Stuff You Should Know - How Ultraprocessed Foods Work

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

Ultraprocessed is a new term for junk food, but it means much more than that – it’s also a cautionary tale for the way we’re supposed to cook and eat, using real food and sitting down with friends and family. But who has the time and money to do that?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's even here and this is Stuff You Should Know. Welcome everybody. Welcome. Yet another food.

Well, I was going to classify this. I don't think this belongs with our food, like coffee beans and stuff like that, but food industry. Sure. Sweet. Can't stop, can't stop, can't stop talking about food. That's what I say. I love it. This is more, yeah, food industry, like massive problem the world faces now, that kind of thing. It's in that suite, like the huge problem suite. That's where I would put it. Yeah, we do and it's growing every day unfortunately because we haven't solved the single one, Chuck, even though we've tried. I know, we're trying. But what we're talking about today are called ultra-processed foods and a lot of people say, you mean junk food? And yeah, it is junk food, but it's applying

science and public health to the idea of what to do about junk food because as people look into it more and more, they find more and more evidence that it's as bad for you as you think it is, maybe even worse. But it's also painfully obvious that it's so fully entrenched in cultures around the world that it's not going anywhere. You can't just get rid of junk food. People survive on junk food as we'll see. So we have to figure out then how to balance those two things, the presence of junk food and the harm that junk food can do to your health. Yeah, and I would even say, and I'm sure you would agree that calling it junk food, I think a lot of people might think like, well, I don't eat Cheetos. And I hate that we're going to have to just rattle off brands like that.

I love a Cheeto every now and then. Sure. Cheese Pulsar the crunchy kind. Oh, no, no, no. The ones that look like little caveman clubs. They do look like that too. When I was a kid, I used to, I didn't eat many Cheetos then either just because we didn't have no money to buy Cheetos. We had whatever the off brand was that came in like gigantic bags. Chocho's. Yeah, probably. But I hate that we're going to have to name brands here and there like that as reference. But let's just say Cheetos. But people might think, oh, I don't eat Cheetos. So I'm good. That's not true, though. There are a lot of foods that you probably eat that you don't realize you may not call junk food. But if you look at the back of the package, you're like, oh, wait a minute, there's like 14

ingredients and two of them sound like food. Yeah. And that's a really good indicator, though, what you're eating is ultra processed food. And that actual, that term ultra processed food, you may have heard before, but it's a relatively recent development. I think it was 2010 when a Brazilian epidemiologist named Carlos Montero came up with it as part of like a four point food group. It was pretty obvious, but sure. It was, but what he did was not obvious. It was actually pretty revolutionary because at the time in Brazil in 2010 and still today in the United States and plenty of other countries, there was a focus on the food groups as we know them, like grains and cereals, fruits and vegetables, fish, meat, dairy, that kind of stuff, right?

We still talk about that here today in the United States. So what this guy said was like, that is so ridiculously confusing. And it's such a problem to keep up with that I'm going to basically take it upon myself to reclassify food into easier to understand stuff. And that's where he came up with ultra processed food. But he actually came up with it from an observation, Chuck, that was kind of like a mystery at first. It sounds like a setup to me. Take it, Chuck. Chuck. Just so people know, we don't write down, set Chuck up for the next bit. No, no. It's just very organic. It is and it's getting clunkier as we're entering 14th and 15th year. Organic and clunky. Rather than taking it as a setup, you're like, sounds like a setup. Yeah, he did notice

something. He realized that the purchase of actual sugar by Brazilians had gone down a lot between the 1980s and 2000s, but obesity and type two diabetes were still on the rise. And I guess he thought it's almost as if they're getting all that sugar from other things that aren't just bags of sugar. Right. And so he looked to the package food industry and came up with a system to classify it and never has there been a system that should be an acronym that's not so frustrating. It's even capitalized Nova in OVA. I'm like, what does it stand for? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Right. Not your ordinary variant analysis. Yeah, I worked on it even. That's what I could come up with. Oh, really? Yeah. I think the reason he chose Nova is because Nova means new star.

So I think he was saying this is providing a new North Star to guide people toward nutrition, I guess. Or that he is the new star of talking about food. Right. That's what he talks about himself as for sure. So I guess we should talk about the four groups. Group one is what you might call like whole foods, which are it's just food. It's unprocessed. It's fruit and it's meat and it's the eggs and stuff like that, you know, comes out of a chicken's butt and into your mouth. Hopefully there's something in between that happens though. Right. And that's a good point too, because people be like, well, meat's processed. Yes. Group one also includes minimally processed foods. So the distinction isn't that it's totally unprocessed. Right. The distinction is that it's

substantially intact as it's been pulled apart and put back together again. And it's nutrient composition as it exists in the cow that's walking around or the chicken that's walking around or the plant that's growing remains basically the same in this form, this minimally processed form. That's right. That's group one. That's what you should shoot for. Group two are processed foods, a little more processed. And, you know, we're talking about oils, packaged herbs. These are things that are used as ingredients or things to cook other things. Right. Yeah. So if you put group one and group two together, what you're doing is cooking and you're coming up with basically group three foods and basically anything that you cook in your kitchen using normal ingredients,

