Food processing influences metabolism and brain activity
news.vt.edu
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Would love to read the original research paper if anyone has access to it. My university unfortunately doesn’t.
[4 comments hidden]
I believe they are on to something, but wouldn't it be much better if the sample size was larger than just 57 people?
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Of course but I'm sure they made the sample size as large as their funding permitted and it's better than nothing.
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This is a good question but not an invalidation of the study. People underestimate the cost of doing large scale surveys, first year researchers become painfully aware of it. There are lots of research were you try to get a quantitative result cheap. But most costs a lot of money (the big studies are usually very well spent money imho)
Example: five years, 10000 participants, $170 million https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-awards-170...
esperent[5 comments hidden]
> The non-UPF and UPF test meals were closely matched on meal weight, energy, energy density, macronutrients, available carbohydrate, glycaemic index and load, total dietary fibre, sodium and water (all ≤1.6% deviation between meals; Fig. 1b).
So they did match glycemic index, which the article omits.
tancop[4 comments hidden]
I bet a lot of this is psychosomatic, you expect some food will give you fast energy so your body thinks that means you need it and releases insulin.
eudkfkriEir[hidden]
plus all of the options that are complete unknowns which, in biology, is probably close to 99.999%
nrclark[hidden]
I know somebody who got really into blood glucose monitoring, and she tells me that the order in which she eats a meal affects how much it spikes her glucose. So if she eats a piece of toast followed by a piece of cheese, it causes her a bigger glucose spike than she'd get if she eats the cheese first and then the toast.
Looking at the two meals in the study: if I sat down to eat the processed one, I'd probably start with the veggie straws. If I saw down to eat the unprocessed one, I'd almost certainly start with the egg or the cheese.
edit: and here are some other options: I notice that the unprocessed one is grain-free, vegetarian and has significantly less sucrose. I don't know if any of that makes it more or less healthy, but they're significant differences nutritionally.
PowerElectronix[hidden]