The Processed Food Paradox

We can feed the world, but can we nourish it?

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In the 20th century, incredible food processing and production advancements made it possible to feed a rapidly growing global population: more energy for the social supercomputer. Fewer famines and less hunger have unquestionably been a positive development for the majority of people. There is a growing dark side, however, to food processing. Our super-charged production of calories may come at the expense of nutrition, leaving our bodies vulnerable to new diseases.

Processed vs Ultra-Processed

In a recently published article, author Hannah Ritchie argues that, despite health concerns, we must accept “processed” foods as a necessity. She claims we need more processed food to feed a growing world population. She makes her case by arguing that we ought not to lump all such foods together as one singular group. Instead, she attempts to differentiate “processed foods” from “ultra-processed foods,” emphasizing that the former is a net positive.

She gives the example of mill-graining flour to make bread and pasteurizing milk as the “good” kind of processing. We will come back to mill-graining in a moment. On the other hand, she claims that “ultra-processed foods,” like snacks and prepared meals, designed for convenience and long shelf life, are distinguishably different. Our health concerns should be primarily limited to these products, she claims. I find it difficult to draw any conclusive distinctions between “processed” and “ultra-processed” foods amid mounting evidence that modern food production methods are affecting the nutritional content of even the least “processed” food today.

Modern food production technology, understandably, is intended to maximize profit for producers. Food processors, therefore, tend to favor products that can easily and cheaply be produced, transported, and stored. Corn and new breeds of wheat, heavily subsidized by governments, have become the primary ingredient in most products. As a consequence, however, some 75 percent of agricultural plant genetic diversity has been lost since 1900. The same is also true for the food we feed to our food. The fish and cattle we consume are fed a similar feedstock consisting disproportionately of corn and wheat. In short, our diets have become dramatically less diverse in the industrial age.

This may not have been a problem were it also not for the fact that processing tends to strip nutrition from our food to make it unattractive to bacteria and insects that, like all organisms, seek out those nutrients. This extends shelf-life, but the nutritional quality of our meals is diminished. For example, Omega-3 fatty acids break down and spoil quickly, so food producers began selectively breeding against Omega-3 long before science had even identified its existence. In the meantime, the availability of Omega-6 fatty acids exploded. We are getting far too little of the former and far too much of the latter. This is important because Omega-3 fatty acids are generally thought to be anti-inflammatory while Omega-6s promote inflammation. It should be of no surprise then that the diseases of the modern world tend to be those associated with chronic inflammation, including Alzheimer’s, asthma, cancer, heart disease, and rheumatoid arthritis.

Even “unprocessed” foods are not immune. In the book, In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan notes that since 1950 food quantity has exploded at the cost of quality. In 43 crops tracked by the USDA, Vitamin C content declined by 20 percent, iron by 15 percent, and calcium by 16 percent. It now takes three apples to get the same amount of iron as a single apple in 1940. In short, we are getting more calories, but fewer nutrients per calorie. If an “unprocessed” apple is no longer as nutritious as it would have been in the pre-industrial era, can we truly differentiate between “processed,” “unprocessed,” and “ultra-processed” food?

The Low-Fat Catastrophe

This, of course, is a question for science, but science has a poor track record in nutrition. Granted, there will always be crackpot doctors, paid researchers, and other “experts” on the fringes who espouse radical views outside the consensus. But the science of nutrition, or nutritionism, as it is often called, is one realm where the expert consensus also has led us astray. Perhaps it is the nature of this science itself. Nutritionism attempts to take the study of nutrients out of the context of a broader diet. It strives to study one variable at a time, when many variables, both known and unknown, render it impossible to establish reliable control groups.

Many commonly accepted health axioms later turned out to be dead wrong. In the mid-20th Century, for example, the scientific consensus held that low-fat, low-cholesterol diets would prevent heart disease and promote a healthy weight. This view was held sacrosanct, despite study after study failing to establish any causal relationship between fat consumption and heart disease. Based on this weak science, food producers seized the opportunity to market “low-fat” products to health-conscious consumers.

Food, however, consists primarily of three components: fat, carbohydrates, and protein. When you suppress one of these three components, the others must rise for the food to remain palatable. Producers subtracted fat and added sugar (carbohydrates), with catastrophic consequences. Unknown at the time, our body mass is largely a function of our insulin production. To absorb the energy from carbohydrates and sugars, the pancreas must produce insulin. As the low-fat craze swept in, our diets became increasingly carbohydrate-dense, with catastrophic consequences.

Our cells, now bathing in insulin all day long, eventually become insulin-resistant. Consequently, the pancreas produces more insulin to compensate, and a vicious cycle begins. From there, pre-diabetes and eventually diabetes develop, along with all of the health issues that accompany it. As Gary Taubes puts it in his book, Why We Get Fat:

“You’ll also begin to manifest a multitude of other metabolic disturbances that accompany this insulin resistance…your blood pressure goes up, as does your triglyceride level; your HDL cholesterol (aka, the “good cholesterol”) goes down…And you’ll become increasingly sedentary, a side effect of the energy drain into the fat tissue.”

The consequences of faulty science that favored carbs over fat will be felt for generations. Today, one of every four dollars of healthcare goes to treating people with diabetes, or over $400 billion annually when factoring in indirect costs. Additionally, older people with diabetes have a higher prevalence and intensity of cognitive impairments, including dementia, vascular dementia, and Alzheimer’s.

Recall that Hannah Ritchie claimed that modern mill graining was an example of the “good” kind of food processing. Indeed, modern mill graining is faster, more efficient, and produces pure white flour that keeps on store shelves longer. These positive attributes mask significant negatives, however. Modern flour is less nutritious and the finer powder is absorbed into the bloodstream faster, creating a stronger insulin spike that adds to the burden on the pancreas.

If this all was not terrifying enough, this may now be a multi-generational problem. Babies in the womb are supplied with nutrients from the mother proportionally to those in her blood. Our diets may be jump-starting insulin resistance at an early age and this may explain a startling rise in childhood obesity rates. Indeed, increased maternal weight is strongly associated with elevated neonatal weight gain. We may be passing obesity and concurrent health issues from one generation to the next.

Over and over again, science has failed us in the realm of nutrition. In the low-fat diet crazy, products like margarine emerged as a “heart-healthy butter” alternative without cholesterol or saturated fats. But again, margarine, like any processed food, is only as good as our understanding of nutrition. We later learned that the process used to make margarine produced trans fats that were far more dangerous than the saturated fats they replaced. Indeed, a mere 2 percent increase in the consumption of trans fats is associated with a 23 percent increased risk of heart disease.

Similarly, we are now learning that our “diet” soft drinks may be more harmful than their caloric peers. Daily consumption of “diet” soft drinks is associated with a 43 percent increased probability of vascular events compared to their non-diet counterparts. Many are likely prematurely dying by consuming these new processed concoctions. Likewise, many are also suffering chronic health ailments because they listened to the scientific consensus of the 20th century. These examples illustrate the limits of science and why the rush to promote more processed foods may be a bit premature.

Humanity needs food to provide energy for our brains and bodies. We also, however, need nutrients. Thanks to technology, we now have more calories than we could ever need, but in a sense, we are also chronically malnourished. How can we feed our growing numbers while still providing proper nutrition? There are no easy answers here, but I suggest some proposals in the next section. In the end, however, this is perhaps one area where we best accept some humility. If we know anything about nutrition, it’s that we don’t know very much at all.

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