The problem is that the category of ultraprocessed foods, which makes up about 60 percent of the American diet by some estimates, is so broad that it borders on useless. It lumps store-bought whole-grain bread and hummus in with cookies, potato chips and soda. While many ultraprocessed foods are associated with poor health, others, like breakfast cereals and yogurt, aren’t.So, there is also disclosure in the body of the text of the article.
Processing can also create products suitable for people with food intolerances or ones that have a lower environmental footprint. (Full disclosure: I have consulted for food companies that I feel make beneficial products, including Beyond Meat, which makes ultraprocessed meat alternatives that I believe are better for the planet.)...
I love the author's name, Nicola Guess. I have to guess about the usefulness of any of the assertions here. Does Beyond Meat have less of a negative impact on the environment than real meat? Even Guess only says that she believes it's "better for the planet." And notice that she didn't say anything about whether ultraprocessed meat is better for our health than real meat. She slipped in the idea that regardless of your personal health, you might want to choose foods that are better for the world in general.
All food production has an impact on the environment. Why harp on meat? One guess is that Beyond Meat funds research. I never see the advice in mainstream media that eating less — a lot less! — would have a good effect on the environment (and would be good for the health of nearly all of us). Have you ever heard the notion that a serving of meat is the size of a deck of cards? Ever serve meat the size of a deck of cards? Ever go to a restaurant where you could order a steak the size of a deck of cards?
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Come to The Deck of Cards Steakhouse. Visit our Wild Card Salad Bar!
You correctly refer to the author's "assertions", and it reminds me of how selective the Times' use of the phrase "without evidence" is.
I've heard the deck of cards idea from Weight Watchers. I understood it to be a "serving" that's meant to be consistent with weight loss goals.
Any time a sentence rubs up against the words “better for the planet” or “environmental footprint”, my attention wanders off to pussy or some such other more interesting thing.
- Al Swearengen
Since when are sugar-cube breakfast cereals not condemned as unhealthy? Her assertions don't pass even casual scrutiny.
Most people don't really understand what's happening in the news media. Once purely unethical journalism is now routinely done: reliance on unnamed sources, printing corporate press releases, "advertising" subtly designed as "news." For many failing newspapers like the NY Times, one of their highest costs is the acquisition of copy inches of "news" to wrap around their advertising.
Solution: It used to be subscribing to the AP and filling your local pages with "national" and "international" garbage a few might care about, but mostly it was to fill up your news hole. That's too expensive nowadays, so they're turning to "free content acquisition." Paying low-paid foreign "work-from-home" people to scour Reddit, GoFundMe, Twitter, Tik-Tok for "news" they can steal ... basically just repackaging content they steal from others.
And then you get these sorts of press releases from industry "consultants." Designed ONLY to pad their own resumes ("as seen in the NY Times!") Pushing corporate narratives that pad the pockets of some target advertiser.
Crap like this entire article.
It's good to see the NY Times selling out for this low-quality garbage. Shows how desperate they are in their final days. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of scumbags.
I believe CAGW is the biggest scam in the history of the world.
Carol J Adams "The Sexual Politics of Meat," a book I bought immediately when it came out. Who knew that 40 years later it would be a classic?
My experience of dieticians is the frumpy fat lady that works in the school cafeteria.
A serving of meat the size of a deck of cards is about 4 ounces. And yes, that's what my husband and I tend to have: 4, up to 6, ounces of meat at the main meal of the day, measured on a scale periodically so we don't have portion size creep, along with a boatload of steamed, roasted, or sauteed vegetables or salad (and no starch - ok, sometimes a tablespoon of flour goes into the entirety of a sauce or something, but no potatoes, rice, bread...). We're getting close to 60 and trying to maintain a healthy weight for the long term.
In a restaurant, say a steak place, I'll order what I want and try to eat about 4 ounces of it, bringing the rest home for a steak salad the next day. Basically we always try to stop at half of a restaurant meal.
We avoid starches at almost all home meals (tacos on average once a week, with tortillas made fresh at our fantastic grocery store - the inimitable HEB) - the only bread I keep around is those 100-calorie small cardboard frisbees they call "sandwich thins" for when I haven't made enough of a stew or something to serve for lunches. We serve stir fries and curries over green beans, broccoli, or spinach instead of rice. We almost never go out for Italian because I like pasta more than non-pasta Italian dishes. My husband eats eggs for breakfast with some kind of meat, a strong cheese (so a little goes a long way), and more vegetables; I don't eat breakfast. We occasionally have popcorn as a snack, a measured ounce, with (here's the ultraprocessed part) butter spray and/or flavored salt, but we try not to do that too often. We don't keep chips or other snack foods around because the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
But then there's beer and wine, the carbs we don't avoid.
