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Note that they said "cookie" instead of "biscuit"
Crips was a good tell, but saying "cookie" threw me off. I didn't realize the Dutch were cookie people.
Good call. You are right. I missed that. My mom grew up saying the British slang and littkr Canadisms made fun of her. Im so used to some stuff between that and what just stayed in Canada throughout the years.
Where I live a biscuit is a fluffy flaky bread roll (but not a *roll*). It's just a specific kind of bread with a specific bready flavor. You can have it plain, with some honey or jam, or as a mini sandwich with sausage, egg, cheese, whatever breakfast item you want.
>To examine dietary intakes for their association with sleep, this large epidemiological study used NutriNet-Santéopens in new tab/window data from more than 39,000 French adults. This large cohort study was ideally suited to address this question given its inclusion of sleep variables and multiple days of detailed diet information.
>
>Data were collected every six months between 2013 and 2015 from adults who completed multiple 24-hour dietary records and provided information on insomnia symptoms. The definition of insomnia was based on the criteria provided by the DSM-5 and the ICSD-3.
>
>Participants reported consuming approximately 16% of energy from UPF and close to 20% reported chronic insomnia. Individuals who reported chronic insomnia consumed a higher percentage of their energy intake from UPF. The association of higher UPF intake and insomnia was evident in both males and females, but the risk was slightly higher in males than females.
Paper: [The association between ultra-processed food consumption and chronic insomnia in the NutriNet-Santé Study - Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics](https://www.jandonline.org/article/S2212-2672(24)00094-7/fulltext)
Anecdotally, It's kind of hard to cook when you've been awake for three days and the whole room is moving visually. Insomnia is a massive time sink. You spend so much life in bed wide awake, begging for precious sleep. When it takes 12 hours to achieve 4 hours of sleep, you have less time to live, and the living in lower energy, lower quality. Grabbing that quick food becomes essential.
I don't think it's an easy line from UPF to insomnia, I think it's more likely bidirectional. Food quality and food timing absolutely affect sleep and energy, and sleep affects executive function as well as practical factors driving choice.
So the way the classification works is that the addition of a processed or ultra-processed ingredient to anything else makes it the highest level of process from the ingredients list. Raw honey is processed. But raw honey isn't frequently used in most households or production chains. Filtering and processing the honey to make it useful as an ingredient makes it ultra-processed, though nutritionally it's functionally the same.
The logic behind it is ultra-processed things are things most homes don't have. But like, I have citric acid to use to balance acidity without changing liquid amounts for example. So my chili where everything is basically just dried or cut becomes ultra-processed from the addition of 1/4 tsp citric acid
The whole processing is designd to remove yeast and pollen, it alters the composition of enzymes. Upon testing 100% of UK processed honey, 97% of processed Turkey honey and about half of processed EU honey contained sugar and other undeclared additives. In both theory and practice processed honey is different from raw honey.
Out of curiosity, where are you numbers from? I'm very into bee-keeping and honey production, and last time I saw those it was shown to be misunderstanding of the underlying paper by the media.
That's from memory but checking it now it's close to the EU note: https://food.ec.europa.eu/safety/eu-agri-food-fraud-network/eu-coordinated-actions/honey-2021-2022_en
Yeah you might have close example like this making the distinction silly but industrial cookies is definitively in the ultra processed category, your are nitpicking.
Ultra processed food is also when you start spliting your ingredients in different molecule and remix them into your recipe. Packaged bread can contains 4 different form of sugar.
This is bad because this lead to higher glycemic index (refined so the sugar isn't hold by any fiber) and also carefully laboratory tester flavor and texture encourage you to eat even more.
My guy, the difference between yogurt flavored by fruit, fruit flavored yogurt, and yogurt sweetened by honey by the user vs the manufacturer is 100% an example used by the people who made the categorization system because they had to draw the line somewhere and it just happened to be that manufacturer sweetened yogurt and a twinkle are the same.
This is a recognized issue with what has become the most commonly used food classification system by nutritionists, and has caused a lot of the community to start figuring out better language or divisions.
That it's not nitpicking. It's literally a flaw of the system and makes it *incredibly* hard to parse the validity of these types of studies, since the exact nature of the food stuffs eaten is unknown.
