How Ultraprocessed Foods Work

Ultraprocessed is a new term for junk food, but it means much more than that – it’s also a cautionary tale for the way we’re supposed to cook and eat, using real food and sitting down with friends and family. But who has the time and money to do that?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and Jerry's even here, and this is
stuff you should know. Welcome everybody, Welcome. Yet another food.

(00:24):
Uh well, I was going to classify this. I don't
think this belongs with our food like coffee beans like that,
but food industry, sure, sweet, can't stop, can't stop, can't
stop talking about food. That's what I say. I love it.
This is more um yeah, food industry like um, massive

(00:46):
problem in the world faces now that kind of thing.
It's it's in that sweet like the huge problem sweet.
That's where yeah, we do, and it's growing every day, unfortunately,
because we haven't solved the single one, Chuck, even though
we've tried. I know we're trying. But what we're talking
about today are called ultra processed foods. And a lot
of people say, you mean junk food, and yeah, it

(01:08):
is junk food. But it's applying science and public health
to the idea of what to do about junk food,
because as people look into it more and more, they
find more and more evidence that it's as bad for
you as you think it is. Maybe even worse. But

(01:30):
it's also painfully obvious that it's so fully entrenched in
cultures around the world that it's not going anywhere. We're
not gonna get rid of. You can't just get rid
of junk food. People survive on junk food, as we'll
see um. But so we have to figure out then
how to balance those two things, the presence of junk
food and the the harm that junk food can do

(01:53):
to your health. Yeah, and you know, I would even say,
and I'm sure you would agree that calling it junk food,
I think a lot of people might think, like, well,
I don't need Cheetos, and I hate that we're gonna
have to just rattle off brands like that. I love
a Cheeto every now and then Cheese Oh no, no, no,

(02:15):
that the ones that look like Little Caveman Club look
like that too. When I was a kid, I used
to I didn't eat many Cheetos then either, just because
we didn't have no money to buy Cheetos. We had
whatever the off brand was that came in, like gigantic bags. Yeah, probably,
but I hate that we're gonna have to name brands
here and there like that as reference. But let's just

(02:36):
say cheetos. Uh, but people might think, oh, I don't
eat cheetos, so I'm good. Uh. That's not true. Though.
There are a lot of foods that you probably eat
that you don't realize. You may not call junk food.
But if you look at the back of the package,
you're like, oh, wait a minute, there's like fourteen ingredients
and two of them sound like food. Yeah, and that's
a really good indicator. Though what you're eating is ultra

(02:58):
processed food. Um. And that actually that term ultra process
food you may have heard before, but it's a relatively
recent development. I think it was two thousand and ten
when a Brazilian epidemiologist named Carlos Montero came up with
it as part of like a four point um food group.

(03:20):
It was pretty obvious, but it was, But what he
did was not obvious. It was actually pretty revolutionary because
at the time in Brazil in two thousand and ten
and still today in the United States and plenty of
other countries, there was a focus on on the food group. Says,
we know, I'm like grains in um, cereals, fruits and vegetables, meat, dairy,

(03:43):
that kind of stuff. Right, there's we still talk about
that here today in the United States. So what this
guy said was like, that is so ridiculously confusing and
it's such a problem to keep up with that. I'm
going to basically take it upon myself to reclassify food
into easier to understand stuff. And that's where he came
up with ultra processed food. But he actually came up

(04:05):
with it from an observation, Chuck, that was kind of
like a mystery. At first. It sounds like a set
up to me, take it, Chuck, just so people know.
We don't write down set chuck up for the next bit. No, No,
it's just very organic, it is. And it's getting clunkier
as we're entering four teeth here. Organic and clunky sounds

(04:29):
like a set up. Yeah, he did notice something. He
realized that the purchase of actual sugar by Brazilians had
gone down a lot between the nineteen eighties and two thousand's,
but obesity and type two diabetes were still on the rise.
And I guess he thought, it's almost as if they're
getting all that sugar from other things that aren't just

(04:51):
bags of sugar. And so he looked to the to
the package food industry and came up with a system
to classify it, and never has there been a system
that should be an acronym. It's not so frustrating. It's
even capitalized nova in O v A and like what
does it stand for? Nothing? Absolutely nothing, not your ordinary

(05:15):
variant analysis? Uh yeah, yeah, I worked on it even
that's what I could come up with. Oh really yeah, Okay.
I think the reason he chose novas because nova means
new star. Um so, I think he was saying, like
this is providing like a new north Star to guide
people towards nutrition. I guess or that he is the

(05:37):
new star of talking about food, right, That's that's what
he talks about himself as for sure. Uh so, I
guess we should talk about the four groups. Uh. Group
one is what you might call like whole foods, which
are it's just food. It's unprocessed, it's fruit, and it's meat,
and it's the eggs and stuff like that. Uh you know,

(06:00):
comes out of a chicken's butt and into your mouth.
Hopefully there's something in between that happens though. Right then
that's that's a good point too, because people be like, well,
meats processed. Yes. Group one also includes minimally processed foods.
So the distinction isn't that it's totally unprocessed. The distinction
is is that it's substantially intact, asn't been pulled apart

(06:20):
and put back together again. And it's nutrient composition as
it exists in the cow that's walking around or the
chicken that's walking around or the plant that's growing, remains
basically the same in this form, this minimally processed form.
That's right. That's Group one, and that's what you should
shoot for. Group to our processed foods a little more processed. Uh.

