What Are Ultra-Processed Foods?

· ·

How exactly is “ultra-processed” defined?

Discuss
Languages

    Selecting a language opens the video on YouTube with captions enabled.

  • English
Republish

Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

Live intro: Ideally, we should try to center our diets around healthy, unprocessed plant foods, but in today’s world, most of what fills our grocery carts isn’t just processed, but ultra-processed, which is good for shelf life, but not necessarily our life. Let’s take a closer look.

Modern nutrition science began about a century ago the in context of nutrient deficiency diseases. Editorials in the Journal of the American Medical Association had titles like “Sugar as Food,” heralding sugar as one of the cheapest sources of calories. For six cents, you could buy 3,000 calories.

But the Nutrient Deficiency era gave way to the Dietary Excess era. No longer were we dying of nutrient deficiency diseases like scurvy as much as we were dying from nutrient excess diseases like obesity and heart disease. So, nutrition science became more about avoiding too many calories, too much saturated fat, too much sugar, and too much sodium, while still focused on nutrients. This allowed food companies to get away with whipping out fiber-fortified Froot Loops. But “Food, Not Nutrients, Is the Fundamental Unit in Nutrition.” And to its credit, the field of nutrition started moving towards a more holistic view.

First generation dietary guidelines emphasized individual nutrients, then moved to second generation food-based dietary guidelines, which largely converged on encouraging diets rich in vegetables, fruits, legumes (beans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils), whole grains, and nuts. But an area of emerging importance is the degree of food processing.

National nutrition guidelines first told us to cut down on saturated fat, alcohol, cholesterol, salt, and sugar. Then they started actually naming names, suggesting citizens might want to cut down on cake, for example. So, from nutrients to foods, and more recently, countries recommending limiting processed foods.

This was the bombshell that really started the momentum: a commentary in the journal Public Health Nutrition in 2009 by Carlos Monteiro, a nutrition professor at the University of Sao Paulo. Maybe the issue with nutrition and health is not so much the food, nor the nutrients, as much as the level of processing. For example, food-based dietary guidelines might tell us to eat more vegetable soup. Great! But there’s vegetable soup and then there’s vegetable soup. Are we talking about cleaning-out-your-fridge vegetable soup? A health-haloed organic quinoa and kale soup with a heart-stopping 1,200 milligrams of sodium per can? How about a vegetable soup that has more salt than it has vegetables? Or a vegetable-flavored soup that contains more artificial flavors and MSG than it has vegetables. Just like there is breakfast cereal and then there is breakfast cereal.

Professor Monteiro and colleagues proposed the “NOVA” food classification system. NOVA is not an acronym. It means new in Portuguese, as in a new way to classify foods, based on the level of process. NOVA classifies all foods and food products into four groups. Group 1 foods are unprocessed or minimally processed, like fresh, dried, frozen, or cooked plants or animal parts, with nothing bad added, like salt or sugar. Group 2 foods are the salt, sugar, and fats used in cooking, and group 3 includes traditionally processed foods, like when you add group 2 ingredients to group 1 foods. But what really put NOVA on the map is group 4, its concept of ultra-processed foods.

These are industrial formulations of several ingredients which, besides salt, sugar, oils and fats, include food substances not used in culinary preparations, like added flavors, colors, artificial sweeteners, emulsifiers, and other additives used to imitate real foods. An example is a frosted grape pop-tart that has more grapes on the front of the box than inside it, with less grapes than salt, but may artificially taste like grapes and look like grapes because of one, two, three, four, five different food dyes.

“Simply put, ultra-processed foods are foods that can’t be made in your home kitchen because they have been chemically or physically transformed using industrial processes.” “They typically contain little or no whole foods, are ready-to-consume or heat up, and are fatty, salty or sugary and depleted in dietary fibre” and other nutrients—like all the sweet, fatty, or salty snacks like potato chips, ice cream, soda, candy, French fries, burgers, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, and fish sticks. Basically, almost everything in a box or a bag. Why not just call them “packaged foods”? Well, they were thinking about it, but were afraid consumers might look at a bag of apples or something and get confused.

Before the NOVA classification system was introduced, the issue of food processing was largely ignored or minimized in education and outreach, as well as in public health policies. But NOVA exploded onto the stage, resulting in a superNOVA in the world of nutrition.

But what exactly is so revolutionary about this concept of ultra-processed foods? I mean, wasn’t fatty, salty, sugary junk always a bad idea? What’s so new about NOVA? Monteiro suggests that there are harmful effects of ultra-processed foods that are independent of their nutrient profile. Is that true? That’s exactly what I’ll cover next.

Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.

Motion graphics by Avo Media

Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

Live intro: Ideally, we should try to center our diets around healthy, unprocessed plant foods, but in today’s world, most of what fills our grocery carts isn’t just processed, but ultra-processed, which is good for shelf life, but not necessarily our life. Let’s take a closer look.

