The Great Nutrition Debate: Ultra-processed Foods

Nutrition Bites

Industrial processing has long helped to improve the shelf-life and stability of food, allowing it to be consumed out of season, and stored without a refrigerator. It's also been used to enhance taste and texture and create magical sensory experiences like with Cool Ranch Doritos. Without knowing it, many of your weekly items are likely highly or ultra processed, that is, manufactured with additives and little whole foods. But because processing can alter the nutritional properties of food, health scientists, and governments are concerned. So should health agencies advise us to moderate our intake of these items like they do with alcohol? It’s not an easy answer, and exactly why ultra-processed foods are at the centre of the latest nutrition debate hosted by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Tune into Nutrition Bites for the down-low on this nerdy nutrition battle.

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Credit to MonoSheep for the theme music
Interested in the debate papers? Access them via the links below:
For: https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ajcn/nqac122/6602407

Against: https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ajcn/nqac123/6602408