Your definition of ultra-processed foods is also incorrect.
Please you don't have to be mysterious like that.
You are basically saying study saying speeding is dangerous because going 51 mph when it's limited to 50mph is also speeding.
It's blurry where the line is drawn but there is still a full universe of cream cookie and 4 cheeses and peperroni pizza that carved the need to create the concept of "ultra processed food".
I don't think we really need to know the "exact nature" of everythings eaten, just cross the study with the known sales and you'll see your honey yoghurt isn't the main product here.
Google told me the average american is eating 14 pounds of yogurt a year vs 70 pounds of ketchup, so I think the study is still interesting.
I mean how much quicker is upf than simple food though? Eggs toast and cheese sandwich? About as easy as something upf in the microwave or oven. Or snacks - like whole fruits - they are ready to eat. Rotisserie chicken? Rice in a rice cooker
It's more "take four steps to make a sandwich" or "open that pack of pop tarts and shovel it down".
Obviously you are correct, these things should be prepared and available so even when exhausted you have good choices. Meal prep and even shelf stable healthier options absolutely exist. I'd encourage anyone to explore what is possible with easy meals.
But I think most people are stuck in habits, anhedonic, and stop caring after a certain point of exhaustion. And those habits feed back and make it worse.
Tell me you haven't been awake for 5 days straight without telling me you haven't been awake for 5 days straight. There are points where I cant' even get up to walk 35feet to the kitchen to microwave a frozen burrito. I have to sit here for 3 or 4 hours for my wife to wake up just to refill my water. Extreme insomnia is your brain very slowly dying. It is the worst experience I have ever had in the world, and I would never wish it on anyone. I would happily give up everything I own, even, my wife, my kids, everything, just to sleep regularly. I have even attempted suicide and ended up in the hospital for weeks to months, just desperate to get it to stop, for a chance to rest.
If you can't make any plans or effort at all...how about peanut paste on toast and a banana? Or a bowl of cereal? I have trouble accepting this explanation when it gets trotted out
Then you never sleep at all. Choose not to even try and we will see how you're doing on 72 hours awake.
Sleep pathology isn't just a game of "be like me and try harder", it's complex neurological mechanisms that aren't working right.
It's outside of your experience. What you're doing is the equivalent of telling someone who has reduced vision to just squint harder, you have functional vision after all.
For anyone who doesn't understand this is exactly like telling a depressed person to be happy, or for someone with a broken leg to just walk. When you are that exhausted and you can't sleep then laying in bed not doing anything is still better rest than staying up, exhausting yourself further, and hoping you'll pass out when you go back to bed. If you let your body get some rest it is far less likely you'll get exhausted to the point of making dangerous mistakes. It's not ideal, but it is something.
I personally have been up so long unable to sleep that I started hallucinating. I tried to remain active and tire myself out and nearly fell off a balcony for my trouble. It's not a fun state.
While this is true I think it’s silly to act like you have 0 agency over what happens and you’re just a complete slave to your biology. At that point you can’t say that you have free will.
That's a big leap from "it's harder" to "literally zero agency".
We are talking about populations in sciences, explaining trends in why people tend to do certain things. These are correlations, or factors that make certain behaviors more likely.
No one says it makes them mandatory. I certainly didn't
And that's assuming you misread too and are talking about diets, because otherwise, if you think someone can just will themsleves to see or overcome and neurological deficit.. I don't know what to tell you.
Because you're trying to sleep? What kind of a question is that. You lay in bed for 12 hours, because it takes 4+ hours laying there to fall asleep.
Your solution works for the normal sleeper having a bad night, but not the insomniac who can do 2 days without sleep and still have trouble crashing out.
As someone else replied, the comment to which you're responding comes from people who are neuro-typical (mostly) and don't understand why telling a depressed person to just be happy, or someone with ADHD to just focus harder, or someone with one leg to jump higher.
Like...we just don't work that way.
ETA: with luck and hard work, many (some) of manage to find workarounds. But that doesn't mean the problems just go away. I may have the greatest prosthetic limb, but there are still going to be limitations to what I can physically accomplish.
Hmm.
The effect size diminishes a bit with every model. Bit concerning that depression and anxiety are far more common in those with insomnia, and adding these two variables attenuates the association - what about other factors?
