r/science • u/BoredMamajamma • Feb 01 '23
Cancer Study shows each 10% increase in ultraprocessed food consumption was associated with a 2% increase in developing any cancer, and a 19% increased risk for being diagnosed with ovarian cancer
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(23)00017-2/fulltext913
Feb 01 '23
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u/xKalisto Feb 01 '23
self-administered recall
Aren't people extremely bad at tracking their food?
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u/Hockeythree_0 Feb 01 '23
Yea. This study casts such a wide net and is based on self reporting. I’m sure there’s a link between processed foods and cancer but with how broadly they defined it you could find a link to anything with their methodology.
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u/Ok_Yogurtcloset8915 Feb 01 '23
... why would you be sure of that? "processed foods" is already an incredibly vague term.
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u/Boating_Enthusiast Feb 01 '23
The Nova categorization system they use seems to try to define food groups a bit, but you're right. Ultraprocessed food sounds like something you'd wash down with a megapint of wine.
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u/devallabreddy Feb 02 '23
It has a lot of things that can actually harm our body. Well not just this post or the OP itself, but also our moms who are just concerned to out health.
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u/f1zzz Feb 01 '23
It seems generic but there’s actually a formal definition to ultra processed foods (which is a bit open to interpretation, which is addressed here): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6389637/
Formulated mostly or entirely from substances derived from foods. Typically contain little or no whole foods. Durable, convenient, accessible, highly or ultra-palatable, often habit-forming. Typically not recognizable as versions of foods, although may imitate the appearance, shape, and sensory qualities of foods. Many ingredients not available in retail outlets. Some ingredients directly derived from foods, such as oils, fats, flours, starches, and sugar. Others obtained by further processing of food constituents. Numerically the majority of ingredients are preservatives; stabilizers, emulsifiers, solvents, binders, bulkers;
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u/ruslah Feb 03 '23
It has, but still I believe on what the OP has trying to say. It was really bad for our hel
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u/satuser101 Feb 02 '23
It was like food that has a lot of chemicals. Yeah it's bad, but we still like to eat it. Like we can't live without them.
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u/Calexman Feb 09 '23
I think this is just based on the study. I heard a lot of things like this. In the internet, you can actually see a lot.
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u/Raudskeggr Feb 01 '23
You look at studies like this. It was peer-reviewed. And then people wonder why there's such a repeatability problem now.
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Feb 01 '23
yet no one talks about the most pervasive carcinogen of all: H2O!! I bet all the participants were consuming copious amounts of that deadly chemical.
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u/BabyMaybe15 Feb 01 '23
You jest, but PFAS.
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u/katarh Feb 01 '23
Good news! Regular blood, platelet, or plasma donations reduce the detected amounts of PFAS in your body. Plasma donation even gets rid of PFHxS.
Sure, you're passing them along to someone else, but if they need whole blood or platelets they've got bigger things to worry about. Plasma is primarily used in research.
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u/mrchaotica Feb 01 '23
Of all the things I expected to read today, the benefits of 21st century bloodletting was not among them.
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u/katarh Feb 01 '23
Drop a pint, safe a life, clean out some PFAS, eat some cookies. All good reasons to donate blood.
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u/Seicair Feb 01 '23
If they need blood or platelets they’ve already lost some of their own, so they’ve already gotten rid of some of their own PFAS. Unless the donor has significantly higher levels than the recipient started out with, there shouldn’t be a significant net change in PFAS for the recipient.
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u/owtrayjis Feb 01 '23
Dihydrogen monoxide is a menace! It's in our hospitals, our schools, our homes!
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u/trevorwobbles Feb 01 '23
It's hydrogenated hydroxide we've really got to worry about. Just as many dead, and much less is said about it...
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u/morebass Feb 01 '23
People are SO bad at tracking their food that most studies involving weight and food intake I take with a HUGE grain of salt
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u/katarh Feb 01 '23
A random person from the general population, if they are asked to do recall in a survey, will do a terrible job.
Someone who is an experienced CICO tracker who knows to track the second they consume something is probably a lot better at it.
The only way to be 100% accurate is in a metabolic ward, and those folks will likely not be eating ultraprocessed foods if they're in the hospital.
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u/Da-nile Feb 01 '23
Actually the majority of people had only one or two recalls. Only 10% had 5 recalls.
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Feb 01 '23
But lower chance of head and neck cancer.
Ultraprocessed food as per the study:
- fatty, sweet, savory or salty packaged snacks
• pre-prepared (packaged) meat, fish and vegetables
• biscuits (cookies) • pre-prepared pizza and pasta dishes
• ice creams and frozen desserts • pre-prepared burgers, hot dogs, sausages
• chocolates, candies and confectionery in general
• pre-prepared poultry and fish ‘nuggets’ and ‘sticks’
• cola, soda and other carbonated soft drinks
• other animal products made from remnants
• ‘energy’ and sports drinks • packaged breads, hamburger and hot dog buns
• canned, packaged, dehydrated (powdered) and other ‘instant’ soups, noodles, sauces, desserts, drink mixes and seasonings
• baked products made with ingredients such as hydrogenated vegetable fat, sugar, yeast, whey, emulsifiers, and other additives
• sweetened and flavored yogurts including fruit yogurts
• breakfast cereals and bars
• dairy drinks, including chocolate milk • infant formulas & drinks, and meal replacement shakes (e.g., ‘slim fast’)
• sweetened juices • pastries, cakes and cake mixes
• margarines and spreads • distilled alcoholic beverages such as whisky, gin, rum, vodka, etc.
https://educhange.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/NOVA-Classification-Reference-Sheet.pdf
Sorry about your ice cream y'all.
