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How Ultraprocessed Foods Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's even here, and this is
0:15
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Welcome everybody, Welcome. Yet another food.
0:24
Speaker 1: Uh well, I was going to classify this. I don't
0:26
Speaker 1: think this belongs with our food like coffee beans like that,
0:30
Speaker 1: but food industry, sure, sweet, can't stop, can't stop, can't
0:36
Speaker 1: stop talking about food. That's what I say. I love it.
0:41
Speaker 1: This is more um yeah, food industry like um, massive
0:46
Speaker 1: problem in the world faces now that kind of thing.
0:48
Speaker 1: It's it's in that sweet like the huge problem sweet.
0:52
Speaker 1: That's where yeah, we do, and it's growing every day, unfortunately,
0:57
Speaker 1: because we haven't solved the single one, Chuck, even though
0:59
Speaker 1: we've tried. I know we're trying. But what we're talking
1:02
Speaker 1: about today are called ultra processed foods. And a lot
1:05
Speaker 1: of people say, you mean junk food, and yeah, it
1:08
Speaker 1: is junk food. But it's applying science and public health
1:14
Speaker 1: to the idea of what to do about junk food,
1:20
Speaker 1: because as people look into it more and more, they
1:23
Speaker 1: find more and more evidence that it's as bad for
1:26
Speaker 1: you as you think it is. Maybe even worse. But
1:30
Speaker 1: it's also painfully obvious that it's so fully entrenched in
1:35
Speaker 1: cultures around the world that it's not going anywhere. We're
1:38
Speaker 1: not gonna get rid of. You can't just get rid
1:41
Speaker 1: of junk food. People survive on junk food, as we'll
1:44
Speaker 1: see um. But so we have to figure out then
1:48
Speaker 1: how to balance those two things, the presence of junk
1:50
Speaker 1: food and the the harm that junk food can do
1:53
Speaker 1: to your health. Yeah, and you know, I would even say,
1:58
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you would agree that calling it junk food,
2:01
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people might think, like, well,
2:03
Speaker 1: I don't need Cheetos, and I hate that we're gonna
2:06
Speaker 1: have to just rattle off brands like that. I love
2:10
Speaker 1: a Cheeto every now and then Cheese Oh no, no, no,
2:15
Speaker 1: that the ones that look like Little Caveman Club look
2:18
Speaker 1: like that too. When I was a kid, I used
2:20
Speaker 1: to I didn't eat many Cheetos then either, just because
2:23
Speaker 1: we didn't have no money to buy Cheetos. We had
2:25
Speaker 1: whatever the off brand was that came in, like gigantic bags. Yeah, probably,
2:32
Speaker 1: but I hate that we're gonna have to name brands
2:34
Speaker 1: here and there like that as reference. But let's just
2:36
Speaker 1: say cheetos. Uh, but people might think, oh, I don't
2:39
Speaker 1: eat cheetos, so I'm good. Uh. That's not true. Though.
2:42
Speaker 1: There are a lot of foods that you probably eat
2:45
Speaker 1: that you don't realize. You may not call junk food.
2:48
Speaker 1: But if you look at the back of the package,
2:49
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, wait a minute, there's like fourteen ingredients
2:52
Speaker 1: and two of them sound like food. Yeah, and that's
2:55
Speaker 1: a really good indicator. Though what you're eating is ultra
2:58
Speaker 1: processed food. Um. And that actually that term ultra process
3:03
Speaker 1: food you may have heard before, but it's a relatively
3:05
Speaker 1: recent development. I think it was two thousand and ten
3:09
Speaker 1: when a Brazilian epidemiologist named Carlos Montero came up with
3:14
Speaker 1: it as part of like a four point um food group.
3:20
Speaker 1: It was pretty obvious, but it was, But what he
3:23
Speaker 1: did was not obvious. It was actually pretty revolutionary because
3:27
Speaker 1: at the time in Brazil in two thousand and ten
3:30
Speaker 1: and still today in the United States and plenty of
3:32
Speaker 1: other countries, there was a focus on on the food group. Says,
3:36
Speaker 1: we know, I'm like grains in um, cereals, fruits and vegetables, meat, dairy,
3:43
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Right, there's we still talk about
3:46
Speaker 1: that here today in the United States. So what this
3:48
Speaker 1: guy said was like, that is so ridiculously confusing and
3:52
Speaker 1: it's such a problem to keep up with that. I'm
3:56
Speaker 1: going to basically take it upon myself to reclassify food
3:59
Speaker 1: into easier to understand stuff. And that's where he came
4:03
Speaker 1: up with ultra processed food. But he actually came up
4:05
Speaker 1: with it from an observation, Chuck, that was kind of
4:07
Speaker 1: like a mystery. At first. It sounds like a set
4:10
Speaker 1: up to me, take it, Chuck, just so people know.
4:14
Speaker 1: We don't write down set chuck up for the next bit. No, No,
4:18
Speaker 1: it's just very organic, it is. And it's getting clunkier
4:22
Speaker 1: as we're entering four teeth here. Organic and clunky sounds
4:29
Speaker 1: like a set up. Yeah, he did notice something. He
4:33
Speaker 1: realized that the purchase of actual sugar by Brazilians had
4:37
Speaker 1: gone down a lot between the nineteen eighties and two thousand's,
4:41
Speaker 1: but obesity and type two diabetes were still on the rise.
4:45
Speaker 1: And I guess he thought, it's almost as if they're
4:48
Speaker 1: getting all that sugar from other things that aren't just
4:51
Speaker 1: bags of sugar. And so he looked to the to
4:55
Speaker 1: the package food industry and came up with a system
4:58
Speaker 1: to classify it, and never has there been a system
5:02
Speaker 1: that should be an acronym. It's not so frustrating. It's
5:06
Speaker 1: even capitalized nova in O v A and like what
5:10
Speaker 1: does it stand for? Nothing? Absolutely nothing, not your ordinary
5:15
Speaker 1: variant analysis? Uh yeah, yeah, I worked on it even
5:21
Speaker 1: that's what I could come up with. Oh really yeah, Okay.
5:24
Speaker 1: I think the reason he chose novas because nova means
5:27
Speaker 1: new star. Um so, I think he was saying, like
5:31
Speaker 1: this is providing like a new north Star to guide
5:34
Speaker 1: people towards nutrition. I guess or that he is the
5:37
Speaker 1: new star of talking about food, right, That's that's what
5:41
Speaker 1: he talks about himself as for sure. Uh so, I
5:44
Speaker 1: guess we should talk about the four groups. Uh. Group
5:48
Speaker 1: one is what you might call like whole foods, which
5:51
Speaker 1: are it's just food. It's unprocessed, it's fruit, and it's meat,
5:56
Speaker 1: and it's the eggs and stuff like that. Uh you know,
6:00
Speaker 1: comes out of a chicken's butt and into your mouth.
6:02
Speaker 1: Hopefully there's something in between that happens though. Right then
6:06
Speaker 1: that's that's a good point too, because people be like, well,
6:08
Speaker 1: meats processed. Yes. Group one also includes minimally processed foods.
6:13
Speaker 1: So the distinction isn't that it's totally unprocessed. The distinction
6:16
Speaker 1: is is that it's substantially intact, asn't been pulled apart
6:20
Speaker 1: and put back together again. And it's nutrient composition as
6:23
Speaker 1: it exists in the cow that's walking around or the
6:26
Speaker 1: chicken that's walking around or the plant that's growing, remains
6:29
Speaker 1: basically the same in this form, this minimally processed form.
6:34
Speaker 1: That's right. That's Group one, and that's what you should
6:35
Speaker 1: shoot for. Group to our processed foods a little more processed. Uh.
6:41
Speaker 1: And you know we're talking about oils, packaged herbs. These
6:45
Speaker 1: are things that are used as ingredients or things to
6:48
Speaker 1: cook other things, right, yeah. Um, So if you put
6:52
Speaker 1: Group one and Group two together, what you're doing is cooking,
6:56
Speaker 1: and you're coming up with basically Group three foods and
7:00
Speaker 1: basically anything that you cook in your kitchen using normal ingredients,
7:05
Speaker 1: even things like cakes and cookies and things like that.
