June Bonus: Ultraprocessed Foods Go To Washington
This month we're talking about the increasing calls for public health experts to align with RFK Jr. to define and regulate "ultraprocessed foods." Not necessarily in that order.
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See you next month!
M&A
Comments (128)
The deep breath before "THAT'S PICKLES, BABY" sent me
Am I eating cocoa pebbles cereal while listening to this episode? YES!
Not the point.. but i'm still reeling from $11 being expensive for cigarettes in the US. They cost between $40 and $60 in Australia
At this point I'm convinced that Aubrey's bonnet is just a literal beehive 😂
Doing peptides? Or diary of a ceo guy? The latest Vit D episode is so flawed I was hand in face with how positive the comments were. Are all his pods like that? Pathetic. Zero push back. Zero anything. Just letting someone rip for hours without anything. How do people listen to this?
There's a Korean drama on netflix called "Birth of the beauty", it is one of the dumbest examples of fat phobia I've ever seen. Please consider doing a bonus episode on it. No research would benecessary, it is awful and needs your attention.
Hi! Local attorney reporting for duty! I read the STAT articles when it came out and started yelling at my screen two lines in. Also, speaking as a subject matter expert re: disability rights law and policy, my professional opinion is that we're all SOL on getting anything from RFK Jr. or his overlords unless they play golf with Trump or have deep pockets for bribes.
Not to be pedantic but “kings” in terms of cigarettes are the short ones. 100s are the longer ones, at least in the past 30+ years that I’ve been smoking. They’re all bad of course but IJS
just received an email from medicare - the new monthly dr. oz ,"stay healthy" newsletter. 😱 paid for by the hhs dept. how much is oz getting paid for this? I could forward it to you, if interested.
My hack for de-earworming a song is to listen to a particular favorite song to overwrite it. Swear it works every time. In my case, the song of choice is Conversation 16 by The National. Love you guys!
I couldn’t finish the Russel Brand episodes 🙈
As a Legislative attorney, the complete lack of a cohesive definition while pushing for regulation/policy is equally insane and so so so common. "No culinary use" would exempt literally every food these people are trying to regulate
If % UPF in your diet predicts illness/bad outcomes, couldn’t you just reverse that and say that % not UPF (= % vegetables, fresh, “artisanal”??) is negatively correlated with bad outcomes (predicts better outcomes)… which just means that having enough money to afford to get more of your calories from fresh and fancier places is related to better health outcomes WHICH WE ALREADY KNEW FROM MANY STUDIES?? Is this whole focus on UPF’s just replicating those results with a really complicated methodology? I guess it would depend on what the research is controlling for - they MIGHT have controlled for income/SES? anyway, that all gets me to totally agreeing w the assertions in episode that really the solution is to increase food stamps etc.
I can't get over that they're terrified of stuff called "Red 17" but approved flavoured vapes lol. What do they think the "flavouring" is???
Merch - Not enough bonnets (w/ 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝)
Friendly neighborhood food lawyer and MP super fan at your service, available anytime for on-air head exploding and screaming into the food policy abyss
I’m a bit frustrated by the part where Michael just said “the FDA literally does regulate what’s safe to put in food!” and moved right past it. There is a policy called GRAS (generally recognized as safe) that allows food companies to self-certify safe additives. Many public health experts call for the GRAS loophole to be closed. RFK even mentioned this concept a while back, but of course the major irony is that ending the GRAS loophole would require a stronger FDA, not one that’s been gutted. I don’t normally nitpick on mistakes but this is an area where MAHA types have glommed onto a real issue and brainwashed everyone into thinking DEregulation is the answer. And it’s important that we understand the issue accurately.
