Ted Kyle is pushing the envelope and pushing me out of my comfort zone. He is passionate about obesity and obesity treatment. I am passionate about (ultra)processed foods. Both Kyle and I tend to think of ourselves as independent thinkers. We have our core beliefs and evaluate new information about our topics of interest, presumably from an objective viewpoint. Sometimes that is easy when we spot clear misunderstandings by advocates of a point of view. At other times, critics force us to rethink our positions.

Enter Linn Steward who started corresponding with me over four years ago. She challenged some of my cherished thoughts about food. We have discussed our differences of perspective online, in posts on my blog, in a formal written debate in Food Technology, and in discussions on LinkedIn. She has influenced my perspective on some topics. I have made an impact on her thinking. She was the person who introduced me to the ConscienHealth website where Kyle posts daily. In his quest to understand the science behind and challenges facing obesity research and treatment, he treads lightly through a minefield of confirmation bias and motivated reasoning. His tools to gaining a better understanding of the topic are critical thinking and staying curious.

Like Kyle and Steward, I aim to avoid the mines. My mission is to become an honest advocate of food processing and ultra-processed food products. Below I trace that journey from three of my personas as a (1) food scientist, (2) climate change skeptic, and (3) defender of processed food.

Confirmation bias. I suspect that most of us have been guilty of this malady at one time or another. As we read and grow in intellect, we develop perspectives and make assumptions that fit with what we believe to be true. We tend to read articles that support our point of view while skipping those that challenge it. LinkedIn and Facebook make it easy to click on ‘Like’ when a headline confirms our position. I plead guilty at times at liking headlines without actually reading the article.

Motivated reasoning is a natural extension of deliberate confirmation bias. Ted Kyle introduced me to the concept. Such approaches look only for support of our positions and ignore any potential contradictions. A former iteration of this term was cherry picking. In writing, then, we only cite articles that support our point of view and deliberately hide any alternate points of view. Motivated reasoning goes beyond mere confirmation bias to deliberate pushing beliefs while seeking to obscure counter arguments.

Critical thinking involves challenging cherished positions and trying to understand what others are advocating. It does not start out by looking for the weaknesses in an argument, but in examining underlying suppositions. What evidence is presented? Is the evidence from a reliable source? Are the conclusions based on the evidence presented? Thinking critically forces us to identify areas of disagreement and seeing if the views can be rationalized into a unified explanation. It is not a failure of reasoning to admit that we could be wrong. Opposing viewpoints may cause us to modify our perspective and come to a clearer understanding of what we believe.

Staying curious is the catch phrase to counteract confirmation bias and motivated reasoning using critical thinking skills. Rather than avoiding perspectives that challenge our positions, we seek out alternate views and try to understand the rationale behind that view. First, it is important that we understand what we believe and why. What are our basic underlying principles, and what is the supporting evidence? How do the new ideas challenge what we believe and what evidence supports that point of view? Are there areas of overlap? Can we identify the axes of disagreement? Can we modify our position to accommodate some or all of these disagreements? Do we need to rethink the validity of our assumptions and even our underlying principles?

My perspective as a food scientist has changed over time. As an undergraduate student I absorbed what I was taught in my classes. I wasn’t always that concerned about separating out the principles from the opinions of my professors and found in textbooks. During the summers I worked in the food industry and observed food processing in action in jobs as diverse as retort operator, warehouse worker, lab analyst, quality control manager, and product developer. Each year I would come back with a better understanding of food science and food manufacturing as my classroom lessons informed my industry experience and vice versa. I also became aware of criticism of processed food.

I read books and articles that challenged the health and nutritional quality of processed foods. My motivation to defend the industry led to seeking out books and articles that countered the criticism. Two courses in my graduate programs stood out to help me grow in my thinking. Dr. Araujo assigned us a discussion topic on issues in contemporary human nutrition each week. Eight of us met for three hours on Wednesday afternoon in the campus pub. He bought the first pitcher, and we critically evaluated several assigned articles and ones we had dug up in the med-school library. At the end of each session each student had to express their opinion on the issue at hand and justify our reasoning. After we completed the course, we formed a journal club that met one day a week on a topic selected by the designated leader. We had excellent discussions, benefitting from the presence of two disciplinary perspectives—food science and human nutrition.

The other class was in food biochemistry at another university. The assignments were ridiculous. In one we were asked to calculate the area of intracellular membranes in a specific cell of a specific organism. I came up with a ballpark estimate and asked Dr. Hultin if I was on the right track. “I don’t know” he replied, “I haven’t started working on the problem yet.” A theoretical problem without a clear answer! It blew me away. Such experiences helped me appreciate that critical thinking was necessary in my career. I put some of these concepts into my book Becoming a Food Scientist: To Graduate School and Beyond with particular emphasis in chapters 4 and 11.