(06:41):
And you know we're talking about oils, packaged herbs. These
are things that are used as ingredients or things to
cook other things, right, yeah. Um, So if you put
Group one and Group two together, what you're doing is cooking,
and you're coming up with basically Group three foods and
basically anything that you cook in your kitchen using normal ingredients,

(07:05):
even things like cakes and cookies and things like that.
If you're using sugar and butter um and basically whole
foods from Groups one or two, you're you're coming up
with Group three, which are processed foods, but they're recommend
their recommended processed food. So the kind of foods that
you're making yourself or if you're buying it at the store,

(07:28):
it's being it's being processed in a way that is
still retaining as much of the nutrients as possible with
as few additional ingredients as possible. And the ingredients, like
you're saying before you can you can understand what they're
what they're saying in the ingredient list. Yeah, Like if
you see, uh, some strawberry preserves on the shelf of
a grocery store and it says and this is, uh,

(07:50):
this is actually in our research and something will point
out later again probably, but food brands are starting to
teut stuff like this, Like I bought some. It's we
don't get eat a lot of like frozen treats like
ice cream and stuff, but I got some because the summertime,
I wanted to get my daughter some like a little treat,
you know, a little frozen treat, like some fruit pops.

(08:11):
And when you go down the fruit pop aisle, that
that aisle especially is made up of things where they'll
say like three ingredients and big letters on the front,
like you know, cane, sugar and water and real fruits. Yeah,
that's the third ingredient, but that would be a group three.
And there are you know, I think the bell has

(08:32):
been ringing. So food companies are are beginning to tout
things like fewer ingredients here and there, uh, so they
don't fall into group four, which is the ultra process
foods that we're gonna talk about today. And these are
you know, contain a lot of engineered ingredients. Uh. When
you look at the back, that's when you're gonna see
things like soy protein and high hydrogenated fats and things

(08:54):
like that and things you can't even pronounce, right, um.
And the longer the list of ingredients is, the likelier
it is to be in group four. UM. The more
difficult to understand ingredients are probably in group four. And
then also even without UM looking at the ingredient list,
you can usually catch a group for type ultra processed

(09:18):
food UM because it's heavily marketed. There's lots of colors
and neat logos and stuff like that, and you've seen
ads for it on TV. That's definitely a hallmark, right,
that's a definite hallmark of ultra processed foods. UM. So
you can usually tell from the packaging and then to
kind of meet the industry where it's going to um.

(09:39):
Some people who are into the Nova system of food
groups say, actually, if you see a packaged food or
a pre prepared food that is making health claims, you
should actually take that as a signal that it's not
actually healthy, that that healthy foods don't have to tout
that kind of stuff. Unhealthy foods are the ones that
you have to watch out for. They say healthy, low fat,

(10:02):
all that stuff, it actually means it's ultra processed. Right,
Like you won't see a bunch of bananas with a
sticker that says now with more potassium. No. And if
you want to kind of imagine what the differences between,
you know, where we are between ultra processed foods and
actual whole foods. Like imagine Mountain Dew, the Mountain Dew logo,

(10:22):
all of the Mountain Dew advertising you've ever heard. Remember
they used to say it was extreme with just an
X that is like classic ultra processed food marketing. Now
imagine yes, for sure. Now imagine that same ad campaign
was for pairs like it will make your brain do
a somersault just trying to even it's just trying to

(10:42):
come up with it, and that's shape it really kind
of brings in to start contrast the difference between ultra
processed foods and whole foods from groups one, two, or three. Yeah,
it's pretty sad, and it's they've been Uh. I mean,
there's some staggering facts in here. The first one that
I came across was right here on our first page,
where it says that, uh, in the US and the UK,

(11:04):
ultraprocessed foods make up more than half of the calories
that we eat period. Uh, and they are on the rise. Uh.
They've they've shown that the percentage of adults US adults
diets that are consist of upfs or ultra processed foods
went from fifty three point five to fifty seven. And

(11:26):
that's from let's say, two thousand two to two thousand seventeen,
which is a long time, but you know, of four
percentage point rise in like a total caloric intake is substantial. Yeah,
And that means that since it was at fifty three
point five percent, already American adults have gotten at least

(11:46):
half of their calories for more than twenty years, at
least half of their calories from junk food for more
than two decades. And that's just the adults. Like, if
you look into studies of ultra processed foods, by far
the largest consumers of them are younger kids, in particular
younger boys. So if our if adults are getting that much,
I mean, it just makes you wonder how much how

(12:08):
much kids are getting And it just so happens that
that's our next stat uh. Yeah, kids. Over an eighteen
year period from ninety nine to two thousand eighteen, they
went from to sixty seven percent. And they found that,
you know, it's generally across all races save one, which

(12:28):
is pretty amazing and awesome. Hispanic adults don't eat nearly
as much ultra processed foods as other people. Uh. And
they've also found that it's basically across um income demographics,
although lower income uh, people with lower incomes do eating
more upfs, but it has been rising across almost all demographics. Yeah,

(12:51):
and um globally too, Like the US has long been
feeding our kids and eating ourselves the ultra processed foods. Uh,
but it's long been kind of a hallmark of a
wealthier country, ironically, because ultra processed foods are so cheap
compared to whole foods UM. But in other countries, as
they started to develop more and more economically UM their

(13:15):
intake of ultra processed foods has increased. In step two,
so you see ultra processed foods making up a larger
and larger share of the caloric intake of all people
around the world. It's becoming a new kind of diet
that wherever you go in the world, you're going to
be able to find basically the same food and it's

(13:36):
wrapped in extreme packaging and contain something that was extruded
and dusted with something that used to be cheese. All right,
that's a great setup. Uh, let's take a break and
we'll talk a little bit about where, or at least
what some people considered the big bang of upfs started
right after this. By the way, Chuck extrusion, I was like,

(14:20):
I think I know what that is. I just want
to make sure you remember the Plato fun factory. Like
that thing that you you put the Plato in one
end and then you pulled the lever and it squeezed
out like a star shape or a moon shape. That's extrusion, yes,
but they never called it the extruder In my day.
They called it the fun factory, the star maker. All right,

