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Are ultra processed foods bad for you? UPFs, fact checked · No Forking Nonsense - The Nutritionist UK

• 0:00
  @PAULTHENUTRITIONIST: Hello and welcome to another episode of No Forking Nonsense and what a week. We have had our most listeners we've ever had. We have been quoted and reposted a billion times in health all about the argument of diet coke. So I did an updated podcast where we covered it all off. And today, we are covering ultra processed foods.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: The absolute shite around it. It's the most infuriating thing because there's so much nonsense out there all about it. Anyway, enough of that. If you want to have a meal deal survival guide that includes some ultra processed foods and it's approved by a registered nutritionist and it's completely free, click the top link in the description. It's gonna talk you through and it's gonna give you hacks on how you can navigate meal deals.
• 0:48
  It is the most incredible, it took me ages to do and I really think it's incredible. People are already messaging me saying they're going into supermarkets and utilising it. It's helping them make decisions to get healthier, high protein, nutritious lunches that actually taste okay. It s answered a lot of questions and queries, helps them understand labels in the most basic manner possible, no nonsense, no shit, saving you loads of money. It s free.
• 1:14
  Why would you not download it? If you haven t downloaded it and you re listening to this, what are you doing? So download that and enjoy today s episode on ultra processed foods. Right ultra processed foods, Let s get into the first question. What are ultra processed foods?
• 1:34
  What is an ultra processed food? A classification system everyone uses is called Nova and it was created by a Brazilian researcher called Carlos Monteiro in 2009 and it splits foods into four different groups. So, you've got group one, which is unprocessed or minimally processed, so think fruit, veg, meat, eggs, milk, fine. Group two, processed culinary ingredients, so your oils, butter, flour, sugar, things used in cooking. And then we have group three, which is your processed foods, which is tinned fish, cured meats, cheese, freshly baked bread, still fine apparently and then group four, ultra processed and this is where it gets fucking wild.
• 2:29
  The definition of an ultra processed food under Nova is basically any food that contains ingredients you wouldn't find in a home kitchen. We are talking emulsifiers, stabilisers, flavour enhancers, colours, preservatives If it's in there, it's defined as ultra processed. And it sounds reasonable on the surface, but here's what actually catches up in the nat. Whole grain bread from the supermarket, ultra processed. Low fat yogurt, ultra processed.
• 3:04
  Baked beans, ultra processed. Protein bars, ultra processed. Most breakfast cereals, including the relatively innocent ones, ultra processed. Flavored sparkling water, ultra processed, a slice of ham, ultra processed. And here's one that made me absolutely laugh out loud when I looked into it: plant based alternatives, some of the most heavily marketed health foods of the last decade, absolutely swimming in emulsifiers and stabilisers, they are massive ultra processed foods.
• 3:41
  So the category is enormous. And when you lump a Greggs sausage roll in the same bucket as Weetabix and baked beans, you have to ask yourself whether the category is actually mollocks. So what does the science actually say? I m not going to sit here and tell you that ultra processed foods are all great, the research isn t nothing, there are some big studies that do flag associations between ultra processed foods, high in consumption, and poor health outcomes. The NOVA researchers and others have linked high ultra processed food diets to increased risk of obesity, type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers.
• 4:22
  A 2024 umbrella review of the British Medical Journal looked at nearly 10,000,000 people across multiple studies and found associations between ultra processed food consumption and over 30 negative health outcomes, and that's a pretty big number that we can't ignore. But there's the word doing all the heavy lifting here, and that is associations. There are observational studies, they track what people eat and what happens to them. They do not prove cause and effect. People who eat a lot of ultra processed foods tend to eat less fibre.
• 5:00
  They tend to have less protein, fewer vegetables, sleep worse, exercise less, smoke more, drink more, and have less money. Is it the emulsifiers in the bread, or is it everything else that comes with that lifestyle? That is the question the science genuinely cannot answer yet. And then the study that really muddied the water. Kevin Hall at the NIH in America did what's called a randomised control study, that is the gold standard of research.
• 5:32
  He had people actually live in a clinical facility and eat either an ultra processed food diet or a whole food diet, matched for calories, protein, sugar, and fiber pound for pound. And he found that people in the ultra processed food diet are about 500 calories ate about 500 more calories per day and gained weight. Sounds damning, but here s the thing, he couldn t isolate why. Was it the processing? The texture?
