> “About 60% of the calories in Americans’ diets are from ultra-processed foods,” says Schmidt, who spoke at a UC Berkeley event in May. “In the mid-’80s, when we see ultra-processed foods starting to scale up in the American food supply, we also see obesity starting to really rise. That is the moment when some of the largest food companies are owned by tobacco companies.”
A reminder here that while there's an important directional claim behind stuff like this, "ultra-processed food" is an extremely silly category that does violence to the argument.
UPFs include:
* Whole wheat bread (most supermarket bread is stabilized, which you might not like aesthetically, but it isn't doing anything to your health)
* Almost all yogurt products, flavored or otherwise
* Literally all baby formula
* Any kind of plant-based meat replacement
* Many supermarket hummus brands (again: stabilizers and emulsifiers)
You get to "ultra-processed" simply by making things shelf-stable, and shelf-stability isn't an actual health problem (kind of the opposite).
You get to problematic through hyperpalatability, which is another, different target of modern food engineering. Hyperpalatable foods are almost always UPFs, but the other direction doesn't hold at all.
> most supermarket bread is stabilized, which you might not like aesthetically, but it isn't doing anything to your health
That's a large assertion to make without evidence. Personally, I'm suspicious of all antimicrobial agents' effects on gut microbiota and the knock-on effects on health.
I mean, he's not presenting the evidence here in a hacker news comment, but that doesn't mean the evidence doesn't exist. There are a bunch of different categories of stabilizers, and only some of them have antimicrobial properties -- most are about maintaining moisture and loaf volume over time.
There are three substances that are predominantly used to inhibit mold growth, though: calcium propionate, potassium sorbate, and sodium benzoate.
The first two are extremely well understood and considered safe globally. The third is still considered safe, but might have some interactions with vitamin C that lead to benzene formation to the tune of several parts per billion. The FDA considers this safe, and has for some time.
You said dislike. I said suspicious. One's an opinion, the other an invitation for science.
> vinegar, salt, and any fermented foods that suppress microbial agents?
In the gut microbiota broad system sequencing experiments I've consumed reports from, even altering diet from one primary food source to another can result in complete restructuring of the gut ecosystem as quickly as within 24 hours. And switching back to the original food source didn't return to an identical gut ecosystem. Many studies show direct connections between gut microbiota and specific and broad health impacts.
So I think suspicious is right. There is much yet to be learned.
"Ultra-Processed Food" is a phrase. It is not a thing. If you want to use it for its media traction, and "nobody knows what it is," define it before you use it.
Instead, everybody has gone for "it is so mysterious," then goes on to cite a bunch of studies about "ultra-processed foods," treating it as a category that categorical statements can be made about.
Name the chemicals, name the processes. They don't because these chemicals and processes are endorsed by massive conglomerates who can pull advertising and lobbying money. When you're vague as hell about everything, it's a case-by-case basis that only affects people who can't bribe as well as others.
And about the people talking about sugars, salt and fats crammed into everything, I'm convinced they never cook. That's taste, and you can pour it in yourself just as well as a corporation. The reason people love it is because it tastes good. Salt isn't even bad for you, it's in fact very, very good for you because it makes micronutrient-rich foods palatable.
Arguing that standard manufactured foods and foods marketed to children are too rich is a different argument, and most importantly for this conversation has nothing to do with the ultraprocessed foods question. Massive food companies are perfectly happy to remove all the fats and sugars from your food and replace them with some weird alcohol sugar or a new form of teflon they just invented a week ago, and to charge you a premium for the privilege of eating it. They literally did that throughout the 80s and 90s.
The narrative intentionally confusing what the above refers to as "hyperpalatability" (a term which is as good as any) with "ultra-processed" (a propaganda term) is a gift to the food industry. It in fact even favors monopolies who can afford to put in the bizarre chemical constructions they'll use as alternatives, and to pay regulators to look the other way.
"Ultra-processed foods" is a phrase meant for advertising - even the prefix "ultra-" reminds me of a cigarette ad, describing the filter. The filter was a device which ostensibly makes cigarettes healthier, but instead allows you to smoke far more than you would otherwise, and leads to worse health outcomes. Isn't smoking bad? Smoke our ultra-filtered cigarettes and breathe easy!
The featured article/podcast has the person presenting define "ultra-processed foods" as industrial hyper-palatable foods.
However, it focuses more about how the foods were marketed, and in particular, that the same marketing playbook developed by tobacco companies to market Marlboro and Camel cigarettes was then used to sell Kool-Aid and Miller beer.
Basically, the execs at Phillip Morris and R. J. Reynolds realized that beer, Kool-Aid/sugar drinks, Oreos and cigarettes were more or less all the same type of products - affordable, habit-forming small luxury goods people enjoyed putting in their mouths, and applied the expertise they'd developed on one type of this market (cigarettes) to the rest of it.
Thanks for articulating this. I've had a problem over the past 20 years with terms like "screen time" and "ultra-processed foods" because there's a kernel of something that really matters somewhere in the argument, but the use of overly broad terms sort of kills things. I appreciate you calling out the nuance, and I agree with you that hyperpalatability is the main issue -- like applying the principles of TikTok to food.
Hyperpalatability is a different issue. The main issue is that our foods are chemical factories. Turning it into a "food is too good" problem is just a trick to blame the consumer for not being mature enough to forgo pleasure.
Food being good is not a crisis. Xylitol giving people heart attacks might be. Ingredients concocted in a lab never being studied at all until someone sues is a problem. Shifting the argument to "cheeseburgers are bad because they're good" is a really obvious distraction.
There is literally no profit in making foods "hyperpalatable." Food companies would be just as happy selling you food that tastes like shit. If anything, in actuality commercial food has become worse and less palatable over time due to substitutions of cheaper ingredients. The argument is being shifted from an important one about power to a dumb moral panic. The people who love this are orthorexics who love telling people how their health is their own fault because they are self-indulgent. There is nothing more self-indulgent and self-praising than this discourse.
This is like the Mexican coke argument all over again. Everybody wants there to be an industrial bogeyman to blame for American nutritional health problems. Wouldn't it be awesome if we could fix problems for people simply by replacing industrial corn syrup with wholesome cane sugar?
Of course, there is literally no difference healthwise between the two products. But that's hard to hear. It means you have to accept that sweetened soft drinks are just bad for you, full stop, and you have to treat them the same way you'd treat alcohol (I said, as an enthusiastic social drinker).
So it goes with UPFs writ large. Wouldn't it be great if we could just make our foods wholesome and pure and not "chemical factories"? In fact: it would make essentially no difference to our health; in fact it would be a health problem if it led people to believe that bakery outputs were healthful and stabilized unsweetened skyr was dangerous.
The entire problem here is that we've gotten incredibly good at engineering food for hyperpalatability, which leads people to make truly bad choices about what to eat habitually. You could reasonably regulate that practice! But you'd want to find a way to do it without doing Mercola science and taking healthful, affordable shelf-stable products off the shelves for no reason.
Your "no profit in hyperpalatable foods" thing, I don't get at all. Maybe if you tried to explain it again. Sounds like the opposite of the truth.
Shelf-stable hummus and Doritos can both be "ultra-processed", but that doesn't tell you much about why one might encourage overconsumption. Hyperpalatability seems much closer to the actual claim the article is trying to make.
I think it literally is the claim the article is trying to make, but "UPF" is the on-trend term, despite the fact that most UPFs aren't engineered for hyperpalatability. It's a problem!
It sort of illustrates the uselessness of the terms. Yogurt is made by sterilizing (likely homogenized) milk and introducing microorganisms that carry out some desired chemical reactions. They produce lactic acid, which is a stabilizer.
Everyone apparently knows that those are good things, so they don't count.
