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[so our fresh, whole foods are a matter of life and death.]

How Ultra-Processed Foods Are Killing Us
http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/2010/11/how-ultra-processed-foods-are-killing-us/65614/
Nov 4 2010, 9:08 AM ET 13

In the current issue of the online Journal of the World Public Health 
Nutrition Association (of which I am a charter member), Carlos Monteiro, a 
professor at the University of São Paulo writes, "The big issue is 
ultra-processing." Because his commentary is so lengthy, I am taking the 
liberty of extracting pieces from it, not always in the order presented.

    The most important factor now, when considering food, nutrition and 
public health, is not nutrients, and is not foods, so much as what is done to 
foodstuffs and the nutrients originally contained in them, before they are 
purchased and consumed. That is to say, the big issue is food processing—or, 
to be more precise, the nature, extent and purpose of processing, and what 
happens to food and to us as a result of processing.

Monteiro makes it clear that all foods and drinks are processed to some 
extent. Fresh apples are washed and, sometimes, waxed. Drinking water is 
filtered. Instead, he distinguishes three types of processing, depending on 
their nature, extent, and purpose:

    • Type 1: Unprocessed or minimally processed foods that do not change the 
nutritional properties of the food.

    • Type 2: Processed culinary or food industry ingredients such as oils, 
fats, sugar and sweeteners, flours, starches, and salt. These are depleted of 
nutrients and provide little beyond calories (except for salt, which has no 
calories).

    • Type 3: Ultra-processed products that combine Type 2 ingredients (and, 
rarely, traces of Type 1).

The purpose of Type 3 ultra-processing is to create:

    durable, accessible, convenient, attractive, ready-to-eat or 
ready-to-heat products. Such ultra-processed products are formulated to 
reduce microbial deterioration ('long shelf life'), to be transportable for 
long distances, to be extremely palatable ('high organoleptic quality') and 
often to be habit-forming. Typically they are designed to be consumed 
anywhere—in fast-food establishments, at home in place of domestically 
prepared and cooked food, and while watching television, at a desk or 
elsewhere at work, in the street, and while driving.

Monteiro argues: "the rapid rise in consumption of ultra-processed food and 
drink products, especially since the 1980s, is the main dietary cause of the 
concurrent rapid rise in obesity and related diseases throughout the world."

As evidence, he notes that ultra-processed products as a group are:

    • Much more energy-dense than unprocessed and minimally processed foods 
and processed culinary ingredients taken together.

    • [Contain] oils, solid fats, sugars, salt, flours, starches [that] make 
them excessive in total fat, saturated or trans-fats, sugar and sodium, and 
short of micronutrients and other bioactive compounds, and of dietary fiber.

    • Relatively or even absolutely cheaper to manufacture, and sometimes—not 
always—relatively cheaper to buy.

    • Often manufactured in increasingly supersized packages and portions at 
discounted prices with no loss to the manufacturer.

    • Available in 'convenience' stores and other outlets often open late or 
even 24/7, and vended in machines placed in streets, gas stations, hospitals, 
schools and many other locations.

    • The main business of transnational and big national catering chains, 
whose outlets are also often open until late at night, and whose products are 
designed to be consumed also in the street, while working or driving, or 
watching television.

    • Promoted by lightly regulated or practically unregulated advertising 
that identifies fast and convenience food, soft drinks and other 
ultra-processed products as a necessary and integral part of the good life, 
and even, when the products are 'fortified' with micronutrients, as essential 
to the growth, health and well-being of children.

Overall, he says:

    Their high energy density, hyper-palatability, their marketing in large 
and super-sizes, and aggressive and sophisticated advertising, all undermine 
the normal processes of appetite control, cause over-consumption, and 
therefore cause obesity, and diseases associated with obesity.

His groups the main points of his argument in three theses:

    • Diets mainly made up from combinations of processed ingredients and 
unprocessed and minimally processed foods, are superior to diets including 
substantial amounts of ultra-processed products.

    • Almost all types of ultra-processed product, including those advertised 
as 'light', 'premium', supplemented, 'fortified', or healthy in other ways, 
are intrinsically unhealthy.

    • Significant improvement and maintenance of public health always 
requires the use of law. The swamping of food systems by ultra-processed 
products can be controlled and prevented only by statutory regulation.

Lest there be any confusion about the significance of this proposal for 
public health nutrition, an accompanying editorial (unsigned but assumed to 
be by Geoffrey Cannon) poses a serious challenge: "Nutrition science: time to 
start again."

    This editorial is about the significance of food processing, and in 
particular of 'ultra-processed' food and drink products. It is also about the 
nature, purpose, scope and value of nutrition science, which as 
conventionally taught and practiced, is now widely perceived to have run into 
the buffers or, to change metaphor, to have painted itself into a corner.

The editorial argues that nutritionists' focus on nutrients, rather than 
foods, has led to the assumption that if foods contain the same nutrients, 
they are the same—even though it is never possible to replicate the 
nutritional content of foods because too much about their chemical 
composition is still unknown:

    This notion is an exquisite combination of stupidity and arrogance, or 
else of intelligence and cunning. For a start, similar results can only be of 
those chemical constituents that are at the time known, and actually measured.

These are important ideas, well worth consideration and debate. I am struck 
by their relevance to the latest survey of soft drink availability in 
American elementary schools. Despite the efforts of the Clinton Foundation 
and the voluntary actions of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola, the availability of 
soft drinks to young school children increased from 49 percent to 61 percent 
just in the year from 2006-07 to 2008-09. Soft drinks, in Monteiro's terms, 
are ultra-processed. Doing something about them requires statutory regulation.

Consideration of the effects of ultra-processing might help us look at what 
we feed our kids in a more constructive way. This is important work.