Focus on Limiting Ultra Processed Food Not Saturated Fat & Sodium

Note: This article is a combination of a Science Made Simple article, with the references below and an editorial which provides my opinion.

Dietary advice — especially National Dietary Guidelines ought to give clear, consistent messages. It would seem that the new Canada Food Guide ‘snapshot’ outlined in the previous article may inadvertently cause considerable confusion as to which foods are healthy and which are not.

The new Canada Food Guide ‘snapshot’ released last week shows a photo of ultra-processed products as foods to avoid, yet the label beneath the photo reads “limit foods high in sodium, sugars or saturated fat” (see circled part of photo, below).

In fact, when the image of these processed foods is clicked on the Health Canada website, it brings the reader to a page listing the “Benefits of Limiting Highly Processed foods” and has paragraphs below for Sodium, Sugars, and Saturated Fat.

In my opinion, this conflates two issues.

Advising people to limit ultra-processed food is not the same as advising them to limit saturated fat, sodium and sugar.

There are many whole unprocessed foods and minimally processed foods such as meat, eggs, cheese, yogourt, olives and berries that have sustained humans through thousands of years of history that contain these elements and are unlikely to be responsible for our current epidemics of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease that we now face.

As mentioned in an earlier article about distinguishing between food and food-like products there is a big difference between the three categories of food as defined by the NOVA food classification system [2,3,4]. Unprocessed Foods such as meat, chicken, fish and eggs are whole, real food in their original state and Minimally Processed Foods such as cheese, yogourt or pickled and cured fish or meat or olives are foods that have been preserved in some fashion by curing, smoking or soaking in brine. Foods such as meat, eggs, cheese and olives may be high in saturated fat or sodium but have been part of the human diet for thousands of years without compelling evidence that these pose a risk to human health.

It may be helpful to recommend that people consume pickled, cured meat and fish in smaller quantities, not because these foods are high in saturated fat or sodium, but because many are now made in less traditional ways that involve the use of chemical additives.

The primary health concern that I see it is that Ultra Processed Foods is making up more than 50% of the Canadian (and American) diet and really isn’t food at all. These are manufactured products made from a combination of refined carbohydrates (including sugar) and seed oils and are convenient, hyper-palatable and cheap — and displace real food from the diet. In fact, some of the most addictive foods available to us are ultra processed foods; including breakfast cereal, muffins, pizza, cheeseburgers, French fries and fried chicken — and desserts such as chocolate, ice cream, cookies and cake, as well as the soda we wash them down with [5]. These ultra processed foods are full of “empty calories” / have little nutritional value, and full of refined fats and refined carbs. It is for this reason ultra processed should be limited — not because it is high in saturated fat and sodium.

Even though fruit as we now know it has been bred over the last 50-100 years to be hyper-sweet, for metabolically healthy people there is still no comparison between natural whole fruit such as berries or an apple, and sugary pop. One is real, whole unprocessed food and the other is ultra processed.

In my opinion, it makes good sense for Health Canada to show a photo of ultra-processed foods as they had (above)with advice to limit them — but because they are ultra processed, not because they are high in saturated fat or sodium.

Shifting the Focus off Saturated Fat Based on the Evidence

As covered in several previous article on this site, while research does indicate that dietary saturated fat raises low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-cholesterol) in the blood, distinction in these studies isn’t made between the small, dense LDL sub-fraction which is atherosclerotic, and the large, fluffy LDL which is not. This recent study makes this distinction; demonstrating that saturated fat from red meat and poultry raises the large, fluffy LDL and cardio-protective HDL, but not the small dense (atherosclerotic) LDL.

Epidemiological studies that do exist provide a very mixed picture of any possible association between saturated fatty acids and cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke); with recent studies finding no association [6,7]. Even more compelling, the data from the Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiological (PURE) Study which was the largest prospective epidemiological study to date involving many different countries found that dietary saturated fat was actually beneficial; with those who ate the largest amounts of saturated fat having significantly reduced death rates and that those that ate the lowest amounts of saturated fat (6-7% of calories) had increased risk of stroke [8].

In addition, according to the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation position statement titled ”Saturated Fat, Heart Disease and Stroke” released in September 2015 [9], different saturated fatty acids (e.g. lauric, stearic, myristic and palmitic acids) have different effects on blood cholesterol, so we can’t simply lump all saturated fats together.

Focus on Where Change is Needed

I believe that national guidelines such as Canada’s Food Guide should focus on eliminating ultra-processed foods from the diet because these form almost half of caloric intake with little nutrients and displace real, whole nourishing food from the diet.

This makes good sense.

In my opinion, the linking of ultra processed foods to saturated fat and sodium as has been done in this most recent Canada Food Guide ‘snapshot’ will end up confusing the public that things like fried chicken and cheese are both equally unhealthy because they are high in saturated fat and salt.

It would be far more helpful to highlight the benefits of whole, unprocessed foods and minimally processed foods while encouraging the public to limit ultra processed foods.

More Info?

If you would like more information about limiting ultra-processed foods, while including whole, real foods (plant-based and animal-based), I can help.

You can learn more about my services under the Services tab or in the Shop. If you have questions, please feel free to send me a note using the Contact Me form above and I will reply as soon as I can.

To your good health!

Joy

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References

Health Canada Snapshot: https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/?utm_source=canada-ca-foodguide-en&utm_medium=vurl&utm_campaign=foodguide
Moubarac JC, Batal M, Martins AP, Claro R, Levy RB, Cannon G, et al. Processed and ultraprocessed food products: Consumption trends in Canada from 1938 to 2011. Can J Diet Pract Res. 2014 Spring;75(1):15-21.
Monteiro CA, Moubarac J-C, Cannon G., Ng SW, Popkin B. Ultra-processed products are becoming dominant in the global food system. Obes Rev. 2013
Moubarac JC. Ultra-processed foods in Canada: consumption, impact on diet quality and policy implications. Montréal: TRANSNUT, University of Montreal; December 2017Nov;14 Suppl 2:21-8. doi: 10.1111/obr.12107.
Schulte EM, Avena NM, Gearhardt AN (2015) Which Foods May be Addictive? The Roles of Processing, Fat Content and Glycemic Load. PLoS ONE 10(2); e0117959. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0117959
Chowdhury R, Warnakula S, Kunutsor S, Crowe F, Ward HA, Johnson L, et al. Association of dietary, circulating and supplement fatty acids with coronary risk: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Ann Internal Medicine 2014;160:398-406.
Sri-Tarino PW, Sun Q, Hu FB, Krauss RM. Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease. Am J Clin Nut 2010;91(3):535-546.
Dehghan M, Mente A, Zhang X et al, The PURE Study — Associations of fats and carbohydrate intake with cardiovascular disease and mortality in 18 countries from five continents (PURE): a prospective cohort study. Lancet. 2017 Nov 4;390(10107):2050-2062
Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, Position Statement ”Saturated Fat, Heart Disease and Stroke, September 24, 2015, https://www.heartandstroke.ca/-/media/pdf-files/canada/position-statement/saturatedfat-eng-final.ashx

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