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Big effort needed on UK diet to fight ultra-processed food, say health experts (theguardian.com)
48 points by PaulHoule on Sept 6, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 74 comments



UK has bigger problems than the ingredient breakdown in foods, the drinking and food culture is entirely based around excess. Go out on the weekend, drink 12 pints, have a kebab while drunkenly stumbling home, wake up and order in takeout because you're too hungover to cook, skip the gym, have a large Sunday roast - eat a half packet of biscuits with your tea.

The government need to start teaching about macronutrient breakdowns and calorie intake during early years, mandate that takeaways label their food with the macro-nutritional information, and let people be educated about the amount of food and drink they are consuming.


People don't tan 12 pints on a weekend, have a kebab and order a takeout because they think this is a healthy lifestyle.


I for one am bored of this trope about Londoners.

Surely everyone knows that 12 pints and a Kebab is for after a meetup on a Tuesday, not the weekend?!


They sure brag about it afterwards though so it's certainly a lifestyle they think is worth having.


I really hope this is a bit of hyperbole...12 pints is a LOT.


Its what happens when adults are bored and don't see any benefit in not doing it.


People don't need a nanny state to tell them 12 pints and a kebab are a shitty life choice, i refuse to believe people are this stupid.


I don't believe that was what OP was suggesting; the addition of nutritional information for fast food outlets would be very welcome, personally. It'd be very informative to see the caloric breakdown and macros of food consumed from such joints. We already have macro-nutritional information for beers, why not extend that to what is commonly ordered with beer, too?

Furthermore, education on caloric intake and macro-nutrients in general would be a very wise decision. From experience, schools in the UK tend to skip what many would consider the essentials (sex education, dieting) to focus on more academic ventures -- it's good that we're focusing on academia, but we also need to place a greater spotlight on ensuring we live healthy lives; this is something regulators and the Government in general are very well-positioned to enforce.

The only real lectures we had on dieting were wishy-washy "eat vegetables" talk, which is glaringly obvious to pretty much anyone. Teaching people how to incorporate them into a meal seems like the logical next step.

Regarding educational institutions, I would much rather such information be presented to children in place of Baccalaureate programs which schools receive kickbacks from the Government to do; I did one and found that the majority of students (including myself) found the entire venture pointless and excruciating.

N.B. A semi-related note: For someone on a restrictive diet such as myself (e.g. keto), having nutritional information for beer is a very welcome luxury. I'm able to have a drink with friends while knowing how it would affect my total intake of carbohydrates for the day.


> the addition of nutritional information for fast food outlets would be very welcome,

I really don't see it... We know a Big Mac is a shitty life choice, how is putting a number next to it going to help (we already do this i think)

When did you leave school out of interest? We did pretty comprehensive sex education, self care, hygiene, cooking, nutrition classes ect ect. Hell we even did managing money and understanding taxation.

I dont think the issue is education, the information is out there and has been for a long, long time. The issue is getting people to care.


> a Big Mac is a shitty life choice, how is putting a number next to it going to help (we already do this i think)

Yeah "we" do: McD boxes report nutritional information, possibly even the wrappers. I'm sure the numbers are a bit gamed, but they are painfully high even like that. Same for "pizza": Domino's, Pizza Hut, etc, they all report caloric intake on their online menus, even in surprisingly visible places.

People (me included, often) still don't care, because we already know that these are all "sins" - classifying them into minor sins and mortal sins does very little. We should ask ourselves why we sin, instead. But that's hard, and risks messing up the current order.


It's likely more about the social circle you surround yourself with. When everyone around you is consistently drinking and indulging in such dietary habits, it can give the illusion of normalcy and social acceptability, even if, from an objective standpoint, it's an unhealthy choice.

The bigger challenge is that the obvious solution, advocating "don't succumb to peer pressure", is essentially acknowledging a lack of a clear solution to the issue.


I think people do it because they enjoy it, not peer pressure. Making "unhealthy" choices can still be rational - we each get only one life after all, and choosing to have a shorter one with greater enjoyment seems as valid to me as the opposite choice.


You have a point, but I’d say it’s considerably more socially acceptable to share 12 pints with friends than to consume the same amount alone. Social norms and acceptability can indeed exert a significant influence on OVERindulgence.


Few have ever went bankrupt gambling that people are impressively, unbelievably stupid.


> The government need to start teaching about macronutrient breakdowns and calorie intake during early years

Stop looking to the government to solve this problem. There are many many thousands of sources online that one can easily use to get nutrition information.