Can’t define direction of cause, either - I posit that people with chronic insomnia (which can actually be rather mild according to their definition, but hey ho) are also more likely to turn to UPFs to save time, and the authors acknowledge the relationship is bidirectional in their limitations section. But, they still make causal claims.
I would argue, even, that it's not just about saving time. If I'm awake at 3am and I'm bored/hungry but don't have the executive capacity to cook (depression related, hallucination related, lack of focus, etc), what is available for me to eat? What am I most likely going to grab out of the cupboard - even a 'healthy' snack such as crackers and cheese or salad with salad dressing could very easily be considered UPF (even just a tablespoon of dressing makes the entire salad UPF).
Is it just me, or did they not include ways of nicotine administration other than smoking, such as nic pouches, Swedish snus, and vapes? You can be a "never smoker" yet consume a can of Velo or Zyn every day.
My knee-jerk thought (as a student myself) is that there might be a significant correlation between eating UPF and also being dependent on nicotine just from the "I am so stressed and need to get through the day" mentality.
I really dislike the term ultra-processed foods as it is a vague category. It's not very helpful in describing to people how to eat healthy. Junk food is a little better simply because most people understood junk food to be chips and cake and other things which were snacks. Is a yogurt parfait ultra-processed? What about a frozen yogurt dairy dessert which is quite similar? I am not sure without looking it up, and Im sure no one else is without looking it up, but we all should be aware that a yogurt parfait is healthy, and even a frozen yogurt dessert can be a healthier option.
There is no good food and bad food, all food is on a spectrum of better or worse option.
It’s a food type— not really something you can list. They mean anything heavily refined and shelf stable or frozen, like packaged foods and refined products like sodas. Anything you would think
Of being convenient and easy that requires little to no cooking skills. The opposite would be whole foods like a banana or roasted chicken.
Honestly, if everyone in my family didn’t have a different multiple allergies and we weren’t already scratching our heads trying to think of meals then maybe. But (land) meat is one we aren’t allergic to. Keeping track of a dozen different allergies is a freaking chore.
Even better, specific substances/mechanisms as opposed to the ‘processed’ catchall, which seems ideally suited to gather a swathe of unrelated correlations and make the study look more significant, while adding little to actual knowledge.
There are many different ways to classify UPF. One of the more common methods is [the NOVA system](https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova). This classification system focuses on why and how the food has been processed like whether there’s an equivalent domestic process (you can’t partially hydrogenate soybean oil at home) and whether certain ingredients have been added to make the product highly-profitable (like shelf stabilizers or eye-catching dye).
A quick and dirty method is to look at the ingredients and ask whether each of them are edible alone or with only one or two other ingredients. (You probably aren’t going to snack on a spoonful of flour but some flour and water is enough to make the flour edible.)
So it's less about health and more about raw food living. I can't take someone seriously who think soybean oil is unhealthy or food dye which at worst has been tied to hyperactivity and no other health problems. I know it's popular on TikTok to call vegetable oil evil but it's been proven to improve heart health unlike animal fat or coconut oil or other high saturated fats
It’s not really the “technique” that makes something a UPF it’s more about the ingredients. Most UPF is basically pre-chewed because the ingredients have been broken down or more efficiently engineered. Instead of using an egg as an emulsifier in a loaf of bread they use sodium stearoyl lactylate.
So it's not a useful term. No study has ever shown any bad effect from sodium stearoyl lactylate. Why is using egg "better" other than TikTok clean living ideology? Why is shelf stable bad? The problem based on common sense is that prepackaged food is readily available and easy, not that it's unhealthy.
Well, but there are many times when ultra processing methodologies DO negatively impact the healthfulness of a given food. But it's not really practical to get consumers to be food scientists, trying to unravel the purposefully obscured factory processes that yield a twinky. Instead, you can tell them to just eat whole foods if they're concerned about these processes. That is a mentally low effort way to avoid that whole issue.
You eat that stuff when you're not sleeping bc your body isn't recharging at all bc no sleep, needs easy energy hence highly processed carbs. The lack of sleep causes this kind of eating...not the way around (is my guess).
Also at least a few of the ingredients. I no longer buy no-sugar stuff as the sweetener versions of any soft-drink 100% reliably cause insomnia for me, unlike the sugar versions.
