[david_draco]

The words "good" and "very bad" indicate that the world is less important to that person than themselves. I'd be okay with a bit of personal harm if it helps against climate change.

Ultra-processed food does not have an agreed-upon definition, and is the new "junk food" with the pretense of being more scientific. Is bread and pizza ultra-processed food? Studies do not agree on their definitions, sometimes including ingredient lists, sometimes not, sometimes it is required that the product is made in small shops with love and not in large factories. The mechanism of how ultra-processed food are supposed to cause harm remains undefined.

[abdullahkhalids]

> Ultra-processed food does not have an agreed-upon definition

The United Nations Food and Agriculture authority have designed the NOVA classification of food[1, 2], which includes ultra-processed food as a category.

[1] https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/527...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification

[WA]

NOVA is criticized to be unscientific: https://afgc.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/UPF-Scientifi...

[parasti]

I read "cancer" in between the lines of that comment. So the characterization of (potentially) that backdrop as "a bit of personal harm" feels wildly overassuming.

[dfxm12]

If one is truly worried about both, they don't have to eat beyond meat though. They can eat rice and beans. Eating rice and beans instead of both conventional and beyond meat is bad for beyond meat, too, I guess.

[baby]

Ultra processed food is food you wouldn't be able to make at home from whole ingredients. It's easy to make bread and pizza.

[gizmo686]

I might be able to figure out how to grind wheat into flour for bread. Maybe I can squint hard enough to consider baking yeast to be a "whole ingredient". But cheese? I assume I can probably figure it out with the internet, but it is not at all obvious what goes into that. And the milk I would use almost certainly went through an industrial sterilization process that I know I am not equipped to so.

[UncleMeat]

And yet, pizza regularly appears on lists of "ultra processed" foods. As do potato chips and ice cream, two foods that are also very easy to make at home from whole ingredients.

There is no consistent definition and people regularly bend over backward to put all "junk food" in this category.

[pacifika]

You can debate semantics / definitions or make an assessment and get most of the benefit.

[rat9988]

He is saying that the assessment is wrongly done.

[mjevans]

I was extremely dismayed when that supermarket simulator game that got popular on Twitch called 'pizza' something along the line of 'frozen dessert pie'...

At least the way it tends to get made in the US, a sugary pastry that's stuffed full of sugar, carbs, fats and cheese? Ok yeah, my favorite foods are _all_ terrible for me and I can't eat them anymore. This makes me very sad.

[pacifika]

Why not make pizza at home?

[timeon]

One does not need to eat these "ultra-processed" foods when reducing meat consumption.

[dokyun]

> The words "good" and "very bad" indicate that the world is less important to that person than themselves. I'd be okay with a bit of personal harm if it helps against climate change.

Yeah, no shit? We're not ants in a colony. I think you're pretty stupid if you're alright with harming yourself while achieving nothing. If you wanna risk your life for a cause then take direct action, eating processed slop and pretending to feel good about it is only gonna make both your world and mine shittier.

[KempyKolibri]

The thing is, we don’t even have good evidence that UPF is necessarily harmful. Whey protein is UPF, but is associated with positive outcomes. Mass produced wholemeal bread is UPF, but is associated with good outcomes.

I’m not convinced that the “UPF” category adds anything useful over “HFSS” at this point. Happy to be pushed off my view, but seen nothing that would do so thus far.