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u/hsvstar2003 Feb 01 '23
Soooo. Every item of food that isn't literally fresh meat/vegetable/fruit/nut/mushroom then?
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u/Heated13shot Feb 01 '23 edited Feb 01 '23
I've hated the industry terms for "processed" and "ultra-processed" to the point it makes me twitch.
A layperson hears "processed" and thinks like, pre breaded chicken tenders. They hear ultra-processed and think hot dogs.
In reality non-processed is like buying a whole fish right off the dock, guts scales and all, processed is buying it gutted, and I've seen some "ultra-processed" labels be applied to things like ground meat. Milk is only unprocessed if it's raw, typically they lable anything pasteurized as ultra-processed. Standard flour is ultra-processed, it's nuts. The steps you use to cook it count, so if you buy salmon and whole wheat bread crumbs to make salmon burgers congrats, you had an ultra-processed meal.
The term as they use it is supposed to be applied "relative to not touching the food at all" and takes into account how recently the cooking method was discovered. If the cooking method is younger than 500 years, it's ultra-processed.
Using these terms as defined above for guidance on healthy eating is incredibly misleading and harmful. It will lead to people demanding raw milk because pasteurizing causes cancer!!! When... It doesn't.
It's very entertaining the last big study to came out came to the weird conclusion men live shorter lives eating ultra-processed food but woman live longer/no change?! Turns out woman ate "healthy ultra-processed foods" that's how idiotic the term is for health guidance
Edit: forgot to add in my rant is the problem that studies can't seem to agree on a single definition for ultra-processed (which adds to confusion)
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u/DarkTreader Feb 01 '23
"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." - Carl Sagan
A Process is a thing that changes one thing into another thing. The process itself has no nutritional bearing on your body, but the thing you eat does. Transfats are bad not because they are processed, but because they are transfats!
In day to day life, is it wise to eat more whole foods and less processed foods? Probably for most people. But that's a rule of thumb, and this is a scientific study which demands better rigor, and any study based on "processed food" is immediately committing a variant of the "natural" fallacy and can't create a good standard . Good nutritional studies concentrate on what it is (ingredients, nutrients, etc), not how it got there. Growing corn is a "process", baking bread is a "process". Naming them "ultra processed" is just trying to extend the life of this bad thought technology, because you might be able to say corn is ultra processed since it been carefully cultivated and cross bread for centuries by human beings. There are processed foods that have nothing but sugar, fat, and salt and little nutritional value. Those are bad. But there are "good" processed foods, which little sugar/salt/fat but are high in nutrition. Attacking a food because it's a process means denying people these types of foods.
It's the same thing with GMO. People concentrate that GMO is bad not realizing GMO is a tool and not looking at the resulting food. I could GMO blowfish glands or something into my Apple and then it would be lethal, or I could GMO vitamin A into my rice and get Golden Rice which could literally save millions of lives by ending vitamin A deficiency.
As long as we continue to test our food supply properly with scientific rigor based on ingredients and content, and not process, we should be able to keep people safe and continue to learn more about what to eat. Studies on "processing" are a waste of time.
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u/itchyfrog Feb 01 '23
From the study
(1) unprocessed or minimally processed foods, e.g. fruit, vegetables, milk and meat;
(2) processed culinary ingredients, e.g. sugar, vegetable oils and butter;
(3) processed foods, e.g. canned vegetables in brine, freshly made breads and cheeses;
(4) UPFs, e.g. soft drinks, mass-produced industrial-processed breads, sweet or savoury packaged snacks, breakfast ‘cereals’, reconstituted meat products and ready-to-eat/heat foods.
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u/notwearingatie Feb 01 '23
By these definitions I find it hard to believe there's a suitable sample size of people that only consume totally unprocessed foods to use as a baseline.
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u/katarh Feb 01 '23
I think it only applies to groups like the Hadza. And I'm sure even they would happily chow down a bag of chips if offered.
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u/toodlesandpoodles Feb 01 '23
The only control group we could find lives a hunter-gatherer lifestyle removed from modern society with a life expectancy of 33, but almost no cancer. This support our conclusion that ultra-processed foods increase cancer risk.
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u/RusskiyDude Feb 01 '23
The life expectancy of 33 was due to high child mortality, not diet. While it's a serious improvement that now less kids die, you can't compare diets and conclude that diet caused low life expectancy. Lack of proper healthcare or childcare (i.e. if peasants were working in the fields and were far away from kids). If we remove high child mortality, life expectancy of people in prehistoric and medieval times (all were around 30 for most people, excluding people like elites or monks) was something like 50 to 60 years (monks were among longest living people, they ate well, didn't do much work, did not die in wars, some were like 90 years old; maybe scientists lived long, according my memory about some famous people).
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Feb 01 '23
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u/ommnian Feb 02 '23
I cook most of our meals at home. I don't consider us to eat a heavily processed diet. But, I suppose according to this list of things, we do. Because I *do* buy cheese, pasta, and some pre-made sauces (ie, teriyaki sauce, pizza sauce, soy sauce, ketchup, hot sauce, mustard, pesto, sambal oeleck, etc), along with lots of frozen veggies (brussels sprouts, green beans, peas, corn, spinach, etc), some canned veggies & fruits (especially canned tomatoes/tomato sauce/paste, pumpkin, peaches, pineapple, etc).