You guys are the best thanks for posting!!! :D
Wondering if it's "Cosmic Girl" by Jamiroquai
I agree with your take on UPF’s, and listening to the two of you discuss anything is always entertaining :) but nonetheless found this episode kind of frustrating. It felt like y’all spent an hour leading up to the conclusion that hey, RFK isn’t really serious about wanting people to eat better (because ya know, he’s part of an administration cutting food stamps, making people work longer hours for less pay, his HHS is proving to be completely in the pocket of big tobacco and every other kind of corporation, etc etc etc). Since this was something we all already knew, it would have made for a more interesting discussion to start there. GIVEN that UPF’s are so ill-defined that they function more as a dog whistle than a scientifically coherent concept (you established this at length in a previous episode), and GIVEN that RFKj is completely full of shit vis-a-vis the things he claims to stand for….what kind of work are these concepts doing in the real world of late capitalist fascism? What is this performative critique of corporate power really accomplishing? What is RFKj’s real agenda, and how does it serve the somewhat different agenda of Donald Trump (who doesn’t even pretend to believe the things RFKj pretends to believe)? Why NOW for a big theatrical push towards supposed regulations that we know are not actually gonna be enacted in anything like this ostensible form? I’ll spare you my own manifesto on these topics ;) but would have been interested to hear your take!
I dont know if this is the place to discuss it, but recent news has finally meant there is a coda to the jordan peterson double bill you guys did ages ago. Also, I know you said no one listens to part two when you do two-parters, but I personally love them and find the public figure deep dives very interesting! Thank you for all you do and being my favourite podcasters and journalists for at least five years now.
In Australia we had a spate of companies releasing “MANSIZE” products: frozen meals, tissues, etc. very tedious.
Academic public health is doing real bad right now due to funding cuts with the administration. They are looking for something they think can produce more grant funding and this is where they landed. I’d bet a lot of folks here were doing tobacco research, but have to do something else now bc their grants were canceled by the guy who got funding from Juul. Jokes on them tho, this administration just hates science and is regulating based on vibes. They aren’t going to fund research to support regulations, or if they do it will be like their anti-vax only autism study funding.
Great episode! Can you guys please do an episode on apps like Yukka? It’s tiiiime!!!
Something I’ve been thinking about that this episode touches on is the way that “addiction” seems to be popping up more and more as a framework. Ultraprocessed foods are addictive! Social media is addictive! Sugar is addictive! Porn is addictive! “Dopamine hit” language, etc. Like, addiction can definitely be a real thing, but I also think about the ways in which this kind of accusation allows people to sound sciencey and punching up without really interrogating preconceived notions about why something might cause a problem in someone’s life (poor people are more likely to have a gambling addiction, for example. Is this because they are more desperate for money and more vulnerable or because losing any amount of money is more likely to “cause a problem in their life” and thus meet the criterion for addiction?). I find this to be particularly true about behavioral addictions, some of which I will admit to having some skepticism about (many people who say they have a porn addiction are Christians, for example, and look at porn a normal amount. They just feel really bad about it because they feel they shouldn’t look at all). It feels a little moral-panicky to me. Just something I’ve been thinking about, not sure if this would be too big a topic for the show to address
Maybe they’re just about to start criminalizing feeding your kids breakfast cereal so they can throw more poor people in jail, or something. Or say you can’t purchase those kinds of foods with food stamps anymore, which I’m sure they know poor folks rely on because they’re shelf stable and last the whole month. So another backhanded way to get more people off food stamps. Idk whatever they’re up to it has to be dark and probably has a eugenics flavor. I’m sure we’ll find out.
Minor nitpick, but journal special issues don't necessarily work in the way they're discussed here. Often the paper authors don't actually work together. The editors who are interested in the topic put out a call for papers saying what they might be willing to publish, academics who think they have relevant work submit research they've most likely already been working on for peer review for the special issue, then the editors curate the final selection from whatever passed peer review. Most of the data, if not all, were already collected before deciding to submit to the issue. Some of the papers may have already been written before the call was even released. The authors of the individual papers would most likely not even know what other authors/papers are being published in the issue. There's no point to reach convergence on definitions unless the editors set a strict definition in the initial call and are strict to it when approving papers for the issue. The original call for this issue didn't really define it at all and assumed a lot of conclusions about what outcomes they were going to publish. The tobacco industry is mentioned repeatedly in the initial call, for example.
Nitpick on the nitpick: how special issues work really depends on the field. There are plenty of special issues in my field that are written not just on the same topic, but by the same overall team (different first authors though). Usually this is done for very large projects that want to publish all their papers at once. Not every large project does it, but I've seen it done plenty. (And yes, this does mean the special issues will get held up by whatever paper had the slowest review process. It's the trade-off you make for having all your results come out at once and make a big splash.)
the comparison between the food & tobacco industries is really interesting because I've only really heard about the link between tobacco marketing/lobbyists and the fossil fuel industry! never about the food industry. the book & documentary Merchants of Doubt is about this.