• 6:03
  The fact that ultra processed foods are usually more calorie dense and easier to eat quickly? The fact that they were slightly lower in fibre in that study, despite the matching attempt? We just don't know. That's the honest answer right now, we literally do not know. This is where I'm going to be straight with you.
• 6:24
  Let's say that you're someone who's carrying a bit of extra weight, you're eating too many calories, you're not hitting anywhere near enough protein, you're not drinking enough water, you re not eating much veg, you re having a few drinks for the weekend, your sleep is appalling. That is the picture for a huge chunk of this population. Remember, sixty percent of the nation are overweight or obese as well. And I work with people and communicate with people like described above every single day. Now someone comes along and tells that person that their biggest problem is the emulsifier in their Warburton's loaf.
• 6:57
  That, my friend, is a fart in a thunderstorm. It is noise. It's a distraction from the things that would actually move the needle. And here's something that nobody talks about when we're having the ultra processed food conversation, alcohol. Alcohol is not classified as an ultra processed food under the NOVA system, which is absolutely insane.
• 7:18
  A glass of wine is apparently fine, but if you have a molycorna, that s the enemy. And if you drink and you are worried about ultra processed foods, you need to get your priorities sorted. The alcohol is doing 10 times more damage and it s not even worth having a conversation about. The same goes for shower gel by the way, sunscreen, shampoo, the air you breathe in a city. We are surrounded by chemicals and additives every single day.
• 7:46
  The idea that lecithin in your protein bar is what's standing between you and good health is frankly absurd. And I'm not saying ultra processed foods don't matter, I am saying the dose makes the poison and the context makes the egg. So what does actually matter? The characteristics that most ultra processed foods share are actually useful to talk about, but they are just not unique to ultra processed foods. Most ultra processed foods are calorie dense, they are low in protein, they are low in fibre, they are easy to overeat because of the texture, the flavour, and how quickly you eat them.
• 8:22
  And those four things, those are the things worth worrying about, not what s written on the label in small print. If you focus on eating enough protein, getting an adequate amount of fibre, being hydrated, keeping calories roughly in check, and building your meals around food that you actually have to chew, you will almost certainly eat fewer ultra processed foods naturally, not because you banned them, but because you crowded them out with better food. That is where the whole eightytwenty approach comes in. 80% of the time, eat food that is relatively whole, higher protein, decent fibre, 20% of the time, have a biscuit, the process, whatever, and stop making yourself miserable over it. The research on this is actually quite clear: calorie balance drives weight change, protein drives satiety and muscle retention, fibre drives gut health and fullness, and sleep drives absolutely everything, and those are the levers.
• 9:19
  So the question is, are you being lied to about ultra processed foods? Not exactly, no, But you are being given an incomplete picture. The science flags genuine concerns but can t tell us why. The NOVA classification is blunt and catches a load of foods that most nutrition professionals would consider perfectly fine. The headlines strip out all the nuance and leave you terrified of your baked meat.
• 9:44
  And my advice is always that eat more food that looks like food, prioritise protein, prioritise fibre, make sure you drink enough water, don t drink your calories, prioritise sleep and move as much as possible. Do those things consistently and the ultra processed food question becomes completely irrelevant because you are already doing the things that actually matter. Don t let perfect be the enemy of the good. And don let a Brazilian classification system from 2009 make you feel guilty about having a bowl of ooey to fix. That's it for this episode of No Forking Nonsense.
• 10:22
  Now I wanna ask you a bit of a question. I recorded an episode recently that is currently unreleased, and I wanna know your opinion. Would you like to hear it? I just want a few people to let me know whether you want it. I did an episode whereby I went through every single note in my iPhone from 2016, which is very, very revealing.
• 10:50
  And it went through my goals from 2016 which were mental, I shared some I was getting into self development so I was like, you know, feeling the depth, there's a few weird quotes in the song lyrics. I broke down why my goals were why they were, talked about some like relationship scenario, anyway it's very revealing, it's just very different to what we usually cover. So if you would like to listen to that, send me a message. Just just say, send me the notes icon on Instagram at pool nutritionist. And if I get enough of them, I'll share it with you.
• 11:39
  If not, back to business as usual on Wednesday. Anyway, download the free meal deal guide, which is down below. It is gonna help you. It's impossible for it not to, and I shall catch up with you on Wednesday where we've got an incredible episode, but I'll tell you about that next week. Have a good weekend.