> sweetened drinks and processed meats, were associated with a higher risk of heart disease, others, like breakfast cereals, bread and yogurt, were instead linked to lower risks for cardiovascular disease.
I highly doubt these extra sweetened breakfast cereals are a net positive for health. So perhaps they should be more specific when it comes to mentioning breakfast cereals.
Likewise breakfast yogurt could be either yoplait “yogurt” or plain unsweetened actual yogurt, or anything in between.
One is basically gelatinized sugar and the other is pretty healthy. If one’s classification doesn’t easily distinguish those two, that’s absurd.
one has added sugar and the other not, it’s clear which one is ultra processed
That doesn't make any sense. If I have a bowl of oatmeal, and I sprinkle sugar on top, it does not magically become ultra-processed.
Well if the sugar is ultra-processed, yes it does, doesn't it?
No, it does not, since ultra-processed, though not a strictly defined term, does not include household ingredients like granulated sugar or brown sugar. If you happen to have a jar of HFCS in your cabinet then that would quality.
Well then it is a worthless term. Both granulated sugar and HFCS are processed foods. Corn syrup is a household ingredient. No idea why you think a bit higher percentage of fructose changes anything.
Corn syrup and high-fructose corn syrup are two different ingredients, although they share some words. One is 100% glucose and the other also contains fructose (usually 42% or 55% fructose), produced by chemically altering the corn syrup. We process glucose and sucrose differently and it affects taste, satiation, digestion, and more. I agree that the terminology is useless, by institutional intention.
> chemically altering the corn syrup.
And where does corn syrup come from? From squeezing corn? The sugars in corn don’t start as glucose either (they’re starches).
Besides, at home, bakers easily make “HFCS” themselves by adding any weak acid to table sugar to make invert sugar (an HFCS 50 equivalent).
> We process glucose and sucrose differently
Tell that to some southerners about their sweet tea. This simple distinction isn’t that metabolically interesting for day to day life (or explaining the prevalence of obesity and metabolic syndromes). Concentrations in a serving and mode of delivery are far more important. You can pretty easily get metabolic syndrome from excess glucose as well as sucrose. Altering smell and moisture content are more impactful variables.
Sucrose readily hydrolyzes to glucose and fructose via sucrase in the small intestine, it and HFCS become equals (no, Mexican coke isn’t healthier you dumb hipsters, just eat a piece of fruit already). If it wasn’t you’d get massive diarrhea from eating it. So sucrose vs HFCS isn’t nearly as distinct.
> and it affects taste, satiation, digestion, and more.
The most important distinctions go beyond the relative concentrations of the simple sugars. A fresh fruit doesn’t have the same insulin spiking and metabolic syndrome inducing potential as plain Karo syrup or a (Mexican) Coke, even though its relative percentage of fructose is higher or similar.
it's pretty processed compared to sugarcane at least
So homemade bread is ultraprocessed because the wheat was processed into flour?
From what I understand, technically yes.
I think there’s a lot of work to be done on categorisation but the underlying principle tends to be fairly decent: the more stuff you do to your raw ingredients, the less healthy they become.
No, homemade bread would be NOVA group. 3. The flour itself is group 2 (processed culinary ingredients.) Mixing the group 2 ingredient (flour) with group 1 ingredients (water, yeast, salt) and baking it makes it group 3 (processed food.)
If you added something like Xanthan Gum to your "homemade bread", that would make it group 4 (ultra processed foods.)
Thanks for the correction!
Homemade bread is a processed food, not an ultra processed food.
You can process wheat into flour at home. You cannot process sugar cane into table sugar without an industrial plant.
>You can process wheat into flour at home. You cannot process sugar cane into table sugar without an industrial plant.
That statement seemed off, so I poked around a little and, yes you can make granulated sugar from sugar cane at home[0].
[0] https://shuncy.com/article/how-to-make-sugar-from-sugarcane-...
>You cannot process sugar cane into table sugar without an industrial plant.
That's obviously false.
The refined sugar you buy in the store ('table sugar') is clarified with phosphoric acid and bleached using a number of other chemicals. In addition to this, it goes though a number of other industrial processing steps that you would not be able to perform at home. Hence, it is 'highly processed'.
