Ultra-Processed Foods Should Be Treated More Like Cigarettes Than Food, Study Says (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0180726946
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/02/03/196254/ultra-processed-foods-should-be-treated-more-like-cigarettes-than-food-study-says
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/feb/03/public-health-ultra-processed-foods-regulation-cigarettes-addiction-nutrition
> UPFs and cigarettes are engineered to encourage addiction and consumption, researchers from three US universities said, pointing to the parallels in widespread health harms that link both.
>
> UPFs, which are widely available worldwide, are food products that have been industrially manufactured, often using emulsifiers or artificial colouring and flavours. The category includes soft drinks and packaged snacks such as crisps and biscuits. There are similarities in the production processes of UPFs and cigarettes, and in manufacturers' efforts to optimise the "doses" of products and how quickly they act on reward pathways in the body, according to [2]the paper from researchers at Harvard, the University of Michigan and Duke University.
>
> They draw on data from the fields of addiction science, nutrition and public health history to make their comparisons, published on 3 February in the healthcare journal the Milbank Quarterly. The authors suggest that marketing claims on the products, such as being "low fat" or "sugar free," are "health washing" that can stall regulation, akin to the advertising of cigarette filters in the 1950s as protective innovations that "in practice offered little meaningful benefit."
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/feb/03/public-health-ultra-processed-foods-regulation-cigarettes-addiction-nutrition
[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0009.70066
Re: (Score:1)
> The last fucking thing we should be worrying about is ultra processed foods. Fuck anyone on the left who is worried about this for anyone but themselves.
You haven't thought this through. Given that we as a society going to heavily subsidize food for some people, including children, do you think we should at least insist that these subsidies go toward buying ans consuming healthy foods? Or should we allow these subsidies to get diverted to junk food manufacturers simply because they are the lowest bidder?
Re: (Score:2)
And this is why people have issues with the government feeding children; because, invariably, they choose the worst options to feed children. The cheapest, nastiest, least nutritious slop, but we pay top dollar for it, and every year the food gets worse but the bill gets higher.
I get it's emotional to complain about starving children, but at some point we need to consider how much we're spending on poisoning these children.
I don't know the solution, but I know giving the government more and more power/mone
You're making excuses for hungry children (Score:2)
I have yet to see anyone argue that feeding children no food versus junk food is an improvement. Every single person that argues against ending child hunger does so on the basis that it makes the kids lazy and it rewards lazy parents.
I guess you do have another novel approach to avoiding feeding hungry children that I haven't seen though which is bogging down the process of feeding them by arguing over what they should be fed.
It's not emotional. It's just fucking common sense that you feed kids when
Re: (Score:2)
I can see you are extremely emotional about this issue.
I doubt the opposition to feeding children is based on some "out group" bias, but more in the practicalities. The argument is two fold; quality and cost. Free food for children will prompt more parents to simply rely on the government to feed their children, resulting in worse health outcomes for the children. That's the quality argument, and it's not a bad one truth be told.
Cost is, of course, as I mentioned; I have yet to meet a government program w
Re: (Score:2)
> I don't know the solution, but I know giving the government more and more power/money leads to worse outcomes, not better.
I don't know about you but this is type of thing Republicans say while they take actions to make sure this is the end result, we get the government we deserve. Lest I remind everyone Michelle Obama tried to give kids more vegetables and the Republicans flipped the fuck out, “Your America is turning into a nanny state thanks to the Obama administration’s efforts to rein in the junk food industry,” said Sean Hannity.
Mike Bloomberg wanted to ban giant sodas and Sara Palin get's on stage with
Re: (Score:2)
Agree with your overall point; Republicans are every bit as horrible as democrats. Just, you know, in slightly different ways.
Re: (Score:2)
> To all agree that children should not go hungry.
Huh? This doesn't have anything to do with parents being unable to provide food for their children, unless you're jumping to the conclusion that everything that can't be sold at Whole Foods will somehow end up banned.
Really, the take-away here is that this is just another one of those studies that places the blame for America's obesity problem on our food, rather than people individually making poor choices with their diet. Absolutely nobody is forcing you to pig out on boxes of Little Debbies. Last I ch
Re: (Score:2)
> To all agree that children should not go hungry. The last fucking thing we should be worrying about is ultra processed foods. Fuck anyone on the left who is worried about this for anyone but themselves.
