I completely agree with this. There's nothing inherent to processing food that makes it less healthy. In fact it could potentially make it even more healthy, e.g. adding fiber or protein to a starch. Heck, even just like at the original processing technique. Cooked vegetables are more nutritious than raw vegetables.

But the reality is that 99% of processing is directed at making foods hyper-palatable, calorically dense, and easy to digest. Because that's what consumers crave. If someone's investing the capital necessary to process foods, it would not be smart to do it such a way to make their product less appealing.

So the reality is that avoiding processed foods in favor of whole foods winds up being a pretty good heuristic. The only real exception I can think of are products marketed explicitly as health food, and even a lot of times they're not actually that healthy.

> But the reality is that 99% of processing is directed at making foods hyper-palatable, calorically dense, and easy to digest. Because that's what consumers crave.

Yes, people want unhealthy foods.

You can buy a perfectly organic, fully unprocessed meal from Panda Express. Its called rice stir-fry, and as long as you hold back the soy sauce its "unprocessed".

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A friend of mine went vegetarian for better health. He ended up eating potato chips and gaining weight. Yes, there's a general "vegetables are usually better for you than meat", but, there's no guarantee that following such vague advice helps anyone.

You need to think harder, and eat smarter than that if you want a better diet. This "unprocessed vs ultraprocessed" designation is too vague, too unhelpful. It will just cause people to eat Panda Express all day every day.

Butter, sesame/vegetable oil and white rice are all processed foods. An unprocessed version would consist of brown rice, eggs, and the chopped veggies. Which would be an improvement on 95% of the typical meals Americans consume.

I do get your point though. There's an aspect of Goodhart's law here. When we come up with some sort of diet management heuristic, over time our personal habits and eventually the market will find exploits. We'll look for the most unhealthy/tasty food that complies with the ostensible rules of the diet.

The article is clearly using NOVA's definition of unprocessed vs ultraprocessed. Under NOVA's definition of unprocessed: butter, vegetable oil are "Group 2" (ingredients) while white rice is "Group 1" (unprocessed / minimally processed).

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As such, fresh Stir Fry from a restaurant with white rice, oil, and butter is Group2.

Group3 and Group4 are the "problematic" (allegedly) groups of high-processing.

Anyway, it's perfectly healthy to eat meat; vegetarianism isn't healthier. What's healthier is being deliberate and thinking about the food you consume.

(For reference, I became vegetarian because I ha concerns about factory farming's environmental impact and slowly just started to dislike the idea of having to sacrifice another animal for my benefit when it became clear to me that not doing so isn't actually that difficult.)

*Vaidya is the title for an Ayurvedic doctor.

I have not read his Aghora series. That could be esoterica or even a spoof, who knows. I have only read his Ayurveda book. Doubt that that book is wrong, since my family has some background in Ayurveda as users for two generations or more. Also read his bio on his site - says he was gold medals winner in his Ayurveda degree exams from the Pune university he studied at. I know of that school. Unlikely to be fake info, could easily be verified.

that Sri Ramakrishna got throat cancer by wish of some female guru as punishment for wanting to learn Tantra out of turn

Abbottabad is hottest place in Asia (it’s Jacobabad near where my mom grew up)

Wajid Ali Shah died soon after he was sent to Calcutta by British

Confuses Shamse Tabrez and Shamsuddin Sabzawari (RA)

Again, on the other hand, some foods require processing to extract necessary nutrients(i.e. nixtamalization of corn).

Why? Just because we consume a lot of it does not mean it is not "ultraprocessed". We should be afraid of a name just because a lot of modern food falls into the definition.

* Are there good foods that are ultraprocessed? (Ex: Grain Berry)

* Are there good foods that are unprocessed? (Ex: Brown Rice)

* Are the bad foods that are unprocessed? (Ex: Pork Belly)

If "ultraprocessed" fails to distinguish good from bad, then the word itself is worthless.

It is puzzling to me why low-fat cereal would be some kind of win or automatically should be considered great thing. You get energy from fat, sugar and proteins. Healthy human can and should eat all three, but I really dont understand why specifically amount of low-fatness of some cereal box would be advantage.

The issue with nutrition is that it is complicated. Food is rarely straight in the "good" and "bad" category. If distinguising between processed and ultraprocessed allows us to simplify it enough to reason about stuff in contemporary stores, then it is useful.

Dietary fiber is a huge part of nutrition and you're ignoring it in your above analysis. In particular, dietary fiber allows you to feel full without consuming ludicrous amounts of calories.