7:09
Speaker 1: If you're using sugar and butter um and basically whole
7:14
Speaker 1: foods from Groups one or two, you're you're coming up
7:17
Speaker 1: with Group three, which are processed foods, but they're recommend
7:21
Speaker 1: their recommended processed food. So the kind of foods that
7:24
Speaker 1: you're making yourself or if you're buying it at the store,
7:28
Speaker 1: it's being it's being processed in a way that is
7:31
Speaker 1: still retaining as much of the nutrients as possible with
7:34
Speaker 1: as few additional ingredients as possible. And the ingredients, like
7:37
Speaker 1: you're saying before you can you can understand what they're
7:41
Speaker 1: what they're saying in the ingredient list. Yeah, Like if
7:44
Speaker 1: you see, uh, some strawberry preserves on the shelf of
7:48
Speaker 1: a grocery store and it says and this is, uh,
7:50
Speaker 1: this is actually in our research and something will point
7:53
Speaker 1: out later again probably, but food brands are starting to
7:57
Speaker 1: teut stuff like this, Like I bought some. It's we
8:00
Speaker 1: don't get eat a lot of like frozen treats like
8:03
Speaker 1: ice cream and stuff, but I got some because the summertime,
8:06
Speaker 1: I wanted to get my daughter some like a little treat,
8:08
Speaker 1: you know, a little frozen treat, like some fruit pops.
8:11
Speaker 1: And when you go down the fruit pop aisle, that
8:13
Speaker 1: that aisle especially is made up of things where they'll
8:16
Speaker 1: say like three ingredients and big letters on the front,
8:19
Speaker 1: like you know, cane, sugar and water and real fruits. Yeah,
8:26
Speaker 1: that's the third ingredient, but that would be a group three.
8:29
Speaker 1: And there are you know, I think the bell has
8:32
Speaker 1: been ringing. So food companies are are beginning to tout
8:35
Speaker 1: things like fewer ingredients here and there, uh, so they
8:38
Speaker 1: don't fall into group four, which is the ultra process
8:41
Speaker 1: foods that we're gonna talk about today. And these are
8:45
Speaker 1: you know, contain a lot of engineered ingredients. Uh. When
8:48
Speaker 1: you look at the back, that's when you're gonna see
8:50
Speaker 1: things like soy protein and high hydrogenated fats and things
8:54
Speaker 1: like that and things you can't even pronounce, right, um.
8:57
Speaker 1: And the longer the list of ingredients is, the likelier
9:00
Speaker 1: it is to be in group four. UM. The more
9:04
Speaker 1: difficult to understand ingredients are probably in group four. And
9:09
Speaker 1: then also even without UM looking at the ingredient list,
9:14
Speaker 1: you can usually catch a group for type ultra processed
9:18
Speaker 1: food UM because it's heavily marketed. There's lots of colors
9:23
Speaker 1: and neat logos and stuff like that, and you've seen
9:25
Speaker 1: ads for it on TV. That's definitely a hallmark, right,
9:29
Speaker 1: that's a definite hallmark of ultra processed foods. UM. So
9:32
Speaker 1: you can usually tell from the packaging and then to
9:35
Speaker 1: kind of meet the industry where it's going to um.
9:39
Speaker 1: Some people who are into the Nova system of food
9:41
Speaker 1: groups say, actually, if you see a packaged food or
9:46
Speaker 1: a pre prepared food that is making health claims, you
9:49
Speaker 1: should actually take that as a signal that it's not
9:52
Speaker 1: actually healthy, that that healthy foods don't have to tout
9:55
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Unhealthy foods are the ones that
9:58
Speaker 1: you have to watch out for. They say healthy, low fat,
10:02
Speaker 1: all that stuff, it actually means it's ultra processed. Right,
10:06
Speaker 1: Like you won't see a bunch of bananas with a
10:07
Speaker 1: sticker that says now with more potassium. No. And if
10:10
Speaker 1: you want to kind of imagine what the differences between,
10:14
Speaker 1: you know, where we are between ultra processed foods and
10:17
Speaker 1: actual whole foods. Like imagine Mountain Dew, the Mountain Dew logo,
10:22
Speaker 1: all of the Mountain Dew advertising you've ever heard. Remember
10:25
Speaker 1: they used to say it was extreme with just an
10:27
Speaker 1: X that is like classic ultra processed food marketing. Now
10:32
Speaker 1: imagine yes, for sure. Now imagine that same ad campaign
10:36
Speaker 1: was for pairs like it will make your brain do
10:40
Speaker 1: a somersault just trying to even it's just trying to
10:42
Speaker 1: come up with it, and that's shape it really kind
10:45
Speaker 1: of brings in to start contrast the difference between ultra
10:48
Speaker 1: processed foods and whole foods from groups one, two, or three. Yeah,
10:53
Speaker 1: it's pretty sad, and it's they've been Uh. I mean,
10:55
Speaker 1: there's some staggering facts in here. The first one that
10:58
Speaker 1: I came across was right here on our first page,
11:01
Speaker 1: where it says that, uh, in the US and the UK,
11:04
Speaker 1: ultraprocessed foods make up more than half of the calories
11:08
Speaker 1: that we eat period. Uh, and they are on the rise. Uh.
11:13
Speaker 1: They've they've shown that the percentage of adults US adults
11:17
Speaker 1: diets that are consist of upfs or ultra processed foods
11:22
Speaker 1: went from fifty three point five to fifty seven. And
11:26
Speaker 1: that's from let's say, two thousand two to two thousand seventeen,
11:30
Speaker 1: which is a long time, but you know, of four
11:33
Speaker 1: percentage point rise in like a total caloric intake is substantial. Yeah,
11:39
Speaker 1: And that means that since it was at fifty three
11:42
Speaker 1: point five percent, already American adults have gotten at least
11:46
Speaker 1: half of their calories for more than twenty years, at
11:50
Speaker 1: least half of their calories from junk food for more
11:52
Speaker 1: than two decades. And that's just the adults. Like, if
11:54
Speaker 1: you look into studies of ultra processed foods, by far
11:58
Speaker 1: the largest consumers of them are younger kids, in particular
12:02
Speaker 1: younger boys. So if our if adults are getting that much,
12:06
Speaker 1: I mean, it just makes you wonder how much how
12:08
Speaker 1: much kids are getting And it just so happens that
12:11
Speaker 1: that's our next stat uh. Yeah, kids. Over an eighteen
12:15
Speaker 1: year period from ninety nine to two thousand eighteen, they
12:18
Speaker 1: went from to sixty seven percent. And they found that,
12:23
Speaker 1: you know, it's generally across all races save one, which
12:28
Speaker 1: is pretty amazing and awesome. Hispanic adults don't eat nearly
12:33
Speaker 1: as much ultra processed foods as other people. Uh. And
12:36
Speaker 1: they've also found that it's basically across um income demographics,
12:42
Speaker 1: although lower income uh, people with lower incomes do eating
12:47
Speaker 1: more upfs, but it has been rising across almost all demographics. Yeah,
12:51
Speaker 1: and um globally too, Like the US has long been
12:55
Speaker 1: feeding our kids and eating ourselves the ultra processed foods. Uh,
13:00
Speaker 1: but it's long been kind of a hallmark of a
13:03
Speaker 1: wealthier country, ironically, because ultra processed foods are so cheap
13:07
Speaker 1: compared to whole foods UM. But in other countries, as
13:11
Speaker 1: they started to develop more and more economically UM their
13:15
Speaker 1: intake of ultra processed foods has increased. In step two,
13:19
Speaker 1: so you see ultra processed foods making up a larger
13:22
Speaker 1: and larger share of the caloric intake of all people
13:26
Speaker 1: around the world. It's becoming a new kind of diet
13:31
Speaker 1: that wherever you go in the world, you're going to
13:33
Speaker 1: be able to find basically the same food and it's
13:36
Speaker 1: wrapped in extreme packaging and contain something that was extruded
13:40
Speaker 1: and dusted with something that used to be cheese. All right,
13:44
Speaker 1: that's a great setup. Uh, let's take a break and
13:48
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit about where, or at least
13:51
Speaker 1: what some people considered the big bang of upfs started
13:54
Speaker 1: right after this. By the way, Chuck extrusion, I was like,
14:20
Speaker 1: I think I know what that is. I just want
14:21
Speaker 1: to make sure you remember the Plato fun factory. Like
14:26
Speaker 1: that thing that you you put the Plato in one
14:28
Speaker 1: end and then you pulled the lever and it squeezed
14:29
Speaker 1: out like a star shape or a moon shape. That's extrusion, yes,
14:34
Speaker 1: but they never called it the extruder In my day.