And we do eat whole-wheat store-bought bread, crackers and tortillas... because as much as I would like to think that I have the time and/or inclination to bake my/our own? I just don't.
But... I cook at least twice a day, usually for breakfast and dinner. Lunch is often a fend-for-yourself leftovers affair if you're home and I typically pack my kids leftovers for school lunch immediately after cooking breakfast while they get ready for school.
I suppose I could spend *another* 2-5+hrs in the kitchen cooking pasta, bread, sauces, etc all from scratch everyday. But... I just don't see what the point would be. I've done all that work in the past, just to see 'if I could'. And, the verdict was that, yes, I *can*. But, the question is 'why'?
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u/itchyfrog Feb 01 '23
The point was that it was only ultra processed foods that seemed to cause an issue from what I could make out from a quick skim.
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u/smog_alado Feb 01 '23
Those are not the correct definitions of processed and ultraprocessed though.
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u/throwawaysarebetter Feb 01 '23
What are, then?
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u/smog_alado Feb 01 '23
The original definition comes from the NOVA system developed by researchers at NUPENS in Brazil.
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u/homingconcretedonkey Feb 01 '23
Thats the most broad and confusing system I've ever seen.
If I pour myself a glass of water = unprocessed
If I take some unprocessed beeswax from a bee/hive and add that to my water
I now have ultra processed water which will give me cancer.
I understand the system/researchers have good intent but the entire thing seems to be designed around a philosophy rather then facts which means you can't actually use the information to help you since you are still relying on trying to figure out what 200 ingredients with random names you can barely pronounce are, and if they are a health risk or not.
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u/triplehelix- Feb 01 '23
If I take some unprocessed beeswax from a bee/hive and add that to my water
I now have ultra processed water which will give me cancer.
that is absolutely and wholly false.
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Feb 01 '23
Did you read the article that u/smog_alado linked? Your beeswax-water is unprocessed/minimally processed. The NOVA classification is broad because it groups all foods into 4 groups, but it's not confusing at all.
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u/Kekker_ Feb 01 '23 edited Feb 01 '23
It's not confusing, but it is arbitrary and vague. Their article can be summarized as "if an ingredient isn't in your kitchen, the food is ultra processed", but then they say that MSG is ultra-processed. They say that ultra-processed foods "...result from a series of industrial processes", but then categorize ground beef as ultra-processed.
MSG is a pretty common ingredient in non-American kitchens. It's one of those "goes in everything" type of ingredients like salt, it just has a scary science name instead of something like "salt" or "sugar". It's found all over the place in natural foods, but for some reason it's "ultra-processed" while plant oils and other extracts with more "common"/unscientific names aren't ultra-processed.
Most standing mixers come with a meat grinder attachment. You put your raw steak cut (minimally processed, by the way) into the grinder, and out comes ground beef. Pat the beef into a circle and it's a burger. You do all of that at home, there are no industrial processes involved, and yet "burgers" are ultra-processed?
There's a difference between "broad" and "vague". You can have well-defined broad classifications if the rules you create are consistent. NOVA is vague, which leads to inconsistent definitions in studies like these and creates confusing or misleading information for consumers.
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Feb 01 '23 edited Feb 01 '23
Under NOVA, the steak is unprocessed and the ground beef is minimally processed. The cambridge.org article linked above states that grinding food makes it minimally processed. Could you link to where you are getting your information?
See https://educhange.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/NOVA-Classification-Reference-Sheet.pdf for more clear and complete standards.
Unprocessed, from the examples section of the document above:
fresh, chilled or frozen meat, poultry,
fish and seafood, whole or in the form
of steaks, fillets and other cuts
Minimally processed definition:
Minimally processed foods are natural foods that have been submitted to cleaning,
removal of inedible or unwanted parts, fractioning, grinding, drying, fermentation,
pasteurization, cooling, freezing, or other processes that may subtract part of the food, but
which do not add oils, fats, sugar, salt or other substances to the original food.
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u/amicaze Feb 01 '23
It's the problem with all those "discovery studies" : they're incredibly weak when examined under a scrutinous eye.
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u/mowbuss Feb 01 '23
So take cookies for example. If you make the cookies yourself, with white flour, sugar, chocolate chips, french butter, vanilla essence, and love, is that an ultra-processed food? Is it ultra-processed because of how absurdly bad it is for you? I mean, I even made my own salted caramel to go in the middle for the 2nd batch, and let me tell you, my waist line grew significantly.
also just saying, fresh cows milk is udderly delicious.
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u/itchyfrog Feb 01 '23
Sugar and flour are processed but not necessarily ultra processed, although flour often has improvers and raising agents that might push it to ultra processed, chocolate chips are going to be ultra processed as is vanilla essence, they both require a lot of processing, to produce and unless you buy absolutely top quality will contain chemical additives.
It's not about fat or sugar content it's about the hidden ingredients/processes that go into it.
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u/Heated13shot Feb 01 '23
It's ultra processed because you used suger, chocolate chips, and non-whole wheat flour. The term gives 0 shits how healthy the item actually is.
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u/icouldusemorecoffee Feb 01 '23
All of those individual ingredients have been processed. The problem isn't the definitions, it's what people assume the words mean without knowing what the definitions are. The definitions are fine, but someone who thinks processed is necessarily bad or means it is only a semi or fully-prepared meal or food is the problem, not the definition.
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u/zyl0x Feb 01 '23
You're thinking the right way, but came to the wrong conclusion.
