Ultra-processed food linked to 32 harmful effects to health, review finds

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Worldwide Cash & Carry Stores in Leeds, Greater Manchester and Birmingham, no trade or customer account required, everyone is welcome to shop using baskets or trolleys or pallet carriers for bulk orders, these are the places which sell food staples like rice, lentils, chickpeas, gram flour, onions in large sacks and catering-sized tinned goods, to supermarket-scale single item products, just posting as an example of more affordable healthy food distribution, there are others too...

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On the whole & FWIW I think this is an unfortunate piece of work.

Under the standard GRADE evidence-scoring protocol they use, most of the associations have "low" or "very low" certainty, which should translate to something like "actual association likely to be substantially different to what is reported here". But their commentary claims much more robust certainty than this. Bottom line: too easy to dismiss as a propaganda exercise.

It also does little or nothing to counter a common belief, supported by subgroup analyses from other studies, that the UPF association depends a lot & maybe almost entirely on just SSB's and processed meats. In which case the whole notion of "UPF" would add little or nothing to previous understandings.

By contrast, the HPF work seems to suggest quite strongly that perhaps the biggest driver for the growth in obesity prevalence and associated health problems has actually been in the "fat + sodium" group, mainly represented by supermarket frozen, ready to eat, whatever meals. Not junk food, not sweets, not "carbs" etc etc. There is overlap with the UPF conception but they are not the same thing & HPF is maybe more useful and maybe less driven by extra-scientific considerations.
 
@Eddy Edson thanks for your useful links, unfortunately "grease + sodium" sums up most of the vegetarian and vegan ready meal options in supermarkets I am weaning my self off!

Can you make any practical real life suggestions about how average people on average or low income can improve their healthy diets on budget, whilst actively avoiding UPF + HPF additives and foods?

Research and case studies can only assist people in the real world if there's more education and awareness about making healthy nutritional choices, as there's no clear guidance for an average supermarket shopper and food labelling is currently inadequate and has not kept up with new synthetic non-food additives given generic labels like "humectant" or "emulsifier" or "E-Number".
 
maryjaneholland said:
@Eddy Edson thanks for your useful links, unfortunately "grease + sodium" sums up most of the vegetarian and vegan ready meal options in supermarkets I am weaning my self off!

Can you make any practical real life suggestions about how average people on average or low income can improve their healthy diets on budget, whilst actively avoiding UPF + HPF additives and foods?

Research and case studies can only assist people in the real world if there's more education and awareness about making healthy nutritional choices, as there's no clear guidance for an average supermarket shopper and food labelling is currently inadequate and has not kept up with new synthetic non-food additives given generic labels like "humectant" or "emulsifier" or "E-Number".
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Sorry - I think I'm too much of a food weirdo to have very useful tips! I eat mainly raw - fruit, berries, vegetables, nuts, seeds, edamame - plus soy milk, rye bread, ryvitas - and some grilled chicken, sometimes sashimi. No sauces, dressings, seasonings. I eat pretty much the same thing every day & love it, but I suspect most would find it unbearably bland & monotonous :(

It's also not a particularly cheap way to eat, I think, but I guess I could make it cheaper - more competent seasonal selections for fruit & veggies, cheaper soy milk, frozen berries instead of fresh, more eg lentils versus expensive nuts etc.

Even though it involves minimal preparation it does involve quite frequent shopping for fresh things, so maybe doesn't score very high on convenience. For price, convenience & variety I think supermarket ready meals are probably superior, but for health my bland monotonous diet is way, way superior.
 
That sounds like my ideal healthy diet, maybe swap grilled chicken for tofu & veg stir fry, hope this is helpful budget version, so...

Supermarkets - Tinned/dried lentils/pulses/beans, frozen edamame beans, frozen fruit & berries, own brand soy milk, tofu, frozen chicken/meat/fish, seasonal special offer fresh fruit and vegetables

Cash & Carry or Online Retailers - Bulk packs of nuts, seeds, dried fruit, ryvitas and long-life rye bread like Biona, bulk cases of long-life soy/plant-based milks, bulk pack of frozen chicken/meat/fish depending on freezer capacity in your home, bulk sacks of lentils/chickpeas/onions/gram flour depending upon your storage space

There are also specific wholesalers who cater to vegetarian/vegan/free from/organic dietary preferences and allow buying groups to join or trade accounts if you are self-employed or run your own business, such as Essential Worker's Co-operative Bristol, Lembas Worker's Co-operative Sheffield and Suma Wholefoods near Hebden Bridge/Halifax, with minimum order amounts and split case options, but this requires co-operative organising and planning in advance with multiple households and members and obviously wouldn't suit everyone, these are just few examples :confused:
 
maryjaneholland said:
That sounds like my ideal healthy diet, maybe swap grilled chicken for tofu & veg stir fry, hope this is helpful budget version, so...