If you want an example of how NOT to do it, just look at the US Gov food pyramid! Most of that diet is made of carbs.

Edit: I did a search and the first article, albeit from Huff Post, shows the food pyramid - https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/usda-dietary-guidelin...


For comparison: the consumption of ultra-processed food in selected European countries were from 2018 [1]

Top European countries with the most household purchases of ultra-processed food:

1. UK 50.7%

2. Germany 46.9%

3. Ireland 45.9

4. Belgium 44.6

5. Finland 40.9

Top European countries with least household purchases of ultra-processed food:

1. Portugal 10.2%

2. Italy 13.4%

3. Greece 13.7%

4. France 14.2

5. Croatia 17.9

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/02/ultra-proces...


For a contrary perspective, see Stuart Ritchie's and Tom Chivers's episode on UPFs: https://www.thestudiesshowpod.com/p/episode-6-ultra-processe...


The concept of ultra-processed food is nonsense. https://thecritic.co.uk/whos-afraid-of-upfs-part-1/


My buddy and I recently went down a rabbit hole researching this after "processed foods" started to be the topic everyone was talking about.

It really is nonsense when people try to define it scientifically.

This is the closest to anything we found that makes sense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_processing#Processing_lev... but it's kind of separate from the popular idea of processed foods

Here's a Nature article discussing the problems: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-022-01099-1


The ones I hate the most are "organic" and "bio" foods. The sweet talking marketeers (professional liars) have won.

It's likely just my biases but I've noticed that the vast majority of people using these nonsense terms are, hmmm, let's just call them high calorie humans. They really want to believe


Organic actually has a legal definition, at least in the USA. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-7/subtitle-B/chapter-I/su...

Of course the lists of regulated chemicals and all the weird stuff it covers are don't correspond to what anyone imagines "organic" means, but it is not marketing puffery.


I mean, I've spent time in west Virginia, the people I met at Huntington's organic farmers market (and Fayetteville) were significantly more normal-sized than most Americans I met, even those I met in Cali, so I don't know if it's true.


My working definition, taken from Michael Greger, is "nothing bad added, nothing good taken away".


So then freshly picked vegetables steamed is ultra-processed, as some of the nutrients got washed away in the steam (good taken away). Cooking a freshly caught fish in a pan or on a grill is ultra-processed because its potentially charring meat proteins which is potentially cancerous (something bad added).

I dunno about you, but this definition doesn't seem to work for me.


The parent comment mentioned "processed foods", and that's what I was attempting to define, not "ultra processed", which doesn't really seem to mean anything coherent.

I think you're right about steaming though, if you're going for maximum nutrition you're better off eating some vegetables raw.


Alot of the fruit and veg that is sold in supermarkets today is not the same stuff from the 70's.

Orange juice has gotten sweeter, even shop bought blackberries are noticeably worse than wild blackberries so I just dont buy the fruit and veg now.

Naturally ripened bananas taste so much better than the artificially ripened bananas and you can taste the gas used to ripen the bananas even though they claim you shouldn't be able to.

Carrots today are horse stock carrots, big, bland and no taste. Spuds, you cant get a decent baker with a decent skin on it any more, come back Spud U like, all is forgiven.

The mince meat from supermarkets is just gristle that leaves feeling worse for wear.

Yoghurts, massed produced sludge, designed to forced through pipework for automated containerisation.

Successive Govts have allowed this to occur in the UK and then they wonder why the NHS cant cope.

Thing is, for most people they havent noticed this decline in quality food so they think you are nutter when you complain about the decline, which probably explains the rise of the influencer.

Cheap crap food masks the costs to your health.


Having lived in a few countries globally, I’ve had the chance to observe the decline in food in multiple regions. Some local industries decline at different rates likely due to locals not tolerating it. Bread and milk are good indicators in my opinion. Whole milk fat content is lower in US vs Europe, and in the middle east, milk fat is replaced with coconut fat or others non bovine sources.


The standard "whole milk" in the US and EU are both 3.5% milkfat. If your whole milk is less than 3.5% in the US, report them to the USDA.


(I up voted you because it was good information that do not deserve to be greyed, I really like the study, but I disagree)

The ultra-processed food are not nonsense, only hard to define depending on your culture.

One example my sister used is bread.

If your bread contain flour water and salt, it's processed food but not ultra-processed. Everyone agree. Even if you use multiple different flour and nuts, still the same.

After that, you can add oil on the bread before cooking it (not mixed with the bread,just on top, to change the crust formation). It is possible to consider it ultra-processed now (people rarely do, even in France).