even things like cakes and cookies and things like that. If you're using sugar and butter and basically whole foods from groups one or two, you're coming up with group three, which are processed foods, but they're recommended processed foods. So the kind of foods that you're making yourself or if you're buying it at the store, it's being processed in a way that is still retaining as much of the nutrients as possible with as few additional ingredients as possible. And the ingredients like you were saying before, you can understand what they're saying in the ingredient list. Yeah. Like if you see some strawberry preserves on the shelf of a grocery store and it says, and this is actually in our research and something we'll point out

later again, probably, but food brands are starting to tout stuff like this. Like I bought some, it's, we don't eat a lot of like frozen treats like ice cream and stuff, but I got some because it's summertime. I wanted to get my daughter some like a little treat, you know, a little frozen treat like some fruit pops. Okay. And when you go down the fruit pop aisle, that aisle especially is made up of things where they'll say like, three ingredients and big letters on the front, like, you know, cane sugar and water and real fruit and partially extruded weirdness. Yeah, that's the third ingredient. But that would be a group three. And there are, you know, I think the bell has been ringing. So food companies are beginning to tout things like fewer

ingredients here and there. So they don't fall into group four, which is the ultra processed foods that we're going to talk about today. And these are, you know, contain a lot of engineered ingredients. When you look at the back, that's when you're going to see things like soy protein and hydrogenated fats and things like that and things you can't even pronounce. Right. And the longer the list of ingredients is, the likelier it is to be in group four. The more difficult to understand ingredients are probably in group four. And then also, even without looking at the ingredient list, you can usually catch a group four type ultra processed food because it's heavily marketed. There's lots of colors and neat logos and stuff

like that. And you've seen ads for it on TV. Maybe a cartoon character. That is definitely a hallmark. Right. That's a definite hallmark of ultra processed foods. So you can usually tell from the packaging and then to kind of meet the industry where it's going to some people who are into the Nova system of food groups say, actually, if you see a packaged food or a pre-prepared food that is making health claims, you should actually take that as a signal that it's not actually healthy. That healthy foods don't have to tout that kind of stuff. Unhealthy foods are the ones that you have to watch out for when they say healthy, low fat, all that stuff. It actually means it's ultra processed. Right. Like you won't see a bunch of bananas with a sticker

that says now with more potassium. No. And if you want to kind of imagine what the difference is between where we are between ultra processed foods and actual whole foods, like imagine Mountain Dew, the Mountain Dew logo, all of the Mountain Dew advertising you've ever heard. Do you remember they used to say it was extreme with just an X? That is like classic ultra processed food marketing. Yeah. For kids. Yes, for sure. Now imagine that same ad campaign was for pears. Like it'll make your brain do a somersault. Just trying to even, just trying to come up with it. Look at that shape. It really kind of brings into stark contrast the difference between ultra processed foods and whole foods from groups one, two, or three. Yeah, it's pretty sad.

And it's, they've been, I mean, there's some staggering facts in here. The first one that I came across was right here on our first page where it says that in the US and the UK ultra processed foods make up more than half of the calories that we eat, period. And they are on the rise. They've shown that the percentage of adults, US adults diets that are consists of UPFs or ultra processed foods went from 53.5 to 57. And that's from, let's say 2002 to 2017, which is a long time, but, you know, a four percentage point rise in like a total caloric intake is substantial. Yeah. And that means that since it was at 53.5% already, American adults have gotten at least half of their calories for more than 20 years, at least half of their calories

from junk food for more than two decades. And that's just the adults. Like if you look into studies of ultra processed foods, by far the largest consumers of them are younger kids, in particular younger boys. So if our, if adults are getting that much, I mean, it just makes you wonder how much, how much kids are getting. And it just so happens that that's our next stat. Yeah. Kids over an 18 year period from 99 to 2018, they went from 61% to 67%. And they found that, you know, it's generally across all races, save one, which is pretty amazing and awesome. Hispanic adults don't eat nearly as much ultra processed foods as other people. And they've also found that it's basically across income demographics, although lower income

people with lower incomes do eat more UPFs, but it has been rising across almost all demographics. Yeah. And globally too, like the US has long been feeding our kids and eating ourselves the ultra processed foods. But it's long been kind of a hallmark of a wealthier country, ironically, because ultra processed foods are so cheap compared to whole foods. But in other countries, as they started to develop more and more economically, their intake of ultra processed foods has increased in step two. So you see ultra processed foods making up a larger and larger share of the caloric intake of all people around the world. It's becoming a new kind of diet that wherever you go in the world, you're going to be able to find basically the same food

and it's wrapped in extreme packaging and contain something that was extruded and dusted with something that used to be cheese. All right. That's a great setup. Let's take a break and we'll talk a little bit about where, or at least what some people consider the big bang of UPFs started right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS

because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikala. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not

smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast,

or wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, Chuck, extrusion, I was like, I think I know what that is. I just want to make sure. You remember the Play-Doh Fun Factory? Sure. It had that thing that you put the Play-Doh in one end and then you pulled the lever and it squeezed out like a star shape or a moon shape. That's extruder. That's extrusion. Yes. But they never called it the extruder in my day. They call it the Fun Factory. The Star Maker. Sure. All right. So if you want to look to where some people consider the Big Bang or at least as Anastasia Marx de Salsado, yeah? Salsado? Yes. Anastasia is a journalist who wrote

a book called Combat Ready Kitchen, colon, how the US military shapes the way you eat. And Lay's claim to the fact that World War II is known, at least to this journalist, as the Big Bang of ultra-processed foods and that revolution, we should point out this is nothing new. Canning, I realize, comes from a competition that was used or held to help feed Napoleon's army. So there's been a long history of food R&D when it comes to feeding lots and lots of soldiers on the battlefield in a way that makes sense because you obviously have to have food that's not going to spoil, stuff that light and that travels. And what it kind of comes down to is getting rid of as much water as you can from food. Right. Because that prevents spoilage.

