Why we might never know the truth about ultra-processed foods

These are the bane Many nutritionists – food produced in mass but more like chicken chips, wrapped snacks, carbonated drinks, ice cream or even sharp brown bread.

So-called ultra-transformed foods (UPF) represent 56% of calories consumed across the United Kingdom, and this figure is higher for children and people who live in poorer areas.

UPFs are defined by the number of industrial processes they have gone through and the number of ingredients – often unpronounceable – on their packaging. Most are rich in fat, sugar or salt; Many you would call fast food.

What unites them is their synthetic appearance, what made it a target for some defenders of their own life.

There is growing evidence that these foods are not good for us. But experts cannot understand how they affect us exactly or why, and it is not clear that science will give us an answer so soon.

While recent research shows that many ubiquitous health problems, including cancers, heart disease, obesity and depression related For upfs, there is no evidence that they are still cause by them.

For example, a recent meeting of the American Society for Nutrition in Chicago received an observational study of more than 500,000 people in the United States. He found that those who ate the most upfs had a risk of around 10% greater to die early, even taking into account their body mass index and the overall quality of food.

In recent years, many other observation studies have shown a similar link – but it is not the same as proving that how Food is transformed causes health problems or pin what aspect of these processes might be to blame.

So how could we get to the truth about ultra-adjustment foods?

The type of study necessary to definitively prove that the UPFS causes health problems would be extremely complex, suggests that Dr. Nerys Astbury, principal researcher in diet and obesity at the University of Oxford.

It would be necessary to compare a large number of people in two regimes – a rich in UPF and a low in upfs, but corresponded exactly to the calorie and macronutrient content. It would be diabolically difficult to do.

Participants should be held under rental and key so that their food intake can be closely managed. The study should also include people with regimes similar to a starting point. It would be extremely difficult in terms of logistics.

And to counter the possibility that people who eat fewer UPFs could have healthier lifestyles, such as doing more exercise or by sleeping more, group participants should have very similar habits.

“It would be an expensive research, but you might see changes compared to the regimes relatively quickly,” said Dr. Astbury.

Funding for this type of research could also be difficult to find. There could be accusations of conflicts of interest, because researchers motivated to manage this type of trial may have an idea of what they want the conclusions to be before their start.

These tests could not last very long, anyway – too many participants would most likely abandon. It would not be practical to tell the hundreds of people to stick to a strict diet for more than a few weeks.

And what could these hypothetical trials prove, anyway?

Duane Mellor, lead for nutrition and drugs based on evidence at Aston University, says that nutrition scientists cannot prove that specific foods are good or bad or what effect they have on an individual. They can only show potential advantages or risks.

“The data no longer or less shows,” he says. The contrary claims are “bad science,” he says.

Another option would be to examine the effect of common food additives present in UPFS on a model of the human intestine – which is something that scientists are occupied.

However, there is a broader problem – the amount of confusion around what really matters as upfs.

Generally, they include more than five ingredients, including some that you will find in a typical kitchen closet.

Instead, they are generally made from inexpensive ingredients such as modified starchs, sugars, oils, fats and protein isolates. Then, to make them more attractive for taste buds and eyes, flavors of flavors, colors, emulsifiers, sweeteners and glazing agents are added.

They are obvious (sweet breakfast cereals, carbonated drinks, slices of American cheese) with perhaps more unexpected yogurt (humor supermarket, low in fat, mueslis).

And that raises the questions: to what extent is a label useful which places the chocolate bars in the same league as the tofu? Could some upfs affect us differently from others?

In order to find out more, BBC News spoke to the Brazilian professor who proposed the term “ultra-transformed food” in 2010.

Professor Carlos Monteiro has also developed the Nova classification system, which goes from “whole foods” (such as legumes and vegetables) at one end of the spectrum, via “processed culinary ingredients” (like butter) then “processed foods” (things like tuna in waterproof and salt nuts) to upfs.

The system was developed after obesity in Brazil continued to increase as sugar consumption has dropped, and Professor Monteiro wondered why. He thinks that our health is influenced not only by the nutrient content of the food we eat, but also by the industrial processes used to do and preserve it.

He said he did not expect the enormous current attention to upfs, but he claims “this contributes to a paradigm change in the science of nutrition”.

However, many nutritionists say that fear of the upfs is overheated.

Gunter Kuhnle, professor of nutrition and food sciences at the University of Reading, says that the concept is “vague” and that the message it sends is “negative”, which makes people confused and frightened by food.

It is true that currently, there is no concrete evidence that the way food is treated damages our health.

Treatment is something we do every day – hash, boiling and frost are all processes, and these things are not harmful.

And when food is transformed on a large scale by manufacturers, it helps ensure that food is safe, kept longer and that waste is reduced.

Take the example of frozen fish fingers. They use pieces of fish, provide children with healthy foods and save parents time – but they still count as upfs.

And what about meat replacement products such as Quorn? Admittedly, they do not resemble the original ingredient with which they are made (and therefore fall under the Nova definition of the UPFS), but they are considered healthy and nutritious.

“If you make a cake or a brownie at home and compare it with the one that already comes in a package that has taste amplifiers, I think there is a difference between these two foods? No, I don’t do it,” said Dr. Astbury.

The organization responsible for food security in England, the Food Standards Agency, acknowledges that people who eat many UPFS have a greater risk of heart disease and cancer, but says that it will not take any measure on UPFS as long as there are no evidence that caused specific damage.

Last year, the government’s scientific advisory committee on nutrition (SACN) examined the same reports and concluded that there were “uncertainties around the quality of the evidence available”. He also had concerns about the practical application of the Nova system in the United Kingdom.

For his part, Professor Monteiro is the most worried of the processes involving intense heat, such as the manufacture of flakes and buffoves of breakfast cereals, which he claims to “degrade the natural food matrix”.

He underlines a small study suggesting that this leads to a loss of nutrients and therefore leaves us less full, which means that we are more tempted to compensate for the deficit with additional calories.

It is also difficult to ignore the crawling meaning of self -justice and whisper it – snobbery around upfs, which can make people feel guilty of eating them.

Dr. Adrian Brown, a specialized dietitian and principal researcher at the University College London, says that demonizing a type of food is not useful, especially when and how we eat is such a complicated problem. “We must be aware of the moralization of food,” he says.

Living a life without UPF can be expensive – and cooking meals from zero takes time, efforts and planning.

A recent report of the food foundation has revealed that healthier foods were twice as expensive as less healthy foods by calories, and the poorest 20% of the British population should spend half of their disposable food income to respond to the healthy government’s regime recommendations. It would cost the richest at only 11% of their own.

I asked Professor Monteiro if it was even possible to live without upfs.

“The question here should be: is it possible to stop the growing consumption of upfs?” he said. “My answer is: it is not easy, but it is possible.”

Many experts say that the current traffic light system on food labels (which brings in high levels, medium and low sugar, fat and salt) is quite simple and useful as a guide when shopping.

There are now smartphone applications for the uncertain buyer, such as the Yuka application, with which you can scan a barcode and obtain a ventilation of product health.

And of course, there are advice that you already know – eat more fruits, vegetables, whole grains and beans, while reducing oily and sweet snacks. To stick remains a good idea, whether or not scientists prove that the UPFs are harmful.

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