A climate change skeptic represents a major change in my persona between my professional and retired lives. Food science is a conservative discipline. I had some encounters with climate-change activism as early as the 1970s, but I never paid much attention to the topic. I read some books and articles on the topic. I remained skeptical. It was not a topic that captured my interest. It was not until I retired and started to write In Defense of Processed Food: It’s not Nearly as Bad as You Think that I was confronted with my lack of knowledge about climate change. Each chapter poses potential answers to a critical question about food. Chapter 9 asked “How can we eat more sustainably to save the earth for our children and grandchildren?” It was a question I could not answer based on my limited background in environmental science. I needed to do some homework.

The IFT Annual meeting was in Las Vegas that year. I attended the technical program of what is now the Sustainable Food Systems Division. Here were food scientists who actually believed in sustainability and combatting climate change. One of the members of the division happened to be my roommate at the conference. I was able to gather some information and resources on a topic I had ignored to this point in my career. I started critically evaluating what I thought and what was out there. I found three very important books expressing very different viewpoints (1-3) on the topic and framed my chapter around my critical evaluation of their premises. None of my chapter research was based on confirmation bias or motivated reasoning. It was a true seeking of knowledge. It was the most refreshing and enjoyable chapter for me to write. My new point of view on the topic appears frequently on this blog (4-6). I stay curious as climate change is one of the key themes I address on this site.

Defender of processed food is my current food-science persona. A student came by after my Food Processing class and showed me a paper tent that he had grabbed from one of the tables in a university cafeteria. The writing on the tent urged students to abandon processed foods and consume whole foods. One of the examples of whole foods was 2% milk and of processed foods was whole milk. I think there was another agenda here as well as anti-processed foods. My graduate class on Food Research and the Scientific Method had actually read and critically evaluated the review article that was the basis of the recommendation. The article had some merit, but much of the reasoning was incomplete and flawed. It was at that moment I decided to write a book defending processed foods and misinformation in the press and on university cafeteria tables after I retired.

In Defense of Processed Food came out in 2016. I did my best to highlight basic principles of food science without being too critical of information that clashed with those principles. After swearing to my editor that I would never write a blog on the topic, I started this site. The rest, as they say, is history. After publishing my defense of processed foods, I accepted an invitation to present a seminar to the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition. In preparation for that talk, I discovered a new fault line in criticism of processed food—ultra-processed food. This seminar was important to me as it was at my alma mater—well one of them anyway—the one where I learned about critical thinking and helped start a journal club. It was great to get back to campus and to tour the building where I was the TA for Food Processing Lab including the pilot plant with the retort and associated thermocouples. I was sad to learn that students in food science and human nutrition students didn’t interact much any more.

Ultra-processed food, what it is and what it is not, became my mission on the site. As much as I tried to separate myself from the obsession, the more I felt compelled to defend it. It was so tempting to succumb to motivated reasoning, but I tried to stick to basic principles. I stayed curious attempting to read as much as I could on the topic, both pro and con. I find that scientific review articles are more informative than studies. The former put research in perspective; the latter are focused and subject to overextrapolation. I challenged misinformation about food processing that appeared in online articles and books. It became apparent that criticism of ultra-processed foods tended to be more about ingredients, particularly food additives, than about processing. Along the way I learned that there was room for honest disagreement on the benefits and detriments of NOVA classification of foods.

Take home lesson. In any discussion on any topic, it is hard to separate fact from opinion. I contended in Becoming a Food Scientist that fact is indeed a four-letter word—most are thinly disguised opinions. Any article, book, or publication that says it doesn’t have and agenda, has an agenda. Any article, book, or publication that proclaims the truth about a topic is probably propaganda. Science is not really about facts or the truth. It is about supposition in search for knowledge based on evidence which evolves into basic principles. Beware of confirmation bias and motivated reasoning. Think critically and stay curious. So easily said. So difficult to follow through.    

Coming soon: Ultra-Processed People

References:

1. Brown, L. 2011. World on Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse. W.W. Norton & Company.

2. Randers, J. 2012. 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years. Chelsea Green Publishing.

3. Weis, T. 2007. Global Food Futures. Zed Books.

4. Global climate change—a personal journey

5. Ending hunger in the age of climate change

6. Global climate change: Is it a hoax or are we doomed?