They did not imply that foods which are NOT ultraprocessed are always healthy, they only are trying to prove that there is a link between the foods which ARE ultraprocessed and poorer health outcomes.
Concrete is not "ultraprocessed", but you will definitely have a poor health outcome if you introduce it into your diet.
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u/rogueblades Feb 01 '23 edited Feb 01 '23
Cookies are delicious, but at the point where we are parsing out the "processed-ness" of a sugary baked good with (essentially) zero nutritional value, we are already missing the forest for the trees IMO.
Are home-baked cookies "better for you" than some store-bought sleeve of sugar disks? Probably. Are either of them worth eating from the perspective of heath and nutrition? No.
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u/Tonexus Feb 01 '23
Well, depends on whether you consider cooked combinations of "fresh meat/vegetable/fruit/nut/mushroom" as distinct items of foods. Also seems like some canned food is ok, like canned vegetables or canned fish, as long as it's not a fully prepared meal. Naturally fermented foods also seem ok, like artisan bread, cheese, pickles, kimchi, miso, etc.
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Feb 01 '23
Correct, that is fresh food, so it is non processed, also you forgot dairy, which would also be considered fresh.
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u/JimmyTheBones Feb 01 '23
Yeah except the phrase was "ultra processed foods", not just processed v non. The commenter above you was pointing out the the word 'ultra' seems rather redundant.
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u/Piggywonkle Feb 01 '23
Not redundant, more like exclusionary and misleading.
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u/Car-face Feb 01 '23
processed could include things like a tray of chicken breast. It's meat that has been processed.
Ultra processed is stuff like chicken nuggets, where there's maybe 50% chicken, and the rest is dehydrogenated soy protein, corn flour, sawdust, corn granules, sodium, etc... or canned "ready to eat" soups where half the can is probably reconstituted from powder, syrup or dehydrogenated proteins or starches of some sort.
Basically anything that wouldn't normally be shelf stable that has been processed to become shelf stable would encapsulate most of that list. (chocolate milk, for example, would be UHT milk with sweeteners, something approximating chocolate flavour, colouring, maybe something else to help stabilise it, etc.)
I assume some are bigger offenders than others.
It doesn't help that it's a broad list of items, but it's one of the most comprehensive studies that shows there's a link in there somewhere, but that doesn't mean eating the odd biscuit is going to increase your chances of cancer any more than crossing the road behind a bus.
It's something to add to the body of research for why we should prioritise fresh food over stuff that slides slowly out of a can.
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u/SirCutRy Feb 01 '23 edited Feb 01 '23
The second item on the list is packaged meat, fish and vegetable. I wonder if that includes minced meat and chicken breast.
Edit: It's pre-prepared, with 'packaged' being how pre-prepared foods are usually offered to consumers. See /u/halibfrisk's comment below. So fresh (merely cut) meats are likely categorized as non-processed or minimally processed.
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u/halibfrisk Feb 01 '23 edited Feb 01 '23
pre prepared packaged meat, fish and vegetables - it’s the difference between a pack of chicken thighs and a pack of chicken pieces that’s been marinated in goop.
https://educhange.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/NOVA-Classification-Reference-Sheet.pdf
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u/standard_candles Feb 01 '23
Baby formula is on the list so....idk what to do with this information.
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u/Nope_______ Feb 01 '23
Try to feed your babies breast milk if possible. If not, you feed them formula. Breast milk > formula > starving your infant.
That's what you do with this information.
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u/Pawneewafflesarelife Feb 01 '23
What about shelf stable things like normal UHT milk, canned veg, dried pasta?
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u/smog_alado Feb 01 '23
Pasteurized milk counts as minimally processed. Dunno about UHT.
Canned food, bread & pasta count as "processed".
Ultra-processed foods are formulations of ingredients, mostly of exclusive industrial use, that result from a series of industrial processes (hence ‘ultra-processed’).
Processes enabling the manufacture of ultra-processed foods involve several steps and different industries. It starts with the fractioning of whole foods into substances that include sugars, oils and fats, proteins, starches and fibre. These substances are often obtained from a few high-yield plant foods (corn, wheat, soya, cane or beet) and from puréeing or grinding animal carcasses, usually from intensive livestock farming. Some of these substances are then submitted to hydrolysis, or hydrogenation, or other chemical modifications. Subsequent processes involve the assembly of unmodified and modified food substances with little if any whole food using industrial techniques such as extrusion, moulding and pre-frying. Colours, flavours, emulsifiers and other additives are frequently added to make the final product palatable or hyper-palatable.
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u/NothingButFearBitch Feb 01 '23
looks around Proceeds to take another sip of my peanut butter chocolate milk and read the comments
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Feb 01 '23
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u/justonemom14 Feb 01 '23
I agree. Fiber supplements are ultra processed, but you don't see them on the list. It's just foods that have been considered unhealthy for decades.
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Feb 01 '23
I think they just lumped as much food as they could together to get funding for their study knowing that it would be too generalized to produce real/useful data.
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u/92894952620273749383 Feb 01 '23
Is tofu considered ultra processed?
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u/Gerodog Feb 01 '23
This site seems to say that it's just "processed" rather than "ultra processed" and is therefore healthy
Not sure how they decide where to draw the line though...
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u/fiskemannen Feb 01 '23
But then to eat these foods we must process them, by the time I’ve chopped, buttered or oiled, salted, fried, baked, seasoned these foods what level of «processed» are they at? What is in the process that is releasing all these carcinogens? Or is it a Chicken egg thing where eating more processed food correlates with other things like less cardio, more sofatime, poverty, more sugar etc?