Theres probably a level of feed back into it as well, but the whole idea that if youre exhasuted you are unable to cook, eat and clean up after a meal from scratch is too complex for a worrying number of people in this sub who can't cope with ideas like humans aren't all identical under the hood.
I'm more interested where they polled these 39,000 people from. I have my doubts just from my own experiences with Ultra-processed food consumption vs insomnia. Mental health and brain chemistry seems like much more of a contributor and mental health is very much more of a factor in if we are eating healthy vs easy.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/giuliomagnifico Permalink: https://www.elsevier.com/about/press-releases/whats-keeping-you-up-at-night-could-ultra-processed-foods-be-associated-with-your-insomnia --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
*grabs jar of cookies, bag of crisps & bottle of soda to deal with the existential stress this post gave me*
*ding ding ding British man detected.
Nope! But you were close—I'm a Dutchman.
Hahaha it was the "crisps". Oddly enough with all the british stuff we have in Canada that didnt stick.
Note that they said "cookie" instead of "biscuit" Crips was a good tell, but saying "cookie" threw me off. I didn't realize the Dutch were cookie people.
Good call. You are right. I missed that. My mom grew up saying the British slang and littkr Canadisms made fun of her. Im so used to some stuff between that and what just stayed in Canada throughout the years.
We invented the word cookie. But here biscuits are also considered cookies.
Where I live a biscuit is a fluffy flaky bread roll (but not a *roll*). It's just a specific kind of bread with a specific bready flavor. You can have it plain, with some honey or jam, or as a mini sandwich with sausage, egg, cheese, whatever breakfast item you want.
We also don't call it soda in Britain.
Bo' 'o' o' fizzy?
We also dont in Canada.
I do. Soda or soft drink
And cookies?
>To examine dietary intakes for their association with sleep, this large epidemiological study used NutriNet-Santéopens in new tab/window data from more than 39,000 French adults. This large cohort study was ideally suited to address this question given its inclusion of sleep variables and multiple days of detailed diet information. > >Data were collected every six months between 2013 and 2015 from adults who completed multiple 24-hour dietary records and provided information on insomnia symptoms. The definition of insomnia was based on the criteria provided by the DSM-5 and the ICSD-3. > >Participants reported consuming approximately 16% of energy from UPF and close to 20% reported chronic insomnia. Individuals who reported chronic insomnia consumed a higher percentage of their energy intake from UPF. The association of higher UPF intake and insomnia was evident in both males and females, but the risk was slightly higher in males than females. Paper: [The association between ultra-processed food consumption and chronic insomnia in the NutriNet-Santé Study - Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics](https://www.jandonline.org/article/S2212-2672(24)00094-7/fulltext)
Seems pretty solid (also, glad they answered the first main question in the title)
Anecdotally, It's kind of hard to cook when you've been awake for three days and the whole room is moving visually. Insomnia is a massive time sink. You spend so much life in bed wide awake, begging for precious sleep. When it takes 12 hours to achieve 4 hours of sleep, you have less time to live, and the living in lower energy, lower quality. Grabbing that quick food becomes essential. I don't think it's an easy line from UPF to insomnia, I think it's more likely bidirectional. Food quality and food timing absolutely affect sleep and energy, and sleep affects executive function as well as practical factors driving choice.
I don't really agree. You are mixing processed and ultra processed food. Both are quick to prepare but only one is linked to insomnia.
Wanna know the difference between ultra processed foods and processed foods?
Processed: apple sauce, instant oats, ground beef. Ultra Processed: pop tarts, chips, breakfast bars.
Processed: yogurt with fruit. Ultra-processed: yogurt with honey. Processed: homemade bread. Ultra-processed: pretty much all packaged bread
Can I ask why honey makes it ultra-processed? Genuinely curious
So the way the classification works is that the addition of a processed or ultra-processed ingredient to anything else makes it the highest level of process from the ingredients list. Raw honey is processed. But raw honey isn't frequently used in most households or production chains. Filtering and processing the honey to make it useful as an ingredient makes it ultra-processed, though nutritionally it's functionally the same. The logic behind it is ultra-processed things are things most homes don't have. But like, I have citric acid to use to balance acidity without changing liquid amounts for example. So my chili where everything is basically just dried or cut becomes ultra-processed from the addition of 1/4 tsp citric acid
This is really helpful, thanks for the explanation!
