{"id":191129,"date":"2025-10-10T19:09:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T19:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/191129\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T19:09:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T19:09:08","slug":"op-ed-ultra-processed-foods-should-not-be-focus-of-u-s-nutrition-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/191129\/","title":{"rendered":"Op-ed: Ultra-processed foods should not be focus of U.S. nutrition policy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"has-block-animation has-fly-in-animation\">A \u201cMake America Healthy Again\u201d report on childhood health, released by the White House in May, cites ultra-processed food as a leading cause of chronic disease\u2014but making these foods \u201cthe new dietary villain\u201d could be a misstep, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/hsph.harvard.edu\/profile\/david-s-ludwig\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">David Ludwig<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-block-animation has-fly-in-animation\">In an Oct. 6 Washington Post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2025\/10\/06\/maha-ultra-processed-foods-nutrition-rfk-jr\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">op-ed<\/a>, Ludwig, professor in the <a href=\"https:\/\/hsph.harvard.edu\/department\/nutrition\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Department of Nutrition<\/a>, wrote that ultra-processed foods are defined imprecisely and studies have not definitely shown that diets without them have long-term health benefits. Therefore, he argued, nutrition policies should not overgeneralize and recommend that all of them be cut out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-block-animation has-fly-in-animation\">He recounted the major effort by the U.S. government and nutrition experts half a century ago to convince the public to follow low-fat diets in order to prevent chronic disease. However, the approach was not strongly supported by research and led to unintended consequences: Processed carbs such as sugary beverages and sweetened breakfast cereals became commonplace, and obesity and diabetes rates increased.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-block-animation has-fly-in-animation\">Ludwig pointed out that ultra-processed foods\u2014defined as having at least one major food component or additive not used in traditional cooking methods\u2014include actually healthy foods such as olive oil created by processing olives. Furthermore, the potential health benefits of diets without ultra-processed foods have not been studied comprehensively, he noted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-block-animation has-fly-in-animation\">\u201cLaunching another broad public health prevention campaign based on ambiguous observational studies and weak clinical trials risks a redux of the low-fat diet debacle,\u201d he wrote. He recommended that health officials should instead focus on the subset of foods that have strong scientific evidence of causing harm, including refined grains, sugar, and other highly processed carbohydrates.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-block-animation has-fly-in-animation\">Read the Washington Post op-ed: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2025\/10\/06\/maha-ultra-processed-foods-nutrition-rfk-jr\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Dietary fat was a scapegoat. Now MAHA is naming a new one.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\nLast Updated<\/p>\n<p>Get the latest public health news<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-block-animation has-fly-in-animation\">Stay connected with Harvard Chan School<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A \u201cMake America Healthy Again\u201d report on childhood health, released by the White House in May, cites ultra-processed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[102,6636,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-191129","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-nutrition","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}