(14:43):
So if you want to look to where some people
consider the Big Bang, or at least as um Anastasia
marks de Salsado, Yeah, salceto, yes, yes. Uh. Anastasia the
journalist who wrote a book called Combat Ready Kitchen colon

(15:03):
how the US military shapes the way you eat and
lays claim to the fact that World War Two was
is uh known at least to this journalist as the
Big Bang of ultra processed foods and that revolution. Uh
we should point out this is nothing new. Canning, I
realized comes from a competition that was used or held

(15:26):
to help feed Napoleon's army. So there's been a long
history of food R and D when it comes to
feeding lots and lots of soldiers on the battlefield. In
a way that makes sense because you know, you obviously
have to have food that's not going to spoil, stuff
that light and that travels, and um, what it kind
of comes down to is getting rid of as much

(15:47):
water as you can from food, right, because that prevents spoilage. It's,
like you said, makes it lighter, so it's easier to
ship and move around. Um. But it still should retain
mostly the same nutrient density, which is what you're really after. UM.
And that's that's a huge, huge thing that kind of
came out of World War two, I believe, UM, which
was drying food, learning to dry not just food but

(16:10):
also coffee. UM. And apparently all of that that drawing
process came out of UM a way to to dry
and store plasma for later use. And they said, you
know what would would also go through this process really well, coffee?
That was it pretty amazing? Yeah, there was some that.
I mean, that is just one tiny little fact. I

(16:32):
think the one that really got me was something like
the McRib was actually born out of this same military
research into something called and this is an album title.
If I've ever heard one, fabricated modules of meat, that's
the Diarrhea Planet album. Oh man, they're not together anymore,
we heard from people. I think I knew they weren't together,
but they'll always be together in my heart. Uh. And

(16:56):
this is very interesting too. What they've UM the start
doing was found out a way to remove or what
to end up with something called intermediate moisture foods. So
if you think of like a chewy granola bar, uh,
that thing is chewy. It's not super dry, but it's
not super wet. And the power bar is something that

(17:17):
was born directly from World War Two. There was something
called a logan bar that was packed in the you know,
soldiers kits as a meal replacement, but it was designed
purposefully to not taste very good, so the soldiers wouldn't
just like dive in after it. It's sort of like
a last resort thing. And they're there in lies the
power bar. So if you're ever like, these things taste terrible,

(17:40):
you can thank the US Army for deliberately making them
taste terrible so that you don't want to eat them, like,
you know, like their kudos, remember kudos, Oh yeah, I
love they were great. They were like a cross between
a candy bar and a granola bar, and they somehow
we're greater than the sum of all its parts. And
those were the kind of things that you're like, oh,

(18:01):
I like this, I think I'll have the rest of
the box. And that's another hallmark of ultra process foods,
as we'll see, I think though we can now not
avoid it any longer. We need to talk about processed
cheese and cheese dust. What the Army ended up calling
jungle cheese because they developed a new way to make cheese.

(18:22):
The people have been making cheese for millennia and it
was great, but it didn't travel well. And so the
Army or I guess you know, the military industrial complex,
said let's find a way to make better cheese that
can travel, and they did it. They did so. One
of the huge challenges was as you dry out cheese,
if you don't do it right, the oil separates out

(18:42):
of the cheese, it becomes sweaty, and the cheese you
have left with is oil and dry and not good
at all. So somebody figured out there was an actual guy,
George Sanders, who was a U. S d. A dairy scientist.
He figured out that if you dry the cheese at
really low temper the protein actually encapsulates the lipids the

(19:04):
fats and locks them in place. So then after that
you can pulverize it and dry it even further and
the fat will stay locked into it. And then you
can take that and you can either turn it into
powder or you can reconstitute it into whatever shape you want. Specifically,
sliced cheese, which is those yellow squares of cheese. That's

(19:25):
what happens to him. Yeah, but when it came to
the powder, like if you've ever made that delicious still
delicious kraffmac and cheese and not the kind with the
packet squeezy cheese. Yeah, I'm talking that yellow orange powder
and you dump it in there with a little butter,
maybe a little heavy cream if you really want to

(19:45):
treat yourself, and you wonder what the heck is this?
It is cheese. It's just treat cheese that has been
ultra processed thanks to George Sanders. And he would shread
it up and then dry it out, and then it
would harden up, and then he would grind it and
then dehydrated even more, and eventually you do that over
and over and you get down to that beautiful orange powder. Yeah.

(20:09):
What's confusing is there seems to be a discrepancy between
who first invented cheese powder. Was it George Saunders in
nineteen forty three? Um? If so, then how did Kraft
come out with their macaroni and cheese or craft dinner
if you're in Canada, Um, back in ninety seven with
powdered cheese. So it's weird. There's a there's a weird

(20:30):
misunderstanding around who created cheese powder, but it does seem
to have come about in the either the late nineteen
early nineteen forties, possibly through military research. But it was
that we got our first cheese dust snack when the
Freedo Company. I guess, I mean, was it a Cheeto?

