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Transcribed using A.I. May contain errors.

Amy Quinton

All right, Kat, let's go shopping.

Kat Kerlin

Let's do it.

Amy Quinton

Kat and I are visiting our local grocery store. It's the perfect place to learn about processed foods. So to me, when I think of processed foods, I think center of the grocery, the stuff that's usually in boxes and packages, and isn't like dairy and meat and fruits?

Kat Kerlin

Yeah, like we're looking at apples and bananas, and I'm thinking, this is not the aisle for us if we're looking for processed foods.

Amy Quinton

But we're gonna go shopping just see, just see what we know and what we don't know.

Kat Kerlin

Yes, I see a big wall of orange boxes that look very promising. That big ball of orange boxes was the mac and cheese.

Amy Quinton

Yep, and the mashed potatoes,

Kat Kerlin 

Four cheese mashed potatoes in a packet?

Amy Quinton 

Dried potatoes. Do people actually eat this stuff?

Kat Kerlin

I lived on that when I was in college.

Kat Kerlin

Yeah, not proud.

Amy Quinton

You're kidding.

Amy Quinton

Well the first ingredient is potatoes. So that's promising.

Kat Kerlin

You're trying to make me feel better. I appreciate it.

Amy Quinton

I don't think I've ever met anyone who's eating dried potatoes unless they're like hiking.

Kat Kerlin

You know, I mean, they were really fast to make, and they filled me up and they cost, like, $1 or something. So fast and cheap and easy kind of did it for me when I was 20.

Amy Quinton

Yeah, I mean, I was all about mac and cheese and ramen. Yeah.

Kat Kerlin

Yeah, Still am.Some days.

Amy Quinton

Comfort food.

Kat Kerlin

Totally. So yeah, chances are you eat processed foods. Most Americans do. Studies have found that between 60 and 70% of American diets are comprised of highly processed or ultra processed food. It makes sense, right? Like, if it's cheap, convenient and pretty delicious, we Americans tend to like it.

Amy Quinton

Yeah, I probably sounded a bit judgmental there, but those dried mashed potatoes had a lot of ingredients that weren't potatoes. Cheese, cultures, vegetable oil, sunflower coconut oil,

Kat Kerlin

Annato extract,

Amy Quinton

dried corn syrup, mono and diglycerides, natural flavors, whatever those are. So it's got preservatives in it, citric acid. I still don't know what mono and diglycerides are.

Kat Kerlin

I can't help you. Actually, Amy, those dried mashed potatoes probably had half the number of ingredients of some of the chips we came across. We are in the chip aisle. There's an explosion of colors.

Amy Quinton

Oh, look at those Doritos. Flaming hot, Cool Ranch.

Kat Kerlin

It's very orange. It's very, very spicy Dorito. So people love this stuff right now. Oh, my gosh. It's like a whole paragraph of ingredients. Oh, maybe I'll just cut to all of the artificial colors in it. Red 40 lake, yellow 6 lake, yellow 6, yellow 5, blue 1, red 40.

Amy Quinton

I didn't know there were that many numbers,

Kat Kerlin

I didn't either

Amy Quinton

And it also had MSG, monosodium glutamate. That's a flavor enhancer.

Kat Kerlin

Yep, makes you want more. Doritos are clearly an ultra-processed food.

Amy Quinton

And what's the difference between processed and ultra-processed, you might ask.

Kat Kerlin

And are all these foods unhealthy for you? Should they be banned?

Amy Quinton

Should they be banned in public schools? These are all really good questions.

Kat Kerlin

So in this episode of Unfold, we're going to examine processed and ultra-processed foods in our first chapter.

Amy Quinton

And in the second chapter of this episode, we'll talk to an expert about why this topic ignites such contentious debate between the public and the food industry. Coming to you from UC Davis, this is Unfold. I'm Amy Quinton

Kat Kerlin

and I'm Kat Kerlin.

Kat Kerlin

You hear people say processed foods are bad for you, right? And ultra-processed even worse. In fact, here in California, lawmakers are debating whether they should ban some ultra-processed foods in public schools.

