Episode Transcript
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Welcome to nutrition For Mortals, the podcast that says life is too damn short to spend your time and attention worrying about your food choices.
So let's take a deep breath and then join us, two registered dietitians and friends, as we explore the world of nutrition with a special focus on cultivating a healthy and peaceful relationship with food.
My name is Matt Priven and I am joined, as always, by my co-host and the best dietitian on planet Earth, Jen Baum.
Hey, Jen.
Hey, Matt.
We're back.
We're back, baby.
Back from summer break.
How are you doing?
I am good.
I'm good.
So I have to say all the intro things.
And I have to remind people that we've got a Patreon where we do bonus episodes.
We are real live dietitians in private practice.
You can reach out to us.
We're on Instagram.
Follow us there.
All of the things that I typically say at the beginning of an episode.
Great marketing.
You are real advertising wiz, aren't you?
That's right.
Well, we're back.
I'm so excited to be back and talking about nutrition.
Let's do this thing.
I know, I know.
And we are diving in with such a great and very relevant topic today.
We are doing a deep dive into the world of ultra processed foods, which is such a hot topic right now.
Yeah.
Ultra processed foods are as we call them here in Boston, wicked processed foods.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
That's the New England version of ultra processed foods.
OK, so Matt, why are we going to talk?
Why are we spending time talking about ultra processed foods?
Yeah, well, I want to have what is maybe the world's first rational discussion about ultra processed foods, because this discourse just gets so out of hand.
I mean, so much black and white thinking and encouragement of this idea that eating any amount of ultra processed foods is extremely harmful.
So I want to take a deep breath today, as I always say in the intro, and talk about how we might want to think about this topic of ultra processed foods.
And a big part of why I'm doing this today is because I received an email from a stressed out client of mine who had seen a clip online that we are going to listen to, and she shared how stressed it made her feel.
And we've gotten a number of requests to talk about ultra processed foods.
And so I figured now is the time to do it.
Now, I think if we can bring a little bit of peace to the ultra processed food discussion, that would be incredibly helpful, because I know, at least from what I see online, most headlines are very sensationalized.
And like you said, all or nothing, black or white.
And so if we can kind of dive into this research in a way that's going to, again, bring a little bit more peace for people, I think that sounds like an amazing idea.
Yeah, and maybe we should start just by quickly defining ultra processed foods so everyone knows what we're talking about.
Yeah, let's do that.
Can I call them UPFs from now on?
Yeah, sure.
So you don't have to say ultra processed foods like a million times during the course of this episode.
Yeah.
So these UPFs are basically foods you couldn't make in your home kitchen.
That's a working definition for a lot of people in this field.
So what does that mean?
That means that the food went through some kind of industrial processing that you can't do at home, or there was some food additive that went into it.
So things like emulsifiers or isolated proteins or synthetic flavorings.
You know, what a lot of people think when they hear ultra processed foods is, oh, that's the food with all the sugar and salt and fat in it.
That's not it.
Stop saying that.
That's not accurate.
We're not talking about whether it has a lot of sugar or not.
We're talking about whether it has what we would consider food additives in it.
And so it is kind of specific, although when you get into trying to decide what foods fit into which categories of ultra processed or processed or minimally processed, you start to get into debates because it gets really confusing really quickly.
Yeah, I can see that.
And I have actually read myself lots of kind of confusing or conflicting definitions of what an ultra processed food actually is.
But I like the way that you put it, Matt.
I mean, it sounds like if you couldn't make the food without industrial techniques or with an industrial kitchen, then it would probably fall into that ultra processed category.
Exactly.
You would probably have to turn your kitchen into a laboratory.
You could do it, but I don't know if you want to.
Right, right, right, right.
So I want to jump in here by playing this clip from the New York Times that was posted on their Instagram account.
And this is going to give you a sense of how we're speaking about UPFs in popular culture and in journalism.
And then I want to get into how my client felt after hearing this.
All right, let's do it.
