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Ultra-Processed Foods May Be Linked To Cancer, Says Study (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Ultra-processed" foods, made in factories with ingredients unknown to the domestic kitchen, may be linked to cancer, according to a large and groundbreaking study. Ultra-processed foods include pot noodles, shelf-stable ready meals, cakes and confectionery which contain long lists of additives, preservatives, flavorings and colorings -- as well as often high levels of sugar, fat and salt. They now account for half of all the food bought by families eating at home in the UK, as the Guardian recently revealed. A team, led by researchers based at the Sorbonne in Paris, looked at the medical records and eating habits of nearly 105,000 adults who are part of the French NutriNet-Sante cohort study, registering their usual intake of 3,300 different food items. They found that a 10% increase in the amount of ultra-processed foods in the diet was linked to a 12% increase in cancers of some kind. The researchers also looked to see whether there were increases in specific types of cancer and found a rise of 11% in breast cancer, although no significant upturn in colorectal or prostate cancer. "If confirmed in other populations and settings, these results suggest that the rapidly increasing consumption of ultra-processed foods may drive an increasing burden of cancer in the next decades," says the paper in the British Medical Journal.
Deaths from Botulism or food poisoning like Cholera?
The trade off is living long enough to get cancer.
Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
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Useless conclusion.... Is it the ingredients in 'ultra processed' foods that cause cancer, or overall poor lifestyle choices made my the types of people who consume a lot of this type of food? Or maybe something else all together?
Scott
it is. I mean that. Especially if you live in a cheap apartment with a crappy kitchen. I do, and I cook most of my meals and it sucks. Your stove takes forever to heat up. Your burners don't heat evenly so you have to set them and let the pans hit for 10-15 minutes or your food cooks unevenly. The stove never stays level either. Your microwave is cheap and your fridge small. Your freezer smaller
If I make a meal of eggs, potatoes & some pancakes from scratch (minus the pancake mix, which is pre made) I need to plan on a little over an hour. 10-15 minutes to heat the pans. 5 minutes to mix the pancake batter (you can't mix it until just before you use it or it screws up the pancake texture). 15 minutes to cook the pancakes (one at a time, since I only have 1 full sized burner) 5 to cook the eggs (I'm not a good cook, so if I try to juggle the eggs and pancakes I burn one or the other) meanwhile the potatoes are cooking for about 30 minutes while being flipped periodically. Then I need to sit down and eat (15-20 minutes) and then clean up (10 minutes). Of course, I have to wait at least 30 minutes to an hour to clean since the pans need to cool or they'll warp. And you can't leave the pans sitting around, especially in an apartment. You'll get roaches. Lots of them. And ants.
Then there's the cost of fresh food. If it's not on sale it's expensive. If it is on sale it's about to go bad. You can freeze meat, but vegetables & fruits don't freeze well (fruit it tolerable in smoothies but nothing else). Packaged dinners are a great buy because they keep for months. I can buy them when they're on sale, stock up and save. I can't do that with Bananas. They're worm food in 5 days tops.
There's a reason why women used to be home bound. Food preparation was a full time job. As pay decreases they moved into the workforce largely to make up the difference. Processed foods made that possible. But wages keep going down. So we need foods that need less and less prep time and cost less and less. There are consequences.
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I liked that the article talked about the term "ultra-processed" and the pros and cons of using it. On the one hand, it's fairly well established that many forms of processing are harmful, and having degrees of processing as a broad category might be useful. By using an umbrella term like that, you can avoid many of the problems with bullshit statistical studies: "Green M&M's are 95% likely to cause cancer."
On the other hand...this is basically a "common knowledge" study which serves no purpose and tells me nothing at all. Gee, "Hungry Man Salisbury Steak" dinners are bad for me? Shocking. I'm fucking stunned by your scientific revelation. Which parts of the processing are most harmful? Should I skip that damned brownie that never cooks properly? Are ensure or soylent "ultra processed?" Oh, you don't know? Thanks for nothing.
https://xkcd.com/882/
After you’re dead, your family doesn’t have to rush as much to make sure you’re buried before you start to decompose.
