Amanda's Wellbeing Podcast - Processed Foods

"Eat less processed food" - you hear it all the time. Today I discuss what that really means.
Some forms of processing, like freezing, to increase shelf life is not necessarily a bad thing. The problems lie with ultra-processing where multiple ingredients like fats, sugars and starches are mixed with other substances e.g. artificial colouring and flavourings to come up with some palatable food-like product. This ultra-processed "food" (if you can even call it that) is not health-promoting.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Amanda's Wellbeing Podcast.

This is my Five Minute Food Facts series.

I'm Amanda Hayes,

Your host,

A nutritionist with a passion for wellbeing.

I decided to do my Five Minute Food Facts series because there is so much conflicting information available about food and various diets.

Some of it is credible and some of it is not.

It can be time consuming and not to mention confusing to try and sift through the noise and get to the heart of the matter.

In this series,

I will do all of that for you and present factual,

Reliable information in a concise and easy to understand way.

The content of my Five Minute Food Facts series is for information purposes only and is not intended to replace the advice of your health professional.

Today,

I am going to discuss processed foods.

So we often hear the advice,

Eat less processed foods and indeed that is something I say again and again.

However,

That advice can be hollow unless you can first identify processed foods and secondly,

Understand why it's beneficial to avoid them.

Processed foods were first seen in the US in about 1910,

So think Crisco and Oreos.

World War One saw the development of canned and frozen foods.

At about that time also,

Household appliances like refrigerators were becoming more common,

Thereby enabling better food storage.

So post World War Two saw the introduction of many convenience foods like instant coffee and the explosive growth of the fast food industry ensued.

Processed foods are not all bad by any means.

Certain methods like pasteurization can inhibit the growth of harmful bacteria and many processing methods save time in the kitchen.

I remember a story that my mum told me that after the Second World War,

My grandmother,

A pianist,

Was whisked off to live on a farm with my grandfather,

Her new husband.

He presented the poor woman who had spent most of her youth on a piano stool and not in the kitchen and therefore had limited cooking skills with a beheaded chook to feather gut and cook for the shearers.

I bet she would have liked to pop down to the local supermarket and buy a plucked and packaged chook from the refrigerated aisle.

So I think really to avoid or limit processed foods,

As I mentioned,

It's really important to understand what they actually are.

So processed foods are classified according to how much they've been altered.

So first you have unprocessed or minimally processed foods,

And those are whole foods in their natural state or nearly natural state.

A minimally processed food may be altered by drying,

Boiling or freezing,

For example,

To make it more suitable to consume or safe at a store.

Next you have a food that has been processed,

And this is one that has been changed from its natural state with the addition of two or three other ingredients like sugar,

Salt or oil.

Examples of these are canned vegetables or freshly baked bread but not supermarket style bread.

And finally you have ultra-processed foods,

And they usually have many ingredients added to them,

Which could include chemicals or artificial colours or flavours.

They're often made from substances like fats,

Starches and sugars that are extracted from foods.

So some of the characteristics of ultra-processed foods are they are mass-produced,

They use low-cost ingredients,

They are consistent batch to batch,

They have a long shelf or freezer life.

So examples of these are hot dogs,

Packaged biscuits and cakes,

Soft drinks,

Instant soups and many breakfast cereals.

And fast foods are like a subset or a type of ultra-processed foods and often they come out of a bag or a box ready to go into your mouth,

And they are usually absorbed quickly into the bloodstream and they are very often calorie dense and highly flavoured containing chemicals or other synthetic ingredients.

So therefore when we talk about eating less or no processed foods we're really referring to ultra-processed foods.

Let's take an apple as an example.

So an apple that you pick off a tree is obviously unprocessed.

Apple juice is processed but an apple pie is ultra-processed.

The reason that I wanted to do a podcast about processed food is because the amount of ultra-processed food we eat is actually quite staggering.

In the US ultra-processed foods are the main source of all calories consumed accounting for 58%.

That's huge.

In Australia we're slightly better,

The percentage is 42% and that comes from a large study published in the BMJ open in 2019.

The problem with ultra-processed food taking up so much space in our diet is that as the consumption of ultra-processed food increases it displaces unprocessed or healthier foods plus it is associated with the risk of diet-related non-communicable diseases which I'll talk about in a minute.

The reasons why ultra-processed foods make up such a substantial part of our diet and just off the top of my head I mean they're convenient,

If you don't have much time to cook they're easy,

Some people lack food preparation skills,

Some people live in places called food deserts where they don't have access to fresh or minimally processed foods and some people have a lack of knowledge about food and nutrition.

