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Freddie deBoer's avatar

"if nobody could ever eat “ultra-processed” food but everything else was the same, they would overeat something else."

The whole point is that processed food reduces the amount of necessary mastication and digestion to consume the same amount of calories. You can theoretically eat as many calories of apples in a sitting as is found in a sleeve of Oreos, but the whole point is that people don't do that. Processed foods in particular sever the relationship between fiber and sugar, which means that you're eating a far higher amount of sugar before you reach satiety. That's why "calories in, calories out" is so misleading - the type of food you're eating deeply influences the amount of calories you eat! And we know that empirically.

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Kade U's avatar

I think the other element that is missing from the analysis here is that ultra-processed foods aren't just plentiful and cheap, they are also delicious. And humans are extremely good at creating delicious foods, even under all kinds of restrictions. You can now get food with really incredible macronutrient profiles that are like 80% calories from protein and they still taste really good.

That hyper-palatability is the problem, because you'll always want to eat more. This is why a lot of fitness guys who are cutting weight swear by extremely plain meals like grilled chicken and rice with minimal seasoning and no sauce. They're not stupid, they know that it's possible to make that food tastier while adding very few additional calories. But by making it tastier they are going to want to eat more of it.

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