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Or option 3, each normal food.
It's not potnoodle OR botulism, as if they're the only choices.
at least where I am those are _very_ expensive. I can go to a restaurant for the cost. My one saving grace is Trader Joe's dough balls. I can make two pizza meals out of that for about $6 or $7 bucks (vegetables instead of cheap processed meats). It's still time consuming. It takes me a long time to cut the vegetables, toss the dough and get everything assembled. If I count for the trip time to buy ingredients about 90 minutes. But at least I get two meals out of it.
Fish is OK too, but with mercury I can't eat that much of it (I'm in the States, not sure about the rest of the world but here you have to keep it to about once a week). A fish fry takes forever. I could cut the time down though with a better deep fryer. A bit of salmon pan fried isn't too bad, but it kinda stinks up the whole apartment. And it's got the same pan heating delay as the pancakes.
I don't generally eat meat, especially the cheap stuff. Mostly because I never cared much for the stuff, but also it keeps me away from fast food. A lot of the quick and dirty meals out there are just frying up some beef. It's hard to screw that up. Chicken's a lot harder since it's easy to cook it until it's dry and tasteless. I tried for years to cook it for my kid and could never get the hang of it. But part of that is my crap stove. I used to live in a house with a decent stove before moving for work and it was a _lot_ easier. I miss having a gas range. There's a reason cooks swear by it. You can use a high end electric range too (Induction? I forget) but you're not going to find those in any apartment I could afford. Maybe after my Kid's out of college I can finally buy a house again. That 2008 market crash still stings.
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Can't I just say no to Botulism _and_ cancer?
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except you've loaded your post with a remark questioning the moral character ("lifestyle choices") of the people who rely on over processed food. I'm not even sure you know you're doing it. But it's basically dismissing the issue by claiming its the fault of the person impacted. The same logic was used against smokers while cigarette companies were hiding the dangers involved. Again, don't take this the wrong way. You might not even realize the message you're conveying, but if you don't then, well, you do now, and need to think about it in context.
Moreover, there's tons of evidence these chemicals are bad for you. You will _never_ find a doctor who says they're A-Ok. At least not one that isn't on the payroll of one of the companies hawking this stuff. The question isn't so much "are they bad for you" it's "how bad and why".
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I just tried the same thing with some water and it didn't melt either. It even ruined the lighter. If it can do that, just imagine what it's doing to your body. That's a lot of damage!
Modern decaffeination is done with super-critical CO2. It's effective and doesn't alter the quality of the food. That's the point of using it; it doesn't ruin the flavor or texture of the beans/leaves. Contrast this with, say, orange juice, where they have to add in "flavor packs" after processing.
What a silly reason to avoid something. Almost as silly as pretending "processed" means something. It means nothing. And, like "toxins", its usage is strongly correlated with how much chemistry a person does not know.
Counterpoint. I have one word for you: snails. When is the last time anyone from England looked down at something slimy that crawls on the ground and thought, "I bet that would go great with butter and shallots?"
Besides, the French invented canning (appertisation), which is practically the foundation of modern processed foods.
If there's a culinary moral high ground, I'm pretty sure the French aren't standing on it any more than the Brits or us Yanks. Just saying. :-)
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...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
The constitution isn't like the laws of thermodynamics; it was created by people it can be changed by people.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If a man (or a woman) works in say a mine, eight hour a day, with a heavy hammer, then he can eat about anything he wants.
Putting aside the "healthy" mining job for a moment, no they cannot merely eat anything they want. That may maintain one's weight, but weight is not the only metric when measuring ones overall health and risk of cancer.
But it is very different for an office worker. The problem is that we engineered out the physical movement from our lives. And any food becomes dangerous in such circumstances. The best way to deal with it is to widen sidewalks, build bicycle trails, nice stairs in buildings, etc. So that we can start move again regularly.
