Scale of Britain’s junk food crisis laid bare
And:
Researchers from Brazil’s scientific institution, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, analysed the impact of UPFs on the rates of premature deaths in eight separate countries.
The study, published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, found UPFs made up 53 per cent of people’s food energy consumption in the UK.
The peeps whoi invented the concept of UPFs are sure that UPFs are very bad. Yes, yes, they are.
She said while this study was observational and could not prove a link between the two,
Quite, quite….
>”researcher from Brazil’s scientific institution,”
It’s just the one then?
I wasn’t sure what a upf was defined as, so I checked.
From Wikipedia.
Ultra-processed foods are further defined as measurably distinguishable from processed foods by ingredients “of no culinary use (varieties of sugars such as fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, ‘fruit juice concentrates’, invert sugar, maltodextrin, dextrose and lactose; modified starches; modified oils such as hydrogenated or interesterified oils; and protein sources such as hydrolysed proteins, soya protein isolate, gluten, casein, whey protein and ‘mechanically separated meat’) or of additives with cosmetic functions (flavours, flavour enhancers, colours, emulsifiers, emulsifying salts, sweeteners, thickeners and anti-foaming, bulking, carbonating, foaming, gelling and glazing agents) in their list of ingredients.
Ok. Curse those profit hungry exploitative companies who are… Putting things in the food of no use…?
In the Nova system, UPFs include most bread and other mass-produced baked goods, frozen pizza, instant noodles, flavored yogurt, fruit and milk drinks, diet products, baby food, and most of what is considered junk food.
Eating a sandwich? UPF. Yoghurt? UPF. Orange juice? UPF. Orange and mango juice? Double upf.
Diet foods? Very unhealthy UPF (though anyone who has read the ingredients list of a ‘diet’ food will be aware it’s more of a chemistry experiment than food). Drinking milk? UPF, unless you’re squeezing it out of the cow apparently.
What a pile of crap.
I have a revolutionary idea. Bear with me.
Why don’t they fuck off and leave us alone?
Astonishing concept I know.
UPF = ultra pretentious folly.
UPF = Ugly Prole Food
Fast forward ten years. Animal meat is banned and humans are eating Frankenmeat created in labs through an ultra process. For dessert we are injecting ourselves via free government syringes with free government opioids created in labs in an entirely natural process.
Bloody, French, eh? You just can’t trust ’em. If only Louis had let us drink milk straight from the cow, think how much healthier we’d all be…
Many years ago a friend introduced me to an interesting concept: the occasional consumption of something ‘not very good for you’ is a treat, but its regular consumption is, well, a bad diet.
That’s brilliant Excavator Man – you should get some grant money to write a book called “A Little Bit of What You Fancy” and why pedalling to greggs extends your life.
I used to make ice cream for fun and I can tell you, it’s far worse for you than what Walls sell. It’s kinda the point, that if you make it yourself, it’s more yummy. Make some custard, add some whipping cream, freeze it. None of that reconstituted skimmed milk.
But making ice cream is not classed as UPF because caster sugar isn’t UPF. Eggs aren’t UPF. Cream isn’t UPF.
It’s junk science but really has more to do with elite behaviour than health. Buying from a small artisan is good. Making yourself is good. It’s the same with people who used to make health claims about organic which were total bullshit.
Mexican food, in Mexico, is just food. Mexican food here consisting as it does of flavour-enhancing ingredients and floor sweepings, is junk.
How about a graph of national average lifespan vs junk food availability? I don’t think the right result would be forthcoming or they’d have done it already.
“ She said while this study was observational and could not prove a link between the two…
She said while this study was observational and could not prove a link between the two… it is therefore of absolutely no scientific validity.
How long you are, Western Bloke. Real ice cream is a superfood.
https://archive.is/8S7nJ
oops. Or even wrong rather than long.
Anyway that ice cream paper is worth a read, not least because of the light it casts on research integrity in Harvard Medical School.
People should be able to sell and buy shit food without government intervention (I’m not completely against the government telling people ‘we think that’s shit food’, but that’s as far as I go), but I don’t think it’s controversial to say that hydrogenated oil, high fructose corn syrup and the various blue colourings are not very good for you, nor that large multinational firms owned by the likes of Vanguard, which are in turn controlled by people who would themselves never eat this shit, are nasty cunts for happily shovelling it out the door and into the gobs of poor and/or uneducated people just so they can have a new Ferrari every six months rather than every year.
“I don’t think it’s controversial to say that … high fructose corn syrup … [is] not very good for you”
Well it bloody well should be. The evidence against HFCS (versus sucrose) seems to be about zero – all I’ve seen is hand-waving, based mainly on ignorance of what High Fructose means.
The sort of dim woman who urges me to eat lots of honey probably also thinks fructose is a poison. Pah!
‘The sort of dim woman who urges me to eat lots of honey probably also thinks fructose is a poison.’
Of course, honey itself is a UPF, being manufactured in centralised production facilities, each of which employs tens of thousands of workers.
You think HFCS *is* very good for people? I beg to disagree – the fact that it’s not much worse for you than other shit is irrelevant.
Unfortunately, Trump’s odd choice for HHS, RFK, Jr., is on the UPF bandwagon.
