a bit but a lot of the popular brands were great depression era hits. Most of us grew up on various forms of slop: hamburger helper, velveeta mac n cheese, spam, etc. The common link between everything I ate was it was easy, and allowed you to significantly stretch the meat in a dish. These days, now that we can afford more, it's most likely a matter of simplicity and brand affiliation. When you have 2/3 of an average store stuffed with ultraprocessed crap and even in the remaining 1/3 you have to be careful it's pretty easy to eat poorly. A perfect example would be "wheat" or "rye" bread which is basically the same as white bread with a little extra added. Though, these days, many even major supermarket chains offer reasonably high quality bread.
"The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food"
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinar...
It's not that there isn't a very legitimate issue underneath all this: packaged, hyperpalatable, low-nutritional-density low-satiety foods are probably a major driver of health problems. It's just that "UPF" isn't the right metric for isolating those foods, and with the wrong metrics you end up in a similar place as California does with the Prop 65 warnings.
We went through a similar thing with "pink slime" (transglutaminase preservation techniques).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-a9VDIbZCU
What the hell are you doing putting crap like that in your yogurt?
Love, Europe
https://grimgrains.com/site/home.html
Step #1 Make good yogurt and eat it.
1. Go buy a quart of milk, full fat. 2. Buy some yogurt culture. Bulgarian preferred. 3. Follow the directions. You need to keep the temp at around 110F, warm water bath, heating pad, hot water bottles, put it in a cooler, whatever.
This is one of the best foods there is.
Step 2. Go to your grocery store or stores and try to find some yogurt that is as good.
You can repeat these steps for other foods. Coffee - roast your own. Cheese. Just go to a gourmet cheese store. Get something that does not come in a plastic bag.
Or go to Europe and try real croissants. Everyone in Paris can get real croissants almost anywhere every day. And not to mention real bread - again the plastic bag.
We are so used to what is available here that we have come believe it is "food" when really it is just adulterated to have a long shelf life. Sorry, but really just try it.
Theory being that the issue is one of the billion colourants/flavourants/preservatives & cooking from scratch cuts most of them.
Too early to confidently tell (4 days in)...but the vibes sure feel promising
As much as there are all the science around low carb diet and optimizing calories, macros and what not, I think there are some wisdom to it in the long game view.
Someone that had a good nutritious breakfast (you will notice every major culture has its variant of breakfast akin to "English breakfast"), would have less difficulty resisting food with empty calories and doing frequent snacking. Contrary, if you had packaged "cereal" with questionable ingredients and nutrition density, no wonder by 11 you will feel the need to snack. And then if you happen to have a lunch in one of the typical take out restaurants optimized for cost at the expense of quality, a 3pm snacking is more likely than not.
By the end of the day, you had racked up calories intake with bunch of empty calories from those snacking episodes that could be entirely prevented with a solid dense breakfast.
There are plenty of specific processes that are extremely questionable and probably dangerous. Europe bans a lot of them, or to be fair almost everybody bans them but the US. But somehow, when the references to food additives and processes get specific, outlets like the NYT start using phrases that include "right-wing," "corners of the internet," "rant," "outburst," "conspiracy theories," "...but the science actually says...," "the consensus," "...that the vast majority of scientists agree to be safe..." etc...
Also, dangerous additives and processes are an entirely different question than talking about people eating fatty, sugary, salty foods because they like them. They're on the verge of turning "ultraprocessed foods" into a moral crusade against the tastes of the lumpen, which their upper-middle class audience loves because it allows them to feel superior (and deserving.)
Also, preservatives are good. They make food cheaper and make it last longer. I want dangerous preservatives banned.
It really changed my relationship with food knowing that it’s not my gut malfunctioning but stems from what I’m putting in me.
The only thing I found was comparing ultra-processed food with other food with the same nutritional value that concluded that people get fatter on UPF because they eat more of it.
The only conclusion I could draw from it is that UPF is just tastier. (or hyper palatable if you want to make it sound more sinister)