Transcription
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. 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. 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 that have linked ultra-processed food to poor health and some specific diseases, but there has not been a comprehensive review that can provide a broad assessment of all the evidence in this particular arena.
In order to bridge that gap, researchers carried out an umbrella review, a high-level evidence summary of 45 distinct pooled meta-analyses from 14 review articles associating ultra-processed foods with adverse health outcomes. The review articles were all published in the past 3 years and involved 9.9 million people. Indeed, these researchers conducted their study, and it was recently published in the pages of the British Medical Journal. It's titled "Ultra-Processed Food Exposure and Adverse Health Outcomes: An Umbrella Review of Epidemiological Meta-Analyses." This is the largest of its kind peer-reviewed study.
What the researchers here did was that they took 14 different studies that had already been published and conducted a large meta-analysis on them to determine the link between ultra-processed foods and general adverse health effects. What they found was really fascinating, to say the least.
To start with, because these researchers were dealing with so many different studies published over the past 3 years, they needed to synchronize a terminology to have a real apples-to-apples comparison. In terms of defining what constitutes processed food as well as ultra-processed food, they used the NOVA food classification system. NOVA classifies food into four separate categories:
1. Group number one: Unprocessed or minimally processed foods. These are what most people would consider natural whole foods, altered minimally by humans—maybe they've been cut up, boiled, frozen, or washed, but that's pretty much it. This includes things like nuts, eggs, milk, steak, most types of fruits, etc.
2. Group number two: Processed culinary ingredients. The things in this group are usually not eaten by themselves and are created to help prepare food—these are things like sugar, salt, honey, olive oil, butter, etc.
3. Group number three: Processed foods. These are products manufactured by mixing 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. They're all classified as processed foods.
4. Group number four: Ultra-processed foods. These are products that are completely industrial formulations and are made almost entirely from substances derived from food or synthesized in a lab. This means that group number four consists of "food" that contains little to no whole foods, and you can't really make this stuff at home; you basically need factories and laboratories to produce it. These include things like baby formula, hamburgers, fizzy soft drinks, microwave pizza, instant noodles, and bag chips. Essentially, ultra-processed foods are many steps removed from the actual whole foods they derive from.
So that's the definition of ultra-processed food that these researchers were using when conducting their meta-analysis. Just for your reference, these 14 studies involved data from approximately 10 million people, resulting in a rather large study population.
After running their analysis, what these researchers found was that exposure to ultra-processed foods—meaning foods in that fourth category—was consistently associated with 32 different adverse health outcomes. 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: greater exposure to ultra-processed food was associated with a higher risk of adverse health outcomes, especially cardiometabolic common mental disorders and mortality outcomes.
These findings provide rationale to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of using population-based and public health measures to target and reduce dietary exposure to ultra-processed foods for improved human health.
In their published analysis, the researchers included a graph showing the severity of each one of these health outcomes. As you can see, most findings indicate an increase in negative health outcomes for people who eat ultra-processed food. Greater exposure to these ultra-processed foods correlates with a 15 to 27% increased risk of all-cause mortality, meaning just dying in general. There's a 51 to 84% increased risk in heart disease-related death. There’s an increase in the risk of most types of cancer except for prostate cancer.
In terms of mental health—which is something that most people don't even necessarily associate with ultra-processed food—they found a 24 to 61% increase in having sleep problems, a 37 to 59% increase in anxiety, as well as a 43 to 63% increase in common mental disorders. Common mental disorders include things like depression, OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and things like that. The researchers found that eating a diet of ultra-processed food increases your risk for those types of issues by 43 to 63%. The list just goes on; you have asthma, Crohn's disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and so on.
As for why ultra-processed foods create all these different issues, the report links to an editorial titled "Reasons to Avoid Ultra-Processed Foods," which states: "Formulations of often chemically manipulated cheap ingredients such as modified starches, sugars, oils, fats, and protein isolates with little of any whole food added, made palatable and attractive by using combinations of flavors, colors, emulsifiers, thickeners, and other additives—no reason exists to believe that humans can fully adapt to these products. The body may react to them as useless or harmful, so its systems may become impaired or damaged depending on their vulnerability and the amount of ultra-processed food consumed."
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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It might be this systemic inflammation—having your 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: "Techniques often used in the creation of ultra-processed foods, such as extrusion and intense heat, degrade the natural food matrix, causing loss of nutrients, disturbances in food digestibility and nutrient bioavailability, and reduction of satiety. They also make ultra-processed food soft, which shortens chewing and swallowing time and increases energy intake. 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. "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, super sizing, and advertising."
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 the 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: 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 cultures, the share of calories they consume from ultra-processed foods are 10% and 25%, respectively.
These researchers suggest the following:
- Crafting national dietary guidelines that recommend varieties of unprocessed or minimally processed foods and freshly prepared meals, and avoidance of ultra-processed foods.
- Institutional food procurement that aligns with these guidelines.
- Front-of-pack labels that clearly identify ultra-processed foods.
- Restricting advertising and prohibiting sales in or near schools and hospitals.
- Fiscal measures that make unprocessed or minimally processed foods and freshly prepared meals as accessible, available, and cheaper than ultra-processed foods.
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, and to instead "develop and implement a framework convention on ultra-processed foods analogous to the framework on tobacco."
Now, 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.
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 to make group number one the basis of your diet.
- Use group two items in moderation.
- Limit your consumption of group number three.
- 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, consider trying to flip it.
If you're looking for a place to start, 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:
- Sugary breakfast cereals
- 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
- Prepackaged pastries
If you're looking to cut out UHF's (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 van Tulleken. If you'd like to get a little 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 weeds, all I ask in return is that as you're making your way down 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 more and more people.
Until next time, I'm your host Roman from The Epoch Times. Stay informed, and most importantly, stay free.