A high-fiber, low-sugar, low-fat cereal provides "stomach filler", so to speak. It makes you feel full, it provides vitamins, minerals, and fiber (important nutrients to live).

The psychology of a full stomach has a huge effect on whether or not someone is going to overeat later in the day. If you eat high-calorie foods like lard (_unprocessed_ fat from pork belly), you're simply not going to have as full of a stomach as someone who was filling up on fibers (even if those fibers are "ultraprocessed").

Unfortunately many people are so used to eating nutritionally bankrupt food that the connection between satiety and nutrition is broken, and many people exist in such a constant state of hunger that only fullness can temporarily stop them from eating more. The people I've met who overeat fiber to keep themselves from overeating caloric food have typically not been very healthy.

This "psychology of a full stomach" is not a requirement to live. In moderation, fiber is fine, but so is lard. You don't have to eat until you are full, you can simply stop eating when you have consumed enough nutrients. The body can give good feedback if one chooses to listen. Unfortunately this innate animalian skill is easy to forget in a world of soda and cheetos.

If you want a more thorough exposition of this idea, consider the book "Why Diets Make us Fat" by Sandra Aamodt, especially if you are interested in the psychology of eating. Please stop hating on pork belly. It is fine in moderation.

I know I can finish an entire pound of pork belly tonight if I am given the opportunity. I'm not going to do it, because I know that's not "in moderation".

The amount of nutrition you get from 1-lb of pork belly will be miniscule compared to a properly balanced meal. But its so damn tasty that you really can just keep shoving that sort of thing into your mouth.

Anything in moderation is healthy. Saying "X is healthy in moderation" is almost not useful at all. That's why serving sizes and yes, religious dedication to weighing foods and portion control is a thing that serious people do when they're seriously dieting.

Oxycodon in moderation is healthy. That's how unhelpful that "in moderation" statement is for dietary health.

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As for "Pork Belly", I'm really saying Lechon kawali, which is a particular Filipino preparation of Pork, which is probably the best tasting pork in the world. Its very good stuff. I just don't think the general English-speaking audience will know what "Lechon kawali" is, so I'm using a rough translation.

"X in moderation" is pretty good advice for most X. It just turns out many people are quite bad at moderation, prefering instead to "shove X into their mouth" or otherwise consume in ways that promote overindulgence. Usually, these habits deserve scrutiny more than X. It possible to choose to eat in a different way.

Seriously, read that book. If you've studied "serious diets," you should know their medium- and long-term success rates are absolutely dismal. Luckily it is not the only way. Working with the hard-to-modify aspects of food psychology is easier, more sustainable, more enjoyable, and more effective than fighting against them.

If you have a point to be made, you can make it here and now without the need of a hundred-page reference. I understand you put a lot of work into reading books about diets or whatever, but I also make my arguments based on the findings supported by a large body of research.

I'm not going to ask you to read through all of the reference material I'm using to build up my arguments. At best, I'm going to point out the FDA + Department of Agriculture studies on health and nutrition which inform my decisions and arguments.

But anyone who says "my argument is in a book elsewhere" is just... going to be ignored by me. Just an FYI. That's also why I'm not shoving FDA or Department of Agriculture whitepapers into your face.

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The mainstream science of food, eating, and nutrition is pretty simple and straightforward. Have a balanced meal (multiple forms of fruits and vegetables. Roughly 1/2 the meat of the average American. Grossly lower sugar intake compared to the average American). That's it.

These papers on "ultraprocessed foods" or "alternative diets" may have something about them, but it is the job of its advocates to make solid arguments about why the mainstream thought is insufficient or inadequate.

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What can I say about diets? Some people have a strong ability to stick to diets, while others do not. Studying the psychology of "what makes people feel full" is an important part of the equation.

Some people just can't help themselves. For those people, you teach them psychology, so that they trick themselves into healthy eating.

I'm really not sure what the "mainsteam science of food" is. Studies linking food to health outcomes are notoroiously low quality, and there isn't strong consensus on most things, other than basic stuff like "eat more vegetables." And it wasn't that long ago that the USDA was saying "eat more grains, less veggies." If you think it is simple I would suggest you read a larger variety of sources. Human health is a very complex subject and there is a lot we still don't know.

I would rather we teach people how to help themselves, rather than teaching them ways to trick themselves. It's hard to trick yourself for long periods of time, especially when you are up against biological imperatives. People who's strategies don't rely on tricks are more successful.

