
Ultraprocessed Foods – A New Theory of Obesity - MattRogish
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-theory-of-obesity/
======
wincy
I’ve been fascinated by the fact that I know several people who have become
vegan, lost weight, and feel better. But I also know many people who have gone
low carb, or even eat nothing but meat, and are also losing weight and report
feeling much better. I’ve been wondering what they both share in common, and
suspected that both forms of dietary restriction mean cutting out most hyper
palatable ultraprocessed foods.

It’s an interesting article, I hope to see more research on the subject.

~~~
cj
Another anecdote: I went completely vegan ~3 months ago. I don't really "feel
better". It's always the first thing someone asks when I say I went vegan..
"Do you feel better?" \- I feel basically the same.

Although my weight has been trending downward, slowly, which is great since
that's happening without trying to limit the amount I eat at all. That's very
different from when I wasn't vegan, my weight would always trend slowly upward
unless I was making a deliberate effort to cut back on calories.

BUT: I think the real reason I'm slowly losing weight on a vegan diet is the
simple fact that eating a restricted diet (ANY restricted diet) requires you
to think about and analyze absolutely everything that enters your mouth. It
introduces a level of mindfulness that just wasn't there when eating an
unrestricted diet. For me, this has had the side effect of also cutting out
most processed food (read: junk food) from my diet, even though most junk food
is vegan. I'm convinced this is the biggest value of being vegan.. it just
makes you think about everything you buy at the grocery store, everything you
order when out to eat, etc.

Another commenter calls this "paying attention to what you eat" \- I think
that's right on target, however cliche it may sound.

~~~
avinium
I consider myself a seasoned dieter (meaning I can manipulate my weight
+/-10kg fairly easily). Over at least a dozen weight cuts/bulks, _the most
effective practice_ I've found is writing a meal plan, and writing down
everything you put in your mouth.

Many people have started losing weight just by doing this - without actively
changing their diet. It has a really profound subconscious impact on what/how
much you put in your mouth.

The psychological/hormonal aspect of food is fascinating.

~~~
11235813213455
my weight is probably going +/-6kg, on a semi-week basis. When I eat, I eat a
lot (fruits at will, legumes, fish vapor-cooked, honey, Camargues rice living
in France, lentils). I think it's useless to weight yourself, it's easy to
feel how much fat you've built, you then need to consume it first before re-
eating (I'm around 60-62kg, 1.83m, with a thin morphology so it's not
underweight)

I feel really well with that "lower-frequency" diet cycle, it's of course
easier when working remote.

~~~
m0zg
+/\- 6kg is basically water. 1kg of fat is 8800kcal - 4 days of average
adult's caloric intake. There's no way to lose 6kg in a week unless what
you've lost is almost entirely water.

~~~
bo1024
It's not very likely to happen with water either. 6kg of water is 6 liters,
which is probably more than the amount of blood in their body. I have to
question the measurements on the 6kg fluctuations, going from 60kg to 54kg in
a week is serious.

~~~
hombre_fatal
I've fluctuated about that much in 48 hours just going from eating a lot of
food constantly -> fasting (no food, no water). Think about all the food and
liquid you can pack into your stomach and intestines.

Seems crazy, but try it. I went from like 180lbs to low 160s. Of course, it
comes back when you start eating and drinking again.

~~~
_carl_jung
This isn't what people typically mean when they talk about weight loss,
though. Which is why normally you hear recommendations for measuring your
weight at the same time every day with an assumption that your eating patterns
are roughly constant.

------
nearbuy
Why is whole milk considered ultraprocessed and skim milk considered
unprocessed? Whole milk is literally what you would get if you didn't process
milk.

Why are canned corn and green beans ultraprocessed? They contain nothing but
corn/beans and a touch of salt. If the salt is the problem, why do the
unprocessed meals have added salt?

It looks like for the unprocessed meals, they chose a bunch of high in
vegetables and whole grains, high fiber meals and chose a bunch of high
calorie foods for the ultraprocessed meals [1]. No surprise people ate more
calories when given the high calorie foods.

They say "dietitians scrupulously matched the ultraprocessed and processed
meals for calories", but also that people were told to each as much as they
like. What does that even mean? The calories can only be the same if you fix
the quantity.

They don't define "ultraprocessed" or provide any mechanism for weight gain
that would apply to their very varied selection of "ultraprocessed" foods.

The term "processed" is used to scare people about food, but the term is so
broad that there can't possibly be a single mechanism by which various
processed food would be unhealthy. Processing includes cutting, grinding,
heating, cooking, mixing, adding ingredients, drying, deboning... basically
anything you do to food. It's one thing to say a specific process, like adding
sodium nitrite, is harmful. Making a blanket statement that all cutting,
cooking and combining of foods is bad should raise a bit more skepticism.

If the article has a more specific definition of processed, they should
mention it because their choices seem pretty arbitrary.

[1] Study meals:
[https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cmet.2019.05.008/attachme...](https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cmet.2019.05.008/attachment/f7d43756-3f67-4557-8322-59a9d143d63c/mmc1)

~~~
alecco
Have you ever milked a cow? That milk doesn’t look at all like the “whole”
milk you get at the shop. Besides pasteurization they put it through filters
and other industrial procedures. Dairy plants are very complex.

~~~
scep12
To OP's point, neither does the skim milk. The question is: which is more or
less ultraprocessed? Intuitively you'd think the whole milk is closer to the
real thing by any measure, even if both varieties are processed. Nonetheless I
tend to agree with your point that there are probably better examples of food
that are closer to ground truth in nature.

------
zubspace
One experiment [1] with rats, which made sense to me, went like this: Some
rats got a lot of sugar and did not gain weight. Another group got a lot a fat
and gained some weight. A third group got a 50:50 ratio of sugar and fat and
gained a substantial amount of weight.

This is one of the reasons why some people (like me) can eat cake made of 50%
sugar and butter nearly endlessly. It's an unnatural combination and somehow
transitions our brains into zombie mode where we never feel satiated.

For that reason you can find that combination in a lot of processed food...

[1]
[https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/43673/5050-sugar...](https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/43673/5050-sugar-
fat-mixture)

~~~
nuxi
Mother's milk contains ~4.5% fat, ~7% sugar and ~1% protein. It's not exactly
50:50 sugar/fat ratio, but it's pretty close, so I wouldn't call the
combination unnatural. Maybe we've been "trained" from birth on what the
"optimal" combination is...

~~~
smn1234
isn't it intended that mother's milk helps the newborn put on weight (fat) and
grow?

That macros ratio of carb and fat is indeed interesting

~~~
leethargo
That, and support rapid brain development (based on glucose).

