This is giving the "ultra-processed" term too much credit. Organic is at least pretty explicitly specified by the USDA (even if that definition is perhaps not what most people think or expect when they read the term).
Ultra-processed doesn't even have a single, consistent definition.
I was thinking of the example of crisps which are basically potatoes with oil and salt, baked. If you are going to call baking ultra processing then it would include rather a lot of things.
Most of the things on sale at “Whole Foods” are ultra-processed these days. Anything that requires effort to make gluten free or vegan for example. Like impossible burger. Extreme ultra-processed. Or gluten free bread.
Please don’t tell me impossible burger patties are like cigarettes.
I think of “UPF” the way I think of “BMI.” Useful insofar as it provides an intial signal for further investigation. The term UPF provides a way to group certain foods according to their likelihood of helping me reach my health goals.
When companies have engineers sitting around figuring out the precise amounts of salt, sugar, and crunch required to force a person to eat 4 servings of something in one sitting… yeah, at least put a warning label on it. I don’t know that I agree with outright bans or anything, but people should be properly warned about the risks.
It’s terribly broken, which is unsurprising since it was never designed to do what it does, and ends up placing healthy, non addictive foods under the ultra processed category 4, while including hyper palatable foods that are not healthy at all in categories 1-3.
Hyper palatability, which is much better defined and is designed to capture what the NOVA system is actually used for, is likely a better categorization.
My favorite nonsensical category 4 classification is anything with achiote in it. It's not part of a traditional European diet, and it's often used to add color so it makes the list, despite saffron having a similar role in European food and booth being a traditional and completely unprocessed ingredient.
Speaking of Mesoamerican ingredients, nixtamal is pretty heavily processed, and is a staple in many areas, but it's much healthier than unprocessed corn which can cause pellagra when used as a staple food.
The NOVA definition is meant to classify ultra processed foods, correct?
You seem to want the NOVA definition to classify between “healthy, non addictive foods” vs “hyper palatable foods”.
What these studies are doing is finding correlations between ultra processed foods and bad health. While the definition you seem to want would cause all sorts of circular definitions.
I mostly agree but wouldn't swap "Ultra" for "Hyper": those are great to sell iPhones but their maximalism tends to push our understanding in emotional zone, which is good for marketing but dommageable for decision making.
Agreed. Government should receive its mandate through consent and if people don't want to make these choices, it's not the privilege of experts to enforce their preferences without out that concent. The state should only inform.
I'd ask the people saying "there's no definition for UPF" or that the NOVA system is terrible, try and come up with your own improvement. As they're attempts to help classify these foods.
Not everyone has a good nutritional understanding of their foods, so these are short form efforts to try and help.
Rather than knocking what's out there, how about also trying to determine an alternative and see how challenging it is.
I read a lot of people poking holes, but not a lot of suggestions of how to improve things.
There is no distinction between ultra proccessed, or hyper palatable, or most anything with a long list of ingredients.
None of it is good for you, and if you never eat sugar, will smell and taste horrible once your pallet recovers.
I never touch anything with sugar, or ingedients simmilar to those found in cleaning products, just food, I do just fine, it takes a bit more time, but I never
end up feeling off, which was common when I ate regular grocerie store products.
Quiting sugar completly, not just eliminating added sugar was the key, sugar bieng a white crystaline substance is the very deffinition of ultra proccessed, as it is absolutly concentrated and can not be refined further, and is found nowhere in nature.
18 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 39.4 ms ] threadIt's like "organic".
Too many variables are conflated to make any of this reasonable.
Ultra-processed doesn't even have a single, consistent definition.
Please don’t tell me impossible burger patties are like cigarettes.
I don’t need a term to be perfect to be useful.
Besides, 'ultraprocessed food' itself is and has always been a useless buzzword (buzzphrase?).
It’s terribly broken, which is unsurprising since it was never designed to do what it does, and ends up placing healthy, non addictive foods under the ultra processed category 4, while including hyper palatable foods that are not healthy at all in categories 1-3.
Hyper palatability, which is much better defined and is designed to capture what the NOVA system is actually used for, is likely a better categorization.
Speaking of Mesoamerican ingredients, nixtamal is pretty heavily processed, and is a staple in many areas, but it's much healthier than unprocessed corn which can cause pellagra when used as a staple food.
You seem to want the NOVA definition to classify between “healthy, non addictive foods” vs “hyper palatable foods”.
What these studies are doing is finding correlations between ultra processed foods and bad health. While the definition you seem to want would cause all sorts of circular definitions.
Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46868287
Not everyone has a good nutritional understanding of their foods, so these are short form efforts to try and help.
Rather than knocking what's out there, how about also trying to determine an alternative and see how challenging it is.
I read a lot of people poking holes, but not a lot of suggestions of how to improve things.