Bread and pizza are not per se ultra processed. They can be depending on how you bought them.
Right like an apple is a plant. Harvesting, washing, slicing, and cooking it into a pie in your own kitchen is technically processing it, but it’s still a whole food as the slices are in their whole unaltered form.
Taking millions of apples, grinding them, emulsifying them and separating them into constituent components, enzymatically pre-digesting them then pressing that concoction into a mould shaped vaguely like apple slices and adding in a barrage of artificial flavors and sweeteners to make it resemble the taste of apple pie? These apples have been ultra processed. It’s done for the sake of corporate profit. Pies made in this fashion make more product per ingredient and are longer lasting on the shelf.
Research is showing foods like this are making us fat not just because they’re tasty and we naturally binge, but because they’re literally interfering with our body’s ability to self regulate hormonally.
The calories from these foods, while not breaking the laws of physics or anything, also come with baggage. The food is already extensively broken down by mechanical and chemical processes; things that our teeth and gut normally have to do. The result if you eat them often is having a bunch of meals that hits your system fast, basically like a runner’s energy gel packet. It’s taken us a long time to discover but research is indicating that this is inherently very bad for us.
This propaganda about good and bad foods has kept me underweight for most of my life.
That all being said, I agree with you, and I expect all of the nuance around this to get twisted and lost into yet another bead in the endless string of worthless diet fads and hacks that nobody can stick to and do more harm than good. I literally already see “wholesome” aisles popping up in some stores where they use all the same harmful processes to make the food but game their ingredients list to only be things that people can pronounce.
Bread and pizza are not per se ultra processed. They can be depending on how you bought them.
Right like an apple is a plant. Harvesting, washing, slicing, and cooking it into a pie in your own kitchen is technically processing it, but it’s still a whole food as the slices are in their whole unaltered form.
Taking millions of apples, grinding them, emulsifying them and separating them into constituent components, enzymatically pre-digesting them then pressing that concoction into a mould shaped vaguely like apple slices and adding in a barrage of artificial flavors and sweeteners to make it resemble the taste of apple pie? These apples have been ultra processed. It’s done for the sake of corporate profit. Pies made in this fashion make more product per ingredient and are longer lasting on the shelf.
Research is showing foods like this are making us fat not just because they’re tasty and we naturally binge, but because they’re literally interfering with our body’s ability to self regulate hormonally.
The calories from these foods, while not breaking the laws of physics or anything, also come with baggage. The food is already extensively broken down by mechanical and chemical processes; things that our teeth and gut normally have to do. The result if you eat them often is having a bunch of meals that hits your system fast, basically like a runner’s energy gel packet. It’s taken us a long time to discover but research is indicating that this is inherently very bad for us.
That all being said, I agree with you, and I expect all of the nuance around this to get twisted and lost into yet another bead in the endless string of worthless diet fads and hacks that nobody can stick to and do more harm than good. I literally already see “wholesome” aisles popping up in some stores where they use all the same harmful processes to make the food but game their ingredients list to only be things that people can pronounce.