------
SketchySeaBeast
This seems to make a lot of sense, and removes that ridiculous notion that
somehow removing a single element from our diet is what will lead to weight
loss - the foods that people gain weights on are the foods that give us mixed
signals to their quality and quantity of calories. It's hard to not feel
you've eaten a lot of calories roast beef when you've eaten a lot of roast
beef, but it's much easier to lose track of how many chips you've eaten, and
harder to match that to the relative amount of calories consumed.

~~~
heymijo
A category of food that had escaped me as highly processed was food at
specific kinds of restaurants. David Kessler has an eye opening chapter "A
visit to Chili's" in his book, The End of Overeating.

Everything they serve at chili's, even seemingly innocuous things like a
chicken breast meal have been made or modified to make them hyper-palatable,
easy to chew, swallow, and overeat.

For non-American's, chili's is a sit down chain restaurant where you order off
a menu. Other comparable restaurants are Applebee's, and TGI Fridays.

[https://www.chilis.com/](https://www.chilis.com/)

~~~
grawprog
I'm curious as to how fast food being highly processed escaped you. It's
fairly obvious just by the texture and taste of most food at those places that
it's highly processed into some form far from what it originally was. If you
take a bite into just about any chicken Burger, nugget, strip, boneless wing,
whatever, from any fast food place and inside is just a formless, whitish
pinkish mush. That's not what chicken's supposed to look like. It's also
something that's been repeatedly said in media and other places since at least
I was a kid in the 90's.

Most things in fast food places come premade and frozen from some factory
somewhere and usually just fried up either in oil or on a 'grill'. Almost
nothing is actually prepared in those places.

Though, if you're in Canada, A&W serves real eggs and Bacon and stuff for
breakfast and their onion rings are actually cut and prepared in store(though
the batter and breading aren't). Everything else though came preprepared.

~~~
heymijo
> _I 'm curious as to how fast food being highly processed escaped you._

I'll read this as a genuine question and you not just calling me out for being
an idiot.

I of course, saw A&W/McDonald's/Wendy's as highly processed junk.

1) But a Chili's or an Applebee's where I can order a chicken entree that
looks like chicken, that I can get with a side of vegetables, that comes on a
real plate, with real silverware--I guess my mind put that in a different
category with expectations that it was more like 'real' food.

2) I hadn't seen how the "sausage was made" so to speak. Yes, I know food is
processed, frozen, prepared off site, but the book I referenced peeled back so
many curtains on just what that looks like, even for that seemingly benign
chicken breast I talked about in my first point.

Here's one excerpt pulled from a sea of them:

 _The uncooked chicken had been in a marinade that combined orange juice,
tequila, triple sec, sweet-and-sour mix, and artificial color, thereby
including sugar, two kinds of oil, and salt. It was shipped frozen in twenty-
five-pound bags, each containing about fifty pieces of meat, plus whey protein
concentrate and modified tapioca starch. Nick Nickelson, a chief scientist at
the Dallas-based Standard Meat, a supplier to Chili’s, said that the chicken
and marinade were tumbled together in a piece of equipment that resembled a
cement mixer. “It pulls the marinade into the muscle,” said Nickelson,
breaking down the cellular structure of the meat and tenderizing it in the
process. Another common way to get marinade into meat is through needle
injection. Hundreds of needles are used to pierce the meat, tearing up the
connective tissue. “It’s been prechewed,” said Billy Rosenthal, former
president of Standard Meat. For all that, very little in the appearance or
flavor of Chili’s food suggests how much sugar, fat, or salt it contains, or
how easily it goes down._

~~~
grawprog
It was a genuine question, sorry if it came off as insulting. I dunno, I've
been learning to cook my own food since I was a kid, so I've got a pretty good
idea of what meat and other food should look and taste like, to the point
where most processed food doesn't really look or taste like 'real food' to me
and I don't even look at it as food. Even those bottom tier just above
fastfood style restaurants. I've always thought people realized this but just
didn't really care. It's just never really came to mind there are people who
just never realized.

------
adrianN
Lab animals are getting fatter too, even though they're on a very controlled
diet[1]. I think there is some factor we don't understand yet.

[1]
[https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.201...](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2010.1890)

~~~
joker3
It's very likely climate change-related:
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/07/climate-...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/07/climate-
change-food-crops-nutrition)

~~~
arrosenberg
Industrial farming also produces less nutritious food generally. Plants can
uptake 20+ minerals from the soil, but industrial farms only add the 3 that
directly fuel growth - Nitrogen, Potassium, and Phosphorus. You get taller,
faster, less nutrient-rich crops.

~~~
qes
> industrial farms only add the 3 that directly fuel growth - Nitrogen,
> Potassium, and Phosphorus

Source? I don't industrial farm, but I highly doubt that as plants suffer
significantly when they lack micro-nutrients.

~~~
arrosenberg
Gabe Brown mentioned it in this lecture on regenerative agriculture. Sorry,
but I don't have a timestamp, it's been a few weeks since I watched it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A)

I'm not an expert in farming, but I do know a little bit of plant biology. My
understanding of what he said was that the combination of atmospheric CO2 and
fertilizer increases the growth rate of the plant, but the plant doesn't
uptake a proportionately larger amount of other micro nutrients, either
because it is biologically rate limited or doesn't have access.

Other Googling suggests that it could be a result of selective breeding
picking crops that grow faster but are less nutritious, but that would seem to
be a correlated problem. Those crops tend to be selected for their ability to
grow with synthetic fertilizer and *-cides, with the lack of nutritional value
being an unintended consequence.

