Yes, I've begun translating "ultra-processed foods" to "junk food". It's roughly the same meaning and roughly the same amount of scientific rigor. UPF sounds scientific and specific but it's neither.
OTOH everybody intuitively understands junk food is bad for you, has a rough idea of what it is and that the definition is circular.
This is giving the "ultra-processed" term too much credit. Organic is at least pretty explicitly specified by the USDA (even if that definition is perhaps not what most people think or expect when they read the term).
Ultra-processed doesn't even have a single, consistent definition.
Agreed. I hope these terms go away. I think what people tend to mean is "calorie dense, low in nutrients, low in fiber", or something along those lines, and the term "processed" makes it far more confusing.
"Processed" ends up meaning anything from "high in sugar" to "long shelf life" or "one of a dozen kinds of artificial sweetener" etc. It does more harm than good.
I can have an extremely high fiber, high protein, nutritionally well rounded meal that's also "ultra processed".
Someone mentioned Nova. Nova is a PERFECT example of how god awful the term is. When asked to classify foods into Nova categories there is almost no agreement amongst nutritionists.
Time after time, Nova is shown to be more confusing than helpful, with worse than random results. Nova itself doesn't even attempt to correlate with "healthy".
> there is almost no agreement amongst nutritionists
Neither is there for speciation. Doesn’t make the term or concept useless. And doesn’t mean we can’t make useful statements about one species versus another, even if it gets blurry at the edges.
That's a perfect example of the problem. It's overgeneralized to the point of meaninglessness.
It asserts that UPF is bad because they tend to result in quicker absorption, amongst many other things. So why not say quick absorbing food is bad for you, and why use a definition that also includes food that is processed to absorb slower?
Then repeat across several other characteristics. Few UPF foods will bingo on all characteristics and a lot of non-UPF foods will bingo on many of the same characteristics.
I was thinking of the example of crisps which are basically potatoes with oil and salt, baked. If you are going to call baking ultra processing then it would include rather a lot of things.
> "Ultra-processed foods" isn't a scientific concept
This is like arguing astronomy isn’t real because colloquial definitions of space are ambiguous.
The study [1] uses a definition that finds a significant effect. We should investigate that further. If it pans out and the term ultra-processed food triggers people, we can rebrand it. (Did the cigarette lobby ever try muddying the water on what cigarettes are?)
Presumably, since the first citation in the paper is said epidemiologist (Monteiro), this is the framework they rely on.
Unless you’re intent on scientific gatekeeping, in which case having actually read the reported study (it’s linked in the article fyi) would have offered much more effective methods of rebuttal than semantic quibbles.
It's not gatekeeping to point out that multiple studies have shown that Nova is a perfect example of "no one agrees on what processed foods are". Even when given Nova criteria, nutritionists repeatedly, across studies, fail to agree on categorization.
Nova also does not even attempt to categorize in terms of health because "processed" has nothing to do with "healthy" despite being used in conversations about public health. Absolutely perfect example of how bad the term "processed" is.
bryanlarsen|26 days ago
OTOH everybody intuitively understands junk food is bad for you, has a rough idea of what it is and that the definition is circular.
xracy|26 days ago
rsanek|26 days ago
Ultra-processed doesn't even have a single, consistent definition.
staticassertion|26 days ago
"Processed" ends up meaning anything from "high in sugar" to "long shelf life" or "one of a dozen kinds of artificial sweetener" etc. It does more harm than good.
I can have an extremely high fiber, high protein, nutritionally well rounded meal that's also "ultra processed".
Someone mentioned Nova. Nova is a PERFECT example of how god awful the term is. When asked to classify foods into Nova categories there is almost no agreement amongst nutritionists.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-022-01099-1 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8181985/
Time after time, Nova is shown to be more confusing than helpful, with worse than random results. Nova itself doesn't even attempt to correlate with "healthy".
JumpCrisscross|26 days ago
Neither is there for speciation. Doesn’t make the term or concept useless. And doesn’t mean we can’t make useful statements about one species versus another, even if it gets blurry at the edges.
fhdjfjkafk|26 days ago
Redirect your energy toward something useful.
46493168|26 days ago
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0009.70066
Which variables are conflated?
bryanlarsen|26 days ago
It asserts that UPF is bad because they tend to result in quicker absorption, amongst many other things. So why not say quick absorbing food is bad for you, and why use a definition that also includes food that is processed to absorb slower?
Then repeat across several other characteristics. Few UPF foods will bingo on all characteristics and a lot of non-UPF foods will bingo on many of the same characteristics.
tim333|26 days ago
JumpCrisscross|26 days ago
This is like arguing astronomy isn’t real because colloquial definitions of space are ambiguous.
The study [1] uses a definition that finds a significant effect. We should investigate that further. If it pans out and the term ultra-processed food triggers people, we can rebrand it. (Did the cigarette lobby ever try muddying the water on what cigarettes are?)
[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0009.70066
kelipso|26 days ago
michaelhoney|26 days ago
wryoak|26 days ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification
Presumably, since the first citation in the paper is said epidemiologist (Monteiro), this is the framework they rely on.
Unless you’re intent on scientific gatekeeping, in which case having actually read the reported study (it’s linked in the article fyi) would have offered much more effective methods of rebuttal than semantic quibbles.
staticassertion|26 days ago
Nova also does not even attempt to categorize in terms of health because "processed" has nothing to do with "healthy" despite being used in conversations about public health. Absolutely perfect example of how bad the term "processed" is.