Slashdot Mirror
Eating Processed Foods Tied To Shorter Life, Study Suggests (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The study, in JAMA Internal Medicine, tracked diet and health over eight years in more than 44,000 French men and women. Their average age was 58 at the start. About 29 percent of their energy intake was ultraprocessed foods. Such foods include instant noodles and soups, breakfast cereals, energy bars and drinks, chicken nuggets and many other ready-made meals and packaged snacks containing numerous ingredients and manufactured using industrial processes. There were 602 deaths over the course of the study, mostly from cancer and cardiovascular disease. Even after adjusting for many health, socioeconomic and behavioral characteristics, including scores on a scale of compliance with a healthy diet, the study found that for every 10 percent increase in ultraprocessed food consumption, there was a 14 percent increase in the risk of death (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). The authors suggest that high-temperature processing may form contaminants, that additives may be carcinogenic, and that the packaging of prepared foods can lead to contamination.
Nobody really knows why "processed foods" cause harm. Studies on salt itself say too much salt affects some people negatively, but not all. Salt sensitivity can usually be detected with specific tests. And lower-processed foods are often also salty. Being heavily processed by itself doesn't mean it automatically has more salt.
As the intro hinted, the exact cause is only speculation at this point. Further studies would be needed to isolate the offending trait(s). Candidate factors include but are not limited to:
* More alleged salt
* More MSG
* More alleged oil/fat
* Less fiber and "roughage"
* Longer cooking period
* More preservatives and "odd" chemicals
* More frying
* On the shelf longer
* Less of certain vitamins and minerals
Table-ized A.I.
Nobody really knows why "processed foods" cause harm. Studies on salt itself say too much salt affects some people negatively, but not all. Salt sensitivity can usually be detected with specific tests. And lower-processed foods are often also salty. Being heavily processed by itself doesn't mean it automatically has more salt.
As the intro hinted, the exact cause is only speculation at this point. Further studies would be needed to isolate the offending trait(s). Candidate factors include but are not limited to:
* More alleged salt
* More MSG
* More alleged oil/fat
* Less fiber and "roughage"
* Longer cooking period
* More preservatives and "odd" chemicals
* More frying
* On the shelf longer
* Less of certain vitamins and minerals
There are well researched mechanisms:
1) The increased GIP/GLP-1 ratio from finely processed foods (as in chopped up or pureed) promoting insulin resistance.
2) The low F/N ratio fats (aka seed oils) used in western food preparation, impairing satiety signaling by impairing RET.
3) The absence of DHA and EPA, so the body keeps up the hunger till it gets enough. Eat that fatty fishy to feel full quicker.
The strawmen you list are the domain of uninformed speculation.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Poor people eat more processed foods. Poor people die sooner.
In India, it's the wealthier people that can afford more processed foods, and they are the ones getting sick. The poor get low quality food, but at least they aren't overeating.
they'd be feeding rats different types of food and studying their life cycles
Last common ancestor between humans and rats is 75 million years old. Last common ancestor between sheep and whales is only 50 million years old, but nobody would say that we should do nutrition studies on sheep to figure out the best diet for a whale.
You are so, so arrogant...
They are not stupid. They are aware of those correlations, and accounted for them. From the abstract:
"Ultraprocessed foods consumption was associated with younger age (45-64 years, mean [SE] proportion of food in weight, 14.50% [0.04%]; P.001), lower income (€1200/mo, 15.58% [0.11%]; P.001), lower educational level (no diploma or primary school, 15.50% [0.16%]; P.001), living alone (15.02% [0.07%]; P.001), higher body mass index (calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared; 30, 15.98% [0.11%]; P.001), and lower physical activity level (15.56% [0.08%]; P.001). A total of 602 deaths (1.4%) occurred during follow-up. After adjustment for a range of confounding factors, an increase in the proportion of ultraprocessed foods consumed was associated with a higher risk of all-cause mortality"
You have a kernel of an idea, but I can't help but think that you're coming from a bias.
Certainly it's possible that "some unidentified, or thought irrelevant, deficiency could contribute to ill health later in life" is certainly possible.
However, all food is "natural", using such wording makes me doubt the origin of your viewpoint. All food is natural. There's no such thing as synthetic food, in essence. Just processed or unprocessed.
Thus it's a question of whether that process affects the food negatively or not. Unfortunately the study stands alone in a sea of other studies that find that the benefits of processed food (i.e. no bugs, no diseases, food safety standards, wide range of foods available in the shops year round) basically outweigh any processing downsides so long as the consumer is sensible. It's much more a "consumer habit makes them get sick" than anything else, rather than laying the blame at processed foods in themselves.
However, the study (which is based on web-reporting of people's food habits, and some of those people barely contributed at all) also finds that the deaths are cancer and cardiovascular disease. Cancers are basically what you die of if you die of nothing else. They are inherent, ever-present, virtually inevitable (unless you're a certain species of lobster, etc.), etc.
Omega-3, in particular, is another snake-oil term from the "health" food industry. Like fibre, vitamin C and many other things, including oxygen - being DEFICIENT in it isn't good for you. But consuming more of it doesn't make you healthier. There are more studies concluding "Dietary supplementation with omegaâ'3 fatty acids does not appear to affect the risk of death, cancer or heart disease." than anything to the contrary, for instance. The EU's official line is "contributes to the normal function of the heart" (which appears a lot in our health adverts as they aren't allowed to claim things that can't be proven - if you read that sentence carefully it basically means "Yeah, you need some, that's about it")
There were many hypotheses saying that Omega-3 is what caused us to evolve from wading animals to super-brain predators, but that's nowhere near true either. Probably it helped, having access to sea-food, but it's not an automatic "makes your brain better" food or else blue whales and sharks would be the cleverest things on Earth - all that fresh Omega-3!
Again - necessary, but not super-boosting just because you eat more.
The basic rule of any health nutrient is "the difference between 'normal' and what happens if you don't have it doesn't mean it'll give you those benefits again ON TOP of normal by having it". More fibre isn't better than normal amounts. More sugar isn't better than normal amounts. Similarly no-sugar isn't better than normal amounts. And "normal amounts" are widely publicised, heavily tested, and also subject to millions of years of evolutionary selection - we call it hunger.
The reason your manufacturer no longer makes "Omega-3 chocolate truffles"? They were a processed food that likely eliminated most of the Omega-3 in their production (like any processed food), and then the hype around Omega-3 died off and nobody bought them.
Honestly, if you haven't read up on this stuff, you shouldn't be offering nutritional advice (I'm not offering nutritional advice either - I'm asking people to exercise caution and, ironically, take every health-fad with a pinch of salt).
The recommended diets are there, heavily researched and tested down to every individual component. They don't mention extremes of Omega-3 or anything else like that, nor do they say "don't eat any processed food". That's your current science. Any parroting of something that sounds like something a "health food shop" checkout girl would tell you is likely to be proven nonsense after the fad has worn off.
But your original line - that's probably right. It's not much use to us, however, if people just don't eat the right diet in the first place.