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