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Babies eat 100% ultraprocessed food!

Children’s diets made up of 65pc ultra-processed food, study finds

Worth considering. Mother eats whatever, then processes that into milk. Thus babies are eating 100% ultraprocessed food.

Horrors, eh?

Those who ate the most ultra-processed foods throughout childhood and adolescence were found to have a BMI 1.18 points higher than those who ate the least by the age of 24.

They also had 1.53 per cent more body fat and, on average, weighed over eight pounds more.

And isn’t that glorious? Given that the historical problem has been to provide children with enough nutrition that they don’t starve to death then that looks like one other problem that has been solved by modernity.

Which is, actually, what the complaint is about. There are those out there just not quite sure about the merits of modernity.

Examples of ultra-processed foods include chocolates, ice cream, biscuits, packaged bread, breakfast cereals and jars of pasta sauce.

Such horrors, that kids might eat boiled tomatoes.

18 thoughts on “Babies eat 100% ultraprocessed food!”

  1. Just as long as those foods don’t have CHEMICALS in them.

    (The statistics quoted do not eliminate the possibility of the non-processed group being stunted, as I read it.)

  2. “They also had 1.53 per cent more body fat ”
    That’s going to be in the small number of ounces, isn’t it? Shouldn’t think you measure someone’s body fat at that accuracy.

  3. @bis
    I agree
    I suspect the shock and horror is covered by natural variance

    Blind application of statistics

  4. I bet they don’t count tofu or tempeh as ultra-processed, despite these foodstuffs having undergone a huge number of odd processes from the raw soya bean.

    But don’t worry, they’ll come up with a different name for the stuff they dislike. No true Scotsman will invent it.

  5. “ They also had 1.53 per cent more body fat and, on average, weighed over eight pounds more”

    That looks like there’s a lot more to the extra weight than just fat. 1.5% extra would be, what, a pound or two? So most of that extra weight is other stuff. Good stuff from extra nutrition rather than going round half starved all day?

  6. Pesto, chianti and brioche all growing naturally, in their edible state, obviously.
    Or is some processing more equal than others?

  7. You should see the size of those who don’t eat processed food. Chimpanzees and those raw food nutters in Germany have HUGE bellies.

  8. ‘Examples of ultra-processed foods include chocolates, ice cream, biscuits, packaged bread, breakfast cereals and jars of pasta sauce.’

    Because that is where Government advice – eat less meat and dairy, eat more carbohydrates such as pasta, rice, bread, cereals – led people. Meat is protein, no sugars to make fatty tissue, fat on meat or from cheese, slows down stomach emptying and bowel transit, so you feel fuller longer after eating and less prone to snack, unlike salads and carbohydrates which leave you hungry a short while after.

    What is the difference between packaged bread and not-packaged bread? Both contain wheat flour, both contain the same carbohydrate which is what becomes sugars stored in fatty tissue in the body.

  9. What is the difference between packaged bread and not-packaged bread?

    The proles buy packaged bread from Lidl. So they need to be told what’s good for them.

    Grauniad readers buy artisanal bread from a little man that was up half the night kneading it with his own sweat. It must be good for you, it costs £10 a loaf and tastes like shit.

  10. Baking bread releases carbon dioxide. ‘Zero carbon’ will put an end to that.
    They’ll be banning beer next.

  11. It’s Imperial!
    I suspect that after 50 years pushing fatphobia and hence encouraging the consumption of carbohydrates the desire is to correct the advice without admitting they were wrong.

  12. At a guess, people – particularly adults – should not drink brown sugar water. A mixed diet is probably a good idea; be sure to include fish.

    So your Grandma’s advice would have been a much better guide than the government’s propaganda over the past five or so decades.

  13. Do they provide a useful definition of “ultra-processed” as compared to merely “processed” foods, or is it just ‘the stuff we want to rag on?’

  14. despite these foodstuffs having undergone a huge number of odd processes from the raw soya bean
    During a visit to my local power station some years ago I was surprised to learn that one of the by-products of smokestack gas scrubbing is using in the making of tofu.

  15. “of exclusive industrial use (e.g. high-fructose corn syrup), are manufactured through a series of complex industrial processes …”

    What have they got against industry?

  16. So what’s the problem with fructose? It’s far sweeter than sucrose so less is used for the same sweetness. I thought they were in favour of people consuming less sugar?

  17. Unlike The Grauniad the UKIPgraph does include the statements that the researchers could not show any causal relationship, just a correlation; that the analysis was confounded by socio-economic factors, such as the poorer children were both fatter and ate more “ultra-processed” foods so distorting the overall statistics; and that the study condemned all “ultra-processed foods” whereas only those high in fats and/or sugars were likely to cause obesity.
    However I do agree with John B – the nutritional content of bread is not changed by the packet and I expect any non-Grauniad reporter to realise that.

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