I am enjoying this, with no small sense of irony, while eating cool ranch Doritos left over from my son's birthday party. FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS!!!! 😆
Hearing “Ultraprocessed food” multiple times makes me want Cheetos.
MAD KING DUMBASS ✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊
It is just a hopeless situation. When they try to label things, the legal department will chime in ..“Where’s the definition???! „
I’m listening while eating lunch and wondering how my tin of tuna fits the ultra-processed foods definition. The ingredients are tuna, some herbs, oil and a bunch of stabilisers, and the manufacturing process is designed to (massively!) extend shelf life, while the little 1 serve size tin is designed for convenience. Seems to fit most of the definitions. But are we seriously saying tinned tuna is a bad thing??
Unless you caught that tuna with your bare hands and tore into it with your teeth right there on the deck of the boat, it's straight to UPF jail with you.
we need an episode on freelee the banana girl! love u guys
Defining sugar-sweetened drinks as sodas is so funny. I know fruit juice was already brought up, but I'm also thinking of like, people who put a little sugar in their tea or coffee or something. That's pop now, sorry. My favourite pop is apparently hot cocoa
Aubrey is gonna end up with enough bees in her bonnet to build a hive in her hair. K, I'll see myself out now 😅
I really wish more podcasts came for the inconsistencies in academic research like y’all do!
Michael is so right though, THESE ARE NOT SERIOUS PEOPLE!
Great episode AND i wish there had been some mention of all the environmental deregulation this administration (and its puppet-ish supreme court) is working on/executing. Industrial toxins, unlike upfs, do actually exist and do actually make people sick.
Soon they are going to blame ultra processed foods for Trans people and then the flood gates are gonna open
One thing I’ve wondered listening to the show is whether you could spend more time analyzing the psychology of parenting itself. I think Maintenance Phase does a great job explaining how people get pulled into wellness culture, moral panic, and misguided health beliefs, but sometimes I feel like parents end up framed mainly as irrational, controlling, or misinformed rather than as people operating under intense responsibility and fear. Parenting changes the way you think about risk when you feel responsible for a helpless person’s health, safety, and future while also being bombarded by family, schools, media, doctors, strangers, and social pressure all telling you that you’re doing it wrong. I’m not saying that makes bad information true, but I think it’s part of understanding why otherwise thoughtful people become vulnerable to these messages in the first place.
As much as I love Aubrey and Michael I have no desire to have two people who have never had kids nor do they want them, to try and psychoanalysis how parents think.
Beez in my bonnet (imagine Samuel L Jackson in a hot pink wig)
FYI the best way to get a song out of your head is to sing the Ella Fitzgerald version of Night in Tunisia. Girl from Ipanema works but tends to get stuck itself.
Does Aubrey still have the soundboard? I think she needs a "Bee in my Bonnet!" sound
Mad king Dumbass ✅️
Seconding all the soda-drinking commenters: yes, I know it's terrible for me, but you can pry my ice-cold, bubbly, caffeinated, sweet beverage from my cold, dead hands. Let my have my one vice!!!
This will sound absurd, but I think there's a strong possibility that I met Marion Nestle in the DC-area this past winter or early spring. I asked a woman if she knew who Margaret Atwood is, and she very definitely replied, "No!" (Which is kind of unusual, most people would say, "No, who is that?") So, if anyone ever gets the chance, please let Marion Nestle know that I'm sorry I thought she was Margaret Atwood!
(I also met a pastor couple from Seattle and couldn't stop my brain from recommending Maintenance Phase and If Books Could Kill to them, so my apologies to that friendly older couple, as well!)
How about an episode on the guy behind the Oasis app?! This sounds unhinged! https://www.instagram.com/reel/DaLPZncAoyx/?igsh=MXZ2NjJyaTg4b3U4ZA==
Where do people usually make episode requests? I'd love one about the scam that is chiropractic and the quack who invented it.
Second! The amount of highly educated, otherwise intelligent people I know who still go to them baffles me. It was literally invented by a man who said ghosts told him about it! I tell everyone this but they keep going back. My health insurance even covers it!
Farming, ranching,.. washing, cutting, cooking... way too many processes. Raw roadkill is the healthy way to go.