------
badfrog
Unfortunately, there's no clear definition of ultraprocessed. Like is factory-
made whole wheat break ultraprocessed? Canned pinto beans? Artisan cheese?
Factory cheese?

~~~
magic_beans
> Unfortunately, there's no clear definition of ultraprocessed. Like is
> factory-made whole wheat break ultraprocessed? Canned pinto beans? Artisan
> cheese? Factory cheese?

The article defines "processed" and "unprocessed":

Processed foods add a few substances such as sugar, fat, and salt to natural
food products, with the goal of improving preservation or sharpening taste.
The category includes canned vegetables and fish, cured and salted meats,
cheeses, and fermented drinks such as wine and beer.

Unprocessed foods are the edible parts of plants (such as seeds or roots or
leaves) and animals (such as meat and eggs). The main processing of this food
type is freezing, drying or pasteurizing to extend storage life. Salts,
sugars, oils and fats are not added.

And the nature of ultraprocessed food:

Ultraprocessed foods often contain a combination of nutritive and nonnutritive
sweeteners that, Small says, produces surprising metabolic effects that result
in a particularly potent reinforcement effect. That is, eating them causes us
to want more of these foods.

~~~
Bartweiss
This... doesn't really define ultraprocessed. The article tries several times,
but the definitions conflict with each other and with the examples given.

The first definition of ultraprocessed is "industrial food formulations made
up mostly or entirely of ingredients... that are not found in a similar form
and combination in nature". That includes a lot of merely 'processed' foods. A
highly aged cheese will have basically no naturally-occurring ingredients
left, and any bread with leavening and refined flour fails "form and
combination found in nature". Similarly, the fat and salt flavors of strong
cheese, or the sweetened flavors of a pastry with sugar, go beyond "sharpening
taste" to creating entirely new nonnatural flavors.

We can all apply the Potter Stewart test to say that Twinkies are
ultraprocessed and sharp cheddar isn't, so I don't meant to be pedantic here.
But I think this loose definition points to genuinely important unresolved
questions.

Where on the scale from sausage to Twinkie does the problem start?

Is it really true that an Entenmann's coffee cake causes vastly different
eating habits than equal access to a home-made version? Can we isolate the
difference?

Above all, which differences actually drive this? 'Ultraprocessed' is not a
food additive but a loose class of recipes, and it'd be nice to reduce that to
a distinction we could put on a label.

The problem probably doesn't isolate to any one additive or alteration, but we
should be able to find something more concrete than a vague naturalistic
appeal. The study in question has some promising work in that direction, like
controlling for energy density. Outright added calories are a long-standing
suspect (since we're likely to use the same amount of e.g. spaghetti sauce
despite store-bought versions having far more sugar), but Hall's work suggests
that the problem persists even without that. I'd very much like to see more of
these studies to replicate the effect and extract a more substantive
definition of 'ultraprocessed'.

~~~
woodandsteel
It's a lot easier to define unprocessed than processed. Unprocessed is just
how it is from plants or animals with little or no alteration. Processed is
altered, like through mechanical action or chemical alteration, and also
different things mixed together that are not in nature. The problem here is
there are so many directions to go doing that, and so many degrees.

But in the end it doesn't matter, since it is becoming so overwhelmingly clear
that it is best to stick with unprocessed.

~~~
Lazare
> Unprocessed is just how it is from plants or animals with little or no
> alteration. Processed is altered, like through mechanical action or chemical
> alteration, and also different things mixed together that are not in nature.

That's a clear definition, but it's _extremely_ sweeping! It's also very
clearly not the definition being used by this study, which had an
"unprocessed" menu that including wheat flour pasta, cooked food, frozen food,
food with herbs and spices from all over the world, food that had undergone
chemical changes, etc.

> But in the end it doesn't matter, since it is becoming so overwhelmingly
> clear that it is best to stick with unprocessed.

By your definition, this study does not support that conclusion.

~~~
woodandsteel
>By your definition, this study does not support that conclusion

Not this study alone, but a great many studies to which this study adds one
more bit of evidence. Which is how it generally goes in research.

When I said "in the end it doesn't matter" I meant having a precise definition
of processed didn't matter for the question what our diet should be. I should
have made that clearer.

~~~
Lazare
> to which this study adds one more bit of evidence.

This study does not support your conclusion, and so adds no evidence to
support that conclusion. It's not even studying the sort of diet you're
talking about!

> I meant having a precise definition of processed didn't matter for the
> question what our diet should be

No, it really does matter. If you're trying to argue that some specific food
or processing technique is bad, then a study that had all participants consume
it can't be used to show that it's actually harmful. And by your definition,
that's what this study did - it had everyone consume highly processed foods,
and some of them had good outcomes. That undermines your conclusion; it does
not support it.

~~~
Bartweiss
Thank you, this is well put.

Perhaps the above comment is accurate in the sense that a raw, paleo diet is
healthiest for humans, or even the only truly healthy diet. (Though I've yet
to see any strong studies claim that it beats a Mediterranean diet, much less
a great many studies.)

But even if that's true, it's an entirely different question from "what's up
with modern ultraprocessed foods?" This study was contrasting foods like
"normal" pasta with canned ravioli and finding a difference. Since "everyone
only eat raw food" is an unlikely and unpopular outcome, it's absolutely worth
finding what's actually problematic within the enormously broad sweep of
"processed".

------
dilap
An interesting observation, but the description of how the effect might work
was a bit hand-wavy.

A very precise and plausible explanation of the effect at the level of
specific hormones released can be found here:

[https://www.bbdnutrition.com/2018/06/08/the-perils-of-
food-p...](https://www.bbdnutrition.com/2018/06/08/the-perils-of-food-
processing-how-the-preparation-of-food-affects-how-quickly-it-is-absorbed/)

Another likely cause is that highly-processed foods often contain seed oils,
which usually have high levels of linoleic acid. One of the effects of
linoleic acid (amongst many others) is to increase appetite:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30261617](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30261617)

------
scythe
It seems like the typical "macronutrient analysis" does not provide a good
metric for a food being "ultraprocessed" because in order to get the
fat/carbohydrate/protein numbers, we essentially ultraprocess (in fact burn)
the food while measuring it! Fat is extracted, protein is recorded by nitrogen
content, and carbohydrates are counted by the weight difference in a
calorimeter.

A few commenters have pointed to "dietary fiber" as that number on a food
label which might warn of "ultraprocessing". This is reasonably close because
the definition of fiber is actually dependent on digestion. It might be
important to remember that fiber is properly understood as a _metric_ , i.e.
"indigestible fraction", rather than as a _substance_ per se. For example,
pureeing a piece of fruit reduces the satiety effect of consuming it:

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019566630...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019566630800620X)

This is a rather simple and compelling demonstration that simple substance-
content analysis does not tell you everything you need to know about what
you're eating.

TFA also comes close to explaining, in my opinion, the strange phenomenon with
fad diets where they seem to work well for early adopters and not so well
after they catch on. In the early stages of a fad diet, food manufacturers
haven't caught on, and dieters are forced to prepare food from scratch. In the
later stages, you buy the frozen bag of "paleo" chicken nuggets from the
freezer aisle or you unseal a quart of "vegan" milk in the morning when you
have coffee. These products are not the same thing eaten by someone who cut up
raw chicken and rolled it in cashew flour, or someone who blended their own
almond-milk.