It's, like you said, makes it lighter. So it's easier to ship and move around. But it still should retain mostly the same nutrient density, which is what you're really after. And that's a huge thing that kind of came out of World War II, I believe, which was drying food, learning to dry, not just food, but also coffee. And apparently all of that, that drying process came out of a way to dry and store plasma for later use. And they said, you know what would also go through this process really well? Coffee. That was it. Pretty amazing. Yeah. There's some, I mean, that is just one tiny little fact. I think the one that really got me was

something like the McRib was actually born out of this same military research into something called, and this is an album title if I've ever heard one, fabricated modules of meat. That's a Diarrhea Planet album. Oh man. They're not together anymore. We heard from people. I think I knew they weren't together, but they'll always be together in my heart. And this is very interesting too. What they've started doing was found out a way to remove or what to end up with something called intermediate moisture foods. Yeah, that's huge. So if you think of like a chewy granola bar, that thing is chewy. It's not super dry,

but it's not super wet. And the power bar is something that was born directly from World War II. There was something called a Logan bar that was packed in the soldiers kits as a meal replacement, but it was designed purposefully to not taste very good. So the soldiers wouldn't just dive in after it. It's sort of like a last resort thing. And therein lies the power bar. So if you're ever like, these things taste terrible, you can thank the U.S. Army for deliberately making them taste terrible so that you don't want to eat them like they're kudos. Remember kudos? Oh yeah, I loved the kudos. They were great. They were like a cross between a candy bar and a granola bar. And they somehow

were greater than the sum of all its parts. And those were the kind of things that you're like, oh, I like this. I think I'll have the rest of the box. And that's another hallmark of ultra process foods as we'll see. I think though we can now not avoid it any longer. We need to talk about process cheese and cheese dust. Yeah. Yeah. What the army ended up calling jungle cheese because they developed a new way to make cheese that people have been making cheese for millennia. And it was great, but it didn't travel well. And so the army or I guess, you know, the military industrial complex said, let's find a way to make better cheese that can travel. And they did it. They did.

So one of the huge challenges was as you dry out cheese, if you don't do it right, the oil separates out of the cheese. It becomes sweaty and the cheese you have left with is oilless and dry and not good at all. So somebody figured out there was an actual guy, George Sanders, who was a USDA dairy scientist in 1943. He figured out that if you dry the cheese at really low temperatures, the protein actually encapsulates the lipids, the fats and locks them in place. So then after that, you can pulverize it and dry it even further and the fat will stay locked into it. And then you can take that and you can either turn it into powder or you can reconstitute it into whatever shape you want, specifically slice cheese, which is those yellow

squares of cheese. That's what happens to them. Yeah. But when it came to the powder, like if you've ever made that delicious, still delicious Kraft Mac and cheese and not the kind with the the packet real squeezy cheese. Yeah. I'm talking that yellow, orange powder and you dump it in there with a little butter, maybe a little heavy cream if you really want to treat yourself. Sure. And you wonder what the heck is this? It is cheese. It's just cheese that has been ultra-processed thanks to George Sanders and he would shred it up and then dry it out and then it would harden up and then he would grind it and then dehydrate it even more. And eventually you do that over and over and you get down to that beautiful orange powder. Yeah. What's confusing

is there seems to be a discrepancy between who first invented cheese powder. Was it George Saunders in 1943? If so, then how did Kraft come out with their macaroni and cheese or Kraft dinner if you're in Canada back in 1937 with powdered cheese? So it's weird. There's a weird misunderstanding around who created cheese powder, but it does seem to have come about in the either the late 1930s, early 1940s, possibly through military research. But it was 1948 that we got our first cheese dust snack. Yeah. When the Frito Company, I guess, I mean, was it a Cheeto or was it like a cheesy Frito? My friend, it was a Cheeto or a Chochot as what you grew up with. I worked with the director years ago, Tom Schiller, who was the, you remember the black

and white SNL shorts from the Belushi days? Yeah. He was like Al Franken's writing partner, I think. Yeah. I was like Schiller's kind of head PA when he came to town. He would request me because we were buddies and he was great with like one of the best dudes I've ever worked for. But he, as a gag would, he didn't even like Cheetos, but he would eat Cheetos on set with a white surgical glove just to make people laugh. That's funny. There's these little finger protectors that look like tiny condoms that you put on your fingertips. And I used to use those to eat buffalo wings just for effect. Well, but that also has a practical effect because that stink can go to other places, you know? If you rub your eyes or... Oh, sure, sure, sure. But I still rub my eyes with little

