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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.  [/quote]

Are all breakfast cereals bad? How about Alpen museli and the like? Multi-grain cheerios no good?

[/quote]

I don’t think this study went into the level of detail you would need to answer that question.  They had people list what they ate, classified it into the four categories above, and then looked for patterns in the rates of illness in the different groups.  Is it possible that there were things that ended up classified as ultraprocessed that don’t contribute to negative outcomes?  Probably.  Are some ultraprocessed foods better or worse than others?  Almost certainly.

I also think that if you are looking at individual kid level the choices might be different.  I know, for example, that one of my kids went through a picky stage when the only green veggies he would eat consistently were frozen peas (processed) and lettuce or baby spinach dipped in bottled Caesar dressing (ultraprocessed).  My guess is that if there was a study, the benefits of eating something green outweighed the downside of the processing.  [/quote]

So frozen peas are processed?? The only ingredient listed is peas![/quote]

Freezing is a form of processing.  Is it a more benign way of processing?  Yes, almost certainly.  But it still qualifies.

My point is that we can become so focused on perfection that it can be the enemy of the good, especially with picky kids and busy lives.  The study just has 4 categories, and only looked at the impact of one of them.  The  take away shouldn't be "OMG don't eat things from this list!"  The takeaway should be "the degree to which a food has been processed is one thing to think about when making decisions".  If you're making decisions between foods then how heavily they've been processed might be one factor.  But other factors, like how much protein, or how much fiber, or how much time they take to prepare, or how much people enjoy eating them should figure in too.

Here is the study:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(23)00017-2/fulltext[/quote]

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