Ultra-Processed Foods

Everyone agrees that processed foods are bad for you. When it comes to defining what they actually are, however, there is considerably less agreement. Support us: Hear bonus episodes on PatreonWatch Aubrey's documentaryBuy Aubrey's bookListen to Mike's other podcastGet Maintenance Phase T-shirts, stickers and more Links! Nutrition and health. The issue is not food, nor nutrients, so much as processingUltra-Processed Foods: Definitions and Policy IssuesExamining the Nova Food Classifi...

• 0:11Speaker 00

  Uh, what do you have? I have one too, even though it's not my turn, but what is yours?

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Wait, I wanna know what yours is.

• 0:16Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, no, no, I wanna see what you do with it first.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Hi, everybody, and welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that's finding new and exciting ways to stigmatize the foods you love.

• 0:26Speaker 00

  Oh, that's good. That's very direct.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  On brand, the other thing that I thought about as an opening is asking you what your favorite ultra-processed food is. Mine is smoked salmon.

• 0:36Speaker 00

  Oh, Nutella.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  No, mine was gonna be, uh, Welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that is finally going to tell the story of yellows one through four.

• 0:47Speaker 00

  I'm Michael Hops.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  I'm Aubrey Gordon. If you would like to support the show, you can do that at patreon.com/maintenancephase, or you can subscribe to premium episodes on Apple Podcasts. It's the same content.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  Same content.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Michael.

• 1:02Speaker 00

  Aubrey.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  We're talking about ultra-processed foods, and this is a thing that people are like, sort of constantly asking us to cover, asking us to talk about, all of that sort of stuff. And I am fascinated to hear where we land.

• 1:14Speaker 00

  Well, okay, so the bad news is, we have to start with the same tedious caveat that we start every episode with. This is like my test of like, can I do research without going down a bunch of like unnecessary rabbit holes and then cutting like hours of footage out of the show? The one thing we're gonna talk about is like the definition of processed food.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, I can't wait.

• 1:36Speaker 00

  I think the core challenge of talking about this in a nuanced way is that there are two definitions. There is the colloquial definition of processed food. Like, when you are going about your business, you constantly hear people say like, I'm trying to avoid processed foods. It's one of those concepts that is sort of like, I know it when I see it.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  That's what I was gonna say is revised tagline is, uh, Welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast where, like pornography, we can't define ultra-processed foods.

• 2:03Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  But we know them when we see them.

• 2:04Speaker 00

  Right. Like, you kind of know that a Twinkie is like an ultra-processed food. You know that Wonder Bread is an ultra-processed food. And I, I want to say that like, as a colloquial matter, I don't really police this stuff. Like, if, if I'm with somebody and they say like, "Oh, I'm trying to cut back on processed foods," I'm not like, "How are you defining that?"

• 2:20Speaker 01

  The research disagrees with you!

• 2:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. If, if you are a person who's trying to avoid processed foods, like, you know what that means. There's all kinds of kind of arbitrary concepts in our lives that we still manage to live by. And I think this is totally fine. The question that we're trying to confront on the show is like, is this useful as a scientific concept and as a concept that is now driving policy?

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:42Speaker 00

  So there are numerous countries that are passing taxes on processed foods. We talked in our last episode about how RFK Jr. potentially might want to remove, quote, "processed foods" from food stamps. And so, it's kind of fine to have a colloquial understanding of a term that is like a little murky or a little, you know, sort of changes depending on the circumstances. But if we're going to be passing laws and if we're going to be putting out studies that say, "Okay, ultra-processed foods is associated with a 5% higher risk of cardiovascular disease," we need to have a clear understanding of what this term means.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  I also think there is a way that sort of processed food has come to act as a stand-in for what folks maybe previously would have referred to as quote-unquote junk food.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  God damn it, Aubrey, this is in my conclusion.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Oh shit, I'm so sorry! There's sort of an understanding that it might be uncouth or sort of judgmental to refer to some foods as quote-unquote junk foods. And processed sounds like more technical or more descriptive or something to people?

• 3:44Speaker 00

  Fine, Aubrey, I'll scroll down to the part of my notes where I have information about this.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  You know, I was thinking about this episode last night and I was looking at my beloved bean shelf. Do my beans count as ultra-processed? What about, "I have a jar of barley, is that ultra-processed?"

• 3:58Speaker 00

  Right.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  The closer you get to trying to find a line, the murkier it gets, right? It's very sort of impressionist. It makes sense from a distance. And then you get up close and you're like, "No."

• 4:08Speaker 00

  The thing is, the more I read about this, the more I actually, I think I prefer the term junk food. Because when people say junk food, you know that it doesn't actually have a lot of informational content. It basically just means like, "Food I..." I don't like. They're like, okay, everybody's going to define it differently. Whereas processed food feels objective.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  But like, it turns out to be like, just as arbitrary. It just sounds less arbitrary.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  There is something that is genuinely helpful about people just sort of owning up to their judgments and biases. Cause then you actually can have a conversation about it.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Versus someone who goes, oh, it's not junk food. It's ultra-processed foods.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Where they just sort of keep sort of seeking a new refuge from any kind of conversation about how they actually feel.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  So the first thing to know about the term processed food is that it's been around like much longer than I knew. So I went on that like Google Gram thing that is like, how much is this term being used? The first reference that it has for processed food is from 1912. You can find old articles in like the New York Times, like decrying processed food and how it's harming people. One of the first articles I found was from 1970 called "Bread is Fatal to Rats, But That's Not the Point."

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, wait, Mike.

• 5:24Speaker 00

  Are you doing a rat soundboard right now?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  No, I'm not. I don't. I'm not doing that sound. God, duh. Uh, I'm trying to find my fucking zoom window to turn on the camera.

• 5:34Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. When is this from?

• 5:36Speaker 01

  This appears to be from the 50s. I found this in an antique shop. It's a print that says, "Bread Helps to Keep Up Your Energy." "In this sensible reducing diet, bread helps burn up safely the fat you lose."

• 5:50Speaker 00

  Dude, bring back this graphic design.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  It looks dope, huh?

• 5:53Speaker 00

  It's so wordy. It's like all these words and then like people at a prom or something because they ate bread.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Also, now I want a rat soundboard. Sorry.

• 6:02Speaker 00

  This is, okay, I know I said I wasn't going to go down rabbit holes and shit, but the first paragraph of this article is, "For what may be the 1,000th time, the question of whether or not rats can live on nothing but ordinary white bread has been raised once again." I'm like, is that, is that something we were raising a lot in the 1970s?

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Sorry, are we coming back to this one a bunch?

• 6:24Speaker 00

  Just like a first date question.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Fascinating.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  Where are you from? Do you have any siblings? Can rats live on bread?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  If a tree falls in the woods, no one's around to hear it, doesn't make a sound. Can rats live on bread?

• 6:35Speaker 00

  So this is a study where they fed rats like ordinary white bread, of course, like refined flour. You know, they remove a lot of the fiber, a lot of the nutrients, et cetera. If you feed rats just white bread, they do die, like they starve to death, basically, because there are not enough nutrients. However, if you feed them an enriched white bread that has these vitamins and minerals put back in, they live.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  But what's interesting to me is like, in this article, from, from the very beginning of this term, nobody could really define what processing is. Because one way to think about it is like, okay, you're processing the wheat, you're taking out all the nutrients, but also boiling down foods to get the nutrients out and turning them into powders and putting them into bread is also processing. It's arguably more processing.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:19Speaker 00

  This is just a different kind of processing. So it's like, everyone uses the term process just to mean like, food I don't like, food that I think is bad.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Right, absolutely. Like, there are very few definitions of processed foods in terms of the like colloquial usage that would include like olive oil.

• 7:35Speaker 00

  This does actually get to like, the biggest problem with the term and the biggest problem with like efforts to define it. So the term becomes much more popular in the early 2000s, especially with like the rise of Michael Pollan. I went back to the Omnivore's dilemma for this, and like, he refers to processed foods many times, but he doesn't refer to ultra-processed foods. The term ultra-processed is coined in 2009 by a Brazilian researcher named Carlos Monteiro, who had been doing kind of fieldwork in Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s, originally on malnutrition. But he was noticing with these poor populations, eventually the problem of malnutrition had started to shift to what he calls overnutrition. You, you basically have, as the Brazilian economy is developing, there's more of these

• 8:16Speaker 00

  like commercial foods being produced and traditional diets are starting to give way to like, you know, sodas and Twinkies and all the kind of stuff we associate with ultra-processed foods. So in 2000- 2009, he puts out the first use of this term in academia, ultra-processed, and also an attempt to define it. So this is a paper called "The Issue Is Not Food Nor Nutrients So Much As Processing." So I'm going to send you the first couple paragraphs.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  "It is now generally acknowledged that the current pandemic of obesity and related chronic diseases has, as one of its important causes, increased consumption of convenience and pre-prepared foods. However, the issue of food processing is largely ignored or minimized in education and information about food, nutrition, and health, and also in public health policies."