So you can make it at home using scary chemicals that you can easily buy online. You can't just say 'industrial processing' and 'chemicals' and be believed.
It does make sense if we're talking about yogurt. The sugary yogurts sold at super markets etc don't have sugar sprinkled on top, but mixed in. Normally, you can't do that.
If you make yogurt the standard way [1] and try to add sugar to it while it's still a fluid, it will all sink to the bottom and then you'll just have some yogurt with a layer of sugar on the bottom. If you add it when it's not a fluid anymore, then you'll have a layer at the top. If you try to mix it up in between you'll break it up [2] and end up with mush; with sugar mixed in.
The only way I can think of to add sugar to yogurt and ensure it is evenly mixed throughout its mass is to use some additive, probably some kind of stabiliser. I suspect that's what makes this kind of yogurt qualify for the ultra-processed category.
Check the ingredients on your favourite yogurt. They should say: milk, yogurt culture. End of transmission. If there's anything else in it, then I would say there's a good claim it's been over-processed.
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[1] Bring milk to boil or use UHT. Let cool to 45° C (113° F). Add lactic ferments (Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus - readiest source: yogurt). Keep warm. Do not disturb. Wait. Enjoy. Scales up to industrial level (and is dirt cheap to boot).
[2] That's called syneresis - that's when you put a spoon in and then find a little puddle of milky fluid in its wake a few hours later. You've broken apart the jell'0 like structure of the yogurt's curd, i.e. the coagulated milk solids, and caused the milk fluids to leak out.
There are many brands of yogurt with "fruit on the bottom" or otherwise unmixed that use plain sugar. Not every store-bought product is the worst possible version of a store-bought product. There's a huge variation.
>> Not every store-bought product is the worst possible version of a store-bought product.
I agree with that for the general case but my intuition is that if someone's selling you something ready-made and pre-packaged, that you can easily make yourself (yogurt with fruit mixed in), then that's because they want to charge you extra and force you into a choice -of ingredients- you possibly wouldn't make.
For example, the yogurts with fruit I've had in the UK were just not very good yogurts, and the fruit were just not very good fruit. The yogurts were the thin and tasteless stuff that seems to be typical of anywhere outside the Balkans (I'm Greek) and the fruit were basically preserve, with added sugar. Why do you need added sugar with fruit? Because the fruit is under-ripe and probably too sour to eat in the first place.
You have to think of the economics a bit. Yogurt is cheap to make and most people won't pay a premium for it. Also it's sour and many people (again, outside the Balkans) don't like that. So companies will add sweeteners and sweet admixtures, like jam, honey or fruit to make it more palatable. And of course to make that financially viable they have to drop the quality of the ingredients. And that's where the additives come in: they improve packaging, transport and distribution, even as they degrade taste and nutrition.
I think you're ignoring the hundreds of higher-end brands that are trying to appeal to people like us. Some are still shit, some are, by all possible accounts, actually amazing.
> If you try to mix it up in between you'll break it up [2] and end up with mush; with sugar mixed in.
Are you sure? Won't the sugar just dissolve into the water that is part of the yogurt? Or if a granule texture remained, just mix in sugar syrup?
I've definitely mixed honey into yogurt and put it in the fridge and it was fine the next day, no separation or anything. Why do you think you'd need a stabilizer?
>> Are you sure? Won't the sugar just dissolve into the water that is part of the yogurt? Or if a granule texture remained, just mix in sugar syrup?
Nope. The fluid you're trying to mix the syrup in is milk, already a stable emulsion of proteins, sugars and water. Try mixing sugar (well, corn) syrup in that and see how long it stays mixed in. Once you stop mixing and the mixture comes to rest, the syrup starts sinking to the bottom. Better drink fast, and it sure sets faster than it takes for yogurt to set.
