Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Speaker 2: Tim Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3: Americans get more than half of their daily calories from
Speaker 3: ultraprocessed foods with salty sugary items. More than half. This
Speaker 3: is according to a government study that was released back
Speaker 3: in August. This government study ran from two thousand and
Speaker 3: one twenty twenty one to twenty twenty three, and it
Speaker 3: said that about sixty two percent of childhood diets come
Speaker 3: from highly processed foods think burgers, pastries, snacks, and pizza.
Speaker 3: This according to the US Centers for Disease Control and
Speaker 3: Preventions Nutrition study. The same foods have a similar grip
Speaker 3: on adults, making up about fifty three percent of the
Speaker 3: calories that they consumed.
Speaker 2: That's a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The question I have is whether or not Health
Speaker 3: and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy can actually make
Speaker 3: some headway on this. He said that the US food
Speaker 3: supply is poisoning children. It's a question that I'll post to.
Speaker 3: Doctor Julia Wolfson, Associate of US ARE in the International
Speaker 3: Health Department at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School, of Public Health.
Speaker 3: The research focuses on how ultra process food affects our
Speaker 3: bodies the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health that
Speaker 3: is supported by Michael Our Bloomberg, founder and majority owner
Speaker 3: of Bloomberg LP, parent company of Bloomberg TV and Radio.
Speaker 3: Doctor Wilson, good to have you back with us. It's
Speaker 3: been about a year since we last spoke. I just
Speaker 3: want to start with the definition of ultra process foods.
Speaker 3: I was kind of surprised to see pizza and burgers
Speaker 3: on that list. How do you define it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so thanks for having me back.
Speaker 5: And ultra process foods are defined by the list of
Speaker 5: ingredients that are included in them. So these are foods
Speaker 5: and beverages that are industrial produced using processes that you
Speaker 5: wouldn't have in a home kitchen and ingredients that you
Speaker 5: also wouldn't have in a home kitchen. So these are
Speaker 5: industrial produced products used by processing techniques like extrusion fractioning,
Speaker 5: where you break down the pieces of the food into
Speaker 5: different things and then put it back together again. And
Speaker 5: they contain things like additives, emulsifiers, sweeteners, thickeners, artificial flavors
Speaker 5: and colorings, and other kinds of substances again that you wouldn't.
Speaker 4: Use in a home kitchen.
Speaker 5: And so the most common definition we have is called
Speaker 5: the Nova classification system, which actually uses the ingredient list
Speaker 5: on a product to look for these kinds of ingredients
Speaker 5: that signal that a food or beverage has been through
Speaker 5: this industrial processed thing.
Speaker 1: So if we turn around, which I think increasingly we
Speaker 1: have a population that is doing that, and especially I've
Speaker 1: got a daughter who's twenty two, younger generation looking at stuff.
Speaker 1: But if there are a ton of ingredients and ingredients
Speaker 1: you don't understand.
Speaker 2: Should you assume that that's ultra processed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that is what we recommend as the way to
Speaker 5: know if a food or beverage you're considering purchasing or
Speaker 5: eating is ultra processed.
Speaker 4: You flip over that package and if you look at
Speaker 4: that ingredient.
Speaker 5: List and you see even one but certainly a bunch
Speaker 5: of ingredients where you think, I don't know what that is.
Speaker 5: That's not something I would cook with. I don't even
Speaker 5: know how to pronounce that. That's a signal that's an
Speaker 5: ultraprocessed food.
Speaker 1: So do we fix it by just infusing everything with protein?
Speaker 1: And then it's all Okay, so.
Speaker 3: It's still ultra processed, like like even a.
Speaker 2: Protein Are you picking on the pop tart?
Speaker 3: Yeah, protein pack a cop tart. We talked about this
Speaker 3: on our editorial call this morning. Sounds great, protein, doctor,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna let you weigh in.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I mean thinking about what our That's a
Speaker 5: strategy the food industry uses maybe to signal that something
Speaker 5: is healthier for us by you know, saying, oh, this
Speaker 5: is protein rich or whole grain rich, or this has
Speaker 5: vitamins or minerals, right, But if it still has these
Speaker 5: other ingredients, it's still an ultraprocessed food. And so you know,
Speaker 5: the addition of you know, other nutrients that we might
Speaker 5: think are beneficial does not change that food into something
Speaker 5: that is not an ultra processed food.