So in my opinion most or all of these issues could be addressed.

So the important question really is why is it a problem if we eat so much ultra-processed foods?

What do they do in our bodies?

So let's take a doughnut as an example.

So a doughnut is made with white flour,

Added sugar and partially hydrogenated oil like soybean or cottonseed oil.

All the ingredients themselves are highly processed and mixed together to make a palatable sweet.

So for example the white flour has all the dietary fibre stripped away,

The partially hydrogenated oil has been chemically altered and there is absolutely nothing good for you about oils like that and the added sugar is quickly and easily absorbed into the bloodstream.

So the bloodstream is flooded with glucose leading to a spike in insulin and the continual repetition of this roller coaster has been implicated in the development of obesity,

Diabetes and even heart disease.

Apart from dietary fibre being taken away,

Ultra-processed foods lack other important nutrients like antioxidants but it's not just what they don't contain,

It's also what they do contain.

They contain too many other things like emulsifiers and this has been described as a detergent like substance and it may strip away the protective mucin layer in the intestine and it may predispose people to intestinal diseases or food allergies.

As you know food allergies have,

The prevalence of them,

Has increased alarmingly in the past few decades and there are many theories as to why.

We don't know exactly why it's happened and this is yet another theory.

It is most likely a combination of factors but it does appear to be something that we humans have done in our environment,

Either our external and or our food environment.

And also ultra-processed foods contain too much salt and too much added sugar.

And just a quick note on processed meats,

The World Health Organisation has classified processed meats such as hot dogs,

Lunch meats and bacon as a carcinogen and that means cancer causing.

I would say that's a pretty compelling reason to avoid or substantially limit processed meats.

Just another aside,

The production of all these monocrops to produce the ingredients for processed foods like soybean,

Wheat,

Things like that has been implicated in soil erosion and environmental damage.

So really there's nothing good in this picture.

And then just a couple of studies.

Recently a study,

Although it was small,

It was only 20 participants,

The subjects were put on an ultra-processed and then a minimally processed diet for two weeks per diet.

They were allowed to determine how much they wanted to eat and the findings were that on the ultra-processed diet the subjects consumed 500 calories,

That is 2100 kilojoules more per day.

Their carbohydrate and fat intake increased but their protein intake didn't.

They nearly all gained weight.

So that's interesting.

And another study in France of 100,

000 adults found that those who consumed more ultra-processed food had higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

So that was an observational study which shows an association,

Not a cause per se.

However,

It's not coming down in favour of eating ultra-processed foods.

And then in a review written by Dr Joel Fuhrman,

Who's been described as a celebrity doctor,

Which I must say does ring a few alarm bells for me,

He makes some shocking observations about the US diet,

Which is often referred to as the SAD diet,

S A D,

SAD being an acronym for Standard American Diet.

He says,

Over the past 50 years,

The health of Americans has gotten worse and 71 to 88% are overweight or obese.

The cutoff depends on which definition of obese you use and which BMI cutoff.

He says,

Today,

Eating processed foods and fast foods may kill more people prematurely than cigarette smoking.

And he also says,

Sugar may even stimulate the brain in an addictive fashion.

Celebrity or not,

No doctors or health professionals are advocating that we should increase our consumption of ultra-processed food.

I've never heard anyone say that.

And out of interest,

Australia has the fifth highest rate of obesity in the OECD.

So that's 28% of our population over 15 years.

Articles in medical journals report a direct association between ultra-processed food consumption and obesity.

And as we know,

Obesity is associated with an increased risk for cancer,

Hypertension and stroke and other non-communicable diseases.

It seems self-evident that strategies to reduce the consumption of ultra-processed foods are needed.

Examples of such strategies could be restricting their sale in schools.

Another one would be tightening up rules and regulations about misleading health claims on some ultra-processed foods.

An example that springs to mind for me is certain cereals claim that they,

For example,

Are high in protein,

Like this is a really good and healthy thing,

But they don't mention they're also high in sugar and other weird additives.

So they just cherry pick out one thing and make it look as though the whole cereal is actually healthy for you when it probably is not.

So there you go.

Knowledge is power people.

Be aware of what you put into your mouth.

And instead of a high protein,

Gluten-free,

Sugar-free,

Vitamin and mineral enhanced energy bar,

Just grab a handful of raw nuts and an apple and you're good to go.

So thank you very much for listening to this podcast today.

I hope you found it useful.

Eat well,

Move well,

Think well.