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The numbers vary a bit depending on your definition of “processed”, but somewhere around 60 percent is the most commonly cited number.
Cites:
60 percent:
61 percent:
70 percent:
57.9 percent:
Jesus, this actually freaks me out.
I hear this is a big cause of Crohn’s disease.
I’m not really following the logic here. It seems like asking what percentage of the food supply is bananas, and then saying you’re freaked out because some people are allergic to bananas.
Crohn’s Disease affects about 0.3% of the population, and people who have it usually follow special diets to help manage symptoms. But diet is not among the suspected possible causes.
Not even comparable lmao
The thing I read about how most processed food is made is just amazingly unexpected.
You know what’s used in bread to soften it? Bleach
Some of those studies use very different definitions.
Ingredients when mixed according to a formula, create a formulation so that is not exact enough IMHO. Some other studies are using a better definition.
The NOVA model seems to be the most common, well regarded classification. These differing definitions will impact the numbers greatly.
But be ready to be bummed out if you like beer, wine or cheese or gluten free products.
I assume “processed” equals not-made-by-me-from-fresh-ingredients. But then I think - what are ‘fresh’ ingredients. Vegetables are often washed or otherwise treated with chemicals to improve appearance and shelf-life. I have soy sauce and a rack of spices; even the water I use has been treated with chemicals.
The air we breathe is full of who knows what and just about everything we consume has been “processed” in some way. Yet we survive somehow.
Uhhh…cite?
He probably means bleached flour.
Chlorine dioxide gas is one of several chemicals that are used.
Science is scary, guys! If you don’t understand something, that means it’s bad and will kill you!
I’m trying to think what “unprocessed” food would even be. Maybe an apple that you picked right off of a tree and chomped into? Without rubbing it off on your shirt first, of course. Mind you, unless it’s a crabapple, it’d still be a GMO, but it’d be an unprocessed GMO.
Mixing ingredients together is processing. Removing inedible parts like rinds is processing. Cooking is processing.
It’s more insidious than you might think. A new study suggests that fast food packaging is linked to obesity.
So it’s not the Wendy’s triple cheeseburger combo you have for lunch every day that makes you fat - it’s the wrappers!!! :eek::smack:
Saying that processed foods may cause Crohn’s Disease is the kind of extremely misleading food scare hype that quack sites use to get people to buy they own phony products.
The underlying grain of truth is far more complicated and nuanced. And most of it comes from one study, Changes in intestinal tight junction permeability associated with industrial food additives explain the rising incidence of autoimmune diseases, by Aaron Lerner and Torsten Matthias (Autoimmunity Reviews
Volume 14, Issue 6, June 2015, Pages 479-489)
Autoimmune diseases (AD) comprise a huge range of ailments, including “Multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel diseases (mainly Crohn’s disease), systemic lupus erythematosus, primary biliary cirrhosis, myasthenia gravis, autoimmune thyroiditis, hepatitis and rheumatic diseases, bullous pemphigoid, and celiac disease.”
What they count as processed food is also very broad. They are not simply the “chemicals” at the bottom of an ingredients list. They start with salt and sugar. The issue with these additives is that it is *hypothesized *that they create “increased intestinal permeability” through “the intestinal epithelial barrier, with its intercellular tight junction, [which] controls the equilibrium between tolerance and immunity to non-self-antigens.”
IOW, some particles that trigger the immune system may leak through less than tight barriers.
Note that I italicized hypothesized. This is not proven. The paper does not do any medical studies of its own. It is a meta-review of many earlier studies that looked at various elements of what might create such a situation. The authors are careful to caveat their findings.
We are very, very early in the study of these associations. As soon as you use the word “cause” you throw all solid science out the window.
You’re telling me I’ve got to stop eating the hamburger wrappers? Damn, first sugar, then fat, now wrappers. Everything tasty is bad for you.
Btw I know I am being a bit unserious with some of my posts, but damn is just frightening to think how much our food supply has been affected.
No, it really isn’t frightening at all. “Processing” isn’t scary; it’s perfectly normal.
Looking into research this is my largest gripe, it is hard to find good statistics within the far more common naturalistic fallacies that seem to rule in this field. I would be interested in you noticed this effect in any of the links above.
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/unpublished/abandon.pdf
In the largest studies I can find the populations were not representative of the population as a whole, and even the increased cancer rates were below that nation or populations rates. I realize that the biomedical and social sciences have ethical limitations, but any suggestions on related papers that is more rigorous and/or less open to p-hacking would be appreciated. As this field hasn’t widely adopted the open data trend I wouldn’t mind spending money to read a more rigorous analysis but also wish to avoid paying for the typical quality of paper.
To my admittedly ignorant eye that the normal noise may be statistically significant in these studies. I would really appreciate cites which will demonstrate why I am in error with this ignorant assumption.
I think that’s called a false dichotomy.
A lot of the additives found on sports drinks are known to cause ADHD.
While yes some processing is what kills some of the bacterias and some of it hurries up the process, but that doesn’t mean is always neccesary.