Processed foods (again)

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Processed foods (again)

Postby casual_cyclist » Mon May 26, 2014 6:05 pm

Just reading up on processed foods. The common advice to avoid "processed foods" is pretty meaningless if "processed" is not defined. As this author points out, "frozen green beans have been "processed" as has butter, grass-fed ground beef, or freshly prepared almond butter". Basically, most food we eat has been processed, even if that processing is minimal. One author contents that:
In most cases, however, the term "processed food" refers to those that are chemically processed and made from heavily refined ingredients and artificial additives. Such processed foods are the bane of Western civilizations' diets.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/artic ... foods.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

My go to example of this is corn chips which have added sugar for some flavours. What? Why?

But the funniest article is this one: No processed food for a week.
My plan is to survive for one week without processed food. Ice-cream and chips are banned and there will be no recipe bases to ease me in to dinner. Instead of effortless quick fixes to feed my family, I will make everything from scratch.
I borrow a breadmaker and make French bread. I put water, flour, salt and yeast into the machine and discover it takes about four hours, so I have to nip to the shop if I want lunch.
http://www.bodyandsoul.com.au/nutrition ... +week,6671" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Oops that flour, salt and yeast are all processed foods huh? Virtually all foods we eat are processed to some exent. Cold pressed extra virgin olive oil? Processed. Washed potatoes in a bag? Processed. Wholemeal rice? Processed. Legumes and nuts? All processed. I doubt many people are going to argue these are unhealthy foods.

Rather, I think the problem is foods that are highly refined so that most of the nutrients are taken out, leaving basically energy without much nutrition. These products are referred to by some as "ultra-processed".
ultra-processing is used to make products from combinations of ingredients extracted from whole foods, usually with little or even no whole foods. Also typically, series of processes are used, in the creation of the ingredients and also in the creation of the products, which also usually contain some or many preservatives and cosmetic additives. They are formulated to be hyper-palatable, of long duration, and are usually packaged ready to consume. They are very profitable and aggressively marketed. They are the end product of a chain of processes, often as evident from their ingredients lists. There is a clear correlation between the rise in production and consumption of ultra-processed products, and obesity.
http://www.wphna.org/htdocs/2012_june_wn3_UPP.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The point the author raises is not to never eat ultra-processed foods.
In countries and areas where most food is industrially processed, it would be tedious and impractical to avoid all ultra-processed products. I am not advocating this. It is a question of proportion. What we should do, as professionals and also as purchasers, is to make sure that ultra-processed products make up a relatively small proportion of food supplies and diets. If consumed, they should not be consumed daily, regularly, or in large amounts, but only sparingly and occasionally.
http://www.wphna.org/htdocs/2011_aug_wn4_cam9.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I think this is a lot more sensible than the generic advice to "avoid processed foods".

So, if we think of processed foods in three groups:
Group 1 foods - Unprocessed or minimally processed foods
Group 2 ingredients - Processed culinary or food industry ingredients
Group 3 products - Ultra-processed products
http://www.wphna.org/htdocs/2011_nov_wn4_cam11.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I think better advice would be to eat most from Group 1, some from Group 2 and little from Group 3.
As I always emphasise, the classification used here does not imply that ultra-processed products are best never consumed. Nobody has ever become ill as a result of consuming one burger, unless it was infected with pathogenic microbes.

The issue is one of proportion. In general, in most countries now, far too many ultra-processed products are consumed. But I do not recommend that ultra-processed products should never be consumed. Nor have I said that any specific ultra-processed product should be cut out of diets. It should be said though, that many ultra-processed products are formulated to be habit-forming, even to the points of having addictive qualities.
http://www.wphna.org/htdocs/2011_nov_wn4_cam11.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Personally, I have seen improvements in my hunger levels from switching from eating mostly Group 3 to eating mostly Group 1 foods. Anyone else?
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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby NeillS » Mon May 26, 2014 9:21 pm

Have been on a Paleo diet for the last 9 months. Will not go back. Feel fantastic.

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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby durianrider » Tue May 27, 2014 10:41 am

CC, the funny thing is Mercola's gf Erin actually follows Freelee's advice on FB to keep slim and healthy.

Ive spoken with Mercola on the phone and he is mega confused on what is correct and what isnt. I guess he is making enough millions doing what he is doing and thats enough for him. Hard to teach someone something when their income depends on them not understanding it.