—
I think when people hear the term ultra processed foods, they might think it's soda, it's chips, it's cookies, but a flavored yogurt, a packaged whole wheat bread, or plant milk, they're also ultra processed.
And ultra processed food is basically any packaged food that you might find in a grocery store that you couldn't recreate in your own kitchen.
They are shelf stable and relatively inexpensive and convenient.
And when you look at the food supply in the US, about 73% of foods are classified as ultra processed.
We've seen a ton of studies that have linked consuming more ultra processed foods to poorer health.
So things like greater risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, even some mental health issues like depression and anxiety.
—
Yeah, I mean, how could you not listen to a clip like that and start to feel a high level of anxiety or worry about consuming these food products?
Absolutely.
You know, there's all these scary health outcomes that are being warned about and at the same time, you're being told that these UPFs are like hiding in plain sight with the foods that you enjoy.
So yeah, this is scary stuff.
I know, especially that 73% of all foods in the American food system are ultra processed.
I think that could lead to most people feeling like there are no safe choices when they walk into a grocery store.
I do want to comment if we could kind of take a little tangent here.
You know, they use the word obesity as one of the supposed scary health outcomes.
And so, you know, let's note here at nutrition For Mortals, we choose not to label body size as a medical condition or a disease, because there are a diversity of human body sizes.
And you know, being in a larger body is not inherently unhealthy.
So I always like to point that out.
If that's a new concept to you, we have other episodes that dig into this.
If that makes you mad, thanks for stopping by.
There's plenty of other podcasts to check out.
Why don't you go yell at a Great Dane for not being a miniature poodle?
See how far that gets you.
Can we get back to the topic here?
Yes, please.
All right.
So back to the video.
So the message of this video is sharing that ultra processed foods hiding in plain sight.
They're bad for us.
So my client watches this video and then emails me.
So I'm going to share some of what they wrote with permission.
Okay.
So they wrote, I guess content like this always spikes a huge anxiety spiral for me and almost brings me immediately back to a mindset of never wanting to eat anything processed or ultra processed because a smart journalist at the New York Times analyzed scientific data and is now conclusively saying that our mental and physical health, specifically in the US, is at major risk because of the food we eat, especially when the information is presented this way, coupled with the monstrosity that is a comment section where people are making wild health and well-being claims.
It just feels so hard to navigate.
Yeah, I mean, so eloquently put, I think that your client really captures, again, the sentiment that most people would feel after watching a clip like that.
And also, I can't even imagine the comment sections.
I would say stay away from the comment section.
Like, do not enter.
I looked through it and people are saying, and that's why I've never eaten the processed food before.
And of course, I'm like clicking through to their bio and seeing pictures of them eating donuts and cookies.
And I'm like, everyone's so full of shit out there.
It's ridiculous.
Yeah, comment section's almost always a mess.
So, okay, that was a great setup.
I think, again, you painted a really good picture, both of how the media portrays ultra processed foods or talks about ultra processed foods, and then how many people feel when they are interacting with said content.
And so where do you want to jump into?
Because I know, Matt, that your goal is to make us all feel better about ultra processed foods.
So where do you want to start that discussion?
If folks will permit me, I want to frame up this discussion just a bit more.
So, Jen, are you familiar with the term nutritionism?
I am.
Yes, I have heard of this before.
My understanding is that nutritionism is when you essentially reduce a food to its nutrient content only, and you don't really pay attention to anything else.
Is that right?
Perfectly said, yeah.
Maybe we can do a little example here for people.
We can use this in a sentence, okay?
Okay.
I feel like, is it a spelling bee?
Are you going to make me spell it after?
Yes.
Can you please give us the country of origin for nutritionism?
It's Australia, by the way.
Oh, interesting.
Okay, yeah, let me give you a food, and then maybe you can interpret that food from a nutritionism perspective.
Perfect.
That's perfect.
Okay.
So let me choose avocado.
Okay.
So I'm going to tell you what an avocado is now, okay?
