Bite Back with Abbey Sharp - Are Additives REALLY to Blame for the Risks of Ultra Processed Foods? (You Might be SHOCKED)

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Starting point is 00:00:30 And on the slower eating UPF diet, people spontaneously ate about 369 fewer calories per day. 369. Like, that is huge, guys. Welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abby Sharp, where I dismantle diet culture rules, call it the charlatans spinning the pseudoscience, and help you achieve food freedom for good. Today we're jumping back into the ultra-processed food rabbit hole. If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, I definitely recommend starting there because we laid a lot of key mystery-solving groundwork. But as a refresher, here's the TLDR. Ultra-processed foods or UPFs, as we've been calling them, are associated with a pretty significant list of negative health outcomes.

Starting point is 00:01:25 But most of that research is observational. Nova 4 is also a wildly heterogeneous category that can include everything from soda and packaged cookies to fortified whole grain cereal, commercial bread, soy milk, and yogurt. The evidence that individual adjectives are destroying our health is a lot less convincing than social media would have you believe. And yet, when researchers actually feed people different diets in controlled experiments, something interesting keeps happening. People often eat more and sometimes fare worse with certain health measures on the ultra-processed dietary pattern. So part one essentially left us with a nutritional murder mystery of sorts. If the UPF label itself doesn't explain everything, then what does? Is it simply that these foods tend to have worse nutritional profiles?

Starting point is 00:02:22 Is it how quickly we eat them, their energy density, their texture? Does processing change the amount of energy that we can actually access from food? Does our microbiome play some kind of role? Or is there some mysterious ultra-processing effect that researchers haven't figured out yet? That is what we're getting into today. And honestly, this is the part of the conversation that I find way more interesting than arguing about whether Xanthan gum is going to kill us. One thing we talk about a lot here on Byteback is how misunderstood mental health conditions can be.

Starting point is 00:03:00 And OCD is a perfect example. We tend to think of OCD as being super organized or obsessed with cleanliness. But that's not what living with OCD is really about. Imagine having persistent, unwanted thoughts that feel completely out of character, but so real and upsetting that you. you feel compelled to do something mentally or physically just to find some relief. And the good news is there is specialized treatment. OCD is highly treatable with the right kind of specialized therapy.

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Starting point is 00:04:32 Honestly, all of that helps me out so, so much. And now that we got all of our housekeeping chores done, let's get nerdy. Okay, so at the end of part one, we were talking about the update trial. That study was really interesting because both the predominantly minimally processed diet and the predominantly ultra-processed diet, were designed to comply with healthy eating recommendations. So in both conditions, people lost weight, but they just ate fewer calories and lost a little bit more weight on the minimally processed diet. So that left us all wondering, is the main problem with UPFs simply that they're easier to overeat?

Starting point is 00:05:14 Because if that were the whole story, then theoretically, if we held calories constant, the health differences should largely disappear. Well, in 2025, researchers tried to get at exactly that question. They recruited 43 healthy young men and gave each participant both an ultra-processed diet and an unprocessed diet for three weeks each, separated by a washout period. And unlike the Kevin Hall study from part one, where people could eat however much they wanted, these participants were given a fixed amount of food. There were actually two calorie conditions, one intended to meet energy needs, and another providing excess calories, but within each condition, the UPF and unprocessed diets were calorie matched. And the researchers reported that after the UPF diet, participants had higher body

Starting point is 00:06:12 weight and fat mass than after the unprocessed diet. And depending on the calorie arm, they also saw differences in LDL to HDL cholesterol ratio and a few reproductive hormone signals. So at first glance, this sounds like pretty strong evidence that UPFs are harmful, independent, of just eating too many calories. And I think this study is really important at getting us closer to the truth. But, and honestly at this point, you should probably know that there's usually a butt with me. but matching calories is not the same thing as matching diet quality. So in this case, the UPF diet contained more saturated fat, cholesterol, refined grains, and added sugar, and less fiber. So the

Starting point is 00:07:02 experiment tells us that the two diets produced different outcomes, but it still can't tell us which characteristic produced each difference. Which brings us to one factor that researchers think may play a a roll texture. Okay, this is actually pretty crazy guys. So think about a lot of the UPFs on shelves right now. As a whole, they're generally pretty easy to eat. And when I say easy, I don't just mean because they taste good, but like physically, they don't take a lot of effort to get down. So they're soft, maybe they're moist. I know we all hate that word, but maybe they're lubricated. They break up really easily in the mouth. You don't have to chew them that much. So you can kind of get in a lot of calories pretty quick. So in a 2026 randomized crossover trial, researchers gave

Starting point is 00:07:54 41 adults two different diets for 14 days where about 95% of the calories in both diets came from UPFs. So this was not like an apple versus pop-tart situation. It was UPF versus UPF. The diets were matched for things like palatibility, portion size, total calories offered, non-beverage energy density, and meal variety. The difference between the two conditions was texture. One diet contained UPF selected to require more chewing and oral processing, which slowed down how quickly could eat them, and the other contained softer foods that could be consumed substantially faster. And on the slower eating UPF diet, people spontaneously ate about 369 fewer calories per day. 369.

