Health Prepping: Stop Poisoning Your Family

If it's not food, don't eat it

For readers who are busy planning Christmas dinner, let’s get right to it: You might be poisoning yourself and your family. Because “poison” is exactly what many popular “ultra-processed” foods are. Consider:

How Do Processed Foods Affect Your Health?

(WebMD) - Highly processed food may put you at a higher cancer risk. One study found that your risk of cancer goes up with the amount of ultra-processed food you eat. Some experts wonder if this is because of all of the food additives that are in these options.

Some processed options don’t give your body what it needs. Foods that are highly processed are stripped of their basic nutrients. This is why many processed foods have added fiber, vitamins, and minerals. But once you take out the natural nutrients from a food, it’s difficult to add back all of its healthful value.

Heavily processed foods are quicker to digest. Processed foods are easier for your body to digest than foods in their natural state. This means your body burns fewer calories when you digest processed foods. Experts think you burn around half as many calories with processed options compared to natural foods. If you eat high-calorie processed foods that require less calories to digest, it may be harder to stay at a healthy weight.

More on the specific health effects:

Obesity and disease rising with consumption of ultra-processed foods

(Harvard Gazette) - According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 40 percent of Americans are obese, and many struggle with comorbidities such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

What is making us so sick? The ultra-processed foods that make up the bulk of the American diet are among the major culprits, according to an online panel hosted by Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health last week.

Experts from Harvard and the National Institutes of Health joined journalist Larissa Zimberoff, author of “Technically Food: Inside Silicon Valley’s Mission to Change What We Eat,” to discuss why the processing of cereals, breads, and other items typically found in the middle aisles of the grocery store — may be driving American weight gain.

Kevin Hall, senior investigator at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases at the NIH, said initial research into diets high in ultra-processed foods shows strong links to overconsumption of calories.

Participants in a study conducted by Hall and his team published in 2019 were randomized to receive either ultra-processed or unprocessed diets for two weeks, immediately followed by the alternate diet for two weeks.

“But despite our diets being matched for various nutrients of concern, what we found was that people consuming the ultra-processed foods ate about 500 calories per day more over the two weeks that they were on that diet as compared to the minimally processed diet,” Hall said. “They gained weight and gained body fat. And when they were on the minimally processed diet, they spontaneously lost weight and lost body fat.”

Manufacturing techniques to create ultra-processed foods include extrusion, molding, and preprocessing by frying. Panelist Jerold Mande, CEO of Nourish Science, pointed out that foods like shelf-stable breads found at the grocery store are often no more than “very sophisticated emulsified foams.”

This isn’t a problem for people who eat right. But unfortunately…

Ultraprocessed Foods Make Up the Majority of American Calorie Consumption

(Dr. Rowen) - A new analysis led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that more than half of calories consumed at home by adults in the U.S. come from ultraprocessed foods.

Ultraprocessed foods contain substances with little or no nutritional value, such as colorings, emulsifiers, artificial flavors, and sweeteners. Examples cover a wide range of products, from chips and hot dogs to prepackaged meals. Researchers have long understood that a substantial proportion of the U.S. diet comes from ultraprocessed foods but it was not clearly understood where those calories were consumed.

Consuming high amounts of ultraprocessed food has been linked to chronic health conditions—cardiovascular disease, obesity, colorectal cancer, among others.

"The perception can be that 'junk food' and ultraprocessed foods are equivalent," says Julia Wolfson, associate professor in the Bloomberg School's Department of International Health and the study's lead author. "Yet ultraprocessed foods encompass many more products than just junk food or fast food, including most of the foods in the grocery store. The proliferation and ubiquity of ultraprocessed foods on grocery store shelves is changing what we are eating when we make meals at home."

Here’s the incoming HHS Secretary’s take:

Here’s a story about how Big Food responds to its critics:

And here are some sources of in-depth data and advice:

Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food (Amazon)

100 Days of Real Food: Fast & Fabulous: The Easy and Delicious Way to Cut Out Processed Food (Amazon)

Food and the Great Awakening (Peak Prosperity Webinar)

Quit Ultra-Processed Foods Now: Practical Steps to Transform Your Lifestyle and Feel Better Fast (Amazon)