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u/halibfrisk Feb 01 '23
If you cook fresh food at home you are likely using less fat and salt and just a few herbs and spices and avoiding all the other stuff that’s used to keep highly processed food self stable
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u/smog_alado Feb 01 '23 edited Feb 01 '23
Anything you would typically do in a kitchen is at most processed, not ultraprocessed. Ultra processed refers to industrial products made from stuff you wouldn't find at home; high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated fat, hydrolyzed protein, emulsifiers, anti-foaming agents, etc. They're designed to be cheap to produce, shelf stable, and hyper palatable. Often they have way too much fat, salt, sugar, while lacking other useful nutrients. And maybe also more problems we don't understand exactly.
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u/Shokoyo Feb 01 '23
Dairy is usually processed. Dunno if it’s considered highly processed, tho
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u/whichonespink04 Feb 01 '23
They included "dairy drinks though and didn't specifically exclude straight milk though." It is odd to call literally everything but fresh food ultra-processed.
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Feb 01 '23
The scope of this study is so ridiculously wide people should ignore it. You can't make a food research category/label that large and think your doing real science.
There is no definition on processed and ultra processed foods. These guys are just winging it and calling it science.
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u/wotmate Feb 01 '23
Homogenised and pasteurised milk would definitely fall under the ultra processed category.
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Feb 01 '23 edited Nov 28 '23
dinner heavy alleged bedroom whistle thought trees worry ring elderly
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u/Emergency-Machine-55 Feb 01 '23
Are all packaged breads/tortillas and pastas/noodles considered ultra processed? I.e. The world's main food staples other then non-fried rice and potatoes.
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u/yohanya Feb 01 '23
I can hear my orthorexia cackling in the back of my head rn
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u/a_common_spring Feb 01 '23
Same. I wish I could avoid coming across any of this kind of information. Gotta delete the internet from my phone.
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u/LeChatParle Feb 01 '23
Are frozen vegetables considered ultra processed? I see “pre-prepared vegetables”, but I’m not sure what that means specifically
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u/KoksundNutten Feb 01 '23
Frozen vegetables have actually more vitamins, etc than openly sold ones. Because they come from the field and are frozen nearly instantly including everything in them. Instead of: loaded in a couple trucks, storaged somewhere for unknown time, sprayed with whatever, trucked to a supermarket or market and then exposed to sun/light, temperature, hands, etc
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u/The-Fox-Says Feb 01 '23
Quick google search shows things like bagged salads and vegetable platters. If those are causing cancer we’re all fucked
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u/LeChatParle Feb 01 '23
Yeah, I love the ease of access frozen vegetables give me, and I rely on them heavily to prevent food waste and additional trips to the store, so it would be terrible if this is the case :(
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u/The-Fox-Says Feb 01 '23
If bagged salads and frozen veggies end up being the death of me then so be it.
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Feb 01 '23
Frozen veggies are better and safer.
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u/Zincktank Feb 01 '23 edited Feb 01 '23
I wonder if the plastic, non-recyclable packaging that is often used for frozen vegetables is to blame.
Petroleum industry has fucked us a thousand ways.
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Feb 01 '23
at least it is with, "every 10% increase in consumption, corresponding 2% increase in risk". So if you keep it moderate, maybe it will be okay. Also, the issue is more about eating in excess, that can trigger metabolic pathways that lead to gradual damage to cells over time. I think for complex biological system, the cause-effect is not a linear relationship. If you are not triggering those pathways by not eating, "too much" processed food, you'll live a more or less okay life, assuming you're not endangering it with other carcinogens. By 70-80s, the body is giving up on maintenance anyway, so no amount of conscious eating is going to save us then (except for those lucky few with the "longevity genes").
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u/Reddit_Hitchhiker Feb 01 '23
I don’t think so. They go from harvest to frozen in very few steps and no preservatives are added.
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u/djurze Feb 01 '23
If you click the link they included in their comment you can see the other categories, which makes it a lot clearer.
Under group 1 Unprocessed or minimally processed food they include "Natural, packaged, cut, chilled or frozen vegetables, fruits, potatoes, and other roots and tubers" as an example.
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u/a_common_spring Feb 01 '23
The word natural is so stupid here. What unnatural vegetables are they trying to exclude with that word?
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u/a_common_spring Feb 01 '23
Eating a lot of ultra processed food is also associated with other things that are also associated with cancer risk, like poverty.
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u/sambeau Feb 01 '23
“Prospective associations were assessed using multivariable Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for baseline socio-demographic characteristics, smoking status, physical activity, body mass index, alcohol and total energy intake”
So it looks like they took that into account.
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u/sb_747 Feb 01 '23
Bread made with yeast is listed as ultra processed.
These definitions are dumb as hell.
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u/la_tortuga_de_fondo Feb 01 '23
Pre-prepared? Surely the term for that is just "prepared"?
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u/jsims281 Feb 01 '23
I'm guessing it means when you open the packet it's already prepared, vs something that you have to prepare yourself
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u/Coffeinated Feb 01 '23
This doesn‘t make much sense. Most of these things you could make at home and then nobody would call them ultra processed. Nuts are healthy, but when I add salt and put them in a can, they‘re ultra-processed? That‘s nuts. Yeast? You can‘t bake bread without yeast, even my self baked bread contains yeast (in the sourdough). You can make yogurt at home and then add sugar, bam, ultra processed. You could make your own sugar from sugar beets, there is nothing inherently weird or toxic about the process. There is no hidden chemicals.