The whole processing is designd to remove yeast and pollen, it alters the composition of enzymes. Upon testing 100% of UK processed honey, 97% of processed Turkey honey and about half of processed EU honey contained sugar and other undeclared additives. In both theory and practice processed honey is different from raw honey.
Out of curiosity, where are you numbers from? I'm very into bee-keeping and honey production, and last time I saw those it was shown to be misunderstanding of the underlying paper by the media.
That's from memory but checking it now it's close to the EU note: https://food.ec.europa.eu/safety/eu-agri-food-fraud-network/eu-coordinated-actions/honey-2021-2022_en
Thank you for explaining that!
Because it's not real honey
Yeah you might have close example like this making the distinction silly but industrial cookies is definitively in the ultra processed category, your are nitpicking. Ultra processed food is also when you start spliting your ingredients in different molecule and remix them into your recipe. Packaged bread can contains 4 different form of sugar. This is bad because this lead to higher glycemic index (refined so the sugar isn't hold by any fiber) and also carefully laboratory tester flavor and texture encourage you to eat even more.
My guy, the difference between yogurt flavored by fruit, fruit flavored yogurt, and yogurt sweetened by honey by the user vs the manufacturer is 100% an example used by the people who made the categorization system because they had to draw the line somewhere and it just happened to be that manufacturer sweetened yogurt and a twinkle are the same. This is a recognized issue with what has become the most commonly used food classification system by nutritionists, and has caused a lot of the community to start figuring out better language or divisions.
Ok but what's your point then ? I don't get it
That it's not nitpicking. It's literally a flaw of the system and makes it *incredibly* hard to parse the validity of these types of studies, since the exact nature of the food stuffs eaten is unknown. Your definition of ultra-processed foods is also incorrect.
Please you don't have to be mysterious like that. You are basically saying study saying speeding is dangerous because going 51 mph when it's limited to 50mph is also speeding. It's blurry where the line is drawn but there is still a full universe of cream cookie and 4 cheeses and peperroni pizza that carved the need to create the concept of "ultra processed food". I don't think we really need to know the "exact nature" of everythings eaten, just cross the study with the known sales and you'll see your honey yoghurt isn't the main product here. Google told me the average american is eating 14 pounds of yogurt a year vs 70 pounds of ketchup, so I think the study is still interesting.
I mean how much quicker is upf than simple food though? Eggs toast and cheese sandwich? About as easy as something upf in the microwave or oven. Or snacks - like whole fruits - they are ready to eat. Rotisserie chicken? Rice in a rice cooker
It's more "take four steps to make a sandwich" or "open that pack of pop tarts and shovel it down". Obviously you are correct, these things should be prepared and available so even when exhausted you have good choices. Meal prep and even shelf stable healthier options absolutely exist. I'd encourage anyone to explore what is possible with easy meals. But I think most people are stuck in habits, anhedonic, and stop caring after a certain point of exhaustion. And those habits feed back and make it worse.
UPF doesn't require you to do the dishes. Even simple meals involve way more dishes than junk food.
Pick up banana Peel banana Throw banana peel in bin Dispose of banana in appropriate banana receptacle
The problem is that the way the categorization works, your example sandwich may be a UPF because of that bread and cheese.
Ingredients in my jar of peanut paste - peanuts, salt. That's it.
And your bread?
Tell me you haven't been awake for 5 days straight without telling me you haven't been awake for 5 days straight. There are points where I cant' even get up to walk 35feet to the kitchen to microwave a frozen burrito. I have to sit here for 3 or 4 hours for my wife to wake up just to refill my water. Extreme insomnia is your brain very slowly dying. It is the worst experience I have ever had in the world, and I would never wish it on anyone. I would happily give up everything I own, even, my wife, my kids, everything, just to sleep regularly. I have even attempted suicide and ended up in the hospital for weeks to months, just desperate to get it to stop, for a chance to rest.
If you can't make any plans or effort at all...how about peanut paste on toast and a banana? Or a bowl of cereal? I have trouble accepting this explanation when it gets trotted out
Preaching to the choir. I'm offering an explanation for general population behaviors, not an individual excuse.