~~~
nickpsecurity
"the strange phenomenon with fad diets where they seem to work well for early
adopters and not so well after they catch on. In the early stages of a fad
diet, food manufacturers haven't caught on, and dieters are forced to prepare
food from scratch. In the later stages, you buy the frozen bag of "paleo"
chicken nuggets from the freezer aisle or you unseal a quart of "vegan" milk
in the morning when you have coffee. These products are not the same thing
eaten by someone who cut up raw chicken and rolled it in cashew flour, or
someone who blended their own almond-milk. "

This is a _great_ hypothesis that's worth testing. I'd love to see some market
research evaluating how many people at the real thing in specific amounts vs
shifted to processed foods that merely had the label. Then, also if they
overate those foods due to the convenience or taste.

------
notafraudster
The mechanism is plausible and the preliminary studies seem suggestive, but I
read the article and I still can't tell you a workable definition of
"processed", nor what the mechanism is beyond "artificial sweeteners screw
with satiety" and "junk supermarket food is high in calories". The latter is
clearly irrelevant since the studies referenced presumably keep caloric intake
constant in an inpatient hospital setting. The former is a result I remember
reading about as a teenager literally decades ago. So what is the article
pitching?

What is "processing" and how does it contribute to confusing gut-brain
signalling? The article lists kinds of food that we all agree are "processed",
but I have no idea why I think they're "processed" the same way a dumb ML
model might correctly classify something as a cow while having a nonsense
mapping from feature space to outcome.

Not trolling. Can someone list a set of specific ingredients or techniques
which are constituent of "processing", and how these things are connected to
the article's mechanism? I am aware of past mixed research on artificial
sweeteners and satiety, but clearly that's both an older finding and a mixed
one, so the article is alluding to something more that isn't explained.

~~~
vinceguidry
I read the article very carefully for that definition, and found that the
conclusion of the study is nothing more and nothing less than "processed foods
make you want to eat more" and that's what caused them to gain weight. They
didn't control for calorie intake _at all._

I feel dumber having bothered to read it. News flash, food that tastes good
makes people want to eat more of it and that will make you gain weight. Film
at 11.

Shit I could have told them that. Every last Cajun in Lafayette is bigger than
a whale, why? Because Cajun food is the best damn tasting food in the whole
country.

They should have added in my grandma's rice dressing and seafood gumbo as a
third category. Would have blown 'processed food' right out of the water.

~~~
notafraudster
If you're correct and the pitch is simply that the category "processed" means
"high calories relative to satiety", then the pitch is tautologically true and
maybe not so useful. LOL. Thanks for confirming I'm not crazy in missing a
more robust definition.

~~~
vinceguidry
It's like all they did was look for the easiest, laziest route to a payday
they could have possibly found. I have to give them props for figuring out the
perfect way to state the obvious.

------
mumblemumble
I'm curious how it is that the bag of flour and the box of pasta ended up in
the "unprocessed food" photo, but the loaves of bread ended up in the
"processed food" photo.

~~~
aidenn0
Some bread is basically [flour, water, yeast] which wouldn't count as
ultraprocessed, but the top hits for whole-weat and white bread respectively
for bread at on instacart have ingredients listed below (notice both contain
sweeteners, oils and salt, with the whole-wheat bread having 3 different
sweeteners and the white bread just good-old HFCS). The first hit for dried
pasta contained two types of flour, plus typical flour fortifications.

Whole Wheat Flour, Water, Sugar, Wheat Gluten, Raisin Juice Concentrate,
Soybean Oil, Yeast, Cultured Wheat Flour, Molasses, Salt, Soy Lecithin, Grain
Vinegar, Citric Acid, Soy, Whey.

Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine
Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Yeast.
Contains 2% or Less of: Soybean Oil, Salt, Soy Flour, Sodium Stearoyl
Lactylate, Ammonium Sulfate, Calcium Sulfate, Ascorbic Acid, Calcium
Propionate (Preservative), Enzymes

Sources (for some reason instacart had some ingredient lists and ralphs'
website had others but neither had ingredient list for both):

[https://www.instacart.com/store/items/item_152519229](https://www.instacart.com/store/items/item_152519229)

[https://www.ralphs.com/p/kroger-enriched-white-sandwich-
brea...](https://www.ralphs.com/p/kroger-enriched-white-sandwich-
bread/0001111000160)

