Ultra-processed foods harm men’s health. They increase weight, disrupt hormones, decrease testosterone, and introduce harmful substances linked to declining sperm quality. They contain industrial and synthetic ingredients. This may be why over the past 50 years, sperm quality has plummeted.

[u/mvea]

https://cbmr.ku.dk/news/2025/not-all-calories-are-equal-ultra-processed-foods-harm-mens-health/

[u/ArdillasVoladoras]

And near the top is a popped out paragraph of what the definition is.

I think a lot of commenters want to endlessly nitpick the definition and are actively trying to avoid how this is useful. It's similar to BMI; when applied to an individual person or item it's not particularly useful, but when applied to the whole population or breadth of foods, the macro level trends are relevant.

[u/Acrobatic_Flamingo → u/ArdillasVoladoras]

I know what definition theyre using it just seems to me like a worse way to categories foods than other already available ones because plenty of low calorie foods fit that definition, and plenty of high calorie, high palatability foods are low in proccessing.

Is cane sugar coke more healthy for me than a protein powder drink? Are ground beef burgers better for me than impossible burgers? Are potatoes fried in beef tallow good for me, so long as theres no ingredients I dont recognize in them?

These are the questions I want answered when we're talking about how processed foods is, because the intuitive response to this focus on processing levels from people is to eat low processed burgers.

This specific study does actually control for calories and macronutrients, which is good but it doesnt detail the actual diets used, and the pictures they use to illustrate the low process diet is like, salmon and broccoli while the picture they use for an ultra processed diet is a burger and fries, even though the former could easily be more processed than the latter.

[u/LurkLurkleton → u/Acrobatic_Flamingo]

Is cane sugar coke more healthy for me than a protein powder drink? Are ground beef burgers better for me than impossible burgers? Are potatoes fried in beef tallow good for me, so long as theres no ingredients I dont recognize in them?

No, no, and no.

[u/Acrobatic_Flamingo → u/LurkLurkleton]

Well, these are the conclusions people are drawing from studies about "ultra processed foods" being bad for you, which to me suggests it's a pretty bad category of food to try to study.

[u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 → u/ArdillasVoladoras]

Did you read it? Cus they're definition is so broad it can mean anything. They say pre frying is part of it.... That just means the food was fried before being frozen. You can do that at home. Using additives isn't some catch so, lecithin isn't going to cause these issues. But some other chemical may. By calling all of this "ultra processed" they've made a category so broad that it's meaningless.

They need to be listing specific ingredients. Not this "you wouldn't recognize it" crap.

[u/deepandbroad → u/Emm_withoutha_L-88]

You seem to be assuming that something fried in a factory and fried at home are perfectly equivalent.

At home, cost often takes a back seat to quality, cleanliness, and food safety procedures. In a factory, cost may take the first priority and the other factors may take a back seat.

A factory may use low-quality oil to fry foods in, or they may not clean the fryers very often in order to not shut down the production line and lose money.

The factory food fryer might be very high quality, but one way to measure this is to study the effects of the food on people who eat it and see if there is a difference between eating food fried at home and food fried in a factory (for example).

With Boar's Head meat products, there definitely were a lot of lapses in sanitation and 10 people died in a listeria outbreak and dozens were hospitalized, so it's not a wrong question to ask if there are other effects of factory food that might be less dramatic in nature but still evident in a study.

[u/Mogling → u/ArdillasVoladoras]

The definition in the article here does a poor job of explaining the NOVA food classifications, even if people read it they would not come off with a good understanding.

The macro contents of both meal groups were very different. Do we know if the results are due to that, or due to the processing of the food?

I think this study shows it is worth doing some more research on ultra processed foods, but the authors claim that this proves anything is a bit hyperbolic. So I don't think this is useful like BMI in making general statements. I think this is useful in that is shows that further research is needed.

[u/ArdillasVoladoras → u/Mogling]

The macro contents were almost exactly the same, figure S1B. The fat profile is different (S1D). Did you read the study?

[u/Mogling → u/ArdillasVoladoras]

Yes sorry, the fat/protein/carb mix is similar. The fat profile is different as you said. We do also see differences in the micronutrients. Fiber and sodium being the largest difference.

[u/ArdillasVoladoras → u/Mogling]

That seems like relatively easy messaging. Show two of the test subject meals side by side, and show the micro differences and the study results below. The pure causal relationship isn't necessary to communicate with the public.

[u/Mogling → u/ArdillasVoladoras]

But I guess my question is, is the difference in outcomes due to the fat profile, different micros, the processing, or something else not controlled for? So I'd just like to see more research in this area.

[u/ArdillasVoladoras → u/Mogling]

The authors of the study said "associated with" and not "proves":

Summary

Consumption of ultra-processed food is associated with increased caloric intake and impaired health.