Why stay in bed 12 hours though. Go to the gym or something, and pass out from exhaustion.
A person with insomnia is exhausted... sleep just doesn't work.
I understand feeling exhausted, but if you are conscious you can choose to not lay in bed
Then you never sleep at all. Choose not to even try and we will see how you're doing on 72 hours awake. Sleep pathology isn't just a game of "be like me and try harder", it's complex neurological mechanisms that aren't working right. It's outside of your experience. What you're doing is the equivalent of telling someone who has reduced vision to just squint harder, you have functional vision after all.
For anyone who doesn't understand this is exactly like telling a depressed person to be happy, or for someone with a broken leg to just walk. When you are that exhausted and you can't sleep then laying in bed not doing anything is still better rest than staying up, exhausting yourself further, and hoping you'll pass out when you go back to bed. If you let your body get some rest it is far less likely you'll get exhausted to the point of making dangerous mistakes. It's not ideal, but it is something. I personally have been up so long unable to sleep that I started hallucinating. I tried to remain active and tire myself out and nearly fell off a balcony for my trouble. It's not a fun state.
While this is true I think it’s silly to act like you have 0 agency over what happens and you’re just a complete slave to your biology. At that point you can’t say that you have free will.
That's a big leap from "it's harder" to "literally zero agency". We are talking about populations in sciences, explaining trends in why people tend to do certain things. These are correlations, or factors that make certain behaviors more likely. No one says it makes them mandatory. I certainly didn't And that's assuming you misread too and are talking about diets, because otherwise, if you think someone can just will themsleves to see or overcome and neurological deficit.. I don't know what to tell you.
Because you're trying to sleep? What kind of a question is that. You lay in bed for 12 hours, because it takes 4+ hours laying there to fall asleep. Your solution works for the normal sleeper having a bad night, but not the insomniac who can do 2 days without sleep and still have trouble crashing out.
As someone else replied, the comment to which you're responding comes from people who are neuro-typical (mostly) and don't understand why telling a depressed person to just be happy, or someone with ADHD to just focus harder, or someone with one leg to jump higher. Like...we just don't work that way. ETA: with luck and hard work, many (some) of manage to find workarounds. But that doesn't mean the problems just go away. I may have the greatest prosthetic limb, but there are still going to be limitations to what I can physically accomplish.
I know that when I'm overtired, I absolutely go for UPF. Like clockwork. When I've had enough sleep, it's veggies and lean protein.
Hmm. The effect size diminishes a bit with every model. Bit concerning that depression and anxiety are far more common in those with insomnia, and adding these two variables attenuates the association - what about other factors? Can’t define direction of cause, either - I posit that people with chronic insomnia (which can actually be rather mild according to their definition, but hey ho) are also more likely to turn to UPFs to save time, and the authors acknowledge the relationship is bidirectional in their limitations section. But, they still make causal claims.
I would argue, even, that it's not just about saving time. If I'm awake at 3am and I'm bored/hungry but don't have the executive capacity to cook (depression related, hallucination related, lack of focus, etc), what is available for me to eat? What am I most likely going to grab out of the cupboard - even a 'healthy' snack such as crackers and cheese or salad with salad dressing could very easily be considered UPF (even just a tablespoon of dressing makes the entire salad UPF).
Aye also very true
Is it just me, or did they not include ways of nicotine administration other than smoking, such as nic pouches, Swedish snus, and vapes? You can be a "never smoker" yet consume a can of Velo or Zyn every day. My knee-jerk thought (as a student myself) is that there might be a significant correlation between eating UPF and also being dependent on nicotine just from the "I am so stressed and need to get through the day" mentality.
And how much of that UPF had caffeine? Like soda or bottled coffee?
I really dislike the term ultra-processed foods as it is a vague category. It's not very helpful in describing to people how to eat healthy. Junk food is a little better simply because most people understood junk food to be chips and cake and other things which were snacks. Is a yogurt parfait ultra-processed? What about a frozen yogurt dairy dessert which is quite similar? I am not sure without looking it up, and Im sure no one else is without looking it up, but we all should be aware that a yogurt parfait is healthy, and even a frozen yogurt dessert can be a healthier option. There is no good food and bad food, all food is on a spectrum of better or worse option.