Nobody seems to have noticed the "product" next to "yogurt":
>> * Almost all yogurt products, flavored or otherwise
If we weren't on HN I'd say that's a subtle engagement hack calculated to generate maximum confusion and irate debate in the comments below. But we're on HN and good faith etc.
So, yes, "yogurt products" are all going to be ultra-processed not least because they will have to destroy the gel matrix of yogurt to incorporate whatever other ingredients they must like fruit juice or sugar, stabilisers, emulsifiers etc. Actually I guess they must include the stabilisers and emulsifiers because they mix in flavours and therefore destroy the yogurt gel matrix, which would otherwise result in an unpleasant gloopy mess.
Speaking of course in all this from the privilege of a summer in Greece where I've start every morning since June with a tub of 150g of fresh (not strained) goat's milk yogurt with the skin on and with a (European) teaspoonfull of honey.
Not healthy, you understand. Not with all the saturated fats and sugars. But, boy, is it palatable.
That's the point. The ultra-processing of shelf-stable unsweetened yogurt food products has nothing to do with engineering it for palatability. And yet they're UPFs, and you could easily ship a highly sweetened dessert yogurt product that would be far less healthy without tripping a UPF standard.
No. And the way you're wrong about this is important. Any plain whole milk yogurt thickened or stabilized with starches or pectin is a UPF; Kroger's Plain Whole Milk, for instance, is a UPF and it isn't sweetened.
(For what it's worth, I really dislike yogurt and would not in 1000 years consume a sweetened yogurt product, though I do work skyr into every other meal these days for protein-maxxing reasons).
Yeah, this is totally true. A Greek yogurt is considered minimally processed, not ultra processed. The problem is, far and away, the majority of yogurt sold is fruit-flavored yogurt, which is considered ultra-processed. Icelandic yogurt and Greek yogurt are premium niche yogurts.
I guess all I'm saying is that for the majority of people eating yogurt, it's an ultra-processed food.
With the exception, maybe, of whole wheat bread (it seems they sometimes add extra wheat gluten, technically an additive but yes, silly), these all seem right to me? Especially meat replacements, they're often incredibly highly processed.
Yoghurt is one you seem to be mistaken on. Yoghurt can be considered group 1, it just often contains thickeners, sweeteners, flavourings, etc. Especially if low-fat.
You're right of course that hyperpalatability is a bigger problem. And you don't have to agree that UPFs are something you need to avoid. But I don't think that makes it a silly category.
It’s a silly category to relate to health because, for example, meat replacements are UPF but are also typically much healthier than meat. Obviously that’s not always true, but most of the time it is. Basically all Americans can benefit from eating less meat, especially red meat.
Ultra-processing is not just used to make more calorie-dense palatable food. It’s also used to make less calorie-dense food and enrich food with vitamins and macros you need for healthy living, like fiber.
I mean, compare the ultra-processed high fiber tortillas to the natural tortillas. The high fiber ones have less calories, less carbs, are more satiating, and are overall healthier. They also taste worse, I.e. are less palatable.
Ultra-processing and palatability are really orthogonal IMO. You can use processing to make palatable food, but you don’t have to. Look at traditional fast food - burgers, fries, fried chicken. You can trivially make any of that with no processing. It’s still unhealthy and ultra palatable. Cutting up a chicken at home and deep-frying it doesn’t magically make it healthy.
Or go one step further, and look at the frying itself. We have access to processed refined oils. But if you don’t use them and go the old fashioned way, with lard frying, is it healthier or less palatable?
No, actually, it’s tastier and much less healthy. You get 10x the saturated fat and way more calories.
And I’ll get ahead of the anti-science anti-seed-oil people who just read that. We know, for a fact, that eating more saturated fat increases your risk of heart disease and cancer. Just because something is naturally or minimally processed does not make it healthy, health is much more complex than that.
> You get to problematic through hyperpalatability, which is another, different target of modern food engineering
I don't think even that is problematic by itself. You need to apply hyper palatable techniques to high calorie nutrient poor food for it to be a problem.
Getting people addicted to something that's mostly protein or fiber or water packed with important micro nutrients would not be a bad thing at all. That's not what the food companies are doing (because empty calories are cheaper) but it's a perfectly good strategy we need more of.
every once in a while i wonder why miracle berries can't be leveraged at scale to make ultranutritious food taste great. but it always feels like a thought with an obvious answer i am too stupid to deduce.
> You get to "ultra-processed" simply by making things shelf-stable, and shelf-stability isn't an actual health problem (kind of the opposite).
I would point out that many whole foods are generally shelf-stable (over at least weeks, if not months) without requiring the introduction of chemical stabilizers that don't otherwise "belong."
Chemical stabilizers are generally needed for shelf stability in ultra-processed foods, because of one of the other defining characteristics of ultra-processed foods: their matrix has been disrupted (or constructed anew) such that the food is now highly labile (biochemical term: "labile organic matter"), i.e. very easy to break down into nutrients. Which applies not only to you breaking such foods down in your gut, but also to bacteria and fungi breaking these foods down on the shelf.
And as it so happens, because these foods are labile, any such nutrients that do come from breaking down the food, come very quickly. Labile carbohydrates are high-glycemic-index insulin-spiking carbohydrates. Labile fats are atherosclerosis-inducing fats. Etc.
Your body evolved to process (metabolize, remove from circulation, etc.) metabolic inputs in an environment where most available foods were the opposite of labile (a.k.a. recalcitrant organic matter). So most meals would give a slow/gentle level of metabolic throughput; with rare spikes of higher throughput from the rare natural labile food, and then plenty of low-throughput time to recover from such events. Your body didn't evolve to be able to deal with getting high-throughput metabolic input spikes from every meal.
And this is why the the presence of chemical stabilizers in a food is actually a very helpful criterion in the definition of "ultra-processed food"! The necessity of stabilization tells you that the food is likely labile (as otherwise, why would they have needed to stabilize it?) — and therefore is unhealthy to be consumed on a continuous basis. (Unless it's milk and you're a baby.)
But note that the stabilizer isn't itself the problem. Bread is ultra-processed even without a stabilizer, because bread is a labile food with weak matrix integrity. The bread you bake at home is ultra-processed; you're the one who ultra-processed it!
The "rules" for UPFs don't assert home-baked bread as a UPF, but that's because the point of the UPF designation is to label commercial foods, and more specifically, to draw a hard-line boundary based on objectively-measurable characteristics that industry players can't argue with or lie about. And lability / matrix integrity, while quantifiable, isn't something with a clear objective way to reduce it to a single number†; so any definition of UPF based on lability would result in endless arguments/pushback from industry players insisting the FDA is "calculating it wrong."
But in your own personal life, the definition of "ultra-processed" you should be carrying around in your head and evaluating foods by, should be one that includes lability.
† (Instead, lability is a high-dimensional measurement of how efficiently any single digestive enzyme, and/or any specific combination of enzymes, and/or any enzyme paired with a cofactor [e.g. a bile salt], will break apart the given food's matrix to release bio-accessible nutrients.)
> The necessity of stabilization tells you that the food is likely labile (as otherwise, why would they have needed to stabilize it?) — and therefore is unhealthy to be consumed on a continuous basis. (Unless it's milk and you're a baby.)
You're completely lost me here. You're asserting that because food goes bad, it shouldn't be consumed on a regular basis. That just doesn't track, even a little bit.
Maybe your assertion hinges on the definition of "continuous basis"? I don't know what that means, but, taking it face value, it sounds like nothing should be consumed on a continuous basis other than air.
> The bread you bake at home is ultra-processed; you're the one who ultra-processed it!
This doesn't track either. The common Nova classification for ultra processing leans heavily on the kinds of processes that happen in factories. It's the flour itself that makes bread ultra-processed, since the flour is ultra-processed. When I realized that the four-ingredient bread I make at home for my family is considered ultra-processed, I started paying a lot less attention to the entire discussion.
