> The Nova definition of ultra-processed food does not comment on the nutritional content of food and is not intended to be used for nutrient profiling.
> Nutrient profiling: also nutritional profiling, is the science of classifying or ranking foods by their nutritional composition in order to promote health and prevent disease.
So it looks like this classification doesn't mean what you think it means.
"health" as quantity of nutrients doesn't really make sense. pretty much everything we eat is good in some quantities, and bad in others. so there's no nutrient that you can name that makes food unhealthy (there are some like trans fats i guess, but mostly). then what makes some food "healthy" and other food "unhealthy"? there is actually a simple answer to this question: foods which lead you to overeat them are unhealthy, foods which don't aren't. so then the relation between ultra processing and health become obvious. processing is expensive. the reason companies do so much of it is to get people to eat more of their food. food that has been ultra processed is pretty much guaranteed to cause over eating and hence be unhealthy. food that has not been processed usually will only lead you to eat a healthy amount. so "ultraprocessed" is pretty much the same as "unhealthy". furthermore, as above, defining "unhealthy" directly is tricky, because it doesn't directly map to the nutrient content of food. so a good proxy metric, like "ultraproccessed", is useful.
But your definition of processed foods has now shifted to being one of hyperpalitability and likelihood of overeating.
Those are two completely different categories. The first is, ostensibly, about the processing done to the ingredients to make the final product. The second is about the outcome that the product has on those consuming it.
If you remove the overconsumption angle, what is left of processed foods? And if processed is used as a proxy for overconsumption, why have this proxy at all, just talk about overconsumption (and the negative impacts of that) directly.
> But your definition of processed foods has now shifted to being one of hyperpalitability and likelihood of overeating.
that's a very small shift. the two are very closely linked
> why have this proxy at all
very simple reason: if i am in the supermarket i can tell immediately looking at a food how highly processed it is.
we have spent many decades telling people "just don't overeat" and it hasn't worked at all. we have also spent many decades telling people that "unhealthy" can be established by looking for a particular ingredient, say sugar, or fat, and it again hasn't helped.
the heart of the advice we would like to give people is that a healthy diet isn't one that has the exact right nutrient balance, but rather one that causes your body to naturally pick the amounts it needs. and we would like to communicate this advice in a way that makes it easy for people to make purchasing decisions.
Do you genuinely not understand the difference between "tends to be unhealthy" and "is always 100% unhealthy"? Do you not understand how the classification is useful even if it contains exceptions?
You're missing that from the conversation, where myself and others have stated it repeatedly, not from the wikipedia page.
> How is the food unhealthy? By having lots of fats?
Yes.
> Or high salt?
Yes, that too.
> Or high sugar?
Yes, very much this.
> Is it perhaps the ingredients that make it unhealthy?
Also true. For example: while preservatives like sodium benzoate are not used in unhealthy quantities in any individual item of food, a diet high in ultraprocessed foods can consume unsafe levels.
Sure my point is that what we’re actually talking about is the ingredients themselves, not how they’re processed. Except it’s through this roundabout way; if your worry is sodium benzoate, it doesn’t matter if the food was extruded, deep fried, or emulsified, all that matters is if it has sodium benzoate.
And we don’t need a proxy for that. We need proper labelling of ingredients.
> if your worry is sodium benzoate, it doesn’t matter if the food was extruded, deep fried, or emulsified, all that matters is if it has sodium benzoate.
Sure, but my worry isn't just sodium benzoate. It's also deep frying, or lots of sugar, or just being vacuously caloric while not providing saiety.
There are a lot of different things done to foods that tend to make them variously unhealthy to consume in quantity, a problem not shared by, say, cucumber or carrots. "Ultra-processed" is a useful linguistic catch all for these.
Some people lack the language skills to deal with terms that are not rigorously defined from a scientific sense, which honestly speaks to a failure of the education system rather than the term being a problem.
I have no idea what you're trying to say here. What it sounds like you're saying is that it is possible for processing to make a product unhealthy, and unlikely for processing to make a product more healthy.
What other people are saying is that this communicates almost nothing. What it does is allow people who are doing very bizarre things to food to hide among people who are doing pretty well known, well-tested, and ancient things to food. It's literally an argument to ignore the specifics, it's an argument for ignorance.
Certainly your first sentence is true. And you're right; what you said you think I said, communicates almost nothing. If it were what I were saying, it would be an argument for ignorance.
> The Nova definition of ultra-processed food does not comment on the nutritional content of food and is not intended to be used for nutrient profiling.
> Nutrient profiling: also nutritional profiling, is the science of classifying or ranking foods by their nutritional composition in order to promote health and prevent disease.
So it looks like this classification doesn't mean what you think it means.