Episode 37: Can Processed Foods Be a Part of a Healthy Diet? with Andy Miller, MS, RD, LD
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Episode Transcription
Participant #1:
Hello, guys. In this episode we are joined by Andy Miller, a fellow registered dietitian. And in this episode we talk all about processed foods, the spectrum of processed foods, if you should eat processed foods. And Andy gives a really good perspective on all of those topics. Yeah, Andy's actually did undergrad and grad school from University of Minnesota. So Big Ten represent and she has her previous interest in nutrition comes from being a competitive gymnast growing up throughout high school and into College. So get pumped for today's episode. Yes, it's a good one. Enjoy. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Lpdiatrician podcast. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we are joined by registered dietitian Andy Miller. Andy, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. So today we really want to talk about the controversy of processed foods and we know that Andy has a lot to say about this. It's going to be an awesome episode. But before we get into that, Andy, please tell us about a day in the life, what you do for work, your education to become a dietitian, your hobbies, that sort of thing. Oh, boy. Loaded question there. Loaded question. So do I work? I used to work primarily. I work as a stayathomeparent buttwiper. It's my primary job, but I also see clients from my kitchen table as a remote dietitian. I have a bachelor's and master's degree in nutrition from the University of Minnesota. I've been a dietitian for eleven years.
Participant #1:
Hobbies. I used to have hobbies before coped and before I had children. I used to like happy hour, eating food, traveling, going to concerts, eating carbs, fruity, beer and pretzels and beer cheese. Currently, I just took up knitting because I'm trying to become an old lady. As fast as humanly possible. I also like taking naps and, like, watching my children do really weird stuff. I don't know if you can call that a hobby, but it's a hobby. So those are my hobbies day in the life. It's really boring. It's boring, but it's, like, really busy. I don't know how you can have a day. I know parents can say this, but it's like your days are really monotonous, but they go by so fast. It's like, how can you do so little but your day can go by so fast? So I wake up, I change some diapers, I make some food. I feed my kids. I play with some kids. I put them down for a nap. I see some clients. I maybe do some work. I wake up, I feed them. I play with them, I feed them again. I go to bed, I maybe feed myself, and then I do it again. Yeah, that sounds about right. It's great and it's horrible. And it's like. And sometimes I take a shower. Sometimes I work out, sometimes I say Hi to my husband, and then that's kind of life. Yeah. When the stars align, probably. And then, like, every other week, maybe I leave the house.
Participant #1:
Mine is the kids part. I can relate to pretty much all of that. Are you guys, like, kind of homebody types or. I go on adventures. I think I'm more homebody than you, Emily. I would gladly just hang out at home, like, 24/7. I think I'm the type that I like going on adventures, but then I burn out, and then I need a week of just nothing. This last weekend. Yeah. You get, like, really ambitious, and then you're like all the things and it's like, Whoa, Whoa, that was a lot. Yeah. We tried to go trick or treating, but my kids are too, so obviously they don't know what candy is. So we just put them in the stroller and walk them around the neighborhood. And my son was like, oh, my God, people and totally had a small panic attack. He's never been around people, so it's like, oh, my gosh. Yeah. So were they born right around the start of everything? They were born in December. So they were born in December when we were living in Nashville, and then we moved. We live near Atlanta. So they really have not done anything. We lived inside since they've been born. I've been thinking about that. Like, all the kids that are younger currently, it becomes like a totally different life lived than what we have lived through. It's crazy. Yeah. Thankfully, there's two of them, so they have someone else to bother. That's true. And to steal toys from. So there's a little bit of social skills, but other than that, it's just like nobody else. Yeah, man, that's craziness babies. Quarantine babies. The QBs. Yes. Thank you so much for the day in the life. We love the honest review of the adult Life. It's totally glamorous. Absolutely. I'm sure it's going to resonate with a lot of people because we appreciate the unfiltered life. The highlight reels, as we all know, social media is known for. But getting into kind of the topic of today. Andy, talk us through what our processed foods is. There a spectrum of processed foods, and if there is, what does this even look like? Because I'm sure everyone has their thoughts and opinions and feelings about the word processed foods. As I scowl and as I'm eating a gingerbread Oreo, those are so good. They're so good. Those are my top five favorite flavors. Side note, last year I didn't even know they existed. I drove an hour one way with two small children to like a Walmart in the middle of nowhere to find them. And they're like, oh, you have to go inside and pick them up. I'm