The Truth About Seed Oils and Ultra-Processed Foods

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2:24Julia Wolfson:You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Americans get more than half of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods, with salty and sugary items more than half. This is according to a government study that was released back in August. This government study ran from 2021 to 2023, and it said that about 62 % of childhood diets come from highly processed foods, think burgers, pastries, snacks, and pizza. This is according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Nutrition Study. The same foods have a similar grip on adults, making up about 53 % of the calories that they consumed.

3:04That's a lot.

3:05Julia Wolfson:Yeah, the question I have is whether or not Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy can actually make some headway on this. He said that the U.S. food supply is poisoning children. It's a question that I'll pose to Dr. Julia Wolfson, associate professor in the International Health Department at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The research focuses on how ultra processed food affects our bodies. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is supported by Michael R. Bloomberg founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, parent company of Bloomberg TV and radio.

3:33Julia Wolfson:Dr. Wolfson, good to have you back with us. It's been about a year since we last spoke. I just want to start with the definition of ultra processed foods. I was kind of surprised to see pizza and burgers on that list. How do you define it? Yeah, so thanks for having me back. And ultra processed foods are defined by the list of ingredients that are included in them. So these are foods and beverages that are industrial produced using processes that you wouldn't have in a home kitchen and ingredients that you also wouldn't have in a home kitchen. So these are, you know, industrial produced products used by processing techniques like extrusion, fractioning, where you break down the pieces of the food into different things and then put it back together again.

4:15And they contain things like additives, emulsifiers, sweeteners, thickeners, artificial flavors and colorings and other kinds of substances, again, that you wouldn't use in a home kitchen. And so the most common definition we have is called the NOVA classification system, which actually uses the ingredient list on a product to look for these kinds of ingredients that signal that a food or beverage has been through this industrial processed thing. So if we turn around, which I think increasingly we have a population that is doing that, and especially I've got a daughter who's 22, younger generation looking at stuff.

4:55But if there are a ton of ingredients and ingredients you don't understand, should you assume that that's ultra processed? Yeah, that is what we recommend as the way to know if a food or beverage you're considering purchasing or eating is ultra processed. You flip over that package. And if you look at that ingredient list and you see even one, but certainly a bunch of ingredients where you think, I don't know what that is. That's not something I would cook with. I don't even know how to pronounce that. That's a signal that's an ultra processed food. So do we fix it by just infusing everything with protein and then it's all OK?

5:31Julia Wolfson:But it's still ultra processed. Like even a protein. Are you picking on the Pop-Tart? Yeah, protein packed Pop-Tart. We talked about this on our editorial call this morning. It sounds great. protein with some glazing top. Doctor, I'm going to let you weigh in. Yeah, so I mean, thinking about what our, that's a strategy the food industry uses, maybe to signal that something is healthier for us by saying, oh, this is protein rich or whole grain rich, or this has vitamins or minerals, right? But if it still has these other ingredients, it's still an ultra processed food. And so the addition of other nutrients that we might think are beneficial does not change that food into something that is not an ultra processed food.

6:14It's still ultra processed.

6:16Julia Wolfson:So just really shocking to see 62 % of childhood diets come from highly processed foods. That was wild to see. But at the same time, I'm thinking about my own family and how difficult it is to get my kids who are six and two to eat food that we would consider not ultra processed. What is the best way to do that? What are strategies that work for kids? I think a lot of parents struggle with this. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a struggle for all of us, right? You know, it's not just kids, it's adults as well. You know, it's over half of adult diets. And I think there's a lot of reasons for that. And it's, you know, our taste preferences are shaped very early.

6:52And there's a lot of marketing, particularly to children for these products. And they're easier to they're easier to grab and go there. A lot of them are ready to eat. And, you know, their snacks, they save time. And a lot of them are more affordable, too. So that's something to consider. I think it is the more snacks that you can have out that are not processed, that are easy to grab and go. You know, that is one strategy to help kids have more, say, fresh fruits and vegetables to snack on or healthy snacks that are made ahead that they can reach for easily. But again, that is extra work for parents and sometimes extra cost for parents as well.

7:31So there are really good and intractable reasons why these foods comprise so much of our diets and particularly our children's diets. We're talking with Dr. Julia Wolfson, Associate Professor, International Health Department at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. We're going to come back to her in just a moment. A headline crossing the Bloomberg terminal coming from the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, who has been meeting with President Trump at the White House and the prime minister of Hungary, saying that Hungary wins U.S. sanctions exemption on Russian energy. And we know that there have been some stiff sanctions against Russian energy as a result of the Russian invasion and war against Hungary.

