Public Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain: An Inpatient Randomized Controlled Trial of Ad Libitum Food Intake

This research has implications for PwME who may rely on easy-to-prepare processed foods, and for those who try to watch their weight. It's an NIH study published in Cell Metabolism

https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(19)30248-7

 

Two thoughts:

1. Not so surprising based on my own experience

2. I lived most my life ad libitum

 

This is a randomised controlled trial using only 20 people for only 14/28 days???

So this says ..if you put tasty flavoursome food in front of a patient after they are preconditioned to eat this stuff and then give them bland but filling food they don’t eat as much.

This really is a palatability study that repeats all the known stuff done in the 1950’s and 60’s. If it tastes nice, people will eat a higher portion when compared to blander food.

It’s interesting their unprocessed choices are particularly bland. They could have put some much more tasty menu options as unprocessed than those used...they seem to have biased this sample deliberately. To be truly robust they should have run sensory acceptance tests on a larger sample to show how appealing the menu choices were in terms of taste etc. And matched them before conducting the test. Not just nutrient matched them and asked some fairly basic questions during the test.

This is a comparison of sausages and bagels vs fresh fruit and non sweetened porridge or a salad vs macaroni cheese.

Fairly straightforward..if it tastes nice you will eat more. If you eat more calories then you get fat.

I’m pretty sure that if you presented a salmon quinoa salad with some chilli oil , herbs, lemon juice etc ..the portions ate would be different than the bland white poached fish fillets they chose.

I thought it interesting that despite the nutrient matching between menus the ‘ultra processed food’ had more calories and carbs in it whereas the unprocessed slightly more fibre and protein (with lower carbs) They also compensated for the fibre by adding only basic fibre in a drink for the ultra processed menus. Fibre (particularly a good mix of soluble and insoluble fibre as part of a meal is known to increase satiety). I wonder what would have happened if they had replaced the white bread with wholemeal and kept everything the same...probably very different. This is blatant blanket demonising of lifestyle with over simplistic reasoning.

...and only 20 people ...I’m not sure this is a robust study that tells us very much...it’s mildly interesting at best