> The common Nova classification for ultra processing leans heavily on the kinds of processes that happen in factories. [...] I started paying a lot less attention to the entire discussion.
Yes, and that's my point: the Nova UPF label is silly, but you shouldn't let a bad definition get in the way of a good conceptual tool.
"Ultra-processed as any lay person would intuitively understand the concept from the name and a series of examples", and "Ultra-Processed Food as defined by the Nova classification", are two distinct — but not conflicting — concepts. Even if you don't care about the UPF label as Nova defines it, you should still care about whether or not things are "lower-case-u ultra-processed." The Nova definition might be silly, but the concept itself isn't.
If you prefer, I could use a different term, like "highly-processed" or "hyper-processed" here, to distinguish what I'm talking about from the Nova label. But personally, I think it makes sense to actually continue to use the term "ultra-processed", and to just think of Nova as defining the term in a way that overlaps with a useful definition, but which both includes and excludes things that a more-useful and intuitive definition of the term wouldn't. After all, all of Nova's other definitions on the same "spectrum" (unprocessed/minimally-processed, processed ingredients, and processed foods) are perfectly good and useful ones. It makes sense to take that series-of-terms and then extrapolate what moving further in the same direction would take you. And where it lands you is a place that is close to, but not equivalent to, Nova's definition of UPF. Which is the place I'm calling "lower-case-u ultra-processed."
I think it's worth thinking this way, rather than ignoring the Nova classifications altogether, because 1. you still get useful information from knowing that a food is in one of the other Nova categories; and 2. a food being a Nova-labelled UPF still tells you something; and that something may, in combination with what else you know about the food, be enough to tell you that the food is in fact a "lower-case-u ultra-processed" food.
> You're asserting that because food goes bad, it shouldn't be consumed on a regular basis. That just doesn't track, even a little bit.
Because food goes bad quickly, yes. (Or more narrowly, "goes bad quickly for the kind of food it is." But I do think it generalizes across foods, if you're careful about how you compare your apples to your oranges. ;)
Also, it's not a direct correlation. Lability (or its inverse, recalcitrance) is the denominator; but nutrient "load" is the numerator. A thing can be highly nutritively bio-accessible and be fine, if it's not nutrient-dense in the first place. Cucumber is liable but nutrient-sparse, so its high bio-accessibility does nothing to you.
But given two foods with the same density of a given nutrient, the easier your gut and/or bacteria breaks them down (and/or the more they've already been broken down), the more you should avoid them / more rarely you should consume them.
This is the generalization of the logic of "eat oranges, not orange juice", but taken past the trivial point of "because orange juice contains far more oranges than you'd normally eat" to the more interesting point of "even if you drank only the amount of orange juice that was in one orange, it'd still be worse for you than eating one orange, because no amount of chewing is going to break the orange down as thoroughly as a blender or juicer will, and so no orange will ever be digested and absorbed as quickly as orange juice will."
I would note that while many foods go bad (and this can give you a weak intuition about lability), ultra-processed foods would go bad really quickly if not for the chemical stabilizers in them, because all the processing has made them more labile than any whole food has ever naturally been. The ultra-processed versions of these foods would, if not for their stabilizers, go bad far more quickly than the "regular amount of processed" equivalents would.
If you could make Wonderbread with all the same steps the factories do, but just skip the part where they mix in stabilizers, the resulting product would never even make it from the factory to store shelves before going bad; let alone have a useful shelf lifetime. And my point is that knowing that can tell you something very important about the structure of Wonderbread, and about what it will do inside your gut.
I wore a glucose monitor for a few months and tested my blood sugar response to different foods. The worst spike I ever got was American Chinese food: rice+sugary sauce. Brown rice vs white rice makes no difference.
Ice cream didn’t make much of a spike - all that fat. Waffle with maple syrup and peanut butter is completely different profile than waffle without peanut butter.
Most important thing for my blood sugar was portion size. Eat a lot, get a big spike.
Frustrating to me that people argue so much about “processed” vs “unprocessed” food. The real issue I believe is portion sizes.
A boiled or fried egg is processed, but not ultra-processed. (The ovalbumin matrix in egg is denatured but not destroyed by just heating it up. Just like the protein matrix in a steak is denatured-but-not-destroyed by just heating it up.) It's still a whole food, per se.
But scrambled eggs, or an omelette, are closer to being ultra-processed; simply because you've mechanically emulsified the egg together, and in the process, have broken down that matrix. (Same reason that ground beef is ultra-processed.)
At that point, very small further additions can push what you might still think of as "just cooked eggs" into being ultra-processed. For example, just adding a sufficient amount of salt while cooking scrambled eggs could produce an ultra-processed result, since the disrupted matrix allows the salt to get in and break down cells and tissues, and then cooking those lysed cells and chemically-denatured tissues results in higher resulting lability / bio-accessibility of nutrients than cooking would have on its own.
But also, on a separate point: raw egg, like milk, is already one of those rare naturally-labile foods. (That's why developing embryos can make use of the nutrients therein. It's also why salmonella loves raw eggs.) Raw egg is not necessarily especially easily digested by humans (none of our gut enzymes are particularly good at taking apart a non-denatured ovalbumin matrix), but many species have evolved into obligate ovivory for a reason.
The Nova classification is generally how people interpret this stuff. Generally speaking ultra processing isn't something you do in your own kitchen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification
> Generally speaking ultra processing isn't something you do in your own kitchen
I don't think that's a useful distinction. Many people make pasta noodles or sausage in their own kitchens, for example, and both of those are ultra-processed by every definition.
Also, IMHO, it's a mistake to think of UPFs as only finished food products you get from the grocery store or from restaurants. Many ingredients people use in what they would very much insist is "home cooking", are themselves UPFs, and so cause the resulting "home-cooked" food to be a UPF.
The FDA's recent categorization of sandwiches as generally being UPFs, for example, is due in part to people using UPF breads like Wonderbread for sandwiches; and in part due to people using reconstituted/preserved deli meats in sandwiches; but it's also due to even people who think they're being healthy, smearing a UPF "sandwich spread" onto their sandwich bread at the end. (A grilled cheese grilled in butter is a highly-processed food. A grilled cheese grilled in mayo is a UPF, because shelf-stable grocery-store mayo is a UPF.)
Yes and pretty much all baby formula is bad. Vegetable oil is often the #1 ingredient and is not even close to having the same density as breast milk. It can be life saving, but it’s not an example of UPF being generally good.
Also supermarket whole wheat bread is very different than real bread if you look at the ingredients. It’s more like bread adjacent.
my wife describes ultra processed food as food that is basically pre digested for you before you eat it, which seems like a pretty good definition to me
I think that it's also literally all plant-based meat replacers (meaning products intended to mimic meat, rather than just replacing meat with plants).
Maybe true as long as you make it the same way at home as the ultra processed version from the store. But you usually can't since you don't have the machinery.
Homemade wheat bread made of just wheat/water/salt is an entirely different thing from most "whole wheat bread" in the food industry.
That's the point. Homemade white bread and store bought have the same nutritional profile. They're both hyper-palatable. The super fine milling of the flour and removal of the bran makes it super tasty and enables the body to convert it into glucose super quick.
A whole-grain bread made with stone milled flour is going to be far healthier for you than steel ground white bread even if the brown bread is technically UPF and the white bread is home made.
The true "natural" alternative would be a cracked-wheat porridge. That's about as far as you can get from hyper-palatable.
> The super fine milling of the flour and removal of the bran makes it super tasty
I disagree on this. Speaking only about homemade, white bread is tasteless and wheat bran and germ adds taste.
White bread pretty much tastes exactly like the sugar you pour into it, and wheat is the sort of mix of sour and sweet that makes an addictive taste - why Kool-Aid and soda are largely citric acid(sour) + sugar(sweet) + [random other stuff]. You can drink a larger volume of sugar in a shorter time through drinking Kool-Aid than you can eat in marshmallows.
