Ultra-Processed Foods

Summary

Maintenance Phase Podcast Summary: Episode on Ultra-Processed Foods

Title: Ultra-Processed Foods
Host/Authors: Aubrey Gordon & Michael Hobbes
Release Date: June 3, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of Maintenance Phase, hosts Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes delve into the contentious topic of ultra-processed foods. The show's mission to "debunk the junk science behind health fads, wellness scams, and nonsensical nutrition advice" sets the stage for a critical examination of how ultra-processed foods are defined, researched, and perceived in both scientific communities and popular culture.

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Defining Processed and Ultra-Processed Foods

Colloquial vs. Scientific Definitions

The conversation begins with the fundamental challenge of defining "processed foods." Aubrey humorously suggests revising the podcast's tagline to reflect the ambiguity: “We can’t define ultra-processed foods exactly, but we know them when we see them” ([00:26] Aubrey Gordon). Michael echoes this sentiment, noting that while items like Twinkies and Wonder Bread are widely recognized as ultra-processed, the term lacks a precise definition in everyday language ([02:04] Michael Hobbs).

Aubrey observes that "processed food has come to act as a stand-in for what folks maybe previously would have referred to as 'junk food'" ([03:15] Aubrey Gordon). Michael critiques the term "junk food" as equally arbitrary but acknowledges that ultra-processing is touted as a more technical and less judgmental term ([04:08] Michael Hobbs).

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Historical Context of Processed Foods

Michael traces the term "processed food" back to its earliest mentions in the New York Times in 1912, highlighting perennial concerns about food processing's impact on health ([04:51] Michael Hobbs). Aubrey adds a humorous anecdote about finding a 1950s print promoting bread's energy benefits, illustrating longstanding public debates over processed foods ([05:24] Aubrey Gordon).

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The NOVA Classification

Group 1: Unprocessed or Minimally Processed Foods

The NOVA classification system, introduced by Brazilian researcher Carlos Monteiro in 2009, categorizes foods based on their degree of processing. Group 1 includes unprocessed or minimally processed foods—items like fresh fruits, vegetables, and plain meats. Aubrey questions the consistency of this group, pointing out that even simple beans can fall into this category despite being canned ([07:27] Aubrey Gordon).

Group 2: Processed Culinary Ingredients

Group 2 encompasses substances extracted from whole foods, such as oils, sugars, and salt. These are typically used as ingredients in cooking rather than consumed on their own. Aubrey mentions olive oil as an example, highlighting the fine line between minimally processed and ultra-processed ([13:58] Aubrey Gordon).

Group 3: Processed Foods

Processed foods in Group 3 are defined as products made by adding sugar, oil, or salt to enhance flavor and shelf-life, such as breads, cereals, and certain meats. Aubrey notes the ambiguity, questioning if items like stored fats or cheeses fall into this group or others ([10:51] Aubrey Gordon).

Group 4: Ultra-Processed Foods

Group 4 is reserved for ultra-processed foods, which are industrially created with multiple additives to enhance taste and convenience. Examples include soft drinks, candy, and ready-to-eat meals like frozen pizzas. Aubrey humorously dismisses the description of meat products as "extruded remnants," emphasizing her reluctance to categorize everyday foods as harmful based solely on processing methods ([15:46] Aubrey Gordon).

Critique of NOVA

Both hosts critique the NOVA system for its inconsistent classifications and arbitrary distinctions. Michael highlights that even basic foods like potato chips, which consist of minimal ingredients (potatoes, oil, salt), are mistakenly categorized as minimally processed under NOVA ([17:55] Michael Hobbs). Aubrey adds that MUlti-ingredient foods like Heinz Baked Beans would fall into the ultra-processed category despite being a staple in many diets ([63:12] Aubrey Gordon).

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Scientific Studies on Ultra-Processed Foods

Kevin Hall's Study

Michael discusses a pivotal study by Kevin Hall, intended to test the effects of ultra-processed foods. Contrary to his initial skepticism, Hall's study inadvertently supported the idea that ultra-processed foods lead to increased calorie intake and weight gain ([31:07] Michael Hobbs). Participants on an ultra-processed diet consumed 500 extra calories per day and gained an average of 2 pounds, while those on a minimally processed diet lost weight ([32:59] Aubrey Gordon).

However, Michael criticizes the study for its flawed design, pointing out that the ultra-processed diet was significantly higher in calories, saturated fats, and sugars, making it difficult to attribute health effects solely to processing ([34:03] Michael Hobbs).

Issues with Study Designs

Aubrey and Michael highlight multiple issues with existing research on ultra-processed foods:

• Inconsistent Definitions: Different studies classify the same food items differently, leading to unreliable conclusions. For example, honey appears in various categories across studies ([43:12] Aubrey Gordon).

• Categorization Challenges: Foods like hamburgers and soy burgers are inconsistently categorized, undermining the credibility of research findings ([44:51] Michael Hobbs).

• Lack of Dose-Response Relationship: Studies often fail to demonstrate a clear dose-response effect, where increased consumption of ultra-processed foods correlates with worsening health outcomes. In some cases, moderate consumption was associated with reduced health risks ([47:00] Michael Hobbs).

Observational Studies

The hosts note that numerous observational studies have linked ultra-processed food consumption with higher rates of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other health issues. However, they caution that these studies rely heavily on self-reported data and food frequency questionnaires, which are prone to inaccuracies and biases ([35:00] Michael Hobbs).

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Mainstreaming and Literature

Chris Van Tilleken's "Ultra Processed People"

In 2023, the term gained widespread attention through Chris Van Tilleken's book, Ultra Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn't Food and Why Can't We Stop? Michael and Aubrey critique the book for its inconsistent use of the ultra-processed food definition and its tangential discussions on climate change and corporate behavior.

Michael argues that while addressing the environmental impact of food is crucial, Van Tilleken conflates ultra-processed foods with broader issues like meat consumption without a clear scientific basis ([51:07] Michael Hobbs). Aubrey points out that many staple foods classified as ultra-processed are integral to various cultures, complicating the narrative ([63:38] Aubrey Gordon).

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Ultra-Processed Foods and Food Addiction

Nicole Avina's Research

The discussion shifts to the concept of food addiction, specifically how ultra-processed foods might trigger brain reward systems similarly to addictive substances. Nicole Avina, an associate professor at Mount Sinai, suggests that combinations of salt, fat, sugar, and protein in ultra-processed foods can activate brain circuits linked to addiction ([53:10] Aubrey Gordon).

Critical Perspectives

Aubrey and Michael express skepticism about the legitimacy of "food addiction" as a scientific concept. They argue that while certain foods can be pleasurable, equating this to addiction oversimplifies the complexity of eating behaviors and neuroscience ([54:08] Michael Hobbs). They caution against using language that could police or shame individuals' eating habits based on ambiguous scientific claims.

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Conclusion

Definition Challenges

Aubrey and Michael conclude that the term "ultra-processed foods" lacks the precision required for scientific discourse. They emphasize the difficulty in consistently categorizing foods and the arbitrary nature of the current classifications. Michael compares the inconsistency to defining a mammal without clear boundaries ([49:32] Michael Hobbs).

Alternative Terminology: Junk Food

Given the definitional issues, Aubrey and Michael suggest reverting to more familiar terms like "junk food," despite its own arbitrariness, as it more accurately reflects cultural perceptions without the misleading veneer of scientific legitimacy ([68:02] Aubrey Gordon).

Call for Scientific Rigor

The hosts advocate for a separation between cultural narratives and scientific evidence. They call for more precise definitions and methodologies in research to genuinely understand the health impacts of food processing. Their overarching message is one of skepticism toward broadly applied terms that lack empirical support, urging listeners to remain critical of health fads that masquerade as science.

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Notable Quotes

• Aubrey Gordon ([00:19]): “Hi, everybody, and welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that's finding new and exciting ways to stigmatize the foods you love.”

• Michael Hobbs ([02:20]): “If we’re going to be passing laws and putting out studies that say, okay, ultra processed foods is associated with a 5% higher risk of cardiovascular disease, we need to have a clear understanding of what this term means.”

• Aubrey Gordon ([07:35]): “Doing a rat soundboard right now. I'm trying to find my freaking Zoom window to turn on the camera.”

• Michael Hobbs ([26:17]): “This is like the thing, like, is processed foods bad for you... but then they redefine and include some that are not.”

• Aubrey Gordon ([16:54]): “Ultra processed foods are confections of Group 2 ingredients, typically combined with sophisticated use of additives to make them edible, palatable, and habit-forming.”

• Michael Hobbs ([31:07]): “So this is the experimental study that was the attempt to prove that ultra processed food is bad for you.”

• Aubrey Gordon ([63:31]): “Are you gonna mention exactly what I was going up for when I was like.”

• Michael Hobbs ([67:00]): “Is this a scientific concept or not? Because, like, do we all want people to have more time to make stuff at home?”