(20:51):
Was it like a cheesy friedo? My friend, it was
a cheeto or cho cho as what you grew up. Uh.
I've worked with the director years ago, Tom Schiller, who
was the remember the black and white SNL shorts from
the Blue. Yeah, he was like Al Franken's writing partner,
I think. Yeah, I was like Schiller's kind of head

(21:13):
p a. When he came to town, he would request
me because we were buddies. Uh. And he was great
with like one of the best dudess ever worked for.
But he as a gag would um he didn't even
like Cheetos, but he would eat cheetos on set with
a white surgical glove just to make people laugh. That's funny.
There's these little finger protectors that look like tiny condoms
that you put on your fingertips and I used to

(21:35):
use those to eat buffalo wings just for effect. Well,
but that also has a practical effect, because that that
stink can go to other places, you know, if you
rub your eyes or oh sure, sure, sure, but I
still rub my eyes with little finger condoms on him
just that, Tom, No, you gotta take those things off.
I forget every time or accidentally swallow one when I'm

(21:58):
licking my fingers. I don't get the hot wings. I
haven't eaten a buffalo wing in years. Oh chuck, you're
missing out. I get the lemon pepper now if I
get anything. Okay, that's good too, But I think you
can mix it up a little bit, all right. They always, uh,
this is no good for my digestive system. So you
said something that I think is um. Well, I hope

(22:19):
your digestive system comes back around so you can eat
some buffalo wings. Um. But you said something a little
while back that I think is worth kind of fleshing out,
and that is that this stuff that's cheese dust used
to be cheese. It's actually made from real cheese. And
that is um an argument that a lot of people make.
When people poo poo junk food, ultra process food, that

(22:42):
kind of stuff, they're like, there's there. It basically amounts
to you're afraid of science, is what you're responding to.
This is still food. In some cases, it's more nutritional
than the whole food it was made from. Um, so
what's the problem. And we'll get into that whole thing.
But I just wanted to kind of point that out
because you did, I mean, you did hit on something

(23:03):
that's that's worth worth saying. Yeah, we're just leadites. I mean, sure,
that's that's I'm a convert though. Um through some of
this one particular study that we'll talk about that I
think is very mind changing. Oh all right, that's a
nice tease. But first, Chuck, I think we have to
talk about corn because you can't really do all this.

(23:25):
You can't make very cheap ultra processed foods without very
cheap base ingredients. And corn is about as cheap as
they come in the United States. It is now because
they over the years figured out how to grow corn
much more efficiently and much more densely. Uh, the nineteen
twenties and thirties is when they started develop these new

(23:46):
strains of corn. The corn ears themselves are actually bigger,
and they could pack them in a lot more. And
I believe between the thirties and the two thousands, an
acre of corn yield jumped from thirty bushel to about
a hundred and forty, which is a big I mean,
what is that a fourfold increase a little more? Actually, yeah,

(24:08):
it's like uh four almost five. Yeah, we we did it.
We got there. They got there and or we got
their math wise, but they got their corn wise. And
now corn is the largest crop in the United States. Uh.
It accounts for about all crop sales in the US,
with about only about a third of that being used

(24:29):
for actual food uh and some other industrial uses that
don't include ethanol or livestock teed right, right, But because
we're feeding most of that corn to our livestock and
then we eat the live stock, well, we were in
turn still consuming the corn which are young one way,
right sure, but we um, I didn't get that. But

(24:49):
I love the young ones so nice. Um. But wait,
So the reason corn is so profitable and so well
grown and so tinkered with is because it's so heavily
subsidized in the United it states, Like the government will
pay you to grow corn. Sometimes they'll pay you to
stop growing other crops to grow corn. Um. And you

(25:10):
if your if your crop goes bad, they'll give you
money for it. Because you try to grow corn. It's
just extremely subsidized, which means that, um, there's always a
market for it. You're always going to be able to
sell it. So lots and lots of people grow corn.
So that's what we use as our staple crop to
to make almost all of our other food from. And
that was discussed at length in the really great book

(25:33):
Derito Effect by Mark Shatzker, which we talked about in
our junk Food episode, because remember we did one just
on junk food. This is different, this is slightly different. Uh.
We grew a little corn growing up, um a couple
of times. I think it was kind of a pain.
So we didn't end up doing it more than like
once or twice. But we had a very robust garden

(25:56):
over about an acre. I lived out in the woods
like a you know, like a yokol. I've talked about
canny or on food and stuff, but um, corn was
something we grew a little bit every now and then.
How much do you want to talk about high fruit
just corn syrup? I mean we did a whole episode
on it, right, So how much do you want to
get into this should we tell people I would done again? Yeah,
I don't know that we ever talked about how it's made,

(26:17):
did we? It seemed all new to me. No, we
talked about it. Well, I mean it's a typical. It's
a good, great example of Wow, you really just shifted
from this corn story of you growing it to whether
or not we're going to talk about high fruit chose corn.
So it was like a whip lash and now we're
talking about yeah, clunky, clunky, year four ten, Well why

(26:39):
don't why don't you go over it then? Because I'm
done with it now, I'm just kidding. Um. You should
talk about it though, because it is pretty interesting. Yeah.
And the reason why it's so interesting is because high
Fruit Choice corn syrup is just one of the many
things that are made out of a single like batch
of corn kernels. That's what makes it such a great
like poster child for ultra process foods because out of

(27:01):
you know, a single kernel of corn, you get everything
from um, the like corn oil from the germ, um
from the fiber from the shell gets sent off to
be used in breakfast cereal. So if you see like
corn bran or corn fiber or something like that, it
was separated out from what eventually became high fruit toast
corn syrup. UM. The stuff that's left over is corn

(27:24):
starch and corn gluten, and gluten gets fed to the livestock,
and the corn starts you could just use around your kitchen.
They use it in building materials, UM, and that you
can also use it to create high fruit toast corn syrup.
So just that one process of taking some of that
corn converts it into all these different things from building
products to high fruit toast corn syrup to cattle feed. UM.

(27:47):
Just with this one type of corn dent corn is
what it's called. Yeah, it is. It's one of those
things where you wish HFCs wasn't so bad for you
and and everything, because when you look at that process
that you just described, it's hard not to sit back
and just and as science food science and pat themselves

(28:09):
on the back and just say, what a amazing process
we developed. That all of this stuff is being used
in all these different areas and in the end we
get are evil ingredient. Right Yeah, yeah, for sure, UM,
but I mean not all of it is evil. Like Um,
if you've ever had a cardboard box that you had
trouble pulling apart to recycle because the adhesive was so strong.

