Let’s Stop Calling Foods “over-Processed”
Ultra-processed foods are associated with an increased risk of cancer , heart disease , and dementia . These foods include a lot of fast food and factory-produced snacks, which probably sounds right – that’s what we can categorize as junk food. But focusing on “processing” raises more questions than it answers.
In any case, who decides what “ultra-machining” is?
The definition of ultra-processed food, as the term is used in these studies, comes from an organization called NOVA. They divide products into four categories.
- Category 1 includes plants, animals, animal products, and fungi that we can eat, and they can remain in this category if they are dried or otherwise minimally processed. (Grapes and raisins count.)
- Category 2 includes sugars, oils, and salt, as well as products made from them (such as salted butter).
- Category 3 includes combinations of the above. Almost all home cooked meals fall into this category.
- Category 4 is the designation “over-processed”. These include foods with additives that are considered industrial and foods that are sold as ready-to-eat meals.
I understand that scientists want to somehow separate the different types of cuisine, but this system has never had any internal consistency. As we said earlier , liquor is considered ultra-processed, while wine is not. A ready-to-eat burger is ultra-processed, but a plate of steak with a roll on the side is not.
It’s hard not to see this as an attempt to create an artificial division between nutritionally similar foods. Sweetened cranberry juice is ultra-processed, but a bottle of grape juice with the same natural sugar content is not. You can see the official definitions with examples here .
How exactly are ultra-processed foods bad for us?
If studies were to compare these similar products and conclude that processing is bad for us, that would be a scientific discovery worth talking about. But studies that ostensibly highlight the risks of ultra-processed foods are not.
They usually ask a group of people to remember what they recently ate, a method notoriously unreliable and, according to some researchers, “fatally flawed.” They then rate the food on the NOVA scale. Then, if they do their job well enough, the researchers will try to control for other factors, such as income. (Many cheap foods are highly processed, so they’re more likely to be eaten by people who don’t have a lot of money.)
From this, it can often be said that people who ate the most highly processed foods had a higher risk of any health condition than people who did not. But does this tell us anything about processed food?
Not necessary. Even if controls were properly performed and we excluded income, smoking status, and other factors that make differences between groups, the products themselves are not necessarily comparable. Is the salt content of ultra-processed foods a problem? Sugar content? Specific preservatives or coloring or texturizing additives?
We cannot accept nutritional recommendations from these studies.
It’s easy to conclude that processed foods are bad for us, but we really don’t have the data to say which ones and why. We already know from the NOVA definitions that nutritionally similar foods can end up in completely different categories depending on where they came from; compare, for example, cranberry juice and grape juice.
In one recent press release (about a study that found a link to cancer), the lead author said that “we need clear warning labels on the front of packaging for highly processed products to help the consumer make a choice.” But then the last paragraph of the press release says: “The researchers note that their study is observational, therefore does not show a causal relationship between ultra-processed foods and cancer due to the observational nature of the study. More work is needed in this area to establish a causal relationship.”
As a scientific study, it is interesting and valid. This prompts the researchers to do the promised “additional work” to find out what is protective or harmful in the various diets they have identified.
The problem is that we take these preliminary results as warnings against eating certain foods. Ultimately, we’re trying to use the word “overprocessed” as a measure of nutrition, even though it’s not defined in terms of nutrition . If the problem with ultra-processed foods turns out to be, for example, their sugar and salt content, then the problem will be sugar and salt, not whether we bought a burger from a fast food restaurant (Group 4) or cooked our own food. own burger at home (group 3).