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Final Thoughts

Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes provide a thorough critique of the ultra-processed food concept, highlighting its definitional ambiguities, methodological flaws in research, and cultural biases. They urge listeners to approach such health narratives with skepticism and advocate for more scientifically rigorous approaches to understanding the relationship between food processing and health.

Transcript

[Michael Hobbs]

Uh, what do you have? I have one too. Even though it's not my turn. But what is yours?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Wait, I want to know what yours is.

[Michael Hobbs]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I want to see what you do with it first.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Hi, everybody, and welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that's finding new and exciting ways to stigmatize the foods you love.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, that's good.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That's very direct on brand. The other thing that I thought asking you what your favorite ultra processed food is. Mine is smoked salmon.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, Nutella. No, mine was gonna be welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that is finally going to tell The Story of Yellows 1 through 4. I'm Michael Hopps.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I'm Aubrey Gordon. If you would like to support the show, you can do [e-mail] maintenancephase or you can subscribe to premium episodes on Apple Podcasts. It's the same content.

[Michael Hobbs]

Same content.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Michael. Aubrey, we're talking about ultra process. And this is a thing that people are like sort of constantly asking us to cover, asking us to talk about all of that sort of stuff. And I am fascinated to hear where we land.

[Michael Hobbs]

Well, okay, so the bad news is we have to start with the same tedious caveat that we start every episode with. This is like my test of like, can I do research without going down a bunch of like, unnecessary rabbit holes and then cutting like hours of footage out of the show? The one thing we going to talk about is like, the definition of processed food.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Oh, my God, I can't wait.

[Michael Hobbs]

I think the core challenge of talking about this in a nuanced way is that there are two definitions. There is the colloquial definition of processed food. Like, when you are going about your business, you constantly hear people say, like, I'm trying to avoid processed foods. It's one of those concepts that is sort of like, I know it when I see it.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That's what I was going to say is revised tagline is welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast where like pornography. We can't define ultra processed foods exactly, but we know them when we see them.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right? Like, you kind of know that a Twinkie is like an ultra processed food. You know that Wonder Bread is an ultra processed food. And I want to say that, like, as a colloquial matter, I don't really police this stuff. Like, if I'm with somebody and they say, like, oh, I'm trying to cut back on processed foods, I'm not like, how are you defining that?

[Aubrey Gordon]

The research disagrees with you.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah. If you are a Person who's trying to avoid processed foods. Like, you know what that means. There's all kinds of kind of arbitrary concepts in our lives that we still manage to live by, and I think this is totally fine. The question that we're trying to confront on the show is. Is like, is this useful as a scientific concept and as a concept that is now driving policy? So there are numerous countries that are passing taxes on processed foods. We talked in our last episode about how RFK Jr. Potentially might want to remove processed foods from food stamps. And so it's kind of fine to have a colloquial understanding of a term that is, like, a little murky or a little, you know, it sort of changes depending on the circumstances. But if we're going to be passing laws and if we're going to be putting out studies that say, okay, ultra processed foods is associated with a 5% higher risk of cardiovascular disease, we need to have a clear understanding of what this term means.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I also think there is a way that sort of processed food has come to act as a stand in for what folks maybe previously would have referred to as quote, unquote, junk food.

[Michael Hobbs]

God damn it, Aubrey. This is in my conclusion. This is in the conclusion of my notes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

There's sort of an understanding that it might be uncouth, are sort of judgmental. To refer to some foods as quote, unquote, junk foods and processed sounds like more technical or more descriptive or something to people.

[Michael Hobbs]

Fine, Aubrey. I'll scroll down to the part of my notes where I have information about this.

[Aubrey Gordon]

You know, I was thinking about this episode last night, and I was looking at my beloved bean shelf. Do my beans count as ultra processed? What about, I have a jar of barley. Is that ultra processed? The closer you get to trying to find a line, the murkier it gets. Right. It's very sort of impressionist. It makes sense from a distance. And then you get up close and you're like, no.

[Michael Hobbs]

The thing is, the more I read about this, the more I actually. I think I prefer the term junk food because when people say junk food, you know that it doesn't actually have a lot of informational content. It basically just means, like, food I don't like. You're like, okay, everybody's gonna define it differently. Whereas processed food feels objective.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

But, like, it turns out to be, like, just as arbitrary. It just sounds less arbitrary.

[Aubrey Gordon]

There is something that is genuinely helpful about people just sort of owning up to their judgments and biases because. And you actually can have a conversation about it.

[Michael Hobbs]

Exactly.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Versus someone who goes, oh, it's not junk food. It's ultra processed foods where they just sort of keep sort of seeking a new refuge from any kind of conversation about how they actually feel.

[Michael Hobbs]

So the first thing to know about the term processed food is that it's been around, like, much longer than I knew. So I went on that, like, Google gram thing that is, like, how much is this term being used? The first reference that it has for processed food is from 1912. You can find old articles in, like, the New York Times, like, decrying processed food and how it's harming people. One of the first articles I found was from 1970 called Bread is fatal to rats. But that's not the point.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Wait, wait, wait, Mike, hang on.

[Michael Hobbs]

Are you doing a rat soundboard right now?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Are you getting rat God? I'm trying to find my fucking zoom window to turn on the camera.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, wow. When is this from?

[Aubrey Gordon]

This appears to be from the 50s. I found this in an antique shop. It's a print that says, bread helps to keep up your energy in this sensible, reducing diet. Bread helps burn up safely the fat you lose.

[Michael Hobbs]

Dude, bring back this graphic design.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It looks dope, huh?

[Michael Hobbs]

It's so wordy. It's like all these words and then like people at a prom or something because they ate bread also.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Now I want a rat soundboard. Sorry.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is okay. I know I said I wasn't going to go down rabbit holes and shit, but the first paragraph of this article is. For what may be the 1000th time, the question of whether or not rats can live on nothing but ordinary white bread has been raised. Once again, I'm like, is that. Is that something we were raising a lot in the 1970s?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Sorry, are we coming back to this one a bunch?

[Michael Hobbs]

It's like a first date question. Fascinating. Where are you from? Do you have any siblings? Can rats live on bread?

[Aubrey Gordon]

If a tree falls in the woods, no one's around to hear it. Does it make a sound? Can rats live on bread?

[Michael Hobbs]

So this is a study where they fed rats like, ordinary white bread and of course, like refined flour. You know, they remove a lot of the fiber, a lot of the nutrients, et cetera. If you feed rats just white bread, they do die. Like they starve to death, basically because there's not enough nutrients. However, if you feed them an enriched white bread that has these vitamins and minerals put back in, they live. Yeah, but what's interesting to me is, like, in this article, from the very beginning of this term, nobody could really define what processing is, because one way to think about it, it's like, okay, you're processing the wheat, you're taking out all the nutrients, but also boiling down foods to get the nutrients out and turning them into powders and putting them into bread is also processing. It's arguably more processing. Yeah, this is just a different kind of processing. So it's like everyone uses the term processed just to mean like food. I don't like food that I think is bad, right?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Absolutely. Like, there are very few definitions of processed foods in terms of the like, colloquial usage that would include like olive.

[Michael Hobbs]

This does actually get to the biggest problem with the term and the biggest problem with efforts to define it. So the term becomes much more popular in the early 2000s, especially with the rise of Michael Pollan. I went back to the omnivores dilemma for this. And he refers to processed foods many times, but he doesn't refer to ultra processed foods. The term ultra processed is coined in 2009 by a Brazilian researcher named Carlos Monteiro, who had been doing kind of fieldwork in Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s, originally on malnutrition. But he was noticing with these poor populations, eventually the problem of malnutrition had started to shift to what he calls overnutrition. You basically have, as the Brazilian economy is developing, there's more of these, like commercial foods being produced and traditional diets are starting to give way to like, you know, sodas and Twinkies and all the kind of stuff we associate with ultra processed foods. So in 2009, he puts out the first use of this term in academia. Ultra processed. And also an attempt to define it. So this is a paper called the issue is not food nor nutrients so much as processing. So I'm going to send you the first couple paragraphs.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It is now generally acknowledged that the current pandemic of obesity and related chronic diseases has as one of its important causes increased consumption of convenience and pre prepared foods. However, the issue of food processing is largely ignored or minimized in education and information about food nutrition and health and in public health policies.

[Michael Hobbs]

So this is happening in the context of this shifting understanding of food. Right. That the original understanding of like quote, unquote unhealthy food was food that was high in saturated fats. Right. We talked about this coming out of the 1950s, it was like, we need to cut down on fat. Then in the early 2000s, we get this stigmatization of sugar and carbs. And so what Monteiro is saying is like, we need A more holistic understanding of this, that it's not just like you measure the grams of sugar and then you're like, this food is level eight bad. Like that's really one dimensional. We need a three dimensional understanding. And that comes from understanding the way that the food is made, basically.

[Aubrey Gordon]

God, the whole time you're talking about this, I'm just thinking about other foods that are ultra processed. Protein, Protein powder. Protein powder. That's ultra processed.

[Michael Hobbs]

We're getting there. We're getting there, we're getting there.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Athletic greens.