He recently announced a ban on food dyes. Cos reasons.
Interested,
“but I don’t think it’s controversial to say that hydrogenated oil, high fructose corn syrup and the various blue colourings are not very good for you, nor that large multinational firms owned by the likes of Vanguard, which are in turn controlled by people who would themselves never eat this shit, are nasty cunts for happily shovelling it out the door and into the gobs of poor and/or uneducated people just so they can have a new Ferrari every six months rather than every year.”
Vanguard is mostly a place for people to set up SIPPs. Just because they have a colossal amount of assets that they manage doesn’t mean they’re doing much. Most of those Vanguard assets are really just regular people with investments. Same when people talk about Blackrock as if they’re SMERSH. Blackrock mostly just run a load of ETFs.
HFCS is just a form of glucose and fructose made from corn. But again, new things, especially with acronyms, will get talked up as a product of Spectre, Black Mesa or Aperture Science because most of the public don’t know any better.
And if Yanks are fat because of it, it’s because they never walk anywhere. But no-one likes to hear “get out the car, fatty” when they can blame the food industry.
@WB
That’s partly what they are – I have Vanguard stock myself. But they are also behind a lot of the B Corp/DEI bullshit as well.
I know what HFCS is – as I say, if you want to scoff it, scoff away. And yep, a lot of obesity is down to shit lifestyle. But it is still in an awful lot of shit food.
“but I don’t think it’s controversial to say that hydrogenated oil, high fructose corn syrup and the various blue colourings are not very good for you”
hydrogenated oil: oil that is turned in to solid or semi-solid fats by adding hydrogen to it. Which is what all cells do naturally. The fact that it is done in bulk in a factory doesn’t change the chemistry behind it.
all oils and fats we ingest that can be broken down by our digestive systems (there’s some types we can’t, which is why they’re in “Diet Food”… ) get broken down and re-assembled to a type that’s suitable for transport in the body from the bits transported through the intestinal cell membranes.
There is, literally, no difference to our bodies what the actual source of the fat, or its composition is.
high fructose corn syrup: along with invert sugar and others of its ilk.
The fructose hits us as “sweet” much, much harder than glucose it’s usual partner. Which means you need less sugar to get to a desired level of sweetness, and a far stronger signal that something is Too Much of a Good Thing.
It gets turned into glucose in the liver anyway before it gets used anywhere else.
It is , in fact, “better” for us than pure glucose, since it actually consumes energy before it can be used by us.
Again, it’s the “artifical”/”man-made” bugaboo that strikes here, because the one natural substance that never gets attacked, yet contains 40-60% hydrolised saccharose ( as in high-fructose for the oiks..) is….. Honey.
blue dye: Which one? E131 is just an artificial indigo, which is a plant extract that some people, well witin statistical probability, have an allergic reaction to. Same as Strawberry Red, and the various carotenes found in carrots, and….
Most other blues are anthocyans or carotenes ( artificially made or not ) that are found in Nature.
Most notably the “superfood” that is….Blueberries. and aubergine.. and red cabbage.. and… edible fowers…
Y’know… all the stuff that the poncy hippies rave about as Health Food…
Just sayin’….. It is controversial to say…. because there is not a shred of actual scientific evidence any of this is “bad” for you, unless you invoke Paracelsus.
By the criteria they are putting together for ultra processed food, cheese would be high on the list. Lots of fat, loads of salt, and, good grief, rennet. Not to mention tons of fungal contamination. Stilton would be right out.
I hope they never ban the MaccyDos Sausage and Egg McMuffin. Snackadicious if you ask me.
BTW, sugar, in all its forms, is pure nutrition. Too much of it is bad for you, but then too much of anything is bad for you, that’s inherent in the idea of ‘too much’.
I heard a story many years ago of someone who was fond of apple pips and so stored up a jar full of them, then ate them, then died of cyanide poisoning. Don’t know if its true but I’m guessing that apple pips are not considered UPF.
“I heard a story many years ago of someone who was fond of apple pips and so stored up a jar full of them, then ate them, then died of cyanide poisoning. Don’t know if its true but I’m guessing that apple pips are not considered UPF.”
Not implausible, at least…
Fruit-bearing plants that actually make ..fruits… meant for consumption by seed-bearers divide the fruit into two bits: the part they “want” you to eat, and the seeds, which don’t “want” you to eat.
Almond/apple/peach seeds are pretty notorious for actually being poisonous, because cyanide ( actually meant to kill off any funghi having a go at the yummy center…) , but any smart kid soon learns to not bite/chew fruit seeds..
Grape and orange seeds are a good and “safe” example… They contain a fair amount of tartaric acid, which isn’t *lethal* but doesn’t taste nice, makes your mouth feel like dried-out leather, and gives you the runs something fierce if you persist….
You soon learn to spit out the things, or swallow them whole where they eventually exit accompanied by prime fertiliser, as Nature intended.
But storing and then eating apple pips? yeah…. good way to self-terminate….
Remember.. if it smells like marzipan, but isn’t marzipan… gtfo…..
I’ve always eaten the whole apple, including core and seeds*, since childhood, and it’s never done me any … aaaargh!
* not the stalk – that would be silly!