Lifestyle
Ultraprocessed foods: How scientists are studying their health impacts
- /data/user9/2025/57/87943/wordpress/.f7670ed618c7ff075a7b5b7fb15be6f8/wp-content/plugins/mvp-social-buttons/mvp-social-buttons.php on line 27
http://dailyofworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/urlhttps3A2F2Fassets.apnews.com2F5a2Fe82F90b75dc057194c6a6ad238680d542F5b0ec04699e4420b9838-1000x600.jpeg&description=Ultraprocessed foods: How scientists are studying their health impacts', 'pinterestShare', 'width=750,height=350'); return false;" title="Pin This Post">
- Share
- Tweet /data/user9/2025/57/87943/wordpress/.f7670ed618c7ff075a7b5b7fb15be6f8/wp-content/plugins/mvp-social-buttons/mvp-social-buttons.php on line 72
http://dailyofworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/urlhttps3A2F2Fassets.apnews.com2F5a2Fe82F90b75dc057194c6a6ad238680d542F5b0ec04699e4420b9838-1000x600.jpeg&description=Ultraprocessed foods: How scientists are studying their health impacts', 'pinterestShare', 'width=750,height=350'); return false;" title="Pin This Post">
BETHESDA, Md. (AP) — Sam Srisatta, a 20-year-old Florida college student, spent a month living inside a government hospital here last fall, playing video games and allowing scientists to document every morsel of food that went into his mouth.
From big bowls of salad to platters of meatballs and spaghetti sauce, Srisatta noshed his way through a nutrition study aimed at understanding the health effects of ultraprocessed foods, the controversial fare that now accounts for more than 70% of the U.S. food supply. He allowed The Associated Press to tag along for a day.
“Today my lunch was chicken nuggets, some chips, some ketchup,” said Srisatta, one of three dozen participants paid $5,000 each to devote 28 days of their lives to science. “It was pretty fulfilling.”
Examining exactly what made those nuggets so satisfying is the goal of the widely anticipated research led by National Institutes of Health nutrition researcher Kevin Hall.
“What we hope to do is figure out what those mechanisms are so that we can better understand that process,” Hall said.
Hall’s study relies on 24/7 measurements of patients, rather than self-reported data, to investigate whether ultraprocessed foods cause people to eat more calories and gain weight, potentially leading to obesity and other well-documented health problems. And, if they do, how?
At a time when Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made nutrition and chronic disease a key priority, the answers can’t come soon enough.
Kennedy has repeatedly targeted processed foods as the primary culprit behind a range of diseases that afflict Americans, particularly children. He vowed in a Senate confirmation hearing to focus on removing such foods from school lunches for kids because they’re “making them sick.”
Ultraprocessed foods have exploded in the U.S. and elsewhere in recent decades, just as rates of obesity and other diet-related diseases also rise.
The foods, which are often high in fat, sodium and sugar, are typically cheap, mass-produced and contain added colors and chemicals not found in a home kitchen. Think sugary cereals and potato chips, frozen pizzas, sodas and ice cream.
Studies have linked ultraprocessed foods to negative health effects, but whether it’s the actual processing of the foods — rather than the nutrients they contain or something else — remains uncertain.
A small 2019 analysis by Hall and his colleagues found that ultraprocessed foods led participants to eat about 500 calories a day more than when they ate a matched diet of unprocessed foods.
The new study aims to replicate and expand that research — and to test new theories about the effects of ultraprocessed foods. One is that some of the foods contain irresistible combinations of ingredients — fat, sugar, sodium and carbohydrates — that trigger people to eat more. The other is that the foods contain more calories per bite, making it possible to consume more without realizing it.
Teasing out those answers requires the willingness of volunteers like Srisatta and the know-how of health and diet experts who identify, gather and analyze the data behind the estimated multimillion-dollar study.
During his month at NIH, Srisatta sported monitors on his wrist, ankle and waist to track his every movement, and regularly gave up to 14 vials of blood. Once a week, he spent 24 hours inside a metabolic chamber, a tiny room outfitted with sensors to measure how his body was using food, water and air. He was allowed to go outside, but only with supervision to prevent any wayward snacks.
“It doesn’t really feel that bad,” Srisatta said.