[Michael Hobbs]

You read two more paragraphs, Aubrey, and then we'll get to the fun part, which is us trying to define what.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Ultra processed food is dunking on. Huel.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, exactly. Yes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Fuck you, Moondust.

[Michael Hobbs]

So I'm sending you these paragraphs about where he lays out, like, what is the problem with ultra processed foods?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Modern diets usually do contain some unprocessed plant foods and meat and milk, but also keep several of the unhealthy features of the processed ingredients. They are mostly based low nutrient density, little dietary fiber, and excess simple carbohydrates, saturated fats, sodium, and trans fatty acids. What makes snacks, drinks, dishes, and meals mainly made up from the ultra processed foods different from traditional dishes and meals is that they are inalterable. They come ready to eat or heat. Diets that include a lot of ultra processed foods are intrinsically, nutritionally unbalanced and intrinsically harmful to health.

[Michael Hobbs]

Well, now, hang on, are you gonna. Are you gonna mention exactly what I was about to say?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Like, you can say this, but we just talked about like enriched flour and enriched cereals, right? That like, growing up. Yes, absolutely. Breakfast cereal was kind of everywhere, but all of that breakfast cere was like very prominently labeled as being enriched with vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin B. I don't know that you can argue necessarily that it's intrinsically, nutritionally unbalanced. Again, athletic greens is an ultra processed food that advertises itself as being nutritionally balanced. Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

There's also this core problem that you find in like every single paper about this, where it says, okay, it's not about the nutrients, it's not about what's inside of the food. It's about the processes by which the foods are made. And then it's like, okay, why are ultra processed foods bad? It's about what's in the food. So he's saying they're high in fat, they're high in sugar, and they're calorie dense.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Oh my God, Mike, are we gonna end up doing the reporting version of that Breyers commercial from the 90s where they made a little kid try to read the ingredients on a bucket of ice cream.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, that was a Breyers commercial. I actually looked up the ingredients of Breyers for this episode.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. Cause they were like. But look at Breyers. And the kid is like. Like milk, cream, sugar, guar gum.

[Michael Hobbs]

That kid could pronounce guar gum.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It just really feels like that's sort of where we're headed.

[Michael Hobbs]

We finally get to the meat of this paper and just such fucking mic bait. The attempt to actually operationally define what ultra processed food is. So he proposes in 2009, this classification that has three groups. Every single person who writes about ultra processed food has, like, the same paragraph where they're like, well, all food is processed.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

Slicing up an apple is processing it, but it has no nutritional content whatsoever. But also Pringles, making a slurry of potato and then shaping it into chip shape is also processing. It's like, this term encompasses such a wide range of activities that it's probably better to just find a different term. So he does acknowledge this. So the first group in his classification is minimally processed foods or unprocessed foods. Obvious stuff. Right. Of like, you pick an apple from the tree and it's like a group one food. Right. But then he also acknowledges that even these foods include processing. So he says such processes include cleaning, removal of inedible fractions, portioning, refrigeration, freezing, pasteurization, fermenting, pre cooking, drying, skimming, bottling.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And packaging, skim milk process.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is the problem. He's saying these are forms of processing, but, like, they don't count. It's not about whether foods are processed. It's about, like, the intensity of the processing.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, it just feels goofy to be like, the dried beans are not processed, but you put them in a can and then they are.

[Michael Hobbs]

So that is group one. These are foods that are like, they're processed. Yeah. But they're not, like, ultra processed, so they're good.

[Aubrey Gordon]

We're gonna look the other way.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, they're fine, right?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

Group two is substances extracted from whole foods. So this is anything like, you know, refining flour.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Oh, is that my olive oil?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yes, this is olive oil. So when you press olives, you get oil out of them. This is, again, also a form of processing, but it's not like the bad kind of processing. You're basically making ingredients out of whole foods. So he says traditionally they are ingredients used in the domestic preparation and cooking of dishes. Mainly made up of fresh and minimally processed foods. Because all of this is based on his work with like traditional families and like rural poor populations in Brazil. What he's really trying to do with this classification is separate kind of traditional food practices from modern food practices. Right. This is a critique of the modern, modern food system. And so what he's doing with group one and two is like, well, yeah, you know, if you look at like a poor family in rural Brazil, like they might be using some flour, they're probably using some oil. When they like saute vegetables, they're using spices. Technically that's processing, but that's not the kind of processing that is going to be harmful to health. These are like traditional practices. Right. But then he contrasts this with group three, which is ultra processed foods. So we're finally getting to the definition of ultra processed foods. So here is this.

[Aubrey Gordon]

These are made up of Group 2 substances to which either no or relatively small amounts of minimally processed foods are added, plus salt and other preservatives, and often also cosmetic additives such as flavors and colors. This group of foods includes breads, cookies, ice creams, chocolates, candies, breakfast cereals, cereal bars, potato chips and savory. And also sweet snack products in general and sugared and other soft drinks.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's the kind of you know it when you see it thing.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Meat products such as nuggets, hot dogs, burgers and sausages made from processed or extruded remnants of meat can also be classified as ultra processed foods. Boy, if anyone ever describes anything I'm eating as extruded remnants of meat, I.

[Michael Hobbs]

Mean, that's what they are.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's true and I don't want to hear it.

[Michael Hobbs]

I know, don't think about it.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Ultra processed foods are basically confections of Group 2 ingredients, typically combined with sophisticated use of additives to make them editable, palatable and habit forming. They have no real resemblance to Group 1 foods, although they may be shaped, labeled and marketed so as to seem wholesome and fresh. Unlike the ingredients Included in Group 2, ultra processed foods are typically not consumed with or as part of minimally processed foods, dishes and meals. They are designed to be ready to eat, sometimes with addition of liquids such as milk or ready to heat, and are often consumed alone or in combination, such as savory snacks with soft drinks, drinks, bread with burgers. It really feels like a very vibey definition.

[Michael Hobbs]

The core definition is that ultra processed foods are made up of Group 2 substances to which either no or relatively small amounts of minimally processed foods are Added. So the idea is that these products are majority, like oil and fat. Like something like Nutella, which is like 13% hazelnuts. And effectively everything else is just like oil and sugar.

[Aubrey Gordon]

But Michael, that's not typically consumed with or as part of minimally processed foods, dishes and meals. Which means. I'm sorry, you never have dipped a banana into Nutella.

[Michael Hobbs]

You know, earlier he said, like, the problem with ultra processed foods. Right. Is that they're very high in sugar, they're high in fat, they're very calorie dense. But then he includes things in ultra processed here that are not particularly high in sugar or fat or energy dense. Like all breads. You're including tortillas. This also excludes a lot of foods. This definition does not include potato chips. Because, like, I looked at lay's potato chips, like lay's original potato chips have three ingredients.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

Potatoes, oil and salt. And like lots of french fries also are just three ingredients. Right. It's potatoes, oil and salt. That's kind of like the canonical food of like, you shouldn't be eating so many potato chips, you shouldn't be eating french fries. But those actually count as minimally processed foods under this definition.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

You're saying ultra processed foods are bad for you.

[Aubrey Gordon]

You.

[Michael Hobbs]

But then you have this definition of ultra processed foods that includes a lot of foods that are not particularly bad for you. And then you have this definition of unprocessed foods that includes a ton of foods that are bad for you. Or like, at least they're calorie dense, energy dense. I was thinking, because he includes milk in the sort of unprocessed category, like a creme brulee would count as like unprocessed. Even though it's extremely calorie dense, it's still mostly cream, right?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. And just so very similar ingredients wise to like, ice cream.

[Michael Hobbs]

Ice cream always makes the list of ultra processed foods. But like, I looked this up. Haagen Dazs ice cream has five ingredients. It's like cream, sugar, vanilla. There's nothing you can't pronounce in there.

[Aubrey Gordon]

As a person who occasionally makes ice cream, there's not much to it.

[Michael Hobbs]

But then the second problem with this definition is that it includes these concepts that are just not related to human nutrition. So he goes into this whole thing that the real problem with ultra processed foods is that they're profit maximizing. They're produced by large corporations. They're these kind of international commodities.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Ah, yes. More vibes.

[Michael Hobbs]

Exactly. So he says ultra processed products are Typically branded, distributed internationally and globally, heavily advertised and marketed, and very profitable. But the problem with this is that fucking like fruits and vegetables and food that is good for you is also very profitable and also produced by fucking international global corporations. Like, if you go to the grocery store and get strawberries, they're gonna be from fucking Driscolls. Driscoll's is like a massive corporation.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I mean, I think here's the interesting thing here. There is a critique to be had about the behavior of any number of multinational corporations that criticism of corporate behavior isn't the same thing as proving that there are negative health effects as a result of that bad corporate behavior. Again, they're trying to kind of ride the coattails of like. This kind of makes sense to you, right? Yeah, you kind of know that corporations are like, bad, so they're probably also bad for your health. Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

We found this in the Michael Pollan book too, that people keep presenting these dietary choices as somehow like a break from capitalism or somehow virtuous in all of these other larger economic ways, and they just aren't. Food can be healthy and produced by miserable corporations. This is the way that we've chosen to structure our economy. You cannot escape from this by buying virtuous food. I think this is a huge mistake in the way that people frame this stuff.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And if you can, then the escape is only an escape that is available to people who can afford it.

