I don’t think Americans eat healthy, but “ultra processed” not defined by any metric is in favor of the manufacturer. Something can be unprocessed and unhealthy and vice versa. Better regulation would help.
The article claims instant oatmeal is bad because it’s sugary, salty, and has other additives then goes on to recommend eating oatmeal and adding sugar yourself. I’m not sure I understand why it’s much better for you.
Ya, agreed.This is the same thing as “natural” foods. Just doesn’t make much sense in any context that matters from a health perspective.
“Ultra-processed food” is a meaningless phrase. The definitions for it are so broad as to cover everything from kimchi to Snickers.
Define the ingredients that are bad ffs. Stop with this ridiculous bs.
I love kimchi, some of my best cubicle-clearing work starts with kimchi.
If you didn’t cook it with your own hands - don’t trust it. My mom was an old school Italian who made everything from scratch - including sauces. I was lucky enough to be raised in that environment. Bless that lady - she didn’t teach me but I watched. Today I love to cook but it’s difficult and yeah expensive… it’s not that much more if you do wise things. Today the wife and I will buy 2 whole chickens from Sams club ( 18 to 20 $ ) and carve them up ourselves into 7 or 8 bags of breasts… wings, etc ( 35 to 45 $ if you buy it individually ) . The remains will be saved for stock or broth and put in bags in the freezer. We’ve re- taken up pressure canning. Every veg we use, all the trimmings we would have thrown out is saved and used in the stocks. We got some 2.5 foot long pork tenderloins from the same place - like my forearm thick for maybe 22 $ and I cut chops and made packs of 4. I got maybe 24 chops which would have cost well over 100 $ just for the hassle of spending some time in the kitchen with some tunes and a knife. You can stretch a budget quite a ways if you don’t rely on purely convenience.
I have issues with sensitivity to unhealthy foods and even some vegetables set me off. Beans, potatoes, rice, sweet peas, anything spicy like onions, garlic, ginger, or peppers. Honey as well, due to being made up mostly of simple carbohydrates. A box of granola bars would spoil my day, a few slices of pizza would kick up arrhythmia, and a shot of vodka would put me in the hospital.
If it’s not a plain fruit, vegetable, nut, or meat like fish or chicken, it’s probably bad to at least some degree.
If it’s not a plain fruit, vegetable, nut, or meat like fish or chicken, it’s probably bad to at least some degree.
That sounds like stience to me.
Scientifically speaking, I am basically a walking index on junk food.
CDC director bouta get fired
Nope. They’re bucking for a promotion. Ultra-processed foods is something RFK Jr. has been bitching about for a while. He thinks everyone should go back to a more natural diet. Like eating roadkill.
To be fair, I agree with RFK on this one. If we all started eating natural whole foods, instead of all the fast food and shit we eat, it’d fix a lot of problems.
I might be open to debate it if he had any sort of definition or clue of what Ultra-Processed means.
Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday praised a company that makes $7-a-pop meals that are delivered directly to the homes of Medicaid and Medicare enrollees.
…
But an Associated Press review of Mom’s Meals menu, including the ingredients and nutrition labels, shows that the company’s offerings are the type of heat-and-eat, ultraprocessed foods that Kennedy routinely criticizes for making people sick.
The meals contain chemical additives that would render them impossible to recreate at home in your kitchen, said Marion Nestle, a nutritionist at New York University and food policy expert, who reviewed the menu for The AP. Many menu items are high in sodium, and some are high in sugar or saturated fats, she said.
Marion Nestle
Well that’s an unfortunate name for this discussion.
Everybody needs a brain worm
the problems involve people not having money to buy more nutritious food, and grocery store chains not supplying certain markets (poor people). this could be helped by giving people more money or at least providing them with food regardless of cost, and also government-run grocery stores that operate regardless of profit margin. also, people like RFK Jr complain about processed food, while drinking fishtank cleaner, popping zyn pouches, and taking steroids, so i dont really care whether food is ‘processed’ that much.
You know how they feed farm animals low grade corn and grains, junk byproduct of all kind of food processing, just what they need so we can get what we want out of them…everything is optimized for extraction.
They used to need us to work their factories, back when we were a manufacturing economy. They’re not bringing back the manufacturing economy, you gotta be a goddamn moron to believe that.
So if you’re not gonna pay up and eat the cheapest, shittiest food possible, and not harass them about education and healthcare and your fucking “happiness”…what the fuck do they need you around for?
The cheapest crap is fed to animals to extract more profit. The cheapest crap is mixed into manufacturing the food to make it more profitable. The cheapest crap is fed to humans to make them more profitable.
Draft pool for WWIII
07
I would say this is almost certainly skewed by income, with the poorest Americans getting almost all of their calories from ultra processed foods, and the share decreasing with income. I would be curious to see that spread because one of the more fucked up things about this is that there are a lot of people who eat this stuff exclusively, and this number kind of hides that.
Probably also skewed by the fact that ultra processed foods are by default more calorie dense, therefore most of a day’s calories might come from that.
A tiny bag of chips is over $5 these days, and has less than 200 calories. Potatoes at fancy grocery stores are about $1/pound, and you can get them much cheaper if you go to “poor people” stores.
You can’t get a double cheeseburger for $1 anymore.
It used to be true, they got people hooked on junk and fast food in the early 2000s, but those days are gone, people spend WAY TOO MUCH on junk food.
It’s absolutely cheaper to buy fresh and eat healthy. It won’t feel as good in your brain as good because it won’t have all the addictive shit that makes junk food bad, but if you learn to cook it’ll taste better.
Even lower income people have time to cook, but people would rather feed another addiction (spend hours on TV and TikTok, but one hour cooking is too much) and ordering delivery. Uber Eats sure doesn’t profit off rich people only…
I mean maybe this used to be true, but it is most definitely not anymore, not even close. It is waaay cheaper to eat healthier.
It is, but that doesn’t mean that poor people don’t still eat more highly processed foods. Not smoking or using drugs is also way cheaper than doing those things, but both are more prevalent among poor people in the US.
Then you need to reframe your point. If heating healthy is cheaper, then it isn’t about income, it’s about something else. Your whole argument is about how it is more expensive to eat healthy, which is not true at all.
You’re imagining an argument and getting mad that I’m not making points in favor of said imaginary argument. .
Large portions of the United States don’t have access to grocery stores that carry fresh produce
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1411126/episodes/17271368-ultra-processed-foods.mp3
Maintenance Phase is a dope podcast that covers the bullshit of the diet/wellness world. It’s appropriately scientifically-skeptical.
This episode adds some much needed context to the idea of “processed-food”.
What does “ultra processed” mean? I can’t get the article to load.
Ultra processed food is way more expensive than real food, so it’s a shame if people are using money as an excuse.
Availability may be a larger problem. But with nearly every American (over 90%) living within 15 minutes of a Walmart (at the very least), this seems like an exceedingly rare problem for the majority of people.
I invite you to come shop at my Walmart :) We were one of the first stores in the country to get those little electronic price tags, so you can’t say with any certainty what the price of anything is, anymore.
If the vegetables haven’t already gone bad on the shelves, they will within a day at your place, and make sure to check the expiration date on every single package you pick up, because they’re often past gone. Also, don’t trust the frozen foods, they defrost in the trucks and on open pallets in the middle of the aisles.
THE AVERAGE AMERICAN. I don’t eat that bullshit :P
It shows in our cognitive abilities.
