I have another little bonus content for you. There’s something extra in the regular episodes of our Nutrition Diva podcast. I wanted to share the response to a study that really got a lot of attention. This was another study linking the consumption of ultra-processed foods, or UPFs, to all kinds of chronic diseases.
You’ve probably seen it in the headlines. And this is just the latest in a very long series of similar studies showing the link between consumption of ultra-processed foods and consumption of a variety of foods. Health conditions and disease risks, and the title of this was the fact that this has become a very consistent finding, and that’s important because all of this research is correlational, right?
They just show associations and we know it. Correlation doesn’t prove causation, but it provides more confidence when you see the same correlations over and over again. So they really highlight the fact that there’s an extreme consistency in this finding. And this is giving increasing emphasis to the push to include new guidance specifically focused on the consumption of processed foods in our national dietary guidelines, which will then inform all kinds of other food policy.
Here’s my problem with that. There are some fundamental underlying flaws in the NOVA classification system. All this research. So every article published and promoted with this finding has the same inherent flaw; This Nova system; The purpose of this is to classify foods according to their level of processing, which allows us to see if there are connections between them. The problem with the consumption of these foods and various diseases is that they often lump perfectly healthy, nutritious foods into the same category.
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Foods we can all agree on are junk food. And this is more than just a classification error. We run the risk of embedding a very privileged view of nutrition into our food policy. And it would be hard to reverse that. I want you to imagine for a moment a busy parent pulling out a box of ready-to-eat cereal for their child.
This is a selection labeled as ultra-processed by Novostat standards. This may be in the category linked to increased risk of chronic disease, but it doesn’t actually belong in that category. This grain is actually likely to contain more iron, more fiber, more folate, and every other nutrient than a quote-unquote, whole food option like steel-cut oats.
By the way, it takes at least 45 minutes to prepare. The claim that time-consuming cooking is the only path to healthy eating completely ignores and disrespects the reality of those who must balance work and childcare, elder care, or limited resources. You know, if the NOVA classification system were a medical diagnostic test, we would reject it because it produces too many false positives.
But still, with each new analysis, it becomes more likely that this particular bias and error will be introduced into our national food policy. Rather than decrying all processed foods, we really need to take a more nuanced approach here; an approach that recognizes the nutritional value offered by certain processed foods, while also acknowledging the wide range of factors that influence our dietary choices.
Let’s distinguish between food processing, which serves to make foods safer, more nutritious, or more accessible, and the type of food processing that simply serves to make cheap, nutrient-poor ingredients more palatable. Good nutrition really needs to be accessible to everyone, and not just to those who are. I have no doubt that there is a relationship between highly processed junk foods and an increased risk of chronic disease.
All I’m saying here is that the NOVA classification system is not specific enough to determine whether a food can or should be included in a healthy diet. And if recommendations to avoid these NOVA category foods are incorporated into our dietary guidelines, we run the risk of alienating and even shaming those who perhaps do not conform to this idealized, but often impractical, nutritional standard.
Good nutrition is not a binary situation. We really need to balance health, accessibility, affordability and convenience.
So my plea is that instead of introducing bias into our food policy, let’s empower people to make more informed decisions within the options available to them, without guilt or judgement. You might be interested in listening once again to my interview with USDA researcher Julie Hess. We were discussing his very provocative work on ultra-processed foods, which I think sheds further light on this dilemma.