• 9:07Speaker 00

  So this is happening in the context of this shifting understanding of food, right? That the original understanding of like, quote-unquote, unhealthy food was food that was high in saturated fats, right? We talked about this coming out of the 1950s. It was like, we need to cut down on fat. Then in the early 2000s, we get this stigmatization of sugar and carbs.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:24Speaker 00

  And so what Montiro is saying is like, we need a more holistic understanding of this, that it's not just, like, you measure the grams of sugar and then you're like, this food is level eight bad. Like, that's really one-dimensional. We need a three-dimensional understanding, and that comes from understanding the way that the food is made, basically.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  God, the whole time you're talking about this, I'm just thinking about other foods that are ultra-processed. Protein, protein powder. Protein powder. That's ultra-processed.

• 9:49Speaker 00

  We're getting there, we're getting there, we're getting there.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Athletic Greens!

• 9:52Speaker 00

  You read two more paragraphs, Aubrey, and then we'll get to the fun part, which is us trying to define what ultra-processed food is.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Fucking dunking on Hughl.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Fuck you, Moondust!

• 10:05Speaker 00

  So I'm sending you these paragraphs about where he lays out, like, what is the problem with ultra-processed foods?

• 10:10Speaker 01

  "Modern diets usually do contain some unprocessed plant foods and meat and milk, but also keep several of the unhealthy features of the processed ingredients they are mostly based on: low nutrient density, little dietary fiber, and excess simple carbohydrates, saturated fats, sodium, and trans fatty acids. What makes snacks, drinks, dishes, and meals mainly made up from the ultra-processed foods different from traditional dishes and meals is that they are inalterable. They come ready to eat or heat. Diets that include a lot of ultra-processed foods are intrinsically nutritionally unbalanced and intrinsically harmful to health." Well, now, hang on.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  Are you gonna, are you gonna mention exactly what I was about to say?

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Like, you can say this, but we just talked about like enriched flour and enriched cereals, right? That like, growing up, yes, absolutely, breakfast cereal was kind of everywhere, but all of that breakfast cereal was like, very prominently labeled as being enriched with vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin B.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  I don't know that you can argue necessarily that it's intrinsically nutritionally unbalanced.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  Again, Athletic Greens is an ultra-processed food that advertises itself as being nutritionally balanced, right?

• 11:31Speaker 00

  There's also this core problem that you find in like, every single paper about this, where it says, okay, it's not about the nutrients, it's not about what's inside of the food, it's about the processes by which the foods are made. And then it's like, okay, why are ultra-processed foods bad? It's about what's in the food. So he's saying, they're high in fat, they're high in sugar, and they're calorie dense.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Oh my god, Mike, are we gonna end up doing the reporting version of that Breyer's commercial from the 90s where they made a little kid try to read the ingredients on a bucket of ice cream?

• 12:01Speaker 00

  Oh, that was a Breyer's commercial? I actually looked up the ingredients of Breyer's for this episode.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz they were like, but look at Breyer's! And the kid was like, milk, cream, sugar.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  Guar gum? That kid could pronounce Guar gum?

• 12:14Speaker 01

  It just really feels like that's sort of where we're headed.

• 12:16Speaker 00

  We finally get to like, the meat of this paper, and like, just such fucking micbait. The attempt to actually operationally define what ultra-processed food is. So, he proposes in 2009, this classification that has three groups. Every single person who writes about ultra-processed food has like, the same paragraph, where they're like, well, all food is processed.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah!

• 12:39Speaker 00

  Slicing up an apple is processing it, but it has no nutritional

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Yes!

• 12:43Speaker 00

  content whatsoever. But also like, Pringles, like, making like, a slurry of potato, and then shaping it into like, chip shape is also processing? It's like, this term encompasses such a wide range of activities, that it's probably better to just find a different term. So he does acknowledge this. So, the first group in his classification- Is minimally processed foods or unprocessed foods. Obvious stuff, right? Of like, you pick an apple from the tree and it's like a group one food, right? But then he also acknowledges that even these foods include processing. So he says such processes include cleaning, removal of inedible fractions, portioning, refrigeration,

• 13:24Speaker 00

  freezing, pasteurization, fermenting, pre-cooking, drying, skimming, bottling and packaging.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Skim milk process.

• 13:32Speaker 00

  This is the problem.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Processed fuck.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  He's saying these are forms of processing, but like they don't count. It's not about whether foods are processed. It's about like the intensity of the processing.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it just feels real goofy to be like, the dried beans are not processed, but you put them in a can and then they are.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  So that is group one. These are, these are foods that are like, they're processed, yeah, but they're not like ultra-processed. So they're, they're good.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  We're gonna look the other way.

• 13:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're fine, right?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:59Speaker 00

  Group two is substances extracted from whole foods. So this is anything like, you know, refining flour.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Oh, is that my olive oil?

• 14:10Speaker 00

  Yes, this is olive oil. So when you press olives, you get oil out of them. This is again, also a form of processing, but it's not like the bad kind of processing. You're basically making ingredients out of whole foods.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:21Speaker 00

  So he says, traditionally, they are ingredients used in the domestic preparation and cooking of dishes mainly made up of fresh and minimally processed foods. Because all of this is based on his work with like traditional families and like rural, poor populations in Brazil, what he's really trying to do with this classification is separate kind of traditional food practices from modern food practices, right? He, this is a critique of the modern food system. And so what he's doing with group one and two is like, well, yeah, you know, if you look at like a poor family in rural Brazil, like they might be using some flour. They're probably using some oil when they like saute vegetables. They're using spices. Technically, that's processing, but that's not the kind of processing that is going to be harmful to health. These are like traditional practices, right?

• 15:05Speaker 00

  But then he contrasts this with group three, which is ultra-processed foods. So we're finally getting to the definition of ultra-processed foods. So here is this.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  These are made up of group two substances to which either no or relatively small amounts of minimally processed foods are added, plus salt and other preservatives, and often also cosmetic additives such as flavors and colors. This group of foods includes breads, cookies, ice creams, chocolates, candies, breakfast cereals, cereal bars, potato chips, and savory and also sweet snack products in general, and sugared and other soft drinks.

• 15:44Speaker 00

  That's the kind of you-know-it-when-you-see-it thing?

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Meat products such as nuggets, hot dogs, burgers, and sausages made from processed or extruded remnants of meat can also be classified as ultra-processed foods. Boy, if anyone ever describes anything I'm eating as extruded remnants of meat.

• 16:01Speaker 00

  I mean, that's what they are.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  It's true, and I don't want to hear it.

• 16:07Speaker 00

  I know, don't think about it.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Ultra-processed foods are basically confections of group-two ingredients, typically combined with sophisticated use of additives to make them edible, palatable, and habit-forming. They have no real resemblance to group-one foods, although they may be shaped, labeled, and marketed so as to seem wholesome and "fresh." Unlike the ingredients included in group-two, ultra-processed foods are typically not consumed with or as part of minimally-processed foods, dishes, and meals. They are designed to be ready to eat, sometimes with addition of liquids such as milk, or ready to heat, and are often consumed alone or in combination, such as savory snacks with soft drinks, bread with burgers. It really feels like a very vibey definition.

• 16:54Speaker 00

  The core definition is that ultra-processed foods are made up of group-two substances to which either no or relatively small amounts of minimally-processed foods are added. So the idea is that these products are majority, like, oil and fat, like something like Nutella, which is like 13% hazelnuts, and effectively, everything else is just like oil and sugar.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  But, Michael, that's not typically consumed with or as part of minimally- Processed foods, dishes and meals, which means I'm sorry, you never have dipped a banana into Nutella.