[Michael Hobbs]

Exactly.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Maybe the push then should be, A, we first have to establish that there is hard and fast evidence that this is like actively uniquely bad for you. And B, then I think the task becomes, then you, like, regulate healthier products.

[Michael Hobbs]

So as we just covered like this, this definition is like, not all that useful. I think this paper is like, actually quite bad. Like kind of shockingly bad, considering it, like began this entire field, like, just obvious contradictions. You know that I love like a petty, like, academic paper, Aubrey. You know, I love like peer reviewed, like, hmm, interesting.

[Aubrey Gordon]

You and I both love the big brother house aspects.

[Michael Hobbs]

Exactly.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Of academia. Absolutely.

[Michael Hobbs]

So I found an article on all of the ways that they had to change the definition of this term over time. Between 2009 and 2017, they changed the definition of ultra processed foods seven times.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, that tracks.

[Michael Hobbs]

And there's this article called Ultra Processed Foods Definitions and Policy Issues by Michael J. Gibney that follows all of these changes in like a super petty but also very useful way.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Oh, it's our Weight Watchers episode.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Here are the 17 different diets at Weight Watchers.

[Michael Hobbs]

So in 2010, the definition of ultra processed foods is updated to durable, accessible, convenient and palatable. Ready to eat or ready to heat. Food products liable to be consumed as snacks or desserts or to replace home prepared dishes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I like that they keep throwing in highly palatable, which is just like, if it tastes good, it's good. It's one of these.

[Michael Hobbs]

The other like the first thing that jumped out to me about this the first time I read it is this ready to eat thing where it's like these are often ready to eat. But do you know what else is ready to eat? A fucking apple.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Totally. And some of that is like grilled chicken breast that's cut up and thrown in a package at the grocery store and then you pick up. Right. So like, to refer to a food like that while conjuring an image of just like a heap of like Hostess cupcakes and Cheetos.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Feels misleading in a way that really verges on deliberate here.

[Michael Hobbs]

There's also the thing, you know, it says they're intended to replace home prepared dishes, but also this is not a biological concept. The purpose of making food does not affect your body differently. If I'm eating a brownie to replace a meal that doesn't make the brownie like affect my body differently. It's like, again, we're just throwing in these concepts that are not actually related to nutrition.

[Aubrey Gordon]

At least let's just be honest about what we're grappling with.

[Michael Hobbs]

Exactly.

[Aubrey Gordon]

You already know which foods it is. It's the foods you already don't trust.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And you already know exactly eats those foods. And it's people who probably make less money than you do.

[Michael Hobbs]

We then in 2012 get another update where ultra processed foods are defined as. These are formulated mostly or entirely from ingredients and typically contain no whole foods. So this is yet another like, message that you see in this world even in like academic articles. It's like they're not even food. They're like edible food, like substances.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Right. This is the Frankenfoods kind of stuff.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, I'm sorry, but like a Dorito is mostly corn. I'm sorry.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. I mean, to your point earlier about lays, another one of those is Fritos where you're like, oh, it's just corn and oil and salt.

[Michael Hobbs]

So, okay, so finally we, finally. This is the whole episode, Aubrey, just.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Walking through technical definitions, walking through definitions.

[Michael Hobbs]

Experts go on for like a decade to like try to come up with a classification. They finally in 2017 come up with what's called the Nova classification, which is now what is used in all of the studies? And from three groups they've now made it four groups. There was a period where they're like 3A and 3B or whatever, but now they're just like, fuck it, there's four groups. So I'm going to send you a JPEG of like the current definitions and some examples.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Group one is unprocessed or minimally processed foods, naturally occurring foods with no added salt, sugar, oils or fats. Group two is processed culinary ingredients. Group three is processed foods defined as food products made by adding sugar, oil and or salt to create simple products from unprocessed or minimally processed foods with increased shelf life or enhanced taste. And then the last one is like a brick. Yeah. And that is the definition of ultra processed food foods. Industrially created food products created with the addition of multiple ingredients that may include some group 2 ingredients as well as additives to enhance the taste and or convenience of the product, such as hydrolyzed proteins, soy protein isolate, maltodextrin, high fructose corn syrup stabilizers, flavor enhancers, non sugar sweeteners, and processing aids such as stabilizers and bulking and anti bulking agents.

[Michael Hobbs]

They're industrially created food products created with the addition of multiple ingredients to enhance taste and or convenience.

[Aubrey Gordon]

The examples here are commercially produced breads, rolls, cakes, cookies, donuts, breakfast cereals, soy burgers, flavored yogurts ready to heat meals such as frozen pizzas, soft drinks and candy.

[Michael Hobbs]

Soft drinks are not ready to heat.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I know, it's such a weird.

[Michael Hobbs]

The order that they're doing it in is weird.

[Aubrey Gordon]

The people who are doing the is defining are not writers. I'll say that.

[Michael Hobbs]

I think the greatest challenge that they come up with is this thing of there's processed foods which are fine, and then there's ultra processed foods which are bad.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is like, I think what they spent 10 years kind of trying to figure out because obviously everything is processed and there's stuff like cheese which is produced in like a very processing kind of process. God damn it. But they don't want to call that bad for you because that's kind of traditional or kind of virtuous, I guess. So that's in like group three.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. It just feels like so clearly such a line drawing exercise around, like how do I keep in the things I like and cut out the things I don't?

[Michael Hobbs]

There's also the one that really stuck out to me the first time I saw this was in group three, which again is good. You have freshly made bread and then in group four, which is bad, you have commercially produced bread. Yeah, again, these are not nutritional content concepts. Something can be made in very large batches and also be very good for you. And the other way around. And like, at what point does bread become commercially produced on some level? All fucking bread is commercially produced. I bought it at the bakery.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Well, also group four talks about, like high fructose corn syrup, but group two includes honey and maple syrup.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, exactly.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So what is the metabolic difference?

[Michael Hobbs]

Right?

[Aubrey Gordon]

It feels like they're trying to have. Have like a hundred sort of like scientific conversations at once. And I'm like, no, dudes, you gotta go through beat by beat and be like, here's the problem with emulsifiers and why they might be bad for your health. Here's the evidence for that. Here's why honey is different than high fructose corn syrup. It isn't.

[Michael Hobbs]

Also, Aubry.

[Aubrey Gordon]

What?

[Michael Hobbs]

No one even, like, in academia can. Can fucking agree on what the four groups are. I have seen honey in all four groups.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Good. Yes.

[Michael Hobbs]

No one can decide.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This is when I turn into that, like Elmo in front of flames. Like, yes, yes.

[Michael Hobbs]

There's also. I mean, maybe this is me being annoying, but like, I also kind of object to, like, cakes and cookies being an ultra processed. Because, like, yeah, some cakes and cookies are ultra processed, but some cakes and cookies you bake at home with like five ingredients. And surely the whole point of a fucking processing scale is to organize foods according to how processed they are. Like the processes by which they are made. You just have like, all cakes and all cookies are in here. Presumably because they're very high in fat and high in sugar. But then if we're just putting in all foods that are high in fat and sugar, then why isn't this just the fucking. How high are foods in fat and sugar scale?

[Aubrey Gordon]

You could also argue that, like, while they've got like cookies in group four, that if you're talking about macarons, those are made with ground up almonds instead of wheat flour. So does that mean that they're sugar nuts? They're really trying to put a real fine point on it, but in the process of so doing, they are revealing how blunt that point is.

[Michael Hobbs]

I could yell that on the Internet for saying this the other day, but, like, there's also the thing of, like, ultra processed foods are characterized by the addition of multiple ingredients and then they list like, maltodextrin, all this kind of stuff. But. Am I losing my mind, Aubrey? Ingredients are not the same as processed processing like, if I make bread with, like, water, flour, yeast, and cyanide, that's not bad because it's processed. Like, the process of making that is precisely the same as if it wasn't poisonous. The reason it's poisonous is because of the ingredient. None of this stuff is processed. It's like, if the ingredients are bad, then it's bad for you. But then the whole. The original article that kicked all this off was like, it's not what's in the food, it's the process. But then they define it, and it's like, oh, so it is what's in the food.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It really mimics the kind of way that I feel myself behaving when I'm looking for, like, shampoo or something. And the container will say, like, no parabens and no phthalates. And I'm like, I don't know what those things are, but it seems good. Yeah, yeah, but they don't have them. And you're like, sort of creating this weird, deliberate Byzantine definition that carves out all the things that you trust and leaves in all the things that you don't trust.