14:37
Speaker 1: They called it the fun factory, the star maker. All right,
14:43
Speaker 1: So if you want to look to where some people
14:45
Speaker 1: consider the Big Bang, or at least as um Anastasia
14:49
Speaker 1: marks de Salsado, Yeah, salceto, yes, yes. Uh. Anastasia the
15:00
Speaker 1: journalist who wrote a book called Combat Ready Kitchen colon
15:03
Speaker 1: how the US military shapes the way you eat and
15:08
Speaker 1: lays claim to the fact that World War Two was
15:10
Speaker 1: is uh known at least to this journalist as the
15:13
Speaker 1: Big Bang of ultra processed foods and that revolution. Uh
15:18
Speaker 1: we should point out this is nothing new. Canning, I
15:21
Speaker 1: realized comes from a competition that was used or held
15:26
Speaker 1: to help feed Napoleon's army. So there's been a long
15:30
Speaker 1: history of food R and D when it comes to
15:33
Speaker 1: feeding lots and lots of soldiers on the battlefield. In
15:37
Speaker 1: a way that makes sense because you know, you obviously
15:39
Speaker 1: have to have food that's not going to spoil, stuff
15:41
Speaker 1: that light and that travels, and um, what it kind
15:44
Speaker 1: of comes down to is getting rid of as much
15:47
Speaker 1: water as you can from food, right, because that prevents spoilage. It's,
15:51
Speaker 1: like you said, makes it lighter, so it's easier to
15:53
Speaker 1: ship and move around. Um. But it still should retain
15:57
Speaker 1: mostly the same nutrient density, which is what you're really after. UM.
16:01
Speaker 1: And that's that's a huge, huge thing that kind of
16:04
Speaker 1: came out of World War two, I believe, UM, which
16:06
Speaker 1: was drying food, learning to dry not just food but
16:10
Speaker 1: also coffee. UM. And apparently all of that that drawing
16:14
Speaker 1: process came out of UM a way to to dry
16:19
Speaker 1: and store plasma for later use. And they said, you
16:22
Speaker 1: know what would would also go through this process really well, coffee?
16:27
Speaker 1: That was it pretty amazing? Yeah, there was some that.
16:30
Speaker 1: I mean, that is just one tiny little fact. I
16:32
Speaker 1: think the one that really got me was something like
16:35
Speaker 1: the McRib was actually born out of this same military
16:39
Speaker 1: research into something called and this is an album title.
16:43
Speaker 1: If I've ever heard one, fabricated modules of meat, that's
16:46
Speaker 1: the Diarrhea Planet album. Oh man, they're not together anymore,
16:50
Speaker 1: we heard from people. I think I knew they weren't together,
16:52
Speaker 1: but they'll always be together in my heart. Uh. And
16:56
Speaker 1: this is very interesting too. What they've UM the start
17:00
Speaker 1: doing was found out a way to remove or what
17:03
Speaker 1: to end up with something called intermediate moisture foods. So
17:08
Speaker 1: if you think of like a chewy granola bar, uh,
17:12
Speaker 1: that thing is chewy. It's not super dry, but it's
17:14
Speaker 1: not super wet. And the power bar is something that
17:17
Speaker 1: was born directly from World War Two. There was something
17:20
Speaker 1: called a logan bar that was packed in the you know,
17:24
Speaker 1: soldiers kits as a meal replacement, but it was designed
17:27
Speaker 1: purposefully to not taste very good, so the soldiers wouldn't
17:31
Speaker 1: just like dive in after it. It's sort of like
17:33
Speaker 1: a last resort thing. And they're there in lies the
17:37
Speaker 1: power bar. So if you're ever like, these things taste terrible,
17:40
Speaker 1: you can thank the US Army for deliberately making them
17:44
Speaker 1: taste terrible so that you don't want to eat them, like,
17:47
Speaker 1: you know, like their kudos, remember kudos, Oh yeah, I
17:51
Speaker 1: love they were great. They were like a cross between
17:53
Speaker 1: a candy bar and a granola bar, and they somehow
17:57
Speaker 1: we're greater than the sum of all its parts. And
17:59
Speaker 1: those were the kind of things that you're like, oh,
18:01
Speaker 1: I like this, I think I'll have the rest of
18:03
Speaker 1: the box. And that's another hallmark of ultra process foods,
18:06
Speaker 1: as we'll see, I think though we can now not
18:10
Speaker 1: avoid it any longer. We need to talk about processed
18:13
Speaker 1: cheese and cheese dust. What the Army ended up calling
18:17
Speaker 1: jungle cheese because they developed a new way to make cheese.
18:22
Speaker 1: The people have been making cheese for millennia and it
18:25
Speaker 1: was great, but it didn't travel well. And so the
18:28
Speaker 1: Army or I guess you know, the military industrial complex,
18:31
Speaker 1: said let's find a way to make better cheese that
18:34
Speaker 1: can travel, and they did it. They did so. One
18:37
Speaker 1: of the huge challenges was as you dry out cheese,
18:40
Speaker 1: if you don't do it right, the oil separates out
18:42
Speaker 1: of the cheese, it becomes sweaty, and the cheese you
18:45
Speaker 1: have left with is oil and dry and not good
18:49
Speaker 1: at all. So somebody figured out there was an actual guy,
18:53
Speaker 1: George Sanders, who was a U. S d. A dairy scientist.
18:57
Speaker 1: He figured out that if you dry the cheese at
18:59
Speaker 1: really low temper the protein actually encapsulates the lipids the
19:04
Speaker 1: fats and locks them in place. So then after that
19:08
Speaker 1: you can pulverize it and dry it even further and
19:11
Speaker 1: the fat will stay locked into it. And then you
19:14
Speaker 1: can take that and you can either turn it into
19:16
Speaker 1: powder or you can reconstitute it into whatever shape you want. Specifically,
19:22
Speaker 1: sliced cheese, which is those yellow squares of cheese. That's
19:25
Speaker 1: what happens to him. Yeah, but when it came to
19:28
Speaker 1: the powder, like if you've ever made that delicious still
19:32
Speaker 1: delicious kraffmac and cheese and not the kind with the
19:37
Speaker 1: packet squeezy cheese. Yeah, I'm talking that yellow orange powder
19:42
Speaker 1: and you dump it in there with a little butter,
19:44
Speaker 1: maybe a little heavy cream if you really want to
19:45
Speaker 1: treat yourself, and you wonder what the heck is this?
19:49
Speaker 1: It is cheese. It's just treat cheese that has been
19:52
Speaker 1: ultra processed thanks to George Sanders. And he would shread
19:57
Speaker 1: it up and then dry it out, and then it
19:59
Speaker 1: would harden up, and then he would grind it and
20:02
Speaker 1: then dehydrated even more, and eventually you do that over
20:05
Speaker 1: and over and you get down to that beautiful orange powder. Yeah.
20:09
Speaker 1: What's confusing is there seems to be a discrepancy between
20:12
Speaker 1: who first invented cheese powder. Was it George Saunders in
20:16
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three? Um? If so, then how did Kraft
20:20
Speaker 1: come out with their macaroni and cheese or craft dinner
20:23
Speaker 1: if you're in Canada, Um, back in ninety seven with
20:26
Speaker 1: powdered cheese. So it's weird. There's a there's a weird
20:30
Speaker 1: misunderstanding around who created cheese powder, but it does seem
20:33
Speaker 1: to have come about in the either the late nineteen
20:36
Speaker 1: early nineteen forties, possibly through military research. But it was
20:43
Speaker 1: that we got our first cheese dust snack when the
20:47
Speaker 1: Freedo Company. I guess, I mean, was it a Cheeto?
20:51
Speaker 1: Was it like a cheesy friedo? My friend, it was
20:53
Speaker 1: a cheeto or cho cho as what you grew up. Uh.
21:00
Speaker 1: I've worked with the director years ago, Tom Schiller, who
21:02
Speaker 1: was the remember the black and white SNL shorts from
21:06
Speaker 1: the Blue. Yeah, he was like Al Franken's writing partner,
21:09
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, I was like Schiller's kind of head
21:13
Speaker 1: p a. When he came to town, he would request
21:15
Speaker 1: me because we were buddies. Uh. And he was great
21:18
Speaker 1: with like one of the best dudess ever worked for.
21:19
Speaker 1: But he as a gag would um he didn't even
21:22
Speaker 1: like Cheetos, but he would eat cheetos on set with
21:24
Speaker 1: a white surgical glove just to make people laugh. That's funny.
21:28
Speaker 1: There's these little finger protectors that look like tiny condoms
21:32
Speaker 1: that you put on your fingertips and I used to
21:35
Speaker 1: use those to eat buffalo wings just for effect. Well,
21:40
Speaker 1: but that also has a practical effect, because that that
21:42
Speaker 1: stink can go to other places, you know, if you
21:45
Speaker 1: rub your eyes or oh sure, sure, sure, but I
21:47
Speaker 1: still rub my eyes with little finger condoms on him
21:50
Speaker 1: just that, Tom, No, you gotta take those things off.
