On today’s show, we’re talking about ultra-processed foods—what they are, whether they’re bad for you, and why it’s so hard to study their effects.: I don’t know about you, Josh, but I’m a big fan of ice cream. I often eat cereal for breakfast, sometimes with a bit of fruit yogurt. And I enjoy a good gin cocktail. What do you think these foods have in common?: But there are so many different right answers here. All those foods have a lot of sugar. In one form or another.
Processed food, in comparison, is kind of everything in between. Just washing a food can be a kind of processing. But so can chopping. And also things like canning, drying, and freezing. By some estimates almost 60 percent of what we eat in the U.S. is ultra-processed. For kids, it's even worse — almost 70 percent of their diet is processed.Nope, it’s actually just a name! “Nova” means “new” in Portuguese.
So NOVA has four categories: there’s unprocessed or minimally processed food – which are things like eggs and vegetables. For two weeks, some of them were given only minimally processed foods – so they would start their day with things like greek yogurt and fruit. Others got only ultra-processed foods, so things like a bagel with cream cheese, turkey bacon, and sugary breakfast cereals. And when each group finished those two weeks, they would switch to the other diet.
They might also be harder to resist. Many ultra-processed foods contain a lot of fat, sugar, salt and carbs. And that combination makes them hyperpalatable – basically, so tempting to us that we find it really hard to stop eating. Those ingredients don’t exist together in nature – and some research has shown that the combination of fatcarbohydrates are better at activating the brain’s reward system compared to foods with just one of those things alone. : Yep.