[Michael Hobbs]

So, okay, so that will. That was the sort of decade long and I think unsuccessful effort to define what this term means. We then, in 2019, get the first evidence that this category of food is uniquely bad. So this comes from a researcher named Kevin hall, who was previously a physicist, but sort of drifted into diet research. He was the guy that wrote the Biggest Loser study, the study that found that their metabolisms were still hella slow, like, years after they were on the Biggest loser. He, in 2015, meets Carlos Monteiro at a conference. And Monteiro is like, you're looking at this the wrong way. You shouldn't be looking at nutrients. You should be looking at processing, according to the lore. He's like, I don't really buy this. I don't know about this whole ultra process thing. I'm gonna design a study to disprove this concept. And then he, like, accidentally ends up proving the concept.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I feel like what you're ramping up for is like, what I was ramping up for when I was like. Richard Simm says he got a book deal by sitting next to someone. I don't have concrete evidence to be like, no, that definitely didn't happen. But I'm gonna go out on a limb and be like, but really didn't happen.

[Michael Hobbs]

So the way that he does this is he gets a Grant from the NIH to basically take 20 people and like, lock them in a room, not really, but like metaphorically and monitor their diets. And so what he does is he gives them for two weeks a unprocessed diet. So like completely whole foods. And then for the next two weeks he gives them a ultra processed diet and he switches this. So like 10 people start with unprocessed and then go to processed. 10 people start with processed and then go to unprocessed. So that way he's like flipping them around. They're given this food and they have 60 minutes to eat as much of it as they want. And then when they're done, the researchers take it and they weigh it to see exactly like gram by gram, exactly how much of it did they eat. So that way they can measure their intake. And then of course, there's like a ton of tests at the beginning and at the end.

[Aubrey Gordon]

You and I have talked about sort of like there are a couple of ways to do nutrition research. And one is like in a lab, in a vacuum, it gets you much more limited in scope kind of data. Or you can go sort of larger scale, more longitudinal, but that's usually dependent on self reports and people sort of like adhering based on the honor code.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So much of what I've heard about processed foods is about long term health effects.

[Michael Hobbs]

Aubrey, are you saying you can't measure the long term effect of lifestyle on Health in two weeks with 20 people? I. Aubrey. I don't know, Mike.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I'm not a scientist.

[Michael Hobbs]

Have you co hosted this show?

[Aubrey Gordon]

I don't know. I don't know. Maybe. I don't know.

[Michael Hobbs]

Let me just make you read the description of the results. This is from a New Yorker article by Dhruv Kular.

[Aubrey Gordon]

When participants were on the ultra processed diet, they ate 500 calories more per day and put on an average of 2 pounds. They ate meals faster. Their bodies secreted more insulin, their blood contained more glucose. When participants were on the minimally processed diet, they lost about 2 pounds. Researchers observed a rise in levels of an appetite suppressing hormone and a decline in one that makes us feel hungry.

[Michael Hobbs]

So this is very decisive. It's like people who ate ultra processed foods gained a bunch of weight, they ate more. All of these markers got worse. The unprocessed people, they did great. They lost weight, they felt awesome. This study, when it comes out is like, it's wild how popular the study was. The study has been cited 1200 times.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. And I don't know, this feels sort of like the glycemic index all over again, which is like a teeny Tiny group of people have a specific response to a food or group of foods, and that then somehow becomes like conventional wisdom in really short order.

[Michael Hobbs]

This study is so much worse than just the fact that it was two weeks. So the whole kind of point of a study like this is to hold everything else constant and only look at the effect of quote unquote processing. But then if you read the fucking text of the study, that was not remotely true. The ultra processed diet had twice the energy density of the unprocessed diet. It had twice the saturated fat and it had 1.5 times more sugar. So these are not equivalent diets at the most basic level. And this is like in the fucking.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Study, you're like one group had a green salad and the other one had like a value meal from Wendy's. And the ones who had a value meal from Wendy's gained weight. Would you believe it?

[Michael Hobbs]

Aubrey, Aubrey, Aubrey.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Oh no. Is it gonna be a fucking biggie sized frosty? Is that what we're about to talk about?

[Michael Hobbs]

The supplementary material of this study includes the daily menu. So for every day it includes specifically what they ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. With photos.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Go Gurt.

[Michael Hobbs]

I am about to send you pudding plates, packs. We're going to do day two dinner, unprocessed menu.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Day two dinner, stir fried beef, tender roast with broccoli, onions, sweet peppers, ginger, garlic and olive oil, basmati rice, orange slices, pecan halves and salt and pepper.

[Michael Hobbs]

So it's like a nice dinner of like, I guess essentially like a stir fry. Sauteed vegetables, sauteed beef. It looks nice, right?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Sure.

[Michael Hobbs]

And then we have of day two processed. What?

[Aubrey Gordon]

What are you talking?

[Michael Hobbs]

Just the visual. Just the visual is so fucking funny.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It is two whole chicken salad sandwiches for dinner, white bread dinner, A cup that appears to be an entire can of canned peaches in heavy syrup. You get two Keebler shortbread cookies and four Fig Newtons. And then you, you get five crystal lights with fiber added. Even in my darkest days of like 80s 90s low fat fucking dieting, I did not get through five crystal lights in one day.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is actually the reason why the energy density is so different between the two diets is because I think in an effort to hold a fiber content, there's no fiber in ultra processed foods. It's like one of the things that makes them ultra processed foods. So the only way to get participants fiber was to basically give them sodas every day with like fiber supplements in them. So these are diet lemonade, but oftentimes it's just like juice or like a little smoothie or milkshake, something like that. But like, there are drinks with every meal for the ultra processed people. There are no drinks for the unprocessed meal. Every once in a while they get a milk or something, but like they're not getting like diet sodas or anything. So that's a huge difference between the two diets.

[Aubrey Gordon]

If you were sitting down to make yourself a meal, the chances that you that like most people would make two whole sandwiches and eat an entire can of peaches, like, right. It just is. It's not representative of like how people eat.

[Michael Hobbs]

Well, also, the thing that really stuck out to me is that there are three desserts with this meal. There are cookies, there are Fig Newtons, and there's a can of peaches in syrup. Almost every single meal of the ultra processed comes with like cookies or shortbread or like some sort of like pudding. There are no desserts with any of the unprocessed meals.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

The other like really striking thing about this is that they're not the same meal. They're completely different.

[Aubrey Gordon]

If you want to do a one to one on your ultra processed, you get the like, I don't know, Stouffer's version of like beef and broccoli.

[Michael Hobbs]

Exactly.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Okay, let's go head to head with similar dishes.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is the thing is like what they're actually fucking doing. They're calling this a test of like, are ultra processed foods worse for you? But it's literally, it's like you give one group of people salads, it's like a lot of salads. You give another group of people fucking cookies and they're like, oh my God, the people ate more cookies. Therefore ultra processed foods are bad for you.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Right? You gave them six cookies with every meal.

[Michael Hobbs]

What I actually think there's like a huge missed opportunity here because something people always talk about in this field is that like, well, pizza isn't necessarily bad for you. Right? If it's, if it's a frozen pizza from the grocery outlets, but then it's bad for you. But if it's like artisanal and there's only three ingredients in the dough and it's like lovingly made, then it is good for you. Right. It doesn't have to be bad. So why didn't you fucking test that hypothesis?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Can we look at their final meal?

[Michael Hobbs]

The like the, the goodbye meal, the farewell?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Is that it?

[Michael Hobbs]

Sorry, I have so many. I have so many files called supplementary material.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I have no doubt.

[Michael Hobbs]

There it is.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Day seven dinner. It was only seven days. I thought it was 14.

[Michael Hobbs]

I think they. They must have repeated.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Oh, they repeated. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. The ultra processed menu for day seven dinner is so.

[Michael Hobbs]

Looks so bad. Also, again, there's fucking two desserts is.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Made for a child.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, it really is. All of them are.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It is two PB and Js that are packed to the gills.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, they really are, like overflowing.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Two cups of 2% milk fiber added. Woof.

[Michael Hobbs]

Horrible.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And then you get a snack pack of chocolate pudding, graham crackers, baked Cheetos. That's the way you disappoint everyone.

[Michael Hobbs]

They're the color of, like, glow sticks at a rave.

[Aubrey Gordon]

They're the color of delicious.

[Michael Hobbs]

I hate Cheetos, dude. Cheetos.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Oh my God. I love. Dude. Anything with powdered cheese. Anything with powdered cheese. I love it so much.

[Michael Hobbs]

There's these long sections of these articles where they're like, people can't stop eating Doritos. And I'm like, really?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Day seven dinner, unprocessed menu. What you're seeing is a pretty sizable bowl of pasta.

[Michael Hobbs]

It looks like a salad with a side salad.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It does look like a salad with a.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is my nightmare, Aubrey. This is it. This is where I flip over the table.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Also with a side salad of green leaf lettuce, baby carrots, and broccoli. Can't have too much salad, apparently. Apparently. God, it's raw broccoli too.

[Michael Hobbs]

I wonder why people ate 500 fewer calories. Wow. We gave them the most boring food imaginable.

[Aubrey Gordon]

They're not listing the giant bowl of grapes, you gluttons.

[Michael Hobbs]

I guess that's the dessert.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It seems visually like there's an implication here. Like, if you weren't having two cookies, you would be eating a bowl of grapes. And I'm like, I just don't think that's how people think and eat.