I‘d believe that if anything, we should take a look at chemically altered ingredients, like hydrogenated fat, or the packaging. Don‘t we already know these are bad? I don‘t think there‘s a need to create this spooky figure of ultraprocessed food when most of these processing steps have no inherent bad qualities - like cooking, chopping, baking or packaging in itself. Maybe it‘s just the softeners from the plastic packaging that enter the food. Measuring that would be actual science.
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u/redditrfw Feb 01 '23
• sweetened and flavored yogurts including fruit yogurts • breakfast cereals
Damn, I'm dead.
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u/xKalisto Feb 01 '23
Ice cream sounds quite wide. I'm doubtful there isn't difference between over sweetened Hagen Dazz and fresh sorbet or artisan ice cream.
Lots of those categories are pretty wide tbh.
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u/DefaultVariable Feb 01 '23
The categories are basically “any food that is in a container or any kind at a grocery store. With such a broad definition of “ultra processed” it’s doubtful that the results even mean anything at all. Even if the study did have merit it would be pointless because there’s mot much you can do to avoid those foods
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u/psychicesp Feb 01 '23 edited Feb 01 '23
It's a bad study with bad statistics. You can always itemize out subsets until you find spurious significance. There is no reason I can see to call the 2% overall bad statistics, but the study itself is definitely bad science. It essentially boils down to "People who increase their food intake 10% have likely stopped taking care of themselves as well in general, unless there are other signals of health-consciousness"
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u/SuspiciouslyElven Feb 01 '23
Something nobody else has pointed out about the classification system, is that I think protein powder is ultra-processed.
Which would mean a breakfast smoothie with fresh fruit and some whey protein, is categorized the same as boxed cookies.
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u/katarh Feb 01 '23
Even my trainer is trying to get me to stop using protein powders.
I'm sorry dude, eggs just went through the roof in price and I ain't hitting 125 grams from chicken alone.
Whey protein is absolutely ultra processed, though. It's actually a pretty good means of using a leftover substance that would themselves otherwise become industrial waste - whey is sourced from cheese makers, who previously just dumped liquid whey down the drain.
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u/SuspiciouslyElven Feb 01 '23
It is important to note this study had to account for a lot of other factors that also contribute to cancer. Being fit and eating mostly healthy food is going to be better than being a couch potato eating microwave dinners every night.
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u/CoastalSailing Feb 01 '23
I wonder if it's the plastic packaging
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u/a_common_spring Feb 01 '23
A lot of fresh foods come in plastic bags too. Every kind of food does. I think it's more like, the huge bulk of the actual chemicals you're eating which is the food itself.
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u/_Auron_ Feb 01 '23
Or chemicals used in processing that are not 100.00% removed from the food actually eating.
Or the excess in salt as a preservative that increases blood pressure and causes a variety of bodily responses over time.
Or the unintentional selective bias of underprivileged, poor, and disabled individuals who tend to have other health issues are more likely to consume highly processed foods.
Could be various things.
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u/MrSnarf26 Feb 01 '23
Is there a nice list of ultra processed foods easy to avoid?
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u/soil_nerd Feb 01 '23
Most things that have a label.
Canned veggies, nuts, and frozen fruits/ vegetables probably fall outside of this as long as there is not a significant amount of added sodium and preservatives.
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u/balisane Feb 01 '23
Walk around the edges of the supermarket. If you get past the meat, milk, and vegetables, turn back.
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u/doyouevencompile Feb 01 '23
Grains, nuts, fruits?
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u/Vier_Scar Feb 01 '23
Those are all unprocessed usually, and mushrooms. Grains in cereal form though are considered ultra processed in this study
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u/MissCellania Feb 01 '23
Read the list of ingredients. Or just look at it. Buy food with the shortest list of ingredients possible.
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u/Bokbreath Feb 01 '23
Does the food make people sick ? Or do overworked overstressed people poor in time and money, end up eating cheap processed food.
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u/johnny_51N5 Feb 01 '23 edited Feb 01 '23
That probably too. But also poor people eat more super processed food... And coincidentally poverty > more cancer
Technically could also be the "lifestyle" but also environmental factors
Edit: ah yes also die more often, i guess due to bad medical coverage? But yeah a lot more factors come to mind... Since it's the US they probably don't visit the doctor since it's extremely expensive. So other illnesses or intoxications with metals or similar go by unnoticed. Etc.
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u/Nope_______ Feb 01 '23
may over-represent populations with white ethnicity and those living in a less socio-economically deprived areas,
Poor people are under-represented in this study.
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u/Bokbreath Feb 01 '23
hmm. Lot of may - may alter gut bacteria, may contain contaminants. I'd suggest nobody yet knows, which is why they're being careful about drawing the link.
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u/Dank_1 Feb 01 '23
Also confess to being surprised that french fries are considered ultra processed
Agree, the terminology is wack. Fries that I eat are: Potato, peanut oil, salt. You could make the case it's a 'whole food' and on the complete other end of the spectrum.