Actually I'm going to correct myself - I think a serving of meat the size of a deck of cards might be 3 ounces, not 4. The palm of your hand is the Weight Watchers reference for 4 ounces, if memory serves.
Not off topic: Mornings have become the time to be reminded how bad it would be if he hadn’t turned his head…
I once ordered a steak platter with the "small" 4 oz steak because I wasn't very hungry. It was no bigger than a deck of cards, but triangular and looked like a scrap that someone left behind after being unable to finish a regular steak. I don't think that it's possible to cook these as anything less than well done either, as the surface/crust requires a certain amount of heat.
No meat is better for the world? It depends on your priorities. Consider this discussion of vegan vs. meat diets and intelligence:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200127-how-a-vegan-diet-could-affect-your-intelligence
We skip lunch then split a rib eye. It’s fine…
And also weight maintenance, which in my experience is harder than weight loss! But yes, Weight Watchers tried to give clients ready references for various common portion sizes - the first joint of your thumb is about a tablespoon, stuff like that, so you can eat in restaurants and other people's houses without making a big deal out of portion control. I'm not sure what their program is now, but when the focus was on, "Live your life and cultivate moderation," I thought it worked great
I’m on Keto. I eat 10 to 14 ounces of meat at my big meal every day. I’ve lost 50 pounds on this diet. The serving size of meat is not the cause of the obesity epidemic. I limit myself to 2000 calories per day. The average obese person, in my estimation, is eating 3000 to 4000 calories per day, most of it carbs, sweets and junk food. As for climate change, I ignore that propaganda.
Not only is her proposal that fake meat "is better for the planet" specious it is ultimately defeated by the general opposition to ultraprocessed foods. The more consumers who avoid UP foods the more the supply chain for those UP ingredients is strained, even if the fake meat were to become popular (it won't). The lack of demand for UP ingredients would lead to price increases for those ingredients. Then the cost of fake meat would increase to adjust. Because it's already inferior in every way to real meat, especially grass fed beef, the downward spiral would be intensified.
No mention of caloric demand. Ann needs more calories than a sedentary. Thru hikers have to hammer the buffet and half gallons of ice cream. The swim team can decimate a poultry farm…
Then there is the Big Question: how can these vegetarians ever hope to move consumers beyond meat when they keep emulating the real thing with their ultraprocessed concoctions? Do they not know that counterfeit goods continue to create demand for the genuine article?
Reading the comments, the phrase "a thousand paths" emerges from what remains of my mind.
While many ultraprocessed foods are associated with poor health, others, like breakfast cereals and yogurt, aren’t.
So Calvin had it right, Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs are an important part of a well rounded diet.
For all those who eat without physical restriction (you can chew, swallow, and digest with a minimum of thought or planning) I suggest that you count your blessings. I am back (mostly) into your category, and I count my blessings at every meal and cook with purpose and a sense of joy.
A steak only the size of a pack of cards is still a significant thing to ingest and swallow. Some of us would now rather have a nice piece of fresh fish.
Agree
Mike (MJB Wolf) +1
As the joke goes, 'vegan' is Indian (feather, not dot) for 'bad hunter'
I eat plenty of vegetable dishes as sides and even main courses (a veggie pizza at the local craft brew/pizza place is one of my favorites). Why is nobody pushing vegetarian meals that don't try to mimic meat? It's almost like all these experts understand they are trying to get people to do something entirely unnatural based on our history, both cultural and genetic.
You don’t have to guess. Ignore the NYT on everything, especially nutrition. They’ve continued to flog what is essentially the old discredited food pyramid (more grains, less meat and dairy). Breakfast cereal and Beyond “meat,” are you kidding? A couple of weeks ago the NYT even had a piece extolling seed oils.
I never went full keto, but I lost about 30 pounds (all I needed to lose) and kept it off by eating mainly meat, eggs, and vegetables, and skipping breakfast. (I can’t eat most fish.) I’ve also cut way back on seed oils in favor of avocado and olive oil. My A1C and triglycerides went down, my HDL went up. I took the CRP test for inflammation and it was practically zero.
Just as you shouldn’t buy a pet from a pet store, you shouldn’t get nutrition advice from a nutritionist.
