A fairly new concept in the scientific community is the categorization of foods into subtypes based on the amount of industrial processing that it takes to create the food. Every since 2010, Dr Carlos Monteiro, from Sao Paulo, Brazil, has proposed a tiered system based on his research. Basically, there are four classifications, called the Nova food classification system:
- Unprocessed food: garden vegetables, bagged beans, pasteurized milk
- Processed culinary ingredients: butter, olive oil, sugar
- Processed foods: canned grains, canned vegetables, jam, tomato paste
- Ultraprocessed foods: soda, cookies, frozen pizza.
Research has proceeded during the last fourteen years, and in early 2024, a systematic review was published showing significant direct association between exposure to ultraprocessed food and 32 health parameters including mortality, cancer, mental health disease, and most organ function disease (https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-077310). Additional research that is ongoing shows that people who eat ultraprocessed foods take in an average of 500 calories more per day leading to weight gain and metabolic disorder. Also, there seems to be significant dopamine release correlated to ingestion of ultraprocessed food which mimics many addictive drug effects, often compared to heroin.
What does this mean? It seems quite obvious to me. Food corporations in the United States specifically have created food which is not nutritious, and is in fact BAD for you at so many levels, and then designed it to be addictive. Sounds like tobacco…
Unfortunately, it is estimated that based on calorie count in the United States, more than 50% of our intake comes from ultraprocessed foods. Think about what this means for your body. As a metaphor, if you treated your car like your body, you would consistently add soda to your gas tank thinking, it’s cheaper then gasoline, it has tons of carbon in it to burn, and tastes so good… Does it help the car? Obvious answer is no. In fact, the practice will likely result in a failed vehicle for which you just paid $35,000.
How do we fix this? Like global warming, the issues are a slow roast, causing rising costs, overwhelming health systems over decades, not days or weeks, and are often not very perceptible to us. We need to change our habits for the long haul:
- Eat natural foods, grow a garden in any space you have available
- Think about your meals: what components are going in and are they harmful
- Reduce ultraprocessed foods by a large margin, and treat them like alcohol or marijuana: once in a while is ok. Daily is addiction and probematic.
- Make changes: Let’s get practical –
- don’t buy baked goods, make them yourself!
- want pizza: make it at home!
- ice cream: same – make it at home. It’s fun and so much better!
- think about time vs health. A lunchtime run to a fast food chain actually takes time and is not that cheap. Buy some ingredients to make the same item at home can feed you for the week at lunch, and be so much tastier and healthy!
- replace breakfast cereal with oatmeal, or have an egg scramble a few days per week.
This list could go on and on: our food system is designed to pay for convenience and taste, not health and sustenance. Think through your food!
Check out the article on Medscape for more info:
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