Okay.
Okay.
An avocado is a source of unsaturated fatty acids with a higher percentage of mono-unsaturated than polyunsaturated fat, and it's a good source of both insoluble and soluble fiber.
That's what an avocado is.
But Matt, you didn't mention guacamole, and that's the best part of an avocado.
Perfect, right?
So you see what I did there?
I only responded from a nutrient perspective.
And you might be thinking, why the heck are we talking about this in a UPF discussion?
But the people who are at the forefront of this anti-UPF idea, they talk about nutritionism a lot as this ideology that really steered us wrong.
Because if we're viewing foods as just a collection of nutrients and we're ignoring all the cultural significance of the food and the farming practices and the processing of the food, then what we're doing is we're giving power to people who know more about the nutrition than we do.
So we give power to, quote unquote, nutrition experts who can tell us how to eat.
Is that making sense?
Yes, it is, which means that I have supreme power, is what you're saying, since I am now like in charge of nutrition, since I have all the knowledge.
Yes, racists use racism, you use nutritionism.
I hear what you're saying.
Oh no, now I don't want to be like, now I don't want to use nutritionism.
No thanks.
All right, well, let's take a listen to someone who really popularized this word nutritionism.
This is Michael Pollan talking about nutritionism.
Has he been on the show yet?
I don't think so.
He has not.
Okay, welcome Michael.
If the nutrient is the key unit in food and nutrients are invisible, who after all has ever seen a nutrient or tasted a nutrient or smelled a nutrient?
Except for, of course, the scientists who see them through their microscopes.
If nutrients are invisible, we need experts to tell us how to eat.
You can't figure this out on your own because the important thing is invisible to you.
You don't know how much is in it.
You need someone to count the nutrients for you, tell you whether they're there or not.
It's sort of like a religion where if the important unit is invisible, is spiritual, you need a priesthood to mediate your relationship to the godhead.
We need experts to mediate our relationship to the blessed or the evil nutrients.
What are you saying, Michael Pollan?
I don't, like, please try to break down for me.
Like, I kind of get where he's going.
I mean, he's illustrating that there's this power dynamic between experts and scientists who have a lot of knowledge of nutrient, nutrient content, nutrition, and that that creates a dynamic where then we look to those experts to provide us the correct information.
Am I kind of getting where he's going with that?
Yeah, I think where he comes from is you can figure this stuff out yourself.
Culturally, people have been able to figure out a lot of these important nutrition concepts without looking under microscopes at individual fructose molecules, right?
And so now we live in a world that's so saturated with this biochemistry of nutrition where everyone is aware of resveratrol and beta-carotene.
It's like, we don't need to be, in Pauline's opinion, we just need to eat food, take care of the land, and enjoy fresh produce and food from the earth.
So in a sense, I get what he's saying, but this like nefarious backstory about how nutrition experts have been like almost conning people for years, that's the part I don't understand as well.
Well, yeah, and what I like is that it sounds like he's encouraging people to hyper focus on food less.
That part I agree with.
I don't think it ever is typically enjoyable to hyper focus on food or worry about nutrients to a point where it's causing someone a lot of stress.
But then the other side of me thinks, gosh, I'm so glad we identified vitamin C so we could cure scurvy.
Oh, absolutely.
No, that's my thoughts exactly.
Like in the last 80 years, we had a handle on like the nutrients that the human body needs to function and avoid deficiencies.
Like all of nutrition is about preventing malnutrition and nutrient deficiencies.
Like you said, scurvy and iron deficiency anemia and protein deficiency.
And then just now we're kind of coming out of that haze and we're getting criticized as a field for being so nutrient focused.
It seems a little backwards.
Yeah, for sure.
You know, but to tie this into UPFs, if we're focused on these single nutrients or combinations even of nutrients, you know, getting enough protein, avoiding too much saturated fat, whatever it might be, it also allows the food industry to leverage this ideology against us.
Oh, okay.
Tell me more.
