"Scientific" Studies That Make Me Angry

[RDKirk]

Here is an example of the kind of garbage that passes for a "scientific study" these days, as well as how it's reported.

Limiting ultra-processed foods does not necessarily make for a healthy diet

A new study demonstrates that eating primarily minimally processed foods, as they are defined by the NOVA classification system, does not automatically make for a healthy diet, suggesting that the types of foods we eat may matter more than the level of processing used to make them.

Surprised? Anyone?

Okay, I think we can all agree that it's certainly possible to create a bad diet with foods right off the hoof and out of the ground. There is plenty of existing information about natural diets of primitive people groups that lacked vital nutrients and resulted in poor health. We don't need a study to prove that such a thing is possible.

Hess noted that some nutrient-dense packaged foods can be classified as ultra-processed, such as unsweetened applesauce, ultrafiltered milk, liquid egg whites and some brands of raisins and canned tomatoes.

Who besides them would classify any of those foods as "ultra-processed?" An Oreo cookie is ultra-processed...a separated egg is not ultra-processed. Pureed apple is not ultra-processed. Drying fruit and simple canning is not ultra-processing. If those were the foods they included in their ultra-processed menu...no wonder there was little difference.

And although they claimed to have gone by the Nova food processing classification system, in fact they did not. According to the Nova food processing classification system:

Ultra-processed foods are industrial formulations made entirely or mostly from substances
extracted from foods (oils, fats, sugar, starch, and proteins), derived from food constituents
(hydrogenated fats and modified starch), or synthesized in laboratories from food substrates
or other organic sources (flavor enhancers, colors, and several food additives used to make
the product hyper-palatable). Manufacturing techniques include extrusion, moulding and
preprocessing by frying.

So, nothing they mentioned would be considered "ultra-processed" by Nova. They simply lied. Or they're stupid.

Whether a diet comprised mostly of simple ingredient foods can provide a low-quality diet remains unexplored.

Whether being stuck in the face with a thrown brick causes facial damage also remains unexplored...do we need a federally funded study for it, though? I'll bet a high school student can find Google information on that.

Results: The LPW and MPW had similar nutrient densities and HEI scores (44 and 43, respectively). The LPW included 20% energy (kcal) from UPFs, while the MPW included 67% energy from UPFs. Relative percentages of shelf-stable, frozen, and refrigerated foods were similar between the two. Using the Kaplan-Meier survival analysis method, median time to expiration of the LPW menu items was 35 days versus 120 days for the MPW menu items. The “per person” cost was $34.87/day for the LPW and $13.53/day for the MPW.

Conclusions: The less-processed and more-processed menus both provided low-quality diets. However, the LPW was more than twice as expensive as the MPW and had a shorter overall shelf life. Level of processing is not a proxy indicator of diet quality, and less processed foods can be more expensive and have a shorter shelf life.

And we also already know that an apple costs more and has a shorter shelf life than a Twinkie.

Funding Sources: USDA Agricultural Research Service project grant #3062-51000-057-00D

We paid for this.

Bless their hearts.

 

[HTacianas]

Limiting ultra-processed foods does not necessarily make for a healthy diet



Surprised? Anyone?

Okay, I think we can all agree that it's certainly possible to create a bad diet with foods right off the hoof and out of the ground. There is plenty of existing information about natural diets of primitive people groups that lacked vital nutrients and resulted in poor health. We don't need a study to prove that such a thing is possible.



Who besides them would classify any of those foods as "ultra-processed?" An Oreo cookie is ultra-processed...a separated egg is not ultra-processed. Pureed apple is not ultra-processed. Drying fruit and simple canning is not ultra-processing. If those were the foods they included in their ultra-processed menu...no wonder there was little difference.

And although they claimed to have gone by the Nova food processing classification system, in fact they did not. According to the Nova food processing classification system:



So, nothing they mentioned would be considered "ultra-processed" by Nova. They simply lied. Or they're stupid.



Whether being stuck in the face with a thrown brick causes facial damage also remains unexplored...do we need a federally funded study for it, though? I'll bet a high school student can find Google information on that.



And we also already know that an apple costs more and has a shorter shelf life than a Twinkie.



We paid for this.

Bless their hearts.

They're preparing you for the bugs.

 

[durangodawood]

They're preparing you for the bugs.

Eating ultra processed foods makes you tastier to bugs?

 

[jacks]

So I guess this means you won't be going to the meeting?

Mark Messina, PhD, director of nutrition science and research at Soy Nutrition Institute Global, will present the findings at NUTRITION 2024, the flagship annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition held June 29–July 2 in Chicago.

