March 21, 2024 - Epoch Times
14:00
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| One of the major criticisms that people have upon coming here to the United States is the quality of the food. | |
| Especially Europeans, when they come to America, they're oftentimes really surprised to learn just how ultra-processed the American diet actually is. | |
| Just as one example out of thousands, here are two comparable products next to each other. | |
| On the left is Quaker Oats Instant Oatmeal for the American market, and on the right is Quaker Oats Instant Oatmeal for the UK. And comparing the ingredients between these two reveals quite a lot, because not only does the American version of that product have a plethora of random chemicals, additives, and colorings that the UK version doesn't, but even further than that, if you study the ingredients, you'll notice that the American version of this product does not contain any strawberries. | |
| Both of these two products are marketed as strawberry oatmeal, but while the UK version contains real, freeze-dried fruit, the American version contains artificial strawberry flavors. | |
| And again, this oatmeal example is just one out of thousands of such examples. | |
| The American market is absolutely saturated with ultra-processed foods, as well as junk food. | |
| But here's the thing. | |
| Even though most people intuitively understand that processed foods aren't as good for them as whole foods, up until now, there's actually been a real lack of scientific studies to confirm that suspicion. | |
| There have been some studies which have linked ultra-processed food to poor health and some specific diseases, but there has not been a comprehensive review which can provide a broad assessment of all the evidence in this particular arena. | |
| And so, in order to bridge that gap, quote, And so indeed, these researchers conducted their study, and it was recently published in the pages of the British Medical Journal. | |
| It's titled, Ultraprocessed Food Exposure and Adverse Health Outcomes, an Umbrella Review of Epidemiological Meta-Analyses. | |
| This is the largest of its kind peer-reviewed study. | |
| And what the researchers here did was that they took 14 different studies that have already been published and they conducted a large meta-analysis on them in order to determine the link between ultra-processed foods and general adverse health effects. | |
| And what they found was really fascinating to say the least, so let's go through it together. | |
| To start with... | |
| Because these researchers were dealing with so many different studies published over the past three years, they needed to synchronize the terminology in order to have a real apples-to-apples comparison. | |
| And so, in terms of defining what actually constitutes processed food as well as ultra-processed food, they used the NOVA food classification system. | |
| NOVA classifies food into four separate categories. | |
| You have group number one, which is the unprocessed or minimally processed foods. | |
| These are what most people would consider natural whole foods, and they have been altered minimally by humans. | |
| Maybe they've been cut up, boiled, frozen, or washed, but that's pretty much it. | |
| So this is basically things like nuts, eggs, milk, steak, most types of fruits, etc. | |
| Then you have group number two, which is processed culinary ingredients. | |
| The things in this group are usually not eaten by themselves, and instead they're created to help prepare food. | |
| These are things like sugar, salt, honey, olive oil, butter, things like that. | |
| Then you get to group number three. | |
| These are processed foods. | |
| These are products that are manufactured by mixing the whole foods in group number one with the additives in group number two, like using yeast and flour to make bread, or bacteria, cultures, and milk to make cheese, Or sugar and berries to make jam, things like that. | |
| They're all classified as processed foods. | |
| And then the last level is group number four, ultra-processed foods. | |
| These are products which are completely industrial formulations, and they're made almost entirely from substances which are either derived from food or synthesized in a lab, meaning that group number four consists of quote-unquote food which contains little to no whole foods, and you can't really make this stuff at home. | |
| You basically need factories and laboratories to make it. | |
| These are things like baby formula, hamburgers, fizzy soft drinks, microwave pizza, instant noodles, bagged chips, things like that. | |
| Basically, ultra-processed foods are many steps removed from the actual whole foods they derive themselves from. | |
| And so that's the definition of ultra-processed food that these researchers were using when conducting their meta-analysis. | |
| And just for your reference, just as it was mentioned in that summary, these 14 studies that we're looking at involved data from approximately 10 million people. | |
| And so the study population was rather large. | |
| And so, after running their analysis, what these researchers found was that exposure to ultra-processed foods, again, meaning foods in that fourth category, was consistently associated with 32 different adverse health outcomes. | |
| Quote,"...overall, direct associations were found between exposure to ultra-processed foods and 32 health parameters spanning mortality, cancer, and mental, respiratory, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and metabolic health outcomes." They also found that the amount of exposure to these ultra-processed foods increases a person's likelihood of having one of these adverse health outcomes. | |
| Quote, Then, in their published analysis, the researchers included this graph right here, you can see it up on your screen, showing the severity of each one of these health outcomes. | |
| The red line going down the middle is the baseline, and as you can see, most of the findings show an increase of these negative health outcomes for people who eat ultra-processed food. | |
| And so as you can see, greater exposure to this ultra-processed food correlates to a 15-27% increased risk of all-cause mortality, meaning just dying in general. | |
| There's a 51-84% increased risk in heart disease-related death. | |
| There's an increase in the risk of most types of cancer, except for prostate cancer. | |