The very fact Mercola's gf follows my gf for health and weight loss advice speaks volumes...
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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby durianrider » Tue May 27, 2014 10:42 am

NeillS wrote:Have been on a Paleo diet for the last 9 months. Will not go back. Feel fantastic.

Id get regular angiograms to make sure you don't suffer an early heart attack from all the endothelium damage the paleo and primal diets have been proven to cause.

Loren Cordain is the father of the paleo movement. Dr Atkins was the originator. Atkins died obese and had heart disease. Loren Cordain is obese and id like to see his angiograms.
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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby simonn » Tue May 27, 2014 11:27 am

It's more semantics than anything else. Picking is processing.

As I understand it, the point of "unprocessed" is that you are preparing your food from scratch so you know what is in the food you are eating.

I'd argue that frozen vegetables would meet this. They are picked then frozen to preserve them. Nothing added. Ideally we would all grow our own and they would go straight from the garden to the cooker, but the modern world doesn't/can't work like that.

Dried beans/pulses, dried fruit, unrefined grains (brown rice, quinoa etc)... probably, but you have to be aware of how they were dried - cranberries for instance have much sugar added when they are dried (so you can't use them to make cranberry sauce).

They way people seem to think of bread as unprocessed is a bit weird though. I have seen that several times.

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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby casual_cyclist » Tue May 27, 2014 2:20 pm

durianrider wrote:Ive spoken with Mercola on the phone and he is mega confused on what is correct and what isnt. I guess he is making enough millions doing what he is doing and thats enough for him. Hard to teach someone something when their income depends on them not understanding it.
Indeed. I was not trying to promote Mercola in my post. I don't really know anything about him. I was just trying to point out a definition of processed food.
durianrider wrote:The very fact Mercola's gf follows my gf for health and weight loss advice speaks volumes...
What speaks volumes is that you ALWAYS attack the person and NEVER attack the message. Please try to point out what is wrong with the following quote:
In most cases, however, the term "processed food" refers to those that are chemically processed and made from heavily refined ingredients and artificial additives. Such processed foods are the bane of Western civilizations' diets.
You don't promote consumption of processed foods. Could it be you actually AGREE with Mercola on this point? In that case, better attack the person, not the message.
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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby Mulger bill » Tue May 27, 2014 7:55 pm

Not gonna happen...
...whatever the road rules, self-preservation is the absolute priority for a cyclist when mixing it with motorised traffic.
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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby durianrider » Wed May 28, 2014 10:23 am

@CC, I DO promote the consumption of processed foods though.

Processed food is a term health marketers used to create a niche group industry. Its a sound bite that is extremely subjective. Put some carrots thru a juicer, remove the fiber and you have a 'processed food'. Make some wheat grass powder in the factory, put it in plastic container and sell it on your 'anti processed food' website underneath a 1000 word blog explaining why 'processed foods are bad!'.

Not all processed foods are the same but not many people take the time to see it like you have.

The following are all processed foods:
Fresh organic carrot juice you made from carrots in your garden.
Big mac
Smoothie made with water and fruits.
soft drinks
bread you made from corn you grew
KFC
potato pasta you made from your own potatoes
pizza hut

So one can be eating the healthy processed foods and be incredibly slim, fit and healthy and they could be eating the nasty processed foods and be sick, tired and on a host of drugs just to wake up and fall to sleep.

Thats why I prefer objective descriptions as a calorie is not a calorie in how its metabolised by the body and a bicycle is not a bicycle in how you can use it to aid fitness. One can't get very fit on a bmx but a nice properly fitted road bike with compact cranks and a power meter...now your talking!

Anything that is cooked, blended, dried, powdered etc is a processed food. We need to focus on ingredients that make up the food vs if its processed or not. Thats if weight loss and health is ones goal.

Of all the processed foods, oil is the worst. Double the calories per gram of sugar, serves no role in human health and if injected into your body, can cause severe health issues. Sugar on the other hand gets the bad rap but every single hospital in the world saves lives daily by injecting IV glucose solutions into sick patients to keep them alive.