• 17:30Speaker 00

  You know, earlier he said like, the problem with ultra-processed foods, right? Is that they're very high in sugar, they're high in fat, they're very calorie dense. But then he includes things in ultra-processed here that are not particularly high in sugar or fat or energy dense. Like all breads, you're including tortillas. Yeah. This also excludes a lot of foods. This definition does not include potato chips. Because like I looked at Lay's potato chips, like Lay's original potato chips have three ingredients.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  It's potatoes, oil and salt.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:57Speaker 00

  And like lots of french fries also are just three ingredients, right? It's potatoes, oil and salt. That's kind of like the canonical food of like, you shouldn't be eating so many potato chips. You shouldn't be eating french fries. But those actually count as minimally processed foods under this definition.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  You're saying ultra-processed foods are bad for you. But then you have this definition of ultra-processed foods that includes a lot of foods that are not particularly bad for you. And then you have this definition of unprocessed foods that includes a ton of foods that are bad for you. Or like, at least they're calorie dense, energy dense. I was thinking, because he includes milk in this sort of unprocessed category, like a creme brulee would count as like unprocessed. Even though it's extremely calorie dense, it's still mostly cream, right?

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and just so very similar ingredients wise to like ice cream.

• 18:42Speaker 00

  Ice cream always makes the list of ultra-processed foods, but like, I looked this up. Haagen Dazs ice cream has five ingredients. It's like cream, sugar, vanilla. There, there's nothing you can't pronounce in there.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  As a person who occasionally makes ice cream, there's not much to it.

• 18:56Speaker 00

  But then the, the second problem with this definition is that it includes these concepts that are just not related to human nutrition. So he goes into this whole thing that the, the real problem with ultra-processed foods is that they're profit maximizing. They're, they're produced by large corporations. They're these kind of international commodities.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Ah, yes, more vibes.

• 19:18Speaker 00

  Exactly. So he says ultra-processed products are typically branded, distributed internationally and globally, heavily advertised and marketed, and very profitable. But the problem with this is that fucking like fruits and vegetables and food that is good for you is also very profitable and also produced by fucking international global corporations. Like if you go to the grocery store and get strawberries, they're gonna be from fucking Driscolls. Driscolls is like a massive corporation.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  I mean, I think here's the interesting thing here. There is a critique to be had about the behavior of any number of multinational corporations. That criticism of corporate behavior isn't the same thing as proving that there are negative health effects as a result of that bad corporate behavior. Again, they're trying to kind of ride the coattails of like, this kind of makes sense to you, right?

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  You kind of know that corporations are like bad, so they're probably also bad for your health, right?

• 20:12Speaker 00

  We found this in the Michael Pollan book, too, that people keep presenting these dietary choices as somehow like a break from capitalism or somehow virtuous in all of these other larger economic ways, and they just aren't. Food can be healthy and produced by miserable corporations. This is the way that we've chosen to structure our economy. You cannot escape from this by buying virtuous food. I think this is a huge mistake in the way that people frame this stuff.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  And if you can, then the escape is only an escape that is available to people who can afford it.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Maybe the push then should be, A, we first have to establish that there is hard and fast evidence that this is like actively uniquely bad for you. And B, then I think the task becomes, then you like regulate healthier products.

• 21:00Speaker 00

  So as we just covered, like this, this definition is like not all that useful. I, I think this paper is like actually quite bad, like kind of shockingly bad, considering it like began this entire field. Like it's just obvious contradictions. You know that I love like a petty like academic paper, Oprah, you know, I love like peer reviewed, like hmm, interesting.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  You and I both love the Big Brother House aspect.

• 21:25Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Of academia, absolutely.

• 21:27Speaker 00

  So I found an article- On all of the ways that they had to change the definition of this term over time. Between 2009 and 2017, they changed the definition of ultra-processed foods seven times.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that tracks.

• 21:42Speaker 00

  And there's this article called Ultra-processed Foods: Definitions and Policy Issues by Michael J. Gibney that follows all of these changes in like a super petty, but also very useful way.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Oh, it's our Weight Watchers episode.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Here are the 17 different diets that Weight Watchers has been.

• 21:58Speaker 00

  So in 2010, the definition of ultra-processed foods is updated to durable, accessible, convenient, and palatable, ready-to-eat, or ready-to-heat food products liable to be consumed as snacks or desserts, or to replace home-prepared dishes.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  I like that they keep throwing in "highly palatable," which is just like, if it tastes good, it's one of these.

• 22:22Speaker 00

  The other, like, the first thing that jumped out to me about this, the first time I read it, is this "ready-to-eat" thing, where it's like, "These are often ready-to-eat." But like, do you know what else is ready to eat? A fucking apple?

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Totally. And some of that is like grilled chicken breast that's cut up and thrown in a package at the grocery store, and then you pick up, right? So like, to refer to a food like that while conjuring an image of just like a heap of like Hostess cupcakes and Cheetos.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  Right.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Feels misleading in a way that really verges on deliberate here.

• 22:53Speaker 00

  There's also the thing, you know, it says, it says they're, they're intended to replace home-prepared dishes. But also, this is not a biological concept. The purpose of making food does not affect your body differently. If I'm eating a brownie to replace a meal, that doesn't make the brownie like affect my body differently. It's like, again, we're just throwing in these concepts that are not actually related to nutrition.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  At least, let's just be honest about what we're grappling with.

• 23:17Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  You already know which foods it is. It's the foods you already don't trust.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  And you already know who eats those foods, and it's people who probably make less money than you do.

• 23:28Speaker 00

  We then in 2012 get another update where ultra-processed foods are defined as, "These are formulated mostly or entirely from ingredients and typically contain no..."

• 23:38Speaker 00

  Whole foods. So this is yet another like message that you see in this world, even in like academic articles. It's like, they're not even food. They're like edible food like substances.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Right. This is the Frankenfoods.

• 23:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm sorry, but like a Dorito is mostly corn. I'm sorry.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, to your point earlier about Lay's, another one of those is Fritos, where you're like, oh, it's just corn and oil and salt.

• 24:01Speaker 00

  So, okay, so finally, we finally, this is the whole episode, Aubrey.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Just walking through definitions, walking through definitions.

• 24:10Speaker 00

  These efforts go on for like a decade to like try to come up with a classification. They finally in 2017 come up with what's called the NOVA classification, which is now what is used in all of the studies. And from three groups, they've now made it four groups. There was a period where they're like three A and three B or whatever, but now they're just like, fuck it, there's four groups. So I'm going to send you a JPEG of like the current definitions and some examples.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Group one is unprocessed or minimally processed foods, naturally occurring foods with no added salt, sugar, oils, or fats. Group two is processed culinary ingredients. Group three is processed foods defined as food products made by adding sugar, oil, and/or salt to create simple products from unprocessed or minimally processed foods with increased shelf life or enhanced taste. And then the last one is like a brick.

• 25:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  And that is the definition of ultra-processed foods. Industrially created food products created with the addition of multiple ingredients that may include some group two ingredients as well as additives to enhance the taste and/or convenience of the product, such as hydrolyzed proteins, soy protein isolate, maltodextrin, high fructose corn syrup, stabilizers, flavor enhancers, non-sugar sweeteners, and processing aids such as stabilizers and bulking and anti-bulking agents.

• 25:38Speaker 00

  They're industrially created food products created with the addition of multiple ingredients to enhance taste and/or convenience.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  The examples here are commercially produced. breads, rolls, cakes, cookies, donuts, breakfast cereals, soy burgers, flavored yogurts, ready to heat meals such as frozen pizzas, soft drinks and candy.

• 25:58Speaker 00

  Soft drinks are not ready to heat.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  I know, it's such a weird.

• 26:01Speaker 00

  The order, the order that they're doing it in is weird.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  The people who are doing this defining are not writers. I'll say that.

• 26:08Speaker 00

  I think the, the greatest challenge that they come up with is this thing of there's processed foods, which are fine. And then there's ultra processed foods, which are bad.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  This is like, I think what they spent 10 years kind of trying to figure out, because obviously everything is processed. And there's stuff like cheese, which is produced in like a very processing kind of process, god damn it. But they, they don't want to call that bad for you, because that's kind of traditional or kind of virtuous, I guess. So that's in like group three.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it just feels like so clearly such a, a line drawing exercise around like, how do I keep in the things I like and cut out the things I don't?