(28:30):
You can bet that was made with corn starch or adhesive. Yeah,
the adhesive, industrial adhesive. UM, some of them power some
of our machinery. Ethanol is made from a lot of corn.
So there it is like a real like you know,
pat on the back for science, like you were saying,
it's just that nutrition. Science, as we'll see, has not

(28:51):
figured out how to how to take that stuff and
make it work for humans, the way that we can
make a machine work with ethanol derived from corn. Yeah,
And I think where they I was about to say
where they aired, but they would say this was the genius.
Part of it was the corn syrup that they end
up with after all those processes. Uh is dextros basically,

(29:14):
And if they would have stopped there, it might not
have been so bad, but they went dextros just isn't
as sweet as we needed to be. It doesn't taste
like that sweet sweet sucrose. So let's make it sweeter.
Let's process it more and add an enzyme to it
and some uh, some pressure and some temperature and body
being bought a boom will turn it into fruit. Toast,

(29:35):
and that's sort of that that final step of the
process is really where it nutritionally went wrong. I think, well, yeah,
because don't forget to add the hydrochloric acid to turn
it into fruit toast too, you know. Yeah, Well, I
mean that's kind of one of the first steps, right, Uh,
that is that toward the end, that's where you when
you add like pressure and heat and everything I've been,

(29:56):
that's where it converts it. So yeah, I mean, like
it's the epitome of what people call like Frank and food.
And it's really really easy to tee off on if
you're a whole food proponent, and there are a lot
of whole food proponents, and they got a ton of traction,
especially in like the early two thousand's, early two thousand tens,

(30:20):
thanks in large part to Michael Poland's Omnivor's Dilemma, which
came out in two thousand seven and basically introduced everybody
to the concept that like we're eating all wrong. Essentially,
I want to point out that's your that was your
second Al Franken reference, Tom Chiller's writing partner, and then
frank and Food was that that was not Al Franken reference.

(30:44):
Oh was it? No, Although I'm picturing him like eating
like lucky charms and the couple are just like falling
out of his mouth onto his shirt. I have a
joke there, but I can't tell it, so uh yeah,
the omnivorous dilemma. There were a few other books that
lood from Michael Poland in Defensive Food, very big book, uh,
and then Food Rules, and one called Cooked about eight

(31:07):
or nine years ago. And if you've ever been anywhere
and seeing this slogan on a wall on a poster, um,
eat food, not too much, mostly plants. That comes from
Michael Poland, and that has become a bit of a
rallying cry for the eat better whole Foods movement. Eat

(31:28):
food like you know, food food, and don't eat too
much of it and try to mostly eat plants. And
if you literally do that, then you're probably gonna a
pretty good diet. Yeah. And they have some other like
rules of thumb to like don't eat food that your
great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food, um, which means you
could still eat oreos because they've been around since the
nine um. Also, I think we've talked about how grocery

(31:52):
stores are laid out before, at least in a video,
if not an episode. Um, And how if you hug
the outside perimeter, you're going to get the whole foods.
It's the middle aisles that the processed foods take up.
It's another we just talked about. Um. And then avoid
foods with like more than five ingredients. That's a little restrictive,
but you get the point. The fewer the ingredients, the

(32:13):
likelier it is to just be whole foods without a
whole bunch of added stuff and tinkering and engineering to
make it taste the way it's supposed to taste. Yeah,
And there's also you know, we should talk just for
a second about the other thing wrapped up in this,
which is food culture. Um Poland and uh is it Monteiro?
Is that what we're saying? Yeah? Or Montero Montero. They

(32:37):
both talk a lot about food culture, which is not
just the things you're putting in your mouth, but how
you look at food and dining in general. Which is
to say that they believe and I would tend to
agree probably that too many people these days are just
grabbing food as they quickly move about life from appointment
to appointment or commitment to commitment rather than the day

(33:00):
is where you could cook a meal and it sit
down as a family and eat it together. Uh. And
he's not just saying, like, you know, this is good
for the family, even though it is. They're just talking
about just societal and cultural Uh. I guess norms and
how they've changed over the years, and how we should
strive to sort of get back to that, because chances are,

(33:21):
if you're sitting down at a table with your family
and you're eating together, you're probably not you know, dump
on a bunch of chicken nugets on a plate, and
probably not. You may and that's what we did at
the seventies sort of Even if you are, though, it's
still probably preferable to eating them in the car while
you're hurrying, you know, to piano practice or something like that.
At least you're sitting down together, So there's that aspect

(33:41):
of culture to it. One of the problems, though, Chuck,
is if you've ever, you know, taken steps to replace
some of your ultra processed foods with some of you know,
whole foods that you cook yourself, the just the difference
in time that it takes to prepare those foods is
really significant and it can really tough. That just kind
of goes to underscore why ultra processed foods have become

(34:05):
so ubiquitous. They fit really really well into our current
culture of like go go, go, go, get another thing done,
sign up for another extracurricular activity, Like, um, you can
eat these foods like anywhere. They're available anywhere, and um,
they you can basically just snack throughout the whole day.
You'll never even need to eat a meal, and you

(34:26):
can do it in your car the whole time while
you're going from place to place. Yeah, I mean that's
one of the big criticisms of people like Poland and Montereiro,
which is like, who was cooking this stuff back in
the day. It was probably a housewife in the kitchen
or domestic servant or previous to that, and you know,

(34:48):
previous years enslave people. And it's really easy to sort
of sit back and say if you're in a certain
income bracket and say, hey, slow down cook your meal. Um,
you're gonna get criticized. Probably it comes across as a
little tone deaf, especially when Poland says something that he
said in two thousand nine and an article that uh

(35:10):
seventies feminists uh thoughtlessly trampled the pleasures of cooking and
their rushed to get women out of the kitchen. Um,
you did say that men should also cook, but like
you can't laugh out a statement like that and not
expect blowback. Like someone has to cook these meals and
to income families, it's like it's it's tough. There's not

(35:30):
a lot of time to do that and to shop
for these foods. So we see why it's a problem
basically definitely. And there's more problems to you know that
you could use to critique the whole idea of you know,
eating whole foods and all of the extra time and
effort it takes. Um. But I say, we take a
break and then we come back and we talk about
the health benefits or problems of upfs. Let's do it, okay, okay, chuck.