Add more sugar to your daily diet is my main moto. Fruit being the best choice. Add sugar to your fruit if its not sweet enough. One will notice a profound boost in energy when ever they try and do something harder or longer. I personally keep my fat intake under 30g a day and carb/sugar grams unlimited. Regardless of my training load.
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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby im_no_pro » Wed May 28, 2014 10:35 am

durianrider wrote: and if injected into your body, can cause severe health issues.
Whilst I dont necessarily disagree with everything you say (your persistent personal attacks aside), I dont see the point in including this. Compress fresh air and inject it into the body and it can cause severe health issues as well, including death.
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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby casual_cyclist » Wed May 28, 2014 4:27 pm

durianrider wrote:Processed food is a term health marketers used to create a niche group industry. Its a sound bite that is extremely subjective. Put some carrots thru a juicer, remove the fiber and you have a 'processed food'. Make some wheat grass powder in the factory, put it in plastic container and sell it on your 'anti processed food' website underneath a 1000 word blog explaining why 'processed foods are bad!'.
Not really. Processed food is a term that international obesity researchers use to try to understand how the increase in consumption of processed foods leads to obesity.
durianrider wrote:Not all processed foods are the same but not many people take the time to see it like you have.
Except for a team of international researchers that has spent the last two years refining the concept of food processing, studying it's effects and publishing 12 papers on the topic.
durianrider wrote:Thats why I prefer objective descriptions as a calorie is not a calorie in how its metabolised by the body and a bicycle is not a bicycle in how you can use it to aid fitness.
"A calorie is not a calorie" is not objective, nor is it useful advice to help someone decide what to eat.
durianrider wrote:Anything that is cooked, blended, dried, powdered etc is a processed food. We need to focus on ingredients that make up the food vs if its processed or not. Thats if weight loss and health is ones goal.
Yes we do, which is why a team of international researchers has spend two years publishing 12 papers to help people understand the levels of processing of food and the impacts these have on human health... something you would already know if you had bothered to read my first post.

http://www.wphna.org/htdocs/downloadsde ... F_SENT.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Instead of just making up random statements that might sound good on paper but have no basis in reality, lets have a look at what the evidence says:
Working with the meticulous household food purchase surveys undertaken in Brazil
since the 1970s, the USP team observed a different pattern (4-5). The rapid rise in
overweight and obesity since that time was not well correlated for example with any
rise in fat or sugar as such. Instead, a clear correlation was observed with
consumption of types of processed food and drink products, such as sugared soft
drinks, cookies (biscuits), and certain types of fatty meat products such as sausages
and burgers often consumed in the form of snack-type meals together with sugared
products.

These products, while superficially different, have properties in common. As well as
being pre-prepared and ready-to-consume, overall they are energy-dense, fatty, sugary
or salty, and formulated to be hyper-palatable. This suggested – to continue with the
two examples – that the significance of fat and sugar is not these substances in
isolation, but rather as contained and combined in certain types of food product. In
turn this suggested that the focus should not be on nutrients as such, or foods as
such, but on types of product that should be classified together as one group.
http://www.wphna.org/htdocs/downloadsde ... F_SENT.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So basically, you can't correlate the massive rise in world obesity with increased sugar consumption or with increased fat consumption or with increased meat consumption. However, there is a strong correlation between world obesity and the increase in consumption of ultra-processed foods.
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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby casual_cyclist » Wed May 28, 2014 4:46 pm

Meanwhile in the real world, it is interesting the distinction the international researchers mentioned above place on the different levels of food processing by looking at the nature, extent and purpose of processing. Obviously all food is sold to make money. But some food also provides nutrition, such as fresh and minimally processed foods. The purpose of the processing is to get the foods ready for people to eat. In contrast, "ultra-processed products are formulated mostly or entirely from industrial ingredients, and typically contain little or no whole foods. The purpose of ultra-processing is to devise products that are durable, convenient, highly or hyper-palatable, and profitable. These products typically are not recognisable as versions of foods, although ultra-processing includes techniques designed to imitate the appearance, shape and sensory qualities of the foods processed to obtain the ingredients.". The sole purpose of these products is to make money. They do not play an imporatant role in human nutrition.

What's so wrong with ultra-processed foods anyway? According to researchers, they are:
1 Nutritionally unbalanced
2 Energy-dense
3 Hyper-palatable
4 Displace meals
5 Imitations or travesties of food
6 Falsely seen as healthy
7 Aggressively advertised and marketed
http://www.wphna.org/htdocs/downloadsde ... F_SENT.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
No one is saying to never eat ultra-processed foods. The issue is one of proportion. If the largest proportion of your calories come from unprocessed and minimally processed foods and most of the rest from processed foods, it will probably be ok to include a limited amount of ultra-processed foods in your diet. However, if most of your calories are from processed and ultra-processed foods, you are at a higher rise of becoming overweight or obese.
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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby jlh » Wed May 28, 2014 6:36 pm

I think the last paragraph sums it all up nicely.