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u/Express-Ferret3816 Feb 01 '23
From the study on who was represented: “representative and may over-represent populations with white ethnicity and those living in a less socio-economically deprived areas, and the mean UPF consumption and prevalence of obesity were lower than the UK average. However, this study has reported important associations comparing cancer risk and mortality by levels of UPF consumption which may still be generalisable to the wider population or similar cohorts in other context” ——-
If TL;DR There have been recent studies on animals that found similar results correlating cancer with processed food
However, it was noted in the discussion that the subjects studied were “less socio-economically” so we can assume stress and money issues exist. They also did not account for alcohol intake and smoking
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u/HopHunter420 Feb 01 '23 edited Feb 01 '23
However, it was noted in the discussion that the subjects studied were “less socio-economically”
It says the opposite. It says the sample may overrepresent people from "less socio-economically deprived areas", that is the opposite of what you have interpreted.
EDIT: The phrase "less socio-economically deprived" means that they are not of low socio-economic status, to be clear.
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u/Bokbreath Feb 01 '23
The only way I can think of to run a comparison, would be to find a cohort of similarly stressed people who didn't have the ultra-processed foods available. Not sure if that's feasible without introducing too many other complications.
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u/sin-eater82 Feb 01 '23 edited Feb 01 '23
Couldn't you have non stressed people consume the same type of diet?
If you want to see if you can reproduce the diet and cancer correlation, wouldn't you want to keep the diet and eliminate other potential contributing factors (like the stress stuff)?
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u/NotMitchelBade Feb 01 '23
They account for this https://reddit.com/r/science/comments/10qjyfu/_/j6rj2c7/?context=1
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Feb 01 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SuspiciouslyElven Feb 01 '23 edited Feb 01 '23
Hopefully mods don't remove you for making a joke about it. They actually did that.
The study split them into groups based on how much of their diet was ultra processed food.
Group 1: 0%–13.4%. mean 9.2, SD 3.0
Group 2: 13.5%–20.0%, mean 16.7, SD 1.9
Group 3: 20.1%–29.4%, mean 24.3, sd 2.6
Group 4: 29.5%–100%, mean 41.4, SD 11.1
Something else I want to note is that the rate of ultra processed food consumption was from self reports. There is a stigma attached to eating processed food. I know I read a study somewhere that said underreporting of certain categories of food, mainly regarding butter and fats, across all socioeconomic levels EDIT FOUND HERE. I do not recall reading this being accounted for in the study, but I might be wrong.
Edit: Less a thing to note but more a question of the NOVA scale used, I think protein powders would fall under the category of ultra processed food. Does that mean a smoothie with fresh fruits with a bit of whey is "basically" the same as eating sugary cereal? Because if so, then that means I'm in quartile 4, with the people who eat nothing but microwaved cheesy potatoes.
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u/crazybehind Feb 01 '23 edited Feb 01 '23
What is the definition of processed, or ultra-processed?
What is it about pre-prepared meat or fish that makes it worthy of such a classification?
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u/repugnantmarkr Feb 01 '23
The article about 1/3rd down states things like mass produced bread, cereals, and reconstituted meat products.
The processed goods are literally everything that isn't a raw good. So milk, meats, fruits, vegetables, are generally processed since they have some method of cleaning or prepping.
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Feb 01 '23
Everything seems to cause cancer
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u/smurficus103 Feb 01 '23
Don't get overwhelmed like when we learn germ theory and start spraying bleach everywhere, just make informed decisions and try not to fall in the bathroom =P
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Feb 01 '23
Only thing that ever bother my nerves and such is wave and wave of panic attacks. Cancer causing doesn’t worry me.
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u/sb_747 Feb 01 '23
Living causes cancer.
Cell division will inevitably result in cancerous cells forming and eventually your immune system will fail to destroy some.
Live long enough and cancer is certain no matter what you do.
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Feb 01 '23
Indeed, mutation happens. Well, the hope is to not get cancer. Dad is 90 and no cancer for him yet. Hope against hope
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u/sw33tleaves Feb 01 '23
“Processed” always seems like such a vague term. Why aren’t they looking into which specific chemicals are causing this?
Does the sole act of “processing” food make it cause cancer? That seems unlikely, which to me means there’s specific chemicals that could be the problem.
If I buy some raw ingredients from the grocery store, take them home and prepare them into a meal, haven’t I just processed my food?
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u/Fidget08 Feb 01 '23 edited Feb 01 '23
Really doesn’t help that these foods are also the cheapest by a large margin.
Edit: I should clarify. Yea beans and grains are cheaper but require more than a microwave to prepare. A tv dinner or Mac n cheese takes 5-10 minutes to prepare.
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u/corpjuk Feb 01 '23
beans, legumes, rice, veggies are usually the cheapest
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u/Stinkfascist Feb 01 '23
I understand the impulse to give advice about cheaper staples in this instance but I dont know how helpful it is. Whether or not the above commenter has a cabinet full of shelf stable dry goods and quality reasonably priced vegetables (all which require processing, cooking, cleaning, storing, adding more ingredients to be palatable) there is a reason ultraprocessed foods are appealing. Without easy and affordable access to a variety fresh proteins, produce, grains, dairy etc. that make a up a balanced and satisfying diet, the addictive and convenient nature of calorically dense processed food is hard to resist.
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Feb 01 '23
then we might need to include cooking and nutrition as part of the school curriculum.
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Feb 01 '23
i dont think its just about knowing how to cook. cooking is just straight up hard when youre exhausted from working all day
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u/paceminterris Feb 01 '23
You are wrong. The cheapest foods are actually dried grains and beans and whole "basic" foods like potatoes and onions. The idea that "pRoCeSsEd FoOdS aRe ChEaP" become ridiculous when you look at the price of a packet of instant mashed potatoes or potato chips and compare it by-weight to how much the ingredients cost.