• 26:46Speaker 00

  There's also the one that really stuck out to me. The first time I saw this was in group three, which again is good. You have freshly made bread. And then in group four, which is bad, you have commercially produced bread.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  Again, these are not nutritional concepts. Something can be made in very large batches and also be very good for you. And the other way around. And like, at what point does bread become commercially produced? On some level, all fucking bread is commercially produced. I bought it at the bakery.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Well, also group four talks about like high fructose corn syrup, but group two includes honey and maple syrup.

• 27:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  So what is the metabolic difference?

• 27:26Speaker 00

  Right.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  It feels like they're trying to have like a hundred sort of like scientific conversations at once. And I'm like, no dudes, you gotta go through beat by beat and be like, here's the problem with emulsifiers and why they might be bad for your health. Here's the evidence for that. Here's why honey is different than high fructose corn syrup. It isn't.

• 27:46Speaker 00

  Also Aubrey.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  What?

• 27:48Speaker 00

  No one, even like in academia can, can fucking agree on what the four groups are. I have seen honey in all four groups.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Good. Yes. Love it.

• 27:57Speaker 00

  No one can decide.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  This is when I turn into that Elmo in front of flames, like, yes!

• 28:03Speaker 00

  Yes. There's also, I mean, maybe this is me being annoying, but I also kind of object to cakes and cookies being an ultra-processed, because, yeah, some cakes and cookies are ultra-processed, but some cakes and cookies you bake at home with like five ingredients. And surely, the whole point of a fucking processing scale is to organize foods according to how processed they are, like the processes by which they are made. You just have like all cakes and all cookies are in here, presumably because they're very high in fat and high in sugar, but then if we're just putting in all foods that are high in fat and sugar, then why isn't this just the fucking how high are foods in fat and sugar scale?

• 28:41Speaker 01

  You could also argue that while they've got cookies in group four, that if you're talking about macarons, those are made with ground-up almonds instead of wheat flour. So does that mean that they're sugar nuts? They're really trying to put a real fine point on it, but in the process of so doing, they are revealing how blunt that point is.

• 29:03Speaker 00

  I got yelled at on the internet for saying this the other day, but there's also the thing of ultra-processed foods are characterized by the addition of multiple ingredients, and then they list maltodextrin and all this kind of stuff. But am I losing my mind, Aubrey? Ingredients are not the same as processing. Like, if I make bread with water, flour, yeast, and cyanide, that's not bad because it's processed? The process of making that is precisely the same, as if it wasn't poisonous. The reason it's poisonous is because of the ingredient? None of this stuff is processed. It's like, if the ingredients are bad, then it's bad for you. But then, the whole, the original article that kicked all this off was like, "It's not what's in the food, it's the process." But then they define it, and it's like, "Oh, so it is what's in the food."

• 29:47Speaker 01

  It really mimics the kind of way that I feel myself behaving when I'm looking for shampoo or something, and the container will say, "No parabens and no phthalates." And I'm like, "I don't know what those things are, but it seems good."

• 29:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  But they don't have them. And you're sort of creating this weird, deliberate, Byzantine definition that carves out- All the things that you trust and leaves in all the things that you don't trust.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  So, okay, so that was the sort of decade long and I think unsuccessful effort to define what this term means. We then in 2019 get the first evidence that this category of food is uniquely bad. So this comes from a researcher named Kevin Hall, who was previously a physicist, but sort of drifted into diet research. He was the guy that wrote the Biggest Loser study, the study that found that like their metabolisms were still hella slow, like years after they were on the Biggest Loser. He in 2015 meets Carlos Montiro at a conference. And Montiro is like, you're looking at this the wrong way. You shouldn't be looking at nutrients. You should be looking at processing.

• 30:53Speaker 00

  According to the lore, he's like, I don't really buy this. I don't, I don't know about this whole ultra process thing. I'm going to design a study to disprove this concept. And then he like accidentally ends up proving the concept.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  I feel like what you're ramping up for is like what I was ramping up for when I was like, Richard Simmons says he got a book deal by sitting next to someone on a plane. I don't have concrete evidence to be like, no, that definitely didn't happen. But I'm going to go out on a limb and be like, that really didn't happen.

• 31:23Speaker 00

  So the way that he does this is he gets a grant from the NIH to basically take 20 people and like lock them in a room, not really, but like metaphorically and monitor their diets. And so what he does is he gives them for two weeks, a unprocessed diet, so like completely whole foods. And then for the next two weeks, he gives them a ultra processed diet. And, and he switches this to like 10 people start with unprocessed and then go to processed, 10 people start with processed and then go to unprocessed. So that way he's like flipping them around. They're, they're given this food and they have 60 minutes to eat as much of it as they want. And then when they're done, the researchers take it and they weigh it to see exactly like gram by gram, exactly how much of it did they eat?

• 32:05Speaker 00

  So that way they can measure their intake. And then of course, there's like a ton of tests at the beginning and at the end.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  You and I have talked about sort of like, there are a couple of ways to do nutrition research and one is like in a lab in a vacuum.

• 32:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  It gets you much more. Are limited in scope kind of data, or you can go sort of larger scale, more longitudinal, but that's usually dependent on self reports and people sort of like adhering based on the honor code.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  So much of what I've heard about processed foods is about long-term health effects.

• 32:36Speaker 00

  Aubrey, are you saying you can't measure the long-term effect of lifestyle on health in two weeks with 20 people? Aubrey, I don't know.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Mike, I'm not a scientist.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  Have you co-hosted this show?

• 32:49Speaker 01

  I don't know. I don't know, man. I don't know.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  Let me just make you read the description of the results. This is from a New Yorker article by Drew Kular.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  When participants were on the ultra-processed diet, they ate 500 calories more per day and put on an average of two pounds. They ate meals faster, their bodies secreted more insulin, their blood contained more glucose. When participants were on the minimally-processed diet, they lost about two pounds. Researchers observed a rise in levels of an appetite-suppressing hormone and a decline in one that makes us feel hungry.

• 33:26Speaker 00

  So this is very decisive. It's like, people who ate ultra-processed foods gained a bunch of weight, they ate more, all of these markers got worse. The unprocessed people, they did great. They lost weight, they felt awesome. This study, when it comes out, is like, it's wild how popular the study was. The study has been cited 1,200 times.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I don't know, this feels sort of like the glycemic index all over again, which is like a teeny-tiny group of people have a specific response to a food or group of foods, and that then somehow becomes like conventional wisdom in really short order.

• 34:03Speaker 00

  This study is so much worse than just the fact that it was two weeks. So, the whole kind of point of a study like this is to hold everything else constant and only look at the effect of quote-unquote "processing." But then if you read the fucking text of the study, that was not remotely true. The ultra-processed diet had twice the energy density of the unprocessed diet, it had twice the saturated fat, and it had- 1.5 times more sugar.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:30Speaker 00

  So these are not equivalent diets at the most basic level. And this is like in the fucking study.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  You're like, one group had a green salad and the other one had a like a value meal from Wendy's. And the ones who had a value meal from Wendy's gained weight. Would you believe it?

• 34:45Speaker 00

  Aubrey, Aubrey, Aubrey.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Oh no, is it gonna be a fucking Biggie sized Frosty? Is that what we're about to talk about?

• 34:51Speaker 00

  The supplementary material of this study includes the daily menu. So for every day, it includes specifically what they ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner with photos.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Gogurt.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  I am about to send you.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Pudding packs.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  We're gonna do day two dinner.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Unprocessed menu, day two dinner. Stir fried beef tender roast with broccoli, onions, sweet peppers, ginger, garlic and olive oil. Basmati rice, orange slices, pecan halves and salt and pepper.

• 35:22Speaker 00

  It's like a nice dinner of like, I guess essentially like a stir fry.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:26Speaker 00

  Sauteed vegetables, sauteed beef. It looks nice, right?

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 35:29Speaker 00

  And then we have day two processed.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  What? What are you talking?

• 35:37Speaker 00

  Just the visual.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, okay.

• 35:40Speaker 00

  So fucking funny.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  It is two whole chicken salad sandwiches.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  For dinner.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  On white bread.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  Dinner.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  A cup that appears to be an entire can of canned peaches in heavy syrup.

• 35:55Speaker 00

  And heavy syrup.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  You get two Keebler shortbread cookies and four Fig Newtons. And then you get five Crystal Lights with fiber added. Even in my darkest days of like 80s, 90s, low fat fucking dieting. I did not get through five Crystal Lights in one day.