Now come the question of sugar (there is a salt question too but I don't know enough to talk about it). Sugar help conserving the bread. In France, some people (including me) consider that any amount of sugar in bread makes it ultra-processed. Some consider that it only is if the bread cannot be just called bread, but that depends on your culture. Some 'bread' in the US would be called 'brioche' here by almost everyone.

But for the majority of stuff, it's easier : if it's a pre-prepared meal with conservatives, it's ultra-processed.

Which does not mean it's bad, though. Generally it is, but not always. Nutri-score (at least the last iteration, the previous one was flawed against fat in general and insaturated fat in particular) is imho a better way to look at food.


Yeah, it's useful to observe the correlation -- processed foods tend to be optimized for junk-food traits -- but going to war on this basis is insane. You'll just wind up discarding a bunch of genuine culinary advances while kicking open the door for fraudulent health foods, of which there are already too many.

I was roundly mocked for predicting that sugar would rebrand as "natural" with marketing that heavily exploited "natural=healthy", but now that I have been proven right I just want to see the madness stop here.


There are virtually no sugar free foods available in any of the british supermarkets. The solution is simple. Any food selling shop must have at least 30% of their offering healthy. That will alleviate some of the stress the NHS is facing (and is of course blamed on immigrants). It will also make it more desirable to investors once privatised.


> There are virtually no sugar free foods available in any of the british supermarkets.

A cursory glance at a UK supermarket website shows that statement to be hyperbole.


The reason many food contain added sugar is because that is what people choose to buy!

It's really easy to avoid sugar if you buy raw foods and actually cook, rather than convenience food. It's also cheaper. The solution is education.

There is no such thing as healthy food, only a diet which is healthy. You can eat so called healthy foods, but if you eat ecess calories your diet isn't healthy for you!


> must have at least 30% of their offering healthy

Who defines what "healthy" is?

In the US, Big Ag and USDA created a food pyramid that put processed carbohydrates as the base, even knowing at the time that that amount of carbohydrate intake is harmful.


> There are virtually no sugar free foods available in any of the british supermarkets.

The whole of the fruit and vegetable section, unless you're including fruit sugars.


Fructose and glucose are sugars and many plants contain significant amounts of sucrose in any case.


The best thing anyone can do is to simply avoid overeating. If you're obese, it's because you're overeating - and you can fix the problem by just eating less. In some sense it's comforting, because it's so easy to describe the problem and a solution, and some sense not because people like eating food!

The problem with "processed" food is that it's usually calorically dense and tasty, so it's easy to eat too much.


While you are right, in order to be able to eat less you normally have to change what you eat.

Many years ago I was obese and it was very difficult to eat less because the junk food that I was buying did not satiate me until eating too large amounts of it.

Now I can easily control my weight and I can have any weight I believe to be optimal, but that is because now I eat only food that I cook myself from raw ingredients and which satiates me in much smaller amounts and I do not feel hungry even a long time after eating.

I have verified that I have not changed and only the choice of food matters, because I have bought some of the things that I liked in the past, and after eating them I was soon hungry like in the old times, despite the big calorie content.

The food that I eat now has a relatively high content of proteins and of healthy fat, and most of the carbohydrates are from starch. I no longer use any sugar in the daily food, I make some sweets at most once per week, but usually more seldom that that.

So while someone who eats "ultraprocessed" food might see a great improvement by just eating less, I believe that it is very unlikely that anyone could succeed to do this as long as they keep eating the same food.


Your first sentence says that it's a simple matter of overeating, whilst your second alludes to the correct fact that it's more about what you eat.

And even then, it's not a simple question of volume. The processed foods are addictive and play havoc with blood sugar with little satiety.

I really think they are at the heart of the obesity epidemic.


"simply avoid overeating" has the same ring of "simply stop being depressed"

People are a lot more complicated than that, and a persons diet is anything but simple.


The value in the perspective comes from realising what you're actually aiming for. Generally speaking, I don't think there's much evidence in that "healthy" foods are strictly better for you than processed food, beyond the idea you don't get as many calories from them so it's harder to overeat.

It's nontrivial to simply "eat less", I agree, but knowing that's the core goal (or more accurately, reducing caloric intake) has value when you're trying to decide how to resolve an obesity problem.


What is so complicated about it? Now, it obviously is hard for those who like to indulge themselves too much, but it is pretty much the exact opposite of complicated.


It's complicated because it's generally a symptom of deeper issues related to circumstance e.g. mental health, price, time, availability etc.

