Just how bad are ultraprocessed foods? Here are 5 things to know

When you open a bag of nacho-flavored chips or cheese puffs, you probably know that you’re about to indulge in an unhealthy snack. The dead giveaway? It’s the yummy, spicy, cheesy, neon-orange dust that coats each morsel and gets all over your fingers. But what about a granola bar? An applesauce pouch? String cheese? Flavored yogurt? Surely these foods — snacks that millions of children and adults eat every day — are not bad, right? Well, it turns out that many fall under the category of ultraprocessed foods — depending on their exact ingredients. Ultraprocessed foods represent a relatively new way of categorizing foods. Ultraprocessed foods contain additives such as flavor enhancers, colors and thickeners. Due to a confluence of historical, regulatory, and economic factors, food companies produced foods that would make them lots of money. Eating a lot of ultraprocessed foods isn’t healthy. Many observational studies have linked ultraprocessed foods to obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, certain cancers, bad outcome from Covid-19, overall mortality, neurodegenerative deaths, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression. A controlled clinical trial showed that ultraprocessed foods caused people to gain weight. Ultraprocessed foods are everywhere, and most of us consume them without even realizing it. Ultraprocessed foods make up more than half of American adults’ diets. For US children, that percentage is even higher. Truly eating ‘clean’ costs more. Creating a minimally processed menu costs about 40% more than an ultraprocessed menu. Some ultraprocessed foods can provide important nutrients, and not all ultraprocessed foods drive the effect of increased caloric intake. Americans may soon get more help sorting through the health effects of ultraprocessed foods. The US Department of Agriculture and the US Food and Drug Administration will soon issue new Dietary Guidelines, which are updated every five years. The scientific advisory committee guiding this process has been asked to consider the connection between ultraprocessed foods and poor health outcomes.