What Plant Do Donuts Come From?
Do processed foods cause heart disease?
We don’t know. We’ve never done a study where half the people eat Cheetos and drink chocolate milk and the others munch on Kale salads and hummus. Come to think of it, the Cheetos/chocolate milk combo is tested out on most kids and they seem to grow fine.
Do processed foods cause weight gain?
Another scientific study took 20 people and fed them processed food for 2 weeks and then non-processed food for the next 2 weeks. People ate 500 more daily calories when they ate processed foods – which led to a 2 pound weight gain.
The processed and non-processed meal plans from the study are here.
Do processed foods cause high blood pressure?
Why do you keep saying “maybe?”
Current studies only show that processed foods are ASSOCIATED with things like high blood pressure, cancer, heart disease, and death. These studies don’t PROVE that processed foods cause those things. Smoking causes lung cancer, but it took many studies showing an association between the two before we believed the connection.
The most important word I got out of that last paragraph was “death.” Do processed foods cause early death?
One study from Spain followed about 20,000 people for 10 years. The most common processed foods eaten were salami, sausage, hamburger, sodas, fruit juices, milkshakes, custard, pudding, ice cream, and french fries. They observed that those who ate more than five processed foods a day had a 62% higher death rate compared with those who ate less than five servings/day.
A 12,000 person study from America and a 45,000 person study from France both observed that the higher the amount of processed foods in the diet, the higher the likelihood of dying sooner.
Why do processed foods cause illness?
Besides the extra calories and salt, many processed foods contain stuff from industrial processing like chemical additives, colorants, flavoring. We are also exposed to heating byproducts such as acrylamide, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, heterocyclic amines, and furanes. Food packaging may expose us to Phthalates and bisphenol A. Do these compounds cause heart disease? No proof yet, but I’m not willing to be a walking test tube.
Okay, I’m slowly putting down my Doritos bag. What exactly are processed foods?
Most everything we eat undergoes processing. It’s really the ultra-processed foods that are probably not good for you. Let’s call them UPF’s.
Simply, UPF’s are generally foods that don’t look like real food. Take donuts for example – what seed plant do they come from? UPF’s are usually poor in nutrition, high in calories, convenient, tasty, highly profitable, and have catchy advertising like the guy below. (Reality Slogan: “Theyyyyrrr’e really NOT great!).
Do Americans eat a lot of processed foods?
Shockingly, the average American now gets around 60% of his/her calories from UPF’s. About 90% of added sugar comes from UPFs.
What are some examples of UPF’s?
All foods are classified at the following website by the amount of processing: https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova.
Specific examples are:
1). Meats: hot dogs, bacon, sausage, salami, and deli ham/turkey/bologna/chicken/roast beef.
2). Grains/plants: white bread, white rice, low-fiber breakfast cereals, candy, pastries, pies, cookies, muffins, donuts, croissants, cakes, churros, chocolates.
3). Drinks: sodas, fruit drinks, sports drinks.
4). Dairy: custard, pudding, ice cream, chocolate milk, milk-shakes
5). Other stuff: potato chips, instant packaged soups/noodles, mayonnaise, alcohol.
What is the price difference between UPF’s and healthy food?
One study showed that the one week cost of eating processed food was $106 and non-processed food was $150. It’s more expensive to eat healthy.
What are some ways to avoid UPFs?
1). Buy food with the following label:
2). Drink mostly water
3). Cook more meals at home from scratch
4). Grow a garden
5). Use fruit for dessert
6). Eat more vegetables for snacks
7). Plan your meals
8). If you have a hard time pronouncing things on ingredient labels, don’t buy it.
9). Eat out less
10). Have “healthy” snacks handy like blueberries, nuts or snap peas and home-made hummus.
Okay Doc, summarize it for me.
Eat processed foods one or less times per day. Eat heart healthy foods in place of UPFs. Remember, there is a non-UPF, whole food diet that prevents heart disease: fruits, vegetables, fish, nuts, seeds, beans, lentils and whole grains.