21:55
Speaker 1: I forget every time or accidentally swallow one when I'm
21:58
Speaker 1: licking my fingers. I don't get the hot wings. I
22:02
Speaker 1: haven't eaten a buffalo wing in years. Oh chuck, you're
22:05
Speaker 1: missing out. I get the lemon pepper now if I
22:08
Speaker 1: get anything. Okay, that's good too, But I think you
22:10
Speaker 1: can mix it up a little bit, all right. They always, uh,
22:13
Speaker 1: this is no good for my digestive system. So you
22:16
Speaker 1: said something that I think is um. Well, I hope
22:19
Speaker 1: your digestive system comes back around so you can eat
22:21
Speaker 1: some buffalo wings. Um. But you said something a little
22:25
Speaker 1: while back that I think is worth kind of fleshing out,
22:27
Speaker 1: and that is that this stuff that's cheese dust used
22:31
Speaker 1: to be cheese. It's actually made from real cheese. And
22:35
Speaker 1: that is um an argument that a lot of people make.
22:38
Speaker 1: When people poo poo junk food, ultra process food, that
22:42
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, they're like, there's there. It basically amounts
22:46
Speaker 1: to you're afraid of science, is what you're responding to.
22:50
Speaker 1: This is still food. In some cases, it's more nutritional
22:54
Speaker 1: than the whole food it was made from. Um, so
22:57
Speaker 1: what's the problem. And we'll get into that whole thing.
23:00
Speaker 1: But I just wanted to kind of point that out
23:01
Speaker 1: because you did, I mean, you did hit on something
23:03
Speaker 1: that's that's worth worth saying. Yeah, we're just leadites. I mean, sure,
23:10
Speaker 1: that's that's I'm a convert though. Um through some of
23:14
Speaker 1: this one particular study that we'll talk about that I
23:17
Speaker 1: think is very mind changing. Oh all right, that's a
23:20
Speaker 1: nice tease. But first, Chuck, I think we have to
23:22
Speaker 1: talk about corn because you can't really do all this.
23:25
Speaker 1: You can't make very cheap ultra processed foods without very
23:28
Speaker 1: cheap base ingredients. And corn is about as cheap as
23:31
Speaker 1: they come in the United States. It is now because
23:35
Speaker 1: they over the years figured out how to grow corn
23:38
Speaker 1: much more efficiently and much more densely. Uh, the nineteen
23:43
Speaker 1: twenties and thirties is when they started develop these new
23:46
Speaker 1: strains of corn. The corn ears themselves are actually bigger,
23:50
Speaker 1: and they could pack them in a lot more. And
23:52
Speaker 1: I believe between the thirties and the two thousands, an
23:57
Speaker 1: acre of corn yield jumped from thirty bushel to about
24:00
Speaker 1: a hundred and forty, which is a big I mean,
24:04
Speaker 1: what is that a fourfold increase a little more? Actually, yeah,
24:08
Speaker 1: it's like uh four almost five. Yeah, we we did it.
24:12
Speaker 1: We got there. They got there and or we got
24:15
Speaker 1: their math wise, but they got their corn wise. And
24:18
Speaker 1: now corn is the largest crop in the United States. Uh.
24:22
Speaker 1: It accounts for about all crop sales in the US,
24:26
Speaker 1: with about only about a third of that being used
24:29
Speaker 1: for actual food uh and some other industrial uses that
24:32
Speaker 1: don't include ethanol or livestock teed right, right, But because
24:37
Speaker 1: we're feeding most of that corn to our livestock and
24:41
Speaker 1: then we eat the live stock, well, we were in
24:43
Speaker 1: turn still consuming the corn which are young one way,
24:47
Speaker 1: right sure, but we um, I didn't get that. But
24:49
Speaker 1: I love the young ones so nice. Um. But wait,
24:52
Speaker 1: So the reason corn is so profitable and so well
24:55
Speaker 1: grown and so tinkered with is because it's so heavily
24:58
Speaker 1: subsidized in the United it states, Like the government will
25:02
Speaker 1: pay you to grow corn. Sometimes they'll pay you to
25:05
Speaker 1: stop growing other crops to grow corn. Um. And you
25:10
Speaker 1: if your if your crop goes bad, they'll give you
25:12
Speaker 1: money for it. Because you try to grow corn. It's
25:14
Speaker 1: just extremely subsidized, which means that, um, there's always a
25:19
Speaker 1: market for it. You're always going to be able to
25:21
Speaker 1: sell it. So lots and lots of people grow corn.
25:23
Speaker 1: So that's what we use as our staple crop to
25:25
Speaker 1: to make almost all of our other food from. And
25:29
Speaker 1: that was discussed at length in the really great book
25:33
Speaker 1: Derito Effect by Mark Shatzker, which we talked about in
25:37
Speaker 1: our junk Food episode, because remember we did one just
25:39
Speaker 1: on junk food. This is different, this is slightly different. Uh.
25:43
Speaker 1: We grew a little corn growing up, um a couple
25:46
Speaker 1: of times. I think it was kind of a pain.
25:49
Speaker 1: So we didn't end up doing it more than like
25:52
Speaker 1: once or twice. But we had a very robust garden
25:56
Speaker 1: over about an acre. I lived out in the woods
25:59
Speaker 1: like a you know, like a yokol. I've talked about
26:01
Speaker 1: canny or on food and stuff, but um, corn was
26:04
Speaker 1: something we grew a little bit every now and then.
26:07
Speaker 1: How much do you want to talk about high fruit
26:08
Speaker 1: just corn syrup? I mean we did a whole episode
26:10
Speaker 1: on it, right, So how much do you want to
26:13
Speaker 1: get into this should we tell people I would done again? Yeah,
26:15
Speaker 1: I don't know that we ever talked about how it's made,
26:17
Speaker 1: did we? It seemed all new to me. No, we
26:20
Speaker 1: talked about it. Well, I mean it's a typical. It's
26:23
Speaker 1: a good, great example of Wow, you really just shifted
26:26
Speaker 1: from this corn story of you growing it to whether
26:29
Speaker 1: or not we're going to talk about high fruit chose corn.
26:31
Speaker 1: So it was like a whip lash and now we're
26:35
Speaker 1: talking about yeah, clunky, clunky, year four ten, Well why
26:39
Speaker 1: don't why don't you go over it then? Because I'm
26:41
Speaker 1: done with it now, I'm just kidding. Um. You should
26:43
Speaker 1: talk about it though, because it is pretty interesting. Yeah.
26:46
Speaker 1: And the reason why it's so interesting is because high
26:48
Speaker 1: Fruit Choice corn syrup is just one of the many
26:51
Speaker 1: things that are made out of a single like batch
26:54
Speaker 1: of corn kernels. That's what makes it such a great
26:57
Speaker 1: like poster child for ultra process foods because out of
27:01
Speaker 1: you know, a single kernel of corn, you get everything
27:04
Speaker 1: from um, the like corn oil from the germ, um
27:09
Speaker 1: from the fiber from the shell gets sent off to
27:12
Speaker 1: be used in breakfast cereal. So if you see like
27:15
Speaker 1: corn bran or corn fiber or something like that, it
27:17
Speaker 1: was separated out from what eventually became high fruit toast
27:21
Speaker 1: corn syrup. UM. The stuff that's left over is corn
27:24
Speaker 1: starch and corn gluten, and gluten gets fed to the livestock,
27:28
Speaker 1: and the corn starts you could just use around your kitchen.
27:31
Speaker 1: They use it in building materials, UM, and that you
27:35
Speaker 1: can also use it to create high fruit toast corn syrup.
27:38
Speaker 1: So just that one process of taking some of that
27:40
Speaker 1: corn converts it into all these different things from building
27:43
Speaker 1: products to high fruit toast corn syrup to cattle feed. UM.
27:47
Speaker 1: Just with this one type of corn dent corn is
27:50
Speaker 1: what it's called. Yeah, it is. It's one of those
27:53
Speaker 1: things where you wish HFCs wasn't so bad for you
27:59
Speaker 1: and and everything, because when you look at that process
28:02
Speaker 1: that you just described, it's hard not to sit back
28:05
Speaker 1: and just and as science food science and pat themselves
28:09
Speaker 1: on the back and just say, what a amazing process
28:12
Speaker 1: we developed. That all of this stuff is being used
28:15
Speaker 1: in all these different areas and in the end we
28:18
Speaker 1: get are evil ingredient. Right Yeah, yeah, for sure, UM,
28:21
Speaker 1: but I mean not all of it is evil. Like Um,
28:24
Speaker 1: if you've ever had a cardboard box that you had
28:26
Speaker 1: trouble pulling apart to recycle because the adhesive was so strong.
28:30
Speaker 1: You can bet that was made with corn starch or adhesive. Yeah,
28:34
Speaker 1: the adhesive, industrial adhesive. UM, some of them power some
28:39
Speaker 1: of our machinery. Ethanol is made from a lot of corn.