Yeah.
So to explain this idea, I'm going to have you read something.
So this is an article from the British Medical Journal from the man who coined the term nutritionism.
I'm going to try his name here, Gyorgy Scrinis.
So Gyorgy writes, quote, within this nutrient centric model, any health harms associated with ultra process foods are primarily attributed to their typically high concentration of particular nutrients, sodium, sugars, saturated and trans fats, et cetera, or energy density.
In framing the harms of ultra process foods in this way, the solution is similarly framed as the nutritional reformulation of these products to reduce the levels of some of these nutrients.
While the minimal reductions in sugars and sodium achieved are welcome, this nutrient focus distracts from the effects of the highly processed, de-constituted, and chemically transformed ingredients and additives that these products are typically constructed from.
Yeah, so the main point here is we're kind of being distracted from the food processing procedures when we hyperfixate on just the nutrients that the food is comprised of.
You can imagine, if you're making a potato chip, you could do that at home by thinly slicing a potato and frying it, or you could break that food down to its individual molecular components and then reconstitute it.
And that's different than the type of food you'd make at home, but we're not really getting that information when we're so focused on the nutrient content, because ultimately, the carbohydrate content might be the same, but it's a very differently produced food.
And so, this whole discussion is really leading into this focus on UPFs in a new way.
As a new research question, if you will.
We've been researching nutrients for so long, and now people like Gyorgy Scrinis and Michael Pollan are saying, we need to research the harms of UPFs exclusive of what nutrients they're comprised of.
Yeah, I mean, it sounds kind of like a bait and switch by food corporations.
They are kind of trying to distract people with their extreme focus on single nutrients away from how these products are created.
And that has led to a gap in the literature or a gap in the research where we don't know, because we haven't really studied the impacts of eating a lot or a high amount of ultra processed foods.
I buy a lot of this argument.
I think it makes a ton of sense.
I think it's a great research question to look at UPF.
So we'll get into the research in a minute.
But I think that a lot of people know that a lot of the food in the grocery store has gone through this industrial processing.
And we've all just kind of accepted that that is a big part of our food culture.
Should it be that way?
That's an open discussion.
But definitely when it comes to like the corporate capture of nutrition and food across the globe, yeah, we're pretty anti-corporation.
We'd love if there were not three companies that produce all the food and can kind of have all the power here.
Am I ranting now?
You are ranting a little bit, but I will allow it because I agree 100%.
And let's talk about the research question, because that is what I am the most interested in.
But I feel like before we do that, we have to talk about the Nova scale, which is again, such a confusing aspect of the ultra-processed food discussion.
But I really want to bring some clarity to it.
Yeah.
So basically, to do research, we needed to have definitions of what is considered a UPF, or just a processed food, or a minimally processed food, or whatever.
And so the tool that we decided on was called the Nova scale, which was proposed in 2009.
And the tool was created at the University of São Paulo in Brazil.
And when I say tool, all I mean is a classification system for putting foods into these categories.
So they proposed the category names and put foods into these categories.
And even though there's a lot of questions about where food should fit on this scale, it was enough for research to kind of take off from that point.
And Nova in Portuguese just means new.
So they were just saying, hey, we got a new system for classifying foods.
And so the four categories are unprocessed or minimally processed, processed culinary ingredients.
So that's like oil or salt.
You just had to do something to isolate these ingredients.
And then three is processed foods like cheeses and pickles and bread.
And then four is ultra processed foods, which are the versions of food that you can't make in your home kitchen.
Okay, great.
So it sounds like we have this new scale that's created to categorize how processed foods are.
And so can we now dive into the research?
Yes, please, because there's so much relief to be gained from actually diving into this research.
I can't wait.
Yay.
All right.
So how should we do this?
All right.
So we have a ton of research into UPFs, that is observational studies.
And then we have one randomized controlled trial.
So we're going to talk about the big world of observational data, and then we're going to talk about the trial.
Okay.
