I'm certain you have heard of processed food.
I'm betting you have heard of ultra-processed food, too.
What are we talking about?
And why does it matter?

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Plant cells are designed to resist digestion.
Animal cells aren't.

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We can't extract nutrients from raw plant foods.
So plant foods need at least some processing to be edible.
Drying.
Freezing.
Grinding.
Fermenting.
Heating/boiling

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Animal foods are nutritious just as they are.
There is nothing more deeply nourishing than a piece of steaming, fresh uncooked liver.
Unless it is raw milk yogurt.

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We don't need to process animal foods to benefit from them.
But we often process animal foods to preserve them.
Salting/brining.
Grinding.
Curing.
Freezing.

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Processing changes the cellular structure of our foods.
Processing makes food safer. (Pasteurization of milk kills bacteria.)
Processing frees up nutrients. (Tomato sauce has twice as many carotenes available compared to raw tomatoes.)

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Ultra-processing further changes our food.
Ultra-processing damages the cellular structure.
Ultra-processing removes nutrients.
Ultra-processing makes calories readily available, driving diabetic reactions and weight gain.

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Volunteers fed a ham and cheese sandwich, same calories, actually got twice the calories from the (ultra-processed) white bread, American cheese, and deli ham sandwich compared to the (merely processed) whole wheat, Swiss cheese, and ham slice sandwich.
Both sandwiches had the same amount of calories.
But half of those calories were used to digest the less processed food.
Full stop.
That's huge.
Calories aren't all equal.

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And now, a study finds that the physical structure of food influences post-meal blood sugar levels and a host of hormones released during digestion:
> Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1)
> Gastric Inhibitory polypeptide
> Pancreatic peptide YY
> Satiety hormones like leptin.

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"Researchers at Imperial College London and the Quadram Institute used chickpea meals prepared with contrasting cellular structures and measured various physiological responses in healthy human participants.

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"All test meals were made from freshly cooked chickpea porridge, flavoured with low-sugar blackcurrant jam and raspberry jelly, and had identical nutrient content, but were processed differently resulting in different cellular structures. These structural variations included nutrients being either entrapped in cell clusters ('Intact-C'), within isolated single cells ('Intact-S'), or in a broken cell form ('Broken').

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"These structural differences were shown to affect starch susceptibility to digestion in vitro, with the 'Broken' cell meal demonstrating the greatest release of starch digestion products.

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"Dr Cathrina Edwards of the Quadram Institute, said: 'Although the foods in the study would have the same food label, because they contain the same ingredients and nutrient composition, we've shown how processing-induced changes to the structure leads to significant effects on hormone and blood sugar responses.'

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"Broken cell structures [ultra processed] led to a rapid increase in blood glucose, insulin, and the gut hormone GIP.

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"Intact cell structures [processed only by cooking] resulted in a prolonged release of GLP-1 and PYY, promoting a greater sense of fullness.

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"This was because different hormones were released as the food components, or metabolites, reached different parts of the gastro-intestinal tract. GIP was released from higher parts of the tract, while GLP-1 was released from cells much lower down, or further on the food journey.

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"Dr Mingzhu Cai, from Imperial College London's Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, explained: 'There's a lot of discussion at present about GLP-1 agonists such as Ozempic. While natural levels of GLP-1 will never reach that level of pharmaceutical dose, by understanding how and where it is released, we have a better chance of increasing the doses that our bodies can produce.'"

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Article text © Imperial College London.
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