"Is the Ultra-processed Food (UPF) concept useful, and for what goals?"

https://tabledebates.org/letterbox/is-the-ultra-processed-food-concept-useful

This is an example of a polite debate about UPF and how annoying this is.

Some of those speakers note, in line with what I'm seeing, that the UPF framework is being weaponized by the meat industry, especially the "beef sector". In this sense, the whole thing UPF/NOVA story seems to be a backdoor way of introduce "paleo diet" bullshit.

The most obvious sign of bullshit to me is the notion that if you use the same ingredients to make something at home, that's more healthful than buying the industrially made item with the same ingredients.

I can understand the hidden implication that the frequency alters the damage done. Basically, people may cook bad foods more rarely or as a celebration at home, for various reasons, and emphasizing this nudges people to eat less of that stuff, as opposed to buying that same stuff daily or weekly from a supermarket. You can bake a high-fat high-sugar cake, but that labor means that you do it a few times per year, not every week. But people don't learn anything about good nutrition, it's simply creating a phobia of industrially made food as a shitty heuristic.

Food isn't magically imbued with healthfulness because it's made at home. I actually come from a place where "home cooking" culture is a decadent tradition of high-fat and high-sugar foods and I've seen the damage up close.

#UPF #NOVA #ultraProcessedFood #ultraProcessedPeople #paleoDiet #BigMeat