So reading from one of the big umbrella reviews of these observational studies, they say, quote, greater exposure to ultra-processed food was associated with a higher risk of adverse health outcomes, especially cardio-metabolic, common mental disorder, and mortality outcomes.
So that sounds scary, right?
Yeah, that sounds just like that New York Times clip.
Exactly, exactly.
And that's what happens here, is all of these individual studies flow up into these meta-analyses, which flow up into these reviews, and the takeaways sound really scary.
So what I like to do is I like to click through and find the studies that they're pulling from and understand what is happening in these studies.
I know statistics tries to fudge everything into one big result, but I think it's really important to learn what these studies actually looked like.
Yeah, that is the most important because that is usually where there is a lot of peace to be found.
And so let me say, I didn't read every study included in these meta-analyses.
I just clicked around and looked at some of them.
So I'm going to share some of the studies that I looked at because there's something interesting about all of them.
So, and these will all be in the show notes.
Here's the first one, ready?
Yep.
Okay, so this is a study that looked at metabolic syndrome risk and consumption of UPFs.
Okay.
And so this study had 6,000 participants who shared what they frequently eat.
And they found that there was a 28% higher prevalence of metabolic syndrome in the group that ate the most UPFs versus those who ate the least.
Does that make sense?
It does, yeah.
And so here's the context I'm talking about.
If you actually look at these groups, the group that ate the most UPFs, more than 71% of their diet was UPFs.
Okay, so very high intake of ultra processed foods.
Exactly.
And the group that ate the least kept their intake of UPFs to less than 40% of their diet.
So, the point I'm making here is we're not comparing eating UPFs to not eating them.
We're talking about a possible increased risk when you make them more than 70% of what you eat.
Does that make sense?
It does.
And this is such an important idea to remember when we study nutrition, is that when we are doing observational studies, we are comparing groups of people based on how much of something they are eating.
And it is never, I don't think I've ever seen an observational study where it's a completely binary comparison.
Meaning that the low risk group has never ever ever eaten a processed food, and then the high risk group is eating a lot of ultra processed foods.
Usually and typically, that lower risk group is always consuming some sugar, some ultra processed food.
So it's just it's not a binary comparison.
It's very, very important to remember.
Because again, I think that most people might feel like this is an all or nothing research question, but it's really not.
Exactly, exactly.
So let's do another one.
So study two here from the Journal of Diabetes Care.
And it's about, you guessed it, diabetes.
And so they concluded that quote, high quality meta evidence shows that total UPF consumption is associated with higher type two diabetes risk.
Okay, very interesting.
If you read on, you find out some interesting stuff though.
And this study showed that some UPFs were associated with higher type two diabetes risk.
Some were associated with lower type two diabetes risk.
Okay, so here we go.
So not all ultra processed foods are created equally, or probably a better way to say that is not all ultra processed foods in this scenario are having the same health impact on someone's diabetes status.
Exactly.
And so the foods associated with a lower diabetes risk were cereals, whole grain breads, packaged sweet and savory snacks, any fruit based product, yogurt and dairy based desserts.
So a lot of the stuff in that New York Times clip that we heard, you know, where they were saying, oh, well, your packaged yogurts and whole grain breads are actually UPFs and those are scary.
This study showed that the intake of those foods was associated with a lower type 2 diabetes risk.
Yeah.
And that's probably incredibly surprising, especially when you hear things like packaged sweet and savory snacks actually were associated with a reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
And so again, this seems like it speaks to the fact that not all ultra processed foods are going to impact our health risks in the same way.
These are observational studies, so we're not getting any conclusive findings here, but these all get pulled into these big scary review articles that we hear about in the news.
And so this is one of the articles that was pulled into that review.
And so let me do one more observational one.
So the third and final one here is a study that looked at UPFs and colorectal cancer.
And they did find an association between higher UPF intake and increased risk of colorectal cancer.
Here's the but, only in men and only for certain foods.
So is that captured by this umbrella review that we hear about in the news?