• 36:19Speaker 00

  This is actually the reason why the energy density is so different between the two diets is because I think in an effort to hold the fiber constant, there's no fiber in ultra processed foods. It's like one of the things that makes them ultra processed foods. So the only way to get participants fiber was to basically give them sodas every day with like. Fiber supplements in them. So these are diet lemonade, but oftentimes it's just like juice or like a little smoothie or milkshake, something like that. But like, there are drinks with every meal for the ultra-processed people. There are no drinks for the unprocessed meal. Every once in a while, they get a milk or something, but like, they're not getting like diet sodas or anything. So that's a, that's a huge difference between the two diets.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  If you were sitting down to make yourself a meal, the chances that you, that like, most people would make two whole sandwiches and eat an entire can of peach, like,

• 37:12Speaker 00

  Right.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  It just is, it's not representative of like, how people eat.

• 37:17Speaker 00

  Well, also, the, the thing that really stuck out to me is that there are three desserts with this meal.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, good.

• 37:23Speaker 00

  There are cookies, there are Fig Newtons, and there's a can of peaches in syrup.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  Almost every single meal of the ultra-processed comes with like, cookies or shortbread or like, some sort of like pudding. There are no desserts with any of the unprocessed meals.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  The other, like, really striking thing about this is that they're not the same meal. They're completely different.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  If you wanna do a one-to-one on your ultra-processed, you get the like, I don't know, Stouffer's version of like, beef and broccoli.

• 37:54Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  And go, okay, let's go head-to-head with similar dishes.

• 37:58Speaker 00

  This is the thing, it's like, what they're actually fucking doing, they're, they're calling this a test of like, are ultra-processed foods worse for you? But it's literally, it's like, you give one group of people salads, it's like, a lot of salads. You give another group of people fucking cookies, and they're like, oh my god, the people ate more cookies. Therefore, ultra-processed foods are bad for you.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Right, you gave them six cookies with every meal.

• 38:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  What?

• 38:19Speaker 00

  I actually think there's like, a huge missed opportunity here, because something people always talk about in this field, is that like, well, pizza isn't necessarily bad for you, right? If it's, if it's a frozen pizza from the grocery outlet, then it's bad for you. But if it's like artisanal, and there's like, three ingredients in the dough, and it's like, lovingly made, then it is good for you, right? It doesn't have to be bad.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:39Speaker 00

  So why didn't you fucking test that hypothesis?

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Can we look at their final meal?

• 38:43Speaker 00

  The like, the, the goodbye meal?

• 38:45Speaker 01

  The farewell.

• 38:46Speaker 00

  Um, is that it? Sorry, I have so many, I have so many files called supplementary material.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  I have no doubt.

• 38:56Speaker 00

  Oh, there it is.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Day seven dinner. It was only seven days? I thought it was 14.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  I think they, they must have repeated.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Oh, they repeated. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. The ultra-processed menu for day seven dinner is...

• 39:08Speaker 00

  It looks so, it looks so bad. Also, again, there's fucking two desserts!

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Is made for a child.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, it really is. All of them are.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  It is two PB&Js that are packed to the gills.

• 39:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, they really are like overflowing.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Two cups of 2% milk with fiber alled. Woof.

• 39:29Speaker 00

  Horrible.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  And then you get a snack pack of chocolate pudding, graham crackers, baked Cheetos. That's the way you disappoint everyone.

• 39:40Speaker 00

  They're the color of like glow sticks at a rave.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  They're the color of delicious.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  I hate Cheetos, dude. Cheetos are so gross.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Dude, anything with powdered cheese. Anything with powdered cheese. I love it so much.

• 39:55Speaker 00

  There was, there's these long sections of these articles where they're like, "People can't stop eating Doritos." And I'm like, "Really?"

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Day seven dinner, unprocessed menu. What you're seeing is a pretty sizable bowl of pasta.

• 40:09Speaker 00

  It looks like a salad with a side salad.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  It does look like a salad.

• 40:14Speaker 00

  This is my nightmare, Aubrey. This is it. This is where I flip over the table.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Also with a side salad of green leaf lettuce, baby carrots, and broccoli. Can't have too much salad, apparently. God, it's raw broccoli, too. Woof.

• 40:28Speaker 00

  Wow, I wonder why people ate 500 fewer calories. Wow. We give them the most boring food imaginable.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Uh, they're not listing the giant bowl of grapes, you gluttons.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  I guess that's the dessert?

• 40:40Speaker 01

  It seems visually like there's an implication here. Like, if you weren't having two cookies, you would be eating a bowl of grapes. And I'm like, I just don't think that's how people think and eat.

• 40:51Speaker 00

  But also, if the title of the study was like, "People eat more cookies than grapes," I'd be like, "Yeah." I don't know that this says anything about processed versus unprocessed foods. These are different foods!

• 41:03Speaker 01

  But listen, if you sort of... Scrape off this top layer of like, sort of window dressing kind of stuff around like, we're actually concerned about long-term health conditions, we're actually concerned about blah, blah, blah. Most of those things are things like diabetes, like heart disease, and things that we associate with fat people. So I think part of what you're seeing here is an assumption about how fat people eat.

• 41:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  And how poor people eat.

• 41:30Speaker 00

  Okay, so that was the experimental study. That was, that was the attempt to prove that ultra-processed food is bad for you, like, in a lab. We then, of course, get a huge wave of observational studies. You can look up on like Google Scholar, there are dozens of studies that measure ultra-processed foods versus non-ultra-processed foods. And like, they all basically find the same thing. It's like higher rates of cancer, higher rates of cardiovascular disease, like, it's all the stuff that you would expect.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:59Speaker 00

  This is sort of the second way that you can measure the effect of food on health. It's like you take these, these big studies of like hundreds of thousands of people, you give people food frequency questionnaires. How often are you eating something? Oftentimes they'll do this in two ways at the same time. They'll be like, how often do you eat these foods in general? And they'll also do a 24-hour recall, like, what did you do yesterday? This is like, kind of as good as it gets, although people are so bad at estimating what they're eating. And like, especially the amounts, right? Like, if you, if you go to a restaurant and you have like pot tie, can you say how many ounces you ate? So there's that sort of layer of just gathering the basic information. But then on top of that, researchers will then go in and they will code people's answers for ultra-processed food.

• 42:44Speaker 00

  So they get these answers, this is what I eat, I ate cake yesterday, cookies yesterday, whatever. And then researchers will go in and go, aha, cake is ultra-processed. So this person is, yes, eating ultra-processed food. So there's two layers of errors with this. And the biggest thing with this is that they're not fucking measuring whether people are eating ultra-processed food. They're just having these food categories. So again, fucking cake, cake can either be ultra-processed or not ultra-processed. It depends on the fucking cake.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Well, and also, again, like, I wonder about, like, how are Are they coding things like tofu?

• 43:18Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  We've seen now multiple ways that processed and ultra-processed foods are categorized. And we've already sort of explored that like reasonable minds can differ, right? That like two people could in good faith, put the same thing in like any of the four different categories.

• 43:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Or two of the four categories or whatever, right?

• 43:40Speaker 00

  And they do, some of the studies do actually attempt to control for that. They'll have blinded, uh, like one researcher will do it and then another researcher will also do it like independently. And they'll say like, okay, we have 95% agreement. They're attempting to control for this, but then what the, the real problem is that it's not actually the coders. It's the actual designers of the research. They all say like, oh, we use the Nova classification system. But if you read studies, different studies have like different classifications. So like we mentioned honey before, shows up in all different categories. I also noticed alcohol.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 44:12Speaker 00

  Some studies just like remove it altogether. They're like, we're not looking at alcohol consumption. Some studies will put it as like not ultra-processed. Some studies will put it as ultra-processed. I also found one that put wine and beer as not ultra-processed, but like vodka as ultra-processed.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Mike, it's a potatoes, it's a carbs.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  The same study also put it was bread was not ultra-processed, but pretzels were ultra-processed.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  When you put it in a shape, that's processing, Mike.

• 44:39Speaker 00

  The other one that really bugs me is like hamburgers are always in the ultra-processed category. But like, I looked this up, a McDonald's hamburger is 100% beef. It's beef, it doesn't have a bunch of weird ingredients in it.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Do you think there may be counting on like buns and American cheese and ketchup and all of that kind of stuff?

