Ultra-processed food study - are you changing the way you cook/eat in your house?

[Anonymous]

No, but it's another thing to feel guilty about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

We bake our own bread in a bread maker since 2020. It's amazing. But it needs to cure on counter for 1 day before slicing, then we freeze and pop in toaster as needed.

Here's my recipe if anyone wants:

1 cup lukewarm water
1.5 tbsp avocado or olive oil
3 cups bread flour
3/4 tbsp sugar
1 1/8 tsp salt
1.5 tsp instant yeast

Add ingredients in that exact order, and for the yeast, make 2 shallow wells and pour in. Use French bread 1.5 lb setting. Don't rock the table while baking.

Thank you for the recipe! Do you change this at all if using whole wheat flour?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not OP, but here's a link:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/09/27/ultraprocessed-foods/

And no, as the person generally in charge of food in our house, I'm not changing anything. This study did not really tell me anything new.

I try to eat generally healthy meals, and if I occasionally have Cheetos or Five Guys, that's fine. Because I'm human, and I'd rather enjoy what life I have than eat nothing but whole foods 100% of the time and have an extra few years in my 80s.

+1, this is where I am as well. We rarely eat out and eat home cooked meals. But if my family wants a granola bar or an Oreo occasionally that's fine by me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Memba "correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation?"

Well, while that saying was often misused, it's highly applicable in this case. Here, what's suggested in the original post is highly processed foods cause cancer. But consider for a moment the demographic who may be eating, on the whole, the most ultra processed food? The poor. With lack of access to proper nutrition and medical care. So I'm not bought in 100% that the ingredients of ultra processed foods, by itself, is what causes the cancer.

This is always my concern with dietary studies as well, it in this case it seems like they took a group of people and randomly assigned them to eat either highly processed foods or non-highly processed foods for a few weeks, so that solves some of the correlational issues, but I still think that the conclusions you can draw from such a short term study are limited.