finger condoms on anyway. I'm just that dumb. No, you got to take those things off. I forget every time. Or I accidentally swallow one when I'm licking my fingers. I don't get the hot wings. I haven't eaten a buffalo wing in years. Oh, Chuck, you're missing out. I get the lemon pepper now if I get anything. Okay, that's good too. But I think you can mix it up a little bit. All right, they always, this is no good for my digestive system. So you said something that I think is, I hope your digestive system comes back around so you can eat some buffalo wings. I appreciate that. But you said something a little while back that I think is worth kind of fleshing out. And that is that this stuff that's cheese dust used to be cheese. It's actually made

from real cheese. Yeah. And that is an argument that a lot of people make when people poo poo junk food, ultra processed food, that kind of stuff. It basically amounts to you're afraid of science is what you're responding to. This is still food. In some cases, it's more nutritional than the whole food it was made from. Yeah. So what's the problem? And we'll get into that whole thing. But I just wanted to kind of point that out because you did, I mean, you did hit on something that's worth saying. Yeah, we're just Luddites. I mean, sure, that's, I'm a convert though, through some of this one particular study that we'll talk about that I think is very mind changing. Ooh. All right. That's a nice tease. But first, Chuck, I think we have to talk about corn because

you can't really do all this. You can't make very cheap ultra processed foods without very cheap base ingredients. And corn is about as cheap as they come in the United States. It is now because they over the years figured out how to grow corn much more efficiently and much more densely. The 1920s and 30s is when they started to develop these new strains of corn. The corn ears themselves are actually bigger and they could pack them in a lot more. And I believe between the 30s and the 2000s, an acre of corn yield jumped from 30 bushels to about 140, which is a big, I mean, what is that a four fold increase? A little more, actually. Yeah. It's like four, almost five. Yeah. We did it. We got there.

They got there, or we got there, math wise, but they got there corn wise. And now corn is the largest crop in the United States. It accounts for about 25% of all crop sales in the U.S. with only about a third of that being used for actual food and some other industrial uses that don't include ethanol or livestock feed. Right. Right. But because we're feeding most of that corn to our livestock and then we eat the livestock, we're in turn still consuming the corn. Yeah, in a very young ones way. Right, sure. But I didn't get that, but I love the young ones so nice. But the reason corn is so profitable and so well grown and so tinkered with is because it's so heavily subsidized in the United States. The government will pay you to grow corn. Sometimes

they'll pay you to stop growing other crops to grow corn. And if your crop goes bad, they'll give you money for it because you try to grow corn. It's just extremely subsidized, which means that there's always a market for it. You're always going to be able to sell it. So lots and lots of people grow corn. So that's what we use as our staple crop to make almost all of our other food from. And that was discussed at length in the really great book Dorito Effect by Mark Schatzker, which we talked about in our junk food episode. Because remember, we did one just on junk food. This is different. This is slightly different. We grew a little corn growing up a couple of times. I think it was kind of a pain. So we didn't end up doing it more than like once

or twice. But we had a very robust garden over about an acre. I lived out in the woods like a you know, like a yokel. I've talked about canning our own food and stuff. But corn was something we grew a little bit every now and then. How much do you want to talk about high fructose corn syrup? I mean, we did a whole episode on it. So how much do you want to get into this? Should we tell people I would stun again? Yeah, I don't know that we ever talked about how it's made. Did we? It seemed all new to me. No, we talked about it. We had to have. Well, I mean, it's a typical, it's a good, great example of, wow, you really just shifted from this corn story of you growing it to whether or not we're going to talk about high fructose corn syrup. It was like a whiplash.

And now we're talking about it. Yeah, clunky in year 14. Well, why don't you go over it then? Because I'm done with it. No, I'm just kidding. You should talk about it though, because it is pretty interesting. Yeah. And the reason why it's so interesting is because high fructose corn syrup is just one of the many things that are made out of a single like batch of corn kernels. That's what makes it such a great poster child for ultra-processed foods. Because out of a single kernel of corn, you get everything from the corn oil from the germ, from the fiber from the shell gets sent off to be used in breakfast cereal. So if you see like corn bran or corn fiber or something like that, it was separated out from what eventually became high fructose corn syrup.

The stuff that's left over is corn starch and corn gluten. And gluten gets fed to the livestock. And the corn starch you could just use around your kitchen. They use it in building materials. And that you can also use it to create high fructose corn syrup. So just that one process of taking some of that corn converts it into all these different things from building products to high fructose corn syrup to cattle feed, just with just one type of corn. Dent corn is what it's corn is what it's called. Yeah, it is. It's one of those things where you wish HFCS wasn't so bad for you and in everything. Because when you look at that process that you just described, it's hard not to sit back and just then as science, food science and pat themselves on the back.