Check out the ingredients on any chocolate milk. There's always a stabiliser, usually a caragenaan. That's to keep the corn syrup and chocolate powder from separating from the milk. Back Home in the Old Country (when I was a kid in Greece) the stores sold a chocolate milk which was just milk with cocoa and some sugar. When you bought it from the store you could see that the milk and solids had separated, and there was a darker layer at the bottom, where all the chocolate and sugar had set. So you had to shake it well before drinking. Nobody makes that anymore, now all the chocolate milks have a stabiliser, so you don't need to expend your precious energy shaking the bottle. All those wasted calories. We don't want that. I guess.
For similar reasons, when you mix honey in your tea you need to keep a spoon in to stir it often, or it all goes to the bottom.
>> I've definitely mixed honey into yogurt and put it in the fridge and it was fine the next day, no separation or anything. Why do you think you'd need a stabilizer?
Because I know yogurt. I basically eat yogurt every day. I even make it myself some times (see my recipe above). Are you sure your yogurt did not have stabilisiers in it?
Thanks for the info! Fascinating. It's the explanations like these that keep me on HN.
This is an incredibly bizarre comment - I buy unsweetened yogurt and sometimes mix honey in before I eat it.
My comment is about adding sugar to yogurt during production. Please read more carefully (e.g. the part of the comment that explains how it's made and why sugar can't be added at that moment).
>The only way I can think of to add sugar to yogurt and ensure it is evenly mixed throughout its mass is to use some additive, probably some kind of stabiliser. I suspect that's what makes this kind of yogurt qualify for the ultra-processed category.
What?? I can't be the only one that gets plain greek yogurt and adds a tablespoon of honey or agave syrup and mixing it evenly before adding some granola + fruit. It's not that hard, and it's definitely not ultra-processed.
Honey and agave syrup have oligosaccharides that act as stabilizers. Fructans in agave, specifically.
As does molasses like when making refined sugar. Most unrefined sources of sugar naturally contain chemicals that act as stabilizers because it’s a side effect of many polysaccharides.
Right, but honey and agave syrup can also act as mild adhesives. I'm not sure anyone would consider them an adhesive any more than they would a stabilizer.
Also "Greek yogurt" is normally strained so it's already stabilised and is less subject to syneresis.
Note that even with the stabilising effect of straining and honey, real Greek yogurt (the stuff without additives) is never sold with admixtures. Once you mix stuff in you really are changing the consistency of the product and therefore its storage and transportation profile.
There's a scene in Silicon Valley [1] where Elrich Bachman is complaining that people keep taking his narrow spoons that he needs to mix in the jam in the little tub attached to his "Fa-Yeeh yogurt" (spelled "Fage". Surprisingly he pronounces it right! I'm Greek).
Bachman is talking about this product, Fage's split-cup Total yogurts:
https://gr.fage/total-2-split-cup
The reason there's a little tub and you have to tip it in and mix it up after you buy it is exactly because once you've disturbed the yogurt by mixing things in it, you don't have yogurt anymore but a gloopy goo with the consistency of thick cream and that just doesn't travel very well, especially if you want to be exporting your yogurt from Greece (where Fage has its plants) to the US (where Bachman complains about his spoons).
Also that gooey gloop is not what yogurt is supposed to be like. But I suppose that's just a matter of habit.
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Oats also don't grow as individual flakes, they are processed too. Separating and concentrating a single ingredient is "processing" it. If you want the healthiest oats, you probably need to grow them yourself and eat them directly off the stalk. I'm joking, of course - sort of.
There is a difference between processing an oat and the derivative ‘ingredients’ that are used to simulate the mouth feel of ‘ice cream’ - which includes a type of mold.
I agree the distinction is murky and can be easy to mock but at the end of the day something associated with these foods is making societies deeply sick and that should encourage us all to care about a solution. Even if you take a libertarian approach to diet, the economic cost of caring for a society with rampant obesity and diabetes impacts us all
> I highly doubt these extra sweetened breakfast cereals are a net positive for health.
You can't really evaluate this outside of a metabolic context. That goes for a lot of things, but you're a lot more likely to burn the sugar more or less immediately early in the morning, particularly before a workout.
Sugar is a necessary nutrient (i.e. healthy by any sane meaning of the word, if such a meaning exists) and we've gone much too far in demonizing it.
