What does "Ultraprocessed" mean?

(Central Florida Bob ) #1

I suppose that’s really all I’m trying to find out. It seems every other day we hear warnings about ultraprocessed food but there doesn’t seem to be a widely agreed upon definition of that word. I’ll wager that there are things that people agree on, but I’ve never seen anything like that.

If you have a beautiful ribeye steak with marbling, that’s probably not even considered processed, but if they take the cattle scheduled to be slaughtered in a month or so and change their feed to add candy to increase the amount of fat the cow has, I’d consider that some sort of processed. I’ve heard folks say that happens but don’t really know.

So what’s ultraprocessed? Is a Snickers bar ultraprocessed? That seems easy to agree to think so. Is bacon?

(KM) #2

As I know it, ultraprocessed: food created using either methods or ingredients or substances you would not as an individual typically seek out or even have access to.

Nutterbutters: UNBLEACHED ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE {VITAMIN B1}, RIBOFLAVIN {VITAMIN B2}, FOLIC ACID), SUGAR, PEANUT BUTTER (PEANUTS, CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, HYDROGENATED RAPESEED AND/OR COTTONSEED AND/OR SOYBEAN OILS, SALT, AND PEANUT OIL), VEGETABLE OIL (SOYBEAN AND/OR CANOLA AND/OR PALM AND/OR PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED COTTONSEED OIL), WHOLE GRAIN WHEAT FLOUR, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, SALT, LEAVENING (BAKING SODA, CALCIUM PHOSPHATE), CORNSTARCH, SOY LECITHIN, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR.

Prepared Lord knows how. Vs

plain old “processed”, which involves manipulating known ingredients in commonly accepted ways. Taking ground wheat, processed white sugar, churned milk solids (butter), eggs, a pinch of sodium bicarbonate and some ground legumes, mixing and heating in an oven = peanut butter cookies.

I’m not sure a finely honed legal definition makes any difference to actual health, though. At last poll, internal organs still can’t read.

#3

In health circles, it means industrial processed food made with ingredients and/or requiring processes that normal people can’t / don’t have access to.

(Central Florida Bob ) #4

Pardon my delay in responding but in a way it’s a good thing because it allows me to do an answer that combines both:

and

Both of those are close to saying, “count the number of ingredients on the package and if it’s more than X, that’s over processed” it adds that the ingredients are things “normal people can’t or don’t have.”

You could say anything with any partially hydrogenated oil, but it’s sort of beyond that.

I asked if a Snickers bar is ultraprocessed, and while this whole discussion is sorta rhetorical since most of us are keto or carnivore and would never eat one. I found a website that dives into that:

Short version, it contains ingredients I don’t have around the house, wouldn’t know where to get, and wouldn’t use if I could. So, yeah, a Snickers bar is ultraprocessed to me.

#5

I agree with everyone, weird methods or ingredients makes things ultraprocessed to me too. If it’s just cut, peeled, mixed, cooked, smoked and stuff, that’s fine.
Number of ingredients doesn’t matter, I cook simply but some of my items has a dozen ingredients (well a dozen is very modest for ultraprocessed stuff… I only went over that when I still made veggie soups). Well I am sure sometimes it’s more than a dozen (it happens when I bake - my low-carb flour mix always was somewhat complex - with a spice mix).

(KM) #6

Two dissonate statements from me:

  1. My personal shortcut is to forward to the bottom of the ingredients list where the weird stuff tends to hide.

  2. If I’m doing a sweet cheat, a mini Snickers bar might be my fave ever. I can make one last 20 minutes.

(Central Florida Bob ) #7

One of the things about the Snickers ingredients that just “triggered” me was that the old ingredients said, “Sweetened Condensed Whole Milk” while the new one listed “Skim milk, lactose, milkfat” which is approximately the same thing, depending on the exact ratios they use. Is this one of those things where the labeling laws made them say three things instead of one, or are they tweaking the amount to make it taste different? And the big question: does it matter? Short answer is it doesn’t matter to me because I haven’t had one in so long I forget.

Semi-related story. I make my own mayonnaise and at some point in the last year, had some issues with the mayo “breaking” (that’s where it turns from what everyone would recognize as mayo into a liquid). I decided to try adding lecithin. There’s a choice between sunflower or soy lecithin, and I went with sunflower. It probably doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference - it would be like saying were your oranges from Florida or California? Or even less meaningful. If it’s the same chemical, and both say lecithin the only difference would be how chemically pure they are, and that should be what they regulate. Is that how it works? I don’t really know how to find out.