TIME Magazine ran interference for the agro-industrial complex with an article defending ultra-processed foods in the wake of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. highlighting their dangers to health upon suspending his presidential campaign and endorsing Donald Trump.
The TIME article titled, “What if Ultra-Processed Foods Aren’t as Bad as You Think?” published on Tuesday made the case that not all ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are inherently bad and that some can actually be healthier for you than non-processed foods.
Under NOVA, an ultra-processed food is made largely or entirely from oils, sugars, starches, and ingredients you wouldn’t buy yourself at the grocery store.
Everything from packaged cookies to flavored yogurt to baby formula fits that description https://t.co/0qyUZVLXob
— TIME (@TIME) August 27, 2024
The article makes four main arguments in favor of UPFs:
- they can be beneficial to a healthy diet if consumed in moderation
- they can be fortified with nutrients that may not be present in non-processed sources
- they’re extremely convenient and relatively inexpensive, and
- their ubiquity in the majority of Americans’ diets make banning them impractical.
The article cites several “experts” to make its case that concerns over UPFs are overblown or unwarranted.
It also cited a study claiming UPFs can be part of a healthy, balanced diet despite admitting the researchers found links between heavily processed foods and premature death.
A 2024 study backs up the idea that people who eat processed foods can still be healthy. Although the researchers did find links between heavily processed diets and risk of premature death, they concluded that overall diet quality may be more important than how many processed foods someone eats. In other words, if someone is eating plenty of nutritious foods, maybe it’s OK if some come from a wrapper.
TIME then made the case that UPFs could be even healthier than whole foods, citing researcher Jessica Wilson’s anecdotal experiment of eating almost exclusively UPFs.
A weird thing happened. Wilson found that she had more energy and less anxiety. She didn’t need as much coffee to get through the day and felt more motivated. She felt better eating an ultra-processed diet than she had before, a change she attributes to taking in more calories by eating full meals, instead of haphazard combinations of whole-food ingredients.
TIME also cited a study by USDA nutritionist Julie Hess to bolster its case that some UPFs are healthier and more convenient than whole foods.
The experiment highlighted that there are nutritious ultra-processed foods, and that certain ones “may make it easier and more convenient to have a healthy diet, because a lot of these foods are more shelf-stable, they’re more cost-effective, they’re sometimes easier to access,” Hess says.
TIME wrapped up by arguing that taking action against UPFs would be “disastrous” because it would derail the modern food industry.
“Stigmatizing a broad category of foods that also includes lower-cost, accessible options, especially without providing an alternative or improving access and affordability of healthy foods” is not the answer, dietician Kendra Chow said.
TIME points to infectious-disease physician Dr. Chris van Tulleken to argue that outright banning ultra-processed foods “wouldn’t be practical” in the modern world where people are “strapped for time and money.”
“He realizes a ban on them wouldn’t be practical; it would essentially wipe out the modern food system, with particularly disastrous consequences for people of lower socio-economic status,” the article reads.
Physician Casey Means however, decimated TIME’s defense of UPFs on X, noting it downplayed UPFs’ known detrimental health consequences.
Mainstream media playbook: When the culture seems to be turning TOWARDS health, rapidly spin up a BS article (like this one that was published yesterday in TIME) to:
1. SEED CONFUSION: CONFUSION IS KEY – it makes us doubt our convictions about healthy food. Key here is bringing… pic.twitter.com/ybE14eV9sh
— Casey Means, MD (@CaseyMeansMD) August 28, 2024
Mainstream media playbook: When the culture seems to be turning TOWARDS health, rapidly spin up a BS article (like this one that was published yesterday in TIME) to:
1. SEED CONFUSION: CONFUSION IS KEY – it makes us doubt our convictions about healthy food. Key here is bringing in “experts” who contradict the science and say it’s sensationalized or impractical to implement.
2. NORMALIZE: talk about how nearly 80% of calories come from ultraprocessed food so it can’t be that bad, right? IGNORE that 50% of children now have a CHRONIC DISEASE. Use a meaningless anecdote like the author of the article eating 80% processed food and feeling just fine!
3. DISTRACT AND SHUT DOWN DISCOURSE BY BRINGING IN SOCIAL JUSTICE: Focus intensely on social justice issues and questions of food access rather than science (“what would people *possibly* eat if we changed the food system towards real food?!”). Rather than focusing on ANY meaningful solutions that are actually good for the health and wellbeing of all people, focus on how changing the current system would lead to more food insecurity. Don’t mention that taxpayer money is what leads these foods and to be cheap through corrupt subsidies, and we actually have a rigged system against people of lower socioeconomic status that is the ACTUAL social justice issue. Don’t mention that we could rapidly steer the billions of dollars of processed food subsidies towards REAL food access for all Americans if there was a will to do so.
4. MINIMIZE THE SCIENCE: mention but then QUICKLY minimize the innumerable studies that say ultraprocessed foods impair hormones, metabolic health, and are associated with early death.
5. DEFINITELY DON’T MENTION CONFLICTS OF INTEREST: certainly don’t talk about funding sources and conflicts of interest at NIH, USDA, FDA, academia, OR THE NEWS OUTLET THAT IS PUBLISHING THE ARTICLE. DON’T FALL INTO THE TRAP
Kennedy also reacted to the article, noting it mentioned nothing about the conflicts of interest between regulatory agencies and food processors.
“And don’t talk about the conflicts at NGO’s like NAACP and the Diabetes groups that get their funding from the processed food lobbyists,” RFK Jr. pointed out.
And don’t talk about the conflicts at NGO’s like NAACP and the Diabetes groups that get their funding from the processed food lobbyists
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) August 28, 2024
TIME also didn’t mention that tens of thousands of chemicals approved for UPFs in the U.S. are banned in most other countries, or that American children are the most unhealthy group of children in the world, two alarming facts RFK Jr. exposed during his Make America Healthy Again speech.
This is what propaganda by an outlet captured by the agro-industrial complex looks like.