(36:17):
So there's uh, there's one thing, um that a lot
of people say is like, there's some foods out there
that are more nutritious for you in their ultra processed
form than they would be if you made it yourself. Um.
The problem seems to be this that there's become a
focus on nutrients like the whole fat free thing back

(36:38):
in like the eighties and early nineties. Uh, the low
carb thing, like we focus on nutrients and food has
not has become not food anymore, and it's ultra process
form it's become. I saw it described as a delivery
system for nutrients. Were just obsessed with nutrients. That's what
you see touted on the packages of ultra processed food

(36:59):
that you're opposed to kind of take as a warning
signal to stay away from. The problem is is that
it's becoming more and more apparent that we can engineer
food all we want, but we don't understand the dynamic
of how nutrients within a food interact with one another
to faithfully recreate them, and so the food that we're
creating is substantially less healthy than the whole food versions

(37:24):
of it. The way that Montero puts it is that
ultra processed foods are intrinsically unhealthy, even if you don't
compare them to anything else. If you eat ultra processed foods,
you're going to suffer greater health problems then you would
if you didn't eat or eat a less amounts of
ultra processed foods. And that is the entire problem with

(37:45):
ultra processed foods right now. Well, and that goes lockstep
with the fact that they are engineered to be um.
I guess he calls it hyper palatable formations. Uh, they're
sold in large rings, and they're easy to eat a
lot of, and they're made to be easy to eat
a lot of. They've actually looked at like the structure

(38:08):
of some of these processed foods. They make it harder
to feel satisfied, Like you literally chemically aren't achieving satiation
as quickly with these foods, so you're gonna eat more
of them. That's why somebody can sit down and eat
a sleeve a Pringles with the TV on without really
thinking about it, or those intermediate moisture foods that are
chewy and stay chewy for five years on the shelf.

(38:31):
Like they found that you with ultra processed foods, you
typically chew less. And one of the ways that we
become satiated, one of the ways that our body knows
that it's full is I guess it counts the number
of times that we chew. And just because we're chewing
less and we're eating more, that in and of itself
makes ultra processed foods less healthy than whole foods. But

(38:54):
the critics of the anti ultra processed food camp, even
proponents of ultra processed foods say, okay, that that's a problem,
and that's something that can be designed out. The if
you put nutrient against nutrient, if you put fiber against fiber,
calorie against calorie, um um, you know, vitamin D against
vitamin D in whole foods and ulder processed foods, they're

(39:16):
basically the same thing. People might eat too many ultra
processed foods, maybe you don't chew as much, but still
if if we if we changed that, they would be
the same. And that was the big critique on Montero
and ultra processed foods in general for almost ten years
until a really really important study came out in two
thousand nineteen UM out of UM what was the National

(39:42):
Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Maryland,
so this guy. It was a study led by Kevin
Hall Chuck and it's considered the gold standard of UM
of nutritional studies. It was a randomized controlled trial with
just twenty participants, but it was so oh well designed
that there's basically no critics of its methodology or findings.

(40:05):
It's just roundly touted as finally evidence that ultra processed
foods are, like Montero said, intrinsically unhealthy. Yeah, and we
should point out they did this study with just the
twenty people, because before this, everything you would ever read
about UPS were correlative studies and meta analyzes among huge,

(40:27):
huge populations. So they Kevin Hall, actually dug in on
a smaller level. Uh And, like you said, twenty people
spent two weeks and they were eating either almost all
ultra processed foods or almost all unprocessed foods. But the
key here, like you were talking about, is they matched
these diets calorically. They matched it their protein, their fiber,

(40:49):
their fats and sugars. They tried to match them so
they were basically equal. And then they said, all right,
twenty people, uh, U ten go and eat however much
you want, and U ten go eat however much you want.
And then they rated those diets in the end just
this was of course subjective, but they rated them as
equally as good tasting. But the ultra processed food people

(41:13):
ate five extra calories per day. Yes, so that's like
eating an extra big maca day. Imagine if every day
you just also ate an extra big Mac on top
of everything else you or an extra an extra Taco
Bell beefy five layer burrito. So yeah, it's good in
moderation and on occasion, but eating one every single day

(41:37):
on top of the food that you ate, that's problematic.
And so they also found chuck that the people who
um who uh were in the ultra processed food group,
they gained about two pounds over the two weeks, while
the control group lost about two pounds. So they found like, no,
this is actually this this stuff is is actually when

(41:58):
you compare apples to apples, the older processed food is
actually unhealthier. Like that it was finally proven what what
basically everyone suspected, but because it hadn't been proven, there
was room to argue against it. And since then it's
become harder and harder to argue in favor of ultra
processed foods, at least as they exist today. Yeah, and there,

(42:20):
I mean, that's just like how healthy are They're all
kinds of environmental concerns. We've talked a lot about bio diversity,
agro biodiversity and putting all your eggs in one basket. UM,
crop wise, is really bad if disease comes along, like
we've seen it happen time and time again through history,
and we're at the point now. This is another sort

(42:41):
of fact of the show for me. UM. There are
hundreds of thousands of edible plant species, but more than
half of the calories that humans on planet Earth consume
come from rice, corn, and wheat. That's it. I notice sing,
that's putting your that's not agrobiodiversity. No, it's putting all
of your corn in one basket. That's right, Which is

(43:03):
a good way to carry corn. It is, um, not
in the basket. No, it's particularly a green and yellow basket.
That's right. UM. But I grow bio biodiversity. Is it's
an extra concern because it's kind of like, by limiting
our diet globally, we're also um, we're not only harming
our health, we're harming the ecosystems of Earth's health as well. UM.