No, it is not.
It just becomes part of that data and we miss all of the nuance.
Yeah, and I mean, I think probably people listening might think, wow, we're really, really like digging heavy into numbers and specific studies.
But this is what is so important to do when we are asking these big research questions.
I think what happens in the media is that the media wants, again, a very sensationalized headline.
And so they're going to gravitate towards a headline that only speaks to increased risk without giving any of the nuance that you just gave us, Matt.
And I think one more really important piece of nuance here for these types of studies is who eats the most UPFs?
We've talked about the concept of food deserts before, right?
These are places where access to whole foods, fresh fruit, veggies, they're very limited.
And what you have instead are things like UPFs.
And the research here shows that across the board, food insecurity is associated with higher UPF consumption.
Do you think any of these studies adjusted for food insecurity or food access?
I mean, just by the way that you're leading me in to answer that question, I'm going to guess absolutely not.
No, only some of them even adjusted for household income, which would at least relate to food access.
And that's not sufficient.
But again, this gets pooled into the research that we hear about in the news.
Yeah, and things like food security and food access are such important variables that have to be considered in this type of research question and in this type of conversation.
Like to ignore those is to ignore such a huge aspect, an important aspect of this conversation.
And they tell us so much about somebody's life.
If you don't have access to food, if you're living with food insecurity, that's a very different life than somebody who has secure access to a wide variety of foods.
And so, we can only get so far with this observational research, which is why we try to step it up and have randomized control trials.
And like I said, we have one.
So should we jump into it?
Yeah, I love it.
We've got the one randomized control trial.
So let us dig into it.
All right, so as a reminder about study design and nutrition, it's so tricky.
Oh, it's hard.
It's so hard to design randomized control trials.
So in these observational studies we just discussed, they just go, hey, what do you normally eat?
And then people answer and then they gather data over time.
But with a controlled trial, you have to control the whole trial.
And so when you try to control all of the food choices that an individual makes, it gets really complicated really quickly.
So occasionally these studies do get done.
So the one randomized control trial we have is from 2019, and it came out of the NIH by a team led by the researcher Kevin Hall, and the full study will be in the show notes.
And so let's talk about this study.
So to conduct this study, Hall and his team had 20 people come check in to the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and live there for 28 days without leaving.
No thanks.
Yeah.
Thank you participants for doing this.
What a sacrifice.
Thank you for your sacrifice because I would not want to live inside a clinical center for a month.
I know.
And I'm sure you've seen nutrition clinical centers at their hospital rooms, right?
You're just living in a hospital for 28 days.
Right.
And having all of your food weighed and measured and brought to you and recorded.
And yeah, it is not a fun scenario.
Exactly.
And so the participants were provided with food, like you said.
And so the study design here is they were provided with either ultra processed or unprocessed food for two weeks.
And that was a randomized process of who got what.
And then if you got the ultra processed food for the first two weeks, you switched to unprocessed for the second two weeks and vice versa.
Does that make sense?
Yep.
Yep, it does.
And everyone was told to eat as much as you want.
And they were provided with plenty of food.
And the researchers wanted to make sure that they controlled for the nutrient content of the meal as much as possible.
So they made sure everyone was, you know, regardless of their diet protocol, getting almost the same number of calories, protein, sodium, et cetera, delivered to them at mealtime.
And the study that was published actually includes photos of all the meals.
I love that they did this because, you know, sometimes when you read about food, you just don't get that like visceral sense of what it would feel like to be served to that food.
But you could totally feel it when you look at these photos.
So, all right, I wrote down some example meals of what they were actually served here.
So will you read this for me?
Sure.
Okay.
So example of the ultra processed breakfast was three Lenders bagels with Philadelphia cream cheese and a bunch of Jenny-O turkey bacon, while the unprocessed breakfast was a big bowl of Fage Greek yogurt with strawberries, bananas, walnuts, and apple slices with fresh squeezed lemon.