Modern nutrition science began about a century ago the in context of nutrient deficiency diseases. Editorials in the Journal of the American Medical Association had titles like “Sugar as Food,” heralding sugar as one of the cheapest sources of calories. For six cents, you could buy 3,000 calories.

But the Nutrient Deficiency era gave way to the Dietary Excess era. No longer were we dying of nutrient deficiency diseases like scurvy as much as we were dying from nutrient excess diseases like obesity and heart disease. So, nutrition science became more about avoiding too many calories, too much saturated fat, too much sugar, and too much sodium, while still focused on nutrients. This allowed food companies to get away with whipping out fiber-fortified Froot Loops. But “Food, Not Nutrients, Is the Fundamental Unit in Nutrition.” And to its credit, the field of nutrition started moving towards a more holistic view.

First generation dietary guidelines emphasized individual nutrients, then moved to second generation food-based dietary guidelines, which largely converged on encouraging diets rich in vegetables, fruits, legumes (beans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils), whole grains, and nuts. But an area of emerging importance is the degree of food processing.

National nutrition guidelines first told us to cut down on saturated fat, alcohol, cholesterol, salt, and sugar. Then they started actually naming names, suggesting citizens might want to cut down on cake, for example. So, from nutrients to foods, and more recently, countries recommending limiting processed foods.

This was the bombshell that really started the momentum: a commentary in the journal Public Health Nutrition in 2009 by Carlos Monteiro, a nutrition professor at the University of Sao Paulo. Maybe the issue with nutrition and health is not so much the food, nor the nutrients, as much as the level of processing. For example, food-based dietary guidelines might tell us to eat more vegetable soup. Great! But there’s vegetable soup and then there’s vegetable soup. Are we talking about cleaning-out-your-fridge vegetable soup? A health-haloed organic quinoa and kale soup with a heart-stopping 1,200 milligrams of sodium per can? How about a vegetable soup that has more salt than it has vegetables? Or a vegetable-flavored soup that contains more artificial flavors and MSG than it has vegetables. Just like there is breakfast cereal and then there is breakfast cereal.

Professor Monteiro and colleagues proposed the “NOVA” food classification system. NOVA is not an acronym. It means new in Portuguese, as in a new way to classify foods, based on the level of process. NOVA classifies all foods and food products into four groups. Group 1 foods are unprocessed or minimally processed, like fresh, dried, frozen, or cooked plants or animal parts, with nothing bad added, like salt or sugar. Group 2 foods are the salt, sugar, and fats used in cooking, and group 3 includes traditionally processed foods, like when you add group 2 ingredients to group 1 foods. But what really put NOVA on the map is group 4, its concept of ultra-processed foods.

These are industrial formulations of several ingredients which, besides salt, sugar, oils and fats, include food substances not used in culinary preparations, like added flavors, colors, artificial sweeteners, emulsifiers, and other additives used to imitate real foods. An example is a frosted grape pop-tart that has more grapes on the front of the box than inside it, with less grapes than salt, but may artificially taste like grapes and look like grapes because of one, two, three, four, five different food dyes.

“Simply put, ultra-processed foods are foods that can’t be made in your home kitchen because they have been chemically or physically transformed using industrial processes.” “They typically contain little or no whole foods, are ready-to-consume or heat up, and are fatty, salty or sugary and depleted in dietary fibre” and other nutrients—like all the sweet, fatty, or salty snacks like potato chips, ice cream, soda, candy, French fries, burgers, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, and fish sticks. Basically, almost everything in a box or a bag. Why not just call them “packaged foods”? Well, they were thinking about it, but were afraid consumers might look at a bag of apples or something and get confused.

Before the NOVA classification system was introduced, the issue of food processing was largely ignored or minimized in education and outreach, as well as in public health policies. But NOVA exploded onto the stage, resulting in a superNOVA in the world of nutrition.

But what exactly is so revolutionary about this concept of ultra-processed foods? I mean, wasn’t fatty, salty, sugary junk always a bad idea? What’s so new about NOVA? Monteiro suggests that there are harmful effects of ultra-processed foods that are independent of their nutrient profile. Is that true? That’s exactly what I’ll cover next.

Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.

Motion graphics by Avo Media

Doctor's Note

This video is the first in a series on ultra-processed foods. Stay tuned for the rest of the videos, coming out over the next several months.

If you don’t want to wait for each video to be released, we’ve compiled all the information into a brand-new book, Ultra-Processed Foods: Concerns, Controversies, and Exceptions.

If you haven't yet, you can subscribe to our free newsletter. With your subscription, you'll also get notifications for just-released blogs and videos. Check out our information page about our translated resources.

Subscribe to our free newsletter and receive the Millet and Cauliflower-Topped Shepherd’s Pie recipe from The How Not to Age Cookbook.

Previous Video

Friday Favorites: Do Alkaline Diets Help Athletic Performance?

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This