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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby anttismo » Wed May 28, 2014 7:11 pm

The last few posts highlights why I find the anti-processed food zealots annoying. No nutritional value in ultra-processed food. Complete mis-information. By definition, carbs, fats and protein provide nutritional value. Indeed, these macro nutrients are more important than all other nutrients. You will die without them. Further, there's no such thing as empty calories. Nutrients provide calories, which provide life for us. Sugar is 100% life giving nutrient. 4000 Cal per kg of pure nutrient.

Anyway, everyone is free to eat what they like, but I'm a very much a happy, healthy, consumer of processed foods. By the definitions in this thread, a heavy bias toward the more processed and plenty of ultra-processed. Taste great, nourishing, easy to store, easy to prepare, and able to provide the vast majority of nutrients I need for my 5000 Cal a day lifestyle. Of course, I eat other things as well to provide those other, far less important, nutrients :)

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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby simonn » Wed May 28, 2014 7:40 pm

anttismo wrote:You will die wi. Further, there's no such thing as empty calories. Nutrients provide calories, which provide life for us. Sugar is 100% life giving nutrient.
If you only ate sugar you would lack quite a few nutrients and end up with scurvy, rickets etc quite quickly.

The phrase "empty calories" simply means "provides nothing but calories". Under normal cicumstances you want to avoid this so you can maintain a balanced diet (which means consume all the nutrients you need within a certain calorific limit). Riding/exercising to the level a lot of people do here is not normal circumstances.

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Processed foods (again)

Postby toolonglegs » Wed May 28, 2014 10:16 pm

My lovely neighbour just gave me 10 kilos of dark dark cherries off the tree... 1 kilo disappeared just like that... I will be doomed!.
Processed food?... Just Right cereal is my downfall... So I don't buy it anymore. Weetabix is the fall back ( with prune juice instead of milk )... But I don't pig out on that. After that there isn't too much heavily processed in my diet... A can of sweet corn unsalted, can of palm hearts, artichokes... Bit of olive oil in salad dressing, rice ( bio )... Is that processed much?, oh yeah I do have soya burgers once a week or less ( they are a pretty naughty treat! ). Breakfast cereals really are my downfall!
Oh yeah... Forgot about baguettes :-(

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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby casual_cyclist » Thu May 29, 2014 11:54 am

toolonglegs wrote:Breakfast cereals really are my downfall!
Oh yeah... Forgot about baguettes :-(
Breakfast cereals and bread are my downfalls too. I don't buy breakfast cereal. If I eat a serve, I feel hungry about an hour later. That many calories should last me until lunch time. I still eat too much bread though... :(
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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby casual_cyclist » Thu May 29, 2014 12:26 pm

anttismo wrote:The last few posts highlights why I find the anti-processed food zealots annoying. No nutritional value in ultra-processed food. Complete mis-information. By definition, carbs, fats and protein provide nutritional value. Indeed, these macro nutrients are more important than all other nutrients. You will die without them. Further, there's no such thing as empty calories. Nutrients provide calories, which provide life for us. Sugar is 100% life giving nutrient. 4000 Cal per kg of pure nutrient.
Ultra-processed foods are great huh? Question then: Did you get to 200kg by eating unprocessed and minimally processed foods or by eating processed and ultra-processed foods?

I would like you to show where anyone said there is "No nutritional value in ultra-processed food". The claim by a team of international researchers is that they are nutritionally unbalanced, not that they provide no nutrients. Here is the exact quote:
They are nutritionally unbalanced, as are processed food products. They are
characteristically fatty, sugary or salty, or depleted in dietary fibre and various
micronutrients and other bioactive compounds. They are often high in saturated fats
or trans-fats. Further, the safety of various specific additives, and classes or
combinations of additive used in their formulation, is unknown or disputed.
http://www.wphna.org/htdocs/downloadsde ... F_SENT.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Your claim there is no such thing as empty calories simply means you don't know what the term refers to. "In human nutrition, the term empty calories applies to food that supplies food energy but little or no other nutrition." Sugar provides no other nutrition besides energy, so provides by definition "empty calories". You seem to place a lot of importance on carbs, fats and protein but with most of the Australian population overweight, it doesn't appear that anyone is suffering from nutrient deficiency of calories. So, if people are fat, they are eating enough of the macro nutrients but if they are fat and nutrient deficient, that means they are lacking vital nutrition in their food supply. Could it be that ultra-processed foods are missing essential vitamins and minerals that keep people healthly? Being nutrient deficient in nutrients other than carbs, fat and protein can make you very sick too.