If an active lifestyle would actually enable you to exercise the risk of cancer away, we wouldn't hear of people getting cancer in countries where most citizens are active, and do not suffer from an obesity epidemic. This is not the case, and reducing or eliminating the risk of cancer starts with eliminating the habit of putting poison in our bodies via the food we consume. There is a reason that the medical community beats the Diet and Exercise drum, because both are required to maintain a healthy life, and one cannot be merely eliminated by the other.
They found that a 10% increase in the amount of ultra-processed foods in the diet was linked to a 12% increase in cancers of some kind. The researchers also looked to see whether there were increases in specific types of cancer and found a rise of 11% in breast cancer, although no significant upturn in colorectal or prostate cancer.
It's the fatness of the people eating the food, not the "ultra-processed foods".
Uh, a diet of "ultra-processed" food usually causes obesity. There's a rather obvious correlation there when you shove SHIT food in your body all day vs. eating raw/non-processed foods.
The fact that breast cancer rates elevate and other, more common cancers aren't should be the dead give away.
There's nothing that is a dead give away here when talking about three cancers out of dozens. It took us half a century to admit and accept that cigarettes cause cancer. We now understand that excess sugar creates diabetics, and excess amounts of sodium creates high blood pressure. Is it really going to take another few decades of study for us to admit and accept that processed food should be avoided? I sure as hell hope not.
Some people miss the point. While they're busy cowering in fear of everything that can give them cancer, cowardly people think that to live the LONGEST life is and should be the goal of every person, and not making sure to enjoy life. Pussies worry about making it last as long as humanly possible might think they're enjoying life. OTHER people, incomprehensibly to the weak, actually LIVE and enjoy life, and aren't giving themselves stomach ulcers worrying about how many seconds they have left to live. The cowards want to live to be over a hundred years old, without, ironically, actually LIVING during that entire century, while people getting fingers wagged at them for living a "unhealthy" life-style, often aren't worried about that kind of bullshit; they drink, they smoke, they fuck, they often die young, and they aren't scared to death of dying, like all the whiny little cunts eating yogurt and kale, and telling themselves over and over again how great their tiny, empty, meaningless little lives are.
LIVE A LITTLE. Eat Cheetos, Ding Dongs, and drink Coke on occasion, smoke once in a while; cigs, weed, whatever, get drunk, and enjoy life! Don't worry too much about the consequences, because let me tell you something. No matter what you do, life is 100% fatal, you are going to be just as dead, for just as long, and no matter what the fuck you do, after you're dead, little will be different because you were alive within even one generation, and within ten, you and everything you touched will be dust--dead, gone, and forgotten. Also, don't forget we could all die any fucking minute because someone let a fucking reality-show retard and his crime-family pretend to run this country, and they could provoke a world-ending nuclear conflagration at any second, or kill us all out of sheer incompetence, plus they're studiously pretending we are not destroying the Earth with our greed, stupidity and wastefulness, which we so totally and obviously are to anyone who isn't a complete fucking moron, so even if you avoid every possible carcinogen, every virus, every pathogenic bacterium... you're still totally going to die, and in the history of the human race, it will be in about a blink of an eye. In geological time, the Earth will never even notice we were here, so...
Fuck it, Dude. Let's go bowl.
The concept of "ultra-processed" seems similar to the precision in "non-natural" processing - processing that isn't commonly done in nature or traditional cooking methods.
Without actually defining _why_ some type of processing should be considered ultra-processed and some others shouldn't I can't see this as a homogeneous group without some "natural magic" added. And nature isn't magical.
One very common example of ultra-processed (using the vague definition given) is pre-processed starches of which there are many variants. One that is commonly used is pre-gelled starch: one takes a starch and treats it like it would be when cooked (heating in water) which generates a gel which is then dried and pulverized. This means that when one add the processed starch into water it will produce a gel without needing heating and with much less tendency to clump.
Doing this saves time but gives the exact same result as if one would take a non-processed starch, add it to a water-based liquid and then heating the result!