Starting point is 00:08:51 Like, that is huge, guys. Same Nova category still overwhelmingly ultra-processed, but like a pretty big difference in intake from just changing the physical experience of eating the food. Now, importantly, this was only for two weeks, so they're really really. wasn't any major body weight differences between conditions, so we can't say from this trial at least that chewing your food more guarantees weight loss. Even though it may follow that fewer calories consumed may result in weight loss over time. But I do feel it very clearly demonstrated that how food is physically structured can have a major and sustained influence on how much energy we

Starting point is 00:09:39 spontaneously consume. And this is not the only study of its kind. In another 2025 study, participants were served sandwiches designed to be eaten at different speeds and containing different amounts of energy per gram. And the difference between the slow eating lower energy density condition and the fast eating high energy dense condition was around 533 calories in a single meal. That is massive. And it gives us a plausible explanation for at least a decent part of the UPF effect. Because a lot of highly consumed UPFs are processed into a form that can be very energy dense, very palatable, and extremely easy to eat very quickly before our gut can tell our brain that we are full.

Starting point is 00:10:31 It's literally like a triple threat to our satiety and reward systems. So while pointing the finger at some mysterious addictive chemical and claiming that processed food hijacks your brain makes for like a really good sound bite on TikTok, the key mechanisms are probably a lot more simple. If you make something delicious, calorie dense, and physically effortless to consume, humans are probably going to eat a lot of it. But eating speed is not the whole story. And this is where things get even. nerderier. Science rules. Okay, okay, dial it in Geek Squad because this is my favorite part of the story. Processing doesn't just influence what happens before we swallow the food. It also changes what happens after we swallow the food. And that brings us to something we call the food matrix.

Starting point is 00:11:32 What truth? There is no spoon. Oh yes, my nerd is definitely showing at this point. Uh, so maybe no spoon, but the food matrix is a very real and very important part of nutrition science. You know I've spent a lot of time on this podcast calling BS on diet culture. But here's something we need to take seriously. Eating disorders are way more common than we think, and they don't always look the way we'd expect. Sometimes it's clean eating that spirals into rigid rules. Sometimes it's constant guilt around food or that relentless voice telling you that your body isn't good enough. Eating disorders don't discriminate by age, gender, or body size.

Starting point is 00:12:23 And they deserve real treatment. And that's why I'm partnering with EQIP, a virtual eating disorder treatment program that brings care right into your home. With EQIP, you get a whole team, a therapist, dietitian, medical provider, and a mentor, who's actually being through recovery. And as a dietitian, I love that because recovery is about so much more than just food. Equip treats people ages 6 and up across all 50 U.S. states with no wait list and most insurance plans are accepted. So if you or someone you love might be struggling, do not wait to get help. Visit equip.health slash biteback to learn more. So when we talk about a food being healthy or not, diet culture has kind of taught us to reduce that food down to a few key numbers.

Starting point is 00:13:18 It has 150 calories and 5 grams of protein, 6 grams of fat, et cetera. And obviously all of those things are super important. But macronutrients aren't just like free floating molecules that get instantly absorbed when we eat like the stick of cheese or whatever. They are contained inside physical structure. So plant cell walls, protein networks, starch granules, fat globules, and we call that whole physical architecture, the food matrix. And depending on what we do to that matrix, aka how we process it, our digestive enzymes may gain greater or lesser access to the nutrients inside. So one of my favorite ways to illustrate this is with nuts. We've got a lot of cool research on nuts,

Starting point is 00:14:07 and there was a controlled crossover study, for example, where participants were given almonds to eat, but with different levels of processing. So they had whole raw almonds, whole roasted almonds, roasted chopped almonds, and almond butter, which is basically just almonds ground up into a paste. And then they actually took a look at the participants' outputs, aka their pee and poop, to calculate how much metabolized energy their bodies actually obtained from each form of nut. On average, whole raw almonds delivered 4.42 calories per gram, while almond butter delivered 6.53 calories per gram. That was almost 50% more measured metabolized energy per gram. Because when you eat a whole almond, some of its fat remains trapped in some of its fat remains trapped in

Starting point is 00:15:01 the plant cell walls. So it just kind of gets pooped out without getting fully absorbed. But when you puree almonds into a smooth paste, you rupture the cell walls so more fat becomes available to our digestive enzymes so then more fat and calories can get absorbed and utilized by our body. And just so people don't lose our damn mind here, that does not mean that almond butter is unhealthy. It's actually not even considered a UPF. This wasn't a UPF study. But it's a a very clear demonstration that food form matters. It's also a good reminder that the calorie value on a nutrition fax label is an estimate, typically derived from using standardized energy factors. Those calculations can't perfectly capture every effect of the food structure or every difference