Speaker 4: It's still ultra process.
Speaker 3: So just really shocking to see sixty two percent of
Speaker 3: childhood diets come from highly processed foods. That was wild
Speaker 3: to see. But at the same time, I'm thinking about
Speaker 3: my own family and how difficult it is to get
Speaker 3: my kids who are six and two to eat food
Speaker 3: that we would consider not ultra processed. What is the
Speaker 3: best way to do that? What are strategies that work
Speaker 3: for kids. I think a lot of parents struggle with this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think it's a struggle for all
Speaker 5: of us, right, you know, it's not just kids, it's
Speaker 5: adults as well.
Speaker 4: You know, it's over half of adult diets.
Speaker 5: And I think there's a lot of reasons for that,
Speaker 5: and it's you know, our taste preferences are shaped very early,
Speaker 5: and there's a lot of marketing, particularly the children, for
Speaker 5: these products.
Speaker 4: And they're easier to they're easier to grab and go.
Speaker 5: There a lot of them are ready to eat, and
Speaker 5: you know, they're snacks. They save time, and a lot
Speaker 5: of them are more affordable too, so that's something to consider.
Speaker 5: I think it is the more snacks that you can
Speaker 5: have out that are not processed, that.
Speaker 4: Are easy to grab and go.
Speaker 5: That is one strategy to help kids have more say
Speaker 5: fresh fruits and vegetables to snack on, or healthy snacks
Speaker 5: that are made ahead so that they can reach for easily.
Speaker 5: But again that is extra work for parents and sometimes
Speaker 5: extra cost for parents as well. So there are really
Speaker 5: good and intractable reasons why these foods comprise so much
Speaker 5: of our diets, and particularly our children's diets.
Speaker 1: We're talking with doctor Julia Wolfson, Associate Professor, International Health
Speaker 1: Department at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Speaker 2: We're going to come back to her in just a moment.
Speaker 1: The headline crossing the Bloomberg Terminal coming from the Prime
Speaker 1: Minister of Hungary, Victor Orban, who has been meeting with
Speaker 1: President Trump at the White House, and the Prime Minister
Speaker 1: of Hungary saying that Hungary wins US sanctions exemption on
Speaker 1: Russian energy. And we know that there have been some
Speaker 1: stiff sanctions against Russian energy as a result of the
Speaker 1: Russian invasion and war against Hungary, so it looks like
Speaker 1: Hungary getting an exemption there.
Speaker 3: Earlier, our team reported that President Trump signaled an openness
Speaker 3: to exempting Hungary from sanctions on purchases of Russian energy
Speaker 3: as he hosted Prime Minister Victor Orbin.
Speaker 1: All right, so let's get back to a guest talking
Speaker 1: with doctor Julia Wolfson, Associate professor over at the Johns
Speaker 1: Hopkins Bloomberg School of pub Public Health. Excuse me, she's
Speaker 1: in the International Health department. So you know what's interesting.
Speaker 1: The stat that Tim mentioned from the US Centers for
Speaker 1: Disease Control and Prevention, their nutrition survey, when they talked
Speaker 1: about highly processed food, they said pizza.
Speaker 3: So this is not the pizza that you get and
Speaker 3: I get on Friday nights.
Speaker 2: That's what I want to ask you.
Speaker 1: So, like, I go to a place where I know
Speaker 1: they are making their homemade crust from special.
Speaker 3: Weed and featured in the New York Times, you know, and.
Speaker 2: It's no, no, no, I hear, you're having fun.
Speaker 1: But but I mean it's like, you know, fresh tomatoes,
Speaker 1: fresh basil. I guess maybe there's obviously some like homemade cheese,
Speaker 1: but like what, like, how do we distinguish really really
Speaker 1: bad processed food versus stuff that maybe isn't so bad.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that you know, that kind of pizza
Speaker 5: that you're describing, or let's think about bread, even pizza
Speaker 5: or bread that might make at home, Like you're combining
Speaker 5: wheat and you know, flour and salt and yeast, and
Speaker 5: you know you have your fresh tomato sauce.