[Michael Hobbs]

But also, if the title of this stuff was like, people eat more cookies than grapes, I'd be like, yeah, I don't know that this says anything about processed versus unprocessed foods. These are different foods.

[Aubrey Gordon]

But listen, if you sort of scrape off this top layer of like, sort of window dressing kind of stuff around, like, we're actually concerned about long term health conditions. We're actually concerned about blah, blah, blah. Most of those things are things like diabetes, like heart disease, and things that we associate with fat people. So I think part of what you're seeing here is an assumption about how fat people eat and how poor people eat.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay. So that was the experimental study that was the attempt to prove that ultra processed food is bad for you. Like in a lab. We then of course get a huge wave of observational studies. You can look up on like Google Scholar. There are dozens of studies that measure Ultra Processed Foods vs non ultra processed foods. And like, they all basically find the same thing. It's like higher rates of cancer, higher rates of cardiovascular disease, disease. Like, it's all the stuff that you would expect. This is sort of the second way that you can measure the effect of food on health is like you take these big studies of like hundreds of thousands of people. You give people food frequency questionnaires. How often are you eating something? Oftentimes they'll do this in two ways at the same time. They'll be like, how often do you eat these foods in general? And they'll also do a 24 hour recall, like, what did you do yesterday? This is like kind of as good as it gets. Although people are so bad at estimating what they're eating and especially the amounts, right? If you go to a restaurant and you have pad Thai, can you say how many ounces you ate? So there's that sort of layer of just gathering the basic information. But then on top of that, researchers will then go in and they will code people's answers for ultra processed food. So they get these answers, this is what I eat. I ate cake yesterday, cookies yesterday, whatever. And then researchers will go in and go, aha. Cake is ultra process processed. So this person is, yes, eating ultra processed food. So there's two layers of errors with this. And the biggest thing with this is that they're not fucking measuring whether people are eating ultra processed food. They're just having these food categories. So again, fucking cake. Cake can either be ultra processed or not ultra processed. It depends on the fucking cake.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Well, and also again, like, I wonder about, like how are they coating things like tofu?

[Michael Hobbs]

Exactly.

[Aubrey Gordon]

We've seen now multiple, multiple ways that processed and ultra processed foods are categorized. And we've already sort of explored that like reasonable minds can differ, right? That like two people could in good faith put the same thing in like any of the four different categories or in two of the four categories or whatever, right?

[Michael Hobbs]

And they do, some of the studies do actually attempt to control for that. They'll have blinded, like one researcher will do it and then another researcher will also do it like independently. And they'll say like, okay, we have 95 agreement. They're attempting to control for this. But then what the the real problem Is that it's not actually the coders. It's the actual designers of the research. They all say, like, oh, we use the NOVA classification system. But if you read studies, different studies have like, different classifications. So like we mentioned, honey before shows up in all different categories. I also notice alcohol. Some studies just like, remove it altogether. They're like, we're not looking at alcohol consumption. Some studies will put it as, like, not ultra processed. Some studies will put it as ultra processed. I also found one that put wine and beer as not ultra processed, but like vodka as ultra processed.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Mike. It's the potatoes, it's the carbs.

[Michael Hobbs]

The same study also put it was bread was not ultra processed, but pretzels were ultra processed.

[Aubrey Gordon]

When you put it in a shape, that's processing. Mike.

[Michael Hobbs]

The other one that really bugs me is like, hamburgers are always in the ultra processed category. But like, I looked this up. A McDonald's hamburger is 100% beef. It's beef. It doesn't have a bunch of weird ingredients in it.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Do you think they're maybe counting on, like, buns and American cheese and ketchup and all of that kind of stuff?

[Michael Hobbs]

Well, that's the thing is, like, technically, yeah, you could put it in there, but again, it could be ultra processed or it could not be like, everything fucking else. Like the cookies and the cakes and the pizza. Like, pizza is always in ultra processed as well. But, like, it kind of matters for your whole thesis, whether it's like frozen pizza or like homemade, artisanal, whatever, quote, unquote, nice pizza.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Has anyone hazarded a guess at what the mechanism is here?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, this is something that you find in, like the critical literature is that they're like, we're actually like, as a research field, we're actually missing a crucial component and we're kind of leapfrogging over this because we thought it was saturated fat, then we thought it was sugar. Now we think it's processing, but no one can agree on what the processing is. Yeah, there's also, Aubrey, I wrote down like nine other problems with these studies. I'm going to try to go through them very quickly.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I know you were talking a big game about we're going to record for two hours.

[Michael Hobbs]

I know.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I'll tell you what, I'm looking at that ticker. We're at 1 hour 54. How's it coming?

[Michael Hobbs]

Well, we're getting. We're on page 40 of 91. Another problem with these studies is they don't distinguish between different types of ultra processed food oftentimes. It's just this weird binary distinction between like ultra processed food and everything else. So all three of the first three categories are just like good and ultra processed is bad. But there's a couple studies that actually look at different categories of ultra processed food. They're like, okay, breakfast cereal, candy bars, various other things. In this study that looked at 10 categories of ultra processed foods, the only ones that showed a clear and consistent association with worse disease was soda, processed meats and alcohol. All the other ones, like cookies, refined bread, all this other stuff, it was like too mixed to really say anything.

[Aubrey Gordon]

But even within those, Right. Like, if we're talking about breakfast cereals, my guess is that Grape Nuts is gonna have a different health effect than like Lucky Charms.

[Michael Hobbs]

All of this stuff breaks down once you try to get granular.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking. And like, okay, so you've got the entire category of sodas. I think there are probably a lot of people out there drinking like poppy and Olipop and all of the like probiotic sodas, thinking that that's a different thing.

[Michael Hobbs]

So. And the final thing I want to mention is the lack of a dose response. So the way that they do these studies is they compare the people who eat the least ultra processed foods to people who eat the most ultra processed foods. And it's like a really wide gap. Like some people are, are eating like 60% ultra processed foods and some people are eating like 7%. When you compare the least versus the most, you do get these pretty large effects. However, there's some studies actually list the effect for each of the quintiles in between. And there's something weird that the death risk actually goes down sometimes if you eat more ultra processed foods.

[Aubrey Gordon]

You heard it here first team.

[Michael Hobbs]

A real effect should have a dose response like a little bit of ultra processed foods is a little bad for you. A lot is a lot bad. Bad for you. But we don't find that in the results. One of the papers found a 50% higher cancer risk if you're eating a ton of ultra processed foods. But then once they adjusted it for the dose response, they only found a 5% difference.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Whoa.

[Michael Hobbs]

Some people, if you eat a little bit of ultra processed foods, you're actually less likely to get cancer. That's something that never comes up. I mean, I don't think this is causal, right? And also it's based on these fucking food frequency questionnaires, so who knows. But it's like to the extent that we have can give diet advice which we all know everybody's going to give diet advice on the basis of these correlational studies. To the extent we can give diet advice, it's like, well, yeah, if you're, if you're not eating any ultra processed foods, you should start eating some because those people actually have a lower risk of dying.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Well, this is sort of like the, like for seniors. It can be more beneficial on a number of health fronts to be in the overweight category versus the quote, unquote, healthy weight category. Right. But you're not seeing that as like health guidance for folks.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Because like this we already have some sort of cultural conclusions drawn.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Ultra processed foods are Cheetos and candy bars, and those are bad for you and you shouldn't eat them. This is maybe more damning than I mean it to be, but, like, it feels like it's sort of masquerading as science.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is what I mean with this. Like, is this a scientific term or is this just like a thing people say? Because I don't really mind if people say processed food, but if we're going to have a scientific term, we should have clear consistency about what is in that category and what is not in that category. You don't read biology papers that, like, can't agree on what a mammal is. Yeah, like, yes, there's some edge cases. Like, there's platypuses, but also, like, in general, that's like a pretty fixed category for this. It's like, sorry, bread. We can't decide where bread goes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I would argue that honey is processed by bees. It's flowers processed by bees.

[Michael Hobbs]

If it's animal processed, then it's fine. I mean, I guess milk is processed by cows. Maybe we're onto something, Aubrey. Let's publish. So this brings us to the massive mainstreaming of this term in 2023, when a guy named Chris Van Tulliken comes out with a book called Ultra Processed People. Why do we all eat stuff that isn't food? And why can't we stop as soon.

[Aubrey Gordon]

As it came out? We got so many episode records, so.

[Michael Hobbs]

Many episode records requests. So Chris Van Tillekin is a professor at my alma mater, ucl. Do you know what UCL stands for?

[Aubrey Gordon]

University College of London.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's the worst name of a university in the whole fucking world. University College.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Guys. That's really funny.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yesterday I had lunch at Food Restaurant.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Listen, I went to a school called Portland State.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, Portland's not a state. Do they know that?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Correct.

[Michael Hobbs]

Do they know that?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Correct. I know. Oh, no.

[Michael Hobbs]

Also, you went To Brown. Why are you forgetting pretending you went to.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I went to two years of Portland State and two years of Brown.