Wheat bread as some sort of health food is a scam, though. You get a few more micronutrients, but the problem is that its a ton of carbs. Brown foods being associated with health was just some weird advertising heuristic that got hammered into us our entire lives.
Wheat bread simply tastes better. All of the seeds and gritty parts that they add to some of them are honestly just more marketing to people who think that things that are more difficult to eat are intrinsically better for you. There are plenty of other places to get your fiber than your bread.
It tastes better to you. Good for you. White bread continues to exist as a category because it's hyperpalatable; in fact, it's one of the canonical HPFs.
It is processed but not ultra-processed. You can look into this by a simple search: “is flour ultra processed” and I got a number of results explaining the difference.
Japan is probably evidence that the surrounding food culture matters at least as much as the existence of UPFs. You can sell plenty of processed food without getting the same outcome if portion sizes, eating habits, school meals, and daily activity are different. The marijuana comparison feels like a non sequitur, though.
>Japan has ultra processed foods and they don't seem to have an obesity epidemic.
Most of that's from a much stronger national guidance on weight control + societal expectations, but IIRC they also are gaining weight. Their ultra processed foods (in the salt and preservative sense) are also why they have one of the highest rates of stomach cancer.
> They also don't have a marijuana epidemic.
Not sure if I'd categorize the US as in a marijuana epidemic (and this is coming from someone who doesn't consume it and dislikes being around it) but even if we were, the states with the highest marijuana usage (west coast and NE) and the states with the highest obesity rates (deep south) are almost non-overlapping circles. If we're tying a drug to be obesity rates I'd be much more willing to believe it's the American propensity to chug large amounts of cheap 100-120 calories a pop beer.
Japan is one of the countries where people smoke literally everywhere. As for marijuana, it's highly illegal, it's one of the remnants of the colonial history there as everything apart from smoking and drinking is considered evil due to how China was devastated with opium.
Maybe 20 years ago, not so much today. There are a few places around town and a few indoor restaurants where public smoking is still permitted, but this is no longer true in most public spaces. Not on train platforms, not indoors in the vast majority of public spaces, it's just not that common and the number of smokers in Japan has significantly diminished over the last several decades.
There are 'smoking boxes' on some train platforms, but I rarely see those in use by more than a few people out of the several hundred who may be waiting. Marijuana is also 'highly' illegal but also not exactly hard to find for people who are 'hip' and it's also not aggressively enforced, much like speeding.
Also, Japan doesn't actually have a 'colonial history' having never been colonized by another nation.
I'm thinking you have just heard about Japan by rough description?
> Also, Japan doesn't actually have a 'colonial history' having never been colonized by another nation.
It was never colonized but I've often heard it talked about in a similar way due to the effects of the Commodore Perry and the post WWII occupation (i.e. see their infamous pornography laws), as well as neighboring affects from China's colonial history.
The infamous 'anti-pornography laws' actually predate Perry by a significant period of time. Those were a Tokugawa era law originally. Post WWII occupation has had very little actual impact on Japanese culture, no matter how impactful the occupiers think they were.
It's the first time I've seen this put forward, I thought the effects of occupation were obvious and undeniable. To me at least there is a clear influence in art/music/cinema, technology, and food. Though over time, it fuses to the point of being its own thing.
They walk everywhere. That is, they have a transit system that allows them to walk (and bike) everywhere. That combines with smaller portions and strong social pressure to remain trim.
Couple caveats:
1) There is a tradeoff in lower average body size/height, which doesn't seem to bother them as a whole, but which any individual athlete/model/actor/businessman might curse.
2) I know of several Japanese men in the 240-400 pound range. Many of them seem to enjoy being larger, but for those who don't, being Japanese in Japan wasn't a silver bullet.
I don't see this mentioned in the transcript. What is the basis for you mentioning it? Seems like a weird thing to throw in without explanation. I say this as someone that does not consume cannabis, btw, so this is not a defense of cannabis usage.
Japan may come up a lot in discussions about longevity, but doesn't Japan have a drinking culture that is very unhealthy? It's pretty well established that alcohol has a serious impact on health in numerous ways. There is even a condition called alcohol-related dementia.
Ultra processed food is about 50-60% of American calories, versus 38% in Japan [1]. Also try visiting a Japanese 7-11, there's tons of fresh-made food options with vegetables and such.
The concept of 'ultra-processed foods' in Japan has some significant differences from the rest of the world. The food safety regulations are actually quite strict. What follows is a list of some synthetic materials found in US foods which are PROHIBITED in Japanese consumables. So the statement 'Japan has ultra processed foods and they don't seem to have an obesity epidemic.' is a misunderstanding of what food might look like American Ultra-Processed food and is missing any of these toxic ingredients.
Azodicarbonamide (ADA) : Dough-conditioning/bleaching agent; oxidizes flour proteins to improve elasticity and whiteness. Currently found in some supermarket sandwich breads and hamburger/hot dog buns.
Potassium Bromate (KBrO₃) : Oxidizing agent that strengthens gluten structure and increases dough rise/volume. Classified a possible human carcinogen (IARC 2B); banned in the EU, Canada, and UK; California has banned it starting 2027. Still federally permitted in the US in trace residual amounts. Regional and bulk/wholesale bakery bread products.
Chlorine Gas / Chlorine Dioxide : Bleaching and maturing agents for wheat flour. Currently used in "bleached flour," a listed ingredient in many cake-mix and biscuit-mix products.
Ammonium Chloride (synthetic) : Yeast nutrient/dough conditioner that accelerates fermentation. Used in some commercial bread and cracker doughs as a processing aid.
2. Synthetic Antioxidants & Preservatives
Butylated Hydroxyanisole (BHA) / Butylated Hydroxytoluene (BHT) ; Synthetic antioxidants preventing fat/oil rancidity. NTP lists BHA as "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen." Some current chewing gum and packaged-snacks.
Tert-Butylated Hydroquinone (TBHQ) : Synthetic antioxidant preservative used at very low levels to extend shelf life of oils and fried/processed foods. Pop-Tarts (Kellanova) and Little Debbie snack cakes.
Propylparaben : Antifungal preservative. EU treats it as effectively banned over endocrine-disruption concerns; California has banned it in food starting 2027; it remains FDA-permitted and is under an active FDA chemical-safety review opened in 2024. Advocacy groups (EWG) have specifically petitioned makers like Entenmann's and Sara Lee to remove it.
Thiodipropionic Acid & Dilauryl Thiodipropionate : Synergist antioxidants used alongside BHA/BHT in fats and shortening.
Stearyl Citrate : Antioxidant/chelating agent in margarines and oil-based dressings.
Ethoxyquin : Antioxidant/color stabilizer, originally developed as a pesticide; used to preserve color in ground spices. Bulk and store-brand ground paprika and chili powder spice blends.
Stannous Chloride : Antioxidant/color-retention agent for canned foods. Canned white asparagus.
3. Emulsifiers, Stabilizers & Texturizers
Polysorbate 60 & Polysorbate 80 : Emulsifiers for oil/water blending in baked goods, ice cream, and creamers. Cool Whip (Kraft) and Coffee-Mate liquid/powdered creamers.
Synthetic Carboxymethyl Cellulose (CMC / Cellulose Gum) : Thickener/stabilizer preventing ice-crystal formation. Common ingredient in many mainstream ice creams (store-brand and name-brand alike — check the specific carton) and low-fat salad dressings.
Sucrose Acetate Isobutyrate (SAIB) : Weighting agent keeping citrus flavor oils suspended. Used in some citrus-flavored sports drinks and sodas currently on the market.
Dioctyl Sodium Sulfosuccinate (DSS / Docusate Sodium) : Wetting agent improving dispersibility of powders. Used in instant cocoa/hot chocolate mix formulations.
