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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.
at some point, we're going to start setting these kids on fire when they try to publish stupid shit like this instead of giving it media attention.
Poor people eat more processed foods. Poor people die sooner.
if they were doing an ACTUAL study, instead of this nonsense? they'd be feeding rats different types of food and studying their life cycles.
(hint: that's been done, i'll let you find it though! the results may shock you!)
Pass me another can of pasteurized processed spray cheese food product so I can take myself out before it gets any worse.
Nitrates in processed meat are heavily linked to bowel cancer.
Studies on salt itself say too much salt affects some people negatively, but not all.
This is race related. East Asians tend to be the least sensitive to salt, sub-Saharan Africans the most sensitive, and Caucasians in between. This correlates with the historical availability of salt. In much of Asia it has been available and affordable for millennia. In Africa, it was historically difficult to obtain. So Asians evolved to excrete salt, while Africans evolved to retain it.
... directly correlates with my current diet. When I force myself / see to it that I cook myself and eat healthy and ad in an amount of fresh veggies and similar foods and reduce sugar (the only substance I'm addicted to) I am more "awake" than usual. That effect kicks in noticably after a week or so.
The more processed foods are, the more unhealthy you're living. To me that's evident in quite a few ways.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Back in the 90's, rBST was given to cows en masse', and while it increased milk yields, it also made the cows sick and would result in milk that sometimes had a double digit percentage of pus, blood and other nastyness. Suffice to say, during this time a bunch of people began getting sick from Dairy-related foods and wierdly enough, you started seeing studies correlating dairy products to every ailment from Cancer to Diabetis. I used to get hemmoroids and diahrhea from drinking milk and when I cut dairy I felt a lot better. I cut it for about 6 or 7 years then found out the organic products didn't give me issues.
Apparently enough people found enough problems with the milk they were drinking they did the same, hence organic foods were born.
In the 00's, the same thing was repeated with corn syrup. Monsanto released their roundup product which was used on corn for ethanol production, companies moved to corn syrup from sugar because it was less expensive, and the refined syrup had a concentration of pesticides. People got sick from corn syrup, studies began linking it to cancer and diabetis and all sorts of things, and people began eliminating it from their diets. Some people went "gluten free". In my case I never had corn syrup in my diet so I never had issues, but lots of people did.
The lessons to be learned is, it isn't cooks or chefs or scientists that run food companies.
It's accountants.
And to them, you and your health is just a number, and they will fight tooth and nail and everything inbetween to force food down your throat that will make you fat, mentally ill, and sick because they think they have a right, not the privelage, of a market share.
Go look on a milk carton sometime. They'll have "No rBST" and then a legal disclaimer.
These people are nuts.
Personally, I am losing faith in the entire food industry and going back to basics. It really takes a hell of a lot of effort to mess up fruits and vegitables.
Most processed foods are engineered to be hyper palatable and include added sucrose. They also commonly contain zero, or nearly zero fiber. Highly refined starches can also present a challenge to the human metabolic system.
I really wonder how many of the maladies of old age are actually deficiency disorders.
Vitamins were discovered when someone figured out that people going months without eating Vitamin C got sick. Someone empirically figured out that eating citrus fruit staved off scurvy and that led to the discovery of Vitamin C. Other vitamins are also important but take longer before a deficiency makes you sick.
Natural food has all kinds of stuff in it and I wonder if some of it is healthy in really subtle ways that take a very long time to show up.
Also, processed foods lack fiber, and you need some in your diet, to help your body control cholesterols.
Finally, omega 3: I read a book called Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill that claims that omega 3 fatty acids are essential to health but at least 95% of people in North America don't get enough of it. Omega 3 is not found in processed foods, because omega 3 oils go rancid very quickly. Before processed foods, everyone got omega 3 naturally (for example, by eating fish or eating meat from grass-fed cattle) but these days people get very little, and get other kinds of oils instead. Since your body is made from what you eat, if you don't eat enough omega 3, your body has to use the other oils and it doesn't work as well. The book claims that while our bodies can't make omega 3, our bodies can convert it from one form to another; so it would suffice to eat only fish oil or only flax oil or whatever and trust the body to convert DHA to GLA or whatever.
My wife and I buy flax oil blend and use it to make salad dressing; it's a painless way to add omega 3 to your diet.
Simple salad dressing recipe:
3-4 tablespoons of oil (flax oil, or olive oil)
1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar (or any other vinegar you like)
sea salt to taste
black pepper to taste
We measure into a convenient cup, then whisk with a small wire whisk. It's fast and easy. We have figured out how many cranks of the pepper mill or how many twists of the sea salt grinder measure out the amount we like so it's a quick grind-and-count, no need to use measuring spoons for the salt and pepper.
Sometimes we put in some tomato paste; you can buy tomato paste in a tube, and it's a handy way to add just a little bit when making just enough dressing for a couple of salads. Or garlic powder or any other spice that suits your taste. It's easy to tweak the recipe. We don't bother buying pre-made salad dressing anymore.
We used to buy omega-3 chocolate truffles. They were expensive but were a tasty way to add omega-3 to our diets. Sadly the manufacturer no longer makes them... I think they were too expensive and didn't sell fast enough.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
* On the shelf longer
* Less of certain vitamins and minerals
I think that eventually it is a combination of factors. That said, nutrition is about more than just the 3 food groups (carbs, fats, protein) with some vitamins and minerals tossed in.
One of the things needed for proper digestion and absorption of nutrients is enzymes. Lots are available especially in raw foods, but they are quite heat sensitive and temperatures of 60 or 70 degrees Celsius destroy them. Which is good if you want long shelf life, since they (by definition) help with the breakdown/rotting process.
Another factor that allegedly, according to some dieticians' writings, is present in raw produce is termed "hydrophilic colloids". I'm not sure about the accuracy of the term, but these are claimed to be substances that enhance the water solubility of other nutrients, also improving absorption of nutrients. Also destroyed by heat and thus not present in processed foods.
Then there's the whole intestinal population of flora, also playing a role in digestion. Many raw vegetables carry with them lactobacillus and other species which is part of the plant's natural defenses. Hence the traditional ability to pickle foods via fermentation of their own microbes, without the addition of other cultures. Plus the prebiotic substances that these microorganisms consume as food.
In short, you can't really get around adding fresh veggies and fruit to your meals.
It is difficult to sift through all the health hype and scientifically quantify each factor, but I think it is safe to say that having a diet of which around half (or more) consists of raw produce (which corresponds with the advice of a dietician I once consulted) would be close to optimal. The traditional way of preserving foods (before cooling, preservative chemicals and industrial processing became available) - in other words fermented foods, would probably also add some small measure to proper nutrition, with the provision that these foods are prepared via traditional/homemade methods, and not industrial shortcuts.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.