Supermarkets - Tinned/dried lentils/pulses/beans, frozen edamame beans, frozen fruit & berries, own brand soy milk, tofu, frozen chicken/meat/fish, seasonal special offer fresh fruit and vegetables

Cash & Carry or Online Retailers - Bulk packs of nuts, seeds, dried fruit, ryvitas and long-life rye bread like Biona, bulk cases of long-life soy/plant-based milks, bulk pack of frozen chicken/meat/fish depending on freezer capacity in your home, bulk sacks of lentils/chickpeas/onions/gram flour depending upon your storage space

There are also specific wholesalers who cater to vegetarian/vegan/free from/organic dietary preferences and allow buying groups to join or trade accounts if you are self-employed or run your own business, such as Essential Worker's Co-operative Bristol, Lembas Worker's Co-operative Sheffield and Suma Wholefoods near Hebden Bridge/Halifax, with minimum order amounts and split case options, but this requires co-operative organising and planning in advance with multiple households and members and obviously wouldn't suit everyone, these are just few examples :confused:
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Thanks! Hopefully motivates me to get things together better than I have at the moment.
 
My mother was not weathy, as a family we were somewhat poor, but, my mother, somehow always provided good nutritious food every day. How did she do it? By buying decent ra2 food and cooking meals at home that would last days, eg, mince, stew, etc. We always had a Sunday roast too with leftovers on the Monday. No snacks and rarely sweets.

Ok UPF hadn't been invented then. Supermarkets too did not exist. If you wanted to eat you had to cook from raw materials. I learned to cook from my mother and now it holds me in good stead ... but ... in the intevening years (after I left home) I was seduced by the evolving food industry, easy 'food', snacks, and marketting and ate more and more rubbish ... until I became ill and was hospitalised.

Wake up call heard.

I now cook from scratch from raw ingredients, avoid UPFs where I can, fewer (none at the moment) sweets or high carbohydrate UPF foods of any sort.

Result: despite ever increasing costs, we cope and our food is way way better. Health too.

Solution? Teach people to cook, the basics, to plan meals for the week, to budget. To try to see the long term...

Ahhh, the human disaster, the inability to take longer term effects seriously now. The ever increasing confusion of fake news and conflicting 'information'

Ok it may not be a solution for many in reality, but it could help some.

Just my thoughts...
 
Gwynn, you are spot on. For my lunches I buy basic ingredients at Aldi such as sardines, canned tomatoes and beans, vegetables, and yogurt. It takes a bit of time to prepare them to microwave or stir fry. Well worth it.
 
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I switched on Radio 4 the other evening when there was a discussion about obesity. I think it was Start the Week.
They talked about the food producers developing addictive food.
I think they said, in the UK we spend about 2.4Bn a year on fruit and veg and 3.4Bn on confectionary.
 
Gwynn said:
My mother was not weathy, as a family we were somewhat poor, but, my mother, somehow always provided good nutritious food every day. How did she do it? By buying decent ra2 food and cooking meals at home that would last days, eg, mince, stew, etc. We always had a Sunday roast too with leftovers on the Monday. No snacks and rarely sweets.
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Fond memories @Gwynn

We were same, large family but despite limited income mother always had a wholesome meal waiting when Dad came in from work, like your mother homemade soups stews mince n tatties & full Sunday roast.

We did have desert, not everyday but she would bake things like apple & rhubarb cake & Dad's fav mixed fruit cake.

A good foundation for later life.
 
We had it a bit harder my mother had had to separate from my father as he was violent. I never knew my father. In spite of this my mother managed to make ends meet, feed us all, and set us all up well for later life. There were my mother, and 4 children.
 
Docb said:
Can I make my usual plea for a bit of balance in this sort of thing?

The amount of processing that goes on in a bull to turn blades of grass into succulent, nutrient steaks is far more ultra than anything the chemists in their lab can dream up.

Also, could it be that people are fundamentally gullible and the increase in levels of overweight and obesity are more due to the ease with which people with settled incomes can be persuaded to eat too much, ultra processed or not?

Just saying and ducks below parapet.
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Isn't all food reprocessed sunlight ? Reformatted into culturally acceptable forms.
 
When I switched to making everything from raw ingredients, my farts stopped smelling.
 
Burylancs said:
See a doctor ;-)
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I'll raise it with the nurse next Tuesday at my 'foot tickling'. I always like to have a question to fill the rest of the 20 minutes!
 
Docb said:
Can I make my usual plea for a bit of balance in this sort of thing?

