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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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Nebuladiver t1_jc2sn1f wrote

Do they just imply all additives to be bad?

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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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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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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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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

Replying to Limp_Distribution (#2,221,972)

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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texasrigger t1_jc3rmk6 wrote

Replying to Limp_Distribution (#2,221,972)

>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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ZRhoREDD t1_jc3rttg wrote

Correlation: colon and rental cancers are increasing massively.

0

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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Mechanicallvlan t1_jc48417 wrote

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

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aticho t1_jc4e19j wrote

Replying to texasrigger (#2,222,845)

>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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j0n66 t1_jc4ndmx wrote

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

−1

Mississimia t1_jc4qbjk wrote

Replying to [deleted] (#2,222,272)

>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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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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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.

0

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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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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Strazdas1 t1_jc6301e wrote

Replying to InTheEndEntropyWins (#2,223,250)

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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Strazdas1 t1_jc637fr wrote

Replying to GDPisnotsustainable (#2,222,057)

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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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_jc63rz4 wrote

Replying to Strazdas1 (#2,226,827)

>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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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_jc74yk0 wrote

Replying to Strazdas1 (#2,227,147)

>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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mohelgamal t1_jc7kjwb wrote

Replying to GDPisnotsustainable (#2,222,057)

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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