
Ultraprocessed Food Consumption and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes - vo2maxer
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2757497
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asciimo
In case anyone else is wondering what ultraprocessed food is, I found this in
an NPR article [1]:

> And ultra-processed foods include more than just the obvious suspects, like
> chips, candy, packaged desserts and ready-to-eat meals. The category also
> includes foods that some consumers might find surprising, including Honey
> Nut Cheerios and other breakfast cereals, packaged white bread, jarred
> sauces, yogurt with added fruit, and frozen sausages and other reconstituted
> meat products. Popkin says ultra-processed foods usually contain a long list
> of ingredients, many of them made in labs. So, for example, instead of
> seeing "apples" listed on a food label, you might get additives that re-
> create the scent of that fruit. These are foods designed to be convenient
> and low cost and require little preparation.

1\.
[https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/05/16/723693839/it...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/05/16/723693839/its-
not-just-salt-sugar-fat-study-finds-ultra-processed-foods-drive-weight-gain)

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mc32
Where do synthetic meats and other goods fall in all this? The beyond meats,
impossible ‘burgers, as well as soylent and soylent-like drinks.

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rurp
Those seem even more processed than many of the examples above.

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serf
given the nature of the product, is it possible to create a 'meat-alternative'
product like the Beyond products _without_ processing?

Although 'processed' seems to be pretty ill-defined, the fact that the entire
category of food could not exist without lab-style production efforts seems to
me to indicate its' processed nature.

~~~
Ididntdothis
It's pretty tough to make something that tastes like meat and has the same
texture even if you use all tricks available. So to me almost by definition
these products have to be extremely processed.

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chiph
This might support the use of the "Perimeter Diet".

In US supermarkets, the outside aisles of the stores are typically stocked
with produce, meat, dairy, and bread. The center aisles are stocked with
commercially processed food ("comes in a box"). The perimeter diet plan says
not to buy anything from the center aisles, and that your diet should be items
found on the perimeter of the store.

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thisisnico
This is pretty much exclusively what I do. I almost never go into the center
isles. Everything I buy is fresh/real unprocessed foods.

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seriesf
The center of a mass market grocery store is terrifying. Safeway carries
something like twenty different kinds of marshmallows, but only one kind of,
for example, ground corn. They don’t sell food.

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Ididntdothis
I hope that as society we will at some point accept that quality of food is
really important and you shouldn’t just eat whatever tastes good. This
together with the growing acceptance of things like the microbiome make me
hopeful that we slowly may be moving towards a more holistic view of health
and not putting a lot of effort into treating symptoms while ignoring the big
picture.

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esotericn
This whole issue is strange to me.

There's an obvious link between 'ultraprocessed' food and just crap / barely-
qualifies-as-food.

Barely anyone here is talking about like, blending a salad up and drinking it
for example. Theoretically, yes, you could extract all of the sugar out of
lettuce and make something unhealthy.

The typical stuff you think of is full of preservatives, is probably something
quite sugary/wheaty to begin with (i.e. low nutritional content), etc.

Is anyone _really_ surprised that honey nut cheerios are crap food? It's
blatantly obviously a treat. I can't seriously consider that anyone would
think it's a component of a healthy diet - you might want to eat it because it
tastes nice and is fun, like a bag of crisps.

It's the classic treat that a 5 year old might want.

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orev
A simple rule of thumb is just that the further you get from a natural state,
the worse it is. Fruit from a tree beats fruit in a smoothie. Grains in a
whole state (i.e. oatmeal) are better than flours (i.e. oat flour). A whole
chicken is better than nuggets. It’s really not that hard of an idea to grasp,
as long as you assume that everything that’s written on food packaging is
meant to deceive you.

Some things need to be processed to a point where they are edible, but not
more than that. And before anyone goes there, yes, cooking is essential —
that’s not considered “processing”.

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xmichael999
I haven't taken Omeprosol once since I started eating my homemade fermented
kimchi daily. Totally anecdotal, but it works for me!

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AlexCoventry
How do you prepare it?

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xmichael999
Pretty basic, I buy 3 or 4 heads of chinese cabbage. Dice it up in to 1 inch
squares roughly. Add grated carrots, ginger and onion. I then soak that all in
salty water (about the same saltyness as the ocean) for about 4 hours. Then I
rinse it all twice. Finally I add three or four table spoons of dried red
peppers finely ground, three or four table spoons soy sauce, three or four
table spoons fish sauce. Finally I put it in a big pot and let sit at room
temperature in a dark room for 48 hours. After that into jars and into the
fridge. I eat it twice a day usually breakfast and dinner, not even that much.
After years and years of lansoprosol, omeprosol and xantac, and tums tums
tums, not one hint of heart burn since.

Edit: and garlic, 2 or 3 whole heads. I usually blend the garlic, as pieces of
garlic turn blue or green and look odd

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cik
I have this theory - and it's completely untested on my side. There's no data,
there's just a feeling. It's qualitative, based on my own anecdote only.
People were bred to eat specific foods.

I gave up manufactured food. Then I gave up North American food - in exchange
for eating the food my ancestors grew up with. My IBS disappeared in two weeks
- I haven't had any of the debilitating pain I had, eating North American
foods. Going back to hamburgers and crisps - my stomach felt like it was ready
to jump out my sides. I vowed to stick to what was prevalent as a kid, not
what I have access to now.

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uwuhn
What do your meals throughout the week consist of? I'm curious to know.

I'd also like to know if you think ground meat itself is problematic, or if
it's the preservatives and seasonings that are added to fast-food burger meat.

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mrandish
I had chronic IBS, GERD and other inflamatory-related issues resolve almost
immediately upon transitioning to a ketogenic (ultra-low carb) diet. The
transition to keto can be hard due to lifelong habits but once I got through
the first month, it started getting easier and now I love what I eat and I'm
the best shape of my life.

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nightski
I'll chime in that I have experienced exactly the same effects on keto, going
several years on the diet now.

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AlexCoventry
> _Absolute T2D rates in the lowest and highest UPF consumers were 113 and 166
> per 100 000 person-years, respectively._

Perhaps my love of potato chips is clouding my judgement, but on a personal
level, that doesn't seem like a huge increase in risk.

