What is the difference between processed food and ultra processed food? Processed food has been around for a very long time. Probably the first time our caveman ancestors decided to enhance the raw meat they were eating by cooking it in fire embers would have been one of the first brave processing experiments. |
Ultra processed foods however are scientific food engineering.
Last week I started writing and thinking about ultra processed foods. Well, you can’t really avoid seeing them. They’re everywhere that has a display case. If it needs to be frozen it’s usually in a display freezer. In every commercial food and grocery enterprise it is most definitely front and centre as you enter the store.
We’ll start with something that everyone loves.
Pizza
The general requirement for a pizza to be called a pizza is worldwide acceptance that it has to be some flattened bread dough with toppings on it, baked at high temperature. Various countries adopt their favourite toppings.
Every country seems to have their own particular favourite. These can vary from a simple tomato sauce and cheese to much more exotic choices, like tuna and olives, egg and potatoes. I have to occasionally remember the best pizza I’ve enjoyed, on one of the Maltese islands, Gozo. Saturday is the ftira day there, in an amazing old bakery. You can read about it here.
I removed one of the pizzas from the huge, expensive display freezer that houses it, and looked at the ingredients.
- Acetylated monoglycerides are used in various food production processes as stabilizers and emulsifiers. The global acetylated monoglycerides market is driven by rising use of acetylated monoglycerides in food and beyond.
Here is a press release for one of the above additives. It’s incredibly boring for most of us, but also incredibly emotionally stirring. It shows how food science and enormous financial considerations are taking over the world of food we live in: Acetylated Monoglycerides Market Size, Share Global Analysis Report, 2023 – 2030
- Love all those amazing bakery products you see? Tired of making your excellent banana bread when they go brown? Yeah, you can freeze them, and everyone loves home baking. But your texture is never the same as those commercial ones your taste buds are growing to love.
Try this commercial trade advertisement. It’s colourful, and you can buy your handy dandy 25 kg (55.116 lb) package if you have space in your kitchen: E472b (Lactic Acid Esters of Mono and Diglycerides) (LACTEM)
That deals with just two of those ingredients you read on this label. Ultra processed food correlates exactly with the ever rising health problems on the planet.
The gigantic food scientific conglomerates who have now dispersed their products all over the world do not care about your health. They care about corporate profits. It’s all about money.
Your digestive system was never designed to deal with chemical foods. If there are ingredients on the label that you don’t know of, let alone have in your kitchen, it might be time for a food rethink.
Please go to the provided links. They make it all come together, just like the toppings on a pizza.
Mountain Embers
It’s a Rex begonia, mountain embers.
Those leaves seem to get more spectacular each week. I’ve been surprised at its phenomenal growth in its big concrete pot.