And then example of the ultra processed lunch was two Spam sandwiches with American cheese on white bread with Lays potato chips and Diet Crystal Light versus the unprocessed lunch which was a spinach salad with chicken breast, apple slices, bulgur wheat, sunflower seeds, and a house made vinaigrette with grapes on the side.
Okay, yeah, so definitely different and very processed versus unprocessed.
I get that.
Yeah, yeah.
And so what did they find after the 28 days?
They found that people eating the ultra processed diet consumed about 500 calories per day more than the other group.
And when folks were in the ultra processed group, they gained some weight.
They gained almost two pounds compared to the unprocessed diet where they lost about as much.
Okay, but can I say something?
Yes.
So these seem like the most extreme examples of meals.
Like this doesn't feel like it mimics real world to me at all, because I feel like, at least I'm talking about myself too, that most people will likely have a mix of processed and unprocessed foods at a single meal, right?
Like, yeah, you might have a bagel and cream cheese, but then you might also have some like mixed fruit on the side, right?
And a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice or something like that.
And so this just seems like very unrealistic when it comes to what most people are probably eating on a day to day basis.
Yeah, and that's not a problem with the study design, but you're absolutely correct that that is the takeaway for me too.
This feels like the extreme version.
That's probably what they set out to do with the study.
My takeaway too is like, if you lock me in a hospital room and give me three lenders bagels for breakfast while I'm watching infomercials all day, I'm probably going to eat more calories than if you give me a Greek yogurt parfait.
It's just a very weird environment to try to eat.
I like how in your version of being in this clinical center, you're watching infomercials nonstop.
That's who you've become in this scenario.
Do they have streaming television and research centers?
Can I watch reruns of Parks in Iraq?
I don't know.
No, but I know what you're saying.
I think, again, not a flaw in the study design because the research question they're trying to explore is the impacts of consuming a very unprocessed diet to a highly processed diet.
But again, I just think that it doesn't necessarily mimic the average intake for a typical person.
Yeah, totally.
And that's why I wanted to have you read the actual meals that they were having.
So people could see that these conditions that they set up maybe don't really feel like they represent what they eat on a normal basis, or maybe they do.
But this is the randomized controlled trial that we have.
And one of my big hot takes, if we can kind of transition to a more of a hot take section here, is that the media is breathlessly commenting on how we now have a controlled trial that confirms our suspicions about UPFs.
And they tie in all of this observational data about dementia and depression and diabetes and all of these health outcomes.
And mortality, all we saw is that people ate more over a couple weeks when they ate in this way.
And so we are nowhere near ready to confirm all of the health risks and certainly not ready to make a comment about the effects of eating any ultra processed foods because we haven't studied that.
Yeah, and I mean, looping back to the observational data that we do have, which sounds like it's quite extensive, even the observational data doesn't suggest that we shouldn't be eating any ultra processed foods at all.
Even in that lower risk group, in many of those studies, you said people were still consuming what?
Around 40 percent of their diet was coming from ultra processed foods.
So it doesn't even feel like it's an all or nothing question at all.
It's also important to talk about why people eat UPFs.
We mentioned it a little bit earlier, but more specifically, there's benefits to them.
They're inexpensive.
They have a long shelf life.
They provide important nutrients.
They're convenient.
And so there's a reason that they're part of our culture that has a lot more to do with just the nefarious acts of shady food industry practices.
Yeah.
And I also come back to this idea too, that I really believe that fed is best.
And so if utilizing convenience foods, processed foods help somebody feed themselves, that can be a game changer.
I would much rather that than somebody not be eating enough chronically throughout the course of the day.
And again, I think the other thing that comes up for me in this conversation is that yes, I mean, I think I would agree with the fact that, you know, eating only ultra-processed foods and nothing else would not probably make most people feel great and could have some risks associated with it.
But I think you and I would probably say that about most things, that you should never only be eating one thing or one category of food because you're just intrinsically going to miss out on other nutrients that your body needs.