28:42
Speaker 1: So there it is like a real like you know,
28:44
Speaker 1: pat on the back for science, like you were saying,
28:47
Speaker 1: it's just that nutrition. Science, as we'll see, has not
28:51
Speaker 1: figured out how to how to take that stuff and
28:54
Speaker 1: make it work for humans, the way that we can
28:57
Speaker 1: make a machine work with ethanol derived from corn. Yeah,
29:01
Speaker 1: And I think where they I was about to say
29:03
Speaker 1: where they aired, but they would say this was the genius.
29:06
Speaker 1: Part of it was the corn syrup that they end
29:08
Speaker 1: up with after all those processes. Uh is dextros basically,
29:14
Speaker 1: And if they would have stopped there, it might not
29:16
Speaker 1: have been so bad, but they went dextros just isn't
29:19
Speaker 1: as sweet as we needed to be. It doesn't taste
29:21
Speaker 1: like that sweet sweet sucrose. So let's make it sweeter.
29:25
Speaker 1: Let's process it more and add an enzyme to it
29:28
Speaker 1: and some uh, some pressure and some temperature and body
29:32
Speaker 1: being bought a boom will turn it into fruit. Toast,
29:35
Speaker 1: and that's sort of that that final step of the
29:38
Speaker 1: process is really where it nutritionally went wrong. I think, well, yeah,
29:42
Speaker 1: because don't forget to add the hydrochloric acid to turn
29:46
Speaker 1: it into fruit toast too, you know. Yeah, Well, I
29:49
Speaker 1: mean that's kind of one of the first steps, right, Uh,
29:51
Speaker 1: that is that toward the end, that's where you when
29:53
Speaker 1: you add like pressure and heat and everything I've been,
29:56
Speaker 1: that's where it converts it. So yeah, I mean, like
30:00
Speaker 1: it's the epitome of what people call like Frank and food.
30:04
Speaker 1: And it's really really easy to tee off on if
30:07
Speaker 1: you're a whole food proponent, and there are a lot
30:10
Speaker 1: of whole food proponents, and they got a ton of traction,
30:15
Speaker 1: especially in like the early two thousand's, early two thousand tens,
30:20
Speaker 1: thanks in large part to Michael Poland's Omnivor's Dilemma, which
30:25
Speaker 1: came out in two thousand seven and basically introduced everybody
30:28
Speaker 1: to the concept that like we're eating all wrong. Essentially,
30:33
Speaker 1: I want to point out that's your that was your
30:35
Speaker 1: second Al Franken reference, Tom Chiller's writing partner, and then
30:39
Speaker 1: frank and Food was that that was not Al Franken reference.
30:44
Speaker 1: Oh was it? No, Although I'm picturing him like eating
30:48
Speaker 1: like lucky charms and the couple are just like falling
30:51
Speaker 1: out of his mouth onto his shirt. I have a
30:55
Speaker 1: joke there, but I can't tell it, so uh yeah,
30:57
Speaker 1: the omnivorous dilemma. There were a few other books that
31:00
Speaker 1: lood from Michael Poland in Defensive Food, very big book, uh,
31:04
Speaker 1: and then Food Rules, and one called Cooked about eight
31:07
Speaker 1: or nine years ago. And if you've ever been anywhere
31:11
Speaker 1: and seeing this slogan on a wall on a poster, um,
31:16
Speaker 1: eat food, not too much, mostly plants. That comes from
31:20
Speaker 1: Michael Poland, and that has become a bit of a
31:23
Speaker 1: rallying cry for the eat better whole Foods movement. Eat
31:28
Speaker 1: food like you know, food food, and don't eat too
31:31
Speaker 1: much of it and try to mostly eat plants. And
31:34
Speaker 1: if you literally do that, then you're probably gonna a
31:36
Speaker 1: pretty good diet. Yeah. And they have some other like
31:38
Speaker 1: rules of thumb to like don't eat food that your
31:40
Speaker 1: great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food, um, which means you
31:45
Speaker 1: could still eat oreos because they've been around since the
31:47
Speaker 1: nine um. Also, I think we've talked about how grocery
31:52
Speaker 1: stores are laid out before, at least in a video,
31:54
Speaker 1: if not an episode. Um, And how if you hug
31:57
Speaker 1: the outside perimeter, you're going to get the whole foods.
32:01
Speaker 1: It's the middle aisles that the processed foods take up.
32:04
Speaker 1: It's another we just talked about. Um. And then avoid
32:08
Speaker 1: foods with like more than five ingredients. That's a little restrictive,
32:11
Speaker 1: but you get the point. The fewer the ingredients, the
32:13
Speaker 1: likelier it is to just be whole foods without a
32:16
Speaker 1: whole bunch of added stuff and tinkering and engineering to
32:20
Speaker 1: make it taste the way it's supposed to taste. Yeah,
32:23
Speaker 1: And there's also you know, we should talk just for
32:26
Speaker 1: a second about the other thing wrapped up in this,
32:28
Speaker 1: which is food culture. Um Poland and uh is it Monteiro?
32:33
Speaker 1: Is that what we're saying? Yeah? Or Montero Montero. They
32:37
Speaker 1: both talk a lot about food culture, which is not
32:39
Speaker 1: just the things you're putting in your mouth, but how
32:42
Speaker 1: you look at food and dining in general. Which is
32:46
Speaker 1: to say that they believe and I would tend to
32:48
Speaker 1: agree probably that too many people these days are just
32:51
Speaker 1: grabbing food as they quickly move about life from appointment
32:56
Speaker 1: to appointment or commitment to commitment rather than the day
33:00
Speaker 1: is where you could cook a meal and it sit
33:02
Speaker 1: down as a family and eat it together. Uh. And
33:04
Speaker 1: he's not just saying, like, you know, this is good
33:06
Speaker 1: for the family, even though it is. They're just talking
33:09
Speaker 1: about just societal and cultural Uh. I guess norms and
33:16
Speaker 1: how they've changed over the years, and how we should
33:18
Speaker 1: strive to sort of get back to that, because chances are,
33:21
Speaker 1: if you're sitting down at a table with your family
33:23
Speaker 1: and you're eating together, you're probably not you know, dump
33:26
Speaker 1: on a bunch of chicken nugets on a plate, and
33:28
Speaker 1: probably not. You may and that's what we did at
33:30
Speaker 1: the seventies sort of Even if you are, though, it's
33:33
Speaker 1: still probably preferable to eating them in the car while
33:36
Speaker 1: you're hurrying, you know, to piano practice or something like that.
33:39
Speaker 1: At least you're sitting down together, So there's that aspect
33:41
Speaker 1: of culture to it. One of the problems, though, Chuck,
33:44
Speaker 1: is if you've ever, you know, taken steps to replace
33:48
Speaker 1: some of your ultra processed foods with some of you know,
33:50
Speaker 1: whole foods that you cook yourself, the just the difference
33:54
Speaker 1: in time that it takes to prepare those foods is
33:58
Speaker 1: really significant and it can really tough. That just kind
34:01
Speaker 1: of goes to underscore why ultra processed foods have become
34:05
Speaker 1: so ubiquitous. They fit really really well into our current
34:09
Speaker 1: culture of like go go, go, go, get another thing done,
34:13
Speaker 1: sign up for another extracurricular activity, Like, um, you can
34:16
Speaker 1: eat these foods like anywhere. They're available anywhere, and um,
34:21
Speaker 1: they you can basically just snack throughout the whole day.
34:24
Speaker 1: You'll never even need to eat a meal, and you
34:26
Speaker 1: can do it in your car the whole time while
34:27
Speaker 1: you're going from place to place. Yeah, I mean that's
34:31
Speaker 1: one of the big criticisms of people like Poland and Montereiro,
34:37
Speaker 1: which is like, who was cooking this stuff back in
34:40
Speaker 1: the day. It was probably a housewife in the kitchen
34:44
Speaker 1: or domestic servant or previous to that, and you know,
34:48
Speaker 1: previous years enslave people. And it's really easy to sort
34:52
Speaker 1: of sit back and say if you're in a certain
34:55
Speaker 1: income bracket and say, hey, slow down cook your meal. Um,
35:00
Speaker 1: you're gonna get criticized. Probably it comes across as a
35:02
Speaker 1: little tone deaf, especially when Poland says something that he
35:06
Speaker 1: said in two thousand nine and an article that uh
35:10
Speaker 1: seventies feminists uh thoughtlessly trampled the pleasures of cooking and
35:15
Speaker 1: their rushed to get women out of the kitchen. Um,
35:18
Speaker 1: you did say that men should also cook, but like
35:20
Speaker 1: you can't laugh out a statement like that and not
35:22
Speaker 1: expect blowback. Like someone has to cook these meals and
35:27
Speaker 1: to income families, it's like it's it's tough. There's not
35:30
Speaker 1: a lot of time to do that and to shop
35:32
Speaker 1: for these foods. So we see why it's a problem
35:36
Speaker 1: basically definitely. And there's more problems to you know that
35:39
Speaker 1: you could use to critique the whole idea of you know,
35:42
Speaker 1: eating whole foods and all of the extra time and
35:45
Speaker 1: effort it takes. Um. But I say, we take a
35:47
Speaker 1: break and then we come back and we talk about
35:49
Speaker 1: the health benefits or problems of upfs. Let's do it, okay, okay, chuck.
