Ultra-Processed Food

Also on Scott's processed list: canned beans, cheese, peanut butter that's just peanuts and salt, whole-grain bread with a short ingredient list. And on the ultra-processed list: soda, candy, instant noodles with seasoning packets, packaged cookies, many frozen microwave meals, anything that says “cheese product.” Jenny's caveat: nobody lives like Little House on the Prairie. Unless you make it yourself, your yogurt has been processed to package it and keep it safe. That's not the same thing as ultra-processed.

Not the chemicals first — the nutrition and the formula.

1. Low nutritional valueHigh intake is linked to chronic disease.
2. Salt, sugar and fat, engineeredJenny remembers a book about the food industry learning to combine fat, sugar and salt so it hits your taste buds exactly — and then hits the brain signal that says take another.
3. The business caseHigher margins, longer shelf life, less waste. Hyper-palatable, so it drives repeat buying. And perfectly repeatable: the chip tastes the same every single time.
4. It's not one chipScott: your body can process canola oil. It's not about one chip, or one bag. It's about 50 bags over a year or two.

Did people have “food noise” 500 years ago, or did they just call it hunger?

1. GLPs quiet itJenny: that's part of why they work for people who had no control before. They bring back some recognition of how much, and what, you've eaten.
2. Most of us don't grow our food anymoreJenny's garden couldn't feed her family of four. Food is available everywhere now — strawberries in December.
3. Snacks are newThere was no such thing as a snack when you ate because Mom called you in from the field. Now there's food at every occasion, and snacks for a ten-minute car ride.
4. Scott's 9:30 drinkHeading to watch TV before bed, he reached for a drink and stopped: why am I doing this? He took water.

As Scott read it on the recording.

1. Mill the cornSeparate the starch from the protein, fiber and oil. Corn starch is a long chain of glucose.
2. Break the starch down with enzymesA starch slurry, then alpha-amylase chops it into shorter chains, then glucoamylase breaks those into mostly glucose. At this point it's corn syrup.
3. Turn some glucose into fructoseThe syrup passes over glucose isomerase, which rearranges some of it. The first product is about 42% fructose.
4. Concentrate and blendSeparate out a fructose-rich stream as high as 90%, blend to the grade they want, then filter, purify, and ship it as a liquid — cheap, stable, easy to pump.

Scott went looking for the original Coca-Cola.

1. 1886, John PembertonThe company doesn't disclose the formula. Its history describes a syrup with carbonated water, named for the coca leaf and the kola nut.
2. RoughlySugar, water, caramel for color, coca leaf extract, kola nut extract for the caffeine, citric acid, lime juice, vanilla, and flavored oils and spices. “That doesn't seem so bad.”
3. Yes, it had cocaineThe coca leaf extract of the time still carried cocaine alkaloids. That was later removed.
4. Seed oilsJenny's point on canola and the rest: much more omega-6 than the omega-3s that help your heart and inflammation. And processing strips nutrients, so things get fortified to put something back.

Jenny's end note.

1. Look at your own grocery listPick one or two things you could change. Spices instead of the seasoning packet.
2. It isn't always more expensiveShe has a family to feed too. Some swaps are more cost-effective once you break them down.
3. Nobody's shaming anybodyScott's wife brought home a sauce packet for chicken — she liked it, and it's eight minutes when you both work. If you can't afford it or don't have the time, fine. You should still understand what's happening.