And just say, what a amazing process we developed that all of this stuff is being used in all these different areas. And in the end, we get our evil ingredient. Right. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. But I mean, not all of it is evil. Like if you've ever had a cardboard box that you had trouble pulling apart to recycle, because the adhesive was so strong, you can bet that was made with corn starch. Or adhesive. Yeah, the adhesive, industrial adhesives. Some of them power some of our machinery. Ethanol is made from a lot of corn. So it is like a real like, pat on the back for science, like you were saying. It's just that nutrition science, as we'll see, has not figured out how to take that stuff and make it work for humans the way that we can make a machine work with ethanol

derived from corn. Yeah. And I think where they, I was about to say where they aired, but they would say this was the genius part of it, was the corn syrup that they end up with after all those processes is dextrose, basically. And if they would have stopped there, it might not have been so bad, but they went dextrose just isn't as sweet as we need it to be. It doesn't taste like that sweet, sweet sucrose. So let's make it sweeter. Let's process it more and add an enzyme to it. And some pressure and some temperature and bada bing, bada boom, we'll turn it into fructose. And that sort of, that final step of the process is really where it nutritionally went wrong, I think. Well, yeah, because don't forget to add the hydrochloric acid to turn it into fructose,

too, you know? Well, I mean, that's kind of one of the first steps, right? Or is that toward the end? That's where you, when you add like pressure and heat and everything, I believe that's where it converts it. So yeah, I mean, like, it's the epitome of what people call like franken food. And it's really, really easy to tee off on if you're a whole food proponent. And there are a lot of whole food proponents. They got a ton of traction, especially in like the early 2000s, early 2010s, thanks in large part to Michael Pollan's omnivorous dilemma, which came out in 2007 and basically introduced everybody to the concept that like, we're eating all wrong, essentially. I want to point out that's your, that was your second Al Franken reference.

Tom Schiller's writing partner, and then franken food. Was that, that was not Al Franken reference? Oh, was it? No, although now I'm picturing him like eating like lucky charms and a couple are just like falling out of his mouth onto his shirt. I have a joke there, but I can't tell it. So yeah, the omnivorous dilemma, there were a few other books that followed for Michael Pollan in defensive food, very big book, and then food rules and one called cooked about eight or nine years ago. And if you've ever been anywhere and seen this slogan on a wall, on a poster, eat food, not too much, mostly plants, that comes for Michael Pollan. And that has become a bit of a rallying cry for the, the eat better whole

foods movement, eat food, like, you know, food, food, and don't eat too much of it and try to mostly eat plants. And if you literally do that, then you're probably going to have a pretty good diet. Yeah. And they have some other like rules of thumb too, like don't eat food that your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food, which means you could still eat Oreos because they've been around since the 19th century. Hooray. Also, I think we've talked about how grocery stores are laid out before, at least in a video, if not an episode, and how if you hug the outside perimeter, you're going to get the whole foods. It's the middle aisles that the processed foods take up. That's another good one. Yeah, we just talked about that. And then avoid foods with like

more than five ingredients. That's a little restrictive, but you get the point. The fewer the ingredients, the likelier it is to just be whole foods without a whole bunch of added stuff and tinkering and engineering to make it taste the way it's supposed to taste. Yeah. And there's also, you know, we should talk just for a second about the other thing wrapped up in this, which is food culture. Poland and is it Monteiro? Is that what we're saying? Yeah, or Monteiro. Monteiro? They both talk a lot about food culture, which is not just the things you're putting in your mouth, but how you look at food and dining in general, which is to say that they believe, and I would tend to agree probably, that too many people

these days are just grabbing food as they quickly move about life from appointment to appointment or commitment to commitment, rather than the days where you could cook a meal and sit down as a family and eat it together. And he's not just saying like, you know, this is good for the family, even though it is, they're just talking about just societal and cultural, I guess, norms and how they've changed over the years and how we should strive to sort of get back to that, because chances are if you're sitting down at a table with your family and you're eating together, you're probably not, you know, dumping a bunch of chicken nuggets on a plate. Probably not. You may. That's what we did in the 70s sort of.

Even if you are, though, it's still probably preferable to eating them in the car while you're hurrying, you know, to piano practice or something like that, at least you're sitting down together. So there's that aspect of culture to it. One of the problems though, Chuck, is if you've ever, you know, taken steps to replace some of your ultra-processed foods with some, you know, whole foods that you cook yourself, the difference in time that it takes to prepare those foods is really significant and it can be really tough. And that just kind of goes to underscore why ultra-processed foods have become so ubiquitous. They fit really, really well into our current culture of like, go, go, go. Go get another thing done. Sign up for another extracurricular activity.

Like you can eat these foods like anywhere. They're available anywhere. And they, you can basically just snack throughout the whole day. You'll never even need to eat a meal and you can do it in your car the whole time while you're going from place to place. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the big criticisms of people like Poland and Monteiro, which is like, who was cooking this stuff back in the day? It was probably a housewife in the kitchen or a domestic servant or previous to that and, you know, previous years enslaved people. And it's really easy to sort of sit back and say, if you're in a certain income bracket and say, hey, slow down, cook your meal, you're going to get criticized probably. It comes across as

a little tone deaf, especially when Poland says something that he said in 2009 in an article that 70s feminists thoughtlessly trampled the pleasures of cooking and their rush to get women out of the kitchen. He did say that men should also cook, but like, you can't lob out a statement like that and not expect blowback. Like someone has to cook these meals and to income families, it's like, it's tough. There's not a lot of time to do that and to shop for these foods. So we see why it's a problem, basically. Definitely. And there's more problems to, you know, that you could use to critique the whole idea of, you know, eating whole foods and all of the extra time and effort it takes. But I say we take a break and then we come back

