<story><title>U.S. Kids Are Getting Nearly 70% of Their Calories from &apos;Ultra-Processed&apos; Foods</title><url>https://gizmodo.com/u-s-kids-are-now-getting-nearly-70-of-their-calories-1847457103</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JumpCrisscross</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not aware of any food that would be considered &amp;quot;ultra-processed&amp;quot; yet known to be good for people&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;What does &amp;quot;ultra processed&amp;quot; mean? Cheese, bread, olive oil and most vegetables require processing to be made or nutritionally useful. Freeze-dried vegetables are quite processed and quite good for you.</text></item><item><author>dataflow</author><text>&amp;gt; Pharmaceuticals are ultra-processed and completely unnatural, yet many of them are life-saving. Clearly then, mere act of processing something doesn&amp;#x27;t make the thing bad for you.&lt;p&gt;I have to admit though, I&amp;#x27;m not aware of any &lt;i&gt;food&lt;/i&gt; that would be considered &amp;quot;ultra-processed&amp;quot; yet known to be good for people.</text></item><item><author>dolni</author><text>The complete lack of rigor and the use of shock-headlines around &amp;quot;ultra-processed&amp;quot; foods drives me nuts. It conveys very little useful information.&lt;p&gt;Pharmaceuticals are ultra-processed and completely unnatural, yet many of them are life-saving. Clearly then, mere act of processing something doesn&amp;#x27;t make the thing bad for you.&lt;p&gt;It shouldn&amp;#x27;t come as a surprise to anybody that constantly horking down Mountain Dew, Little Debbie snack cakes, and Doritos isn&amp;#x27;t good for you. We all know this, we don&amp;#x27;t need a headline for it.&lt;p&gt;Give me some useful information. What are reasonable thresholds for these junk foods? How about for specific ingredients?&lt;p&gt;Ranting and raving out of the way, do yourself a favor and skip to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization classification document [1] linked in the article. It actually answers some of the questions I posed.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fao.org&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;ca5644en&amp;#x2F;ca5644en.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fao.org&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;ca5644en&amp;#x2F;ca5644en.pdf&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>artimaeis</author><text>Ultra processed is defined by the FAO (The UN Food and Agriculture Organization) thusly:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Formulations of ingredients, mostly of exclusive industrial use, made by a series of industrial processes, many requiring sophisticated equipment and technology (hence ‘ultra-processed’). Processes used to make ultra-processed foods include the fractioning of whole foods into substances, chemical modifications of these substances, assembly of unmodified and modified food substances using industrial techniques such as extrusion, moulding and pre-frying; use of additives at various stages of manufacture whose functions include making the final product palatable or hyper-palatable; and sophisticated packaging, usually with plastic and other synthetic materials.&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fao.org&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;ca5644en&amp;#x2F;ca5644en.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fao.org&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;ca5644en&amp;#x2F;ca5644en.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I believe this is the widest standard used to define &amp;quot;ultra-processed&amp;quot;, though there are more sentences and paragraphs in that doc explaining the definition more thoroughly.</text></comment>
<story><title>U.S. Kids Are Getting Nearly 70% of Their Calories from &apos;Ultra-Processed&apos; Foods</title><url>https://gizmodo.com/u-s-kids-are-now-getting-nearly-70-of-their-calories-1847457103</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JumpCrisscross</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not aware of any food that would be considered &amp;quot;ultra-processed&amp;quot; yet known to be good for people&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;What does &amp;quot;ultra processed&amp;quot; mean? Cheese, bread, olive oil and most vegetables require processing to be made or nutritionally useful. Freeze-dried vegetables are quite processed and quite good for you.</text></item><item><author>dataflow</author><text>&amp;gt; Pharmaceuticals are ultra-processed and completely unnatural, yet many of them are life-saving. Clearly then, mere act of processing something doesn&amp;#x27;t make the thing bad for you.&lt;p&gt;I have to admit though, I&amp;#x27;m not aware of any &lt;i&gt;food&lt;/i&gt; that would be considered &amp;quot;ultra-processed&amp;quot; yet known to be good for people.</text></item><item><author>dolni</author><text>The complete lack of rigor and the use of shock-headlines around &amp;quot;ultra-processed&amp;quot; foods drives me nuts. It conveys very little useful information.&lt;p&gt;Pharmaceuticals are ultra-processed and completely unnatural, yet many of them are life-saving. Clearly then, mere act of processing something doesn&amp;#x27;t make the thing bad for you.&lt;p&gt;It shouldn&amp;#x27;t come as a surprise to anybody that constantly horking down Mountain Dew, Little Debbie snack cakes, and Doritos isn&amp;#x27;t good for you. We all know this, we don&amp;#x27;t need a headline for it.&lt;p&gt;Give me some useful information. What are reasonable thresholds for these junk foods? How about for specific ingredients?&lt;p&gt;Ranting and raving out of the way, do yourself a favor and skip to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization classification document [1] linked in the article. It actually answers some of the questions I posed.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fao.org&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;ca5644en&amp;#x2F;ca5644en.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fao.org&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;ca5644en&amp;#x2F;ca5644en.pdf&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>endisneigh</author><text>One definition of processed would be the amount of &amp;quot;steps&amp;quot; required to take from the base ingredient.&lt;p&gt;So if you make falafel for example, it&amp;#x27;s only two steps removed from chickpeas, as it&amp;#x27;s just mildly grinded and fried. That being said it&amp;#x27;s an exercise to the reader in determining if each &amp;quot;step&amp;quot; is equally bad. In general steps involving the destruction or heating of the food are worse than the &amp;quot;separation&amp;quot; (e.g. peeling or cutting vs frying or blending).</text></comment>