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Twenty-year-old Sam Srisata is dedicating a month of his life to science — research that could help shape the future of America's Diet and Nutrition Guidelines Most spoiled foods That makeup Almost 70% of the country's food supply.
Every day at 7 a.m. in the hospital room, nurses record Srisatta's weight and vitals. Bowel movement samples are taken for analysis. Some mornings, blood is drawn to test how the body reacts to different types of food. Other days, he sleeps in a bubble that measures his oxygen and carbon dioxide outputs to determine how many calories he burns at rest.
After completing each morning's battery of tests, Sirisata has 15 minutes to eat breakfast before the food is taken out, weighed and recorded. At lunch and dinner, he has a full hour to eat as much or as little as he likes, before scooping up leftovers to measure out and grab extra nutrients. Then he can read, play video games, do supervised exercise or sleep.
He and 35 other volunteers will repeat it for four weeks while living in the National Institutes of Health's Metabolic Clinical Research Unit in Bethesda, Maryland — part of a multicenter randomized clinical trial to tease out various health effects. Types of highly perishable foods.
“These are industrially made formulas with refined ingredients and additives that you wouldn't normally find in your home,” says Kevin Hall, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda. The study.
Highly processed foods typically contain added sugar, salt, and fatHappiness point” Food makes it irresistible – like the 1960s potato chip ad above Actor Bert LahrHe is famous for playing the Cowardly Lion in “The Wizard of Oz” “Betcha You Can't Eat Just One.”
Advances in food science over the past decades have created more artificial tastes, smells and textures that home-cooked meals can no longer reproduce, they say. These additives, along with their high levels of sugar, salt and fat, can help attract a lot of processed foods.
Several studies have been found A large amount of Highly processed food It increases the development of obesity and chronic diseases Cancer, Cardiovascular disease, Excessive obesity, Type 2 diabetes And Depression. Such foods can even be Shorten life.
“These and other nutritional factors are responsible At least half of the deaths in AmericaThey disproportionately affect and contribute to black, indigenous, low-income, and rural Americans 4.5 trillion dollars in annual health care costs” wrote senior officials of the United States Food and Drug Administration Editor in mid-November On the dangers of highly spoiled foods.
But do all processed foods do the same damage? Critics say the question is confusing scientists and delaying regulatory action.
“There's a lot of debate about whether or not all highly processed foods are bad for you,” says Hall. “Probably not, so what are the mechanisms in this large, very broad category of superfoods—which account for 50% to 70% of the calories in our food supply—that undermine health?
“If we can figure this out, we can provide information to our FDA colleagues and regulators about how they want to label food or how they want to change policies,” he said.
Hall and his team have previously investigated the appeal of highly processed foods. In previous research, Published in July 2019They followed healthy volunteers from the outside world for a month, eating highly processed foods, including sugary cereals and blueberry muffins, for two weeks and minimally processed foods, such as Greek yogurt with fresh fruit and nuts, for another two weeks. Participants were able to eat as much or as little of each diet as they liked.
Both diets contained the same amount of total calories, sugar, fiber, fat, salt and carbohydrates, so Hall expected the food and drink to have the same effect on the 20 volunteers' bodies — but that didn't happen.
“What we've seen in previous research is that people eating highly processed foods tend to eat about 500 more calories per day than the same people exposed to zero processed foods in their environment,” Hall said.
Recently, much less so A randomized clinical trial A series of nine volunteers in Japan who ate a week of ultra-processed and minimally processed food for a week got huge results – people on the super-diet ate 813 calories a day.
“In Hall's study, these people were in a closed room. They can't lie, they can't cheat, they can't do anything but eat what they're given, says molecular biologist and nutrition scientist Paulette Goddard, professor of nutrition, food studies and public health. , Emerita at New York University.
“They could eat as much as they wanted, as much as they were given, and they got this amazing result, which has now been replicated in Japan,” says Nestl, who was not involved in either study.
In a July 2019 study, an extra 500 calories a day led to an average weight gain of 2 pounds. (0.9 kg) Each week on the highly processed diet — and the same weight loss each week on the least processed diet, Hall said.
“Now the question is, why did it happen?” he asked. “What we've done in this new study is to reformulate some of the aspects that we think may be contributing to excessive caloric intake.”
As of 2011 Obesity is a global epidemic, he says. World Health OrganizationSupposedly More than half of the world In 2035 will be overweight or obese. Only in the United States, it is estimated About 260 million Americans By 2050, there will be obesity or obesity unless policymakers take immediate action.
For the first time in history, the potential role of highly processed foods in the US Obesity is an infectious disease It is being investigated as part of the new 2025-2030 US Dietary Guidelines; It is slated to be published by the end of 2025.
Once finalized, these guidelines will form the basis of federal nutrition policy for the next five years.
“Ultra-processed foods are extremely important, indeed the most important concept in nutrition since vitamins,” says Nestle. “It is supported by addiction literature. It is supported by Hall's controlled clinical trial and observational studies. How much more do you need? ”
From 2023, a group of famous nutritionists b 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committeeor DGAC, began Exploring the latest science The ways in which highly processed foods affect health. Those findings will be shared with staff at the US Department of Agriculture and the US Department of Health and Human Services. Write the final instructions.
While discussions of the effects of ultra-processed foods on heart disease, diabetes and other health issues have occurred over the years, the committee limited its scientific analysis to just one question: How do ultra-processed foods affect growth, weight and obesity across the lifespan?
The advisory committee set high standards for studies included in the analysis, excluding studies of less than 12 weeks and fewer than 30 studies, and prioritized studies conducted in the United States.
“We've learned the hard way from low-fat clinical trials that weight control trials can last for a year or more, because weight loss was high for 6 months with low fat, but it's the opposite,” said lead nutritionist Dr. TH Chan, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, was not part of the advisory committee or involved in Hall's study.
“So the experiments that lasted only a few months were worse than any experiments because they were misleading,” Willett said in an email. “As a result, the design phase of weight control trials must now be maintained for at least a year.”
However, they say such studies are rare due to cost, a general lack of funding for nutrition research in the US, and the difficulty of monitoring what people actually eat and say they eat.
“If you just ask people how many calories they're eating, they're going to underestimate that baseline,” Hall said. “Also, they believe that they are consuming very low amounts of calories during the diet – they gradually eat more calories over time.”
The committee's criteria exclude studies that are unclear about how foods are considered highly sophisticated — a common phenomenon that is the subject of ongoing debate among nutritionists. Describe the most spoiled foods.
Although the final consultation report will not be available to government stakeholders for a few months, a May meeting The advisory committee discussed the scientific findings.
In the research the committee members considered, they could find “Limited” evidence To suggest that highly processed foods can lead to weight gain and obesity in children, adolescents and adults of all ages.
Hall's 2019 randomized controlled clinical trial, however, was not included in the analysis because it was less than 12 weeks old and involved fewer than 30 people, according to a spokeswoman for the Office of Prevention and Health Promotion, which supports the committee's work.
“There was wide variation in what was supposed to be a highly structured and some of the most alarming things under study,” said advisory committee member Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
And due to the disparity in global food supply, the availability of highly processed foods to the American population was at great risk. So that's how we got to the 'Limited' stage.” Stanford said. During the May meeting.
There was insufficient data to show that highly processed foods could harm pregnant women and infants and toddlers.