[Michael Hobbs]

No, I do know this. I just like reminding listeners that you went to Brown because you hated it. I meant fucking shit. Any excuse.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Now you're gonna leave all this shit in.

[Michael Hobbs]

So the thing is, we're not gonna go super duper into this book. Mostly because, like, I already have a podcast that does that. Like, I can't just, like, do fucking books all the time. The book, book, honestly, I've read worse from British TV presenters. As I was going, I would sort of double check things, and most factually, it mostly checks out. You don't catch him saying anything completely false. But I think the core problem of the book is that this concept of ultra processed food just does not hold up to 300 pages of discourse. I think throughout the book you keep getting this sense that, like, the, the ultra processed concept is not really helping us understand anything. So he has a whole section about climate change that, like, the way that we're eating is, like, really bad for the climate, which is absolutely true. And then he says, like, well, ultra processed foods are driving climate impacts. And I was like, are they, though? I went to the various NGOs have, like, rankings of, like, foods that are the worst for the climate. And so the top 10 foods that have the worst climate impact are beef, lamb, cheese, cow's milk, kind of like dairy products, generally chocolate, coffee, shrimp, palm oil, pork and chicken.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Oh, shrimp.

[Michael Hobbs]

And Chris Van Tilleken, like, admits this. He's like, well, you know, these aren't necessarily ultra processed foods, but they're part of like this ultra processed food system. And he sort of tries to, like, make that work, but it's like, if you, if you want to reduce your climate impacts, you wouldn't stop eating ultra processed food. You would stop eating, like, meat is, like, catastrophically bad for the climate, especially cows. Anything involving cows is really bad.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Well, and you could argue just as much if you're saying, like, beef is part of the problem. Imported beef is also a big part of the, like, fine dining landscape.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is the thing is he's constantly straddling ultra processed and unprocessed because you can eat a steak, which is unprocessed, but that's terrible for the planet.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Even worse if it's like Wagyu from Japan.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah. Like blown in frozen. It just is like, I don't like, over and over again in the book, you're like, this is interesting as like, a critique of the food system. But processing isn't like a very good entry point to this. He also has a whole section about how ultra processed food is addictive. So I'm going to send this to you.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Nicole Avina is an associate professor at Mount Sinai in New York and a visiting professor at Prison Winston. Her research focuses on food addiction and obesity. She told me how ultra processed foods, especially products with particular combinations of salt, fat, sugar and protein, can drive our ancient evolved systems for wanting some ultra processed foods may activate the brain reward system in a way that is similar to what happens when people use drugs like alcohol or even nicotine or, or morphine. The neuroscience is persuasive if still in its early stages. There is a growing body of brain scan data showing that energy dense, hyper palatable food, ultra processed, but probably also something a really good chef might be able to make, can stimulate changes in many of the same brain circuits and structures affected by addictive drugs. Is this just pleasure?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, this is.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Are you just experiencing pleasure?

[Michael Hobbs]

I read a really good paper on this called food addiction a valid Concept where like, it was basically a debate like, here's the case for food addiction as a real thing, and here's the case against food addiction as a real thing. And like, again, there's a colloquial definition of food addiction where people say, like, I'm addicted to chocolate. Like, the authors are actually very like, compassionate about this and are like, if that helps you, that makes sense. Like, the way that people talk about it colloquially is fine. However, as a scientific concept, the term addiction means something specific in like brain science, and we don't actually have good data on that for food.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I think that there are pitfalls to the ways that people talk about it colloquially because there is a point at which it stops being your own internal lens and starts being a lens that you apply to other people.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It also turns into like scrutinizing other people's eating and eating habits through the lens. That works for you. Right, right. I don't think that it's like totally unproblematic how people talk about it colloquially. But agree, agreed, that like, the research should have a higher threshold than that.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, exactly. And a lot of it basically is based on these functional MRI studies where like, they show you pictures of food or you eat food and like, you can see different parts of your brain light up as you do that. And so we always get these studies that it's like it lights up the same part of your brain as cocaine. But like, yeah, that's just like The I'm happy part of your brain. Like this. This is the same part of your brain that lights up when, like, you see your bag. Best friend.

[Aubrey Gordon]

We talked about this with, like, the idea of quote unquote, sugar addiction in our sugar episode, right? That, like, yeah, dude, you get that when you eat, like, a chocolate bar, but you also get it when you pet your dog.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's also very different person to person. Like, which part of your brain lights up. It's not as easy to say. It's like, oh, the cocaine part. Like, you're touching the cocaine part of your brain. It's just like. That's like the happy part. And it's very different for people. It's not really. It's not like a mature enough science. Science to say that this exists. And then the other kind of category of evidence for food addiction is rat studies.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Oh, your favorite.

[Michael Hobbs]

You can't really do rat studies on ultra processed foods because rat, like, they feed rats like, little pellets of, like, specific formulations, right? Of like, it's 40 carbohydrates and 20 protein. So like, that's basically as processed as it comes. You're making, like a slurry and then drying it into pellets and feeding it to rats. So all rat food is, like, equally processed, like, as processed as it can possibly be. There is something. There's studies where they feed. This is literally what it's called. They feed rats sweet fat chow, which is like a specific kind of chow. And then they measure, like, what they do. And like, there's some evidence. But also most of the rat study work is on sugar addiction. And sugar addiction, as we talked about, is, like, very disputed in the literature. And it's just like, not that it exists.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Hang on, I gotta go on Etsy and find a potter to make me a cookie jar with a label that just says sweet fat chow.

[Michael Hobbs]

I know, I love these little things.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Where's the sweet fat chow?

[Michael Hobbs]

At a very basic level, it's sort of indicative, this sort of stuff. But it's very. We're very far from kind of proving that food is addictive. And we're also very far from proving that ultra processed food is specifically addictive.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It is sort of feels like a frustrating thing when we do cover concepts like these that, like the assumption from Jump is that this has to be a biological reality. And that culture plays little or no role in how all of this stuff sort of gets metabolized by people.

[Michael Hobbs]

It also brings us back to the definitional problem because there's Actually, a study by Nicole Avina, this researcher that he's quoting here, where it's just like a qualitative survey. They just asked people, like, what food are you? What are you most, quote, unquote, addicted to? Like, what are the foods that you feel out of control around? And the number one answer, Beans. My bean shelf. I'm clawing my bean shelf all the time. That's only you, Aubrey. And if you want to talk about it like that, that's fine, but scientifically, the bean shelf is not in the rat.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Listen, get back at me when you see me at 2am in the kitchen just chomping down on dry. But the.

[Michael Hobbs]

The top five foods that people feel addicted to are chocolate, ice cream, french fries, pizza, and cookies.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Sure.

[Michael Hobbs]

Most of these are not ultra processed. Like, another thing that really bugs me about this ultra processed food research is that it always includes chocolate. And like any. You pick up any, almost any, like, milk chocolate, basic milk chocolate bar at the store. And it has like five ingredients. Like, I looked at Ghirardelli, it's unsweetened chocolate cane sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla extract, and soy lecithin. And the only sort of frankenfood ingredient in there is soy lecithin.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Like, are there health effects of soy lecithin?

[Michael Hobbs]

Well, exactly. Then it's sort of like we're back to this issue of like, what's the mechanism here? Because are we saying soy lecithin is addictive in food or harmful? Because soy lecithin is in a shitload of foods. It's in like, salad dressings, bread, it's, et cetera. Those foods aren't addictive the way that chocolate is. Right. People don't have the same relationship with those foods that they have with chocolate. So it's like, sorry, what is this theory? Is it that soy lecithin is bad or is it that, like. Well, chocolate is an ultra processed food because it's high in sugar and high in fat. If it's ultra processed because it's high in sugar and high in fat, then ultra processed isn't doing anything for us.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Right? I mean, like, if you're gonna take aim at like, stabilizers and emulsifiers, uh, oh, green juice.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Because if you don't put something in the green juice, it separ, and then you end up with like, yellow liquid and green silt in a bottle on the shelf, and nobody's buying that shit. Right. Like, another emulsifier is when you put a little bit of mustard in your vinaigrette.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right? Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

You can Sort of give all of these things more sort of nefarious sounding names or whatever, more complicated names, but like, that doesn't actually establish the case, make the case that they are harmful to your health.

[Michael Hobbs]

I feel like there's, there's this systematic lack of precision because I'm actually open to the idea that there's stuff in food that is harming us. Sure. And I don't love the fact that there's weird fucking hormones in the beef and shit. I don't love the artificialness of our food supply. However, I would much rather that conversation be led by actual scientists who know the dosages that are shown to be harmful and the ways in which it is harmful. We need actual information evidence for these things. We can't just say like there's chemicals in the food because like baking soda is a, is a white powder that you add to bread. It's in everything. Is that bad for us?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Well, and again, we're throwing all of this stuff in the same bucket. Right. And if you sort of chase down each one of these ingredients individually, some of them may have some mixed scientific evidence, some of it may have none.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

We're just shunting so many things into this sort of giant bucket labeled ultra processed foods.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, I think, I mean, this also sort of brings us back to his own problem, problems with defining the term. Because throughout the book, the definition of this term changes a bunch of times. He starts out by saying that an ultra processed food is any food with any ingredient that you wouldn't find in a standard home kitchen.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Whoa, whoa.