Lack of vitamin D can cause rickets, lack of vitamin C can cause scurvy, lack of vitamin B12 can cause pernicious anemeia. There is a whole list of these. How much vitamin D, vitamin C or vitamin B12 is there in sugar?

http://www.nal.usda.gov/wicworks/Topics ... tChart.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby anttismo » Thu May 29, 2014 4:36 pm

casual_cyclist wrote:...Ultra-processed foods are great huh? Question then: Did you get to 200kg by eating unprocessed and minimally processed foods or by eating processed and ultra-processed foods?...
Processed, ultra-processed, and enormous quantities of alcohol. Similar to when I went from 200 to 100. Processed, ultra-processed, but no alcohol this time. Turns out the 1st law of thermodynamics does apply to my body (which is a relief to 300 years of physical science), so dropping calorie intake lower than daily expenditure made weight go down. Eat less, move more :)
casual_cyclist wrote:...I would like you to show where anyone said there is "No nutritional value in ultra-processed food". The claim by a team of international researchers is that they are nutritionally unbalanced, not that they provide no nutrients. ...
Yeah, my bad there, can't show that. But I did infer it from the following 2 statements:

1. "But some food also provides nutrition, such as fresh and minimally processed foods." which implies other categories provide no nutrition

2. "The sole purpose of these products is to make money. They do not play an important role in human nutrition" which again seems to suggest ultra-processed foods provide no nutrition

Also may be my bad for using the dictionary definition of nutrient: something like "A substance that provides nourishment essential for the maintenance of life and for growth" I interpret that macro-nutrients provide all your energy requirements, which does seem to be important from maintenance of life and growth. I did not consider that only micro-nutrients were related to nutrition :)
casual_cyclist wrote:...Your claim there is no such thing as empty calories simply means you don't know what the term refers to. "In human nutrition, the term empty calories applies to food that supplies food energy but little or no other nutrition." Sugar provides no other nutrition besides energy, so provides by definition "empty calories".....
OK. Seems I have all these crazy interpretations. Apparently since calories only have "nutritional value", but do not have "other nutritional value," they are empty. Fair enough, to be non-empty, must have at least 2 types of nutrient value :)
casual_cyclist wrote:...You seem to place a lot of importance on carbs, fats and protein but with most of the Australian population overweight, it doesn't appear that anyone is suffering from nutrient deficiency of calories. So, if people are fat, they are eating enough of the macro nutrients but if they are fat and nutrient deficient, that means they are lacking vital nutrition in their food supply. Could it be that ultra-processed foods are missing essential vitamins and minerals that keep people healthy? Being nutrient deficient in nutrients other than carbs, fat and protein can make you very sick too....
I place enormous importance on carbs, fats and protein. I believe basically 100% of my metabolised calories come from these sources (I could be wrong here). And it turns out that, by a very large margin, carbs, fats and protein are the majority of the nutrients I consume. Potentially a kg per day of these combined! Much, much more abundant than micro-nutrients, and I'd reckon this is true of anybody.... who is alive :)

I do think some people do suffer from deficiency of these nutrients, and unfortunately they die. But admittedly this is rare. Most Australians do not suffer from this, that is true. Sure, it could be so that ultra-processed foods are missing essential vitamins, which is why you should not restrict your diet to them only. But they do provide plenty of nutrients - the 3 most important one, in great abundance. Could also possibly be why fatties and the weak willed, and general dumb-arses should probably avoid ultra-processed foods. But for some of us, they are great :)
casual_cyclist wrote:...Lack of vitamin D can cause rickets, lack of vitamin C can cause scurvy, lack of vitamin B12 can cause pernicious anemeia. There is a whole list of these. How much vitamin D, vitamin C or vitamin B12 is there in sugar?....
Yeah, for sure I would not base my diet entirely on sugar. That sounds really, really silly. But nevertheless, far and away the no. 1 nutrients in my diet are carbohydrates, of which sugars are some. So while carbs shouldn't be the only nutrient, it is my most important nutrient :)