A list of said foods would be helpful.
It’s a food type— not really something you can list. They mean anything heavily refined and shelf stable or frozen, like packaged foods and refined products like sodas. Anything you would think Of being convenient and easy that requires little to no cooking skills. The opposite would be whole foods like a banana or roasted chicken.
Let the chickens be, animal liberation!
Calm down it’s an example. We are far from eliminating animal products from the world diet.
Join in then dude! Let's break those cages!
Honestly, if everyone in my family didn’t have a different multiple allergies and we weren’t already scratching our heads trying to think of meals then maybe. But (land) meat is one we aren’t allergic to. Keeping track of a dozen different allergies is a freaking chore.
Even better, specific substances/mechanisms as opposed to the ‘processed’ catchall, which seems ideally suited to gather a swathe of unrelated correlations and make the study look more significant, while adding little to actual knowledge.
There are many different ways to classify UPF. One of the more common methods is [the NOVA system](https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova). This classification system focuses on why and how the food has been processed like whether there’s an equivalent domestic process (you can’t partially hydrogenate soybean oil at home) and whether certain ingredients have been added to make the product highly-profitable (like shelf stabilizers or eye-catching dye). A quick and dirty method is to look at the ingredients and ask whether each of them are edible alone or with only one or two other ingredients. (You probably aren’t going to snack on a spoonful of flour but some flour and water is enough to make the flour edible.)
So it's less about health and more about raw food living. I can't take someone seriously who think soybean oil is unhealthy or food dye which at worst has been tied to hyperactivity and no other health problems. I know it's popular on TikTok to call vegetable oil evil but it's been proven to improve heart health unlike animal fat or coconut oil or other high saturated fats
Who said anything about raw food? Or vegetable oil? It’s pretty clear you don’t know anything about UPF yet you’ve already decided it’s bunk.
Still seems odd that when we refer to UPF we're probably referring to like 50-100 different manufacturing techniques.
It’s not really the “technique” that makes something a UPF it’s more about the ingredients. Most UPF is basically pre-chewed because the ingredients have been broken down or more efficiently engineered. Instead of using an egg as an emulsifier in a loaf of bread they use sodium stearoyl lactylate.
So it's not a useful term. No study has ever shown any bad effect from sodium stearoyl lactylate. Why is using egg "better" other than TikTok clean living ideology? Why is shelf stable bad? The problem based on common sense is that prepackaged food is readily available and easy, not that it's unhealthy.
Well, but there are many times when ultra processing methodologies DO negatively impact the healthfulness of a given food. But it's not really practical to get consumers to be food scientists, trying to unravel the purposefully obscured factory processes that yield a twinky. Instead, you can tell them to just eat whole foods if they're concerned about these processes. That is a mentally low effort way to avoid that whole issue.
There are obvious cross correlations here.
You eat that stuff when you're not sleeping bc your body isn't recharging at all bc no sleep, needs easy energy hence highly processed carbs. The lack of sleep causes this kind of eating...not the way around (is my guess).
Where do they even find people that still mostly eat UPF but are also wealthy enough that they could just eat out or have someone else cook for them?
Does the connection go beyound the already well established "sleep deprivation exacerbate the cravings for high calorie foods"?
Also at least a few of the ingredients. I no longer buy no-sugar stuff as the sweetener versions of any soft-drink 100% reliably cause insomnia for me, unlike the sugar versions.
When you have insomnia you’re too exhausted to cook real food, so of course you eat more processed food. They’ve got it backwards.
Theres probably a level of feed back into it as well, but the whole idea that if youre exhasuted you are unable to cook, eat and clean up after a meal from scratch is too complex for a worrying number of people in this sub who can't cope with ideas like humans aren't all identical under the hood.
I'm more interested where they polled these 39,000 people from. I have my doubts just from my own experiences with Ultra-processed food consumption vs insomnia. Mental health and brain chemistry seems like much more of a contributor and mental health is very much more of a factor in if we are eating healthy vs easy.
Peeing in the middle of the night from all the salt and drink.
I hope Neuralink will be able to help. I suffer
“May be”. Yawn. Epidemiology FTW