like, I don't have a stroller and I'm not carrying two screaming infants into a Walmart to go get them, you have to bring them out. So I did do that. So process foods get so technically, processed food is anything that is not in its original form. So if you pick a food, if you pick a plant out of the ground, it's processed because it's not in its original form. So when you pick a carrot and you Peel a carrot, it is technically a processed food. So if we're getting really nitty gritty, every single thing you eat is processed. So when people say they don't eat processed food, yes, you do. That was a good impression. But what people mean is kind of the spectrum of, well, how process is it? A carrot still looks like a carrot, whereas something like a Twinkie does not exist in nature. A Dorito does not exist in nature. They're talking about processed foods, but something that is so processed it can live on a shelf in a grocery store for two years and not foil. But again, the range of processing varies. Right. And I think, Emily, you alluded to it, too. Along with processing, people just add a lot of connotations to the process of processing. Just because it's processed, it is bad. And instead of saying, oh, it's a processed food and why do we process it in this way? They say it is processed, therefore it is bad. And that's not true at all. Yeah, it's actually a good segue into the next little question here is like, why are those foods like demonized or deemed as bad? And kind of part two of that question is like, should we eat clean or are we allowed to have those processed foods? When people say processed foods, they normally think of the very process, process side of the spectrum of like the Oreos, Twinkies, chips, things that don't exist in nature side of the process spectrum. And normally those foods tend to be high in the sofas, like the solid fats and added sugars and low in the vitamins and minerals and things like that. So it's easy to say those foods are bad. Right? Because most people know that if you survive on a diet of Oreos, Doritos and Twinkies, it's probably not the best thing for you. Do some people do that and live a perfectly healthy, long life? Yes, they do. And Congratulations to them. You have fabulous genes, and I'm very happy for you. That tends to be why people think of these foods as bad is because we think of processed foods as those. And then when people say, okay, we need to eat clean, I don't even know where that food started. I don't even know what you guys think of that word. What do you think? I think we agree. It's just like, so there's not a lot of dirt on it. Great. I'm glad that you don't eat things that are dirty in my notes. Like, the only food that is dirty are foods that have dirt on them, ones that garbage or vegetables that are shaped like suggestive organ. I love that. But when health influencers use the word clean, it's like my red flag to just stop listening to that person.
Participant #1:
I was just watching a TikTok of some dude who obviously was not any nutrition professional talking about something called the 50 Brain cell challenge of looking on the back of nutrition label and every ingredient that you read, you lose a brain cell. No, I think of these things. Have you looked on the back of baby formula? How many ingredients baby formula has? Do you know how shitty it is to shame baby formula, like shaming? Baby formula, in my opinion, is one of the most horrible things you can do because there are people that have to use baby formula because breastfeeding is just hard. People need baby formula. And half of the ingredients on a baby formula label are vitamins and minerals, and they're the chemical name so that person can just. So the idea of clean eating comes from looking at the ingredient label and thinking that the more ingredients are on that ingredient label, the worse or more unhealthy a food is. And that having more ingredients is a bad thing. Because someone said one day, I think someone I don't know who it was like, carrots don't have ingredient labels. And I think it was like Michael Pollan had a food rules book. And one of the rules was like, if your grandma doesn't understand what an ingredient label is, what an ingredient is, don't eat it. Or if your food doesn't spoil, don't eat it. You have a list of, like, these ten food rules, and some of them weren't too cringy. But do you really need to follow these to be healthy? No. If you follow these things, the number of ingredients that something has on the label has no bearing on the health or the merit or the nutrition density of a food. Like going back to that baby formula analogy. Baby formula has a very long nutrition label and it's a very nutritionally dense, healthy food. And it has a lot of healthy things in it. And it's very, very processed. Like it's very man made. It's very chemically. Very chemically.
Participant #1:
How many nutrients are on the label equating to health? I mean, you couldn't eat it. It just runs into problems. Absolutely. And also, I think we might have actually talked about this on a previous episode, Hannah and I talked about how I know there's the whole ideology of like, if you don't know what an ingredient in a nutrition label is and it's bad for you. I feel like we talked about how potentially the only people that know all those ingredients are the people making the product or like food scientist, because that's there.