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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby casual_cyclist » Thu May 29, 2014 5:27 pm

anttismo wrote:Also may be my bad for using the dictionary definition of nutrient: something like "A substance that provides nourishment essential for the maintenance of life and for growth" I interpret that macro-nutrients provide all your energy requirements, which does seem to be important from maintenance of life and growth. I did not consider that only micro-nutrients were related to nutrition :)
I think it is pretty obvious that if you can't eat food that has micro-nutrients but no macro-nutrients but you can eat food that has only a macro-nutrient and no micro-nutrients. I would like to see someone who eats sufficient micro-nutrients but is macro-nutrient deficient. It would be unusual these days. On the other hand, it is pretty easy to be in an energy surplus but have a diet that is lacking in micro-nutrients. Plenty of people do that.
casual_cyclist wrote:...Your claim there is no such thing as empty calories simply means you don't know what the term refers to. "In human nutrition, the term empty calories applies to food that supplies food energy but little or no other nutrition." Sugar provides no other nutrition besides energy, so provides by definition "empty calories".....
anttismo wrote:OK. Seems I have all these crazy interpretations. Apparently since calories only have "nutritional value", but do not have "other nutritional value," they are empty. Fair enough, to be non-empty, must have at least 2 types of nutrient value :)
Exactly. Because you can be energy sufficient but nutrient deficient if you consider more than protein, fat and carbs. A vitamin or mineral deficiency is also a nutrient deficiency and can potentially be very serious or even fatal.
casual_cyclist wrote:...You seem to place a lot of importance on carbs, fats and protein but with most of the Australian population overweight, it doesn't appear that anyone is suffering from nutrient deficiency of calories. So, if people are fat, they are eating enough of the macro nutrients but if they are fat and nutrient deficient, that means they are lacking vital nutrition in their food supply. Could it be that ultra-processed foods are missing essential vitamins and minerals that keep people healthy? Being nutrient deficient in nutrients other than carbs, fat and protein can make you very sick too....
anttismo wrote:I place enormous importance on carbs, fats and protein. I believe basically 100% of my metabolised calories come from these sources (I could be wrong here). And it turns out that, by a very large margin, carbs, fats and protein are the majority of the nutrients I consume. Potentially a kg per day of these combined! Much, much more abundant than micro-nutrients, and I'd reckon this is true of anybody.... who is alive :)
Of course we need far more fat, protein and carbs than any micro-nutrient. No one is suggesting otherwise. But I think it is pretty poor to say that a diet that is energy sufficient is nutritionally sufficent. That advice could make some people very, very sick. You also haven't mentioned fibre, which is something that ultra-processed foods often lack. I eat a range of unprocessed, processed and ultra-processed foods so that I get the energy, vitamins and minerals and fibre that I need. It's a matter of balance. When my balance was wrong and I ate far too much ultra-processed foods, my diet was energy sufficient but lacking in fibre... with painful consequences :oops:
anttismo wrote:I do think some people do suffer from deficiency of these nutrients, and unfortunately they die. But admittedly this is rare. Most Australians do not suffer from this, that is true.
Well, I accept that few Australians die from nutrient deficiencies but I think the fact that someone is alive is a pretty poor definition of good nutrition. Australians commonly lack vitamin D and could also be deficient in B12, zinc, folate and vitamin K. It is important because if you are nutrient deficient, you can be alive and pretty miserable. What is the point of being sick when you don't need to be?
anttismo wrote:Sure, it could be so that ultra-processed foods are missing essential vitamins, which is why you should not restrict your diet to them only. But they do provide plenty of nutrients - the 3 most important one, in great abundance.
As I stated before, it would be virtually impossible to get all of your energy requirements without eating any processed and ultra-processed foods. But as you have raised, you should not only eat ultra-processed foods. You seem to think that this thread is against processed food. It's not. It was my attempt to start a discussion on what role ultra-processed foods play in nutrition and to talk around what level is apporpriate. I have already said that "none" is not an appropriate level and you have said that 100% is not an appropriate level. So, an appropriate level must be somewhere in between those two points eh?
anttismo wrote:Could also possibly be why fatties and the weak willed, and general dumb-arses should probably avoid ultra-processed foods. But for some of us, they are great :)
I don't agree that people should avoid ultra-processed foods altogether. If they don't eat processed and ultra-processed foods, is pretty unlikely they will meet their energy requirements. It's more an issue of proportion. What proportion is appropriate?
casual_cyclist wrote:...Lack of vitamin D can cause rickets, lack of vitamin C can cause scurvy, lack of vitamin B12 can cause pernicious anemeia. There is a whole list of these. How much vitamin D, vitamin C or vitamin B12 is there in sugar?....
anttismo wrote:Yeah, for sure I would not base my diet entirely on sugar. That sounds really, really silly. But nevertheless, far and away the no. 1 nutrients in my diet are carbohydrates, of which sugars are some. So while carbs shouldn't be the only nutrient, it is my most important nutrient :)
Of course your number 1 nutrient is carbohydrates. Mine is too. And no one is suggesting you should stop eating sugar. I certainly won't. But it is pretty pointless to be energy sufficent if your diet is deficient in essential vitamins and minerals and that makes you sick.

