Ultra-Processed Hypothesis

 I spend a lot of time during the day researching the health industry, nutrition, how it affects us and the world around us...and I've been developing a hypothesis. Let me dig into this a bit with you and see if you don't agree or at least see the merit in the idea.

You've heard the old axion of "We are what we eat?" I think that it goes a whole lot deeper than any of us can imagine. A few years back I wrote a blog about how I felt the world seemed to be getting angrier. People seem less considerate, irritable and down right grouchy! Driving is an especially challenging time when people feel they deserve to cut you off, honk at you when you are going the speed limit (and not 10-20mph over) as well as just in a bloody hurry to get there before everyone else on the road! It may well be that as I get older I get less tolerant but it does seem that there is a growing grouch happening.

A few days ago I ran across an article that just may very well point a finger at the culprit. Ultra-processed foods, UPF for short! These are found everywhere and we as American's (and most of the rest of the world) consume tons of it every day. The article discusses how these ultra-processed foods can affect your mental health and well-being with the research showing depression and anxiety being key outcomes to this kind of diet. So my assertion is that we have basically been poisoning ourselves with all the UPFs which in turn is creating more mental health issues for the masses. I would venture a guess that 99.9% of all the foods sold in convenience stores are UPFs. Unless you stick to the produce section of a grocery store there is a good chance that you will be putting UPFs in your grocery cart.

So what is an ultra-processed food? Basically anything that comes packaged in plastic and have one or more ingredients that we don’t tend to have at home including alphanumeric additives like emulsifiers, humectins, stabilizers, colourants and flavors. Grab any of these packages and glance at the ingredients and it's like a chemistry test! The manufacturers have done a very fine job of breaking down simple things like corn or wheat into individual components which ruins the health benefits of the whole food and then they have to add back in color, flavor and let's not forget preservatives so it can stay on the shelf until the end of the millennia! The ultimate driver for this industry is to make a profit so products are made as cheaply as possible and will last the better part of a lifetime! 

I decided to get into the pantry and see what potential UPFs we had. We read all the package labels on items we buy that come in a package and very few get into our cart that contain unknown ingredients. This is just the way we eat these days. When it comes to foods the ones without a label are the ones we purchase and that includes fresh fruits and veggies. I make my own bread once or twice a week and am going to experiment with grinding my own wheat kernels for flour. We make all of our own salad dressings, condiments and grind our own peanut butter. Most all the meals we prepare are from scratch meaning we use whole foods that we peel, chop, sauté, bake, etc...and are not poured out of a package.

Yes, I still get depressed and angry with most of my anger due to being treated poorly in the first place. Depression is a nasty beast and after the things we've had to endure in the last few years it's no wonder but I firmly believe that it would have been a whole lot worse if we had been eating ultra-processed foods all along. Maybe it's time to start reading the packages on the foods you buy and if there's a longer list of ingredients that you don't recognize perhaps choose another. Yes, foods will spoil faster but you will know you are getting something that will actually do a body good!