Participant #1:
I could probably name a lot of ingredients I would look at or at least nutrition labels I would go look at right now. I would not be able to tell you every single ingredient specifically what this is and what it does and all these things. It's just a very silly mindset to have
Participant #1:
that mindset or that thought process is something that's heavily propagated on social media and that spear mongered a lot in a lot of people. I think I've seen like three videos on that recently. There was a guy talking about hot Cheetos. No, Emily loves her. Hot Cheetos. No, he's talking about Grange is a psychiatrist and was talking about hot Cheetos and ingredients he couldn't read or ingredients he couldn't pronounce. And then another, I think a man who obviously worked in some kind of he was a chef or food chemist, stitched the video and just read the ingredients really quickly and very eloquently. And it was very funny. But the exact point is that it's like these are chemical names because everything is a chemical
Participant #1:
and not everybody is a food chemist. There was a woman who made a video on TikTok who is the owner of the Hint Water Company. This was good. She made this video of the speech that she was doing and she said, because I didn't understand the 30 ingredients that were in Diet Coke. There's eight ingredients in Diet Coke. There's not 30. I decided I wasn't going to drink it anymore. So I switched to water and I lost like £20 in a month. And then I lost £50 in however many months. Wait, from Diet Coke, just from removing Diet Coke and replacing it with water. So obviously substitute being a zero calorie beverage for another zero calorie beverage, which is a net zero calorie change resulted in this dramatic weight loss. Red flag. No, it didn't. But just because she didn't understand what those ingredients were, she was promoting this. Oh, they're harmful. No, they're not. They're there for a purpose. They're stabilizers the caramel. Color is obviously there for color. There's nothing wrong with it and she could've Googled them. Oh, yeah. I mean, you can Google things. And she didn't Google them. Obviously, the video was promoting a product, which was her flavored water. But it was just such trash to be like, because I didn't understand these 30 ingredients. No, they're eight like that's on you, lady, for not understanding those. That makes you look kind of dumb. But it's just like, just because I don't understand something, that's, like a good thing. I don't get calculus. That doesn't mean it's not real. Right. I'm really bad at math. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist. That's a good point. I'm thinking of many friends who are diabetic. Like, they have to take insulin. I know. Like, they have to have general education around that. But if I ask them to break down the chemical makeup of insulin, I don't know if all of them could, but that doesn't mean that it's not helping them, and it's not bad. I don't get biochemistry. I know that's going to hit personal with Hannah. Yeah. I don't get biochemistry. Doesn't mean it's not real. It kind of seems very real. I mean, some of those things, you just kind of want to be like, oh, my God. Yeah. And people soak that up. And they believe every single word. Just because it's like a flashy thing, that's even more frustrating. Yeah. And again, on a lot of US versus European food labels, the US will list out the chemical names of vitamins and minerals, and European food label won't. And the United States label will be longer and European food label will be shorter. So then obviously people will think United States is poisoning me. I've seen so many of those. It's so cringy. And then someone, I think on Instagram sends this to me. It was like a yogurt label. And the first ingredient in the US label was, like, milk and cream and sugar and something else. In the European label, the first ingredient was yogurt. Yogurt is not an ingredient. Like, what the hell is your yogurt made out? Yogurt is not made out of yogurt. That's awesome. Say what's in it. I mean, all of these little things that confuse people, that just take more critical thinking that it's not that people aren't willing to do. It's just that health influencers take advantage of and play off of people's fears and insecurities of. What are you putting in my food? Are you poisoning me? Are you making my health worse? Yes, exactly. The tinfoil hat thing. I think the government is against me all of the time. We're just making this. We're playing on my fear and we're making it worse.
Participant #1:
Absolutely. We love social media.
