Mike4 wrote:CliffEdge wrote:Probably will now buy more so called ultra processed food as much of it seems quite nutritious, e.g. baked beans, fish fingers, pasta sauce jars, Weetabix etc.
Missing the point by a country mile. You obviously haven't read the book!
Yes much of it actually IS nutritious but nutritional content is not what it's all about. Its all the other stuff they put in it as well that's the problem.
I haven't read the book either.
Personally I like having potassium nitrate in my sausages, bacon, ham, and pork pies.
Sure nitrates are not good for us.
However I do prefer their side effects to the effects of botulism (sausage poisoning).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6043430/
By the way, did you follow the link yourself? It isn't about UPF's at all!
No it's about living on a diet restricted to the worst "foods" that you can find, picked from the processed group.
Guess what ANY poor diet is bad.
The staple in many populations was maze. In some it lead to Pellagra, in others not. What was the difference? Well in some they practiced a process called nixtamalization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization
The primary nutritional benefits of nixtamalization arise from the alkaline processing involved. These conditions convert corn's hemicellulose-bound niacin ("niacytin") to free niacin, making it available for absorption into the body, thus helping to prevent pellagra.
The diet was still poor, but now it didn't lead to the same health problems.
So what do we learn? In this case a processed diet (of what was available) is better than a low processed diet!
Maze was brought to Europe and America, but the process not.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6357846/
Corn, used here in the sense of "Indian corn" or maize, was brought to Europe from America, and over the period 1750-1850 became the typical peasant's staple in many of the areas bordering the Mediterranean. By the end of that period, it had also come to be recognized that pellagra had become a serious, chronic disease in these same countries,
The problem is NOT food processing, it's education!