[Michael Hobbs]

It doesn't matter the amount of that ingredient. It doesn't matter. Sort of like some of these ingredients are just like things you haven't heard of because you're not a chemist.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Well, and also some of them are the chemical names for shit you already know.

[Michael Hobbs]

The gimmick of the, the book is he's doing a super size me thing where he's like, for 30 days, I'm gonna only eat ultra processed food. And of course he like gains a bunch of weight and he feels worse and he says his like MRI is different. Whatever.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Well, yeah, he's eating two PB and JS and a half a pack of graham crackers for every meal.

[Michael Hobbs]

Again, it's just very hard to separate this from like the actual contents of the food. But so he has this section.

[Aubrey Gordon]

As my diet went on, I became obsessed with what is and isn't ultra processed food food. So did everyone around me. Friends started sending me ingredients lists. Does fruit concentrate means this is Ultra processed food. Yes it does.

[Michael Hobbs]

By the way, to reiterate, that means one ingredient, if it has one ingredient, it's ultra processed.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And also like fruit concentrate is just.

[Michael Hobbs]

Like boil down fruit juice.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, you could also get fruit juice and boil it down yourself and make like a barbecue sauce or what? Like I just like what sugar is. I met Bea Wilson at a food festival at which we spoke on a panel together. She's a food journalist and author who has written about ultra processed food. She asked whether I would classify baked beans as ultra processed food. She didn't think that they were canned. Baked beans comprising white beans in tomato sauce are a staple in the British diet. As Wilson put it, Although they're obviously not the healthiest food in the world, in the context of so much else that's in the average diet, there's quite a lot of real food in the can. This is true. Most of a tin of baked beans is actually beans and tomatoes.

[Michael Hobbs]

So these are, these are back to back paragraphs by the way. It's like if it has fruit concentrate in it, one ingredient means it's ultra processed. But then as soon as we get to baked beans, he's like, well a lot of people like them. And yeah, most of it's, you know, beans and water. Sorry, is this a scientific concept or not?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Hang on, I'm looking it up, dude. Michael, Aubrey, would you like to know the ingredients to Heinz Baked Beans?

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, I have it. That's like the next thing in my notes. But read it, read it, read it.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Water, white beans, tomato puree, sugar, salt, calcium chloride, mustard, onion powder, paprika extract, spices and garlic powder, nuts.

[Michael Hobbs]

Now sir, they're fucking ultra processed by your own definition. You can't just say, oh well they're like a big part of like the British diet and it's important culturally and eh, it's mostly beans. Sorry, what are we doing here? If it's this qualitative where just anything can sort of jump from this category to the other category, then this is not a useful category for scientific research.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Well, and if you're talking about like ingredients that you don't have in your kitchen. Calcium chloride, if you're right, like tomato puree, like I don't know guys, I don't know what is tomato paste if not a fruit concentrate?

[Michael Hobbs]

This is like really, this is not the end of the book, but this is like to me the culmination of my engagement with the book because I got so annoyed at this section. So he's trying to eat a healthy diet while Also doing ultra processed food. So he's like, okay, I can't just cheat and eat fucking cookies all the time, so I need to look for some ultra processed food that isn't so bad. He goes to Sainsbury's, which is like the relatively high end grocery store in the uk. He gets a frozen lasagna. But the problem with the frozen lasagna is that it's all like normal ingredients. It's just like wheat pasta sauce. It doesn't count as ultra processed in his own definition. But then he looks, he goes to Aldi, which is like the much cheaper grocery store, and that one has a bunch of additives and emulsifiers and stuff. And he's like, okay. So then he calls a member of Carlos Monteiro's team to kind of ask about this. Like, well, is lasagna then kind of ultra precious processed and not ultra processed at the same time? So here's sort of the answer.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Some products are not technically ultra processed food, she explained, but they use the same plastics, the same marketing and development processes, and they're made by the same companies as ultra processed food. The additives are part of the definition, but they are not the only problem with the food. Some additives are harmless, whereas others cause direct harms. But in either case, their presence indicates that a product probably has lots of other properties that may cause harmful effects. According to Lusada, the Sainsbury's lasagna is not ultra processed food if you apply the technical classification quote. But these foods are like a fantasy. They are not homemade foods.

[Michael Hobbs]

There is a very consistent like, snobbishness throughout this book. And I think this whole concept, you're basically looking at frozen lasagnas which meet all of the criteria you say that you want, right? These are all, these are whole foods. They don't have too many ingredients, they don't have a bunch of chemicals in them. And you're like, oh, but they're still ultra processed because, like, they're not homemade. People should be making it at home. Again, is this a scientific concept or not? Because, like, do we all want people to have more time to make stuff at home? Yes, fine, whatever. But it's like now we're just judging people for like microwaving a dinner.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Also. Just like, you really could say, hey, some frozen foods are actually not ultra processed. Yeah, you could actually add some new ones. And this appears to be leaning away from that nuance and going, no, no, no, it's frozen, it's still bad. You didn't make it. It's still bad. Also, like, I have made plenty of bad food.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

My housemate and I, when I was in my 20s, decided that we were gonna make cheese sticks at home. And instead of using breadcrumbs, we used Flamin Hot Cheetos. That is a homemade meal. I would argue it's made maybe not nutritionally our strongest effort, but also, again, not nutritionally devoid of value. Right. Mozzarella cheese has a bunch of fat and protein in it that are generally pretty good for you. You know what I mean? There's a bunch of stuff.

[Michael Hobbs]

Well, I make. The only thing I ever bake at home. Cause I'm really bad at baking. Is banana bread. Any dumbass can make banana bread. Banana bread's extremely bad for you. It's really good, but it's, like, so delicious. At one point in the book, he actually says, like, well, if something is, like, made with love, then it doesn't count as an older processed food. I'm just like, dude, please have a fucking definition and stick with the definition, man.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, I think increasingly, as we talk about this, the more I'm sort of in your camp of like, oh, well, then just say junk food. Because that is honest.

[Michael Hobbs]

Just say fucking junk food.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yes. It's not my favorite term, but it is more honest than being like. Actually, there are these, like, extremely concrete helping effects that are, like, widespread for, like, every preservative that is ever used in foods or every ingredient that you can't pronounce. What a deeply weird bar.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah. I can't pronounce shit. People know. It's like all of our inboxes, me not being able to pronounce stuff.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Let's hope there's not a denouement in your food.

[Michael Hobbs]

York is technically ultra processed food at this point. I now have no conclusion, Aubrey. Because all I had was the junk food thing. We already talked about the junk food thing.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Oh, sorry, sorry.

[Michael Hobbs]

I have no clue.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Wait, can I tell you a conclusion?

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, yeah. What is yours?

[Aubrey Gordon]

You were talking about Pringles earlier, and I remembered that there was a specific name for the shape of Pringles.

[Michael Hobbs]

Saddle. Saddlebags. No, Michael, it's the universe.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's called a hyperbolic paraboloid.

[Michael Hobbs]

Wait, what?

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's mathematically known as a hyperbolic paraboloid.

[Michael Hobbs]

Put that on the fucking labels and nobody will ever buy them again.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Like, I will give you a food that is that uniform in color, flavor, texture, and shape. I'm like, I won't fight you on that. Being ultra processed.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah. I mean, this is the Thing is, I feel the need to reiterate that like both of us are like relatively careful about how we eat and like, I really do go out of my way to like try to eat healthy. And part of that is like avoiding like, I don't know, foods that should go bad but don't go bad. That's like one of my like little food rules. I'm like, if it should be perishable and it's not perishable, I probably don't to want, want to eat it. I don't know how scientific that is. I think if people have food rules like this and they're kind of arbitrary or kind of weird, like, fine, I don't really police other people. Obviously diet related disease is real and is something that we need to address. But also we need to have scientific concepts if we're going to have scientific approaches to issues.

[Aubrey Gordon]

We're still so deeply in the process of discovery about this stuff.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, totally. Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

But the stuff that takes off is the stuff that comports with our cultural ideas of what is and isn't healthy, which are not the result of science. Right, right. I just wish that we were able to have a cultural conversation about the cultural stuff and a science conversation about the science stuff.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I think it's just worth being honest with ourselves that most of our sort of like hard and fast thinking about what is and is not okay to eat comes much more from like a set of assumptions and sort of a mishmash of like life influences.

[Michael Hobbs]

And also if it's working for, for you, then keep doing it. And I'm not going to tell you not to.

[Aubrey Gordon]

We're not here to tell you what to eat or what not to eat.

[Michael Hobbs]

I am here to tell you not to eat hyperbolic paraboloids.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I'm here to tell you to eat them.

[Michael Hobbs]

Only hyperbolic paraboloids.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Get the pizza flavored ones. Sa.