and we talk about the health benefits or problems of UPFs. Let's do it. Okay. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide

you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikar and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in

the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay Chuck, so there's one thing that a lot of people say is like there's some foods out there

that are more nutritious for you in their ultra-processed form than they would be if you made it yourself. The problem seems to be this, that there's become a focus on nutrients, like the whole fat-free thing back in like the 80s and early 90s, the low-carb thing. Like we focus on nutrients and food has become not food anymore in its ultra-processed form. It's become, I saw it described as a delivery system for nutrients. We're just obsessed with nutrients. That's what you see touted on the packages of ultra-processed food that you're supposed to kind of take as a warning signal to stay away from. The problem is, is that it's becoming more and more apparent that we can engineer food all we want, but we don't understand the

dynamic of how nutrients within a food interact with one another to faithfully recreate them. And so the food that we're creating is substantially less healthy than the whole food versions of it. The way that Montero puts it is that ultra-processed foods are intrinsically unhealthy. Even if you don't compare them to anything else, if you eat ultra-processed foods, you're going to suffer greater health problems than you would if you didn't eat or eat less amounts of ultra-processed foods. And that is the entire problem with ultra-processed foods right now. Well, and that goes lockstep with the fact that they are engineered to be, I guess he calls it hyper palatable formations. They're sold in large servings and they're easy to eat a lot of and they're made

to be easy to eat a lot of. They've actually looked at like the structure of some of these processed foods, they make it harder to feel satisfied. Like you literally chemically aren't achieving satiation as quickly with these foods, so you're going to eat more of them. That's why somebody can sit down and eat a sleeve of Pringles with the TV on without really thinking about it. Or those intermediate moisture foods that are chewy and stay chewy for five years on the shelf. Like they found that you, with ultra-processed foods, you typically chew less in one of the ways that we become satiated. One of the ways that our body knows that it's full is, I guess it counts the number of times that we chew. And just because we're chewing less and we're eating more,

that in and of itself makes ultra-processed foods less healthy than whole foods. But critics of the anti-ultra-processed food camp, even proponents of ultra-processed foods say, okay, that's a problem and that's something that can be designed out. If you put nutrient against nutrient, if you put fiber against fiber, calorie against calorie, vitamin D against vitamin D in whole foods and ultra-processed foods, they're basically the same thing. People might eat too many ultra-processed foods, maybe you don't chew as much, but still if we change that, they would be the same. And that was the big critique on Montero and ultra-processed foods in general for almost 10 years until a really, really important study came out in 2019 out of...

The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Maryland. So this guy, it was a study led by Kevin Hall, Chuck, and it's considered the gold standard of nutritional studies. It was a randomized control trial with just 20 participants, but it was so well designed that there's basically no critics of its methodology or findings. It's just roundly touted as finally evidence that ultra-processed foods are, like Montero said, intrinsically unhealthy. Yeah, and we should point out they did this study with just the 20 people because before this, everything you would ever read about UPS were correlative studies and meta-analyses among huge, huge populations. So they... Kevin Hall actually dug in on a smaller

level. And like you said, 20 people spent two weeks and they were eating either almost all ultra-processed foods or almost all unprocessed foods. But the key here, like you were talking about, is they matched these diets. Chlorically, they matched it, their protein, their fiber, their fats and sugars. They tried to match them, so they were basically equal. And then they said, all right, 20 people, you 10, go and eat however much you want, and you 10, go eat however much you want. And then they rated those diets in the end, just this was, of course, subjective, but they rated them as equally as good tasting. But the ultra-processed food people ate 500 extra calories per day. Yes. So that's like eating an extra Big Mac a day. Imagine if every day you just

also ate an extra Big Mac on top of everything else you ate. Sounds so good. Or an extra Taco Bell beefy five-layer burrito if you're into that. That's getting even better. So yeah, it's good in moderation on occasion, but eating one every single day on top of the food that you ate. That's problematic. And so they also found, Chuck, that the people who were in the ultra-processed food group, they gained about two pounds over the two weeks while the control group lost about two pounds. So they found like, no, this is actually, this stuff is actually, when you compare apples to apples, the ultra-processed food is actually unhealthier. Like it was finally proven what basically everyone suspected. But because it hadn't been proven, there was room to argue against it.