The amount of processing that goes on in a bull to turn blades of grass into succulent, nutrient steaks is far more ultra than anything the chemists in their lab can dream up.

Also, could it be that people are fundamentally gullible and the increase in levels of overweight and obesity are more due to the ease with which people with settled incomes can be persuaded to eat too much, ultra processed or not?

Just saying and ducks below parapet.
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I agree with you but I will still eat steak when I can afford it lol. I have always thought processed food was not good for you. People eat too much for all sorts of reasons but it seems manufacturer's keep inventing more and more processed food to tempt people. It's them I blame for easy food.

In the end it's a free country and you can lead a horse to water etc

I will join you under the parapet.
 
Gwynn said:
What if food producers started out making good wholesome food but then had the problem of shelf life to extend as the supermarkets emerged and then the problem of creating higher profits for the shareholders whilst driving prices down (really?). What if they lost their way and then tried to make the cheapest food for consumers whilst maintaining their political support regardless of what the food really became. What if they really now believe that what they are producing is good, if not excellent?

What if more and more people understand less and less about nutrition, food and cooking and the obvious answer then becomes well supplied, easy to obtain, easy to feed, UPFs. Could it be an education problem in the schools and at home? Who has time to cook now-a-days?

Maybe supermarkets were not such a good idea? Maybe they were inevitable.

But then, how do you feed a constantly growing population especially as more and more may be strggling to feed their families?

I think I'll hide with the ducks under the parapet.
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Hmmmmm, duck, a l'orange ? Hoisin sauce ?
 
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Returning from shopping trip to my local Lidl supermarket I haven't been to in while, I really tried my best to be conscious and aware of UPF + HPF processed foods and non-food additives, but it's very difficult journey from entering the store there's long aisle of baked goods opposite the fresh fruit and veg, then "fresh orange juice machine" £4.50 for one litre bottle as you watch the oranges get squeezed by the machine (but full of loose sugars so not for me), and then discovering lots of product lines missing since my last visit like multivitamin vegetable juice, reduced fat houmous, vegan options, so grabbed fresh salad, fresh fruit and veg, coconut water (at home discovered it contains refined sugar so have to dilute it to drink it), houmous, tinned beans/lentils, and walked past long aisles of brightly coloured frozen pizzas, frozen ice cream, confectionery, biscuits, Easter seasonal sweet treats and high sugar high carb high calorie high caffeine processed foods I can't have on my Type 2 Diabetes weight loss diet... One unexpected highlight was fresh root ginger for cooking and herbal teas, and small Solevita cans of organic ginger turmeric shots containing fruit juice and no refined sugar, which can be diluted in iced teas, and are healthy energy drinks which don't contain caffeine, in moderation... Yes there's lots of choices, but acually very limited options with dietary and lifestyle preferences and personally I would prefer remission with boring diet than lifetime of medication and often judgmental Type 2 diabetes healthcare appointments with comments like "it's easy to manage diabetes and lose weight, just healthy diet and exercise, really simple!"... Ugh!
 
maryjaneholland said:
Returning from shopping trip to my local Lidl supermarket I haven't been to in while, I really tried my best to be conscious and aware of UPF + HPF processed foods and non-food additives, but it's very difficult journey from entering the store there's long aisle of baked goods opposite the fresh fruit and veg, then "fresh orange juice machine" £4.50 for one litre bottle as you watch the oranges get squeezed by the machine (but full of loose sugars so not for me), and then discovering lots of product lines missing since my last visit like multivitamin vegetable juice, reduced fat houmous, vegan options, so grabbed fresh salad, fresh fruit and veg, coconut water (at home discovered it contains refined sugar so have to dilute it to drink it), houmous, tinned beans/lentils, and walked past long aisles of brightly coloured frozen pizzas, frozen ice cream, confectionery, biscuits, Easter seasonal sweet treats and high sugar high carb high calorie high caffeine processed foods I can't have on my Type 2 Diabetes weight loss diet... One unexpected highlight was fresh root ginger for cooking and herbal teas, and small Solevita cans of organic ginger turmeric shots containing fruit juice and no refined sugar, which can be diluted in iced teas, and are healthy energy drinks which don't contain caffeine, in moderation... Yes there's lots of choices, but acually very limited options with dietary and lifestyle preferences and personally I would prefer remission with boring diet than lifetime of medication and often judgmental Type 2 diabetes healthcare appointments with comments like "it's easy to manage diabetes and lose weight, just healthy diet and exercise, really simple!"... Ugh!
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Yes, that's all I get from my Diabetic Nurse and GP. I have never received any dietary advice from the NHS. I just read and learn. I no longer visit supermarkets for the very reasons you mention! I shop online, saves a couple of hours too. Good luck
 
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