We want causal correlations. Someone decided that instead they wanted to divide food into categoried in this specific way, and then rank categories. And I don't think all of them were naive about what they were doing. I've read Merchants of Doubt, I don't give harmful industries the benefit of doubt when it comes to things like this.
Edit to add: I think it’s also clear from this that there isn’t anything like the scientific consensus you believe there is on this issue.
So there's no debate that ultra processed foods affect health, there's only debate on whether the category itself is good enough. And if you go deeper into the subject, it becomes pretty obvious that the Nova system is a pretty bad model. But it's a simple model that can be easily communicated to Doomscroll Sally. The better models we have haven't caught on anywhere near as well.
"The participants in this debate agree that food processing vitally affects human health, and that the extent of food processing significantly affects diet quality and health outcomes. They disagree on the significance of ultra-processing, as defined within the Nova food classification system."
Is my point. There’s a lot of correlation but whole classification system is poorly designed and mechanisms are not really explained. The whole idea of labelling foods as ultra processed as a proxy for bad seems poorly conceived. If I was to go further I’d say it has a whiff of naturalistic fallacy about it.
It why people ultra process foods - to make them more tasty and addictive by processing in more fats, salts and sugars. Take soda for example. They added acidic CO2 bubbles so they can add more sugar .
The problem with the term ultra processed has, it bags in huge amounts of different foods and classifies them all bad.
But "hyperpalatable" also misleading in that heavy processing of unhealthy food often just makes things a lot more storable but only a little less tasty (e.g. sweet baked goods).
For "ultra-processed", not only is the choice of classes to divide food into suspect, but they're gerrymandering those classes too. Much fried food isn't especially processed. Extract the oil, fry the vegetable in it, basically two steps. Certainly fewer steps than say, rye bread.
From what I've seen, the studies of ultra-processed food find excuses to count many processing steps for obviously unhealthy food, and fewer for benign ones.
* it frequently removes the fiber and structure, making it faster to eat, and easier to over consume.
* it frequently adds sugar, salt, etc., not just making it easier to over consume, but with a payload that itself does extra damage.
* simply changing the form of food, without changing the contents, itself can have serious nutritional consequences [0].
[0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-n...
This is a very specific definition of "ultraprocessed" that many people don't associate with the term at all. Most people are trying to avoid the strange chemicals and fillers used to market food (like color and shine), to preserve food (so it can last longer on the shelf/warehouse and travel farther), or fill food (to replace expensive fats, starches and sugars with cheap fats, starches and sugars, or even to add indigestible elements for bulk and texture.) We have no idea of a lot of the long-term effects of some of this stuff, and much of it has never been tested for safety, just assumed to be safe.
Other people are trying to tell people to eat healthy food. This is your camp. You don't have to "ultraprocess" things to dump sugar into them. You can just dump sugar into them. I'm a home cook who doesn't really eat much processed food at all, but I certainly eat a lot of fats, salt, and sugar. I can tell you exactly how much. I put it in because I like it. I'm not interested in anybody's suggestion that I cut it other than my doctor. It's a public morals crusade disguised as a health crusade. "Ultraprocessing" often comes in when you dump some strange chemical in to disguise the lack of butter, the lack of a real sugar, or to lower salt content.
But with the other stuff, I hate that it's all lumped together in an "ultraprocessed" category. Each of the types of processing that is done on food is different, each should be justified on its own merits, the process should be public, and things that are notable should be labeled so people who want to avoid them can. Lobbyists fight in order not to label things, and not to have to test things.
I also don't mean to be overcritical about people who want people to eat healthier, but I believe that it undermines the fight to not have unknown dangers in food to turn it into an orthorexia crusade.
It might be some Big Meat conspiracy to combat these upstarts, but there's also reasonable data indicating that less processing results in better health outcomes.