As I stated earlier, it is pretty difficult to eat enough vitamins and minerals and be energy deficient... calories (carbs/protein/fat) are not the nutrients that people are deficient in. On the other hand, it is common for Australian diets to be deficient in calcium, iodone, iron, zinc and/or Omega-3 fatty acids.

http://www.healthyfoodguide.com.au/arti ... ficiencies" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The bottom line here is to eat processed and ultra-processed foods for energy because you are pretty unlikely to hit your energy targets if you don't and to eat unprocessed and minimally processed foods for essential vitamins, minerals and fibre which may be missing from processed and ultra-processed foods. The issue is one of balance and I think that many people have the balance wrong, eating too much from the processed and ultra-processed side and not enough from the unprocessed and minimally processed side. How to find that balance is the question.
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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby anttismo » Fri May 30, 2014 9:37 am

casual_cyclist wrote:....The bottom line here is to eat processed and ultra-processed foods for energy because you are pretty unlikely to hit your energy targets if you don't and to eat unprocessed and minimally processed foods for essential vitamins, minerals and fibre which may be missing from processed and ultra-processed foods. The issue is one of balance and I think that many people have the balance wrong, eating too much from the processed and ultra-processed side and not enough from the unprocessed and minimally processed side. How to find that balance is the question.
Yes, good to be in balance, or at least get sufficient nutrients of all types. One advantage of riding a lot and eating a lot with reasonable variety is that it is relatively easy to cover most bases :)

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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby casual_cyclist » Tue Jun 03, 2014 1:00 pm

anttismo wrote:Yes, good to be in balance, or at least get sufficient nutrients of all types. One advantage of riding a lot and eating a lot with reasonable variety is that it is relatively easy to cover most bases :)
Something to consider in all of this is people who are a lot less active than you... so, basically sedentary. Their energy requirements (carbs/fat/protein) are going to be a lot lower than yours are. In that case, it would be easy for them to be in an energy surplus and to gain weight. Well, with an obesity rate in Australia reported at "more than 60 per cent of adults are either overweight or obese" (1), it seems like it is pretty easy. Bottom line is that these people are eating too many calories. If those calories come from eating unprocessed, minimally processed, processed and ultra-processed foods, what are you going to tell them to reduce? Considering ultra-processed products don't provide balanced nutrition but pack a lot of energy for their size, it seems like it would be good advice to reduce their calorie intake from those products. Reducing energy intake from the other foods might leave them nutrient deficient in essential vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids and dietary fibre that may be missing from ultra-processed foods. But then they are probably deficient in some of these anyway. The other side is volume of food and feeling full. To get all my energy from ultra-processed foods is actually quite a small volume of food and if I just eat that, I still feel hungry (I have done it and felt constantly hungry while still gaining weight). Foods from the other groups weigh more per calorie and is a much bigger volume of food to chew through. If I eat more from the mimimally processed and processed groups, I feel less hungry or not hungry at all. It's pretty easy to bulk out my ultra-processed foods with foods from the less processed groups and I find those meals more filling. You can feel fuller but eat less calories... advice that at least 60% of adult australians need to hear.