Solving poverty is also not very complicated when reduced down to "just have more money". That might be a useful starting point but it's worthless in practical terms.


I am reducing overeating down from what, life itself?

I disagree that leading with "reduce consumption, if possible" is impractical when we're trying to address the results of calorie intake


> I disagree that leading with "reduce consumption, if possible" is impractical when we're trying to address the results of calorie intake

We do lead with "Reduce consumption, if possible". The point isn't that it's impractical but rather that stopping there is woefully ineffective. We've never had more visibility into calories consumed; yet we're still seeing rising levels of obesity.

If we actually want to reduce obesity then we need to identify and address the reasons that cause people to overeat. That's what makes the reductive view of "calories in, calories out" counter-productive.


I'd go simpler than that. If something goes in your mouth you need to confidently be able to state every ingredient in it. Easy rule, easy to follow.

You've got to work really, really hard following this rule to still end up as a Double F.


Can you confidently state all the amino acids in an egg?


No, its an egg.

Are you just being contrarian or do you not get the general idea?


Well, my twinky has "cake and cream" so I can list all it's ingredients. Makes it healthy, right?


I am being contrarian. Rules of thumb like yours are good but the article claims a level of scientific rigour that I don't think exists.


So I can't have the homemade daal but I can have loads of potato chips (potatoes, salt, sunflower oil, paprika, yeast, sugar, onion)?


> homemade daal

You can name the ingredients yes? Surely you can because you've put each one in yourself.

> but I can have loads of potato chips

No, because im not convinced you know what Firming agent (calcium chloride) is.

Getting the idea of how this works?

I gave the general public the benefit of the doubt in another comment but now im not so sure.


There is no calcium chloride in my potato chips. I don't know if it's in the home made daal though.

You're massively shifting the goalpost by now requiring that I know what calcium chloride is. I do but I still don't think it makes chips better food than the daal, which includes tamarind paste, which I'm not entirely sure what it is (some kind of root?)


Does lab-grown meat count as ultra processed food?


An interesting thought came to me after a recent vacation in Taiwan: almost every restaurant and street stall is serving "whole foods"[0] to some extent whereas in the Western world, we've somehow elevated whole foods to a luxury item reserved for "farm-to-table" and high-end dining. From night markets to side street hole-in-the-wall restaurants, more than likely the produce and meats being served were purchased that day from the market.

Visit countries like Taiwan, Viet Nam, Thailand, Japan, Korea and you'll notice that even the foods that have a processed component often tend to be made by hand, on site, and day-of. Buy scallion pancakes from a street vendor? Very likely that the proprietor purchased the scallions from a market in the morning and made the dough that day. Those scallions came from a farm harvested that day or the day before.

I think part of this is due to lack of density in the US and the supply chain challenges of moving fresh produce across the vastness of the US. California being such a massive producer[1] of agricultural products means that we need a very sophisticated logistical network to move those goods and access to those goods is determined by this logistical network. This naturally leads to a consolidation of the food supply chain as we see in the US (Sysco, Conagra, etc.). Yet another part of it is the US car culture that affects our dining culture (again lack of density); we don't have access to markets and even if we do, those markets are probably only open a few days of the week. Part of it is general food culture and perhaps a more western expectation of "uniformity"[2] in food both in appearance and taste that favors processing. And some part of it might be a legacy from WWII and the rapid adoption of processed foods as a form of preservation and efficiency.

Not sure how to fix it, but I thought it was an interesting observation.

[0] I use "whole foods" here because there's a general consensus that processed foods exist on a spectrum: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Spectrum-of-processing-o... and "whole foods" simply refers to being biased towards unprocessed or minimally processed foods.

[1] https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/PDFs/2022_Ag_Stats_Review...

[2] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-the-supermarket-helped-...


From what my friends in China tell me this is changing in a big way, mass produced foods are taking over for the labor in even small and unlicensed vendors. They're hitting some sort of economic threshold that we have in the USA where it's just cheaper for every diner to buy frozen from GFS than do it themselves.


It is indeed changing in countries like China for a variety of reasons.

Some of it being the pressure and pace of modern life. Some of it being western foods being perceived as a "luxury" item and status symbol (e.g. Starbucks). Some of it being changes in economics.


In the west = anglo countries

please don't clump together all westerners


Processed food exist on a spectrum: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Spectrum-of-processing-o...

Anglo countries tend to be more biased towards wheat as a staple versus rice in the east. Whereas rice can be consumed in a minimally processed state, it's rare to see anyone consume wheat berries; it's almost always processed by striping the germ, grinding, bleaching, and then subsequent enriching. Pastas, pizzas, breads, burger buns, tortillas, flat breads -- all would be considered more on the processed end of the spectrum.