Participant #1:
Same. It was never my intent to do anything significant on social media. This was a happy accident. Yes. You guys would know. Andy is killing it on TikTok, so definitely go follow her. I'm in jail most of the time. Don't listen for good reasons. I wish we could bail you out. Yeah, it's fine. Tiktok doesn't pay you. So it's not really a job. Like they think that. They think, oh, you have followers, you get paid. You don't get paid. It's like your best day. You get maybe $4. Yeah. It's like here you have enough money to buy half a coffee, but since you don't leave your house, it's useless anyway. Awesome. Okay, our next question in terms of processed foods here is, are highly processed foods addictive? I know that the whole sugar addiction thing is a huge claim. And people will say they're addicted to those highly palatable foods like chips and that sort of thing as well. Is that a thing? Are foods like that addictive? Is that possible? Yes and no, which is a very unsatisfying answer. People ask all the time. So this is something I'll touch on through lightly because I won't take up an hour because it can take up a lot of hours. People ask all the time. On the hot Cheetos video, he said sugar is addictive. Sugar is not addictive. That has been happily debunked because have you seen somebody take a cup of granulated sugar and just dump it down their pie? No, you have not. The foods that are highly palatable and very easy to eat large quantities of are usually a combination of sugar, fat and salt. Their chips, their pizza, their cookies, they're all of those things in combinations. They're not sugar on their own. So it's not sugar. It's highly palatable foods. Like Hannah, you just mentioned the reason why chemically they are addictive. I'll go back to the not addictive part. You can't be addicted to something you need to survive. Right? Calories. You need calories to exist as a human being. If you don't eat calories, you will die. Therefore, in my professional opinion, on a very basic level, can you be addicted to something that if you stop consuming them, you will not be alive? No. But that combination of like the sugar, fat, salt, brownies, pizza, things like that, give people happy hormones in their brain. They give them dopamine serotonin things like that. So when we eat them, we feel happy, our pain physically decreases, we feel good. The more we repeat that behavior, it creates a habit pathway in our brain. The more we do it, it gets reinforced. And we teach ourselves that when I'm feeling tired, stressed, depressed, any negative emotion, that if I eat this food, it will make me feel better. And I associate that food, that pizza, that brownie with those chemicals. And my body knows that if I eat that food, I get that chemical response. So in that sense, that addiction type pathway gets created and it can become addictive and it can be very hard to break. So that sense. Yes. That was a really good explanation. I was going to say that was perfectly debunked because it's more complex than just yes or no, as most nutrition is, but I think that was a perfect way of explaining it. Yeah. And then food companies, there's a term called the bliss point that basically refers to a combination of sugar, fat and salt. Chemically
Participant #1:
basically refers to that amount of all of those flavors that can trigger that. It also refers to, like the mouse feel of a food, the texture of a food. Like, you want a chip to be crunchy but not too crunchy. You want something to be sweet but not like off putting me sweet. You want something to be salty but not too salty. Like a chip to be just enough so it like is good so that you can keep eating it. I think I read something or heard something on a podcast that if there was like a spicy food, that it was a combination, I think it was some kind of chips. And they had extra hot chips immersed in not so spicy chips. But you couldn't have too much of the extra spicy chips or it would give you palate fatigue. So researchers study these things so that people will actually consume more of these foods. So in that sense, some of these processed foods are also very addictive. So, again, there's another aspect of that, too. So as a dietitian, it's also hard to say, yes, all foods fit when food marketers are kind of needling it, too. But we also know and have enough evidence of dietitians that when you tell somebody to not eat something and we tell people to restrict that very bad things happen. Yeah, we talk about that probably every episode. Emily, don't we about how restriction just never pays off. But yes, it is a tough balance of, like, don't restrict, but you also can overdo it with some food. So it's a very hard balance to find as someone who has had a long relationship with food that hasn't been so good. So that's why working with an Rd can be so helpful. Yes. So we have a fun question because we've been talking about a lot of I don't know, people would say sad, but a lot of truth around processed food. So a more fun question for you to discuss and is what are your favorite types of processed foods? And this is completely subjective. Obviously, no one listening should be like, oh, now I'm only going to eat these processes because Andy said, what are my favorites? Well, this is all my opinion. Absolutely. This has no bearing of the health status of the food, because health is a word that has no definition. Health is like organic doesn't mean shit. Diet soda is wonderfully refreshing. Something about diet pop, it just hits the spot. Pizza, cold pizza. What else? Ice cream. Ice cream. Cheese. Cheese. Cheese, cheese.