Amy Quinton

Yeah, and they've already banned some food dyes in public schools. And our current U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary has criticized ultra-processed food, saying it leads to chronic diseases. And when we began to research this episode, we were both confused about which foods are processed.

Kat Kerlin

Right? Like, I kind of know it when I see it, I thought it's really just foods that you shouldn't eat too much of. The foods with the long lists of ingredients.

Amy Quinton

Yeah, but here's what confused me, canned tomatoes are processed. In fact, there's a tomato processing plant just down the road from here, and meat is processed. Isn't that why the plants are called meat processing plants?

Kat Kerlin

I always thought of those examples as like a food going through a process like canning, boiling, slicing or dicing. Not the same thing as a processed food.

Amy Quinton

But they make pizza sauce loaded with all sorts of ingredients at some tomato processing plants, and then there's the deli meat made at meat processing plants.

Kat Kerlin

Yeah, it can be confusing, and it's certainly not well defined. Nowadays practically all food is processed in some sense.

Amy Quinton

A researcher in Brazil attempted to cut through the confusion in 2009 by grouping foods based on the extent and purpose of industrial processing. The goal was not so much to categorize food but to use it as a tool to understand the health implications of different industrial processes.

Kat Kerlin

It's called the NOVA classification system. We asked Professor Alyson Mitchell in our Food Science and Technology Department about these classifications.

Amy Quinton

Alyson says category one includes unprocessed or minimally processed foods.

Alyson Mitchell

So that might be something like an apple or a dried apricot or maybe a carrot. You wash the carrot. These are foods that are minimally processed, which includes drying, washing things like that, but you haven't modified the basic food stuff, so you haven't added anything to it. It is still the same food item.

Kat Kerlin

And category two foods are processed culinary ingredients. These are things like oils, butter, sugar, salt. They're ingredients that you might add to your category one foods, but likely not eat them on their own.

Amy Quinton

I did eat a thing of butter once. I was a baby, didn't know any better.

Kat Kerlin

There's no judgment in this podcast.

Amy Quinton

So when you combine category one foods with the culinary ingredients of category two foods, you get processed foods. And Alyson gave an example of a category three food using peas.

Alyson Mitchell

So you might take those peas, you might wash them, then you might add some salt and water, and then you would can them, and you've created a product that's no longer, you know, highly perishable, like the original peas, but you've got now a canned food that can last two years. That would be a NOVA classification three a processed foods.

Kat Kerlin

Alyson says the purpose of a processed food is to preserve its shelf life. It can include foods made or preserved through baking, bottling, canning, boiling or fermenting. And then the final category under NOVA are ultra-processed foods.

Amy Quinton

Ultra-processed foods are just components of foods, formulated and industrial produced using ingredients you won't find in your kitchen.

Alyson Mitchell

You're using emulsifiers, and you're using flavoring agents,

Amy Quinton

and you're using hydrogenated oils and synthetic colors

Alyson Mitchell

and texture improvers and things like that, things that actually modify the food and make you want to eat it, you know, but it's not a food. It's a formulated food.

Kat Kerlin

Alyson says ultra-processed foods are designed not just to make you want to eat it, but designed to make you want more.

Amy Quinton

The foods often drive your appetite through magical additives like MSG. Reminds me of that commercial marketed me as a kid, the Lay's potato chip commercial.

Kat Kerlin

oh yeah, Bet you can't eat just One.

Amy Quinton

I found it.

Commercial 

Commercial

One potato two potato, three potato, four, just one Lay's potato chip, makes you want much more.

Kat Kerlin

They warned us.

Kat Kerlin

I don't remember that one. I think that's been their slogan for forever, but that's a great find. Well, Alyson says the purpose of ultra-processed foods has very little to do with shelf life.

Alyson Mitchell

The only purpose is to create a new food, or a food that mimics a food that is made from pieces of foods that are held together by industrial ingredients. And the purpose is not necessarily to improve the safety or improve the shelf life of the food. It's to sell a food product. It's to make money off of the food.

