Tagged biology because it’s related to health studies.
I keep seeing that “processed” and “ultraprocessed” foods hurt longevity and cause all sorts of risks. I get what that means in a very general sense – e.g. don’t eat Doritos every day – but this terminology seems really mushy when you push on it, kind of like with “organic” and “genetically-modified.” Please help me understand what the actual guidance is, rather than just panic about how everything is processed.
In: Biology
Ultra processed could also include the facsimile of real ingredients, some notorious examples being honey (often substituted by corn syrup+Carmel color) maple syrup (same scam) blueberries in waffles/muffins (blueberry flavored gelatin orbees that are dyed blue) and dairy substitutes in whipped cream or cheese flavoring. You’ll also see a notorious proliferation of deceptive terms to sidestep a lack of less processed ingredients. When you think “chocolate chips” you’ll typically envision semisweet morsels made from cocoa and cane sugar. But often this has been replaced by cheaper alternatives – “chocolately bits/coating” on cheap snack products is often a negligible amount of cocoa, palm oil and HFCS.
Another irritating example is peanut butter. “Natural” peanut butter is just ground peanuts, maybe a little bit of salt in there. But heavily processed peanut butter actually takes out the peanut oil (which is valuable and used elsewhere for higher end cooking oil) and replaced with cheaper seed oils that will produce a more uniform texture and might have other favorable properties like shelf life.
Then you have products that use ingredients that would otherwise use foods we’d consider spoiled. Hershey’s chocolate and ranch dressing are both notorious for using milk that would be too rancid tasting to use in other dairy products but it’s functional enough and significantly cheaper than using fresh skin milk or buttermilk.
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