FAR too processed - that involves a motorized vehicle! Deer that died of old age or GTFO!
Came here to request a peptides episode please! What are they? Why are people talking about them? What is happening?!
Burnt Toast did an episode on them recently!
"Mad King Dumbass" = poetry
Mike: is it Hoppipolla?
Somebody get Aubrey a bee smoker with all these bees!
Can’t believe there is a discussion of tobacco companies looking for synergies with food manufacturing and yet there is no discussion of the 2000 Yahoo Serious film “Mr Accident”, about a food company putting nicotine in eggs to make them addictive smh Mike is SLIPPPINNGGG
I feel like every month I come here to say that I could listen to the 2 of you talk for hours about anything…but it’s true! Please just keep doing what you’re doing 👏🙌🫶🏻
So bees in bonnets, do we have insects in our old-timey head covering or are we britishly complaining about them under the hood of our car?
Just as an aside, I would only buy athletic greens from Hugh Jackman in a jumper and not shredded Hugh Jackman.
Any version of Hugh Jackman could sell me things.
As soon as Aubrey said "I need a lawyer . . . Call Peter" I could hear Peter Shamshiri saying "sorry, I'm a FORMER lawyer."
Horse Girl Putin took me out 💀
You didn't ask, but I have soup for one by chic stuck in my head
Not Maintenance Phase influencing me to cut back on my sugary drinks!!
send Aubrey to jail for her pronunciation of Matryoshka
Yeeeesssss! And to build on the food stamps/SNAP point, many folks who rely on food assistance in the U.S. work multiple jobs and don’t have a ton of time to prepare food from scratch! If we (as a country) were serious about enabling folks to eat healthy food and engage in “healthy lifestyle choices”, livable wages (so people don’t need multiple low paying jobs that take up all their time) and other supports (childcare for example) are critical! Love y’all’s work!! ❤️❤️❤️
God, so much this. I'm Australian so we have a much higher minimum wage here, but our unemployment benefits are pathetically low. I'm so tired of seeing ignorant takes about individual choices when systemic and structural failures are responsible for people being put in impossible situations.
Also worth noting that the legal movement against Big Tobacco took literal *decades*. The health issues started becoming well known in the 50s and early 60s (familiar to anyone who watched the early seasons of Mad Men), but the regulatory and court victories didn’t really start moving until the late 90s through the 2010s. And even then, it was almost all state-level work, the federal government was largely absent from the entire process.
Re Jared Fogel, there was a docuseries about him on Investigation Discovery. I usually dig shows like that but it wasn’t as interesting as I thought it would be. It probably only needed one episode
Ultraprocessed Dudes Crew represent! 🤘
😄
Honestly may have to bow out after this episode, and after the errors in the salt episode. Mike is misrepresenting the conclusions of many of the authors of the studies he’s referencing. When Aubrey reacted with “why can’t someone just say it’s way more complicated?!?” And Mike didn’t say that many public health and food science experts criticize upf and say it is complex, I tapped out. Hell, I could find this in five minutes on the faculty research pages of all three top public health universities in the United States
That’s ridiculous.
I want a shirt that says "Mad King Dumbass"
No one has ever been able to explain to me why, if all these dastardly food corporations are single mindedly trying to kill us, do we live so long?? I work for hospice in some very poor and rural counties, and I promise you these days even the lifelong smokers drinking full sugar soda and eating daily salt cured ham are 85 years old. I feel like I can take my chances. (And RFK can pry diet soda and powered cheese out of my cold dead hands)
I'm guessing because the people who died younger aren't able to speak about their experience. Yep, I'm pretty sure science would back me up about the fact that dead people don't speak.
I'm listening to this drinking coffee made from ground coffee from the supermarket and eating eggs and a slice of cheese on a high-fiber tortilla and musing that I don't think anybody would have an issue with this breakfast - and yet SO MUCH of it is in fact process/ultra-processed.
This. Just about everything we eat/drink undergoes “a process.”