> We have hundreds of thousands of children who are going to go hungry tonight because child hunger is a political issue and a sizable number of voters like to tell themselves that food insecurity breeds character.
> And you know who you are and I bet you have mod points. Go ahead I've got karma to burn.
> But getting back to the left wing we have this really nasty habit of getting our asses kicked by the right wing on stuff that matters and then they let us go off and do whatever the fuck on shit that doesn't matter and then we look like idiots and morons because of it.
> So you get people complaining about kids eating chicky nuggies instead of kids having sleep for dinner.
I think you often have something useful to say, but your rage causes a kind of stream-of-anger output which detracts from comprehensibility.
Serious suggestion: Don't think of karma as currency. Breathe more slowly. Remove the coarse language. Parse once to edit before submitting.
Re: (Score:1)
You can fight for universal access to food and care about food quality.
Ultra-processed food is not a boutique concern. It is structurally linked to poverty, healthcare costs, disability, and shortened life expectancy. Poor kids are not just hungry; they are disproportionately fed the worst food because it is cheap, subsidized, and aggressively marketed.
Treating UPFs like cigarettes is not about scolding parents or banning nuggets. It is about regulation: labeling, advertising to children, corporate ac
Re: (Score:2)
> To all agree that children should not go hungry. The last fucking thing we should be worrying about is ultra processed foods. Fuck anyone on the left who is worried about this for anyone but themselves.
Eat a bag of dicks. Specifically, eat a bag of ultra-processed dicks.
This is Capitulation 101, to suggest that anyone should stop efforts to solve Big Problem because Bigger Problem exists. And you're blaming and cussing out the people who care about both problems and want both problems fixed? Lunacy.
> We have hundreds of thousands of children who are going to go hungry tonight because child hunger is a political issue and a sizable number of voters like to tell themselves that food insecurity breeds character.
First of all, that's not the shitty position the right-leaning take on child hunger. Their position is "my kids ate whatever our live-in nanny/sous-chef nutritionist prepared for them for today's meal pla
Things that will be illegal in 100 years (Score:2)
It's an interesting thought experiment to look at moral trends, and consider what activities which are currently legal may become illegal in the future.
e.g. If you were playing this game in the past, you might have correctly predicted dog fighting, or legal descrimination based on race.
Looking 100 years into the future, we might wonder about the sport of boxing, or factory farming of animals. But I hadn't considered ultra-processed food...
Re: (Score:1)
Things that will be illegal in 100 years?: 1. Leaving your district. 2. Insulting a member of the Capitol. 3. Doing anything haram.
Re: (Score:2)
> Oh, no one wants to play that game, or we'd be having a serious discussion about hormone therapy and medically unnecessary surgeries ( maiming ) for minors.
> Won't be 100 years though, more like 10, maybe 20.
> Imagine what kind monsters people in the future will think we were for allowing that to be done to little ones. And they'll be 100% accurate.
There is certainly precedent for medical procedures which were introduced, but later banned. The lobotomy is such an example.
infinity plus gum (Score:3)
I want a agreed-upon, stable, succinct, and intelligible definition of "ultra-processed" or I want to stop hearing the term.
Re: (Score:2)
Wait until you hear about "hyper-processed". I head someone use term on a news station this morning.
Re: (Score:2)
> I want a agreed-upon, stable, succinct, and intelligible definition of "ultra-processed" or I want to stop hearing the term.
"Of food: subjected to a high degree of industrial processing during manufacture, and usually containing large quantities of additives such as salt, sugar, fat, preservatives, or artificial colours and flavourings." [Source: Oxford English Dictionary]
Re: (Score:2)
A dictionary definition is completely useless, if not actively harmful, in a legal context.
But now feel free to use a completely useless, if not actively harmful, in a legal context dictionary definition of "high degree," "industrial processing," "large quantities," or even "food."
Re: (Score:2)
And I want a pony, but here we are.
Bad for science! (Score:3)
Crap like this is why the morons want to discredit science. Sometimes I almost want to join them. Because they say shit like this. UFP's aren't the best way to get nutrition but, as bad a cigarettes? No way. I've consumed a lot of both over the years. My health got a lot better after after I quit smoking. I didn't notice a big change when I quit drinking Coke. I should know, I work at one of those research institutions mentioned above.
Re: (Score:1)
> UFP's aren't the best way to get nutrition but, as bad a cigarettes?