He could eat as much or as little as he liked. The meals wheeled to his room three times a day were crafted to meet the precise requirements of the study, said Sara Turner, the NIH dietitian who designed the food plan. In the basement of the NIH building, a team carefully measured, weighed, sliced and cooked foods before sending them to Srisatta and other participants.
“The challenge is getting all the nutrients to work, but it still needs to be appetizing and look good,” Turner said.
Results from the trial are expected later this year, but preliminary results are intriguing. At a scientific conference in November, Hall reported that the first 18 trial participants ate about 1,000 calories a day more of an ultraprocessed diet that was particularly hyperpalatable and energy dense than those who ate minimally processed foods, leading to weight gain.
When those qualities were modified, consumption went down, even if the foods were considered ultraprocessed, Hall said. Data is still being collected from remaining participants and must be completed, analyzed and published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Still, the early results suggest that “you can almost normalize” energy intake, “despite the fact that they’re still eating a diet that is more than 80% of calories from ultraprocessed food,” Hall told the audience.
Not everyone agrees with Hall’s methods, or the implications of his research.
Dr. David Ludwig, an endocrinologist and researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital, criticized Hall’s 2019 study as “fundamentally flawed by its short duration” — about a month. Scientists have long known that it’s possible to get people to eat more or less for brief periods of time, but those effects quickly wane, he said.
“If they were persistent, we would have the answer to obesity,” said Ludwig, who has argued for years that consumption of highly processed carbohydrates is the “prime dietary culprit” and focusing on the processing of the foods is “distracting.”
He called for larger, better-designed studies lasting a minimum of two months, with “washout” periods separating the effects of one diet from the next. Otherwise, “we waste our energy, we mislead the science,” Ludwig said.
Concerns about the short length of the studies may be valid, said Marion Nestle, a nutritionist and food policy expert.
“To resolve that, Hall needs funding to conduct longer studies with more people,” she said in an email.
The NIH spends about $2 billion a year, about 5% of its total budget, on nutrition research, according to Senate documents.
At the same time, the agency cut the capacity of the metabolic unit where investigators conduct such studies, reducing the number of beds that must be shared among researchers. The two participants enrolled now at the center and the two planned for next month are the most Hall can study at any one time, adding months to the research process.
Srisatta, the Florida volunteer who hopes to become an emergency room physician, said participating in the trial left him eager to know more about how processed foods affect human health.
“I mean, I think everyone knows it’s better to not eat processed foods, right?” he said. “But having the evidence to back that up in ways that the public can easily digest,” is important, he said.
HHS officials didn’t respond to questions about Kennedy’s intentions regarding nutrition research at NIH. The agency, like many others in the federal government, is being buffeted by the wave of cost cuts being directed by President Donald Trump and his billionaire aide Elon Musk.
Jerold Mande, a former federal food policy advisor in three administrations, said he supports Kennedy’s goals of addressing diet-related diseases. He has pushed a proposal for a 50-bed facility where government nutrition scientists could house and feed enough study volunteers like Srisatta to rigorously determine how specific diets affect human health.
“If you’re going to make America healthy again and you’re going to address chronic disease, we need better science to do it,” Mande said.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
LONDON (AP) — “Doctor Who” and Eurovision unite for an evening of music and intergalactic adventure on Saturday — all thanks to Russell T Davies.
Before fans tune in for the annual song contest, they can enjoy Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor and Varada Sethu’s Belinda Chandra attending the Interstellar Song Contest in an episode of the sci-fi series.
In real life, the Eurovision Song Contest is an annual musical competition and TV event that sees 37 countries compete for a crystal microphone trophy over a four-hour live broadcast. In the interstellar version, aliens from 40 different worlds vie to win, also by singing.
Davies says it took three years to pull it off the doubleheader because they had to work with the BBC to set the schedule and storylines in stone to ensure a perfect alignment.
Britain’s Sam Ryder took a “Space Man” to Eurovision before, in 2022. Now, Gatwa will read out the U.K.’s jury scores during the song contest’s grand final, held this year in Basel, Switzerland.
Talking to The Associated Press, Davies says that both Eurovision and “Doctor Who” share the DNA of old-fashioned Saturday night television, making the combination “irresistible.”
This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
AP: Do you feel that Eurovision and “Doctor Who” naturally share a kind of fandom?