• 44:56Speaker 00

  Well, that's the thing is like technically, yeah, you could put it in there. But you, again, it could be ultra-processed or it could not be like everything fucking else. Like the cookies and the cakes and the pizza, like pizza is always in ultra-processed as well. But like, it kind of matters for your whole thesis, whether it's like a frozen pizza or like homemade artisanal, whatever, quote unquote, nice pizza.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  What's, has anyone hazarded a guess at what the mechanism is here?

• 45:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is, this is something that you find in like the critical literature. Is that they're like, we're actually like, as a research field, we're actually missing a crucial component and we're kind of leapfrogging over this because we thought it was saturated fat, then we thought it was sugar, now we think it's processing, but no one can agree on what the fuck processing is.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:40Speaker 00

  There's also, Aubrey, I wrote down like nine other problems with these studies. I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to go through them very quickly.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  I know you were talking to Big Game about we're gonna record for two hours.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  I know.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  And I'll tell you what, I'm looking at that ticker, we're at 1 hour 54. How's it coming?

• 45:55Speaker 00

  Well, we're getting, we're on page 40 of 91. Another problem with these studies is they don't distinguish between different types of ultra-processed food. Oftentimes, it's just this weird binary distinction between like ultra-processed food and everything else. So all three of the first three categories are just like, good, and ultra-processed is bad, but there's a couple of studies that actually look at different categories of ultra-processed food. They're like, okay, breakfast cereal, candy bars, various other things. In this study that looked at 10 categories of ultra-processed foods, the only ones that showed a clear and consistent association with worse disease was soda, processed meats, and alcohol. All the other ones, like cookies, refined bread, all this other stuff, it was like too mixed to really say anything.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  But even within those, right? Like, if we're talking about breakfast cereals, my guess is that Grape-Nuts is gonna have a different health effect than like Lucky Charms.

• 46:48Speaker 00

  All of this stuff breaks down once you try to get granular.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking. And like, okay, so you've got the entire category of sodas, I think there are probably a lot of people out there drinking like Poppy and Ollie Pop and all of the like probiotic sodas, thinking that that's a different thing.

• 47:06Speaker 00

  So, and the, the final thing I want to mention is the lack of a dose response.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  Oh, Lord, yeah.

• 47:12Speaker 00

  So the way that they do these studies is they compare the people who eat the least ultra-processed foods to people who eat the most ultra-processed foods. And it's like a really wide gap. Like, some people are eating like 60% ultra-processed foods, and some people are eating like 7%. When you compare the least versus the most, you do get these like pretty large effects. However, there's some studies actually list the effect for each of the quintiles in between. And there's something weird that like, The death risk actually goes down sometimes if you eat more ultra-processed foods.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Okay, you heard it here first, team.

• 47:43Speaker 00

  A real effect should have a dose response. Like, a little bit of ultra-processed foods is a little bad for you. A lot is a lot bad for you. But we don't find that in the results. One of the papers found a 50% higher cancer risk if you're eating a ton of ultra-processed foods. But then, once they adjusted it for the dose response, they only found a 5% difference.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 48:03Speaker 00

  Some people, if you eat a little bit of ultra-processed foods, you're actually less likely to get cancer. That's something that never comes up. I mean, I don't think this is causal, right? And also, it's based on these fucking food frequency questionnaires, so who knows? But it's like, to the extent that we can give diet advice, which we all know everybody's gonna give diet advice on the basis of these fucking correlational studies. To the extent we can give diet advice, it's like, well, yeah, if you're not eating any ultra-processed foods, you should start eating some, because those people actually have a lower risk of dying.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Well, this is sort of like, for seniors, it can be more beneficial on a number of health fronts to be in the overweight category versus the quote-unquote "healthy weight" category, right? But you're not seeing that as like, health guidance for folks.

• 48:42Speaker 00

  Right.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Because, like this, we already have some sort of cultural conclusions drawn.

• 48:48Speaker 00

  Right.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Ultra-processed foods are cheetos and candy bars, and those are bad for you, and you shouldn't eat them. This is maybe more damning than I mean it to be, but like, it feels like it's sort of masquerading as science.

• 49:00Speaker 00

  This is what I mean with this, like, is this a scientific term? Or is this just like, a thing people say?

• 49:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:05Speaker 00

  Because I don't really mind if people say "processed food." But if we're gonna have a scientific term, we should have clear consistency about what is in that category and what is not in that category. You don't read biology papers that like, can't agree on what a mammal is.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:20Speaker 00

  Like, yes, there's some edge cases, like, there's platypuses. But also, like, in general, that's like, a pretty fixed category. For this, it's like, sorry, we can't decide where bread goes.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  I would argue that honey is processed by bees. It's flowers processed by bees.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  If it's animal processed, then it's fine. I mean, I guess milk is processed by cows. Maybe we're on to something, Aubrey. Let's publish. So this brings us to the massive mainstreaming of this term in 2023, when a guy named Chris Van Tullikin comes out with a book called Ultra Processed People. Why do we all eat stuff that isn't food? And why can't we stop?

• 49:58Speaker 01

  As soon as it came out, we got so many episode requests for it.

• 50:03Speaker 00

  So many episode requests. So Chris Van Tullikin is a professor at my alma mater, UCL. Do you know what UCL stands for?

• 50:10Speaker 01

  University College of London?

• 50:11Speaker 00

  It's the worst name of a university in the whole fucking world. University College, guys.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  That's really funny.

• 50:18Speaker 00

  Uh, yesterday I had lunch at Food Restaurant.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Listen, I went to a school called Portland State.

• 50:24Speaker 00

  Oh, Portland's not a state? Do they know that?

• 50:26Speaker 01

  Correct. Correct. I know. Oh, no.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  Also, you went to Brown. Why are you pretending you went to a different school?

• 50:33Speaker 01

  I went to two years of Portland State and two years of Brown.

• 50:36Speaker 00

  No, I do know this. I just like reminding listeners that you went to Brown because you hate it.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Damn it, fucking shit.

• 50:44Speaker 00

  Any excuse.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Now you're gonna leave all this shit in too.

• 50:50Speaker 00

  So the thing is, we're not gonna go super duper into this book, mostly because like I already have a podcast that does that. And I'm like, I can't just like do fucking book all the time. The book, honestly, I've read worse from like British TV presenters. As I was going, I would sort of double check things. And like most factually, like it mostly checks out. You don't catch him saying anything completely false. But I, I think the core problem of the book is that this concept of ultra-processed food just does not hold up to like 300 pages of discourse. I think throughout the book, you keep getting this sense that like the, the ultra-processed concept is not really helping us understand anything. So he has a whole section about climate change,

• 51:33Speaker 00

  that like the way that we're eating is like really bad for the climate, which is absolutely true. And then he says like, well, ultra-processed foods are driving climate impacts. And I was like, are they though? I went to, there's various NGOs have like rankings of like foods that are The worst for the climate. And so the top 10 foods that have the worst climate impacts are beef, lamb, cheese, cow's milk, kind of like dairy products generally, chocolate, coffee, shrimp, palm oil, pork and chicken.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  Oh, shrimp.

• 52:01Speaker 00

  And Chris Mintilikin like admits this. He's like, well, you know, these aren't necessarily ultra-processed foods, but they're part of like this ultra-processed food system. And he sort of tries to like make that work. But it's like, if you, if you want to reduce your climate impacts, you wouldn't stop eating ultra-processed food. You would stop eating meat. Like meat is like catastrophically bad for the climate, especially cows. Anything involving cows is really bad.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Well, and you could argue just as much if you're saying like beef is part of the problem. Imported beef is also a big part of the like fine dining landscape.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  This is the thing is he's constantly straddling ultra-processed and unprocessed because you can eat a steak, which is unprocessed, but that's terrible for the planet.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Even worse if it's like wagyu from Japan.

• 52:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, like flown in, frozen.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:53Speaker 00

  It just is like, I don't like over and over again in the book, you're like, this is interesting as like a critique of the food system, but processing isn't like a very good entry point to this. He also has a whole section about how ultra-processed food is addictive. So I'm going to send this to you.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Nicole Avina is an associate professor at Mount Sinai in New York and a visiting professor at Princeton. Her research focuses on food addiction and obesity. She told me how ultra-processed foods, especially products with particular combinations of salt, fat, sugar and protein can drive our ancient evolved systems for wanting. Quote, "Some ultra-processed foods may activate the brain reward system in a way that is similar to what happens when people use drugs like alcohol or even nicotine or morphine." The neuroscience is persuasive, if still in its early stages. There is a growing body of brain scan data showing that energy-dense, hyper-palatable

• 53:54Speaker 01

  food, ultra-processed, but probably also something a really good chef might be able to make, can stimulate changes in many of the same brain circuits and structures affected by addictive drugs. Is this just pleasure?