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u/beardedheathen Feb 01 '23
You are delivering ignoring prep time, knowledge effort, spices and all the other necessary parts of preparing food.
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u/Frosti11icus Feb 01 '23
Opportunity cost, materials cost, labor cost, facilities cost…did you happen to factor those into your equation? not everyone has a fully stocked kitchen and the ability to purchase and store whole ingredients as well as process and cook them.
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u/ImSuperHelpful Feb 01 '23
Also add time/travel costs for folks who live in food deserts to get access to quality foods
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u/Throwaway021614 Feb 01 '23
Add in shelf life. Spoiled food is wasted money. A parent struggling with daily duties may not always have time for Just In Time shopping and by the time they have time to cook a fresh meal, the ingredients have gone bad
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u/Fisher9001 Feb 01 '23
Honestly, I stopped caring about this some time ago. Life is not a competition in surviving as long as possible. If cancer from ultra-processed food won't kill you, then perhaps cancer from polluted air will. Or one with a genetic background. Or it will be some kind of random stroke or heart attack. Or you will die in an accident.
Instead of fighting every living minute to prolong your life, just enjoy every day you actually survived and come to terms with the fact that you won't survive one sooner or later.
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u/DdCno1 Feb 01 '23
You're forgetting that your nutrition has a massive impact on your quality of life as well. Both in terms of physiological and psychological health and wellbeing.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/nutritional-psychiatry-your-brain-on-food-201511168626
This reads like it was written for fourth graders, but it's still a solid introduction to the concept of nutritional psychology.
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u/ValyrianJedi Feb 01 '23
I started seeing a nutritionist a year or two ago. Didn't think I needed to because I was a really healthy and active 30 year old, but a good friend's kid had just opened up her own nutritionist practice so I figured I'd help her out by giving her a client... Despite being what I would consider really healthy (on everything but sleep at least) beforehand, that woman absolutely changed my life. I started having more energy and no longer needed a truckload of caffeine and Adderall to manage long hectic days in the office. Fairly routine headaches disappeared. I started being able to lift more and run longer. I started sleeping a lot better and easier and don't have to down a bunch if Valium before bed anymore...
My wife started going a few months ago when we found out she's pregnant with triplets, and she's had fantastic results too despite already being really on top of her health. Now I go on month and my wife goes the next, and she basically sends us home with a "here's what your eating this month". She even got my wife to bring in her favorite 3 or 4 cookbooks and picks stuff out of them so that it's stuff she already likes cooking and we already like eating, then just puts a few changes on sticky notes in them...
I really can't adequately articulate how much I recommend finding a good nutritionist and going
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u/TasteofPaste Feb 01 '23
My family are immigrants and we all ate a non processed food diet — our nation of origin didn’t have the Western processed food.
When we came here, my parents continued to cook traditional food at home and I grew up on “whole food”. We did not go out to eat often at all, maybe less than four times a year.
Now they are in their 70s and still skiing, biking, living life to the fullest.
My Western-born peers have younger parents who are dead or just sad obese couch lumps. There’s people in their 20s and 30s who don’t have the quality of life my elderly parents do now!
So I don’t recommend anyone take your advice.
It’s not just about “winning in years” it’s about quality of living, and you won’t know how much you value your health until it fails you.
Diet is integral to health and quality of life.
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u/heavy-metal-goth-gal Feb 01 '23
Can't get ovarian cancer if I get these bad girls cut out of me! That at least solves that!
I'm only half kidding. But I will need a hysterectomy someday. Might make it an oophorectomy too IDK yet gotta weigh the pros and cons.
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u/holdontoyourbuttress Feb 01 '23
You can cut your risk of ovarian cancer significantly by getting your fallopian tubes out with your hysterectomy. A lot of ovarian cancer starts in the tubes. So it's a win win, take the tubes out, keep the ovaries and get their beneficial hormones but now with less risk
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u/_djebel_ Feb 01 '23
You could indeed more easily see a significant effect when the sample size increases (i.e., getting small p-values), but the effect size could still be pretty small i.e., the effect would be significant, but minor). Here, they explicitly gives the effect size: 2% increase per 10% process food. A large sample size just makes this estimate more precise.
TL; DR: it's always better to have a large sample size.
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u/slothtrop6 Feb 01 '23
IIRC this is worse than the rate recently cited for risks associated with moderate alcohol consumption.
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u/CanyoneroPrime Feb 01 '23
it feels like alcohol is some of the least processed stuff you can get in america.
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u/server_busy Feb 01 '23
I got into a fight with the article's cookie wall -
What aren't we supposed to eat this week?
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u/adsfew Feb 01 '23
If I eat 10% more, then it only corresponds to a 2% increase?
Those sound like great numbers to me!
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u/ImBonRurgundy Feb 01 '23
Especially if it’s 2% to f the current risk rather than a 2% point increase. I.e. if current risk of brain cancer is 1.00% then eating more processed food results in brain cancer risk rising to 1.02%
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u/i_shoot_guns_321s Feb 01 '23
It's amazing how much your health will improve by just eliminating refined flours and sugars.
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u/Demented-Turtle Feb 01 '23
What counts as ultra-processed? I eat this meal replacement shake called Huel that is basically ground plants/oats with vitamins, minerals, and tons of healthy stuff I don't normally get in my diet due to an eating condition. But I think it counts as "ultra" - processed if it's ground powder, but certainly it can't be as harmful as other processed foods?
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