If you don't like it, that's fine. I'm just saying... it works. And it works very well. Predict your own behaviors, be honest with yourself, and then nudge yourself into improving yourself through greater reasoning.

If you know that X will make you overeat, then avoid X from the start. If you know that Y makes you feel full, then eat Y. Etc. etc. That reduces the amount of measuring you need to do when dieting, because you can start to trust the nerve-cells in your stomach and/or brain chemistry for when you feel full and/or hungry.

That's the problem with a lot of diets: they don't recognize the efficacy that a little bit of psychology and prediction can do. Everyone's psychology is slightly different: what works for one person doesn't work for everyone else. So you need to customize it to each person.

But once you figure out someone's psychology, you really can "manipulate them to better themselves". That includes yourself. And its a lot less stressful than trying to "willpower" your way throughout the hours, days, or weeks.

I've never met a food with this kind of psychic power. Even if pigs did have this dramatic power at some point, surely it is lost after they are cooked.

I can get on board with being honest with yourself and trusting your stomach, but I wouldn't call that a psychology or a trick/hack. I would simply call that listening to the signals your body has been sending all along. But if you are interested in psychological manipulation in other contexts maybe it can be helpful to frame it that way.

"Willpower" methods are usually set up to fail because they approach the problem from a bad angle. It takes sustained effort to look at a delicious food while abstaining. It takes less effort if the food is far away, out of sight. It takes no effort if you decide it's not that delicious after all. But if you have something that works for you by all means stick to it.

People don't like ultra-processed in an partake-abstain framing (like many do with illegal drgus), but they could just apply a how-often, or frequency framing, (like they do with alcohol).

People are just uncomfortable with the responsibility being theirs and are exercising their denial.

The demand for a narrative about evil-FDA or evil-food-corp is HIGH. Everyone could just eat like the healthiest among their friends and family, but you can't sell a story without a villian.

Which is non-helpful. A stir-fry dish from Panda Express and/or Noodle's and Co is entirely "group 2 unprocessed" by this designation. Is eating Panda Express all-day, every day healthy?

You can literally see them cut the veggies and meats as they make the stir-fry. Its fresh and out in the open.

That is just not how nutrition works either. And honestly, the processed/unprocessed distinction will end up with better result then "fat is bad".

Aren't we more interested in health outcomes associated with food rather than moralistic rules or labels?

The leap from "this general rule has some exceptions" to "this is worthless" is unwarranted.

You still personally expect people that eat less processed foods to be slimmer on average than those that eat more, right?

Not if you consider low-fat low-sugar cereals like "Grain Berry" as "ultraprocessed". All you're doing is making it harder for people to craft a useful diet.

Would you say that Lard is more, or less healthy than a high-fiber cereal?

Lard doesn't contain trans fats, which is what fast food is full of.

Lard is a time-tested animal product that has been used by many long-lived civilizations. "trans fats" wasn't a thing until ~20 years ago, so basically science is catching up with the implicit knowledge people have had for thousands of years.

https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/nutrition/2013/...

Lard is definitely healthier than processed oils, e.g. vegetable oil in the supermarket.

I eat food cooked with lard before I eat fast food or industrial cooking, every time. (and I lost significant weight in the last 3 years, so I'm medically "normal", which is 20-30% percentile -- i.e. most people are heavier than me)

Ditto for butter -- natural, whole fats were "out of fashion" 20 years ago because of incorrect nutritional knowledge foisted upon you by interested parties. Again, there are many mainstream books that cover these topics, like Pollan's.

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And as much as these comparisons make sense, I would say that lard is also healthier than a cereal with the following ingredients:

Whole Oat Flour, Wheat Starch, Sorghum Berry Bran, Modified Corn Starch, Brown Sugar, Salt, Tricalcium Phosphate, Tripotassium Phosphate, Mixed Tocopherols (Vitamin E) added to maintain freshness.

The sugar, salt, and preservatives gives me pause. I believe that unprocessed sugars like honey, maple syrup, and dried fruit are easier for the body to metabolize, and I don't think that's very controversial these days.

So I eat granola without preservatives or much added sugar instead (although you can be tricked by concentrated apple or pear juice, etc. which is basically sugar). You have to pay about double, and it rules out about 50% of what's on the shelves at Whole Foods, and maybe 80% at Safeway. But I think it's cheaper in the long term.