"or ones that have a lower environmental footprint."
Whatever. Obviously we have evolved to eat meat as the significant source of protein and calories, and as the old commercial said, "It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature!"
This author is yet another researcher whose bias or patron dictates the outcome of her research.
Plus, if she is so upset about the breadth of “ultra processed” to categorize foods, why not simply propose an alternative?
Produce and groceries with expiration dates leave a long and wide carbon-fueled trail of spoilage…
I have had good success with "the carbohydrate addicts diet" in which you eat protein for breakfast, and stop eating within an hour of starting until lunch, where you also eat protein and stop eating within an hour, then whatever you want for dinner, as long as you limit it to a specific time window too. The beauty of it is that if you see some pastry or whatever, during the day, that you really want to eat, you buy it, and keep it until dinnertime, and eat it then. Oddly though, within a couple of weeks, these cravings go away.
The theory is that your pancreas is set to release a certain amount of insulin, based on your last three meals, and if two of them are meat, it trains it to no longer overproduce insulin, which is what produces addiction to carbs. It's a lot easier to maintain than Atkins, and works.
It could also be called "The best way to deal with temptation is to give into it" diet.
These are not “assertions” made without evidence.
They are “Guesstimates”!
"Ultraprocessed" is the new "Whiteness"; a vague term that is thrown around by numbskulls who profess expertise and competence.
I am looking for a new copy-print-scan desktop machine, but it must also look and function like a flower vase.
I am looking for a new Supreme Court Justice, but the most important criteria are skin color and genitalia.
I am looking for a nutritious vegan meal, but a critical criterion is it must have the look, taste, and texture of beef.
My sympathies, and I'm glad you are progressing but as far as I can see nobody is telling people they must eat meat like it or not, unlike the folks who are often effectively try to ban animal protein. They are also likely to go after fish when they're finished with cows and pigs.
+++
Exactly. When I grill a hot dog I don't disguise it as a carrot to make myself or my fellow diners feel better about consuming it. And I've never shaped my turkey like a tofu slab either. Just stop!
Nothing you eat is Always Bad if that thing is not the sole component of your diet. I'm eating a Candy Cane JoJo right now. It's delicious. I wouldn't make it my only food today however.
The Feds mandate "best if used by" dates, which people interpret as "expiration date" even when put on bulk rice or bottles of water.
I sure hope other school children tormented her with those obnoxious REE CO LA throat lozenge ads.
"In a restaurant, say a steak place, I'll order what I want and try to eat about 4 ounces of it, bringing the rest home for a steak salad the next day. Basically we always try to stop at half of a restaurant meal."
I try to limit my carb intake as well, but I love Italian so occasionally my wife and I will go to a very good Italian restaurant. They generally serve so much pasta that I can take it home and have two to three more meals out of it. We also split orders a lot, but even then we often get a take home box.
One assertion we could - probably - all agree on is that the Twinkie is the ultimate ultra-processed food. [I recognize that I'm playing fast 'n loose with the very meaning of food when it comes to Twinkies.]
Also, plain yogurt is not ultra-processed and if they are adding a lot of sugar and preservatives then its not good for you.
I catch and eat fish almost every very single day I’m home. It’s the best!
It's a lot simpler to just calibrate the levels of your exercise routine (walking, biking, calisthenics) to your eating habits than to treat every meal like a lab chemist. The more you happen to eat, just exercise more. You also sleep better and generally stay healthier and in better physical condition.
Well I am 70 male. I have been eating at least 1lb of red meat daily for 20 years or so. In recent years 2lbs. My typical breakfast is a Costco rib eye steak. My second and last meal is 2 burger patties and about a 6 ounce filet of wild caught sockeye salmon. My vegetable of choice is coffee. I eat almost no veggies. I do include some fruit every week so. My health is great. Better than most of my peers. Red meat from my n1 is one of the best food to eat. They demonize it to help convince you to eat other more profitable trash. Mono crops are worse for the environment than cattle. Cattle can graze on the natural growth. Do not get me started on cow farts. Talk about BS.
I have consulted for food companies that I feel make beneficial products, including Beyond Meat, which makes ultraprocessed meat alternatives that I believe are better for the planet.
But not better for 'you'. Beyond Meat should be renamed 'Barring Meat'. And it's also true that, as a human, dying 'as soon as possible' is better for the planet, according to people with this mindset.