• 54:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is-

• 54:09Speaker 01

  Are you just experiencing pleasure?

• 54:11Speaker 00

  I read a really good paper on this called "Food Addiction: A Valid Concept", where like, it was basically a debate, like, here's the case for food addiction as a real thing, and here's the case against food addiction as a real thing. And like, again, there's a colloquial definition of food addiction, where people say like, "I'm addicted to chocolate." Like, the authors are actually very compassionate about this, and are like, "If that helps you, that makes sense." Like, the way that people talk about it colloquially is fine, however, as a scientific concept, the term "addiction" means something specific in, like, brain science. And we don't actually have good data on that for food.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  I think that there are pitfalls to the ways that people talk about it colloquially, because there is a point at which it stops being your own internal lens and starts being a lens that you apply to other people.

• 54:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  It also turns into like scrutinizing other people's eating and eating habits through the lens that works for you, right?

• 55:05Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  I don't think that it's like totally unproblematic how people talk about it colloquially, but agreed that like the research should have a higher threshold than that.

• 55:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And a lot of it basically is based on these functional MRI studies, where like they show you pictures of food, or you eat food, and like you can see different parts of your brain light up as you do that. And so we always get these studies, there's like, "It lights up the same part of your brain as cocaine." But like, yeah, that's just like the "I'm happy" part of your brain. Like, this is the same part of your brain that lights up when like you see your best friend.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  We talked about this with like the idea of quote-unquote "sugar addiction"

• 55:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  in our sugar episode, right? That like, "Yeah dude, you get that when you eat like a chocolate bar, but you also get it when you pet your dog."

• 55:48Speaker 00

  It's also very different person to person, like which part of your brain lights up. It's not as easy to say, it's like, hmm. The cocaine part, like you're touching the cocaine part of your brain. It's just like, that's like the happy part and it's very different for people. It's not really, it's not like a mature enough science to say that this exists. And then the other kind of category of evidence for food addiction is rat studies.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  Oh, your favorite.

• 56:10Speaker 00

  You can't really do rat studies on ultra-processed foods because rat, like they feed rats like little pellets of like specific formulations, right? Of like it's 40% carbohydrates and 20% protein. So like that's basically as processed as it comes. You're making like a slurry and then drying it into pellets and feeding it to rats. So all rat food is like equally processed, like as processed as it can possibly be. There is something, there are studies where they feed, this is literally what it's called. They feed rats sweet fat chow, which is like a specific kind of chow. And then they measure like what they do. And like, there's some evidence?

• 56:48Speaker 01

  Oh no.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  But also, most of the rat study work is on sugar addiction. And sugar addiction, as we talked about, is like very disputed in the literature. And it's just like not clear that it exists.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Hang on, I gotta go on Etsy and find a, like a potter to make me a cookie jar with a label that just says, "Sweet Fat Chow."

• 57:07Speaker 00

  I know, I love these little studies.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  Where's my sweet fat chow?

• 57:10Speaker 00

  At a very basic level, it's sort of indicative, this sort of stuff. But it's, it's very, we're, we're very far from like kind of proving that food is addictive. And we're also very far from proving that ultra-processed food is specifically addictive.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  It is sort of, feels like a frustrating thing when we do cover concepts like these that like, the assumption from jump is that this has to be a biological reality and that culture plays little or no role?

• 57:39Speaker 00

  Right.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  In how all of this stuff, you know, sort of gets metabolized by people, you know?

• 57:44Speaker 00

  It also brings us back to the definitional problem because there's actually a study by Nicole Avina, this, this researcher that he's quoting here, where it's just like a qualitative survey. They just asked people like, "What food are you most quote unquote addicted to? Like what are, what are the foods that you feel out of control around? And the number one answer..."

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Beans.

• 58:04Speaker 00

  My bean shelf, I'm clawing at my bean shelf all the time.

• 58:09Speaker 00

  That's only you, Aubrey. And if you want to talk about it like that, that's fine. But scientifically, the bean shelf is not in the rat studies.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  Listen, get back at me when you see me at 2 a.m. in the kitchen just chomping down on dried beans.

• 58:26Speaker 00

  But the, the top five foods that people feel addicted to are chocolate, ice cream, french fries, pizza, and cookies. Most of these are not ultra-processed. Like, another thing that really bugs me about this ultra-processed food research is that it always includes fucking chocolate. And like, any, you pick up any, almost any, like, milk chocolate, basic milk chocolate bar at the store, and it has like, five ingredients. Like, I, I looked at Gier Deli. It's unsweetened chocolate, cane sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla extract, and soy lecithin. And the only sort of Frankenfood ingredient in there is soy lecithin.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  Like, are there health effects of soy lecithin?

• 59:02Speaker 00

  Well, exactly. Then it's sort of like, we're, we're back to this issue of like, what's the mechanism here? Because is, are, are we saying soy lecithin is addictive in food or harmful? Because soy lecithin is in a shitload of foods. It's in like, salad dressings, bread, etc. Those foods aren't addictive the way that chocolate is, right? People don't have the same relationship with those foods that they have with chocolate. So it's like, sorry, what, what is this theory? Is it that soy lecithin is bad? Or is it that like, well, chocolate is an ultra-processed food because it's high in sugar and high in fat? If it's ultra-processed because it's high in sugar and high in fat, then ultra-processed isn't doing anything for us.

• 59:38Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, like, if you're gonna take aim at like, stabilizers and emulsifiers, uh-oh, green juice.

• 59:44Speaker 00

  Right.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  Because if you don't put something in the green juice, it separates, and then you end up with, like, yellow liquid and green silt in a bottle on the shelf, and nobody's buying that shit, right? Like,

• 59:56Speaker 00

  Right.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Another emulsifier is when you put a little bit of mustard in your vinaigrette.

• 1:00:00Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  You can sort of give all of these things more sort of nefarious sounding names or whatever, more complicated names, but like, that doesn't actually- Establish the case, make the case that they are harmful to your health.

• 1:00:13Speaker 00

  I feel like there's this systematic lack of precision because I'm actually open to the idea that like there's stuff in food that is harming us.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  And like, I don't love the fact that there's like weird fucking like hormones and the beef and shit. Like, I don't love the artificialness of our food supply. However, like, I would much rather that conversation be led by actual scientists who know like the dosages that are shown to be harmful and the ways in which it is harmful. Like, we need actual evidence for these things. We can't just say like, "There's chemicals in the food!" Because like, baking soda is a white powder that you add to bread. It's in everything. Is that bad for us?

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  Well, and again, we're throwing all of this stuff in the same bucket, right? And if you sort of chase down each one of these ingredients individually, some of them may have some mixed scientific evidence. Some of it may have none.

• 1:01:02Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  We're just shunting so many things into this sort of giant bucket labeled ultra-processed foods.

• 1:01:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, I mean, this also sort of brings us back to his own problems with defining the term. Because throughout the book, the definition of this term changes a bunch of times. He starts out by saying that "an ultra-processed food is any food with any ingredient that like you wouldn't find in a standard home kitchen."

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  Well, what?

• 1:01:27Speaker 00

  It doesn't matter the amount of that ingredient. It doesn't matter, sort of like, some of these ingredients are just like things you haven't heard of because like you're not a chemist.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  Well, and also, some of them are like the chemical names for shit you already know.

• 1:01:38Speaker 00

  The gimmick of the book is he's doing a "supersize me" thing where he's like, "For 30 days, I'm gonna only eat ultra-processed food." And of course, he like gains a bunch of weight and he feels worse and he says his MRI is different, whatever.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, he's eaten two PB&Js and a half a pack of graham crackers for every meal.

• 1:01:53Speaker 00

  Again, it's just very hard to separate this from like the actual contents of the food. But so he has this section.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  "As my diet went on, I became obsessed with what is and isn't ultra-processed food. So did everyone around me. Friends started sending me ingredients lists. Does fruit concentrate means this is ultra-processed food? Yes, it does, by the way."

