6 Popular Ultra-Processed Foods To Immediately Stop Eating 2024-03-21 00:00

one of the major criticisms that people have upon coming here to the United States is the quality of the food especially Europeans when they come to America they're often times really surprised to learn just how Ultra processed the American diet actually is just as one example out of thousands here are two comparable products next to each other on the left is Quaker Oats instant oatmeal for the American market and on the right is Quaker Oats instant oatmeal for the UK and comparing the ingredients between these two reveals quite a lot because not only does the American version of that product have a plethora of random chemicals additives and colorings that the UK version doesn't but even further than that if you study the ingredients you'll notice that the American version of this product does not contain any strawberries both of these two products are marketed as strawberry oatmeal but while the UK version contains real freeze-dried fruit the American version contains artificial strawberry flavors and again this oatmeal example is just one out of thousands of such examples the American Market is absolutely saturated with ultr processed foods as well as junk food but here's the thing even though most people intuitively understand that processed foods aren't as good for them as Whole Foods up until now there's actually been a real lack of scientific studies to confirm that suspicion there have been some studies which have linked Ultra processed food to poor health and some specific diseases but there has not been a comprehensive review which can provide a broad assessment of all the evidence in this particular Arena and so in order to bridge that Gap quote researchers carried out an umbrella review a highlevel evidence summary of 45 distinct pooled meta analyses from 14 review articles associating ultr processed foods with adverse Health outcomes the review articles were all published in the past 3 years and involved 9.9 million people and so indeed these researchers conducted their study and it was recently published in the pages of the British medical journal it's titled Ultra processed food exposure and adverse Health outcomes an umbrella review of epidem NE ological meta analyses this is the largest of its kind peer-reviewed study and what the researchers here did was that they took 14 different studies that have already been published and they conducted a large meta analysis on them in order to determine the link between ultr processed foods and general adverse health effects and what they found was really fascinating to say the least so let's go through it together to start with because these researchers were dealing with so many different studies published over the past 3 years they needed to synchronize a terminology in order to have a real Apples to Apples comparison and so in terms of defining what actually constitutes processed food as well as ultr processed food they used the Nova food classification system Nova classifies food into four separate categories you have group number one which is the unprocessed or minimally processed foods these are what most people would consider natural Whole Foods and they have been altered minimally by humans maybe they've been cut up boiled Frozen or washed but that's pretty much it so this is basically things like nuts eggs milk steak most types of fruits Etc then you have group number two which is processed culinary ingredients the things in this group are usually not eaten by themselves and instead they're created to help prepare food these are things like sugar salt honey olive oil butter things like that then you get to group number three these are processed foods these are products that are manufactured by mixing the Whole Foods in group number one with the additives in group number two like using yeast and flour to make bread or bacteria cultures and milk to make cheese or sugar and berries to make jam things like that they're all classified as processed foods and then the last level is group number four ultr processed foods these are products which are completely industrial formulations and they're made almost entirely from substances which are either derived from food or synthesized in a lab meaning that group number four consists of quote unquote food which contains little to no Whole Foods and you can't really make this stuff at home you basically need factories and Laboratories to make it these are things like baby formula hamburgers fizzy soft drinks microwave Pizza instant noodles bag chips things like that basically ultr processed foods are many steps removed from the actual Whole Foods they derive themselves from and so that's the definition of ultr processed food that these researchers were using when conducting their meta analysis and just for your reference just as it was mentioned in that summary these 14 studies that we're looking at involved data from approximately 10 million people and so the study population was rather large and so after running their analysis what these researchers found was that exposure to ultra-processed Foods again meaning Foods in that fourth category was consistently associated with 32 different adverse Health outcomes quote overall direct associations were found between exposure to ultra-processed foods and 32 Health parameters spanning mortality cancer and mental respiratory cardiovascular gastrointestinal and metabolic Health outcomes they also found that the amount of exposure to these ultra-processed Foods increases a person's likelihood of having one of these adverse Health outcomes quote greater exposure to ultra-processed food was associated with a higher risk of adverse Health outcomes especially cardi metabolic common mental disorders and mortality outcomes these findings provide IR rationale to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of using population-based and public health measures to Target and reduce dietary exposure to Ultra processed foods for improved human health then in their published analysis the researchers included this graph right here you can see it up on your screen showing the severity of each one of these Health outcomes the red line going down the middle is the Baseline and as you can see most of the findings show an increase of these negative Health outcomes for people who eat ultr processed food and so as you can see greater exposure to this ultr processed food it correlates to a 15 to 27% increased risk of all cause mortality meaning just dying in general there's a 51 to 84% increase risk in heart disease related death there's an increase in the risk of most types of cancer except for prostate cancer then in terms of mental health which is something that most people don't even necessarily associate with ultra processed food well they found a 24 to 61% increase of having sleep problems 37 to 59% increase to anxiety as well as 43 to 63% increase in common mental disorders which by the way I had to look that up and common mental disorders include things like depression OCD obsessive compulsive disorder social anxiety disorder panic disorder things like that the researchers found that eating a diet of ultra processed food increases your risk for those types of things by 43 to 63% and the list just goes on you have asthma Crohn's disease obesity type 2 