Participant #1:
Beer. Beer. Like I said, soft pretzels and beer cheese. But again, on the practical side of things that are used on a daily basis that are processed that make life better. We eat a lot of Greek yogurt in our house when we go through, like, my kids eat a lot of fruit. Canned fruit, bead crap. Tons of canned fruit, canned beans. Nobody in their right mind should ever Cook beans from dry beans because it takes like 56 years. Canned tomatoes, very useful. Frozen berries, frozen vegetables, lentil, pasta, like chickpea, lentil, noon. Oh, yeah. Very good. Those are so good. Kodiak cakes, pancakes. Oh, yeah. Someone was railing on those on the interwebs about like had kittens. Kodiac cakes. If you hear this, sponsor me. I'm waiting. I think I need like 2 million, 3 million more followers on the Internet for that to happen. Yeah.
Participant #1:
Yeah. I think the hard thing is that people think, oh, processed foods are so bad, but there are so many good staples that are actually highly nutritious that can fit into your daily rotation. I think I also put people were doing that, I think, Hannah, you were tagged in at first. That $25 a week check. Yes, I still responded to that. I need to. But one of the most common food items was oatmeal and canned beans. And people like to talk about, oh, that stupid rule of only shop the outside of the grocery store. A. Yeah. I don't know if they've ever lived on a graduate student budget before.
Participant #1:
No. Or just have like, multiple family members and been low income. But there's a lot of really healthy foods that you miss out on if you don't go into those inside aisles. And like, oatmeal, canned beans, like their Canch chicken is in there. There's a lot of really good stuff that you miss if you don't go into those inside house at the grocery store. Absolutely. We had an episode on grocery shopping that was one of our big points because that is such a common thing I hear all the time. So, yes, I'm glad you guys covered that because it's such a stupid rule. I don't even know how that started either. Probably some influencer who just decided to be with out of their mouth. I think it was probably one of those books with those food rules. Yeah, probably. That's probably a good guess. Yeah. I'm really glad you brought up the canned and frozen vegetables and fruits because I feel like those get a bad rep because everyone's, like, you need to only buy fresh produce. But not only does fresh produce not last very long, also, people can't always go to the grocery store every day. No. I switched a video of I think it was an acupuncturist who was ripping on canned produce. And granted, it got a lot of views, which was very bizarre, but people were kind of heated about thinking that canned vegetables were really bad. And there's a lot of misconceptions about that nutrient loss in canned vegetables. And it's not the closer an item is processed after it is picked, the more nutrients are retained. And freezing and Canning, they're processed really close to when they're harvested. And granted, flash frozen is probably the closest you're going to get to being processed when something is picked. But the canned vegetable is a very cheap, very shelf stable option. And people were like, oh, there's a lot of preservatives added in the Canning process. No, the Canning process is the preservation process. Without it, they would not stay good on the shelf. Yeah, but you don't need preservative. Like, the Canning process is the preservation process. They're not loaded up with chemicals. That's it. You heat it and you seal it and good to go. Yeah. So can vegetables are great and there's low sodium options. And then with things like that, if you put it in a colander and rinse it, you guys know you can cut down the sodium content and you're not hypertensive and you don't have heart problems. You don't have to worry about it. Someone said eating high salt is going to give you heart problems. No, it's not. No, it's not that garbage. People are wild. They're unhinged. Welcome to everybody having an opinion about nutrition on the Internet. That's what I always say. Everyone has opinion about it. It's craziness. Well, Andy, if you just sum it up, any final thoughts on this topic? If you could put it into, like a few sentences or so, what would you like to say about this episode when it comes to food, eat what you like and eat what you can afford. And if someone says that one food is either, like, toxic, super harmful, or is the sole cause of disease, unless you have a significant allergy to it, it's bullshit. Like one food or one ingredient is not going to cause significant bodily harm unless it makes you swell up like violent Beauregard and Willy Wonka. No,
Participant #1:
exactly. The dose makes the poison.
