Currently browsing posts about: Ultraprocessed

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, research is pouring in (see below) about the benefits of avoiding consumption of ultra-processed foods, those that are more than minimally processed and contain added sources of calories, salt, and color, flavor, and texture additives.

Since ultra-processed foods are among the most profitable, the makers of such foods wish this term would disappear.  Hence, this paper.

Julie Miller Jones.  Food processing: criteria for dietary guidance and public health? Proceedings of the Nutrition Society (2019), 78,4 –18

Conclusions: “No studies or β-testing show that consumers can operationalise NOVA’s [the non-acronym name given to this food classification system] definitions and categories to choose nutrient-rich foods, to eschew foods of low nutritional quality and improve diets and health outcomes. Further, there are significant concerns about NOVA’s actionability and practicality for various lifestyles, skillsets and resource availability.

Financial Support: The staff from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, ASN [American Society for Nutrition], IFT [Institute of Food Technologists] and IFIC [International Food Information Council] assisted with the planning and facilitation of the conference calls and with the review and editing of the manuscript. No specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors was received for the development of this manuscript.

Conflicts of Interest: Julie Miller Jones is a scientific advisor to the Grains Food Foundation, The Healthy Grains Institute (Canada), Quaker Oats Advisory Board, and the Campbell Soup Company Plant and Health Advisory Board. She has written papers of given speeches for Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, Mexico), Cranberry Institute, and Tate and Lyle.

Comment: What most disturbs me about this review is its sponsorship by two major U.S. nutrition societies, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and ASN, whose first goal ought to be promoting public health.  Instead, they speak here for the food industry [I devote chapters to both organizations in Unsavory Truth].

The other two groups would be expected to support food-industry marketing objectives.  The IFT is the trade association for food scientists; it works for the food industry.  The IFIC Foundation positions itself as “dedicated to the mission of effectively communicating science-based information on health, nutrition and food safety for the public good” but is sponsored by food companies; this makes it a front group for the food industry.

Two more papers finding benefits for the ultra-processed concept just appeared in the BMJ.  These are discussed and cited here.

Kevin Hall at NIH has done a controlled diet study demonstrating that people who consume ultra-processed foods eat more calories—500 more a day (!)—and, therefore, gain weight.

Carlos Monteiro at the University of São Paulo and his colleagues explain how to identify ultra-processed foods.  

They also demonstrate that ultra-processed foods comprise nearly 60 percent of calorie intake.

No surprise.  Calories matter, as Mal Nesheim and I explained in our book Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics (and thanks Kevin for confirming what we wrote in that book).

The clear conclusions of this study have elicited a lot of attention.  Here’s my favorite from Francis Collins, the head of NIH and Kevin Hall’s boss, who also did a blog post:

Examples of media accounts (there were lots more)

• New York Times (this comes with pictures of the two different diets)
• Consumer Reports
• Mother Jones 
• Medical News Today
• NPR
• Center for Science in the Public Interest

My colleagues who attended the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics annual meeting and Expo brought back examples of what I love to call dietetic junk foods.

The big trends in such products are gluten-free and allergy-free—apparently without much regard for taste (at least by my standards).

Here is an example of a gluten-free product: 

Check the ingredient list:

Cane sugar, pea starch, potato starch,non-hydrogenated shortening (palm oil, modified palm oil), white rice flour, tapioca starch, water, tapioca syrup, pea protein, salt, pea fiber, natural flavor, modified cellulose, inulin, sodium bicarbonate, sunflower lecithin, beta-carotene (color).

And, in case you were worried, it’s “not a product of genetic engineering.”

To me they taste like chalk, but sweet.

Here’s an example of an allergy-free product:

It too has a long ingredient list:

Organic rolled oats, rice protein crisps (rice protein, rice starch), tapioca syrup, cocoa butter, pearled sorghum crisps, organic caramel (organic cane sugar, water), date paste, brown sugar, dried banana, roasted and salted sunflower seeds (sunflower kernels, sunflower oil, salt) safflower oil, white pearled sorghum flour, popped sorghum.

But this one is remarkable for what it does not contain:

I did not particularly like the texture or taste (off flavors) of this one.

Apparently, the Expo had loads of these.

Why?  Real (relatively unprocessed) foods are less profitable, alas.

An article in FoodNavigator.com got my attention.  It said the French food industry was outraged by a report from the French National Assembly calling for actions to make heavily processed (“ultraprocessed”) foods healthier.

The Assembly issued its non-partisan report in two parts:

• Tome I: The report summary, details, and recommendations (If you click on this link, the site offers Google translation into English)
• Tome II: The transcripts from the hearings held by the committee

The report includes recommendations for a wide variety of measures to improve the food supply, especially for children.

With respect to ultraprocessed foods, the report is tough.  It provides evidence that the industry’s voluntary measures to improve the nutritional quality of its products are neither adequate nor effective.

Therefore, the Assembly proposes measures like these:

• Limit the number of additives that can be used in processed and ultraprocessed food products; require them to be labeled.
• Introduce regulations limiting the salt, sugar, and trans fat content of processed foods.
• Restrict TV and other electronic marketing of products likely to harm the health of children.
• Guarantee the quality of food marketed overseas by restricting their sugar content.
• Make food education compulsory from pre-school on; include school meals in the education program; train teachers and staff.  This applies to all schools by 2019-2020.
• Implement Nutri-Score* on all processed and ultraprocessed food products produced in France.
• Require labeling of origin for processed and ultraprocessed products.
• Distinguish artisanal from industrial pastry products with a “made on site” label.

*Nutri-Score, as I have previously discussed, is a front-of-package labeling scheme that awards a letter grade to processed foods based on a combination of its desirable and undesirable nutrients (A is healthiest).

No wonder French food companies are upset.  The French National Assembly wants to hold them accountable.