Yeah, and this really isn't a question of personal choice for a lot of people.
That's just what they have access to, right?
And so if you only have access to UPFs, then you should eat some UPFs as opposed to not eating.
And that's such a sad reality to have to comment on.
And I mean, listen, I'll get riled up about these food corporations consolidating power, but at the end of the day, you know, our personal relationship with food is way more than just a response to capitalism.
Like we have to eat, we have to nourish ourselves, we have to get enjoyment from food.
There's so much more to eating than this.
And so I would love to vote for more access to unprocessed foods for all, but we also have to live our lives.
Yeah, and I think it speaks to the need for systemic change, right?
You're talking about food access and how helpful it would be to make fruits, vegetables more accessible for people who are maybe lower socioeconomic status or people who live in food deserts.
So that's where we should focus our time, our money, our energy, not on making people feel bad because they're consuming ultra processed foods, because that's what they're able to afford or have access to.
And I think where I get very riled up and I get very upset is that when many people see a New York Times headline or see a clip like we played earlier, they start to feel very bad about themselves.
They feel guilt, they feel shame, they feel like they are doing something wrong.
And they shouldn't.
They should be thinking about the systemic problems that you and I are talking about that make it really challenging for people to feed themselves a wide varied diet.
If I can add one more thing that might bring the temperature down about UPFs a little bit, I want to play a clip.
And this is from an interview with Kevin Hall.
So he's the lead researcher on that randomized control trial we talked about.
Honestly, I love this guy.
I love Kevin Hall.
He sounds like a very cool dude.
And I'm sure we'll talk about him more on the show.
But after doing this research, let's take a listen to how he thinks about his UPF intake and his families.
After doing this work, did you change the way you eat?
You know, not so much.
I always sort of ate a relatively healthy diet.
And yeah, it probably didn't have a huge amount of ultra processed foods in it.
I mean, it was still probably something like 30 or 40 percent, which is kind of not super low, but it's not terribly high either.
I mean, my kids, like you mentioned earlier, I have a nine year old and a six year old, and it's really tough to get them to eat a mentally processed diet.
And at the end of the day, when you're exhausted and you just don't want to have a fight with your kids about what they're going to eat, you know, my balance is, yeah, they'll end up eating maybe some chicken nuggets, but they'll also have some green beans and some carrots or something like that, or some chickpeas, things that are mentally processed, but yeah, they'll be an ultra-processed component probably of their dinner plate, but I try to balance it off.
Oh my gosh, I love that clip.
So down to earth.
Yeah.
As a rule, we shouldn't be more stressed than the main person researching the question.
True statement.
seriously.
Yeah.
And as much as I hate to say it, if even after listening to this, you never want to touch a UPF again, go for it.
That's okay too.
We're not here to be angry at anybody.
We want you to eat the food that you want to eat, but as always, our focus is having a healthy and peaceful relationship with food.
And for a lot of people I've met, including myself, it would be pretty hard to do that without an Oreo once in a while.
Yeah.
Is that the ultra processed food that you'd be very sad to give up forever and ever?
Yeah.
Oreos are definitely up there, but there's just so many convenient foods that happen to be ultra processed that make my life better and I'd be sad to lose them.
What about you?
For me, I would be incredibly sad to say goodbye to salt vinegar chips.
Those are one of my favorites.
I love most types of pretzels too, specifically Snyder's sourdough pretzels.
Those are one of my faves.
So yeah, I mean, I am not going to say goodbye to those foods and I'm still going to include them.
And I feel like Kevin Hall brought us the piece that we needed in this discussion.
Absolutely.
Can I throw in one more on behalf of my wife?
Of course, please do.
Whenever she's on a road trip, immediately she needs Cool Ranch Doritos and I respect the hell out of that decision.
Oh yeah, that is a solid, solid decision.
All right, I'll see you in the next one, Jen.
All right, see you Matt.
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Zoinks, it's Ultra Processed Food, actually might be the title.
That's really good.