[https://www.ralphs.com/p/barilla-farfalle-
pasta/000768085010...](https://www.ralphs.com/p/barilla-farfalle-
pasta/0007680850108)

~~~
mumblemumble
Right, but I'm talking just processed vs unprocessed. The breads in the
pictures looked like they probably weren't heavily processed, but even if
they're just flour, water, salt, and yeast, I'd still count de-germing and
milling the wheat to make flour as kinds of processing. The fermentation is
also at least arguably a form of processing, as is kneading to develop the
gluten.

------
kazinator
> _Subjecting more people to the strict study regimen at this preliminary
> stage, Hall says, “would be unethical.”)_

What? They aren't being whacked with hammers or given electric shocks.

And, regarding "more people", whatever is unethical for 500 people is
unethical for 5.

------
peterwwillis
_" Sure, meal portions today are larger, food more abundant, and many of us
are eating more calories than people did decades ago. But with temptations so
plentiful, almost all Americans could be overeating—yet a good number do not.
That, Hall thinks, is the real nutrition mystery: What factors, for some
people, might be acting to override the body’s inborn satiety mechanisms that
otherwise keep our eating in check?"_

1) everything they listed, 2) food tasting good > "my body is adequately
satiated". This is not a mystery. We just don't want to admit that our food is
very tasty, we're serving our people too much food, and that we have no self
control.

The body may have an "inborn satiety mechanism", but that doesn't mean it
rules our brain. My body sends me pain when I run too much and my knees hurt.
Do I stop running? Not if running makes me feel good.

------
pkaye
Would something like the Impossible Burger patty be considered ultraprocessed?

~~~
pr0tonic
Yes, absolutely.

~~~
MuffinFlavored
Does this mean that it isn't technically "healthy" for you?

~~~
asokoloski
Yep. In fact, in order to make it more meat-like, they added a chemical called
"heme" (it's what makes meat seem "bloody"). There's evidence that heme is a
carcinogen. And of course the burgers include large amounts of saturated fat
in the form of coconut oil.

All that said -- it's probably no _worse_ than a meat burger, but it doesn't
hurt animals, and it doesn't contribute to global warming, so if the choice is
between that and beef, go nuts!

~~~
skohan
But it might be much worse than a beef burger from a health perspective.
Grass-fed beef in moderate quantities in the context of the right diet can be
very healthy for you.

~~~
MuffinFlavored
> in moderate quantities in the context of the right diet

How much grass-fed beef should an average person consume in a day/week/month?

------
bjornsing
> “I have the freedom to change my mind. Basically, I have the privilege to be
> persuaded by data.”

So this is considered a “privilege” among researchers and scientists in this
day and age... It used to be what separated science from pseudoscience.

------
jascii
I would love to read the original publication. I'm curious if/how they
factored in the use of high fructose corn syrup which is known to suppress
satiation response and is common is processed foods. Allas; the original paper
is paywalled behind elsevier:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31269427](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31269427)
You'd think that since it was publicly funded the public should be able to
read it..

Edit: previous link was an erratum.
Original:[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31105044](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31105044)

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
They pointed out also artificial sweeteners causing confusion in the response.
It's not one smoking gun, it's a ton that end up all counting as
"ultraprocessed food". I'm sure if we dumped out HFCS something else in there
would end up performing the same function.

~~~
jascii
I wouldn't be surprised if lots of sweeteners/sugars suppressed the satiation
response to some degree. I guess it is beneficial to fruit bearing plants to
get us to spread lots of seeds..

------
dehrmann
> Dietitians scrupulously matched the ultraprocessed and processed meals for
> calories, energy density, fat, carbohydrate, protein, sugars, sodium and
> fiber.

Hopefully they accounted for bioavailability of nutrients. The way I've seen
this framed is you'll get more energy from powdered rice than an equivalent
amount of whole rice.

~~~
hnick
That's my opinion too. In many cases 'processing' is basically pre-digestion,
it makes things more available. Simple to process (for our bodies) often means
tastier since it's preferable in a calorie-poor environment.

I didn't see preservatives in that list. Though some of the items like salt
and sugar are preservatives, added preservatives also abound in processed
foods. Since the goal of preservatives is to basically kill bacteria/fungus to
prolong shelf life that would presumably have an impact on our gut flora,
which recent studies have shown is actually fairly important to our digestion
and weight gain.

------
Shorel
I think this method of actually measuring and cataloguing the food consumed
instead of relying in a poll is the way forward.

We should repeat this kind of studies. This methodology should be encouraged.

I just have a small doubt about a particular point: it mentions 'a very low
carbohydrate ratio'.

But this is not clear at all.

Is 30% of carbohydrates very low? So far some studies actually claim this.

Is it 5% of carbohydrates, like the ketogenic diet proponents claim is
necessary to be in a ketogenic state?

For me, the proportion of carbohydrates that can be considered very low
actually makes too big a difference to not to dive further.

------
bArray
I think it's more that ultra-processed foods typically have high amounts of
sugars and carbs. Any diet where you remove sugar and carbs, you'll see weight
loss. Diabetics demonstrate that our relationship with food is much more
complex than most people think - for example, diabetics don't have to inject
insulin if eating white cheddar cheese.

People should generally eat more protein in the form of meat, eggs, fish,
nuts, cheese, etc. You feel fuller and with a little exercise you can quite
easily turn it into muscle.

------
MikeGale
An important area on which a lot of nonsense is published. By some analyses
over 80% nonsense. (When I look at the other material you often can't take any
action based on it anyway.)

Some interesting observations in these comments, much better than you usually
see.

Could even kick off an HN diet study? Detailed recording of everything that
can be sensibly noted, you pick the dietary changes and do it for a long, long
time. Something like that might cut through the clutter?

------
Izkata
There's one aspect of this that's very lazily written: what exactly they mean
when they say people ate "more" food.

The big open question for me - and what I've long thought was one of the main
contributors - is caloric density. Were these people eating roughly the same
volume of food, which just happened to have more calories when ultraprocessed?
Or is the density about the same, and they are actually consuming a larger
volume?

~~~
jgwil2
I think they mean total calories. My understanding is that the body has a
sense of the caloric density of unprocessed foods, and adjusts the appetite
accordingly (as in the example given for honey or other natural sugars; the
taste prepares the body for the calorie load). But ultraprocessed foods
confuse the body's ability to do this, causing people to eat more overall
calories than they otherwise would, regardless of density.

------
katsura
But this begs the question for me, if you can count the calories of these
ultraprocessed foods can they still contribute to a healthy lifestyle? I mean,
let's consider that I eat ultraprocessed all the time, but in my calorie
range, so I don't get obese; is it less healthy than for example vegan diet,
or it doesn't matter that much?