• 1:02:17Speaker 00

  To reiterate, that means one ingredient. If it has one ingredient, it's ultra-processed.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  And also like fruit concentrate is just like boiled down fruit juice. You could also get fruit juice and boil it down yourself and make like a barbecue sauce or what? Like, I just like, I don't know.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  I met Bea Wilson at a food festival at which we spoke on a panel together. She's a food journalist and author who has written about ultra-processed food. She asked whether I would classify baked beans as ultra-processed food. She didn't think that they were. Canned baked beans comprising white beans and tomato sauce are a staple in the British diet. As Wilson put it, although they're obviously not the healthiest food in the world, quote, "In the context of so much else that's in the average diet, there's quite a lot of real food in the can." This is true. Most of a tin of baked beans is actually beans and tomatoes.

• 1:03:12Speaker 00

  So these are, these are back-to-back paragraphs, by the way. It's like, if it has fruit concentrate in it, one ingredient means it's ultra-processed. But then, as soon as we get to baked beans, he's like, "Well, a lot of people like them and yeah, most of it's, you know, beans and water." Sorry, is this a scientific concept or not?

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Hang on, I'm looking it up. Dude! Michael.

• 1:03:35Speaker 00

  Aubrey.

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  Would you like to know the ingredients to Heinz baked beans?

• 1:03:38Speaker 00

  Oh, I have it. That's like the next thing in my notes. But read it, read it, read it.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  Water, white beans, tomato puree, sugar, salt, calcium chloride, mustard, onion powder, paprika extract, spices, and garlic powder. Now, sir.

• 1:03:56Speaker 00

  They're fucking ultra-processed by your own definition. You can't just say, "Oh, well, they're like a big part of like the British diet and it's important culturally and eh, it's mostly beans." Sorry, what are we doing here? It's, if it's this qualitative, where just anything can sort of jump from this category to the other category, then this is not a useful category for scientific research.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  Well, and if you're talking about like ingredients that you don't have in your kitchen, calcium chloride. If you're, right, like tomato puree, like, I don't know, guys, I don't know. What is tomato paste if not a fruit? Concentrate.

• 1:04:29Speaker 00

  This is like really, this is not the end of the book, but this is like to me, the culmination of like my engagement with the book because I got so annoyed at this section. So he's trying to eat a healthy diet while also doing ultra-processed food. So he's like, okay, I can't just like cheat and like eat fucking cookies all the time. So like, I need to look for some ultra-processed food that isn't so bad. He goes to Sainsbury's, which is like the relatively high-end grocery store in the UK. He gets a frozen lasagna. But the problem with the frozen lasagna is that it's all like normal ingredients. It's just like wheat, pasta sauce. There, it doesn't count as ultra-processed in his own definition. But then he looks, he goes to Aldi, which is like the much cheaper grocery store. And that one has a bunch of like additives and emulsifiers and stuff. And he's like, okay.

• 1:05:11Speaker 00

  So then he calls a member of Carlos Montiro's team to kind of ask about this. Like, well, is, is lasagna then kind of ultra-processed and not ultra-processed at the same time? So here's sort of the answer.

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  Some products are not technically ultra-processed food, she explained. But they use the same plastics, the same marketing and development processes. And they're made by the same companies as ultra-processed food. The additives are part of the definition, but they are not the only problem with the food. Some additives are harmless, whereas others cause direct harms. But in either case, their presence indicates that a product probably has lots of other properties that may cause harmful effects. According to Lusada, the Sainsbury's lasagna is not ultra-processed food if you apply the technical classification, quote, "But these foods are like a fantasy. They are not homemade foods."

• 1:06:08Speaker 00

  There is a very consistent like snobbishness throughout this book. And I think this whole concept, you're basically looking at frozen lasagnas, which meet all of the criteria you say that you want, right? These are all, these are whole foods. They don't have too many ingredients. They don't have a bunch of chemicals in them. And you're like, oh, but they're still ultra-processed because like they're not homemade. People should be making it at home. Again, is this a scientific concept or not? Because like, should, do we all want people to have more time to make stuff at home? Yes, fine, whatever. But it's like, Now we're just judging people for like, microwaving a dinner.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  Also, just like, you really could say, hey, some frozen foods are actually not ultra-processed.

• 1:06:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  You could actually add some nuance, and this appears to be leaning away from that nuance.

• 1:06:53Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  And going, no, no, no, it's frozen, it's still bad. You didn't make it, it's still bad. Also, like, I have made plenty of bad food.

• 1:07:00Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  My housemate and I, when I was in my twenties, decided that we were gonna make cheese sticks at home, and instead of using breadcrumbs, we used flaming hot Cheetos. That is a homemade meal, I would argue. It's maybe not nutritionally our strongest effort. But also, again, not nutritionally devoid of value, right?

• 1:07:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Mozzarella cheese has like, a bunch of fat and protein in it that are like, generally pretty good for you. Like, you know what I mean? Like, there's like, a bunch of stuff, ah.

• 1:07:30Speaker 00

  Well, I make, the only thing I like, ever like, bake at home, because I'm really bad at baking, is banana bread. Because it's like, any dumbass can make banana bread. Banana bread's extremely bad for you. It's really good, but it's a fucking cake. It's not like...

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  It's so delicious.

• 1:07:43Speaker 00

  At one point in the book, he actually says like, well, if something is like, made with love, then it doesn't count as an ultra-processed food. I'm just like, dude! Please, have a fucking definition and stick with the definition, man.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think increasingly, as we talk about this, the more I'm sort of in your camp of like, oh, well then just say junk food, because that is honest.

• 1:08:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, just say fucking junk food, yes.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  It's not my favorite term, but it is more honest than being like, actually, there are these like, extremely concrete health effects that are like, widespread for like, every preservative that is ever used in foods.

• 1:08:17Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  Or every ingredient that you can't pronounce. What a deeply weird bar.

• 1:08:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, I can't pronounce shit. People know. It's just like, all of our inbox is me not being able to pronounce stuff.

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  Let's hope there's not a denouement in your food.

• 1:08:30Speaker 00

  York is technically ultra-processed food, at this point. I now have no conclusion, Aubrey, because all I had was the junk food thing. We already talked about the junk food thing.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.

• 1:08:38Speaker 00

  So now I have no closing thoughts.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  Wait, can I tell you a conclusion?

• 1:08:41Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. What is yours?

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  You were talking about Pringles earlier, and I remembered that there was a specific name for the shape of Pringles.

• 1:08:47Speaker 00

  Saddle, saddlebags?

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  No, Michael.

• 1:08:50Speaker 00

  It's the universe.

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  It's called a hyperbolic paraboloid.

• 1:08:55Speaker 00

  Wait, what?

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  It's mathematically known as a hyperbolic paraboloid.

• 1:09:01Speaker 00

  Put that on the fucking labels, and nobody will ever buy them again.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Like, I will give you a food that is that uniform in color, flavor, texture, and shape, I'm like, I won't fight you on that being ultra-processed.

• 1:09:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, this is the thing, is I feel the need to reiterate that, like, both of us are relatively careful about how we eat, and like, I really do go out of my way to like, try to eat healthy, and part of that is like, avoiding, like, I don't know, foods that should go bad but don't go bad. That's like, one of my, like, little food rules. I'm like, if it should be perishable and it's not perishable, I probably don't want to eat it. I don't know how, like, scientific that is. I think if people have food rules like this, and they're kind of arbitrary, or like, kind of weird, like, fine. I don't really police other people. Obviously, diet-related diseases, like, is real, and is like, something that we need to address, but also, we need to have scientific concepts if we're gonna have, like, scientific approaches to issues.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  We're still so deeply in the process of discovery about this stuff.

• 1:10:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally, yeah.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  But the stuff that takes off is the stuff that comports with our cultural ideas of what is and isn't healthy, which are not the result of science, right? I just wish that we were able to have a cultural conversation about the cultural stuff, and a science conversation about the science stuff. I think it's just worth being honest with ourselves, that most of our sort of, like, hard and fast thinking about what is and is not okay to eat, comes much more from, like, a set of assumptions, and sort of a mismatch of, like, life influences.

• 1:10:34Speaker 00

  And also, if it's working for you, then keep doing it, and I'm not gonna tell you not to.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  Do whatever you want. We're not here to tell you what to eat or what not to eat.

• 1:10:41Speaker 00

  I am here to tell you not to eat hyperbolic paraboloids.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  I'm here to tell you to eat them!

• 1:10:46Speaker 00

  Only hyperbole for Raveloid.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Get it.

• 1:10:48Speaker 00

  Pizza flavored ones.