Participant #1:
Yeah. No. Yeah. Enough said. Very powerful. Cool. Very cool. So kind of then going to the fun part of our episode, every episode, we always have a bonus question where it's either it's just us talking about our opinions essentially. And we either like, it's a debate type question or favorite whatever type question. Today is cereal technically a soup. And as always, we always let our guests go first. So, Andy, cereal. Soup. No, I looked it up on the Internet, because that knows all things. By definition, a cereal is a liquid food. Liquid food. Cereal is not a liquid food. It's a dry food made by boiling or simmering meat, fish or vegetables with various added ingredients. You don't simmer or boil. Well, I mean, you Cook cereal, but you don't simmer it. And there's no meat, fish or vegetables.
Participant #1:
I have to say. No. I think that's one of the key points is like the cereal versus the cereal in the milk. That's a big difference there. I didn't think about it the way you defined it, which is like the cereal is just like a grain. Like, it's just cereal because I was envisioning, like, cereal floating in milk, which I feel like there's an argument for that. But I totally agree that dry cereal is obviously not soup. Emily, what are your no, I was thinking only because I've worked in long term care. Like, I think about my rotation, say, let's say cold versus hot cereal and hot cereal, like oatmeal, because that's oil. Yeah. You don't put Meat Fisher vegetables. I mean, you could, but even, like, a gaspacho, though, is vegetable simmered in water and then it's, like, blended. It's a good point. And you could do, like, savory oats. You don't have to do them sweet. So you could do, like, add a veggie to your oatmeal. I wouldn't do that. I'm more of a sweet kind of person, but that's the thing that would be like. That's true. Okay, I'm going to agree. I don't think cereal is a soup, but hot cereal still confuses me. It kind of does. Yeah. There was a cauliflower oatmeal on TikTok. Oh, sweet Jesus is turning upside down. Was cauliflower, like, the 8th ingredient in there, like a second cauliflower? I haven't looked at it yet, and I don't even know what I want to do with that because a lot of people get on my case because I don't think cauliflower needs to be parading around as food. It's not. But oatmeal is crossing a line. I know. I don't know if cauliflower wanted all this attention. No, it did not. No, it was in a fudge recipe. And I lost I lost my shit. And people were like, can't you just let people have their thing? And I was like, no, eat fudge. Fudge.
Participant #1:
Cauliflower oatmeal. Could you imagine your oatmeal smelling like heat to eat your breakfast? And then the Wolf of heat sitting your face? And for what? What do you gain from that? How many calories do you save? Like, 100 calories? Is that worth it? It is not worth it. Sink up your kitchen and you'll ruin your morning. Exactly. You start your day on a bad foot. Oh, so good. That was great. The worst joke I've had. That's perfect. We're easy to please. Oh, yeah, that was really good. What happens in your late 30s jokes?
Participant #1:
Cool. Okay. Very cool. So, Andy, how can everyone find you? Because I'm sure they had a wonderful time listening to our bad jokes. You're great jokes and all things process. And I'm sure Hannah and I want them to continue following your nutrition debunking journey that you are so very involved in. Appreciate that. On TikTok. I'm Andy does healthy on Instagram. I'm Andy does healthy. And I think I'm Andy Miller. And Andy is healthy on YouTube. And maybe I'll do something with that. Someday it exists. Someday something will happen there. I just don't know what yet. Maybe I'll talk about how much I hate cauliflower and oatmeal. Exactly. The first episode started off. It really should talk about how much of a bad idea cauliflower oatmeal is. I'd watch that. I'm making recommendations for YouTube ideas if anybody's interested. Okay. Yeah. Leave a comment, guys. We'll send it over to Andy be the first one there so you can see her first video. Yeah. Well, thank you, guys for having me. Yes. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on. We really do appreciate it. This will be a good episode for everyone. They'll really enjoy it. Oh, yeah, definitely. Absolutely. Thank you so much also for joining us. So sending us into a very busy schedule.
Participant #1:
Yes. Cool. Very cool. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in today. We hope you learned something new something away from it. You had to have learned something. I'm sure you did not know all of this but be sure to tune back in next week otherwise. And of course, go check out all of Andy's social media and go support her on everything. Yeah, we'll see you got this, Andy. If you're new to the pod, Emily always gets stuck doing the outro and it's always a struggle. Bus. It's hard. It's so hard. I hate doing it.
Participant #1:
I always tell them we'll see you next week. I don't see any of them. I will see you in my mind. I will be thinking of you fun. Absolutely. We'll chat next week. Yeah. All right. Bye. Bye.