DAVIES: I almost think every episode of “Doctor Who” is a great big celebration, sort of noise and color and spectacle, and that sums up Eurovision as well. In pitching this to Disney+ as well it’s like, “Look we’re going out in 60 of your territories” and Eurovision itself has a viewing figure that some years is bigger than the Super Bowl. There’s not many shows that can say that on planet Earth.
AP: How much fun did you have with the lore of Eurovision?
DAVIES: It’s enormous fun. It could be said if you’ve never seen a single Eurovision Song Contest in your life, you can still come along and watch this. It’s the kind of thing we’d have made up for a “Doctor Who” story anyway.
One day I’ll do that “ABBA Voyage” story where the holograms come to life and start killing people. That’s the best idea ever. We’ve got to do that one then. Can you imagine? That would be just amazing. I think there might be some copyright problems with that but we’d overcome them.
The actual pitch for the story to Juno (Dawson), who wrote it, was Eurovision meets “Die Hard.” So as you will see, the moment it starts, there’s trouble, someone’s out to sabotage it. There are villains behind the scenes trying to disrupt the program. All chaos is let loose and the rest of the episode is spent saving people’s lives after that.
AP: How about the songs?
DAVIES: I think there’s four songs in total (by Murray Gold). Obviously we don’t get to all 40 planets with their songs, but it was a very big production. We had to hive this off into its own production unit. There are scenes in the television gallery, where 40 different monitors have output of 40 different screens. And that’s all been fed in live. That’s not done with green screen afterwards, that’s all stuff they’d already shot. Crowds, acts, rehearsals, backstage, presenters, all of that stuff, playing onto that set, so it’s terribly complicated.
“Doctor Who” showrunner Russell T. Davies explains why an intergalactic spin on the Eurovision Song Contest was an irresistible storyline for Season 2’s May 17 episode. (May 13)
AP: Is this the most expensive episode of “Doctor Who”?
DAVIES: Frankly, they’re all expensive. It was a lot, yes. It had to be planned very far in advance, more than any. Once you plan something carefully, then it costs less just because you’re not busking. We allocate each story more or less the same amount of money. So I think it ends up costing as much as the others, but it just looks so good because they had so much time to plan it.
AP: Am I allowed to ask how much an episode normally costs?
DAVIES: We never say that. I don’t know why, but we just don’t ever do it. I don’t think they’d tell me. I’d faint.
This image released by Disney shows Christina Rotondo from “Doctor Who” Season 2. (BBC Studios/Disney/Bad Wolf via AP)
AP: Are you planning to watch Eurovision this year?
DAVIES: Yes, I will be. This will be a great night. I always sit and watch “Doctor Who” — I’m old-fashioned — on its old-fashioned BBC One transmission at 7 o’clock at night.
I know people who have Eurovision parties, which I’ve never gone to actually. Look at my life, it’s devoted to television. I can’t bear other people talking over it. That would just be a nightmare. So I will be sitting in. I’ll get some nice dinner. I’ll be a very happy man.
AP: Have you got any favorites for this year?
DAVIES: I would like to go on a date with the man from Cyprus (Theo Evan). He’s beautiful. I do like the U.K. entry this year (“What the Hell Just Happened?” by Remember Monday). I have a theory it’s being underestimated in Great Britain. Just because we’re so used to losing. We’ve won five times, everyone. But this country gets a bit cynical about Eurovision sometimes. But I love our song. I think it’s got a very memorable chorus.
U.S. retail egg prices fell in April from the record-high prices they hit earlier this year, according to government data released Tuesday.
The average price for a dozen Grade A eggs declined to $5.12 last month after reaching a record $6.23 in March, according to the Consumer Price Index. It was the first month-to-month drop in egg prices since October 2024.
Overall, the average price of eggs of all sizes fell 12.7%, the steepest monthly decline since March 1984.
While wholesale egg prices have been coming down for a while, it was unclear how much store prices would decrease in April because consumer demand is usually high around Easter and Passover.
Still, retail egg prices remain near historic highs as a persistent outbreak of bird flu wipes out flocks of egg-laying hens. The April average price for a dozen large eggs was 79% higher than the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported for the same month a year ago, when the price averaged $2.86 per dozen.
Bird flu has killed more than 169 million birds since early 2022. Any time a bird gets sick, the entire flock is killed to help keep bird flu from spreading. Once a flock is slaughtered, it can take as long as a year to clean a farm and raise new birds to egg-laying age.
