Chicken nuggets;
Fast foods, including Pizza;
Frozen meals;
Deli rotisserie chicken;
Mashed potatoe flakes;
Hot dogs;
Lunchables;
Packaged soups;
Packaged cookies;
Jarred sauces;
Potato chips;
Crackers like Pringles and Cheez-Its;
Soft drinks and Energy Drinks;
Sweetened breakfast cereals and Flavored granola bars
I have to wonder why that is or if it applies to everything in this category, because some frozen food is literally just normal food, only frozen. I recently bought and ate two cheap frozen pizzas and took a look through their ingredients to see what kind of crap I'm ingesting. One of the pizzas contained the same ingredients that a homemade pizza of a similar type would have, with only one exception, which was a tiny bit of citric acid. Harmless. The other contained added modified starch in the tomato sauce, and surprisingly a bit of dextrose in the dough and on the pieces of chicken meat. That is not great, but since it was listed in the last place and ingredients have to be sorted by the amount present in a descending order, I know that there was less dextrose than salt in the dough, which means the amount was quite small. Still, no preservatives, colorants or flavor enhancers.
There is one difference - making a homemade pizza takes me about an hour because there's a lot of prep involved, whereas this is done in 15 minutes, so I eat it more often. But I have no need to restrict caloric intake, so that's not an issue for me either unless there is some other way in which this is unhealthy.
Highly processed on its own doesn't mean much without taking into account processing method and ingredients used to process them.
These processing methods used may include extrusion, moulding, chemical modifications and hydrogenation (turning liquid unsaturated fats into a more solid form).
In the case of frozen pizzas, the ingredients do not say much, but they are in fact considered a group 3 ultra processed food because of how they were made and the fact that manufacturers don’t need to state the processes foods undergo on the label... just that they are bread, cheese and sauce.
Ah shit, turns out I actually needed the warning. You'd think it'd be hard for something to be ultra-processed without even being cut up, but apparently not!
Edit: wait a second, does it mean Costco-loss-leader-style whole chickens, sliced glued-and-formed spherical chicken breast lunch meat, or both?
In Europe and Mexico they’re just outright banned. But I’m glad that now American regulators are considering that it possibly could be important or at least maybe possibly a little bit relevant for some people to know if they bother to read some small text on a package
Uhm... What is considered ultra processed foods? Because you say in Europe is banned.
But then somebody else here is saying frozen pizza is ultra processed
and I am telling you I have eaten them in Europe. There were other examples provided in the comments that also have in Europe.
Are they just "processed", not ultra? One wonders.
All I'm going to say is that there are a lot of misconceptions about what processed food means and this is just a part of the war on fat people. If we don't systemically change our food availability systems and how society is structured these problems will continue to exist.
As a fat, never seen processed food as leverage in a "war" but more of a unhealthy convenience that can set a habit. Then again, I have food intolerances with highly processed foods so I avoid that stuff a lot.
I agree with the rest though. I cook from simple ingredients nightly, I just don't eat healthy. A tomato is $3.99/lb at our close grocery store. Ground beef is $1.69/lb. What do I do when I need to pinch pennies? Ditch the fruits and veggies and load up on protein and grains. It'll be great is plants were cheap again. Heck, I even saw dandelions in the produce section a month ago; literally selling weeds!
Yah, I understand nutrition. No, I don't like my situation either. Tell my boss to pay me more and things will change. Ha!
Yeah, that's a big part of the problem is that most people view being fat as unhealthy. They aren't synonymous. A lot of foods that are processed contribute to this by sneaking in fats and sugars. The problem is that what is considered to be a processed food, even a highly processed food, doesn't necessarily need to do that. For instance, flour by itself would be considered to be highly processed. Same with a frozen pizza made entirely of "whole" ingredients.
They need to do what Europe did and teach people that quality of life is about work-life balance and good public services, not about grinding and buying cheap shit in big quantities. People will not start cooking their meals because of warning labels. They will start cooking when they have enough time and money for it.
Minimal change in relation to the damage ulta-processed foods are causing our population but at least its a step in the right direction. As someone who suffers from a Crohns (likely induced by a combination of processed food and over stress/work) I'm very happy we're finally taking a look at the food industry with more scepticism. I've done work inside food processing plants and it amazes me how they can justify manipulating our basic foods to ensure they are addictive and profitable at any cost.
Change does not happen overnight and hopefully this push to reevaluate our food practises will actually make it through the next election.
One day, I hope to be able to eat a food cooked by someone else without experiencing debilitating pain afterwards.