Sugar is absolutely not "a necessary nutrient" and we haven't gone far enough in demonizing it.
Literally every study, from rats to humans and from obesity to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral health to chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar is harmful. Modern Americans eat unprecedented amounts of refined sugar compared to any point in history.
Sugar should be consumed in moderation akin to alcohol, not pumped into every product at every meal.
While I generally agree with the sentiment that we should be cutting added sugar. I have to point out that sugar is naturally occurring in most whole foods. Nearly everything will have at least a little sucrose, glucose, or fructose in it.
Most of the body's natural way of generating energy involves turning macronutrients into glucose and later into ATP. sucrose and fructose just so happen to have very short and very fast routes to conversion.
That fast path is what I think makes sugar particularly problematic (as well as honey and a whole lot of other "natural" sweeteners that are just repackaged *oses). That big jolt of energy which the body ends up converting to fat since it has nothing to do with it is (probably) where most of the problem lay.
> That fast path is what I think makes sugar particularly problematic
there is no way to separate the discussion, doing so it’s just to avoid solving the issue that is to regulate refined sugar
Refined sugar is extremely concentrated compared to the natural sources. You need like 50 kilos of sugar cane to produce one kilo of refined sugar, and through multiple steps of heavy industrial processes.
You could make a case for honey, but, like all other natural sources, it contains other ingredients that somehow limits ingestion or metabolization.
Sugar is literally evaporated sugar cane juice. You need a lot of cane to make a little sugar because water is heavy. "refinining" is just separating out the molasses to make it white and so the molasses can be sold separately. You only need "heavy industrial processes" to make it profitably at scale.
The refined sugar you buy in the store ('table sugar') is clarified with phosphoric acid and bleached using a number of other chemicals. In addition to this, it goes though a number of other industrial processing steps that you would not be able to perform at home. Hence, it is 'highly processed'.
> You could make a case for honey, but, like all other natural sources, it contains other ingredients that somehow limits ingestion or metabolization.
In the natural environment, said other ingredients would be the angry swarm of bees?
Actually carbs are necessary and carbs are sugars. In the past people with diabetes tried to live on a completely carb free diet - but you cannot do that for long. Personally I am not sure I am buying the narrative about fructose - but it is plausible that it might be bad - but glucose you'll have in your blood even if you don't eat any sugar - because your own body produces it if you don't get it from the food directly.
I wonder why nobody has started sweetening stuff with glucose as a 'healthy sweetener'. It is maybe 3 times more expensive than normal sugar - but I guess this is mostly because it is not a common product - cane sugar in Poland is of the same price - and the impact on the price of the end product would be marginal.
> Actually carbs are necessary
This is NOT true. Carbs are ONE form of energy that the body can use for fuel. Fat is the other one.
> people with diabetes tried to live on a completely carb free diet - but you cannot do that for long.
I guess you're saying I don't exist?
For about 10 years, I haven't eaten carbs beyond the VERY rare cookie or two every other month and the insignificant trace amounts in above-ground leafy vegetables and the like. I'm not alone, there are lots of us who eat this way. Whole online communities, full of people who each have their own reasons. I did it for general health and fitness reasons, others do it to reverse their type 2 diabetes.
In the 1960s, a man named Angus Barbieri fasted for over a year under medical supervision and suffered no ill effects afterward. Unless you want to believe the whole thing is a hoax and he was secretly snarfing donuts on the sly, he is proof that humans don't NEED carbs.
The planet used to be dotted with cultures that eat animals and fish primarily or exclusively for hundreds to thousands of years. The Inuit, Mongolian nomads, tribes in the Amazon, etc. They mostly don't exist anymore. (But not because of their diet.)
It's not a big group, but there ARE modern people who live on a carnivore diet for years on end and don't appear to suffer any notable long-term effects. Generally these are either extreme keto/paleo adherents, bodybuilders, or those who are trying to manage a medical condition.
> Angus Barbieri
So far as I can tell, he consumed yeast extract, which all my suppliers of assure me does in fact contain carbohydrates.
But perhaps Barbieri ate a special kind that didn't?