Oxystearin Anti-crystallizing agent keeping liquid vegetable oils clear under refrigeration. Used in some refrigerated bottled vegetable/salad oils, typically store-brand.
4. Synthetic Colorants
Titanium Dioxide : White opacifying/color additive. Banned as a food additive in the EU (2022); still FDA-approved federally (up to 1% by weight), under an open FDA safety review since 2023, and subject to a pending California ban effective 2027. Per FDA data cited by food-safety reporting, over 4,300 candy products currently contain it, along with many white frostings, powdered coffee creamers, and donut glazes.
FD&C Citrus Red No. 2 : Colorant with one narrow legal use: coloring the skins of Florida oranges (not the flesh, not general food products). Currently applied to some Florida orange peels sold in grocery stores.
Fast Green FCF (FD&C Green No. 3) : Synthetic green dye, low usage volume relative to other approved dyes. Currently found in some mint-flavored candies and canned green vegetable products with added color.
5. Anti-Caking & Coating Agents
Synthetic Magnesium Silicate (Synthetic Talc) : Anti-caking agent absorbing moisture in powders. Used in some current powdered spice blends and pre-shredded cheese as an anti-caking coating; brand presence varies enough that I'd want you to check the specific product's label rather than take a brand name from me.
Sodium Ferrocyanide (Yellow Prussiate of Soda) : Anti-caking agent in table and processed salt. Present in some current table salt formulations, including certain Morton's products, and in salt used within processed snack seasoning blends.
Modified Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) Coatings : Glossy protective film coating on high-sugar snack pieces. Yogurt-covered raisins and pretzels.
Synthetic Petroleum Waxes : Food-grade paraffin/microcrystalline waxes for candy shine and moisture barrier. Hard candies and chocolate-coated candy shells.
6. Chelating & Minor Functional Agents
Calcium Disodium EDTA : Chelating agent binding trace metals to prevent oxidation/discoloration. Kraft Mayo and Miracle Whip-type sandwich spreads, and in canned beans and some canned soft drinks.
Zinc Lactate : Zinc salt used for anti-cavity/breath-related function rather than classic preservation. Sugar-free chewing gums marketed for dental benefits (e.g., certain Trident and Orbit formulations)
7. Fortification Agents
Synthetic Iron Sources (Carbonyl Iron) : Reduced elemental iron powder fortifying "enriched" flour. Wonder Bread, most white sandwich breads, and in many fortified breakfast cereals.
8. Processing Solvents & Residues
Acetone : Industrial solvent used in extraction of some resins/oleoresins and fat/cocoa-butter processing; trace residues can remain.
Methylene Chloride (Dichloromethane) : Solvent used for coffee/tea decaffeination via direct extraction. FDA permits a 10 ppm residual limit specifically for this food use. "Traditional process" decaffeinated coffees that don't specify "Swiss Water" or "CO2 process" on the label .
9. Agricultural & Livestock Inputs (Not Added Directly to Food , Present via Animal-Derived Ingredients)
Ractopamine : Beta-agonist fed to pigs and cattle before slaughter to increase lean muscle growth. Banned in the EU, China, and Russia; still FDA-approved for US livestock. Because it's a feed input rather than a processing additive, it never appears on any processed-food label.
Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH/rBST) : Synthetic hormone used to increase dairy cow milk yield. Banned in the EU, Canada, and Japan; still FDA-approved in the US. Most major retailers and chains (Walmart, Kroger, Starbucks) now source rBST-free and label accordingly, so current use is concentrated in dairy supply chains that don't carry that label. Think about all the 'strawberry milk' and 'chocolate milk' drinks without this label.
So, no Japan does not have the same kinds of Ultra-Processed foods as the US, and for MANY other reasons doesn't have an obesity crisis.
They do have a functional educational system, and have plentiful availability of fresh fruits and vegetables within walking distance of nearly every citizen. The idea of US inner city 'fruit free' areas is perplexing in the extreme to their perceptions of "American Greatness."
I recently discovered just how much food engineering goes into products like potato chips and similar items, not only in the flavor, but also in the texture and even the sound it makes.
There's someone at the factory who basically spends their time eating samples from new batches to ensure they're exactly as expected.
Not sure why this comment by KurSix is marked dead:
>What stands out to me is that the real transfer wasn't a specific ingredient or recipe, it was institutional knowledge: how to engineer repeat consumption and then market the hell out of it
But this really is the gist of it. The execs from the Tobacco industry saw the writing on the wall, and moved over to the food industry where the knowledge of making things addictive to consume was applied to food.
agreed. the comments in here feel reactionary, not taking into account the sheer amount of influence marketing has on society. beyond just hyperpalatability, the tobacco companies also leveraged all they learned from their extremely successful advertising campaigns and applied it to foods
that meme image of Garfield saying 'you are not immune to propaganda' comes to mind. it's always the people who are the most confident that they aren't influenced by marketing that also have some of the most irrationally strong brand loyalties
Is Huel ultra processed food too? They promote themselves as healthy meals and I am long time subscriber. I keep telling myself that even if it is not like cooking from raw ingredients, it is still far from a greasy junk food at kebab shops and McDonalds.
Hyper-ultra-processed, yes. But, as others point out in these comments, a food's degree of processing doesn't determine its health value, although those two things are correlated.
Personally, my instincts would favor Huel over fast food, too. I'd be very interested in any study that tested this rigorously. Huel is far from anything "raw," but so long as all the nutritional components are still in there, one has to wonder if it's just as healthy.
This is kind of the point. We simply don't have a sufficiently good understanding of food and nutrition to be able to say "smoosh these nutrients ands other food derivatives together and you get a healthy food".
UPFs is exactly the smooshing, and is generally done to maintain palatability whilst saving money, not even in an attempt to make a healthy food. Sure, Huel has a different goal, but I'm not sure the end result is any different. Just because it's not hyper palatable, it doesn't mean it's healthy.
Reading through this and thinking about the problem in a blame-free way leads me to see the tobacco companies as a through-line for product packaging optimization that transcends any specific use. "The first patented cigarette-making machine was invented by Juan Nepomuceno Adorno of Mexico in 1847." [0] This puts high volume manufacture of cigarettes right at the cusp of the second industrial revolution with improvements in "steel-making processes, mass production, assembly lines, electrical grid systems, large-scale manufacture of machine tools, and use of advanced machinery in steam-powered factories." [1]
Blame free works with humans where you assume good intent.
It's harmful and dangerous with corporations with a proven history of lying and disregard for human lives and well being. Especially ones with a record of developing and optimizing addictive products.
any more "ethical" tobacco company got out competed. result: blame tobacco companies that survived.
People still smoke. any lies the tobacco companies sold to the public were either so old that few alive heard them, or believed them when they were told.
I think I mis-spoke when I wrote "blame-free" because while I come from a psychological-safety inquiry perspective, the term isn't quite descriptive. The purpose of dropping "blame" is that stopping inquiry there without understanding what lead to the "bad thing" leaves a lot of valuable knowledge on the table.
This is a interesting point. I gave some thought to the nature of what was being processed. In some ways another New World agricultural product gone industrial, cocoa, brought about some companies that at a minimum rival the tobacco companies for contributions to ultra-processed foods, examples Nestle and Coca-Cola.
Like tobacco, cocoa is not an essential food and also has psychoactive components. Thus companies formed around industrializing the material must develop methods of persuasion and navigate oppositional socio-political pressure. Like the sibling comment's observation that "any more "ethical" tobacco company got out competed," the most successful were especially suited for adopting other food production lines both from an industrial-technical and a socio-political perspective.
> Buying into the food industry also facilitated the tobacco companies in applying the knowledge, skills, and strategies developed from their tobacco businesses to another business domain in ultraprocessed foods and beverages. For example, Philip Morris applied its aggressive marketing tactics developed from its tobacco businesses to market ultraprocessed foods to the US public. Furthermore, US tobacco companies and their food companies were systematically involved with developing hyper-palatable foods, which have elevated addictive properties.