The FDA has banned partially hydrogenated oils (artificial trans-fat) in the US. The phase-out process won't be 100% complete until January 1 (certain specifically exempted products containing trace amounts can still be sold until then), but for the vast majority of PHO-containing foods, 2018 was the last year that they could be manufactured and 2019 was the last year that they could be sold (in the US).

but from the linked article...

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For everyone else, choose liquid oil high in monounsaturated fats, such as olive oil or organic, non-GMO canola oil, which are trendy now and healthy, says Lindzon, even for baking your next birthday cake. “The bottom line is change your grandmother’s recipes that call for butter and lard,” she says.

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by 'vegetable oils', do you mean processed oils like margerine and shortening?

Nope. Just less healthy than a high-fiber, low sugar, low-fat breakfast cereal.

If you disagree: explain to me how 1-bowl of lard is possibly any healthier than 1-bowl of Grain Berry breakfast cereal.

At scale, processing food often introduces challenges only solvable by introducing chemicals and practices that are considered harmful to humans.

Phthalates become more common in foods the more times it changes hands. Sterilized environments necessary for processing must be sanitized by using chlorine, some of which is exposed to the food itself. Most processed foods have ingredients that are also processed, so the effects of this are compounded. Many preservatives, past and present, have positive correlations with various types of cancer and neurological diseases.

I agree with base premise — you don't automatically start eating healthily by choosing whole foods. But I think it's harmful to consider processing as benign.

Citation needed. Not all fats are created equal.

For example Inuits consume 50% of their calories from fat [1]. They do not have the "western diet disease" (obesity, heart disease, etc.)

It really IS the processed fats that are bad for you. You can see this all over the world when Aboriginal peoples are introduced to industrial cooking / ultra-processed foods / "western corporate diet".

They literally get addicted, and their body size increases by double digit percentages within a generation. This also happened in the US, but happens faster around the world. The average body weight for a man in the US increased from ~166 in the 1960’s to ~196 today [2].

This is an amazing fact that needs an explanation if you don't believe it's a result of the rise in industrial cooking.

And if you believe in capitalism, you would have to explain how this would NOT happen. Why wouldn't companies gradually develop cheap, consistently manufactured, addictive foods? The profit motive would lead them there, even if it weren't intentional.

I suggest reading some of Michael Pollan's books like Omnivore's Dilemma or Cooked; they talk about this (and probably talk about Inuits specifically as far as I remember)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_cuisine

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/12/look-...

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Another anecdote: I know someone from the Midwest with "industrial cooking disease" who dropped from 350 lbs to 200 lbs in a year by going on the "carnivore diet", where he ate exclusively beef and chicken (yes, literally).

I remember someone else remarking the same thing on HN, and observing that going vegan can have the same effect.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19177116 (not sure if this is the thread but there are many of them on HN)

Hypothesis: Both the carnivore diet and a vegan diet are BOTH suboptimal. The reason that they help many people with "western diet disease" is that you eliminate industrial cooking / ultra-processed foods from your diet.

The human body is extremely flexible and can metabolize a wide variety of things in the environment. What it apparently can't metabolize is addictive foods that corporations have created...

Filipino diet, consisting of fresh chicken, fresh pork, fresh fish, and fresh rice will lead to heart attacks at relatively young ages.

Nothing against my family or heritage. But these things are known. Balancing it out with some "processed" canned veggies for +Fiber intake can grossly help and improve overall health. And cutting out the fatty Lechon (aka: "Island Pork" with the apple in the mouth) helps too.

Also bad air quality, bad water quality, etc. etc. lead to other issues. But diet is clearly a problem IMO. Even if it is a fresh chicken and/or fresh Lechon/Pig (which really is quite tasty, and barely processed at all)

Worse, everyone (even americans) tend to agree that "ordinary" Filipino food is less healthy (and less tasty) than basically anyone elses. Compare your experience at jolibees to at McDonald's. I claim that almost everyone (even people who hate both) will prefer the food at McDonalds, and that the average item from McDonalds is healthier than from Joliebees

Filipinos trying to bring up their good food and "somehow were still having bad health outcomes" is pinoy pride going wrong. And who can forget about THIS delicacy? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagpag

That's what's so ridiculous about this "unprocessed" vs "processed" label. Lumpia is just flour + water for the wrappers, and then fillers (beef+rasins is pretty common, but maybe you're a veggie-lumpia person). Ultimately, its just flat + fresh dough wrapping fresh foods. Nothing processed about it at all.

I bet you that frying your food and filling it up with oils and salts probably has more to do with your health than how "processed" those foods are.