> In the 1960s, a man named Angus Barbieri fasted for over a year under medical supervision and suffered no ill effects afterward. Unless you want to believe the whole thing is a hoax and he was secretly snarfing donuts on the sly, he is proof that humans don't NEED carbs.
Read a little about this on Wikipedia, that's insane! I'm still being stubborn and halfway refusing to believe there were no bad side effects, though lol
OK - I stand corrected on the point of consuming carbs.
But our body produces glucose anyway - so consuming or not does not change much. Brain needs glucose.
> Brain needs glucose.
That is actually incorrect, just a common misconception. You might want to read up on ketogenic diets, and specifically the state of ketosis itself.
If you have an ultra-low carb diet (<30 g/day) with only moderate protein consumption (<30% of daily required calories), then the body can’t produce enough glucose to power the brain. Instead, it starts to convert fats to ketones in the liver, and the brain actually runs fine on ketones as well. Alternatively, if you’re not underweight, you can fast for 24 hours with a moderate activity level, and should enter ketosis regardless of diet (as you start converting stored body fat into ketones to power the brain).
Interestingly, you then notice that the “low blood sugar” mental haze disappears as your brain switches over to ketones, and you kinda avoid the rollercoaster between mental highs and lows throughout the day that you usually get with a carb-based diet – instead, mental energy is kinda just at a constant “medium” throughout the day. It’s also easy to measure more objectively, if you pick up a glucose monitoring device + “keto sticks” from a pharmacy.
I saw this randomly the other day - what do you make of it?
https://www.ualberta.ca/en/folio/2020/10/excessive-ketone-me...
have you ever actually tried to read about indian diet on Amazon? ... it's not because they hunt(ed) fish and capybaras that you can make such a claim, go figure
i also tried to find a link for a paper here but it's been a long time but basically the population we have the smallest register of disease is an indian tribe around the coast of South America that mostly has a super high carbohydrate consumption compared to the rest of the world (will edit and comment if i find it)
edit: yeah, doubt i'll find but another counterpoint, go look at the rate of disease of Eskimos... they eat meat only!
> In the past people with diabetes tried to live on a completely carb free diet - but you cannot do that for long.
What is “long?” There are people living years on no carbs at all.
Who is living years without any carbs?
The Inuit, for starters. Oh, and me.
So far as I can tell, Inuit get about 15–20% of their calories from carbohydrates, because of all the glycogen from the raw meat they consume.
But I am only looking at summaries outside a bunch of paywalls, so I can't confirm the quotes on the wikipedia page.
There are no essential carbohydrates. Essential vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and fatty acids, yes. Essential carbohydrates, no.
> Literally every study, from rats to humans and from obesity to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral health to chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar is harmful. Modern Americans eat unprecedented amounts of refined sugar compared to any point in history.
Emphasis on refined sugar.
Most food products, even meat in trace amounts, has some level of some form of sugar in it.
Added sugars are not needed in mass amounts for sure.
That is just eating disorder kind of thinking. Stop spreading it. You can eat sugar, it wont harm you. Pretty much anything harms you in super large quantities.
Sacharids are good for you in general, just like faits, protein and everything else.
If you don't eat sugar directly your body will produce it. And unless you plan on eating no fruits or vegetables I can't imagine a diet devoid of all sugar.
Maybe you can't imagine it, but lots of people do it all the same.
What you are referring to would be something akin to a hyper-strict keto diet, which I think nearly all medical professionals would consider ill-advised if not outright dangerous.
There is a lot of stuff I can't eat because the amount of added sugar is disgusting.
Yeah, but even a cup of celery contains a gram of sugar. Eating "no" sugar is preposterous. You could never eat any fruits or vegetables! But lots of people avoid excess sugar, me included.
> Eating "no" sugar is preposterous.
This is relatively easy for anyone on a carnivore diet.
It's actually not hard to eat a diet that doesn't have a lot of fructose. More difficult to avoid heavily processed carbohydrates that are absorbed too quickly.
