Study on super processed foods
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Anonymous
| Released saying they basically raise all cancer rates. Isn’t basically everything except vegetables and fruits this way ? |
Anonymous
| Basically. Super! |
Anonymous
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No I think there’s a pretty big gulf between basic processing and super processing. For instance: I love Coca Cola with sugar. Sugar came from a plant, once, but it’s miles away from it and the caramel coloring and acids… it’s not a food. It’s a product.
Conversely if I brewed up some tea, cooled it and added a lot of sugar it wouldn’t be healthy, but it’s also not so divorced from food. |
Anonymous
| ^^^but I feel like they never do a good job explaining the limits. I make all our food at home but I use store bought broth. That’s got way more ingredients that my grandma never used when she made broth from scratch. It makes it very confusing as to what to exactly constitutes “super processed.” |
Anonymous
You can make broth at home, you are just taking a shortcut. Most boxed cereals on the other hand you could never make at home. They are super processed. |
Anonymous
This is a good explanation. The main issue is the distance from the original food sources. Buy stuff from the edges of the supermarket and some shortcuts in the middle and you will be good. It’s pretty easy to identify what is really a product and not food. |
Anonymous
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If you read the study they divide food into 4 categories:
1) unprocessed (e.g. fruit, vegetables, milk, meat) 2) processed ingredients (e.g. grains, sugar, vegetable oil) 3) processed foods (canned fruit or vegetables, fresh baked bread, cheese) 4) ultra processed food (snacks, store bought bread, breakfast cereal, soda, processed meat, ready to eat meals) The correlation they found was with the last category, although I don’t know if they looked at other correlations. It was interesting to me, because for my family, bread and breakfast cereal are relatively easy changes I can make for my teens. Usually if my kids eat them it’s at home because they are easy and fast and not because they love them so if I make some other carb that’s easy and fast, or buy or make fresh bread, they won’t care. |
Anonymous
| Is even killer Dave’s bread considers ultra processed ? |
Anonymous
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Wasn’t there some other recent study in the news that said the same thing?
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Anonymous
I think this is the same study being discussed. I think this is valuable info and worth considering -- agree with PP that the goal should be to aim for foods with no or minimal processing, though I think it's unrealistic for people to completely cut out all processed foods, including ultra processed. Like how many people can bake all their own bread? What I wish is that the US would adopt some of the more restrictive rules, or at least require labeling, to identify the many questionable ingredients in a lot of heavily processed foods. Like the main difference between bread you bake at home and store bought bread? Preservatives, that prevent the store bought bread from going bad as quickly. A lot of the preservatives in American breads are not even legal in other countries. Some are though. It would be amazing if, at a minimum, foods were clearly labeled to identify the ingredients they include that should raise caution flags. As a consumer, I wind up standing in the bread aisle reading the tiny print ingredient lists and googling ingredients to try and figure it out. It's ridiculous that I should have to work that hard. |
Anonymous
| How is store bought bread worse than homemade bread? Dave’s killer bread seems far more nutritious than any homemade bread I’ve ever had. |
Anonymous
It's the added preservatives that keep it from getting moldy. All processed foods have them, though maybe DKB has fewer? I honestly doubt it though, because any bread sold in the commercial aisle of a grocery store is going to need to be relatively shelf stable in order to survive the process of distribution. A home-baked or bakery fresh bread will be sold/eaten within a day or two of being made, and day-old bakery items are often sold at a discount specifically because they already show signs of staleness. Mold will appear within as little as 2-3 days. It is next to impossible to get a commercial bread on the shelves and sold in that length of time, and when you buy a loaf of DKB, does your family consume it within a day or two, or do you work your way through over the course of a week? This is why you can't discuss these studies in a vacuum. It's easy to say "oh yes, super processed foods are terrible for you, it doesn't surprise me that Doritos cause cancer." But getting rid of super processed foods from our diets would mean changing a lot about the way we eat. Super processed foods are popular not just because they are sweet or highly marketed, but because they are convenient. And our entire economy has been structured upon access to conveniences, like shelf stable bread, that enable things like two-income families, long work days and school days, etc. It's all part of our culture. Exempting yourself from a food chain that is built on super processed foods doesn't just mean buying expensive bread at Whole Foods. It would mean changing your entire life style. It's harder than you think. |
Anonymous
I agree. I know fresh whole foods are good, packaged shelf-stable foods bad, but there is so much in between. Is ground beef considered super processed? Dr. Praeger's black bean burgers? Frozen peas? Canned peas? Pasteurized milk? Etc. |
Anonymous
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We make our own bread. Sourdough wheat sandwich loaves. Kept properly, they can stay fresh and mold free for a week. Whole grain bread does not go bad very quickly. Now, baguette can get hard quickly, but that can be fixed or used for other purposes.
Shelf stable bread should be banned. |
Anonymous
| Eh who cares. I just had cancer. Chemo and surgery. My prognosis is good. I’ll continue to eat my processed foods. I’m going to enjoy the rest of my time here! |