Welcome to Part 2 of our two-parter on Ultra Processed Foods! Virginia is chatting with Laura Thomas, PhD, a Registered Nutritionist who specializes in responsive feeding and anti-diet, body affirming nutrition. Her work centers on helping parents and families end inter-generation dieting and body shame, and work towards a greater sense of embodiment and ease in their relationship with food. She runs the Substack and podcast Can I Have Another Snack?, and is the author of two books; Just Eat It and How to Just Eat It.

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Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.

BUTTER & OTHER LINKS

Part 1 of this series 

Laura's three part series on UPFs

Virginia on processed foods here and there

responsive feeding

episode with Naureen Hunani

Laura Thomas on sugar

Michelle Obama’s legacy on kids and food

FAT TALK is out! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.

CREDITS

The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell. Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Episode 102 Transcript

Virginia

Okay, so we’re going to dive into some of your questions now, and Laura is going to help us think through all of this a little more.

Can our bodies really differentiate between ultra processed foods and less processed foods?

Laura

It just depends. I could go to the store and buy some shop bought cookies, right? They would be considered ultra processed. I could bake virtually the same cookies at home and they would be called processed cookies, but the way that my body responds is probably fairly similarly. 

Virginia

Right. To your body, it’s all a cookie.

Laura

Some of the pushback around ultra processed food from within the nutrition community is that the label of “ultra processed food” doesn’t tell us anything about the qualities of that food that can’t be explained by more traditional metrics that we would use within nutrition.

I’m thinking about things like energy density, intrinsic fiber, glycemic load, and added sugar. All these tools that we already have to determine how our body will respond to something can just as easily tell us how our bodies will respond. I don’t think there’s anything special about ultra processed food in and of itself, if a food has lower fiber regardless of whether it was made in a factory made or made in our house, it’s going to respond slightly differently in our bodies. It’s more about the overall properties of a food, rather than where it’s processed. 

Virginia

Your body is not like, “This is a Frito Lay product and I can tell because I’m having a different reaction.”

Laura

No, but it can be like, “well, this is an apple and therefore, it’s actually not going to provide me enough sustenance to keep going,” right? We have receptor cells in in our gastrointestinal tract that tell us about the nutrient density of the food. And spoiler, if you’re not eating enough food, it’s going to send that feedback and it’s going to start pumping out more hormones that ramp up your appetite because we don’t have enough. So, our bodies can tell foods apart to some extent, but that’s not exclusively processed versus ultra processed foods.

Virginia

That’s probably the thing bodies are least focused on, in a way. 

Laura

Yeah, it’s like, “Is this meeting my needs.” 

Virginia

Any links that you’ve come across in your research between ultra processed foods and mental health?

Laura

This is something that I didn’t go into specifically, but it’s something that I tangentially read around. Mental health is so multifaceted that it’s really difficult to tease apart what is the effect of our diet versus what is the effect of some of these other variables that mean that we are eating an ultra processed food diet in the first place. Does that make sense? Like, because we’re having to work three jobs to make ends meet and we don’t have time to cook a meal from scratch. Both of those things independently could have an impact on your mental health.

Virginia

Right. But it wouldn’t be because you’re eating the ultra processed food that you have the mental health outcome.

Laura

It might be because you’re having poor sleep. And the narrative is that we’re to blame for our mental health when we need to be really conscious of these broader structural influences over mental health.

Virginia

Super important. Okay, this person writes:

I have a kiddo with ARFID and almost all safe foods would be considered ultra processed foods. How much is too much of a single ultra processed food?

Laura

It’s really hard to say without having a bit more information there. But what I would say is that kids with ARFID can do really well with a fairly limited diet. I would always get it checked out with a pediatric dietitian, preferably one who specializes in responsive feeding so that you can check for any gaps.

When it comes to kids who are neurodivergent or have feeding differences, their diets are never going to look like typical eaters. T