Norm Peterson:
[about his and Cliff's meal at The Hungry Heifer] Yeah, Cliffy had himself the tunnel T-bone. For less than four bucks, you get 24 ounces of USDA choice US bef.
Cliff Clavin:
Bef? You mean beef.
Norm Peterson:
Beef? Don't be ridiculous Cliffy, that stuff is bef. You see, it's a Hungry Heifer trademark for a processed, synthetic, what... , meat-like substance.
Cliff Clavin:
Ohh, Norm.
Norm Peterson:
What do expect for four bucks? Do you hear me complain about the loobster?
I like making my own ultra processed yogurt. I start out with ultra pasteurized milk ultra processed inulin and pharmaceutical grade probiotics. Then let the mixture contained in a glass jar sit in a water bath at a temperature of 100° f for 36 hours. Once the yogurt is done I add highly processed freeze dried fruit to the yogurt place it in mason jars and refrigerate.
"Nicola Guess" sounds like a character in a Martin Amis novel that he didn't live long enough to write (or maybe a Kingsley Amis novel).
Everybody on the STEM side of academia now has some sort of side hustle (humanists have to turn to the wrong side of the law to make that kind of money). If she's a crusader against meat and has a private clinic, I'd be worried about checking in there. It sounds too much like a cult.
I just work out/exercise 2-1/2 hours a day so I can eat whatever I want.
Bingo
Exactly. Give me the scientific distinction between ‘processed’ and ‘ultraprocessed’ food. Can’t do it. It’s just a scary media buzzword.
I actually ate a vegan burger one time. It wasn't so bad and perhaps better than some Indian dishes. Still, I can't think of any reason to ever again eat another one. Maybe if I develop heart trouble or something......I read somewhere that as you get older, you need to eat 3% less food each year. I know how compound interest works so your choice is either to get fat or go to bed hungry.......Life sucks. I go to the gym regularly. The gym affords an excellent view of a pizza parlor across the street. One slice of pizza equals the calories expended in an hour of working out. Life sucks.
The ‘deck of cards’ reference is just a visualization tool for the public. This manufactured unit of “meat measurement” was unfortunately given the name of ‘serving’. Serving for whom? A 92 year old frail woman weighing 100 lbs. or a 25 year old 250 lb. halfback? Just think of this ‘serving’ unit as a method of comparing like quantities, and not what you are ‘supposed’ to eat at any given meal.
"The problem is that the category of ultraprocessed foods, which makes up about 60 percent of the American diet by some estimates, is so broad that it borders on useless."
It took them how many decades to figure this out?
"Ever go to a restaurant where you could order a steak the size of a deck of cards?"
Eat half of a NY Strip at the restaurant, keep half (plus sides, if they serve enough), and presto: two meals.
I miss the NY Strip from Popeye's in Lake Geneva - not the Cajun chicken place, but a wondrous bar & grill with a lake view - but they discontinued it several years ago and failed to notify me. The nerve. Found one nearly as good in Central PA, served with whiskey butter and flame grilled green beans. The sides are better than Popeye's, the steak is almost as good, so it's an even match overall.
"Have you ever heard the notion that a serving of meat is the size of a deck of cards?"
My doctor is always on me to keep my weight up. If I ate servings that size I would waste away. But then, I limit my carbs.
There really is no doubt any longer. As attested to here by many, low-carb diets keep the weight off. Why aren't our federal food-scolds trumpeting this fact from the ramparts? RFK needs to address this.
Now that RFK Jr. is pro-Trump, the NYT algorithm demands that everything he stands for must be wrong. So yesterday the Times ran a piece defending big pharma on vaccines, and today they're defending ultra-processed foods.
"They are also likely to go after fish when they're finished with cows and pigs."
You can count on it.
The "climate crisis" is part and parcel of Rahm Emmanuel's statement, "Never let a good crisis go to waste". The Left need crises in order to enact their controls over us.
"Ever go to a restaurant where you could order a steak the size of a deck of cards?"
The Texas Steakhouse. You can order a 4oz Filet Mignon.
Works for me. And the endorphins are a major plus! The only time I ever had to watch my weight was during wrestling season. Dieting sucks.
Sure. But when you deep fry them they become a a nutritious meal!
…I don’t disagree there is some stupid there. Also I have a brother in law who rants about expiration dates on things like eggs. Perhaps coincidentally he’s down for the count with food poisoning once in a while…
Nicola Guessla
Beef Links Matter (BLM)
How is a potato chip ultra-processed? The potatoes are sliced and fried in very high quality veg oil.
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