Starting point is 00:15:52 between individual digestive systems. And this is where the microbiome comes into play. Because in addition to your toilet bowl, there's another place that some of the energy from food can end up. Your colon. So fiber, resistant starch, and other materials that escape digestion in the small intestine can travel farther down in the GI tract where your gut microbes ferment it. And a small but very tightly controlled feeding study gives us a really interesting window into how meaningful this can actually be. So researchers compared to a calorie-matched Western diet with a high-fiber, whole-food diet, specifically designed to deliver more substrate to the gut microbiome. On the high-fiber microbiome enhancer diet, participants

Starting point is 00:16:43 saw greater microbial biomass, different microbial communities, more fermentation products, and an additional loss of about 116 calories per day in their stool compared to the Western diet. So the takeaway is a lot more nuanced than saying that additives in UPFs destroy your microbiome and make you fat. It's that food structure and fiber can affect how much dietary energy becomes available to us, and foods interaction with the gut microbiome may be part of that equation. Okay, so yes, this was a lengthy two-parter here, so if you made it this far, hoping for like the got-you moment, of a singular explanation, I'm quite sorry, but that is almost never how science works.

Starting point is 00:17:36 But I think the bottom line is that we cannot imagine ultra processing as one singular biological exposure with one singular mechanism. Like Nova Four foods typically bundled together a cluster of characteristics that all interact to play a role in our health. Often they're easy to eat quick, energy dense, low in fiber and protein, super delicious, aggressively marketed, available in big portions,

Starting point is 00:18:06 and perhaps most importantly, displace whole foods that do provide more volume and hunger-crushing compounds like fiber. And then layered on top of that web of factors, maybe some additional effects of particular additives, processing methods, or packaging exposures that were still trying to to understand. And that is why it has been so difficult to answer this question cleanly. Because when you compare an ultra-processed diet to a whole-food diet, you're not just changing like one thing. You're changing everything. And so I get that our busy, rule-loving brain loves a clear black and white rule book where like whole foods are good and processed foods are bad. But real life doesn't actually work like that, right? So time, money, food skills, kitchen access, mental and physical bandwidth,

Starting point is 00:19:03 these are all real resources that factor into our food choices every day. And in my professional opinion, convenience has tremendous nutritional value when it helps somebody feed themselves. So here's where I land after dedicating weeks of my life to nerding out on this. First, don't use Nova as your personal food toxicity score. Nova may be helpful at a population level, but it does not tell us whether an individual food is a good choice. Two, judge processed foods by what they add to your diet and life, not merely by the fact that they come in a package. Does it give you protein, fiber, micronutrients, whole grains, fruit and veggies? Does it make a meal more satisfied?

Starting point is 00:19:56 Does it help you eat something balanced on a day where perhaps you otherwise wouldn't? Like, a high fiber fortified cereal with some Greek yogurt and frozen berries may technically be ultra-processed and still make for an incredibly nutritious breakfast. Number three, consider food structure, satiety, and the experience you have around that food. Like, you don't have to obsessively chew every bite like four dozen times. But if most of your food is being inhaled very quickly in the car or in front of a screen, slowing down and adding in more fiber, volume, protein, and foods with a more intact physical structure may make that meal more satisfying.

Starting point is 00:20:45 And this is also where my hunger-crushing-carbo method fits in beautifully. If you want chips, have the chips. But instead of mindlessly shoveling them back from the bag, put some chips on a plate. plate with perhaps some veggies and some cheese to support more physical satiety and emotional satisfaction. Nutrition by addition, not restriction. And finally, zoom out. Honestly, this is what basically every wellness trend or something. The new Subaru Cross Trek hybrid is the most fuel-efficient cross-track yet. That means less time filling your tank and more time filling your day. More court time, more ride time, more lake time, more camp time, more go time.

Starting point is 00:21:31 The new 2027 Subaru Cross Trek hybrid. Consumer Reports top-rated subcompact SUV. Stop by your local Subaru dealership or visit Subaru.ca to learn more. Consumer reports that's not indoors products or services. Sensationalized nutrition fear of message depends on you. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees, earn an average of over $26 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields like software development and information

Starting point is 00:22:08 technology. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. The big picture. There is no evidence that one yogurt containing an emulsifier is going to, you know, ruin your microbiome or give you diabetes or cause chronic inflammation. Despite what your TikTok feed might suggest, nutrition is way more nuanced than just like a red flag on a food scanning app. And if we want to really understand it for ourselves, we definitely need to get more comfortable living in the gray. But on that note, that is all that I have for you guys today. I loved this conversation so, so much. It was genuinely so fascinating to dig into this research.

Starting point is 00:23:00 So I would really love it if you would give me a nice little comment or share this episode with a friend. Also, if you want more insight into my evidence-based approach to eating well for your goals, check out the links in the show notes where you can order or purchase my best-selling book, The Hunger Cushing Combo Method. But until next time, signing off with Science and SASS. I'm Abby Sharp. Thanks for listening. And here's the legal language here, folks.

Starting point is 00:23:23 But everything that you saw or heard in this episode is for entertainment and educational purposes only. It is never a replacement for medical advice. So I always recommend working one-on-one with a health care provider for your unique needs.

Bite Back with Abbey Sharp - Are Additives REALLY to Blame for the Risks of Ultra Processed Foods? (You Might be SHOCKED)

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