Yes, but everyone "knows" cookies are junk food. They don't see bread as anything they can live without.

It's these unconscious biases that still mess up good science, and what the bad kind is based upon. Any of us who dealt with the shock and horror of our family and friends discovering we are low carbing can remember the difference from the turn of the century to... now. Now, at least everyone knows what it IS.

Reading Unprocessed, I see how low carb was dressed up and called KETO as a buzzword, and the result was an emphasis on plant-based treats because plants are our friends.

So yes, the soaking of kidney beans for three days so we don't kill our family is "processing." All those Weston A. Price Foundation traditional foodways were about the processing.

But ULTRA-processed is truly another beast. Traditionally it was efforts to take toxins from food. But Ultra means they have taken out the nutrition itself, the very substance of the "food" and now it's actively toxic, not a source of nutrients, and what people never seem to understand is how this makes it a poison, at any dose.

It's so unrecognizable as a food that it's not even a bad diet. It's more like starvation while putting on fat. And I think that's a concept not easily found in biased brains.

I'm reminded of the researcher Gary Taubes quoted in one of his books, talking about sugar in terms of, "It makes me feel so GOOD how can it be wrong!"

I get it. But it's not science, is it?