~~~
hx87
> but in my calorie range

That's the difficult part--the insulin spikes from ultraprocessed food will
make you hungrier and eat more as well as lower your basal metabolism.
"Calorie range" is a moving target.

------
xvilka
Would have been nice if they checked not only low-carb, but also a "no-carb"
diet a.k.a. keto diet.

------
woodandsteel
The multi-trillion dollar world ultraprocessed food industry is going to go
into high gear to try to trick the public into believing that eating
ultraprocessed foods is just fine and the fault for the obesity epidemic lies
entirely elsewhere. In fact, I would say it is already doing it.

------
collyw
The obvious quick test to this question would be to look at countries where
they have a lot less processed foods.

India as I understand has rising levels of obesity, yet their food seems a lot
less processed than western diets - though someone may have more accurate
information than me.

------
dragontamer
Apparently this is a picture of ultraprocessed foods:
[https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/Image/201...](https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/Image/2019/scientificamerican1019-38-I3.jpg)

This seems like nonsense. There's baby formula in the top right corner: were
they really feeding baby formula to grown adults in the lab trials?

Or did the authors of this piece just grab a bunch of foods from the grocery
store and assumed they were related to the study?

I want a link to the actual study. Pictures like the above just piss me off.
There's a lot of issues in health-reporting and diet reporting. Lots of
"Ultraprocessed" discussion going on, but there's no definition of what
"ultraprocessed" is.

\--------

EDIT: Here's the next photo:

[https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/Image/201...](https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/Image/2019/scientificamerican1019-38-I4\(1\).jpg)

Are you seriously telling me that __canned peas__ are highly processed? That's
ridiculous. Especially in the face of highly-refined, enriched, white-flour in
the "unprocessed" food picture.

Look: I get that Spam and frozen-pizza are "ultraprocessed" foods. But canned
peas and Goya chickpeas are processed? Who made these photographs? They fed
Spam to people in hospital, and these images are drawing conclusions about
canned peas.

\-------------

I think there's something to be said about "Spam is bad for you" (actual
study) vs "We fed Spam to 20 people in a hospital for 2 weeks, and we've
concluded that Frosted Flakes and canned peas are bad for you". Unfortunately,
this article feels a lot like the latter conclusion.

~~~
Lazare
[https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cmet.2019.05.008/attachme...](https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cmet.2019.05.008/attachment/f7d43756-3f67-4557-8322-59a9d143d63c/mmc1)

There's a PDF of the actual menu, although it's just as random. Apparently
wheat flour pasta is unprocessed, but a wheat flour tortilla is ultra-
processed, sure, okay.

~~~
dragontamer
Day 1 Dinner: Canned Corn (Giant brand) is considered "ultraprocessed".

Wow. I appreciate the link. Honestly, seeing the menu makes me think it is
somewhat quackery. But it seems like Scientific American really did represent
this study correctly.

The main thing I've noticed is that the "ultraprocessed" foods are low in
fiber, and they try to make it up with large doses of "NutriSource Fiber"
pretty much every day.

There are exceptions: Canned Corn (wtf?) makes it on the list of
"ultraprocessed", and has decent fiber from my memory. A few days later they
have beans + beef. But otherwise, the primary source of fiber in that diet is
artificial Nutrisource Fiber.

Dietary Fiber is core towards feeling full. Its no secret to me (at least)
that more fibrous foods (even when low in calories) fill me up quicker than
fiber-free foods. I can eat 2 or 3 500+ calorie donuts for example, but trying
to eat 800-calories worth of "ultraprocessed" canned corn (that's 1.5 kg / 3.3
pounds of corn) is simply infeasible in one sitting.

Or to put it another way: 800 calories in corn is roughly 3x 8.5 oz cans of
corn. Still "ultraprocessed" (lol) according to this study, but its going to
be way healthier than drinking diet lemonaid with Nutrisource Fiber.

~~~
Lazare
Yeah, just some very odd choices. And quite a unpleasant menu to be honest.

------
pesmhey
It’s probably fiber? Is there any literature in the effect of fiber on
satiety?

~~~
oraknabo
Fiber has been one of the top factors in my own weight control. I've been
vegan since the mid 90s, but was slowly adding extra pounds each year. I
decided to go on an "if it doesn't have fiber, don't eat it" diet a few years
back and lost 60 lbs in 6 months. It massively cut down the sugar and oil in
my diet and has consistently helped me control my blood sugar.

One thing I learned is that satiety isn't just about the meal you just ate or
how full your stomach just got. If your blood sugar spikes, no matter how big
a meal you had or if you ate 4000 calories in one sitting, you'll be hungry
again in 3 or 4 hours. Eating a high fiber diet, I can just eat one meal a day
or even skip a few days of eating without ever feeling the kind of gnawing
hunger I used to get within a few hours of having a full meal.

Aside from blood sugar, fiber is also important because high fiber foods,
especially ones with any water content, are usually the lowest calorie density
foods and you can eat much larger quantities than you can with highly
processed foods. You have to be more careful of highly dehydrated ones like
whole grain crackers and dried fruit, but they're still far better and harder
to abuse than chips & candy.