36:17
Speaker 1: So there's uh, there's one thing, um that a lot
36:20
Speaker 1: of people say is like, there's some foods out there
36:23
Speaker 1: that are more nutritious for you in their ultra processed
36:27
Speaker 1: form than they would be if you made it yourself. Um.
36:32
Speaker 1: The problem seems to be this that there's become a
36:35
Speaker 1: focus on nutrients like the whole fat free thing back
36:38
Speaker 1: in like the eighties and early nineties. Uh, the low
36:41
Speaker 1: carb thing, like we focus on nutrients and food has
36:45
Speaker 1: not has become not food anymore, and it's ultra process
36:48
Speaker 1: form it's become. I saw it described as a delivery
36:52
Speaker 1: system for nutrients. Were just obsessed with nutrients. That's what
36:56
Speaker 1: you see touted on the packages of ultra processed food
36:59
Speaker 1: that you're opposed to kind of take as a warning
37:01
Speaker 1: signal to stay away from. The problem is is that
37:04
Speaker 1: it's becoming more and more apparent that we can engineer
37:08
Speaker 1: food all we want, but we don't understand the dynamic
37:11
Speaker 1: of how nutrients within a food interact with one another
37:15
Speaker 1: to faithfully recreate them, and so the food that we're
37:18
Speaker 1: creating is substantially less healthy than the whole food versions
37:24
Speaker 1: of it. The way that Montero puts it is that
37:27
Speaker 1: ultra processed foods are intrinsically unhealthy, even if you don't
37:31
Speaker 1: compare them to anything else. If you eat ultra processed foods,
37:34
Speaker 1: you're going to suffer greater health problems then you would
37:38
Speaker 1: if you didn't eat or eat a less amounts of
37:40
Speaker 1: ultra processed foods. And that is the entire problem with
37:45
Speaker 1: ultra processed foods right now. Well, and that goes lockstep
37:49
Speaker 1: with the fact that they are engineered to be um.
37:54
Speaker 1: I guess he calls it hyper palatable formations. Uh, they're
37:59
Speaker 1: sold in large rings, and they're easy to eat a
38:02
Speaker 1: lot of, and they're made to be easy to eat
38:04
Speaker 1: a lot of. They've actually looked at like the structure
38:08
Speaker 1: of some of these processed foods. They make it harder
38:10
Speaker 1: to feel satisfied, Like you literally chemically aren't achieving satiation
38:14
Speaker 1: as quickly with these foods, so you're gonna eat more
38:17
Speaker 1: of them. That's why somebody can sit down and eat
38:19
Speaker 1: a sleeve a Pringles with the TV on without really
38:23
Speaker 1: thinking about it, or those intermediate moisture foods that are
38:27
Speaker 1: chewy and stay chewy for five years on the shelf.
38:31
Speaker 1: Like they found that you with ultra processed foods, you
38:34
Speaker 1: typically chew less. And one of the ways that we
38:37
Speaker 1: become satiated, one of the ways that our body knows
38:40
Speaker 1: that it's full is I guess it counts the number
38:42
Speaker 1: of times that we chew. And just because we're chewing
38:45
Speaker 1: less and we're eating more, that in and of itself
38:49
Speaker 1: makes ultra processed foods less healthy than whole foods. But
38:54
Speaker 1: the critics of the anti ultra processed food camp, even
38:57
Speaker 1: proponents of ultra processed foods say, okay, that that's a problem,
39:02
Speaker 1: and that's something that can be designed out. The if
39:05
Speaker 1: you put nutrient against nutrient, if you put fiber against fiber,
39:09
Speaker 1: calorie against calorie, um um, you know, vitamin D against
39:13
Speaker 1: vitamin D in whole foods and ulder processed foods, they're
39:16
Speaker 1: basically the same thing. People might eat too many ultra
39:20
Speaker 1: processed foods, maybe you don't chew as much, but still
39:23
Speaker 1: if if we if we changed that, they would be
39:26
Speaker 1: the same. And that was the big critique on Montero
39:29
Speaker 1: and ultra processed foods in general for almost ten years
39:33
Speaker 1: until a really really important study came out in two
39:35
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen UM out of UM what was the National
39:42
Speaker 1: Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Maryland,
39:46
Speaker 1: so this guy. It was a study led by Kevin
39:49
Speaker 1: Hall Chuck and it's considered the gold standard of UM
39:54
Speaker 1: of nutritional studies. It was a randomized controlled trial with
39:57
Speaker 1: just twenty participants, but it was so oh well designed
40:01
Speaker 1: that there's basically no critics of its methodology or findings.
40:05
Speaker 1: It's just roundly touted as finally evidence that ultra processed
40:10
Speaker 1: foods are, like Montero said, intrinsically unhealthy. Yeah, and we
40:15
Speaker 1: should point out they did this study with just the
40:17
Speaker 1: twenty people, because before this, everything you would ever read
40:21
Speaker 1: about UPS were correlative studies and meta analyzes among huge,
40:27
Speaker 1: huge populations. So they Kevin Hall, actually dug in on
40:31
Speaker 1: a smaller level. Uh And, like you said, twenty people
40:34
Speaker 1: spent two weeks and they were eating either almost all
40:38
Speaker 1: ultra processed foods or almost all unprocessed foods. But the
40:42
Speaker 1: key here, like you were talking about, is they matched
40:45
Speaker 1: these diets calorically. They matched it their protein, their fiber,
40:49
Speaker 1: their fats and sugars. They tried to match them so
40:52
Speaker 1: they were basically equal. And then they said, all right,
40:55
Speaker 1: twenty people, uh, U ten go and eat however much
40:58
Speaker 1: you want, and U ten go eat however much you want.
41:01
Speaker 1: And then they rated those diets in the end just
41:05
Speaker 1: this was of course subjective, but they rated them as
41:07
Speaker 1: equally as good tasting. But the ultra processed food people
41:13
Speaker 1: ate five extra calories per day. Yes, so that's like
41:18
Speaker 1: eating an extra big maca day. Imagine if every day
41:21
Speaker 1: you just also ate an extra big Mac on top
41:23
Speaker 1: of everything else you or an extra an extra Taco
41:28
Speaker 1: Bell beefy five layer burrito. So yeah, it's good in
41:33
Speaker 1: moderation and on occasion, but eating one every single day
41:37
Speaker 1: on top of the food that you ate, that's problematic.
41:40
Speaker 1: And so they also found chuck that the people who
41:43
Speaker 1: um who uh were in the ultra processed food group,
41:47
Speaker 1: they gained about two pounds over the two weeks, while
41:50
Speaker 1: the control group lost about two pounds. So they found like, no,
41:54
Speaker 1: this is actually this this stuff is is actually when
41:58
Speaker 1: you compare apples to apples, the older processed food is
42:02
Speaker 1: actually unhealthier. Like that it was finally proven what what
42:06
Speaker 1: basically everyone suspected, but because it hadn't been proven, there
42:10
Speaker 1: was room to argue against it. And since then it's
42:13
Speaker 1: become harder and harder to argue in favor of ultra
42:16
Speaker 1: processed foods, at least as they exist today. Yeah, and there,
42:20
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just like how healthy are They're all
42:23
Speaker 1: kinds of environmental concerns. We've talked a lot about bio diversity,
42:28
Speaker 1: agro biodiversity and putting all your eggs in one basket. UM,
42:33
Speaker 1: crop wise, is really bad if disease comes along, like
42:37
Speaker 1: we've seen it happen time and time again through history,
42:39
Speaker 1: and we're at the point now. This is another sort
42:41
Speaker 1: of fact of the show for me. UM. There are
42:44
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of edible plant species, but more than
42:48
Speaker 1: half of the calories that humans on planet Earth consume
42:51
Speaker 1: come from rice, corn, and wheat. That's it. I notice sing,
42:56
Speaker 1: that's putting your that's not agrobiodiversity. No, it's putting all
43:00
Speaker 1: of your corn in one basket. That's right, Which is
43:03
Speaker 1: a good way to carry corn. It is, um, not
43:07
Speaker 1: in the basket. No, it's particularly a green and yellow basket.