(1) http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life/ob ... 394s4.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby anttismo » Tue Jun 03, 2014 2:01 pm

Eat less, move more, would be my advice. But sure, cutting back on ultra-processed food is certainly worth doing if you need to lose weight :)

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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby casual_cyclist » Tue Jun 03, 2014 3:19 pm

anttismo wrote:Eat less, move more, would be my advice. But sure, cutting back on ultra-processed food is certainly worth doing if you need to lose weight :)
The failed traditional wisdom of calories in vs calories out aka eat less, move more. The only problem is that the "less" in "eat less" is undefined and useless. When I was eating mainly ultra-processed food, I tried the "eat less" mantra. I kept eating the same food, just less of it. All it did was make me more hungry and so I started overeating to compensate. Some might call it binge eating but that is more associated with a loss of control, which I didn't experience. However, I did feel strongly driven to eat. To rectify, I upped my intake of minimally processed foods and cut back on ultra-processed foods. In terms of volume, my volume of food per day more than doubled. I was eating so much and it was so much work to chew all that dam food that by my last snack of the day (after dinner) I actually sighed at the thought of having to eat more food. My jaw ached from chewing so much. So, that would "eat more" really. Perhaps then "Eat more volume but less calories" would be more accurate and more helpful?

It's interesting that I could be in an energy surplus but constantly hungry and gaining weight. I have seen some nutritionistas claim that our brains count nutrients, not calories. IMO this is 100% false. Right at the start I tried "kick start soup", a "nutrition" packed but energy empty vegetable broth. I have never been so hungry as when I ate that. I was ridiculous. So basically, that stuff is nutrionally unbalanced. You can't eat energy but no "other nutrients" or all "other nutrients" but no energy.
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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby anttismo » Tue Jun 03, 2014 4:43 pm

casual_cyclist wrote:The failed traditional wisdom of calories in vs calories out aka eat less, move more. The only problem is that the "less" in "eat less" is undefined and useless....
Failed? Never experienced, or even read, about a case of it failing.

OK, I'll define it as "eat less calories"

Everything else sounded like a description on what you need to do to eat less calories. That's fine, you've go to do what you've got to do. Nevertheless, if you do succesfully manage to eat less calories, and you if manage to move more, you will lose weight. If not, we can write some papers :lol:

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Re: Processed foods (again)

Postby casual_cyclist » Tue Jun 03, 2014 5:39 pm

anttismo wrote:
casual_cyclist wrote:The failed traditional wisdom of calories in vs calories out aka eat less, move more. The only problem is that the "less" in "eat less" is undefined and useless....
Failed? Never experienced, or even read, about a case of it failing.
Dieting is the most common approach to losing weight for the majority of obese and overweight individuals. Restricting intake leads to weight loss in the short term, but, by itself, dieting has a relatively poor success rate for long-term weight reduction. Most obese people eventually regain the weight they have worked so hard to lose.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21677272" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I explained why I failed. I ate less but then got so hungry that I overate to compensate for the feeling of being that hungry. In other words, I tried to eat less calories but I ended up eating more calories because I felt like I was starving. I believe this is quite common amonst dieters. They try to eat less but end up eating more due to hunger. It is not the science failing them. If you can achieve a calorie deficit, of course you will lose weight. It is the method that lets them down. Eating too little of the wrong food can leave people so hungry that they eventually overeat to compensate. On the other hand, I chose to eat different food, so I was still in an energy deficit state but not feeling constantly hungry. Trying to eat less of the same foods led me to feel constantly hungry and to gain weight. Eating different foods made me feel less hungry and led to weight loss. I am not some weird outlier that feel less hungry when eating different food.

This study comparing people switching from a low micronutrient to a high micronutrient diet found that
Highly significant differences were found between the two diets in relation to all physical and emotional symptoms as well as the location of hunger. Hunger was not an unpleasant experience while on the high nutrient density diet, was well tolerated and occurred with less frequency even when meals were skipped. Nearly 80% of respondents reported that their experience of hunger had changed since starting the high nutrient density diet, with 51% reporting a dramatic or complete change in their experience of hunger.
And concluded that:
A high micronutrient density diet mitigates the unpleasant aspects of the experience of hunger even though it is lower in calories. Hunger is one of the major impediments to successful weight loss. Our findings suggest that it is not simply the caloric content, but more importantly, the micronutrient density of a diet that influences the experience of hunger.
http://www.nutritionj.com/content/9/1/51" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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