(43:27):
And then in addition to that, all of that slick
packaging and um and and wrappers and all that those
require natural resources to make, and they are automatically converted
into waste after you are sold. That that ultra processed
food and if you consider Earth's natural processes as belonging

(43:48):
to all humankind, it can kind of start to tick
you off that there's companies out there that are using
these natural resources to market. They're extremely unhealthy foods to
to me imediately be converted into waste. It's kind of irksome,
you know it is. As for Montero and Brazil, they

(44:08):
have made some big changes about eight years ago and
their government um created basically a whole new health guideline
kind of based on this NOVA framework, and they don't
categorize foods according to like how much fat they have
and how much fiber and how many other nutrients they have.
They based it on that NOVA framework and talk about

(44:30):
food culture a lot. They say to eat regularly and
carefully in appropriate environments and whenever possible in company like
you know, you've got people with you. And some other
countries have followed suit over their Peru, Uruguay, Ecuador, France
has jumped on board as far as saying just try
and avoid ultra processed foods altogether, or at least try

(44:51):
and limit them. And we haven't seen it as much
in the US aside from what I mentioned earlier, which
is certain, uh, certain manufacturers sort of seeing the future
and knowing where this is headed and trying to, I guess,
get ahead of the curb and tout how few ingredients
they have. Sure one of the problems is in the

(45:14):
US the so Brazil said like, this is our new thing.
These are food groups Montero's Nova system, that's what we do.
In the U S we're still doing those that food
pyramid kind of thing. And the U s c A,
from what I can tell, has no official position on
ultra processed foods or how much we should eat or
not eat. At some point, well, apparently back in the seventies,

(45:36):
George McGovern from either South or North Dakota tried to
get the government to issue guidelines saying like you should
eat less red meat and dairy. I think because there
were studies coming out that that we're saying it was
bad for you. And he got ousted from office in
the next election because of that by the Cattle Association,
And it kicked off a long trend to where food

(45:58):
producers lat be the government to not take official positions
against something. Instead they might target you know, nutrients, macro molecules,
things like that like eat less fat, not don't eat
so much red meat, um, and that that kind of
has the United States in a in a quagmire right

(46:20):
now where our scientists are fully aware of like the
health risks of eating certain kinds of food over others,
and yet the government is standing mute as far as
advising citizens what to do or not do, which means
that marketers can fill in that vacuum and argue, no,
it's fine, just eat this, it's good. Yeah. I mean,

(46:40):
I think people like us who do this kind of research,
and I would argue, like a lot of our listeners
are genuinely curious people who see a headline about a
nutritional study and they will click on that and read that.
But the majority of people don't, and they, you know,
they may look to official guide like eating Health Eating

(47:02):
Guidelines of the U s d A and not say, oh,
look at this article I saw and on this website
that clearly says to avoid this or that, you know,
to avoid red meat or something like that, where like
the lobby can't touch that, right. But also there's other
ways that the government can directly influence your diet. It
can say, okay, it's actually really bad to eat as

(47:23):
much corn as we're eating in all these different ways,
we're gonna subsidize soy. Apparently soy is very is not
subsidized almost at all. So maybe they'll start subsidizing soy
over corn, and that that will make the food producers
start using more soy rather than more corn, and then
people start eating soy, which may or may not be healthier.

(47:46):
So the government can make these kind of macro decisions
that affect people's diets even more than just issuing guidelines too. Yeah,
and some people say, just stick your nose out of
it and I'll do what I want. Yes, which is
totally fair. It's completely fair. But if from a public
health standpoint, when you look at you know, meta analysis
that says the higher amount of ultra processed foods you eat,

(48:08):
the higher your risk of death, UM, cardiovascular disease, type
two diabetes, etcetera. UM, it is it's a it's a problem.
It's alarming, especially if you're seeing it developing earlier and
earlier and younger kids who are being raised on ultra
processed foods and as they grow into adults are going
to have no idea how to cook or what foods

(48:29):
to eat and won't be able to pass that on
to their kids. There's there. We're we're looking at a
transitional generation right now, and it's not a transition in
any kind of positive way right And to be clear,
we're not arguing for some nanny state where the government
like outlaws ultra processed foods. We're talking about issuing fair
and honest guidelines that people can still fund their nose

(48:50):
out if they want to write. And Plus, also, this
is not a hit job against ultra processed foods. There's
a lot of people who say, again, like we've come
a really far away in um fortifying foods through processing
to cure certain diseases that used to happen to prevent
birth effects by adding fullate to breakfast cereals. Um that

(49:11):
that it's not that it's not processing itself, it's we
don't quite know how to do it yet, or we're
adding too much sugar, we're adding too many trans fats,
and we need to go in and tinker with the
tastes and the flavors and also the nutrient composition, and
then we'll have everybody eating ultra processed food that actually
is good for you. Whether that whether we're able to

(49:35):
do that anytime soon, as that remains to be seen. Yeah,
there's a journalist named David H. Friedman who in the
Atlantic said, where there are too many people and we
can't literally can't feed the world on this delicious whole food.
Uh that's affordable. So maybe the onus is on some
of these companies to mess with their recipes a little bit.

(49:58):
Maybe we should look to McDonald to tweak their recipes
just a little bit, not to where it tastes like
some drastically. You know, not not to push health food necessarily,
but you know there are things you can do. They
pointed out that the smell of vanilla can mask uh,
if you reduce sugar content, it can mask that and
trick you into thinking that it's still just as sweet.

