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Gemmabeta t1_jc2u1qf wrote

So, the things they consider food additives include MSG, citric acid (i.e. lemon juice), Ethyl alcohol (i.e. regular drinking alcohol), corn oil, capsicum oil (i.e. hot sauce), sodium bicarbonate (i.e. baking soda), Carbon Dioxide and so forth.

This list is ludicrously over-padded with things that are completely harmless just to produce a hysterical scaremongering headline.

I am surprised they didn't declare water and table salt to be food additives as well just to bring up the number to a full 100%.

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Foxs-In-A-Trenchcoat t1_jc331tp wrote

And WTH is a "technical" food additive? It sounds like how the word natural has lost all meaning.

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UseOnlyLurk t1_jc3el9r wrote

Are they trying to say “technically has food additives”.

60% seems really low. That leaves produce, some fresh meats and even fewer dairy.

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EtherCJ t1_jc425p7 wrote

I mean some fruits and vegetables often have wax on them.

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Gemmabeta t1_jc47qlu wrote

It's not wax, it's shellac, aka resin excreted by lac bugs.

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kslusherplantman t1_jc4i2ph wrote

Fruit waxing is the process of covering fruits (and, in some cases, vegetables) with artificial waxing material. Natural wax is removed first, usually by washing, followed by a coating of a biological or petroleum derived wax

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_waxing

They also use just wax, wax with shellac, or just shellac.

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UseOnlyLurk t1_jc4vgq9 wrote

Pesticides over here trying not to get spotted but I’m calling them out.

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hfsh t1_jc7z7ni wrote

Even more so considering they're only looking at packaged food.

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ocmaddog t1_jc53q02 wrote

Natural has no definition when it comes to food generally

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LoganSterling t1_jc5ctu2 wrote

right! I thought it was pieces of micro plastics from old shredded laptops..

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ItsAWonderfulFife t1_jc4r534 wrote

By that metric a soup is water with food additives.

Feels like a “technically correct”, but misleading statement.

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mohelgamal t1_jc7hx9q wrote

The list wasn’t complete enough, they didn’t include dihydrogen monoxide.

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Nebuladiver t1_jc2sn1f wrote

Do they just imply all additives to be bad?

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Gemmabeta t1_jc2tg5l wrote

Next they'll tell you that 100% foods contain CHEMICALS!

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PlanesFlySideways t1_jc35l42 wrote

I never understood how "chemical free" can be used on some cleaning items and not be considered false advertisement.

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1enigma1 t1_jc3h3zk wrote

It's okay most food is chemically organic.

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_jc420pt wrote

Studies show that ultra-processed foods are bad, even when macros are controlled.

So I'm guessing this is just some kind of proxy measure to determine if it's processed vs unprocessed food.

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Strazdas1 t1_jc6301e wrote

No. Studies show that badly processed foods are bad. Merely processing it does not impact its effect on health. Do note that most thermal processing creates carcinogens, which is another can of worms people should stop fearmongering over.

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_jc63rz4 wrote

>No. Studies show that badly processed foods are bad.

There are multiple studies

>People eating ultra-processed foods ate more calories and gained more weight than when they ate a minimally processed diet, according to results from a National Institutes of Health study. The difference occurred even though meals provided to the volunteers in both the ultra-processed and minimally processed diets had the same number of calories and macronutrients.
>
>https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-finds-heavily-processed-foods-cause-overeating-weight-gain

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Strazdas1 t1_jc69yqz wrote

People ate more, but that wasnt the fault of the meals.

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_jc74yk0 wrote

>People ate more, but that wasnt the fault of the meals.

I don't really know what you mean by "fault" here.

They established that one of the causal factors of how much someone ate was whether the food was ultra-processed or not.

So I would say it is partially the fault of the meals.

There is a reason why pretty much every health organisation and expert in the field say's to limit consumption of ultra processed foods.

>You should limit highly processed foods and drinks because they are not a part of a healthy eating pattern.
>
>https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/healthy-eating-recommendations/limit-highly-processed-foods/

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Mechanicallvlan t1_jc48417 wrote

Alarmingly, the other 40% of US foods aren't technically food.

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infodawg t1_jc2uoh6 wrote

I lost over 100 pounds of weight after moving from my native USA to South America, to a region that has very little packaged food. Not saying the loss of weight was attributable to only this factor, but I'm sure it made a difference.

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_jc42ek7 wrote

Studies show that when controlling for macros, people eat more of processed foods.

So yes, you would expect switching from processed foods to unprocessed foods, would help you lose weight.

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smurficus103 t1_jc39t16 wrote

Yeah bleached flour and refined sugar stuff never satiates, "empty" calories just cause you to seek more food

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FoodForTheEagle t1_jc2wkv7 wrote

Note that not all food additives necessarily have a net negative impact on health. For example, I remember in the 1990's Ingster & Feinleib hypothesized that artificial flavours might be the reason for a decrease in cardiovascular disease mortality that was observed in the mid 1960's. The suggestion in their paper is that salycilates present in foods might have similar effects to supplementation by acetyl-salicylic acid (Aspirin).

I'm not sure if their work was ever followed up on by others, but you can read their original paper here.

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KingAlastor t1_jc5wbmg wrote

When i was in US, i had a hard time finding a product that didn't contain HFCS. It's nuts.

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Limp_Distribution t1_jc36q4w wrote

There are varying degrees of food additives, some benign, some harmful, some beneficial. If you are really concerned then learn to cook from scratch or raw ingredients. You’ll know more about what goes into your food.

