Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, it seems like you need to plan on grocery shopping almost every day. I wish American supermarkets would make smaller packages of things. For example, smaller loaves of fresh bread. I can’t see starting to bake bread. And we can’t eat a giant loaf in a few days. Or I guess maybe we can just give up bread?

Just freeze it and toast as needed. My mom did that in the 80s and I do it now.

Freezing is processing! Chuckle. Sorry researchers I am not going to feel guilty about frozen vegetables. Other studies say they are often better than fresh because they are frozen right away.

The study doesn't say to avoid freezing. It indicates a potential link between super-processed foods and cancer. Freezing foods isn't going to give you cancer. Living on frozen dinners from Trader Joe's probably will contribute to your likelihood of getting cancer.

So whole grain bread from the grocery store is not good? I thought we needed more whole grains in our lives. This is what my kid takes for lunch when she has a sandwich for school about 3x a week.

I’m really sad about processed meats. I’m on weight watchers and really, having a ham and lettuce roll with mustard gets me through the afternoon. I know I can do alternatives, but I really like that snack. I’ve already given up so much. I cook everything from scratch.

Anonymous wrote:Released saying they basically raise all cancer rates. Isn’t basically everything except vegetables and fruits this way ?

Live long enough and either cancer or heart disease will get you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, it seems like you need to plan on grocery shopping almost every day. I wish American supermarkets would make smaller packages of things. For example, smaller loaves of fresh bread. I can’t see starting to bake bread. And we can’t eat a giant loaf in a few days. Or I guess maybe we can just give up bread?

Just freeze it and toast as needed. My mom did that in the 80s and I do it now.

Freezing is processing! Chuckle. Sorry researchers I am not going to feel guilty about frozen vegetables. Other studies say they are often better than fresh because they are frozen right away.

Anonymous wrote:So, it seems like you need to plan on grocery shopping almost every day. I wish American supermarkets would make smaller packages of things. For example, smaller loaves of fresh bread. I can’t see starting to bake bread. And we can’t eat a giant loaf in a few days. Or I guess maybe we can just give up bread?

Just freeze it and toast as needed. My mom did that in the 80s and I do it now.

Anonymous wrote:Who has time for all of this? When I saw the study, I thought through our family eating habits and I just don't even know where to start - my kids eat cereal or oatmeal or toast (store bought bread) for breakfast. Then for lunch, they take a sandwich - usually with storebought bread and either storebought jam or peanut butter or cheese. They also may take store bought popcorn, or a fruit roll up or a store bought cookie. Maybe store bought hummus and crackers for dipping. For dinner, we have store bought pasta sometimes - I will make my own sauce but I don't have time to do that all the time (and don't suggest making a huge batch - I have 4 kids to feed, I'd have to have an entire freezer to keep it in!)

And then they have ice cream or maybe make a store bought cake on the weekends and eat that for dessert. On the weekends, they eat fast food. And don't even get me started on snacks.

Literally every meal has some element of super processed foods in it. My kids seem healthy enough, play sports, get good grades. Can someone post their no-super processed foods meal plan?

I have teen boys so they eat more than usual.

Here are some things they might have that are l relatively easy

Breakfast:

Smoothie with frozen fruit, whole milk Greek yogurt, handful of spinach

and one of the following

Scrambled eggs and toast made with bakery bread
Bakery toast with peanut butter
Oatmeal with peanut butter and other stuff added in

Snack

So, it seems like you need to plan on grocery shopping almost every day. I wish American supermarkets would make smaller packages of things. For example, smaller loaves of fresh bread. I can’t see starting to bake bread. And we can’t eat a giant loaf in a few days. Or I guess maybe we can just give up bread?

Anonymous wrote:Who has time for all of this? When I saw the study, I thought through our family eating habits and I just don't even know where to start - my kids eat cereal or oatmeal or toast (store bought bread) for breakfast. Then for lunch, they take a sandwich - usually with storebought bread and either storebought jam or peanut butter or cheese. They also may take store bought popcorn, or a fruit roll up or a store bought cookie. Maybe store bought hummus and crackers for dipping. For dinner, we have store bought pasta sometimes - I will make my own sauce but I don't have time to do that all the time (and don't suggest making a huge batch - I have 4 kids to feed, I'd have to have an entire freezer to keep it in!)

And then they have ice cream or maybe make a store bought cake on the weekends and eat that for dessert. On the weekends, they eat fast food. And don't even get me started on snacks.

Literally every meal has some element of super processed foods in it. My kids seem healthy enough, play sports, get good grades. Can someone post their no-super processed foods meal plan?

This sounds so unhealthy. 90% of what you put in your body should either come directly from a plant (eg raw apple or steamed frozen peas or sliced tomato or mashed potato or a boiled rice) or from an animal (milk, steak, egg) or come from these sources and processed mechanically or organically eg fermentation or heating or aging or grinding or air drying. Of course you can add salt and spices and even minimally processed sweeteners. It’s the multi-step chemical laden processing that is killing us. It is sad how Americans have spent so many generations brainwashed by big food they don’t even know what real food is.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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

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.

So frozen peas are processed?? The only ingredient listed is peas!

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

Anonymous wrote:Who has time for all of this? When I saw the study, I thought through our family eating habits and I just don't even know where to start - my kids eat cereal or oatmeal or toast (store bought bread) for breakfast. Then for lunch, they take a sandwich - usually with storebought bread and either storebought jam or peanut butter or cheese. They also may take store bought popcorn, or a fruit roll up or a store bought cookie. Maybe store bought hummus and crackers for dipping. For dinner, we have store bought pasta sometimes - I will make my own sauce but I don't have time to do that all the time (and don't suggest making a huge batch - I have 4 kids to feed, I'd have to have an entire freezer to keep it in!)

And then they have ice cream or maybe make a store bought cake on the weekends and eat that for dessert. On the weekends, they eat fast food. And don't even get me started on snacks.

Literally every meal has some element of super processed foods in it. My kids seem healthy enough, play sports, get good grades. Can someone post their no-super processed foods meal plan?

This is the problem. You know we spend a lot of time mocking women in the 50s/60s for how everything they did was cooking and recipes but what this does not adequately capture is that prior to the invention of both the refrigerator and modern food processing/preservatives the reason many women stayed home was not JUST lack of opportunity in the professional world. It is because the job of getting meals on the table was a FULL TIME JOB. Getting food, storing food, preparing food, etc etc etc most of human history has revolved around the acquisition of and safe preparation of food. We really cannot even fathom what the daily food requirements of a housewife living in 1948 were. It is a world as different to us as a world without internet is to kids born today.

I see entirely that our overreliances on chemicals in food could be causing some unintended side effects. But reverting to a non processed food world will take creativity because our society will not (and honestly IMO SHOULD NOT) revert to a pre 1970s lifestyle where women HAVE to stay home in part to feed their family. The processed food revolution has perhaps made us sick and fat, its also given us freedom and dramatically reduced starvation. Pros and cons for every new frontier.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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

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.

So frozen peas are processed?? The only ingredient listed is peas!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And what about butter? Surely the butter at the store is ultraprocessed? And juice too I imagine. I am doomed if ultraprocessed foods are going to kill me.

The study lists butter, along with oil and sugar in a separate category (2 on the list above).

Can someone link the study? The categorization sounds helpful. While I think some people are trolling, I do genuinely struggle with what's "processed" and making healthiness tradeoffs

Anonymous wrote:And what about butter? Surely the butter at the store is ultraprocessed? And juice too I imagine. I am doomed if ultraprocessed foods are going to kill me.

The study lists butter, along with oil and sugar in a separate category (2 on the list above).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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

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.