------
ggregoire
Is it a new theory tho? There is a chapter about this topic in The 4-Hour Body
(2010). And I'm pretty sure Tim Ferriss isn't the author of the theory so it
was known before this book.

~~~
woodandsteel
I have no expertise here, but from what I understand what is new is Hall was
the first to do an experiment with the needed rigor.

------
dkarl
I don't know why people concentrate on the amount of processing and de- and
re-construction of food when it seems obvious that many foods are engineered
to make them easy and compelling to consume in large quantities.

Ice cream is not heavily processed compared to the kind of protein bars that
aspiring bodybuilders eat, but you can easily binge thousands of calories of
ice cream in a single sitting. It's not so easy to binge protein bars, despite
companies doing their chemical best to make them taste like candy.

Or compare those protein bars to the sweet, easy-to-eat bars (can't find brand
names now) at Whole Foods that brag about having a small number of minimally
processed ingredients. If you cram something full of honey or figs you can
make it dangerously easy to feed your demons with while still being "natural"
and "minimally processed." You won't see expensive bars sold to health-
conscious well-off people implicated in the obesity epidemic, but that's a
matter of class, not nutrition.

Why bother obsessing over abstract, ill-defined distinctions like "processed"
or "ultraprocessed" instead of teaching people to recognize that companies are
systematically and scientifically exploiting our human weaknesses for profit
and ruining our health in the process? Educate people to look at a Snickers
bar, or a bar full of honey and dried fruit from their fru-fru grocery store,
and see a cold, calculated, predatory attack. Food companies attack the
weaknesses in our eating behavior the way a lion seeks out the neck of a
wildebeest. The lion doesn't specifically want the wildebeest to suffer and
die; it just wants to eat its flesh. Likewise, Mars Inc. does not specifically
want Americans to suffer from obesity and diabetes; it just wants to sell a
lot of candy bars.

I suspect the obsession with these distinctions is motivated by the desire to
find a positive story to address the obesity crisis with. Negative stories
about food and eating are hard to sell to the public, who by and large (heh)
just want to enjoy their food in an uncomplicated way. Not to mention that
many people working in public health see them as a risk factor for eating
disorders. Stigmatizing a category of food is a positive story because it
promises us that once this subset of food is out of the picture, we can have
an easy, healthy, uncomplicated relationship with food, without any need to
address our own behavior. It locates the entire problem in a category of
inanimate substances that can be purged from our world. It's a much happier
story than saying we have desires and tendencies that don't always serve us,
and that some of the most powerful forces in our society seem bent on making
sure those desires and tendencies lead us to the worst possible place. But I
suspect that eventually we'll have to face up to that, like we did with the
tobacco industry, except that we'll have to accept the existence of the food
industry and an indefinite, partly adversarial relationship with it.

~~~
avinium
> It's not so easy to binge protein bars, despite companies doing their
> chemical best to make them taste like candy.

Amusing anecdote - for some reason, after a night on the town in Hong Kong, I
ended up back in my hotel room, ravenous, with nothing to eat but a box of 10
protein bars that had been gifted to me.

I tore through the whole box in under 10 minutes. My stomach did _not_ thank
me.

------
victor106
Reading through most of the comments, a common theme for weight loss, seems to
be cut out snacking in between meals and be mindful of what you eat (vegan or
vegetarian or meat)

------
dmcclurg
Is this study biased in the sense that people who cook for themselves are not
represented? Does the hospital staff order everything in?

------
ineedasername
An important distinction in the article: It doesn't say that you _gain more
weight_ by eating processed foods, but that eating processed foods _makes you
want_ to eat more. In other words, calories from processed foods are not more
powerful weight gainers, the impact on obesity is related to how it effects
satiety & appetite.

------
acruns
Smaller portion size. Of any foods. Of course, I am not a scientist.

~~~
quickthrower2
The problem is control, especially when there is an over abundance of food,
mostly crap (it takes some effort to find the good food) that is tasty and
addictive.

Then you have alcohol, alcohol advertising and culture, food eating in culture
(from dating at restaurants, to pizza for the team, visiting someones house
and they make a 3 course meal and it's rude not to finish).

Basically losing weight or not drinking alcohol requires some degree of
pushing aside social norms and not fitting in. Arguing with people and making
them slightly confused, angry or concerned. Being an asshole (even though
really you are not, you just want to choose what to eat).

In the UK it's madness. Not drinking at Friday lunchtime would be seen as
weird if you have been seen drinking before.

It also means literally throwing away food in the bin to go to landfill.
Someone gave you chocs for your birthday? In they go.

Yeah "smaller portion size" is simple but not easy!

------
ccffph
This is not new at all. Ultraprocessed foods are usually supplemented with
oils that increase inflammation and cause a variety of health issues. The guy
who opened me up to this is PD Mangan, who I found out about from Taleb.

[https://twitter.com/Mangan150](https://twitter.com/Mangan150)

Let me dump some info though for more discussion.

A Western-like fat diet is sufficient to induce a gradual enhancement in fat
mass over generations. This study used mice and bred them over 4 generations.
Each generation became fatter than the previous one.
[http://www.jlr.org/content/51/8/2352.full](http://www.jlr.org/content/51/8/2352.full)

What was the key element of this “Western-like fat diet”? A high ratio of
omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids. The omega-6 is due to a high amount of
linoleic acid, of which seed oils contain a large amount.

The results show that high-fat diets, when that fat is composed largely of
linoleic acid, made mice fat and that epigenetic changes likely drove the
increase in fat mass over generations.

Notably, at a time where overweightness and obesity have steadily increased
over generations in most industrialized countries, consumption of LA and ARA
has increased. In France, an increase of 250% and 230%, respectively, occurred
from 1960 to 2000.

The consumption of large amounts of linoleic acid, mainly from seed oils, is
something new in the world. Humans didn’t evolve eating that much, which is
around 10-fold higher than dietary requirements.

Decreasing the linoleic acid content to 1% of the diet reversed the obesogenic
property of the high-fat diet. Adding omega-3 fatty acids of the type in fish
and fish oil also reversed the obesogenic properties of the diet. Excess
linoleic acid induces inflammation, a key factor in chronic disease such as
diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2012.38](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2012.38)

The modern Western diet has been consumed in developed English speaking
countries for the last 50 years, and is now gradually being adopted in Eastern
and developing countries. These nutrition transitions are typified by an
increased intake of high linoleic acid (LA) plant oils, due to their abundance
and low price, resulting in an increase in the PUFA n-6:n-3 ratio. This
increase in LA above what is estimated to be required is hypothesised to be
implicated in the increased rates of obesity and other associated non-
communicable diseases which occur following a transition to a modern
Westernised diet.
[https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0132672)
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269696521_A_high_fa...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269696521_A_high_fat_diet_rich_in_corn_oil_reduces_spontaneous_locomotor_activity_and_induces_insulin_resistance_in_mice)

Soybean oil and other seed oils are in almost all ultra-processed foods. They
might also be linked to the depression epidemic. Men in the highest tertile
(third) of linoleic acid intake had more than double the risk of depression.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19427349?dopt=Abstract](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19427349?dopt=Abstract)

We saw above that linoleic acid leads to fat accumulation and insulin
resistance. People in the highest tertile of visceral fat had 6 times the risk
of colorectal cancer as those in the lowest. Insulin resistance was associated
with up to 4 times the risk.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19837793](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19837793)

High waist circumference is associated with 2 to 3 times the risk of
colorectal cancer.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7847643](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7847643)

One of the worst ingredients found in ultra-processed food is seed oil.
Soybean oil is the most common. Seed oils cause obesity and increase the risk
of chronic disease, like cancer. [https://blog.aicr.org/2017/06/13/processed-
foods-calories-an...](https://blog.aicr.org/2017/06/13/processed-foods-
calories-and-nutrients-americans-alarming-diet/)

The average American eats more than half of calories as ultra-processed food.
To stay lean and healthy, you must avoid the ultra-processed junk that passes
for food among average people. Eat whole, minimally processed foods. Meat,
fish, eggs, fermented dairy, non-starchy vegetables.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
And there you go making the same mistakes that a lot of people are. You're
looking at the article, going "ok, this part confirms my bias that it's <one
thing I'm passionate about>" and then not learning from the article.

