By Kevin Kolodziejski
It’s almost Father’s Day, and I already see them. By Labor Day, they’ll be everywhere — and annoying. By Columbus Day, I’ll be so sick of them that setting sail for a New World instead of riding in the old one will tempt me to no end. Especially after I check a calendar and realize the end to this incessant onslaught is still 23 days away.
So what’s the unnamed cause of this upcoming unpleasantness? Being subjected to the surfeit of political ads leading up to the fall election. Something that bothers me doubly because I also believe the bombardment is as ineffective as it is infuriating.
Can You Be Swayed by Political Ads?
According to Brett R. Gordon, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University, and Wesley R. Hartmann, the same at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, though, my second belief is sadly mistaken. They teamed up for a paper published by Marketing Science in 2013 that analyzed the effect of advertising on the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. In 2000 election, it proved to be a game-changer. For if there had been no campaign advertising and “all other factors held constant, three states’ electoral votes would have changed parties in 2000.
[T]his shift would have resulted in a different president.”
Hmm. Food for thought, no doubt; however, I still find political ads distasteful. Based on what the two profs have found, though, I’ll acknowledge that messages conveyed as frequently as they are — given the proper context and for the proper reasons — can be effectual.
It’s an acknowledgement has freed me from a fear I wrote about not too long ago: filling this column with the same old, same old. This liberation results from knowing that offering you what could be construed as exactly that could lead you to a higher quality of life and a longer one — not to mention more power and pleasure seated upon the saddle.
Consequently, I’ll continue to use this platform to campaign for healthy eating and against ultraprocessed foods. (For the campaign’s kickoff, see “Forgo Ultraprocessed Food.”)
The Campaign for Healthy Foods Continues
A bit more than a month ago, BMJ published a paper that calls for “limiting consumption of certain types of ultra-processed foods for long-term health,” specifically “ready-to-eat-products” consisting of meat, poultry, or seafood, as well as sugar-sweetened beverages. It’s an assessment based on 30 years’ worth of information culled from more than 113,000 health professionals. Author’s note: Artificially sweetened beverages are also cited as such in the paper but fall outside of the scope of this article. What this author will also note is that the authors of the study are far less critical of UPFs than you might imagine.
They believe not all UPFs need to be restricted because once overall diet quality was considered, the link between early death and UPFs was not as pronounced. Which is exactly what you’d expect.
Something else you’d expect comes from a meta-analysis published in BMJ about two months earlier. The finding “that greater exposure to ultra-processed foods” — regardless of how the exposure is measured — “was consistently associated with a higher risk of adverse health outcomes.”
More on the Election-Affecting Meta-Analysis
It’s monstrous, reviewing 45 studies that encompass nearly 10 million people. Its lead author Melissa Lane, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Food & Mood Centre at Deakin University in Geelong, Australia, told CNN it found “strong evidence” between a higher risk of cardiovascular disease-related death and common mental health disorders and the consumption of UPFs. In both cases, the increased risk is about 50 percent. The meta-analysis also discovered a high intake of UPFs increased the risk of early death from any cause by 20 percent.
While these studies don’t conflict, it’s quite possible that either or both cause conflicted feelings about UPFs in you.
No Need to Feel Conflicted
If that’s the case, consider the explanation and advice Dana Hunnes, PhD, a senior dietitian supervisor at RR-UCLA Medical Center — who was not involved in either study — offered in an article written by Elizabeth Pratt for Medical News Today about the first one. That it’s not “feasible” to be “fully ascetic and eat 100 percent healthy all the time,” so eating UPFs on occasion is fine. “Less though, is always better.”
That’s true not only if your goal is to be healthier and live longer but also if you want to maintain that certain weight you feel is best for cycling. And it’s true for a rather simple reason.
Processed foods are easier for your body to digest than foods consumed in their natural state, which means less diet-induced thermogenesis — the burning of calories to produce the heat required to digest food thereby increasing your resting metabolic rate — takes place. A lot less when the foods are ultraprocessed and then compared to natural ones. Up to 50 percent less in certain comparisons.
A Just-in-Case Conclusion
There’s no universally accepted definition of UPFs. So just in case you’re wondering how to recognize them, here’s my way of doing so.
They are purchased foods you can’t recreate in your own kitchen, containing ingredients you’re unsure how to pronounce — even though you’re sure of their function. To give the food a long shelf life, make it ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat, and work in concert with added sugars and fat (in most instances) so you want to eat more and more and more.
Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.
A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.