diabetes and so on and so on and in terms of why meaning why do ultra processed foods create all these different issues well the report links to an editorial that was titled reasons to avoid ultr processed foods and here's what it says quote formulations of often chemically manipulated cheap ingredients such as modified starches sugars oils fats and protein isolates with little of any Whole Food added made palatable and attractive by using combinations of flavors colors emulsifiers thickeners and other additives no reason exists to believe that humans can fully adapt to these products the body May react to them as useless or harmful so its systems may become impaired or damaged depending on their vulnerability and the amount of ultra processed food consumed the grossly imbalanced composition of ultr processed foods means that their increased intake makes diets energy dense high in sugar and saturated fat and loow protein fiber micronutrients and health protective phytochemicals such as flavonoids and phytoestrogens they also contain additives including colors emulsifiers and sweeteners linked by experimental and epidemiological evidence to imbalances in gut microbiota and systemic inflammation all right just to pause here for a super quick moment I'd like to introduce the sponsor of today's episode Pat mobile who for the past 10 years now has been America's only Christian conservative wireless provider and when I say only they really are the only one they've also been great supporters of the show which is why partnering with them was pretty much a no-brainer now patri mobile they offer Dependable Nationwide coverage giving you the ability 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today it's again Patriot mobile.com Roman or just call 972 Patriot and so it might be this systemic inflammation having your own body constantly fighting a lowlevel inflammatory battle which leads to problems popping up seemingly everywhere including disperate areas like mental health and anxiety the editorial continues quote techniques often used in the creation of ultra processed foods such as Extrusion and intense heat degrade the natural food Matrix causing loss of nutrients disturbances in food digestibility and nutrient bioavailability and reduction of sa they also make ultr processed food soft which shortens chewing and swallowing time and increased energy intake consumption of these Foods has also been associated with increased concentrations of acrylamide and phalates in the blood or urine these are toxins created during processing or released from packaging materials respectively furthermore the researchers write that these foods are bioengineered to be addictive and therefore people eat more of them to the detriment of their own health quote Ultra processed foods are engineered to be highly desirable combining sugar fat and salt to maximize reward and adding flavors that induce eating when not hungry many are addictive judged by the standards set for tobacco products and aggressively marketed with meal deals super sizing and advertising and the reason that this really matters so much now is because Ultra processed foods aren't a rare delicacy that people eat on occasion instead according to the study as of this year 58% of America's caloric intake comes from ultra-processed Foods 58% of the calories that we as Americans eat come from that fourth group of foods but here's the thing and it's a point that the authors rais which is that this is not an inevitability it's not that as a country becomes more developed it absolutely has to go the route of ultr processed foods Instead This is a direct result of both policy choices as well as cultural choices for instance Italy and South Korea are both modern developed Nations but because of differences in their policies and in their cultures the share of calories that they consume from ultr processed foods are 10% and 25% respectively and so these researchers suggest the following quote crafting National dietary guidelines that recommend varieties of unprocessed or minimally processed foods and freshly prepared meals and avoidance of ultra processed foods institutional food procurement that aligns with these guidelines front of pack labels that clearly identify Ultra processed food Foods restricting advertising and prohibiting sales in or near schools and hospitals and fiscal measures that make unprocessed or minimally processed foods and freshly prepared meals as accessible and available as and cheaper than Ultra processed foods furthermore these researchers also urge the United Nations to take a quick break from trying to get a needle into every arm and from creating a global surveillance State take a break from that and to instead quote develop and Implement a framework convention on Ultra processed foods analogous to the framework on Tobacco now as to whether any any of this will actually happen is anyone's guess despite the documented obvious risks of saturating a Nation with ultr processed food there's unfortunately not a lot of money to be made from fixing the problem and so instead of these policy recommendations which will probably fall on deaf ears here are four recommendations based on the Nova groups that you as an individual can try and take try and make group number one the basis of your diet use group two items in moderation limit your consumption of group number three and try to avoid the items in group number four at all costs ultimately a little ultr processed snack here and there won't hurt but the problem is that most Americans aren't having a little ultr processed snack here and there instead close to 60% of our calories are coming from group number four so if you happen to fall into that category well consider trying to flip it and if you're looking for a place to start well perhaps rather than trying to change everything all at once there was a phenomenal interview that was conducted with a nutritionist over at the Daily Mail wherein he laid out six specific Ultra processed foods that you should eliminate ASAP these were as follows sugary breakfast cereals deli meats because they contain so much salt and preservatives potato chips processed cheese slices because while cheese itself is great cheese slices usually contain a lot of emulsifiers to give them their characteristic texture soda as well as prepackaged pastries and so if you're looking to cut out uhfs ultra high processed foods that is a good place to start also if you're interested in getting deeper into the subject I would highly recommend this book right here ultr processed p people by Chris telen if you'd like to get a little bit deeper into the subject it's a good book on the science of ultra processed foods their history as well as some real practical ways forward I'll throw a link to that book as well as to the studies that we referen in today's episode you can find it all down there in the description box below if you're the type of person that likes to dig into the wheed and all I ask can return is that as you're making your way down there to the description box take a short detour to smash those like And subscribe buttons so that the YouTube algorithm will be quite literally forced to share this information out to ever more people and then until next time I'm your host Roman from The Epic Times stay informed most importantly Stay [Music] Free