That can have an effect on the egg supply because massive egg farms may have millions of birds. Outbreaks on two farms in Ohio and South Dakota last month affected more than 927,000 egg-laying hens.
Lowering egg prices has been a particular focus of President Donald Trump. In February, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it would invest $1 billion to help farmers improve their biosecurity measures to fight bird flu.
The U.S. has also increased imports of eggs from South Korea, Turkey, Brazil and other countries. According to Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute Sector Manager Kevin Bergquist, the volume of egg and egg product imports increased 77.5% during the first three months of the year compared to the same period a year ago.
The antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice is also investigating Cal-Maine Foods, the largest U.S. egg producer, which supplies around 20% of America’s eggs. Cal-Maine confirmed the investigation in early April..
Ridgeland, Mississippi-based Cal-Maine said its net income more than tripled to $508.5 million in its most recent quarter, which ended March 1.
For many, the return of the spring garden brings with it a sneezy, itchy, foggy-headed feeling that hits the moment a warm breeze stirs up invisible trouble. I’m fortunate not to suffer much, but my blue car turned a chartreuse shade of yellow last week, and a $32 car wash provided results that lasted only two hours. Sigh.
These seasonal allergies often go by the old-fashioned name hay fever, but it’s not the hay that causes misery for so many, it’s the pollen.
And not just any pollen, but the nearly weightless kind that floats up our noses and engages our immune systems. Trees, weeds, grasses and even some of our favorite flowers are culprits.
But pollen isn’t all bad. It’s essential to the reproduction of plants, the survival of insects and the entire food web. We humans could not survive without it, so we absolutely shouldn’t avoid high-pollen plants as a general rule. However, if you’re an allergy sufferer who has had to forgo planting a garden due to health reasons, plants that release the least pollen may enable you to smell the flowers.
Plants that might bring sneezes
Allergy-inducing plants are those that rely on wind rather than bees or butterflies to spread their pollen. Ragweed, which strikes in late summer and early fall, gets the most notoriety, but its springtime counterparts can be at least as irritating.
Trees most likely to cause symptoms include birch (Betula), catawba (Catalba), cypress (Cupressus), elm (Ulmus), hickory/pecan (Carya), oak (Quercus), sycamore (Platanus) and walnut (Juglans), according to the Ogren Plant Allergy Scale (OPALS), created by horticulturist Thomas Ogren and published in his 2020 book, “The Allergy-Fighting Garden.”
This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.
Palm trees, too — but only the males. In fact, female trees don’t produce pollen at all, so seek them out when possible.
Grasses can irritate eyes and sinuses, too. The scale ranks Bermuda (except sterile male varieties), Johnson, Kentucky, orchard, sweet vernal and timothy grasses among the highest for allergens.
Weeds like ragweed, curly dock, lamb’s quarters, pigweed, plantain, sheep sorrel and sagebrush are also big pollen producers, Ogren found.
Not all plants are irritating to allergy sufferers
On the other hand, plants with “double” flowers or heavier pollen that doesn’t travel far are less likely to release much pollen.
Among trees, apricot (Prunus armeniaca), fig (Ficus), fir (Abies), fruiting pear (Pyrus), fruiting plum (Prunus domestica, Prunus insititia), redbud (Cerus), serviceberry (Amelanchier laevis), female ash (Fraxinus), female box elder (Acer negundo), female cottonwood/poplar (Populus), female maple (Acer), female palm (Arecaceae) and female willow (Salix) are easier on the respiratory system.
St. Augustine and sterile male Bermuda are safer bets in the grass department.
As for flowers, you’ve got options: Begonia, female clematis, columbine, crocus, daffodil, delphinium, hibiscus, impatiens, iris, bird of paradise, pansy, petunia, phlox, poppy, snapdragon, tulip, verbena and zinnia are friends. Roses, too — especially tightly packed, dense-petaled varieties, which exude even less pollen than those with single or semi-double flowers (rose allergies are more often fragrance-related than due to pollen, according to Ogren).
And if you suffer from seasonal allergies, keeping windows closed and getting someone else to mow the lawn will also help to nip your symptoms in the bud.
___
Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for the AP and publishes the award-winning Weekly Dirt Newsletter. You can sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice.
___
For more AP gardening stories, go to https://apnews.com/hub/gardening.