That fact haven't stopped people claiming that using this kind of processed starch is somehow bad, if not in some magic non-natural way then as a way of "cheating" consumers from properly prepared food.
You see folks, I once tried burning cheese using a lighter flame. Guess what; I didn't melt! At that point, I threw out all the cheese I had and have never bought any again. It's been 7 years now.
In a similar vein I stopped buying orange juice that isn't fresh squeezed from oranges right in front of me. Basically most orange juice sold these days is stored in oxygen free vats for up to a year which removes all the flavor and then the "flavor" is reintroduced using so called flavor packs which ensures it all tastes exactly the same. I'm not a fussy eater but I'll just make my own orange juice if I want some thanks.
Yes I'm aware that a lot of stuff we eat is probably similarly disgusting but gotta start somewhere right?
Eggs are heavily cleaned in the US.
This is true and not necessarily a good thing. It's also arguably unnecessary if you design the supply chain properly. As evidence see how eggs are handled in other countries without the same amount of washing. Most places in the world do not bother with the expensive cleaning and refrigeration systems the US supply chain requires.
In the US, the entire supply chain from post clean to shopping cart has to be germ free.
Not even remotely true and not possible either. The supply chain does have safe food handling regulations including cleaning and refrigeration and testing but safe handling does not equal germ free. If it was germ free it would be FAR more expensive.
Now the US egg lasts a lot longer because it's been sterilized and sits in a sterile environment.
A) They aren't sterilized. Some (but not all) eggs are pasteurized which isn't the same thing. Those that aren't are cleaned but nothing remotely close to sterile.
B) Eggs are most certainly not stored in a sterile environment nor are they handled in a sterile manner in most of the supply chain. Especially once they reach the grocery store. People open literally almost every egg carton to ensure no breakage prior to purchase so they are a LONG way from sterile by the time you get your hands on them.
C) Eggs in the US demonstrably do not last longer and because of how they are processed they have to be refrigerated which is not required other places. I own chickens and eggs that aren't cleaned (which removes the protective coatings) actually can sit on a counter for weeks without ill effect even without refrigeration. US eggs are refrigerated which makes a difference but you can refrigerate uncleaned eggs too and get the same effect. Once you refrigerate an egg though it has to stay refrigerated until you use it.
I am not sure how old you are, or where your "reality" comes from. Marxism was a big thing in the 1940's and 1950's. Feminism is far older it was big in the 1920's and 1930's, but had its origins earlier than that. Your grandparents probably took Hollywood more seriously than people do today.
People have been campaigning for social justice since at least the time of Jesus Christ, and probably even earlier - you might remember a guy called Moses saying "let my people go". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzDw1QF-9ko? Not all people trying to stop their surroundings being actively destroyed are "Ecology-Nazis" although clearly some are.
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Try to live like your grandparents did.
Eat a lot of fried food, use butter and/or animal fat when cooking just about everything, and smoke unfiltered cigarettes?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Mass shootings could never occur in Paris because guns are forbidden there.
Years ago we bought cheese and made pizza but whatever brand it was was absolutely terrible. The was a plastic film covering the melted "cheese". Needless to say, we didn't eat it and got a refund.
They're called "cheese slices", and you're supposed to take them out of the plastic wrappers before you put them on the pizza.
I personally like not having to clean the chicken shit from my eggs when I get home from the store.
So don't clean it off. Seriously, it isn't necessary except in rare cases and it's unlikely to harm you in any way. Washing in many cases actually increases the risk of getting salmonella and other pathogens into the egg so I prefer eggs that are actually safe and produced with best practices. 90+% of the world doesn't wash eggs the way they do in the US and they get similar to better results. A lot of egg producers vaccinate their birds against salmonella.
I raise my own chickens and eat the eggs they lay. Sometimes the shells have a little poop on them and there is vast evidence that this does not present a serious health risk if the birds and eggs are handled properly. If this grosses you out then you are a bit of a weenie and you aren't basing your behavior on actual evidence.