 

[Handmaid for Jesus]

They're preparing you for the bugs.

Yikes!!! Soylent green!

 

[RocksInMyHead]

Yikes!!! Soylent green!

Silly goose - Soylent Green isn't bugs! (It's people)

 

[Pommer]

Does roadkill count as high processed food?

 

[Hans Blaster]

(Some how some of your text was in quote boxes, so I had to manually quote it again.)

Here is an example of the kind of garbage that passes for a "scientific study" these days, as well as how it's reported.

What kind of study is it that you object to? Let's see...

Limiting ultra-processed foods does not necessarily make for a healthy diet



Surprised? Anyone?

Okay, I think we can all agree that it's certainly possible to create a bad diet with foods right off the hoof and out of the ground. There is plenty of existing information about natural diets of primitive people groups that lacked vital nutrients and resulted in poor health. We don't need a study to prove that such a thing is possible.

Oh, I see now. Any thing you think is "obvious" doesn't need to be tested. Sorry (not sorry) to break it to you, but in science we don't just accept something untested because it is "obvious". If you think claim (in this case about ultraprocessed foods being worse) is wrong, you design an experiment to test that claim and then publish your results.

Who besides them would classify any of those foods as "ultra-processed?" An Oreo cookie is ultra-processed...a separated egg is not ultra-processed. Pureed apple is not ultra-processed. Drying fruit and simple canning is not ultra-processing. If those were the foods they included in their ultra-processed menu...no wonder there was little difference.

And although they claimed to have gone by the Nova food processing classification system, in fact they did not. According to the Nova food processing classification system:



So, nothing they mentioned would be considered "ultra-processed" by Nova. They simply lied. Or they're stupid.



Whether being stuck in the face with a thrown brick causes facial damage also remains unexplored...do we need a federally funded study for it, though? I'll bet a high school student can find Google information on that.



And we also already know that an apple costs more and has a shorter shelf life than a Twinkie.

I've seen these kinds of complaints from people who don't understand how science works for a very long time.

We paid for this.

Bless their hearts.

This study is just a small component of a larger project:

Project : USDA ARS

(That is normal for many reports or papers come from a single project.)

 

[Whyayeman]

Who besides them would classify any of those foods as "ultra-processed?"

I find that a good rule of thumb is to count the number of ingredients you would not find in your store-cupboard. A home-made loaf of bread will contain flour, yeast and water with a bit of salt and sugar. A bought loaf in the UK will contain those and several more whose names I don't recognise or have a distinctly un-foody sound.

A loaf of bread need not be ultra-processed but for most people who buy their bread it is. That is, it contains quite a lot of non-food chemicals.

 

[durangodawood]

Limiting ultra-processed foods does not necessarily make for a healthy diet



Surprised? Anyone?

Okay, I think we can all agree that it's certainly possible to create a bad diet with foods right off the hoof and out of the ground. There is plenty of existing information about natural diets of primitive people groups that lacked vital nutrients and resulted in poor health. We don't need a study to prove that such a thing is possible.



Who besides them would classify any of those foods as "ultra-processed?" An Oreo cookie is ultra-processed...a separated egg is not ultra-processed. Pureed apple is not ultra-processed. Drying fruit and simple canning is not ultra-processing. If those were the foods they included in their ultra-processed menu...no wonder there was little difference.

And although they claimed to have gone by the Nova food processing classification system, in fact they did not. According to the Nova food processing classification system:



So, nothing they mentioned would be considered "ultra-processed" by Nova. They simply lied. Or they're stupid.



Whether being stuck in the face with a thrown brick causes facial damage also remains unexplored...do we need a federally funded study for it, though? I'll bet a high school student can find Google information on that.



And we also already know that an apple costs more and has a shorter shelf life than a Twinkie.



We paid for this.

Bless their hearts.

It made sense when I see that one of the authors is Big Soy.

I have a lot of respect for science in principle. But like any human endeavor its prestige can be hijacked by people interested in other things besides truth. Agribusiness is notorious for this.

 

[RDKirk]

Oh, I see now. Any thing you think is "obvious" doesn't need to be tested. Sorry (not sorry) to break it to you, but in science we don't just accept something untested because it is "obvious". If you think claim (in this case about ultraprocessed foods being worse) is wrong, you design an experiment to test that claim and then publish your results.

I've seen these kinds of complaints from people who don't understand how science works for a very long time.

I pointed out that the information to answer the question "Is it possible to create a bad natural diet" was already available. That didn't have to be "re-proven" at taxpayer expense.

 

[RocksInMyHead]

I pointed out that the information to answer the question "Is it possible to create a bad natural diet" was already available. That didn't have to be "re-proven" at taxpayer expense.

