https://ca.style.yahoo.com/inside-government-study-trying-understand-131517394.html

Pop-Tarts are a food group.

>Pop-Tarts

I'm thinking they should be the poster child.

"The foods, which are often high in fat, sodium and sugar, are typically cheap, mass-produced and contain added colors and chemicals not found in a home kitchen."

"some of the foods contain irresistible combinations of ingredients — fat, sugar, sodium and carbohydrates — that trigger people to eat more"

>fat, sugar, sodium and carbohydrates

Pop-Tarts, junk food, are like narcotics, they got all the good stuff to make you feel good eating them.

Healthy stuff: celery, oats, sprouts, bird seed, bark, twigs and shit just can't compete.

Fortune has a touch of "The Onion" ....

The government wants to understand the health effects of ultraprocessed foods so it paid people $5,000 to eat chicken nuggets for science

https://fortune.com/well/2025/03/12/ultraprocessed-foods-government-study-nih-kevin-hall/

The science on ultra processed food is not very good...

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/494045/ultra-processed-foods-science-rcts

I think that just repeats what we already knew?

If eating UPF, we as humans eat more and have less fibre and other good things in our diet. We don't know what the chemicals are likely to do, but my choice is I only have one life to live, so why risk it if I don't have to.

If I had Crones decease I  might have to eat more UPF.

Pringles are food, but never going to be the best food, as they are designed to stop you feeling full.

We all know this.  The chemicals are a side show.  Now we definitely need to know about the impact of the chemicals, to know if they should be used at all. But that's different. 

Am I wrong?

>Am I wrong?

No one really knows yet. We're in some sort of long, drawn out food culture war --largely funded by Big Food and protected by an army of lobbyists.

Personally, I tend to think that the colonial era diet is a good place to start ....minus all the alcohol those drunks were swilling.

> repeats what we already knew?

Not really. Yes we know that excess of calories, absence of fibre, high levels of sugar tend to have negative impacts.

We also know that some additives tend to have negative effects to the extent that some are banned.

What we cannot do, and this is the point of the article, is tease out what the effects of "ultra-processed" foods are when all else is balanced.

For example, if someone eats a concoction of ultra-processed food that has the same amount of calories and sugar and fiber and vitamins as an apple, but is ultra-processed, is that inherently "bad"?

And the example that comes up all the time: is it really way way better to eat a homemade white bread with sugar added than it is to eat an organic whole grain bread that adds a tiny bit of, say, lecithin so that has a certain texture?

The people who say "ultra-processed is bad" would have you eat the white bread with sugar added.

So the question that remains is, it is just the calories and the lack of fibre, or is there something specific to ultra-processed foods that matters and, if so, what the hell is an ultra-processed food?

Is cow's milk just an ultra-processed form of grass?

> those drunks

Up until 1958, elementary schoolchildren in France usually had wine with lunch and it was not abolished in high schools  until 1981. This was the fallout of a campaign started in 1956 that suggested that one liter per day was the healthy amount of wine. Just as a reminder, a standard wine bottle today is 750ml

https://vinepair.com/articles/french-anti-alcohol-art/

PS - the reason I find this trend worrying is that every health fad breeds a slew of unhealthy foods.
 
What I see coming is shelves and shelves of "minimally processed" foods that substitute honey for high-fructose corn syrup, and that is not really addressing any health problem.

We could stand to cut down on the salt in processed foods.  Originally it was a flavor enhancer and a preservative but we have refrigeration, freezers and all those chemicals so we could cut back on some of the salt.  Hard to do with Pringles but at least you know what you are getting straight up with them.

>  salt in processed foods

And there you go. Salt is a minimally-processed ingredient. So it's not covered by the "ultra-processed" label