They probably spoke about how addictive these are, not that you going to get lung cancer from eating Doritos instead of a proper meal.
Re: (Score:2)
> Crap like this is why the morons want to discredit science. Sometimes I almost want to join them. Because they say shit like this. UFP's aren't the best way to get nutrition but, as bad a cigarettes? No way. I've consumed a lot of both over the years. My health got a lot better after after I quit smoking. I didn't notice a big change when I quit drinking Coke. I should know, I work at one of those research institutions mentioned above.
I understand your point about UPF being compared to cigarettes. That might be going too far.
Although having said that, if you change from a typical US diet to one based on fresh food made from basic ingredients, I think you'd notice more of a change than you would after just cutting out Coke. It's a difficult chnage to make living in the US, but people sometimes mention it if they move from the US to Japan. And vice versa - After living in Japan for a while, if they return to the US they feel an immediate s
Re: (Score:3)
Like maybe some studies that add preservatives/additives to a whole/unprocessed food diet and see if you get the same negative health impacts?
That doesn't sound like a very ethical study if you're intentionally seeing if you can make the participants sick.
First, define ultra processed foods (Score:2)
The term ultra-processed foods is one of those "I'll know it when I see it" definitions so far. Until they can actually define what that term means and use that as a meaningful way to identify foods that have common characteristics that may be bad or good under what circumstances, then anything someone says about his dangerous they are is full of shit because there is no category.
Re: (Score:2)
Nova classification IV.
[1]https://www.fsp.usp.br/nupens/... [fsp.usp.br]
You'll find a definition including abstract characteristics as well as examples.
[1] https://www.fsp.usp.br/nupens/en/food-classification-nova/
I'm From the Government and... (Score:2)
...I'm here to help...
I will believe in ultra-processed food ... (Score:2)
as a meaningful category when chocolate is added to it.
It's like Paula Poundstone's reasoning about Ding-Dongs:
They only have three ingredients- devil's food cake, creamy filling, chocolaty coating.
Re: (Score:2)
Welcome to the believer's club! Group IV.
[1]https://www.fsp.usp.br/nupens/... [fsp.usp.br]
"Ultra-processed foods include... sweets and chocolates..."
[1] https://www.fsp.usp.br/nupens/en/food-classification-nova/
Original article (Score:2)
I believe this is the link to the original article, it appears to be open access / no paywall.
[1]https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co... [wiley.com]
I need to read it again, but it feels like it reads more like an essay or whitepaper than a scientific article. I am not sure the author actually conducted any testing or comparing tobacco to ultra-processed food. I am also not sure the author offered a concrete definition of ultra-processed food. The author does identify foods that are very high in simple carbohydrates (e.g. can
[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0009.70066
So ... (Score:2)
> Ultra-Processed Foods Should Be Treated More Like Cigarettes
On a shelf, behind the counter at 7-11? They're going to have to reverse the design in all the stores, flipping the employee ans customer spaces.
This is how they kill the poor (Score:2)
Make real food expensive, then take away the cheap food.
Re: (Score:2)
"They"?
Re: (Score:2)
You can still buy cigarettes, and while there was once an attempt to ban alcoholic beverages, that didn't last. So, the most likely outcome is a big ugly warning label on the package that says in so many words "THIS SHIT BE UNHEALTHY, YO" .
Which of course, people will just ignore just as they do the warnings on cigarettes and alcohol. Because ultimately, if you wanna put garbage in your body, that really should be your choice so long as you're fully informed.
Re: (Score:2)
> You can still buy cigarettes, and while there was once an attempt to ban alcoholic beverages, that didn't last. So, the most likely outcome is a big ugly warning label on the package that says in so many words "THIS SHIT BE UNHEALTHY, YO" .
> Which of course, people will just ignore just as they do the warnings on cigarettes and alcohol. Because ultimately, if you wanna put garbage in your body, that really should be your choice so long as you're fully informed.
And so long as your subsequent health problems are not a burden on anyone else?
Re: This is how they kill the poor (Score:2)
No, real food is cheap. I regularly get real zucchini and real potatoes and onions etc from my garden, practically for free.
Re: (Score:2)
> No, real food is cheap. I regularly get real zucchini and real potatoes and onions etc from my garden, practically for free.
Sure, but... you pay for the seeds, water, tools, land and house and provide all the labor ...