Likewise with cheeses and preserved meats; while still present historically in Asia, it is certainly not consumed at the same volume as in Anglo countries. Likely this has a basis in climate where techniques for processing and preserving food in the northern hemisphere is critical for civilization due to the shorter growing season and more extreme winters whereas the population dense parts of Asia tend to be in warmer climates that support year-round agriculture. (Preservation techniques also tend to differ as we examine cultures going northwards from the equator).

Perhaps the more apropos distinction is "wheat staple culture" versus "rice staple culture" (but that roughly aligns with the Anglo West and Asian East)


Yeah! For example, in Greece, well outside the Anglosphwere, we have pitogyro, the most wholesome of all street foods:

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=pitogyro&atb=v344-1&iax=ima...

(/s)


Its a systemic disease of greed that is causing larger and larger corporations in modern societies, while we are taught we [west] are a free market, false-capitalism from "wealthy states" is causing this rot across finance, food and healthcare across the globe.


those 4 "food groups" seem like a big nonsense.

what people in the UK (and elsewhere to a lesser degree) are eating isn't unhealthy because it is "ultra processed", it is unhealthy because it consists of 80% fat&sugar.


Technically you’re right, but…

Processed foods have added fat and sugar to make them more palatable.

Adding fat and sugar is a processing step.

No processing, no added crap.

Processing isn’t the key point, it’s a simplified way of looking at things to ease decision making.


Processing is still significant, as it includes the use of food additives to extends the self life and maintain quality. Salt is also a big component, as it flavour enhancer.


As a general overview, I enjoy Dr Greger's definition of processed food - 'Nothing bad added, nothing good taken away'.


I suspect this is in the news partly due to a recently published book on the subject [1] which has been selling very well.

The book takes a rather expansive view of what counts as 'ultra-processed' - it's not just things like coca-cola and ice cream; apparently Hovis Wholemeal bread and margarine both count as ultra-processed.

[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ultra-Processed-People-Stuff-That-I...


Sounds identical to the situation in the United States.


This goal is opposite of the approach to reduce meat consumption with -- ultra-processed -- meat substitutes. In general there's a problem with meat being replaced with processed vegetarian options. It sure can't be assumed that people will instead turn to actual vegetables.

So is meat part of the fight against ultra-processed food or not? I believe that meat is a health food, and from where I stand I can't tell where the zeitgeist is on this. Ethics aside, does the nutrition establishment believe that meat is better or worse than ultra-processed options in general?


A cow is in a sense a factory producing various proteins, fats, and carbs from grass. Does putting it into something "natural" reset it? I would imagine that red meat isn't a UPF by definition as it's only been through one process, but would argue that the inconsistency with fake meat clearly feeling processed is definitely interesting. Also interesting is perhaps that red meat is presumably not UPF but is carcinogenic.


In that sense a plant is as much a factory as an animal, and all foods are processed before they are harvested.

If this is an argument that "processing" isn't really a useful concept, I'll disagree, because it's clear that post-harvest processing has a very significant effect.


The only definition of ultra processed food is food the middle classes turn their noses up at.

You are right about meat though.


Meat is the most nutritious food you can eat, as it contains all the nutrients you need. There isn't any other food which compares to meat in that regard (with the exception of eggs).


Raw or frozen lean meat is obviously not "ultra-processed" and it is an optimal source of proteins that are not combined with too much starch or too much fat, as in most alternatives.

Nevertheless there are valid reasons why some prefer other sources of proteins, due to ethical concerns or sustainability concerns.

Moreover, human stupidity has ensured that today there no longer exists any food choice that is free of health risks. Every choice has health risks, so at most it can be assessed that a choice is less bad than the others.

For instance, beef or poultry meat may contain hormones and antibiotics, fish may contain mercury, nuts and seeds may contain lead and cadmium, and so on.


Historically in the US, the nutrition establishment has been certain since at least the 1970s that meat "is the devil". Blamed for cardiovascular disease, for cholesterol, for cancer. Beef and pork fat, lard and tallow, where possible, have been replaced by vegetable oils. Even ignoring environmental and cost concerns, we've been told over and over to moderate our meat intake, to reduce it, to minimize it.

I don't know that I've heard it referred to as "processed", so there's at least that. On the other hand, it's difficult to argue that some things we call "mystery meat" aren't highly processed. Sausages and such.




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