I saw this going viral last week Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods are bad for you. Non-paywalled version.
The focus on ultra-processed foods seems like a way of sidestepping the reality that people are simply consuming too much food.
1. How does one blame processed or ultra-processed foods when no one can even agree what makes food processed? Much of the discussion in the comments is about trying to define what makes food processed or not. Does mixing ingredients make it processed, in which case milk and honey is processed? Or a modern manufacturing process? Or preservatives? Or food that is too palatable? How can we blame ultra-processed foods if we cannot even agree on what makes food processed at all?
2. Healthy, wholesome food can easily have greater calorie density compared to processed ‘bad’ food. Skittles has fewer calories per gram compared to peanut butter or oats. Milk is more calorie dense than soda. A large salad with oils, cheese, and nuts can have more calories than a Big Mac meal. Defaulting to healthy food will not stave off obesity if people are simply consuming too many calories for their metabolic needs.
3. I find the claim that ‘whole foods’ or healthy food are more satiating unconvincing. I have not observed this myself. I can easily eat near unlimited quantities of healthy food if put in front of me. If this were true then solving obesity would be as easy as instructing obese people to eat only whole foods or healthy food, and yet they still fail. The people on those obesity reality TV shows tend to eat too much of everything, not just the junk food.
4. Adults need far fewer calories than commonly assumed to function, including even jobs that entail physical labor. Getting every adult male on a 2,000 kcal/day diet would fix obesity for most cases, and would be survivable without any nutritional deficiencies, but just not fun. It would be unpleasant having so little food, but no negative health consequences. Humans eating a lot of food is a relatively recent development due to industrialization. Much of human history is one of scarcity, up until probably after the Second World War.
As shown by the excellent tweet below, rising calorie consumption on a per-capita basis precipitated the obesity problem in the US:
Attempts to explain the obesity epidemic through contamination, toxins, conspiracies, seed oils, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, lithium, or whatever else always strike me as annoying.
What we must explain is an increase of ~200-350 calories a day in energy balance. That's all. pic.twitter.com/f26vURG8TT
— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) November 19, 2024
5. Blaming sugar ignores that all food triggers a spike of dopamine and insulin reaction, unless it’s diluted in a lot of water. All food that is not diluted in water will trigger an insulin response. That is how digestion works. Otherwise you’d have type 1 diabetes. This is why vegetables are safe for diabetics, due to being so diluted.
Think about it: How is possible for people to crave steak and eat lots of steak in a single sitting despite having no sugar if the theory is that sugar causes a huge reaction and people to crave more sugar after eating it? How does sausage, eggs, and bacon taste so good when there is no sugar in it? Because steak and eggs produces the same sort of endorphins as sugary food does. Why a lot of people find eating pleasurable has do to with the complicated interplay of satiety signals and chemistry between the stomach and the brain. GLP-1 drugs work in part by making food less appealing mentally and inducing premature fullness at the gut-level. It’s not like people have to add sugar to lobster to make it appetizing.
Jason Fung, Attia, Taubes and other fitness/health influencers keep spreading this nonsense about carbs spiking insulin, when all macros spike insulin as part of the normal digestion process. This is why Ozempic consistently works when ‘heath influencers’ and their dumb theories consistently fail; because Ozempic makes it really hard to eat too much, so weight loss is the result. Amazing huh.
In conclusion, if society is serious about solving obesity, we need to deal with the reality people are simply eating too much and that labeling food as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ will not solve this, unless it’s something as reductive as leafy vegetables ‘good’ and everything else ‘bad’ (as it’s nearly impossible to overeat on vegetables owing to huge water concentration).