Kat Kerlin

Yeah, yeah. Kind of unappetizing. When you put it like that.

Amy Quinton

It's kind of crazy. But can we say these ultra-processed foods are actually unhealthy for you?

Kat Kerlin

Alyson says your body is getting a lot more than just extra sugar and salt.

Alyson Mitchell

A lot of the technologies that we're using are restructuring molecules and creating molecules we've never been exposed to before. What we can say is we know that as we've modified the diet in such a drastic way in such a short period of time, we are seeing increases in metabolic disorder and cardiovascular disease.

Kat Kerlin

Most studies show an association between consumption and obesity, some cancers, gastrointestinal diseases and even depression.

Amy Quinton

Studies that have evaluated direct impact on the body show that ultra processed foods, which are calorie dense and nutrient poor, lead to weight gain.

Alyson Mitchell

The reality is is we are creating. Ingredients so rapidly we don't have time to study them. We're not putting the money and effort into studying them. So the food technology is moved faster than the health studies have

Kat Kerlin

A lot of these ultra-processed foods also have food dyes in them. Alyson, who specializes in Food Chemistry and Toxicology says they shouldn't,

Alyson Mitchell

And I would have to 100% stand here and say they do not belong in our foods. The only person that benefits from having food dies in the food is the food industry. The consumer gains nothing.

Amy Quinton

She could not have been more adamant about this issue.

Alyson Mitchell

Most food coloring agents are derived from coal tar dyes. Most of them are carcinogenic. We've taken most of them out of the foods. There's only seven that are allowed in foods anymore because, because we know they're problematic.

Amy Quinton

Alysonwas part of a group of scientists along with California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment that looked at children who were exposed to synthetic food dyes.

Kat Kerlin

The scientists found the dyes can result in hyperactivity and neuro behavioral problems in some children.

Amy Quinton

They also found the FDA current safe levels of consumption were based on 35 to 70-year-old studies that weren't designed to detect behavioral issues.

Kat Kerlin

Alyson says FDA rules for safe consumption of dyes are designed for just one food item, not all the many food items we might eat throughout the day.

Alyson Mitchell

But if you look around, food coloring agents are in everything. They are in our food. They are in our medicines. They are in our drinks. They are ubiquitous, and they're really serving people no functional value.

Amy Quinton

So all of us are likely getting a lot more in ultra-processed food than we realize.

Kat Kerlin

All of this has captured the attention of both California lawmakers and the nation's new HHS Secretary, as we mentioned in the beginning of this episode.

Amy Quinton

So should there be increased regulations around synthetic colors or food additives? Should ultra-processed foods be banned?

Kat Kerlin

Alyson says, when it comes to food additives, the technology is moving faster than those health studies, so maybe there needs to be increased regulation.

Amy Quinton

She says there definitely needs to be more research into the issue. At the same time, there is a need for ultra-processed foods.

Kat Kerlin

yeah, like with infant formula or shelf-stable foods for astronauts in space or people in war zones or other extreme environments.

Amy Quinton

She says that's what food science is all about, but...

Alyson Mitchell

But it's when you've taken that mission and you've turned it into, well now we're going to make all these different ingredients and put them together and make these ultra-processed foods to replace foods. I think that's where the problem or disconnect has come from.

Kat Kerlin

So we've talked a lot about what defines a processed or ultra processed food under these NOVA classifications.

Amy Quinton

Important to point out that those NOVA classifications are not perfect. They can be fuzzy. For example, hot dogs and mac and cheese fall into the same category as protein shakes, some soy-based sausages, infant formula and gluten-free bread. They're all ultra-processed.

Kat Kerlin

But many experts we talk to say NOVA is a good start if we want to begin to understand the health implications of processed food.

Amy Quinton

Often, what defines a processed food depends on who you ask. Charlotte Biltekoff, a UC Davis Professor of American Studies and Food Science and Technology, discusses this in her latest book.