[u/Mogling → u/ArdillasVoladoras]

“Our results prove that ultra-processed foods harm our reproductive and metabolic health, even if they’re not eaten in excess. This indicates that it is the processed nature of these foods that makes them harmful,” says Jessica Preston, lead author of the study, who carried out the research during her PhD at the University of Copenhagen's NNF Center for Basic Metabolic Research (CBMR).

Directly from the article. So while the study doesn't say that, the author of the study did. Unless the Author of that article is making up quotes. I'll stand by my statement that the quote I was referencing was a little hyperbolic, even if the study itself does not go that far.

[u/SimoneNonvelodico → u/ArdillasVoladoras]

"When <very vaguely defined thing>, sometimes we also observe <other thing>" is not very useful science. Maybe if it was the first observation, but at this point we're full of studies banging the drum of "ultra processed foods" without a hint of causal or mechanistic links that would make the information actually actionable.

[u/ArdillasVoladoras → u/SimoneNonvelodico]

How is this information not actionable? Correlations are enough to start working on messaging for public discourse, the average layperson doesn't care about actual mechanisms. We do not need to wait for the perfect causal link in order to start attempting to persuade the narrative. There's literally pictures of every meal given to subjects as well as an almost identical macronutrient profile. It's only not useful to you and lots of others in discussions in here if you want to be purposefully dense about the subject.

Saying "we're full" of data is more harmful than helpful. Replicating negative correlations will always be welcome.

[u/SimoneNonvelodico → u/ArdillasVoladoras]

"Stop eating everything that's... uhh... ultra processed... whatever that means" is actionable only in a very generic sense. People won't bother much with such a large target. Others will take the wrong message and have their fear of anything "artificial" reinforced. And you can't really do much policy on it. If we knew that preservatives X, Y and Z cause health issues we could simply ban them and we'd solve the problem much more easily.

[u/ArdillasVoladoras → u/SimoneNonvelodico]

Show examples of meals from each category in the study next to each other and their health correlations. Don't excuse your lack of creativity as a lack of methodology. Banning specific preservatives leaves the door open for new ones to be created with the same effects. We need to change public discourse, simply banning things isn't enough.

I am not against finding direct causes, but it's not needed to start messaging. We're talking to the uneducated public, not other scientists.

Edit: I actually have a better question to you. When will we find this causal relationship? Because I know we already have a relatively strong correlation. How long should we wait with no message at all until we can get your smoking gun?

Perfect is the enemy of good. People don't need the perfect message, they just need one that they can interpret that's good enough.

[u/Catholic-Kevin → u/ArdillasVoladoras]

The greatest part about r/science is that not a single one of the people here has ever read a research paper, where defining terms that will impact the results is always the very first thing the author does. It’s like researchers have thought about this. 

Then of course you get people completely ignoring the definition used in the study and saying “ultra-processed foods aren’t a thing,” when we all have a pretty good intuitive understanding of what they are.

[u/Willuz → u/Catholic-Kevin]

defining terms that will impact the results is always the very first thing the author does

when we all have a pretty good intuitive understanding of what they are

This is the problem with the term "Ultra Processed Foods". The definition varies greatly between studies but everyone thinks they know what it is. I've read studies where organic applesauce with no additives qualifies as Ultra Processed per the definition used in that particular study. Article headlines for scientific studies are already very misleading and this just adds to the confusion. Very large and variably defined categories such as "Ultra Processed" often lead to correlation without causation.

[u/Catholic-Kevin → u/Willuz]

You’re finding fringe items and posturing them as if they’re the norm. In a case like applesauce it’s very possible that one brand be little more than ground up apples and the brand right next to it might be full of additives, thus one might be ultraprocessed and one not. Yes, researchers can vary and have debates on if certain foods are to be considered ultraprocessed. No one denies this. This does not invalidate all use of the term ultra processed. 

No one is confused when the ice cream that isn’t legally allowed to call itself ice cream is classified as ultraprocessed, or the chicken nugget that has been ground up and reconstituted five times is either. Words do have meaning, and this is a useful classification. This is what forms an academic consensus.

[u/SimoneNonvelodico → u/Catholic-Kevin]

when we all have a pretty good intuitive understanding of what they are

"We all know them when we see them" isn't a very scientific definition. The fundamental problem is as others have said, how do I act on this information? This way of defining things creates a duality between ultra processed and "natural" which leads people to think that as long as it's not industrial, it's healthy, and that's patently not the case. And I'm sure plenty of preservatives and stuff are actually perfectly fine and not harmful too. There's clearly something harmful in there but we don't really know what and no studies seem to make a lot of progress there.

[u/Catholic-Kevin → u/SimoneNonvelodico]

There are scientific definitions, you guys just don't acknowledge that they exist and engage in arguments that no one is making. Read the article, the author defines ultra processed foods in the very first paragraph numb nuts.