One of the reasons the consumption of ultra-processed foods is associated with the higher risk

of disease is food additives, like artificial colors and flavors, sweeteners, emulsifiers,

and more, as I talked about in my last video.

But at least they're listed in the ingredients on the label, so you can avoid them if you wanted

to. Unlisted are some of the sneakier ways ultra-processed foods can be bad for you, like

contaminants formed during industrial processing methods.

For example, there's acrylene, a toxin found in cigarette smoke that's also generated during

the cooking or frying of food with fats or oils, so it can be found in foods like potato

chips, french fries, donuts.

Ironically, canola oil, considered to be perhaps the most quote-unquote heart-healthy type

of oil, appears to generate the highest amounts of acrolean, and acrolean may cause

cardiovascular disease and probably causes cancer too. In fairness, acrolean would still be a problem,

even if you made French fries from scratch, which would be considered a minimally processed food,

rather than ultra-processed frozen fries or fast-food fries. But if every time you wanted to have fries, you had to cut up potatoes yourself and

deep fry them, we'd probably eat a lot fewer fries.

Fried and pre-fried foods may also be contaminated with 3 MCPD,

another possible carcinogen, fiorans and acrylamide or two other heat-generated

contaminants that are possibly or probably cancer-causing.

Trans fats are produced in the refining process to make vegetable oils, so they may end up

as high as half a percent trans fats.

In fairness, even unprocessed meat and dairy products naturally

have a lot more, without much difference between unprocessed and ultra-processed products.

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