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Food for thought

shemp

a flimsy character...perfidious and despised
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Are Ultra-Processed Foods Killing Us?

In the past half century, nutrition scientists have blamed health conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease on many features of the American diet, including sugary beverages and saturated fat. These factors surely contribute to Americans’ uniquely poor health. But Kevin Hall, the N.I.H. study’s principal investigator, was researching a possible culprit that wasn’t named until the twenty-first century: ultra-processed food. The problem, Hall believed, might have less to do with high levels of sodium or cholesterol than with industrial techniques and chemical modifications. From this perspective, homemade jam on pain de Gonesse would be fine; Smucker’s on Wonder Bread would not, even if it contained less sugar and fat. “The thesis is that we’ve been focussing too strongly on the individual nutritional components of food,” Hall told me. “We’re starting to learn that processing really matters.”

In recent years, dozens of studies have linked ultra-processed fare to health problems such as high blood pressure and heart attacks, and also to some problems that one might not expect: cancer, anxiety, dementia, early death. One analysis found that women who ate the most ultra-processed food were fifty per cent more likely to become depressed than those who ate the least; another found that men who consumed more had substantially higher rates of colon cancer. (Most of these studies controlled for confounding factors such as income, physical activity, and other medical conditions.)

An exploration of the question of what is really wrong with the American diet. A long read, but worthwhile.
 
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