Speaker 4: That's not an ultraprocessed food.
Speaker 5: So that but that is not the majority of the
Speaker 5: pizza that people are eating. So when we talk about
Speaker 5: things like pizza, it really could be those frozen pizzas
Speaker 5: that you get in the grocery store or maybe more
Speaker 5: mass produced pizzas that are made at scale and therefore
Speaker 5: have some sorts of preservatives or other kinds of ingredients
Speaker 5: that you know, change the say, the softness of the
Speaker 5: dough or something like that.
Speaker 4: Those are the ultra process things.
Speaker 5: So not all ultra processed foods, though, are equally concerning.
Speaker 5: I would say, you know, I mentioned bread, So you know,
Speaker 5: the bread that we might make by ourselves at home,
Speaker 5: like if we were some of the people who started
Speaker 5: making sour oat bread during COVID, for example, Yeah, that's
Speaker 5: not ut processed.
Speaker 4: Bread you might get at the bakery in.
Speaker 5: Your neighborhood that is made by scratch is not ultra processed.
Speaker 5: But most of the bread that we see on our
Speaker 5: supermarket shelves is ultra process that sliced bread that you
Speaker 5: see and so, but that includes even whole wheat bread.
Speaker 5: So you know, there are some ultraprocessed products that are
Speaker 5: by definition ultra process because they might contain right thoselifuyers
Speaker 5: or things that turn them into that product, but they
Speaker 5: might still be some are less of a concern than others.
Speaker 3: I would say, So, just in the last two minutes
Speaker 3: that we have with you, that health and even service.
Speaker 3: As Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Junior has vowed to go
Speaker 3: after these food companies so Americans do eat healthier. Thus far,
Speaker 3: how is he doing well?
Speaker 5: I mean, I think it's good that he's focusing on
Speaker 5: this as an issue. I think there are, as I mentioned,
Speaker 5: you know, there's a lot of reasons why we eat
Speaker 5: these foods, and one of them, a big one is
Speaker 5: they're more affordable. They tend to be more affordable than
Speaker 5: scratch ingredients. They save time, and they're more accessible.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 5: I think some of the policies of the administration, say
Speaker 5: cutting or even eliminating snap benefits is not helpful for
Speaker 5: people to be able to avoid ultraprocessed foods. But thinking
Speaker 5: about labeling or getting ultra process foods out of schools
Speaker 5: in a way that also balances with giving schools the
Speaker 5: resources they need to source and prepare less processed foods
Speaker 5: would be a step in the right direction.
Speaker 1: Why do we just real quickly thirty forty seconds here,
Speaker 1: why do we have so much ultraprocessed food? Is it
Speaker 1: about keeping shelf life or like what is it? Or
Speaker 1: is it just cheaper mass production food?
Speaker 2: I don't know, just quickly.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean it's the majority of the foods in our
Speaker 5: grocery store shelves, right. They make foods more shelf stable,
Speaker 5: they are oftentimes more affordable, and they're in high demand
Speaker 5: because they save people time and they save people.
Speaker 4: Mental energy as well.
Speaker 5: You know, it's a lot easier to say, have a
Speaker 5: frozen dinner than it is to make all the components
Speaker 5: of the frozen dinner yourself.
Speaker 4: So there's demand for it.
Speaker 5: And you know, they've really dominated our food supply for
Speaker 5: decades now, so it will be really difficult to make
Speaker 5: that switch at a large scale, but it's worth considering
Speaker 5: how we can do it. Well.
Speaker 2: Last quick question twenty five seconds. Can we eat too
Speaker 2: much protein?
Speaker 5: I think it is possible to eat too much protein,
Speaker 5: and Americans do eat a lot of protein, so we
Speaker 5: are not suffering from a shortage of protein in the
Speaker 5: US as a whole.
Speaker 1: That's what my dad, O Bettie said, Everything in moderation, like,
Speaker 1: it's pretty logical. Just do that. What.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even ultra process foods, even French fries, yes, no, no,
Speaker 3: not processed.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 2: Doctor Julia Wilson so appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Associate Professor in the International Health Department at the Johns
Speaker 1: Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Speaker 4: This is boombrang