Almost correct, except sugar consumption has been declining for decades. The peak was prior to 2000 IIRC
Yeah there used to be a children’s breakfast cereal called Super Sugar Crisp and the cartoon character promoting it in commercials was named Sugar Bear. Foods in the ‘70s and ‘80s were loaded with sugar.
Pretty sure this still exists and in the US it is called "Golden Crisp". I personally always loved it :)
> Sugar should be consumed in moderation akin to alcohol, not pumped into every product at every meal.
Sugar is naturally occurring in basically all the food we consume. Good luck ripping it out. Good luck getting a functioning body without consuming carbohydrates, either.
> Literally every study, from rats to humans and from obesity to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral health to chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar is harmful.
The body also requires dietary sugar to function :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate
> Sugar should be consumed in moderation akin to alcohol,
Alcohol is a literal poison that you should not consume at all. Sugar is a basic dietary requirement. Of course, all nutrients should be consumed in moderation, but that's not unique to sugar in any way.
> Sugar is naturally occurring in basically all the food we consume. Good luck ripping it out. Good luck getting a functioning body without consuming carbohydrates, either.
How do you go from "Sugar should be consumed in moderation" to "Sugar should be ripped out of all foods and the body doesn't need carbohydrates"?
Why jump from a reasonable and sound observation to some ridiculous extreme nobody asked for?
I interpret it to mean that we shouldn't be adding sugar to any of our foods. The natural sugar in the foods we eat is plenty.
I wouldn't even go that far. A slice of birthday cake won't kill someone. Added sugars have their place, but we shouldn't be adding them where they aren't needed and we should consume them in moderation. It's wild how much random stuff has added sugar. I've even seen deli meat with added sugar. Who is asking for corn syrup to be pumped into their roasted turkey?
In side by side taste tests more people like the version with added sugar. That’s why they add it; it sells.
> Good luck getting a functioning body without consuming carbohydrates, either.
The body doesn't need carbohydrates to function.
> The body also requires dietary sugar to function :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate
Again, the body does not :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet
Sure, if you like being constantly fatigued and stupid and have a constantly decaying body, you can strip all carbs from your diet. I'm not sure you can survive this; is there any evidence to the contrary?
Ketogenic diet doesn't mean stripping all carbs from your diet (which is, again, effectively impossible). It just means burning fat. It's also wildly unhealthy if you don't have fat to burn. Only obese people should engage in that sort of diet.
> Sure, if you like being constantly fatigued and stupid and have a constantly decaying body, you can strip all carbs from your diet. I'm not sure you can survive this; is there any evidence to the contrary?
You mean, is there any evidence aside from every person who manages their diabetes through diet alone? Or the various pre-industrial human cultures who ate virtually nothing but fish and small game because their climate was notoriously resistant to agriculture and fruit trees?
> It's also wildly unhealthy if you don't have fat to burn. Only obese people should engage in that sort of diet.
You seem to be confusing the ketogenic diet with starving. That's not how it works. If you deplete your fat body's stores and get hungry, you simply eat some fat and then your body will burn it for fuel. If you decide to eat much more fat than your body needs, your body will store the fat as fat. But it won't do it quite as readily as with sugar/carbs, and you won't get food cravings mere hours after eating.
> Or the various pre-industrial human cultures who ate virtually nothing but fish and small game because their climate was notoriously resistant to agriculture and fruit trees?
We have longer life span. We are healthier then them. And we have also bigger muscles for those fitness oriented.
That article starts with
> The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate dietary therapy
Keto diet is low-carbs - not completely carbs free.
To split hairs, "low carb" means different things to different groups of people. Lifelong adherents of the keto diet put the limit at around 20g of carbs per day. But you can find research studies and the like where they take a normal Western diet (75-90% carbs) and reduce it to say, 60% carbs and then refer to THAT as "low carb."
It's not splitting hairs. Unless you are extremely physically active, even ~100g of carbs a day will inhibit ketosis where the liver converts fats into ketones for powering your brain and body. This is easily seen by using ketone strips to detect ketones in urine.
>The body doesn't need carbohydrates to function.
Only in so much as that it will built glucose out of other things you eat if you don't eat carbs separately. Your body runs on glucose which is a carbohydrate.