| Then in terms of mental health, which is something that most people don't even necessarily associate with ultra-processed food, Well, they found a 24% to 61% increase of having sleep problems, 37% to 59% increase to anxiety, as well as 43% to 63% increase in common mental disorders. | |
| Which, by the way, I had to look that up, and common mental disorders include things like depression, OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, things like that. | |
| The researchers found that eating a diet of ultra-processed food increases your risk for those types of things by 43 to 63%. | |
| And the list just goes on. | |
| You have asthma, Crohn's disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and so on and so on. | |
| And in terms of why, meaning why do ultra-processed foods create all these different issues, well, the report links to an editorial that was titled Reasons to Avoid Ultra-Processed Foods. | |
| And here's what it says. | |
| Quote, The grossly imbalanced | |
| composition of ultra-processed foods means that their increased intake makes diets energy-dense, high in sugar and saturated fat, and low in protein, fiber, micronutrients, and health-protective phytochemicals such as flavonoids and phytoestrogens. | |
| They also contain additives including colors, emulsifiers, and sweeteners linked by experimental and epidemiological evidence to imbalances in gut microbiota and systemic inflammation. | |
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| And so it might be this systemic inflammation, having your own body constantly fighting a low-level inflammatory battle, which leads to problems popping up seemingly everywhere, including disparate areas like mental health and anxiety. | |
| The editorial continues, quote, Consumption of these foods has also been associated with increased concentrations of acrylamide and phthalates in the blood or urine. | |
| These are toxins created during processing or released from packaging materials, respectively. | |
| Furthermore, the researchers write that these foods are bioengineered to be addictive, and therefore, people eat more of them to the detriment of their own health. | |
| Quote, ultra-processed foods are engineered to be highly desirable, combining sugar, fat, and salt to maximize reward and adding flavors that induce eating when not hungry. | |
| Many are addictive, judged by the standards set for tobacco products, and aggressively marketed with meal deals, supersizing, and advertising. | |
| And the reason that this really matters so much now is because ultra-processed foods aren't a rare delicacy that people eat on occasion. | |
| Instead, according to this study, as of this year, 58% of America's caloric intake comes from ultra-processed foods. | |
| 58% of the calories that we as Americans eat come from that fourth group of foods. | |
| But here's the thing, and it's a point that the authors raise, which is that this is not an inevitability. | |
| It's not that, as a country becomes more developed, it absolutely has to go the route of ultra-processed foods. | |
| Instead, this is a direct result of both policy choices as well as cultural choices. | |
| For instance, Italy and South Korea are both modern, developed nations, but because of differences in their policies and in their cultures, the share of calories that they consume from ultra-processed foods are 10% and 25% respectively. | |
| And so these researchers suggest the following, Furthermore, | |
| these researchers also urge the United Nations to take a quick break from trying to get a needle into every arm and from creating a global surveillance state, take a break from that, and to instead, quote, develop and implement a framework convention on ultra-processed foods analogous to the framework on tobacco. | |
| Now, as to whether any of this will actually happen is anyone's guess. | |
| Despite the documented, obvious risks of saturating a nation with ultra-processed food, there's unfortunately not a lot of money to be made from fixing the problem. | |
| And so, instead of these policy recommendations, which will probably fall on deaf ears, here are four recommendations based on the NOVA groups that you as an individual can try and take. | |
| Try and make group number one the basis of your diet, use group two items in moderation, limit your consumption of group number three, and try to avoid the items in group number four at all costs. | |
| Ultimately, a little ultra-processed snack here and there won't hurt, but the problem is that most Americans aren't having a little ultra-processed snack here and there. | |
| Instead, close to 60% of our calories are coming from group number four. | |
| So if you happen to fall into that category, well, consider trying to flip it. | |
| And if you're looking for a place to start, well, perhaps rather than trying to change everything all at once, there was a phenomenal interview that was conducted with a nutritionist over at the Daily Mail, wherein he laid out six specific ultra-processed foods that you should eliminate ASAP. These were as follows. | |
| Deli meats, because they contain so much salt and preservatives. | |
| Potato chips. | |
| Processed cheese slices, because while cheese itself is great, cheese slices usually contain a lot of emulsifiers to give them their characteristic texture. | |
| Soda, as well as prepackaged pastries. | |
| And so if you're looking to cut out UHPFs, ultra-high processed foods, that is a good place to start. | |
| Also, if you're interested in getting deeper into the subject, I would highly recommend this book right here, Ultra-Processed People by Chris Talekin. | |
| If you'd like to get a little bit deeper into the subject, it's a good book on the science of ultra-processed foods, their history, as well as some real practical ways forward. | |
| I'll throw a link to that book as well as to the studies that we referenced in today's episode. | |
| You can find it all down there in the description box below if you're the type of person that likes to dig into the wheat. | |
| And all I ask in return is that as you're making your way down there to the description box, take a short detour to smash those like and subscribe buttons So that the YouTube algorithm will be quite literally forced to share this information out to ever more people. | |
| And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from The Epoch Times. |
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