(50:20):
Or there um plant derived compounds that can replicate the
effects of fat on the tongue and basically you experience
that satiation that allows you to stop eating. And he's saying, like,
we can do this, we can make our ultra process
foods a little better at least. Yeah, and other people

(50:41):
argue like, just because the food is ultra process doesn't
necessarily mean it's harmful to you. Um. There was a
two thousand and twenty two meta analysis in the American
Journal of Epidemiology found the highest consumption of ultra processed
foods was associated with the highest risk of death, but
the highest consumption of breakfast cereal was associated with a

(51:01):
much lower risk of death. So they kind of says like, Okay,
just because this ultra processed food does not make it
inherently bad, and it also suggests that we may be
able to make healthier ultra processed foods. Again, the problem is,
it seems like nutritional science is not at a point
where it can advise of food companies on how to

(51:22):
actually do that in as in a way that's that
can actually replicate the nutrition you get from whole food.
We just can't do it right now. Yeah, And I
think the truth is if a large fast food retail
chain tweak their recipes to make them a little bit better, uh,
people may notice there may be a stink, and then

(51:44):
you know what, people would still go there and eat
that stuff. Yeah, Like Burger King has impossible burgers and
I thought those were gonna last about five days, and
they've been on the menu for years, so obviously some
people are eating them. Which, by the way, that is
about as ultra process to food as you can find.
It just happens to be um healthier on meat. I guess.
I don't know. It could be based, plant based. There

(52:07):
you go. Yeah, I had a Beyond burger the other day.
It was delicious, talk about really good. Do they make
you gassy? I mean, I couldn't tell any difference. I'm
always farting, so who knows your vowels didn't step it
up a little after business as usual? I have to
like sleep in another room after I feel like an

(52:28):
impossible burger. Yeah, oh interesting, Okay, I'm considerate like that. Well,
I haven't had Impossible. I don't know how much different
they are from Beyond. It's probably about the same thing.
It's basically the same. Although I will tell you this,
I would but Buzz Market Incognitos chicken tenders. They are good.
They nailed plant based. Yes, they nailed chicken tenders. Um Like,

(52:52):
if you pull it apart and look at it, you're like, yes,
this is not chicken, but it looks kind of like chicken,
and it tastes like chickenold study right exactly. But if
they did a really good job, I would recommend those
if you can find to try that, because fried chicken
is one of my achilles heels, you know, anything else.
I mean, we could go on about this for hours

(53:13):
if we wanted to. Oh I've got one more thing, Chuck,
I do have one more thing. So another huge critique
is that, UM, whole foods, non ultra processed foods are
typically much much more expensive than ultra processed foods, and
so it's a lot easier for people to be like, yeah,
see whole foods. You know. UM, Not only is that

(53:34):
not taking into account the time that people don't have,
it's also not taking into account the lower income that
a lot of people have. So it's kind of shaming
people for what they they're only option to eat is.
And that's a huge criticism of of UM that kind
of anti ultra processed food camp too well, and kind

(53:55):
of ties in with the tone deafness of just spend
three hours shopping and cooking for your family and then
sit down and eat it together like the nine exactly.
So let's it for ultra processed food for now, until
we do another episode on it in a few years,
probably ultra ultra processed foods, right, somebody will come out

(54:17):
with another name for junk food and we'll do an
entire new episode on it, or we'll just get to
that space food we all yearned for when we were kids,
where it's like a dinner pill. Yeah, apparently space food
sticks was like one of the first ultra processed foods.
It was Pillsbury. Did you ever have this? I mean
I had that, you know, ice cream of the future,

(54:38):
stuff that eventually morphed into dipping dots. These were more
like an energy bar. Okay, yeah, I don't think I
had that. Oh well, did it taste like ice cream? Maybe?
Then it was made of little tiny babies? Who knows.
It is funny though, how much like the Army and
NASA has influenced the food that we eat. I got

(54:59):
nothing else, though, So hats off to NASA and the
Army for coming up with the food we eat. That's right. Uh.
If you want to know more about ultra process foods,
go start reading up on it. There's a lot from
both camps on the internet to satisfy you, to satiate you.
And since I said satiate, it's time for listener mail.
I'm gonna call this one of two kidney transplant emails

(55:23):
we're gonna read. Uh, We're gonna read the next one
in the next episode. But boy, we heard some really
good stuff and got great feedback and hurt from some
donors and some doctors. Uh. And this is from an
r N in South Dakota named Danielle. Hey, guys, longtime fan,
first time writer. I've been waiting seven years to be
able to contribute to your lovely show, and that opportunity

(55:43):
hit after your kidney don't wrap. I'm a nurse who
works in a small city hospital, and the kidney transplant
for you did a great job with this info. But
I do want to inform you that uh, anti rejection
medications must be taken for life, although the dose might change.
I think i'd said you can eventually get off of them,
which apparently is we're just trying to be optimistic, right.

(56:05):
Uh And Chuck, you said the fact of the show
is that all kidney stay in your body. But here's
the fact of this listener mail. I had a patient
at one time with five kidneys in their body because
they had been through several transplants. They had chronic disease
because each kidney to last about ten or fifteen years
and trust me, I was sure to pull up those

(56:27):
radiology images to see, but apparently Danielle believes in patient
privacy because daniel did not send those to me. That's
that's nice. Thanks for spreading tolerance, unbiased, ish information, and
light conversation to the world. Very nice. Thanks a lot, Danielle.
Thank you for saving lives and mending um broken kidneys. Yeah,

(56:51):
all five of them. If you want to be like
Danielle and get in touch with us, we'd love to
hear from you. You can send us an email to
Stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com. Stuff you
Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

(57:15):
H