How ULTRA-PROCESSED FOOD is Causing You to Overeat

Ultra-processed diets increase food intake and weight gain - but what is ultra-processed food? Subscribe at https://www.youtube.com/c/Nourishable

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References
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31105044
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http://iris.paho.org/xmlui/handle/123456789/7699
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A 2019 study showed that eating an ultra-processed diet increased food intake and weight gain. Minimally processed foods are plants and animals eaten whole or altered by methods like crushing, drying, heating, netflix and chilling, or fermenting. They can include oils or spices used in cooking - picture starting with whole raw foods in your home kitchen. Ultra-processed foods are formulated with lots of industrially produced additives and little-to-no whole food. Scan the ingredients list for sugar and salt, as well as super refined stuff like soy protein isolate, high fructose corn syrup, stabilizers, added flavours, colours and unicorn snot to know if a food’s processing has gone ultra. Eating lots of ultra-processed food is associated with obesity and other chronic diseases.Twenty healthy adults were recruited to live at a research center for a month. For two of those weeks subjects ate a minimally processed diet and the other two weeks ate an ultra-processed one. They were presented with food and could eat as much as they liked. The diets were matched for total calories, fiber, sugar, sodium, fat, protein and carbs - so nutrient content was the same but the processing was different. A day on the ultra-processed looked like this: croissants, sausage and blueberry yogurt with fiber sprinkles for breakfast, turkey quesadilla, refried beans and fiber sprinkled diet lemonade for lunch and chicken salad sandwich, syrup canned peaches, cookies and more lemonade for dinner, plus unlimited snacks like chips, peanuts, goldfish crackers. A minimally processed day could start with plain yogurt with fruit and nuts for breakfast, a spinach salad with whole grains, chicken breast, fruit and seeds for lunch, and beef roast with rice pilaf, steamed broccoli, salad, nuts and fruit for dinner, plus unlimited nuts and fruits for snacks. Subjects ate 500 more calories per day on the ultra-processed diet and gained two pounds in two weeks, whereas they lost two pounds on the minimally processed diet. They ate more ultra-processed food much faster. Subjects rated both diets equally tasty and satisfying - but here’s a key - when eating the minimally processed food they had higher levels of the appetite-suppressing hormone PYY. Shifting to a minimally processed menu with more plants could be an effective tool for obesity. Take stock of your diet and see whether you can shift towards less processed options - like swapping fruit flavoured for plain yogurt with whole fruit. Another approach is to focus on foods that naturally contain fiber, like fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes. Remember those fiber sprinkles? Every ultra-processed meal had to add in fiber. All that processing removes this super important nutrient that we can’t digest, but microbes in our microbiome can! There are challenges in switching to minimally processed food - it can be more expensive, more time-consuming and requires cooking skills. The reality is that we need larger policy changes to make a global impact. In the misinformation age of nutrition, advice can seem convoluted. But at the heart of it, here it is: avoid that ultra-processed stuff and strive for a minimally processed diet with lots of plants. Eat real food. That’s what science tastes like.