The big idea: why we need a new definition of junk food
Ultra-processed products now make up 60% of our diet – and they’re killing us
Strange as it may seem, food has replaced tobacco as the leading cause of early death globally. Each year,more
people die in America from illnesses caused by poor diet than were killed fighting in every war in US history
combined. In the UK the situation is equally 1. dire. Officially, the health effects of food are entirely due to
its nutritional content – the amount of fat, salt, sugar and fibre it contains. The current system leaves it up
to you to read the detailed information on the pack and decide how much to eat based on recommended
values, and if you have children, you’ll need to know the values for them too. This is nigh-on impossible
for most people – but even if you were able to calculate exactly how much fat, salt and sugar you were
consuming in each 2. mouthful, you would still be neglecting one vital determinant of health – how the
food was processed. You might feel like you’ve heard all this before. People have expressed concern about
“processed food” for a long time, but it’s not always been an easy concept to 3. pin down. After all, we have been processing food for hundreds of thousands of years. The human diet was invented by primarily female
domestic scientists who modified plants and animals by milling, shaking, pounding and grinding them, or
altering them via fermentation and heat, before salting, smoking and drying them for preservation. Food
processing has shaped almost every aspect of our bodies: we have the shortest guts of any animal our size
because part of their job is outsourced to our kitchens. We are the only animal that must process its food to
survive. Processing is fine.
But just over a decade ago a team of scientists in Brazil noticed a 4. paradox in the data from their national
nutrition surveys. Obesity had gone from being rare, to being the country’s dominant public health problem –
even though people were buying less oil and sugar. What theywere eating more of was industrially processed
food: biscuits, emulsified breads, confectionary and so on. The team developed a definition that distinguished
between traditional food, whole or processed, and these items, which they termed ultra processed foods,
or UPFs for short.
Disponible in: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/15/the-big-idea-why-we-need-a-new-definition-of-junk-food. Access in: May, 15 2023 (adapted).
Choose the alternative whose bold words have similar meanings in the sentences.