Kat Kerlin

It's called Real Food, Real Facts: Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge. She says, the public's definition of a processed food and the food industry's definition are different.

Amy Quinton

Charlotte's book explores the tension between these two perspectives or frames of thought about processed food. There's the real food frame, and then the real facts frame.

Charlotte Biltekoff

Sometimes processed is used very sort of generally, to refer to bad food, and that's a real food frame perspective. Sometimes it's used very technically to think about a technical process. That's a real facts frame kind of perspective.

Kat Kerlin

She says, on the one hand, many consumers worry about processed food.

Charlotte Biltekoff

Because of what was in it, its effect on individual health or population level health, its effect on the environment. Some just saw seeing it as a troubled product of a troubled food system.

Amy Quinton

Charlotte says on the other hand, the food industry sees the issue as a lack of understanding and scientific knowledge about food processing.

Kat Kerlin

Basically the industry says the public has an irrational fear of things they don't understand.

Charlotte Biltekoff

And the idea there was that those misperceptions needed to be corrected with facts about food and food processing. Also from a real facts frame, you often hear the argument that that all food is processed, right, that even spinach that is washed, or carrots that are peeled, or, you know, rice that is dried these are all processed food, right?

Kat Kerlin

And that's not what I think of when I think of processed foods, I think of that package of dried potatoes or that bag of Doritos.

Amy Quinton

Instead of addressing public concerns about processed foods, the food industry began to market their foods as natural. You might remember the media coverage around this when the FDA was asked to regulate use of the term natural on food labels,

Kat Kerlin

And they never ended up doing that,

Amy Quinton

No. But Charlotte says the public's concern did lead to the rise of clean labeling.

Charlotte Biltekoff

which is when a product appears to you to be simpler, fresher, natural, more natural, less processed, etc, without actually using the term natural right? It's done through short ingredient list, words you can pronounce, sometimes clear packaging, certain visual you know, languages that suggest nature.

Kat Kerlin

So obviously, the food industry recognizes that the public's trust of their products is waning, but Charlotte says their solution to reclaim that trust shouldn't be to convince the public with more facts

Amy Quinton

Or to appeal to their values by calling something natural.

Charlotte Biltekoff

That's one of the key interventions of the book. It's to say, instead of focusing so much on the problem of public misunderstanding, let's change the perspective and think about the problem of experts misunderstanding of the public.

Kat Kerlin

Charlotte says it's not that the public is ignorant, anti-science or lacks the capacity to understand these new food technologies.

Charlotte Biltekoff

A different set of assumptions can be and I would argue should be, that the public wants to be engaged in big questions about the trajectory of the food system, is capable of gaining new knowledge and understanding, to participate in debate and dialogue about the kind of food system that we want for the future,

Amy Quinton

And she urges people to pay attention to how the meaning of processed food shifts in different contexts, depending on who is using it and why.

Kat Kerlin

She says how experts communicate with the public about processed food should be understood as part of food politics.

Charlotte Biltekoff

There's a lot of slipperiness. That's part of what makes it so powerful. That's part of what drew me to the topic is like, wow, this means everything and nothing. So does natural, so does real. You know, the more flexibility a term and a concept has, the more power it has in a way, because it can be used in so many different ways.

Kat Kerlin

You can dive much deeper into this topic by reading Charlotte's book. You can find a link to it at our website. ucdavis.edu/unfold.

Amy Quinton

And maybe you remember our first conversation with Charlotte on food politics in Season One of Unfold. If you haven't listened to it, it's still available at our website.

Kat Kerlin

It's a good one. You'll also find a link to an Ask the Experts article that includes questions answered by both UC Davis food scientists and nutritionists.

Amy Quinton 

I'm Amy Quinton

Kat Kerlin

and I'm Kat Kerlin. Thanks for listening.

Andy Fell

Unfold is a production of UC Davis. Original Music for Unfold comes from Damien Verrett and Curtis Jerome Haynes. Additional music comes from Blue Dot sessions.