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If you've been to the Philippines, you can watch people literally rip the plantain (a bananna-like fruit) from a tree, wrap it, and deep fry it for you. Its about as fresh and "unprocessed" as it gets. Literally, these people just sit on the side of the road selling this stuff. Its kind of awesome. (Or they'll climb a tree and cut a fresh Buko / Coconut for you. Etc. etc.)

That doesn't make it any healthier. Now it makes it really, really tasty and a really good experience. But no way in hell am I going to call that healthy eating.

That's not to say we shouldn't cook our food (and in some cases cooking can make food more nutritious by destroying anti-nutrients like phytic acid), but we should be aware of how the cooking time, temperature, and method affect nutrient content. Boiled vegetables are generally going to be less nutritious than steamed vegetables, for example.

And of course, frying tends to use industrially produced oils which are highly processed. Oily foods like avocados that you find in nature are going to have some fiber and other nutrients; the process of removing all that to produce pure oil is a form of processing.

You're not familiar with this new "unprocessed" vs "processed" vs "ultraprocessed" designation then.

https://worldnutritionjournal.org/index.php/wn/article/view/...

Oils are a "Group 2", low-processed food. Page 5:

> Group 2 items are rarely consumed in the absence of group 1 foods. Examples are salt mined or from seawater; sugar and molasses obtained from cane or beet;honey extracted from combs and syrup from maple trees; vegetable oils crushed from olives or seeds; butter and lard obtained from milk and pork; and starches extracted from corn and other plants

Group 2 foods are apparently NOT processed. For some reason, I didn't make this designation, I just make fun of it on the internet.

Group 3 foods are "processed", and Group 4 foods are "ultraprocessed". This designation is completely and utterly meaningless in regards to health.

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That's why something like LOL Lumpia + Stir Fry dinners is at worst... "Group 2", unprocessed by this designation (Both Oil and Flour are just Group2 designations, the most processed items in Lumpia). But if you eat a low-fat cereal + yogurt + applesauce, you're eating ultraprocessed stuff.

I bet you that "Group 4 Ultraprocessed" Low-fat fortified cereal + yogurt + applesauce meals are healthier than "Group 2 Unprocessed" Lumpia + Stir Fry dinners with fresh Lechon + Rice.

The distinction is accurate: These are unprocessed oils, and there is a big difference between them and the processed oil that fast food is fried in, and that industrial cooking uses.

The same plaintains fried in ultraprocessed vs. unprocessed Oils is going to be worse for you. See for example "The Dental Diet" for its effects on your teeth, but there are other nutritional reasons as well. (Anecdotally, I think lack of nutrients in the fat makes you hungrier; it makes it "addictive". If you cooked in real fats, you feel sated with very few fried plaintains.)

The way I think of this is: "Food is not a linear combination of macronutrients". All fats aren't equivalent; some fats are very good for you. Again Pollan's books are very good on this subject.

I'm not very familiar with the ingredients in Filipino cooking, but since it was an American colony in 1898, I would guess the habits are strongly influenced by industrial cooking (spam being popular, etc.) It's a mix of local ingredients and cheap ingredients bought from Western corporations.

You can see it in a Chinese-American family pretty clearly: the grandparents eat fatty cuts of meat (but small portions), fish heads, etc. and live until 100 years old. The parents are mixed -- they eat some traditional foods (fish and vegetables), but cook with American vegetable oil instead of soybean oil, and got addicted to McDonald's in the 80's. They have more health problems in their 60's and 70's a result (hypertension, heart disease), and they're not going to live until 100. Even without obesity, they still have these problems. Their kids are fatter than both generations, and as a result less healthy, at least without a change in diet in adulthood, etc.

I suspect it's clearer in the Chinese case because there was less western influence (fewer occupying armies and less trade). Whenever Western processed food companies take hold in a foreign market, the health of the population suffers. This is well known. And I would guess it happened earlier and to a greater degree in the Phillipines than in other countries.

I'm not claiming to be an expert here, but it seems suspicious, and some Googling reveals that people are studying that issue. That is, because of history you may not remember what is "traditional", but I can more or less see what was traditional (non-Western) from my grandparents born in 1916.

Five Guys uses pure peanut oil for their fast-food frying. Does that make their burgers / fries any healthier than alternatives?

Or is the innate carbohydrates + oil combination a high-calorie, fundamentally unhealthy thing to consume, no matter how "Fresh" the potatoes are or how "unprocessed" the oils are?