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GDPisnotsustainable t1_jc38wg9 wrote

Hegemony,

Work two part time jobs, or on salary for that matter and see to it family is fed. The system is broken, making eating whole foods (not the brand) unavailable to most families.

Problem is, my comment is social science so it will be removed. But I can cite how difficult it is for families to not rely on processed foods for multiple meals per week.

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Strazdas1 t1_jc637fr wrote

whole foods (not the brand) are availble to most working class families. they just dont choose them because, to no surprise, they dont taste good.

Processed foods are not bad. The issue is that many "fast" food is badly processed.

Have you ever boiled rice? Thats processing food.

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troll-destroyer-3000 t1_jc5aqnw wrote

I have a hard time believing this.

Anecdotally, I can get veggies for several meals for less than a bag of potato chips.

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ConsciousCr8or t1_jc63dep wrote

Where are you getting your produce?? I can no longer afford the Whole Foods i used to buy, being that most have dam near doubled in price (and some almost tripled) heavily processed trash consumables are wayyyy cheaper.

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troll-destroyer-3000 t1_jc6j2e7 wrote

In my experience you just have to buy what's in season.

E.g. veggies harvested in early spring are going to be expensive in the middle of winter.

I go to local produce markets, they mostly only stock what's in season

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mohelgamal t1_jc7kjwb wrote

While I understand that people don’t come from work to do more work at home. Relying on home cooked meals isn’t as difficult, expensive or time consuming as people argue. Once you learn to cook you can do it fairly quickly if you don’t want very fancy gourmet meals.

And buying ingredients is definitely cheaper than buying processed food if you are ok eating similar meals a few days in a row so you don’t waste stuff.

For example, to feed a family of 4 Big Macs meals from McDonald’s, which is cheap, you would need pay something like $25 dollars.

$25 dollars are definitely enough to buy a 1lbs of ground beef, a head of lettuce, a pack of cheese, two potatoes and 4 buns of bread. You would need oil (reusable) a pinch of spices and perhaps a $1 in energy to make the same at home. It would take 15-20 mins to cook the burgers and the fries. And you probably would still have some left over buns and cheese slices.

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texasrigger t1_jc3rmk6 wrote

>If you are really concerned then learn to cook from scratch or raw ingredients.

Even then there are additives. With produce you have fertilizers and with meats there are a whole host of additives in the animal's feed that end up in the meat. Unless you are reenacting our hunter gatherer days your food will have different man-made additives in it and even there you'll likely still have contaminants from man-made activities.

(None of that is necessarily a bad thing, many of those additives are necessary for the animal's health and are also beneficial or even required by humans.)

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Limp_Distribution t1_jc3yqn9 wrote

I said you’ll know more about what goes into your food. I understand the complexity of modern food production.

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aticho t1_jc4e19j wrote

>None of that is necessarily a bad thing

Keep your adding propaganda away from me! One day we will live in a world where nothing is ever added to anything and then I can finally rest.

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SatanLifeProTips t1_jc4v1yj wrote

Compare similar packaged food from Canada and the US. Products that look identical have a ingredients list half as long in Canada. Because Canada and the EU have a very different classification as to what is considered ‘food’.

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diosmio OP t1_jc2r3b7 wrote

“Food Additives in Ultra-Processed Packaged Foods: An Examination of US Household Grocery Store Purchases,” by Elizabeth K. Dunford, PhD, Donna R. Miles, PhD, and Barry Popkin, PhD (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jand.2022.11.007) .The article appears online in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, publishedby Elsevier.

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_jc439cj wrote

People often get worked up about the additives and get worked into thinking that all added sugar/oil are evil. But I think a better view is simply that ultra processed foods are bad, and not to worry about the macros.

So if you want to be healthy, you don't need to go on a crazy extreme diet avoiding certain macros, just avoid ultra-processed foods.

>People eating ultra-processed foods ate more calories and gained more weight than when they ate a minimally processed diet, according to results from a National Institutes of Health study. The difference occurred even though meals provided to the volunteers in both the ultra-processed and minimally processed diets had the same number of calories and macronutrients.
>
>https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-finds-heavily-processed-foods-cause-overeating-weight-gain

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DisregardedTerry t1_jc5n029 wrote

I just ate peanut butter Girl Scout cookies. They had “corn syrup solids” as an ingredient. Not even getting that high quality syrup we subsidized so strongly.

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INTJstoner t1_jc9x738 wrote

Is this really a shock to anybody?

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ZRhoREDD t1_jc3rttg wrote

Correlation: colon and rental cancers are increasing massively.

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Sleepyslothie_ t1_jc5mq9q wrote

Pretty sure 100% of every continent's food and water contains microplastics by now so dunno which is worse. Food additives or microplastics? Maybe we'll find out someday.

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j0n66 t1_jc4ndmx wrote

I’ll always remember having my first US chicken breast. Such a strange texture. Taste was fine.

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[deleted] t1_jc3dnr5 wrote

[deleted]

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Mississimia t1_jc4qbjk wrote

>The investigators used Nielsen Homescan Consumer Panel data from 2001 and 2019 to examine the proportion of products purchased by US households containing four common technical food additives (colors, flavors, preservatives, and nonnutritive sweeteners) and to ascertain whether purchases have changed over time through the products’ scanned Nutrition Facts Panels.

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