There's a difference, from a scientific standpoint, between "this group of people isn't getting the nutrients that they need because the natural foods they eat don't have them" and "buying foods that are advertised as 'less processed' does not automatically make your diet healthier". The first is more about environmental factors and anthropology (those primitive tribes aren't choosing that diet - it's just what's available) while the second is more about nutrition and marketing.

Personal incredulity is rarely a good argument against anything - just because you don't see the value in the research does not mean that it is actually valueless.

 

[RDKirk]

Personal incredulity is rarely a good argument against anything - just because you don't see the value in the research does not mean that it is actually valueless.

I spent half my life just collecting information without specific need for that information, so I understand that principle. I've contributed basic information to many databases that may or may not find application.

But--and this was also true for us--when a specific question is asked, we went first to all our accumulated information to see if we already had the answer among our "unknown knowns." If that information was insufficient, we levied a requirement to collect more data...but only if that information was insufficient, a factor that had to be demonstrated before we spent more taxpayer money.

 

[RocksInMyHead]

But--and this was also true for us--when a specific question is asked, we went first to all our accumulated information to see if we already had the answer among our "unknown knowns." If that information was insufficient, we levied a requirement to collect more data...but only if that information was insufficient, a factor that had to be demonstrated before we spent more taxpayer money.

Can you point to specific research that covers the same information? What qualifications do you possess in order to provide that assessment? Can you identify how much money was actually spent to produce this paper (which is one very small part of a larger multi-year study on obesity and nutrition in the US)?

I would trust you to accurately assess the inventory of "unknown knowns" from a military intelligence standpoint, but when it comes to nutritional science, color me skeptical.

 

[Laodicean60]

A bought loaf in the UK will contain those and several more whose names I don't recognise or have a distinctly un-foody sound.

A loaf of bread need not be ultra-processed but for most people who buy their bread it is. That is, it contains quite a lot of non-food chemicals.

The sad thing is that EU laws are better than mine regarding food safety. Compare a can of Coke ingredients and look at the difference.

 

[RDKirk]

Can you point to specific research that covers the same information? What qualifications do you possess in order to provide that assessment? Can you identify how much money was actually spent to produce this paper (which is one very small part of a larger multi-year study on obesity and nutrition in the US)?

Can you point to any specific information gathered by a particular day of reconnaissance satellite coverage or how it should be assessed? Can you even point to any specific information gathered by a particular day of satellite coverage available on Google Earth?

I would trust you to accurately assess the inventory of "unknown knowns" from a military intelligence standpoint, but when it comes to nutritional science, color me skeptical.

The basic principles of information collection, management, and analysis are objective. We studied classical logic.

 

[RocksInMyHead]

Can you point to any specific information gathered by a particular day of reconnaissance satellite coverage or how it should be assessed? Can you even point to any specific information gathered by a particular day of satellite coverage available on Google Earth?

I'm not sure what my ability to evaluate satellite coverage (something I've never claimed to be able to do) has to do with your ability to evaluate nutritional science research.

The principles of information collection, management, and analysis are objective.

Sure, but specialized knowledge is required in order to apply them effectively and accurately within a field of study.

 

[Whyayeman]

The sad thing is that EU laws are better than mine regarding food safety. Compare a can of Coke ingredients and look at the difference.

Yes, that is true. It is difficult for American firms to export to the EU partly for this reason.

I would be hesitant about including any American meat in my meals because the standards of hygiene are below European standards. Chlorinated chicken is banned in the EU and the UK, for example.

 

[Laodicean60]

Can you point to specific research that covers the same information?

It sounds like the food corporation cabal sponsored this article. It also gave a misrepresentation about healthy eating. Either pay now or pay later in healthcare costs.

"Conclusions: The less-processed and more-processed menus both provided low-quality diets. However, the LPW was more than twice as expensive as the MPW and had a shorter overall shelf life. Level of processing is not a proxy indicator of diet quality, and less processed foods can be more expensive and have a shorter shelf life.
Source:
American Society for Nutrition"

I am saddened that there wasn't a disclaimer stating about ongoing studies showing some processed foods are not for a healthy diet.

What is ultra-processed food and what does it mean for my health?

Ultra-processed foods have been linked to more than 30 different health problems, including heart disease, cancer and anxiety.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[RocksInMyHead]

It sounds like the food corporation cabal sponsored this article. It also gave a misrepresentation about healthy eating. Either pay now or pay later in healthcare costs.

I agree with that - I was specifically addressing RDKirk's claim that this paper was unnecessary because it was rehashing information that was already known and published (and was therefore a waste of money).