>Tobacco-owned foods were 29% more likely to be classified as fat and sodium hyper-palatable foods (HPF) and 80% more likely to be classified as carbohydrate and sodium HPF than foods that were not tobacco-owned between 1988 and 2001 (P-values = 0.005–0.009).
> Tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds led the transition to sweetened beverages in 1963 when it purchased Hawaiian Punch from Pacific Hawaiian Products Company, according to the documents. The beverage previously had been promoted to adults as a cocktail mixer, but R.J. Reynolds sought to beef up the drink’s “Punchy” mascot – a counterpart to the “Joe Camel” cartoon character the company used to promote cigarettes – and featured it on toys, schoolbook covers, comics, tumblers, clothing and TV commercials. Punchy became the “best salesman the beverage ever had,” according to tobacco industry documents.
> In the ’60s and ’70s, the company conducted taste tests with children and mothers to evaluate sweetness, colors and flavors for Hawaiian Punch product line extensions. The children’s preferences were prioritized, the authors noted.
> By 1983, R.J. Reynolds introduced the nation’s first juice box, marketed as a “handy little carton that comes with its very own straw.” This innovation was largely responsible for a 34 percent jump in sales, according to industry documents.
> At the end of 1988, Philip Morris Companies purchased Kraft for $12.9 billion. In 1989, Kraft merged with Philip Morris's General Foods unit—makers of Oscar Mayer meats, Maxwell House coffee, Jell-O gelatin, Budget Gourmet frozen dinners, Entenmann's baked goods, Kool-Aid, Crystal Light and Tang powdered beverage mixes, Post Cereals, Shake 'n Bake flavored coatings and numerous other packaged foods—as Kraft General Foods. Its aggressive product development was reversed after the merger, as it became slow in addressing issues on its product lines due to its size, and also company politics.[4]
> In 2000, Philip Morris (renamed Altria in 2003) acquired Nabisco Holdings for $18.9 billion and merged the company with Kraft Foods the same year.[212][4] Also in 2000, the company acquired Balance Bar.[213] In 2001, Philip Morris sold 280 million Kraft shares via the third-largest IPO of all time, retaining an 88.1% stake in the company.
Okay... Pop Tarts are also Kellogg's, not a tobacco company. But let me pick some other examples.
Eggo waffles predate RJ Reynolds getting into this by 10 years.
Twinkies were introduced in the 1930s.
I'm not defending ultra-processed foods nor tobacco companies. I'm just saying the authors have a major blind spot if they think the concept or popularity of ultra-processed foods started in the 1960s.
The Twinkie of 1940 is very different from the Twinkie of 2000. Lots of old and sort of OK things got corrupted when pulled into the corporate-Zerg-slime
Interesting, but I wouldn't oversimplify this to one cause. Home cooking of meals and making of lemonade/fruit punch used to be a norm. Society chose to move towards taking a lazy way out with microwave dinners and takeouts. On the other hand, Asian countries have healthier fresh made bento boxes in convenience stores so it's not time saving alone. At the end of the day, companies deliver what consumers want and try to discern demand, what else are they supposed to do?
> “About 60% of the calories in Americans’ diets are from ultra-processed foods,” says Schmidt, who spoke at a UC Berkeley event in May. “In the mid-’80s, when we see ultra-processed foods starting to scale up in the American food supply, we also see obesity starting to really rise. That is the moment when some of the largest food companies are owned by tobacco companies.”
A reminder here that while there's an important directional claim behind stuff like this, "ultra-processed food" is an extremely silly category that does violence to the argument.
UPFs include:
* Whole wheat bread (most supermarket bread is stabilized, which you might not like aesthetically, but it isn't doing anything to your health)
* Almost all yogurt products, flavored or otherwise
* Literally all baby formula
* Any kind of plant-based meat replacement
* Many supermarket hummus brands (again: stabilizers and emulsifiers)
You get to "ultra-processed" simply by making things shelf-stable, and shelf-stability isn't an actual health problem (kind of the opposite).
You get to problematic through hyperpalatability, which is another, different target of modern food engineering. Hyperpalatable foods are almost always UPFs, but the other direction doesn't hold at all.
> most supermarket bread is stabilized, which you might not like aesthetically, but it isn't doing anything to your health
That's a large assertion to make without evidence. Personally, I'm suspicious of all antimicrobial agents' effects on gut microbiota and the knock-on effects on health.
I mean, he's not presenting the evidence here in a hacker news comment, but that doesn't mean the evidence doesn't exist. There are a bunch of different categories of stabilizers, and only some of them have antimicrobial properties -- most are about maintaining moisture and loaf volume over time.
There are three substances that are predominantly used to inhibit mold growth, though: calcium propionate, potassium sorbate, and sodium benzoate.
The first two are extremely well understood and considered safe globally. The third is still considered safe, but might have some interactions with vitamin C that lead to benzene formation to the tune of several parts per billion. The FDA considers this safe, and has for some time.
So you dislike vinegar, salt, and any fermented foods that suppress microbial agents?
> So you dislike
You said dislike. I said suspicious. One's an opinion, the other an invitation for science.
> vinegar, salt, and any fermented foods that suppress microbial agents?
In the gut microbiota broad system sequencing experiments I've consumed reports from, even altering diet from one primary food source to another can result in complete restructuring of the gut ecosystem as quickly as within 24 hours. And switching back to the original food source didn't return to an identical gut ecosystem. Many studies show direct connections between gut microbiota and specific and broad health impacts.
So I think suspicious is right. There is much yet to be learned.
> I'm suspicious of all antimicrobial agents' effects on gut microbiota
Boy do I wish people would talk like this, instead of the "ultra-processed foods" bullshit.
The Atlantic had a stupid as hell article a few days ago with a title that really boils the entire op down: Nobody Knows What Ultra-Processed Food Is"
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/08/kennedy-ultraproc...
"Ultra-Processed Food" is a phrase. It is not a thing. If you want to use it for its media traction, and "nobody knows what it is," define it before you use it.
Instead, everybody has gone for "it is so mysterious," then goes on to cite a bunch of studies about "ultra-processed foods," treating it as a category that categorical statements can be made about.
Name the chemicals, name the processes. They don't because these chemicals and processes are endorsed by massive conglomerates who can pull advertising and lobbying money. When you're vague as hell about everything, it's a case-by-case basis that only affects people who can't bribe as well as others.
And about the people talking about sugars, salt and fats crammed into everything, I'm convinced they never cook. That's taste, and you can pour it in yourself just as well as a corporation. The reason people love it is because it tastes good. Salt isn't even bad for you, it's in fact very, very good for you because it makes micronutrient-rich foods palatable.
Arguing that standard manufactured foods and foods marketed to children are too rich is a different argument, and most importantly for this conversation has nothing to do with the ultraprocessed foods question. Massive food companies are perfectly happy to remove all the fats and sugars from your food and replace them with some weird alcohol sugar or a new form of teflon they just invented a week ago, and to charge you a premium for the privilege of eating it. They literally did that throughout the 80s and 90s.
The narrative intentionally confusing what the above refers to as "hyperpalatability" (a term which is as good as any) with "ultra-processed" (a propaganda term) is a gift to the food industry. It in fact even favors monopolies who can afford to put in the bizarre chemical constructions they'll use as alternatives, and to pay regulators to look the other way.
"Ultra-processed foods" is a phrase meant for advertising - even the prefix "ultra-" reminds me of a cigarette ad, describing the filter. The filter was a device which ostensibly makes cigarettes healthier, but instead allows you to smoke far more than you would otherwise, and leads to worse health outcomes. Isn't smoking bad? Smoke our ultra-filtered cigarettes and breathe easy!