43:11
Speaker 1: That's right. UM. But I grow bio biodiversity. Is it's
43:15
Speaker 1: an extra concern because it's kind of like, by limiting
43:19
Speaker 1: our diet globally, we're also um, we're not only harming
43:22
Speaker 1: our health, we're harming the ecosystems of Earth's health as well. UM.
43:27
Speaker 1: And then in addition to that, all of that slick
43:30
Speaker 1: packaging and um and and wrappers and all that those
43:34
Speaker 1: require natural resources to make, and they are automatically converted
43:38
Speaker 1: into waste after you are sold. That that ultra processed
43:42
Speaker 1: food and if you consider Earth's natural processes as belonging
43:48
Speaker 1: to all humankind, it can kind of start to tick
43:51
Speaker 1: you off that there's companies out there that are using
43:54
Speaker 1: these natural resources to market. They're extremely unhealthy foods to
43:59
Speaker 1: to me imediately be converted into waste. It's kind of irksome,
44:03
Speaker 1: you know it is. As for Montero and Brazil, they
44:08
Speaker 1: have made some big changes about eight years ago and
44:12
Speaker 1: their government um created basically a whole new health guideline
44:16
Speaker 1: kind of based on this NOVA framework, and they don't
44:20
Speaker 1: categorize foods according to like how much fat they have
44:24
Speaker 1: and how much fiber and how many other nutrients they have.
44:27
Speaker 1: They based it on that NOVA framework and talk about
44:30
Speaker 1: food culture a lot. They say to eat regularly and
44:33
Speaker 1: carefully in appropriate environments and whenever possible in company like
44:38
Speaker 1: you know, you've got people with you. And some other
44:40
Speaker 1: countries have followed suit over their Peru, Uruguay, Ecuador, France
44:46
Speaker 1: has jumped on board as far as saying just try
44:48
Speaker 1: and avoid ultra processed foods altogether, or at least try
44:51
Speaker 1: and limit them. And we haven't seen it as much
44:55
Speaker 1: in the US aside from what I mentioned earlier, which
44:58
Speaker 1: is certain, uh, certain manufacturers sort of seeing the future
45:05
Speaker 1: and knowing where this is headed and trying to, I guess,
45:08
Speaker 1: get ahead of the curb and tout how few ingredients
45:10
Speaker 1: they have. Sure one of the problems is in the
45:14
Speaker 1: US the so Brazil said like, this is our new thing.
45:18
Speaker 1: These are food groups Montero's Nova system, that's what we do.
45:22
Speaker 1: In the U S we're still doing those that food
45:24
Speaker 1: pyramid kind of thing. And the U s c A,
45:27
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, has no official position on
45:29
Speaker 1: ultra processed foods or how much we should eat or
45:32
Speaker 1: not eat. At some point, well, apparently back in the seventies,
45:36
Speaker 1: George McGovern from either South or North Dakota tried to
45:40
Speaker 1: get the government to issue guidelines saying like you should
45:42
Speaker 1: eat less red meat and dairy. I think because there
45:46
Speaker 1: were studies coming out that that we're saying it was
45:48
Speaker 1: bad for you. And he got ousted from office in
45:52
Speaker 1: the next election because of that by the Cattle Association,
45:55
Speaker 1: And it kicked off a long trend to where food
45:58
Speaker 1: producers lat be the government to not take official positions
46:03
Speaker 1: against something. Instead they might target you know, nutrients, macro molecules,
46:09
Speaker 1: things like that like eat less fat, not don't eat
46:12
Speaker 1: so much red meat, um, and that that kind of
46:16
Speaker 1: has the United States in a in a quagmire right
46:20
Speaker 1: now where our scientists are fully aware of like the
46:24
Speaker 1: health risks of eating certain kinds of food over others,
46:28
Speaker 1: and yet the government is standing mute as far as
46:31
Speaker 1: advising citizens what to do or not do, which means
46:34
Speaker 1: that marketers can fill in that vacuum and argue, no,
46:37
Speaker 1: it's fine, just eat this, it's good. Yeah. I mean,
46:40
Speaker 1: I think people like us who do this kind of research,
46:44
Speaker 1: and I would argue, like a lot of our listeners
46:46
Speaker 1: are genuinely curious people who see a headline about a
46:51
Speaker 1: nutritional study and they will click on that and read that.
46:54
Speaker 1: But the majority of people don't, and they, you know,
46:57
Speaker 1: they may look to official guide like eating Health Eating
47:02
Speaker 1: Guidelines of the U s d A and not say, oh,
47:05
Speaker 1: look at this article I saw and on this website
47:08
Speaker 1: that clearly says to avoid this or that, you know,
47:12
Speaker 1: to avoid red meat or something like that, where like
47:14
Speaker 1: the lobby can't touch that, right. But also there's other
47:18
Speaker 1: ways that the government can directly influence your diet. It
47:20
Speaker 1: can say, okay, it's actually really bad to eat as
47:23
Speaker 1: much corn as we're eating in all these different ways,
47:26
Speaker 1: we're gonna subsidize soy. Apparently soy is very is not
47:31
Speaker 1: subsidized almost at all. So maybe they'll start subsidizing soy
47:35
Speaker 1: over corn, and that that will make the food producers
47:40
Speaker 1: start using more soy rather than more corn, and then
47:43
Speaker 1: people start eating soy, which may or may not be healthier.
47:46
Speaker 1: So the government can make these kind of macro decisions
47:48
Speaker 1: that affect people's diets even more than just issuing guidelines too. Yeah,
47:54
Speaker 1: and some people say, just stick your nose out of
47:56
Speaker 1: it and I'll do what I want. Yes, which is
47:59
Speaker 1: totally fair. It's completely fair. But if from a public
48:01
Speaker 1: health standpoint, when you look at you know, meta analysis
48:04
Speaker 1: that says the higher amount of ultra processed foods you eat,
48:08
Speaker 1: the higher your risk of death, UM, cardiovascular disease, type
48:13
Speaker 1: two diabetes, etcetera. UM, it is it's a it's a problem.
48:17
Speaker 1: It's alarming, especially if you're seeing it developing earlier and
48:20
Speaker 1: earlier and younger kids who are being raised on ultra
48:23
Speaker 1: processed foods and as they grow into adults are going
48:26
Speaker 1: to have no idea how to cook or what foods
48:29
Speaker 1: to eat and won't be able to pass that on
48:31
Speaker 1: to their kids. There's there. We're we're looking at a
48:33
Speaker 1: transitional generation right now, and it's not a transition in
48:36
Speaker 1: any kind of positive way right And to be clear,
48:40
Speaker 1: we're not arguing for some nanny state where the government
48:42
Speaker 1: like outlaws ultra processed foods. We're talking about issuing fair
48:47
Speaker 1: and honest guidelines that people can still fund their nose
48:50
Speaker 1: out if they want to write. And Plus, also, this
48:53
Speaker 1: is not a hit job against ultra processed foods. There's
48:55
Speaker 1: a lot of people who say, again, like we've come
48:58
Speaker 1: a really far away in um fortifying foods through processing
49:04
Speaker 1: to cure certain diseases that used to happen to prevent
49:07
Speaker 1: birth effects by adding fullate to breakfast cereals. Um that
49:11
Speaker 1: that it's not that it's not processing itself, it's we
49:16
Speaker 1: don't quite know how to do it yet, or we're
49:18
Speaker 1: adding too much sugar, we're adding too many trans fats,
49:21
Speaker 1: and we need to go in and tinker with the
49:24
Speaker 1: tastes and the flavors and also the nutrient composition, and
49:28
Speaker 1: then we'll have everybody eating ultra processed food that actually
49:31
Speaker 1: is good for you. Whether that whether we're able to
49:35
Speaker 1: do that anytime soon, as that remains to be seen. Yeah,
49:39
Speaker 1: there's a journalist named David H. Friedman who in the
49:42
Speaker 1: Atlantic said, where there are too many people and we
49:46
Speaker 1: can't literally can't feed the world on this delicious whole food.
49:51
Speaker 1: Uh that's affordable. So maybe the onus is on some
49:54
Speaker 1: of these companies to mess with their recipes a little bit.
49:58
Speaker 1: Maybe we should look to McDonald to tweak their recipes
50:02
Speaker 1: just a little bit, not to where it tastes like
50:04
Speaker 1: some drastically. You know, not not to push health food necessarily,
50:08
Speaker 1: but you know there are things you can do. They
50:11
Speaker 1: pointed out that the smell of vanilla can mask uh,
50:14
Speaker 1: if you reduce sugar content, it can mask that and
50:16
Speaker 1: trick you into thinking that it's still just as sweet.