~~~
ccffph
Can you please explain how that appears to be the case? What mistakes am I
making? What bias do I have? Everything I've alluded to is drawn from data. I
never had a pre-existing dislike of ALAs lol.

And I'm being genuine, because I'd like to see where I'm flawed.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
> This is not new at all. Ultraprocessed foods are usually supplemented with
> oils that increase inflammation and cause a variety of health issues.

Your thesis statement tells me that you're focused on oils. The article
identifies and discusses multiple spectrums of why the ultraprocessed food
would be bad, but it seems you've excluded the larger possibilities and have
decided to focus on your own personal oil-based bugbear.

~~~
ccffph
I'm focused on ultraprocessed foods. Many people ask "how are highly processed
foods different than regular whole foods". Thus I provide a deeper reason for
ultraprocessed foods to be bad for you. They are often supplemented with
fillers that are evidenced to be detrimental to health in a variety of ways.

I read the article and understand that many explanations were offered.
However, none of them were more substantial than one study put together. In my
opinion, the article was fairly high level and simply provided a brief
overview of competing theories on obesity and processed foods.

I understand your point in that focusing on any "one thing" that allegedly
drives poor health is a fool's errand, but you can't discount the facts. I
also acknowledge that I could be wrong, ALA could have nothing to do with
this, and we should quit all meats for maximum health. From what I have seen,
the data has shown otherwise. But again, please prove me wrong.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
The problem is that similar data can be found for sugars as well, so it's not
just the one smoking gun, much like removing fats from the things in the 90's
didn't suddenly make everyone skinny, even though there was research to
suggest fat was the problem.

------
tehjoker
Under capitalism, food is produced to be sold in as great quantity as
possible, and therefore is designed to be addicting by their producers, large
and small. It is possible to design food production to be healthy instead of
craving driven.

~~~
merpnderp
Why inject the politics? Are you saying that all our problems would go away if
we just had someone taking away our choices and telling us what to eat? They
could plan out food production centrally. In five year plans. And people would
would definitely no longer over eat.....

~~~
tehjoker
I injected it because there is an explanation for why our food is designed
this way and it is economic in nature. I think this is a bad thing, you might
think that the system is good, but it's important to point it out and not
pretend otherwise.

------
magwa101
Sugar, now go away.

------
notadoc
Taking in more calories than are used causes weight gain.

Using more calories than are consumed causes weight loss.

This is rudimentary physics, there are no new theories needed to explain it.

~~~
badfrog
Your premise is true, but drastically oversimplified. And your conclusion
doesn't follow at all. It's clear that there's a huge public health problem
with obesity that needs to be corrected. In order to correct it, we need to
know why it's happening. Is something causing people to consume more calories
than before? Is something causing them to use fewer calories? The "classic"
answer is that people are lazy and gluttonous, but there's a distinct
possibility that other factors are in play making people crave food more.

~~~
tathougies
> Is something causing people to consume more calories than before?

Yes. For most of human history, food was scarce. People regularly died from
starvation.

Today, that is no longer the case. Despite the outrage industry's continued
and tired claims that hunger is at all time highs, etc, the truth of the
matter is that most people in developed countries -- far more than ever before
-- have access to all the nutrition they need at a price they can afford.

Unfortunately, people are not used to that availability, and thus are not able
to process it rationally. Instead we binge eat. For example, there is a free
box of bagels today at work and I'm going to have one now because cream
cheese... yum!

------
rakeshsrr
Vegan or Meat eater doesn't matter. It is always the amount and type
(processed or non-processed/fresh) food that we consume is what makes an
individual to gain or lose weight. I have reduced my weight without altering
the type of food that I take with the following steps

1\. Eat when you are hungry 2\. Even when you are hungry, eat only a medium
portion(your stomach can be half filled). 3\. Reduce sugar in take (any form
of sugar) 4\. Include physical activities in your daily work / home life.
Walking via stairs, cycling or walking to work etc.. you don’t necessarily
need to do any dedicated exercise routines (well if u have time, its good to
do). 5\. Do not consume food after 7 pm. ( can take small portion of regional
fruit if you are really hungry). 6\. Most importantly, get a good sleep (10pm
to 5am). 7\. Get rid of all the measuring apps that you have in your phone,
fitness, calorie calculator.. these are useless. Every human is unique in
their nature and each individual needs certain amount of energy to do a
work(differs from individual to individual) .. so we cannot set a common
standard (BMI ) for all.

Always have time to cook fresh food on daily basis. I am from southern part of
India and its very easy here to get fresh fruits, veggies, meat on daily
basis. Mostly importantly, we buy on daily means and cook for the day. We
never carry/food for the next day. Almost zero processed/frozen food. I
believe processed food are the root cause for most of the health related issue
that we face now a days.