And since then, it's become harder and harder to argue in favor of ultra-processed foods, at least as they exist today. Yeah. I mean, that's just like how healthy they are. There are all kinds of environmental concerns. We've talked a lot about biodiversity, agro-biodiversity, and putting all your eggs in one basket. Crop-wise is really bad if disease comes along. Like we've seen it happen time and time again through history. And we're at the point now, this is another sort of fact of the show for me. There are hundreds of thousands of edible plant species, but more than half of the calories that humans on planet Earth consume come from rice, corn, and wheat. That's it. That's not agro-biodiversity. No, it's putting all of your

corn in one basket. That's right, which is a good way to carry corn. It is. I'm not going to basket. No, it's particularly a green and yellow basket. That's right. But agro-biodiversity is, it's an extra concern because it's kind of like by limiting our diet globally, we're not only harming our health, we're harming the ecosystems of Earth's health as well. And then in addition to that, all of that slick packaging and wrappers and all that, those require natural resources to make and they are automatically converted into waste after you are sold that ultra-processed food. And if you consider Earth's natural processes as belonging to all humankind, it can kind of start to tick you off that there's companies out there that are using these natural resources to market

their extremely unhealthy foods to immediately be converted into waste. It's kind of irksome, you know? It is. As for Montero and Brazil, they have made some big changes. About eight years ago in 2014, their government created basically a whole new health guideline kind of based on this NOVA framework. And they don't categorize foods according to like how much fat they have and how much fiber and how many other nutrients they have. They base it on that NOVA framework and talk about food culture a lot. They say to eat regularly and carefully in appropriate environments and whenever possible in company, like, you know, you've got people with you. And some other countries have followed suit over there, Peru, Uruguay, Ecuador, France has jumped

on board as far as saying, just try and avoid ultraprocessed foods all together or at least try and limit them. And we haven't seen it as much in the US aside from what I mentioned earlier, which is certain manufacturers sort of seeing the future and knowing where this is headed and trying to, I guess, get ahead of the curve and tout how few ingredients they have. Sure. One of the problems is in the US that, so Brazil said like, this is our new thing, these are our food groups, Montero's NOVA system. That's what we do. In the US, we're still doing those that food pyramid kind of thing. And the USDA from what I can tell has no official position on ultraprocessed foods or how much we should eat or not eat.

They will at some point. Well, apparently back in the 70s, George McGovern from either South or North Dakota tried to get the government to issue guidelines saying like, you should eat less red meat and dairy, I think, because there were studies coming out that were saying it was bad for you. And he got ousted from office in the next election because of that by the Cattle Association. And it kicked off a long trend to where food producers lobby the government to not take official positions against something. Instead, they might target nutrients, macromolecules, things like that, like eat less fat, not don't eat so much red meat. And that kind of has the United States in a quagmire right now where our scientists are fully aware of like the health

risks of eating certain kinds of food over others. And yet the government is standing mute as far as advising citizens what to do or not do, which means that marketers can fill in that vacuum and argue, no, it's fine. Just eat this. It's good. Yeah. I mean, I think people like us who do this kind of research and I would argue like a lot of our listeners are genuinely curious people who see a headline about a nutritional study and they will click on that and read that. But the majority of people don't. And they may look to official health eating guidelines of the USDA and not say, oh, look at this article I saw on this website that clearly says to avoid this or to avoid red meat or something like that where like the lobby can't touch that.

Right. But also there's other ways that the government can directly influence your diet. It can say, okay, it's actually really bad to eat as much corn as we're eating in all these different ways. We're going to subsidize soy. Apparently soy is not subsidized almost at all. So maybe they'll start subsidizing soy over corn and that will make the food producers start using more soy rather than more corn and then people will start eating soy, which may or may not be healthier. So the government can make these kind of macro decisions that affect people's diets even more than just issuing guidelines too. Yeah. And some people say, just stick your nose out of it and I'll do what I want.

Yes, which is totally fair. It's completely fair. But if from a public health standpoint, when you look at meta analysis that says the higher amount of ultra-processed foods you eat, the higher your risk of death, cardiovascular disease, type two diabetes, etc., it is. It's a problem. It's alarming, especially if you're seeing it developing earlier and earlier and younger kids who are being raised on ultra-processed foods. And as they grow into adults, they're going to have no idea how to cook or what foods to eat and won't be able to pass that onto their kids. We're looking at a transitional generation right now and it's not a transition in any kind of positive way. Right. And to be clear, we're not arguing for some nanny state where the

government outlaws ultra-processed foods. We're talking about issuing fair and honest guidelines that people can still thumb their nose at if they want to. Right. And plus also, this is not a hit job against ultra-processed foods. There's a lot of people who say, again, we've come a really far away in fortifying foods through processing to cure certain diseases that used to happen, to prevent birth defects by adding folate to breakfast cereals. It's not processing itself. We don't quite know how to do it yet or we're adding too much sugar. We're adding too many trans fats and we need to go in and tinker with the tastes and the flavors and also the nutrient composition and then we'll have everybody

eating ultra-processed food that actually is good for you. Whether we're able to do that at any time soon as that remains to be seen. Yeah. There's a journalist named David H. Friedman who in 2013 in the Atlantic said, there are too many people and we literally can't feed the world on this delicious whole food that's affordable. So maybe the onus is on some of these companies to mess with their recipes a little bit. Maybe we should look to McDonald's to tweak their recipes just a little bit not to where it tastes like some drastically, not to push health food necessarily, but there are things you can do. They pointed out that the smell of vanilla can mask, if you reduce sugar content, it can mask that and trick you into thinking that it's still just a