50:20
Speaker 1: Or there um plant derived compounds that can replicate the
50:26
Speaker 1: effects of fat on the tongue and basically you experience
50:30
Speaker 1: that satiation that allows you to stop eating. And he's saying, like,
50:36
Speaker 1: we can do this, we can make our ultra process
50:38
Speaker 1: foods a little better at least. Yeah, and other people
50:41
Speaker 1: argue like, just because the food is ultra process doesn't
50:44
Speaker 1: necessarily mean it's harmful to you. Um. There was a
50:47
Speaker 1: two thousand and twenty two meta analysis in the American
50:51
Speaker 1: Journal of Epidemiology found the highest consumption of ultra processed
50:54
Speaker 1: foods was associated with the highest risk of death, but
50:58
Speaker 1: the highest consumption of breakfast cereal was associated with a
51:01
Speaker 1: much lower risk of death. So they kind of says like, Okay,
51:06
Speaker 1: just because this ultra processed food does not make it
51:08
Speaker 1: inherently bad, and it also suggests that we may be
51:11
Speaker 1: able to make healthier ultra processed foods. Again, the problem is,
51:16
Speaker 1: it seems like nutritional science is not at a point
51:19
Speaker 1: where it can advise of food companies on how to
51:22
Speaker 1: actually do that in as in a way that's that
51:25
Speaker 1: can actually replicate the nutrition you get from whole food.
51:29
Speaker 1: We just can't do it right now. Yeah, And I
51:33
Speaker 1: think the truth is if a large fast food retail
51:36
Speaker 1: chain tweak their recipes to make them a little bit better, uh,
51:42
Speaker 1: people may notice there may be a stink, and then
51:44
Speaker 1: you know what, people would still go there and eat
51:46
Speaker 1: that stuff. Yeah, Like Burger King has impossible burgers and
51:50
Speaker 1: I thought those were gonna last about five days, and
51:52
Speaker 1: they've been on the menu for years, so obviously some
51:55
Speaker 1: people are eating them. Which, by the way, that is
51:57
Speaker 1: about as ultra process to food as you can find.
52:00
Speaker 1: It just happens to be um healthier on meat. I guess.
52:04
Speaker 1: I don't know. It could be based, plant based. There
52:07
Speaker 1: you go. Yeah, I had a Beyond burger the other day.
52:09
Speaker 1: It was delicious, talk about really good. Do they make
52:14
Speaker 1: you gassy? I mean, I couldn't tell any difference. I'm
52:18
Speaker 1: always farting, so who knows your vowels didn't step it
52:22
Speaker 1: up a little after business as usual? I have to
52:26
Speaker 1: like sleep in another room after I feel like an
52:28
Speaker 1: impossible burger. Yeah, oh interesting, Okay, I'm considerate like that. Well,
52:34
Speaker 1: I haven't had Impossible. I don't know how much different
52:36
Speaker 1: they are from Beyond. It's probably about the same thing.
52:38
Speaker 1: It's basically the same. Although I will tell you this,
52:40
Speaker 1: I would but Buzz Market Incognitos chicken tenders. They are good.
52:46
Speaker 1: They nailed plant based. Yes, they nailed chicken tenders. Um Like,
52:52
Speaker 1: if you pull it apart and look at it, you're like, yes,
52:54
Speaker 1: this is not chicken, but it looks kind of like chicken,
52:57
Speaker 1: and it tastes like chickenold study right exactly. But if
53:02
Speaker 1: they did a really good job, I would recommend those
53:04
Speaker 1: if you can find to try that, because fried chicken
53:06
Speaker 1: is one of my achilles heels, you know, anything else.
53:11
Speaker 1: I mean, we could go on about this for hours
53:13
Speaker 1: if we wanted to. Oh I've got one more thing, Chuck,
53:15
Speaker 1: I do have one more thing. So another huge critique
53:18
Speaker 1: is that, UM, whole foods, non ultra processed foods are
53:22
Speaker 1: typically much much more expensive than ultra processed foods, and
53:28
Speaker 1: so it's a lot easier for people to be like, yeah,
53:30
Speaker 1: see whole foods. You know. UM, Not only is that
53:34
Speaker 1: not taking into account the time that people don't have,
53:39
Speaker 1: it's also not taking into account the lower income that
53:42
Speaker 1: a lot of people have. So it's kind of shaming
53:45
Speaker 1: people for what they they're only option to eat is.
53:49
Speaker 1: And that's a huge criticism of of UM that kind
53:52
Speaker 1: of anti ultra processed food camp too well, and kind
53:55
Speaker 1: of ties in with the tone deafness of just spend
53:59
Speaker 1: three hours shopping and cooking for your family and then
54:02
Speaker 1: sit down and eat it together like the nine exactly.
54:06
Speaker 1: So let's it for ultra processed food for now, until
54:09
Speaker 1: we do another episode on it in a few years,
54:11
Speaker 1: probably ultra ultra processed foods, right, somebody will come out
54:17
Speaker 1: with another name for junk food and we'll do an
54:19
Speaker 1: entire new episode on it, or we'll just get to
54:21
Speaker 1: that space food we all yearned for when we were kids,
54:24
Speaker 1: where it's like a dinner pill. Yeah, apparently space food
54:28
Speaker 1: sticks was like one of the first ultra processed foods.
54:32
Speaker 1: It was Pillsbury. Did you ever have this? I mean
54:36
Speaker 1: I had that, you know, ice cream of the future,
54:38
Speaker 1: stuff that eventually morphed into dipping dots. These were more
54:42
Speaker 1: like an energy bar. Okay, yeah, I don't think I
54:46
Speaker 1: had that. Oh well, did it taste like ice cream? Maybe?
54:50
Speaker 1: Then it was made of little tiny babies? Who knows.
54:53
Speaker 1: It is funny though, how much like the Army and
54:55
Speaker 1: NASA has influenced the food that we eat. I got
54:59
Speaker 1: nothing else, though, So hats off to NASA and the
55:02
Speaker 1: Army for coming up with the food we eat. That's right. Uh.
55:05
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about ultra process foods,
55:07
Speaker 1: go start reading up on it. There's a lot from
55:10
Speaker 1: both camps on the internet to satisfy you, to satiate you.
55:13
Speaker 1: And since I said satiate, it's time for listener mail.
55:19
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this one of two kidney transplant emails
55:23
Speaker 1: we're gonna read. Uh, We're gonna read the next one
55:25
Speaker 1: in the next episode. But boy, we heard some really
55:28
Speaker 1: good stuff and got great feedback and hurt from some
55:30
Speaker 1: donors and some doctors. Uh. And this is from an
55:34
Speaker 1: r N in South Dakota named Danielle. Hey, guys, longtime fan,
55:38
Speaker 1: first time writer. I've been waiting seven years to be
55:40
Speaker 1: able to contribute to your lovely show, and that opportunity
55:43
Speaker 1: hit after your kidney don't wrap. I'm a nurse who
55:46
Speaker 1: works in a small city hospital, and the kidney transplant
55:48
Speaker 1: for you did a great job with this info. But
55:51
Speaker 1: I do want to inform you that uh, anti rejection
55:54
Speaker 1: medications must be taken for life, although the dose might change.
55:59
Speaker 1: I think i'd said you can eventually get off of them,
56:02
Speaker 1: which apparently is we're just trying to be optimistic, right.
56:05
Speaker 1: Uh And Chuck, you said the fact of the show
56:07
Speaker 1: is that all kidney stay in your body. But here's
56:10
Speaker 1: the fact of this listener mail. I had a patient
56:13
Speaker 1: at one time with five kidneys in their body because
56:18
Speaker 1: they had been through several transplants. They had chronic disease
56:22
Speaker 1: because each kidney to last about ten or fifteen years
56:25
Speaker 1: and trust me, I was sure to pull up those
56:27
Speaker 1: radiology images to see, but apparently Danielle believes in patient
56:33
Speaker 1: privacy because daniel did not send those to me. That's
56:35
Speaker 1: that's nice. Thanks for spreading tolerance, unbiased, ish information, and
56:43
Speaker 1: light conversation to the world. Very nice. Thanks a lot, Danielle.
56:46
Speaker 1: Thank you for saving lives and mending um broken kidneys. Yeah,
56:51
Speaker 1: all five of them. If you want to be like
56:54
Speaker 1: Danielle and get in touch with us, we'd love to
56:56
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can send us an email to
56:58
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com. Stuff you
57:04
Speaker 1: Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For
57:06
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
57:10
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
57:15
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