The featured article/podcast has the person presenting define "ultra-processed foods" as industrial hyper-palatable foods.
However, it focuses more about how the foods were marketed, and in particular, that the same marketing playbook developed by tobacco companies to market Marlboro and Camel cigarettes was then used to sell Kool-Aid and Miller beer.
Basically, the execs at Phillip Morris and R. J. Reynolds realized that beer, Kool-Aid/sugar drinks, Oreos and cigarettes were more or less all the same type of products - affordable, habit-forming small luxury goods people enjoyed putting in their mouths, and applied the expertise they'd developed on one type of this market (cigarettes) to the rest of it.
Thanks for articulating this. I've had a problem over the past 20 years with terms like "screen time" and "ultra-processed foods" because there's a kernel of something that really matters somewhere in the argument, but the use of overly broad terms sort of kills things. I appreciate you calling out the nuance, and I agree with you that hyperpalatability is the main issue -- like applying the principles of TikTok to food.
> hyperpalatability is the main issue
Hyperpalatability is a different issue. The main issue is that our foods are chemical factories. Turning it into a "food is too good" problem is just a trick to blame the consumer for not being mature enough to forgo pleasure.
Food being good is not a crisis. Xylitol giving people heart attacks might be. Ingredients concocted in a lab never being studied at all until someone sues is a problem. Shifting the argument to "cheeseburgers are bad because they're good" is a really obvious distraction.
There is literally no profit in making foods "hyperpalatable." Food companies would be just as happy selling you food that tastes like shit. If anything, in actuality commercial food has become worse and less palatable over time due to substitutions of cheaper ingredients. The argument is being shifted from an important one about power to a dumb moral panic. The people who love this are orthorexics who love telling people how their health is their own fault because they are self-indulgent. There is nothing more self-indulgent and self-praising than this discourse.
That argument is hyperpalatable to orthorexics.
This is like the Mexican coke argument all over again. Everybody wants there to be an industrial bogeyman to blame for American nutritional health problems. Wouldn't it be awesome if we could fix problems for people simply by replacing industrial corn syrup with wholesome cane sugar?
Of course, there is literally no difference healthwise between the two products. But that's hard to hear. It means you have to accept that sweetened soft drinks are just bad for you, full stop, and you have to treat them the same way you'd treat alcohol (I said, as an enthusiastic social drinker).
So it goes with UPFs writ large. Wouldn't it be great if we could just make our foods wholesome and pure and not "chemical factories"? In fact: it would make essentially no difference to our health; in fact it would be a health problem if it led people to believe that bakery outputs were healthful and stabilized unsweetened skyr was dangerous.
The entire problem here is that we've gotten incredibly good at engineering food for hyperpalatability, which leads people to make truly bad choices about what to eat habitually. You could reasonably regulate that practice! But you'd want to find a way to do it without doing Mercola science and taking healthful, affordable shelf-stable products off the shelves for no reason.
Your "no profit in hyperpalatable foods" thing, I don't get at all. Maybe if you tried to explain it again. Sounds like the opposite of the truth.
Shelf-stable hummus and Doritos can both be "ultra-processed", but that doesn't tell you much about why one might encourage overconsumption. Hyperpalatability seems much closer to the actual claim the article is trying to make.
I think it literally is the claim the article is trying to make, but "UPF" is the on-trend term, despite the fact that most UPFs aren't engineered for hyperpalatability. It's a problem!
I think someone has really mislead you on yoghurt. If you get plain, natural yoghurt it’s not ultra processed.
It sort of illustrates the uselessness of the terms. Yogurt is made by sterilizing (likely homogenized) milk and introducing microorganisms that carry out some desired chemical reactions. They produce lactic acid, which is a stabilizer.
Everyone apparently knows that those are good things, so they don't count.
>> They produce lactic acid, which is a stabilizer.
Is it? The role of lactic acid in yogurt is to hydrolyze milk proteins and turn them into solids, so you can eat it with a spoon.
Nobody seems to have noticed the "product" next to "yogurt":
>> * Almost all yogurt products, flavored or otherwise
If we weren't on HN I'd say that's a subtle engagement hack calculated to generate maximum confusion and irate debate in the comments below. But we're on HN and good faith etc.
So, yes, "yogurt products" are all going to be ultra-processed not least because they will have to destroy the gel matrix of yogurt to incorporate whatever other ingredients they must like fruit juice or sugar, stabilisers, emulsifiers etc. Actually I guess they must include the stabilisers and emulsifiers because they mix in flavours and therefore destroy the yogurt gel matrix, which would otherwise result in an unpleasant gloopy mess.
Speaking of course in all this from the privilege of a summer in Greece where I've start every morning since June with a tub of 150g of fresh (not strained) goat's milk yogurt with the skin on and with a (European) teaspoonfull of honey.
Not healthy, you understand. Not with all the saturated fats and sugars. But, boy, is it palatable.
That's the point. The ultra-processing of shelf-stable unsweetened yogurt food products has nothing to do with engineering it for palatability. And yet they're UPFs, and you could easily ship a highly sweetened dessert yogurt product that would be far less healthy without tripping a UPF standard.
Flavored yoghurt is often candy adjacent, but sneeks under the radar as a health food "It's probiotic!"
No. And the way you're wrong about this is important. Any plain whole milk yogurt thickened or stabilized with starches or pectin is a UPF; Kroger's Plain Whole Milk, for instance, is a UPF and it isn't sweetened.
(For what it's worth, I really dislike yogurt and would not in 1000 years consume a sweetened yogurt product, though I do work skyr into every other meal these days for protein-maxxing reasons).
Yeah, this is totally true. A Greek yogurt is considered minimally processed, not ultra processed. The problem is, far and away, the majority of yogurt sold is fruit-flavored yogurt, which is considered ultra-processed. Icelandic yogurt and Greek yogurt are premium niche yogurts.
I guess all I'm saying is that for the majority of people eating yogurt, it's an ultra-processed food.
The majority of people in which part of the world? Certainly not e.g. in the Eastern Med and the Balkans, I can assure you of that.
With the exception, maybe, of whole wheat bread (it seems they sometimes add extra wheat gluten, technically an additive but yes, silly), these all seem right to me? Especially meat replacements, they're often incredibly highly processed.
Yoghurt is one you seem to be mistaken on. Yoghurt can be considered group 1, it just often contains thickeners, sweeteners, flavourings, etc. Especially if low-fat.
You're right of course that hyperpalatability is a bigger problem. And you don't have to agree that UPFs are something you need to avoid. But I don't think that makes it a silly category.
It’s a silly category to relate to health because, for example, meat replacements are UPF but are also typically much healthier than meat. Obviously that’s not always true, but most of the time it is. Basically all Americans can benefit from eating less meat, especially red meat.
Ultra-processing is not just used to make more calorie-dense palatable food. It’s also used to make less calorie-dense food and enrich food with vitamins and macros you need for healthy living, like fiber.
I mean, compare the ultra-processed high fiber tortillas to the natural tortillas. The high fiber ones have less calories, less carbs, are more satiating, and are overall healthier. They also taste worse, I.e. are less palatable.
Ultra-processing and palatability are really orthogonal IMO. You can use processing to make palatable food, but you don’t have to. Look at traditional fast food - burgers, fries, fried chicken. You can trivially make any of that with no processing. It’s still unhealthy and ultra palatable. Cutting up a chicken at home and deep-frying it doesn’t magically make it healthy.
Or go one step further, and look at the frying itself. We have access to processed refined oils. But if you don’t use them and go the old fashioned way, with lard frying, is it healthier or less palatable?
No, actually, it’s tastier and much less healthy. You get 10x the saturated fat and way more calories.
And I’ll get ahead of the anti-science anti-seed-oil people who just read that. We know, for a fact, that eating more saturated fat increases your risk of heart disease and cancer. Just because something is naturally or minimally processed does not make it healthy, health is much more complex than that.