8:15So it looks like Hungary getting an exemption there.

8:18Julia Wolfson:Yeah, earlier, our team reported that President Trump signaled an openness to exempting Hungary from sanctions on purchases of Russian energy as he hosted Prime Minister Viktor Orban. All right, so let's get back to our guest talking with Dr. Julia Wolfson, associate professor over at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Excuse me, she's in the International Health Department. So you know what's interesting? This stat that Tim mentioned from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, their nutrition survey, when they talked about highly processed food, they said pizza.

8:50So this, you know.

8:51Julia Wolfson:But not the pizza that you get and I get on Friday nights. That's what I want to ask you. So like I go to a place where I know they are making their homemade crust from special weed. It's been featured in the New York Times. You know, and it's, no, no, no. I hear you're having fun. It has been. But I mean, it's like, you know, fresh tomatoes, fresh basil. I guess maybe there's obviously some like homemade cheese there, but like what, like, how do we distinguish really, really bad processed food versus stuff that maybe isn't so bad? Yeah, I think that, you know, that kind of pizza that you're describing, or let's think about bread, even pizza or bread that you might make at home, like you're combining wheat and, you know, flour and salt and yeast, and, you know, you have your fresh tomato sauce.

9:40That's not an ultra processed food. But that is not the majority of the pizza that people are eating. So when we talk about things like pizza, it really could be those frozen pizzas that you get in the grocery store, or maybe more mass produced pizzas that are made at scale and therefore have some sorts of preservatives or other kinds of ingredients that change the, say, the softness of the dough or something like that. Those are the ultra processed things. So not all ultra processed foods, though, are equally concerning, I would say. You know, I mentioned bread. So, you know, the bread that we might make by ourselves at home, like if we were some of the people who started making sourdough bread during COVID, for example, that's not ultra processed.

10:25Bread you might get at the bakery in your neighborhood that is made by scratch is not ultra processed. But most of the bread that we see on our supermarket shelves is ultra processed. That sliced bread that you see And so but that includes even whole wheat bread. So, you know, there are some ultra processed products that are by definition ultra processed because they might contain some of those qualifiers or things that turn them into that product. But they might still be somewhere less of a concern than others, I would say.

10:58Julia Wolfson:So just in the last two minutes that we have with you, the Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has vowed to go after these food companies. So Americans do eat healthier thus far. How is he doing? Well, I mean, I think it's good that he's focusing on this as an issue. I think there are, as I mentioned, you know, there's a lot of reasons why we eat these foods. And one of them, a big one is they're more affordable. They tend to be more affordable than scratch ingredients. They save time and they're more accessible. And so I think some of the policies of the administration, say cutting or even eliminating SNAP benefits is not helpful for people to be able to avoid ultra processed foods.

11:42But thinking about labeling or getting ultra processed foods out of schools in a way that also balances with giving schools the resources they need to source and prepare less processed food would be a step in the right direction. Why do we just real quickly 30 40 seconds here? Why do we have so much ultra processed food? Is it about keeping shelf life or like what is it? Or is it just cheaper, mass production food? I don't know, just quickly. Yeah, I mean, it's the majority of the foods in our grocery store shelves, right? They make food more shelf stable, they're oftentimes more affordable, and they're in high demand because they save people time, and they save people mental energy as well.

12:21You know, it's a lot easier to, say, have a frozen dinner than it is to make all the components of the frozen dinner yourself. So there's demand for it. And, you know, they've really dominated our food supply for decades now. So it will be really difficult to make that switch at a large scale, but it's worth considering how we can do it. One last quick question, 25 seconds. Can we eat too much protein? I think it is possible to eat too much protein and Americans do eat a lot of protein. So we are not suffering from a shortage of protein in the U.S. as a whole. That's what my dad, Betty, was at everything in moderation.

12:57Like it's pretty logical. Just do that. What?

12:59Julia Wolfson:Even ultra-processed foods. Even French fries. I guess. No. No, not. No. Dr. Julia Wolfson, so appreciate it. Associate Professor in the International Health Department at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. This is Bloomberg.

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13:46When you're running a business, the best days are the ones where priorities stay on track. For midsize and large companies, risk can affect multiple parts of the organization at once, from property and liability to cyber and regulatory challenges. At that level, managing risk becomes an ongoing discipline. At the Hartford, the focus is on helping businesses manage risk before it turns into something more disruptive. And when losses do happen, that work is paired with insurance coverage shaped by years of underwriting, risk engineering, and claims experience. Learn more at thehartford.com slash risk mitigation.

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