sweet or they're plant-derived compounds that can replicate the effects of fat on the tongue. And basically you experience that satiation that allows you to stop eating and he's saying like we can do this, we can make our ultra-processed foods a little better at least. Yeah and other people argue like just because a food is ultra-processed doesn't necessarily mean it's harmful to you. There was a 2022 meta-analysis in the American Journal of Epidemiology found the highest consumption of ultra-processed foods was associated with the highest risk of death, but the highest consumption of breakfast cereal was associated with a much lower risk of death. So they kind of says like okay just because it's ultra-processed food does not make it inherently

bad and it also suggests that we may be able to make healthier ultra-processed foods. Again, the problem is it seems like nutritional science is not at a point where it can advise food companies on how to actually do that in a way that can actually replicate the nutrition you get from whole food. We just can't do it right now. Yeah and I think the truth is if a large fast food retail chain tweak their recipes to make them a little bit better, people may notice there may be a stink and then you know what people would still go there and eat that stuff. Yeah like Burger King has impossible burgers and I thought those were going to last about five days and they've been on the menu for years. So obviously some people are eating them which by the way that

is about as ultra-processed to food as you can find it just happens to be healthier. Not meat. I guess I don't know. Plant-based. Plant-based. There you go. Yeah I had to be on burger the other day. It was delicious. Talk about they're really good. Do they make you gassy? I mean I couldn't tell any difference. I'm always farting so who knows. Your vowels didn't step it up a little after? No. Business is usual. I have to like sleep in another room after. Really? Like an impossible burger. Yeah. Oh interesting. Okay. Yeah I'm considerate like that. Well I haven't had impossible. I don't know how much different they are from beyond. It's probably about the same thing right? It's basically the same although I will tell you this. I would buzz market Incognito's

chicken tenders. They are good. They nailed. Plant-based? Yes. They nailed chicken tenders. Like if you pull it apart and look at it you're like yes this is not chicken but it looks kind of like chicken and it tastes like chicken. That's why they do blindfold studies. Right exactly but they did a really good job. I would recommend those if you can find them. All right I'll have to try that because fried chicken is one of my Achilles heels as we know. Totally. You got anything else? I mean we could go on about this for hours if we wanted to. Oh I've got one more thing Chuck. I do have one more thing. So another huge critique is that whole foods, non-ultra process foods are typically much, much more expensive than ultra process foods and so it's a lot easier for people

to be like yeah just eat whole foods you know. Not only is that not taking into account the time that people don't have, it's also not taking into account the lower income that a lot of people have. So it's kind of shaming people for what their only option to eat is and that's a huge criticism of that kind of anti-ultra process food camp too. Well it kind of ties in with the tone deafness of just spend three hours shopping and cooking for your family and then sit down and eat it together like the 1950s. Exactly. So that's it for ultra process food for now until we do another episode on it in a few years probably. Ultra, ultra process foods. Right. Though somebody will come out with another name for junk food and we'll do an entire new episode on it. Or we'll

just get to that space food we all yearn for when we were kids where it's like a dinner pill. Yeah apparently space food sticks was like one of the first ultra process foods. It was Pillsbury. Did you ever have those? I mean I had that you know ice cream of the future stuff that eventually morphed into Dippin' Dots. These were more like an energy bar. Okay. Yeah. I don't think I had that. Oh well. Did it taste like ice cream? Maybe. Then it was made of little tiny BBs. Who knows. It is funny though how much like the army and NASA has influenced the food that we eat. Yeah for sure. I got nothing else though. So hats off to NASA and the army for coming up with the food we eat. That's right. If you want to know more about ultra process foods go start

reading up on it. There's a lot from both camps on the internet to satisfy you to satiate you. And since I said satiate it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this one of two kidney transplant emails we're going to read. We're going to read the next one in the next episode. Okay. But boy we heard some really good stuff and got great feedback and heard from some donors and some doctors. This is from an RN in South Dakota named Danielle. Hey guys long time fan first time writer. I've been waiting seven years to be able to contribute to your lovely show and that opportunity hit after your kidney donor rep. I'm a nurse who works in a small city hospital on the kidney transplant floor.

You did a great job with this info but I do want to inform you that anti-rejection medications must be taken for life although the dose might change. I think I said you can eventually get off of them which apparently is not true. We were just trying to be optimistic. And Chuck you said the fact of the show is that old kidneys stay in your body but here's the fact of this listener mail. I had a patient at one time with five kidneys in their body because they had been through several transplants. They had chronic disease. It caused each kidney to last about 10 or 15 years and trust me I was sure to pull up those radiology images to see. Wow. But apparently Danielle believes in patient privacy because Danielle did

not send those to me. That's nice. Thanks for spreading tolerance unbiased ish information and light conversation to the world. Very nice. Thanks a lot Danielle. Thank you for saving lives and mending broken kidneys. Yeah all five of them. If you want to be like Danielle and get in touch with us we'd love to hear from you. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey I'm Lance Bass host of the new I Heart Podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody ya everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer

give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys I'm Kaylee Shore. On my podcast Too Much to Say I share my thoughts on everything from music to martinis, social media, social anxiety, regrets to risky texts and so much more. I have been known to read my literal diary entries on my show and sometimes I do interviews with my crazy group of friends. So if you guys want to tune in you can hear new episodes of Too Much to Say every Wednesday on the National Podcast Network available on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to them.