The mechanism is plausible and the preliminary studies seem suggestive, but I read the article and I still can't tell you a workable definition of "processed", nor what the mechanism is beyond "artificial sweeteners screw with satiety" and "junk supermarket food is high in calories". The latter is clearly irrelevant since the studies referenced presumably keep caloric intake constant in an inpatient hospital setting. The former is a result I remember reading about as a teenager literally decades ago. So what is the article pitching?
What is "processing" and how does it contribute to confusing gut-brain signalling? The article lists kinds of food that we all agree are "processed", but I have no idea why I think they're "processed" the same way a dumb ML model might correctly classify something as a cow while having a nonsense mapping from feature space to outcome.
Not trolling. Can someone list a set of specific ingredients or techniques which are constituent of "processing", and how these things are connected to the article's mechanism? I am aware of past mixed research on artificial sweeteners and satiety, but clearly that's both an older finding and a mixed one, so the article is alluding to something more that isn't explained.
I read the article very carefully for that definition, and found that the conclusion of the study is nothing more and nothing less than "processed foods make you want to eat more" and that's what caused them to gain weight. They didn't control for calorie intake at all.
I feel dumber having bothered to read it. News flash, food that tastes good makes people want to eat more of it and that will make you gain weight. Film at 11.
Shit I could have told them that. Every last Cajun in Lafayette is bigger than a whale, why? Because Cajun food is the best damn tasting food in the whole country.
They should have added in my grandma's rice dressing and seafood gumbo as a third category. Would have blown 'processed food' right out of the water.
If you're correct and the pitch is simply that the category "processed" means "high calories relative to satiety", then the pitch is tautologically true and maybe not so useful. LOL. Thanks for confirming I'm not crazy in missing a more robust definition.
It's like all they did was look for the easiest, laziest route to a payday they could have possibly found. I have to give them props for figuring out the perfect way to state the obvious.
After a rather surprising amount of digging, I found the underlying study and the menu they used, and it seems there was no set of rules or ingredients. The "ultra-processed" diet included:
Canned corn
Deli turkey
Refried beans
Sour cream
Whole milk
Canned peaches
Scrambled eggs
Sausages
Blueberry yoghurt
Bagels
Cream cheeese
Canned chili
Frozen macaroni and cheese
Canned green beans
Peanut butter
Non-fat greek yoghurt
And so on. All major brands, but it's hard to detect a theme; a lot of the items are not especially "processed" in any way, and don't seem especially unhealthy. And many specific items seemed difficult to distinguish from items in the unprocessed menu. Is canned corn less healthy than fresh or frozen corn in some way? How? Some studies have shown that canned corn contains more available nutrients than fresh corn, so what is the theory here?
For another example, the ultra-processed menu had scrambled eggs made with liquid, pasterurized eggs from a carton; the unprocessed menu had an omelette made from fresh eggs. Does pasteurizing eggs make them unhealthy? If so, how, and what studies support this? If not, why bother including different egg dishes in the menus?
Or for another example, some of the ultra-processed meals used as a protein source Tyson brand steak; some of the unprocessed meals used Tyson brand "beef tender roast". What is the difference between these, and why do we think Tyson steak is bad and Tyson beef roast is good? Alternatively if we don't think there's a difference why use different products in the two menus?
If if we accept that the study did show an effect, it almost seems designed to obscure the underlying cause, since it was so aggressively scattershot.
One could also quibble about the choice of foods; the ultra-processed menu leaned hard into meat and carbs with little or no greens, while the unprocessed menu had lots of broccoli and other green veggies. But obviously you could construct a much healthier diet from the ultra-processed menu, or a much less healthy diet from the unprocessed menu. I love broccoli, but if you drown it in rich sauces, it's not going to do your diet many favours.
Similarly, why is it the unprocessed diet snack selection had unsalted nuts? Salt doesn't count as processed (right?) so was this just picked to try and make the snacks taste less good so people would eat less, or...?
What is "processing" and how does it contribute to confusing gut-brain signalling? The article lists kinds of food that we all agree are "processed", but I have no idea why I think they're "processed" the same way a dumb ML model might correctly classify something as a cow while having a nonsense mapping from feature space to outcome.
Not trolling. Can someone list a set of specific ingredients or techniques which are constituent of "processing", and how these things are connected to the article's mechanism? I am aware of past mixed research on artificial sweeteners and satiety, but clearly that's both an older finding and a mixed one, so the article is alluding to something more that isn't explained.