Wickerman level bees in Aubrey's bonnet
I see your Wickerman, and raise a Candyman. Ultra-processed sweets to the sweet
YAY a new episode - NAY it's containing RFK Jr. content T__T
re upf correlation with dementia: poorer people eat more of what we consider upf, because its cheaper, more accessible in other ways etc. and a lower level of education is a predictor for dementia, and poorer people generally have had worse access to education etc. so i think that might be at play here, and upf is a proxy. (which could also explain why grams and not calories matter. it’s not about the food itself)
Also lead poisoning. There’s still a lot of environmental lead contamination in poor neighborhoods.
Can we get an MP merch shirt that says “that’s pickles, baby!”
Also "That's bee #3 in my bonnet"
why does Michael know what music the gym was playing? is he rawdogging the gym?!
Thank god, my repeat prescription! Just in time
I love you Michael, but annatto is a seed.
Snort. Old El Posso. He's still got it. ❤️
To be fair that's a pretty good pronunciation in Spanish.... But Mike's gotta up his game on nasally American bastardizations!
Requesting a skincare episode🙋♀️
This definitely seems like the new grift in wellness circles 🧐
Mike is a gym gay who can't kick a mountain dew addiction he just like me fr fr
I was at Sprouts the other day and the person checking out in front of me was chatting with the checker and UPF came up and it was so off putting to hear absolute nothing of substance being said in such a panicked yet confident tone of voice. One was like, oh these ultra processed foods are just terrible nowadays blah blah effecting our health, and the other was like, yeah and the effects to our mental health too! Like pardon!? It’s definitely not the state of everything in the world depressing us, it’s Cheetos 🙄
It's only that one very particular Cheeto...
Footage not fucking found!
Truly so crazy making that our current administration is so obsessed with make believe over supposed food and sugar addiction and is completely ignoring the actual addiction issues that spring from actually sinister products like gas station heroin aka kratom shots like Feel Free
The Trump admin just moved to defund safe use sites as well. It's eternally baffling how adverse this administration is to doing anything meaningfully beneficial.
Believe me when I tell you, I have a podcast for every bee in my bonnet
i think we need an oops all bees in bonnets tote bag/tee shirt
This is exactly what I came here to say!
It seems so symptomatic that instead of increasing people's access to food, all these policymakers, researchers and pundits want to put an entire nation on a restrictive diet. Like, how many of them have personally dieted or felt food-related shame? Almost all, probably? And now they're like, hey, this could scale if we externalize that shaming inner voice and make it the government.
Yeah I don’t think this is about making anything better, just a new discursive construct to keep saying that people are unhealthy because they individually made bad choices.
Ding ding 🛎️
Annatto was my first guess for mac and cheese coloring, it’s also what colors orange cheddar cheese.
Jared Fogle went to my high school and had to be removed from our Wall of Fame when I was there 😅
It is insane that he was ever famous to begin with. The 00s were a wild time.
Aussie listener here very amused at the idea $11 is expensive for a packet of cigarettes! The illegal tobacco traders sell them for more than that here!!
Also FWIW I live in the state of North Carolina, original home of RJ Reynolds, and they’re even cheaper here lol
New maintenance phase!!! Apart from this I was just listening to the Pete Evans one over and over. You know. So my body can settle to its natural beautiful proportions and I can become human.
I'm Australian and I can't tell you how cathartic that episode was since I've been ranting about that dipshit for decades to anyone who'd listen, often to blank stares and "but he's just a chef who cares about wellness"
Someone get Aubrey Gordon a bee soundboard
😆
I think MAHA’s victories have been more than superficial, specifically in funding research. We are seeing unprecedented defunding. I work in biochemistry studying proteins in cell signaling and am deeply concerned. It would be great if yall did an episode on what’s been happening and how it will impact public health.
Yes 👍
Unintentionally doing my part by listening to this while eating fries and drinking a coke 😇
Not me taking my blood pressure medicine with coke no sugar every morning 😅
So glad y’all are discussing this!!! I know a disconcerting number of otherwise very intelligent and sensible people who have gone ALL IN on freaking out about “ultra-processed” foods and it is SUCH a bummer.
Just in time for the Sunday scaries! Also, would still love a Freelee The Banana Girl Episode. (I know. Im insufferable). Love you, MP!!
Omg, yessssss! I forgot about her
I’m sure this will be great but DAMMIT I was really hoping for the salt taste test 😆
Like I REFUSE to google how Himalayan salt works WHEN NO HIMALAYAN SEA. IT MOUNTAIN??