> You get to problematic through hyperpalatability, which is another, different target of modern food engineering
I don't think even that is problematic by itself. You need to apply hyper palatable techniques to high calorie nutrient poor food for it to be a problem.
Getting people addicted to something that's mostly protein or fiber or water packed with important micro nutrients would not be a bad thing at all. That's not what the food companies are doing (because empty calories are cheaper) but it's a perfectly good strategy we need more of.
every once in a while i wonder why miracle berries can't be leveraged at scale to make ultranutritious food taste great. but it always feels like a thought with an obvious answer i am too stupid to deduce.
> You get to "ultra-processed" simply by making things shelf-stable, and shelf-stability isn't an actual health problem (kind of the opposite).
I would point out that many whole foods are generally shelf-stable (over at least weeks, if not months) without requiring the introduction of chemical stabilizers that don't otherwise "belong."
Chemical stabilizers are generally needed for shelf stability in ultra-processed foods, because of one of the other defining characteristics of ultra-processed foods: their matrix has been disrupted (or constructed anew) such that the food is now highly labile (biochemical term: "labile organic matter"), i.e. very easy to break down into nutrients. Which applies not only to you breaking such foods down in your gut, but also to bacteria and fungi breaking these foods down on the shelf.
And as it so happens, because these foods are labile, any such nutrients that do come from breaking down the food, come very quickly. Labile carbohydrates are high-glycemic-index insulin-spiking carbohydrates. Labile fats are atherosclerosis-inducing fats. Etc.
Your body evolved to process (metabolize, remove from circulation, etc.) metabolic inputs in an environment where most available foods were the opposite of labile (a.k.a. recalcitrant organic matter). So most meals would give a slow/gentle level of metabolic throughput; with rare spikes of higher throughput from the rare natural labile food, and then plenty of low-throughput time to recover from such events. Your body didn't evolve to be able to deal with getting high-throughput metabolic input spikes from every meal.
And this is why the the presence of chemical stabilizers in a food is actually a very helpful criterion in the definition of "ultra-processed food"! The necessity of stabilization tells you that the food is likely labile (as otherwise, why would they have needed to stabilize it?) — and therefore is unhealthy to be consumed on a continuous basis. (Unless it's milk and you're a baby.)
But note that the stabilizer isn't itself the problem. Bread is ultra-processed even without a stabilizer, because bread is a labile food with weak matrix integrity. The bread you bake at home is ultra-processed; you're the one who ultra-processed it!
The "rules" for UPFs don't assert home-baked bread as a UPF, but that's because the point of the UPF designation is to label commercial foods, and more specifically, to draw a hard-line boundary based on objectively-measurable characteristics that industry players can't argue with or lie about. And lability / matrix integrity, while quantifiable, isn't something with a clear objective way to reduce it to a single number†; so any definition of UPF based on lability would result in endless arguments/pushback from industry players insisting the FDA is "calculating it wrong."
But in your own personal life, the definition of "ultra-processed" you should be carrying around in your head and evaluating foods by, should be one that includes lability.
† (Instead, lability is a high-dimensional measurement of how efficiently any single digestive enzyme, and/or any specific combination of enzymes, and/or any enzyme paired with a cofactor [e.g. a bile salt], will break apart the given food's matrix to release bio-accessible nutrients.)
> The necessity of stabilization tells you that the food is likely labile (as otherwise, why would they have needed to stabilize it?) — and therefore is unhealthy to be consumed on a continuous basis. (Unless it's milk and you're a baby.)
You're completely lost me here. You're asserting that because food goes bad, it shouldn't be consumed on a regular basis. That just doesn't track, even a little bit.
Maybe your assertion hinges on the definition of "continuous basis"? I don't know what that means, but, taking it face value, it sounds like nothing should be consumed on a continuous basis other than air.
> The bread you bake at home is ultra-processed; you're the one who ultra-processed it!
This doesn't track either. The common Nova classification for ultra processing leans heavily on the kinds of processes that happen in factories. It's the flour itself that makes bread ultra-processed, since the flour is ultra-processed. When I realized that the four-ingredient bread I make at home for my family is considered ultra-processed, I started paying a lot less attention to the entire discussion.
> The common Nova classification for ultra processing leans heavily on the kinds of processes that happen in factories. [...] I started paying a lot less attention to the entire discussion.
Yes, and that's my point: the Nova UPF label is silly, but you shouldn't let a bad definition get in the way of a good conceptual tool.
"Ultra-processed as any lay person would intuitively understand the concept from the name and a series of examples", and "Ultra-Processed Food as defined by the Nova classification", are two distinct — but not conflicting — concepts. Even if you don't care about the UPF label as Nova defines it, you should still care about whether or not things are "lower-case-u ultra-processed." The Nova definition might be silly, but the concept itself isn't.
If you prefer, I could use a different term, like "highly-processed" or "hyper-processed" here, to distinguish what I'm talking about from the Nova label. But personally, I think it makes sense to actually continue to use the term "ultra-processed", and to just think of Nova as defining the term in a way that overlaps with a useful definition, but which both includes and excludes things that a more-useful and intuitive definition of the term wouldn't. After all, all of Nova's other definitions on the same "spectrum" (unprocessed/minimally-processed, processed ingredients, and processed foods) are perfectly good and useful ones. It makes sense to take that series-of-terms and then extrapolate what moving further in the same direction would take you. And where it lands you is a place that is close to, but not equivalent to, Nova's definition of UPF. Which is the place I'm calling "lower-case-u ultra-processed."
I think it's worth thinking this way, rather than ignoring the Nova classifications altogether, because 1. you still get useful information from knowing that a food is in one of the other Nova categories; and 2. a food being a Nova-labelled UPF still tells you something; and that something may, in combination with what else you know about the food, be enough to tell you that the food is in fact a "lower-case-u ultra-processed" food.
> You're asserting that because food goes bad, it shouldn't be consumed on a regular basis. That just doesn't track, even a little bit.
Because food goes bad quickly, yes. (Or more narrowly, "goes bad quickly for the kind of food it is." But I do think it generalizes across foods, if you're careful about how you compare your apples to your oranges. ;)
Also, it's not a direct correlation. Lability (or its inverse, recalcitrance) is the denominator; but nutrient "load" is the numerator. A thing can be highly nutritively bio-accessible and be fine, if it's not nutrient-dense in the first place. Cucumber is liable but nutrient-sparse, so its high bio-accessibility does nothing to you.
But given two foods with the same density of a given nutrient, the easier your gut and/or bacteria breaks them down (and/or the more they've already been broken down), the more you should avoid them / more rarely you should consume them.
This is the generalization of the logic of "eat oranges, not orange juice", but taken past the trivial point of "because orange juice contains far more oranges than you'd normally eat" to the more interesting point of "even if you drank only the amount of orange juice that was in one orange, it'd still be worse for you than eating one orange, because no amount of chewing is going to break the orange down as thoroughly as a blender or juicer will, and so no orange will ever be digested and absorbed as quickly as orange juice will."
I would note that while many foods go bad (and this can give you a weak intuition about lability), ultra-processed foods would go bad really quickly if not for the chemical stabilizers in them, because all the processing has made them more labile than any whole food has ever naturally been. The ultra-processed versions of these foods would, if not for their stabilizers, go bad far more quickly than the "regular amount of processed" equivalents would.
If you could make Wonderbread with all the same steps the factories do, but just skip the part where they mix in stabilizers, the resulting product would never even make it from the factory to store shelves before going bad; let alone have a useful shelf lifetime. And my point is that knowing that can tell you something very important about the structure of Wonderbread, and about what it will do inside your gut.
I wore a glucose monitor for a few months and tested my blood sugar response to different foods. The worst spike I ever got was American Chinese food: rice+sugary sauce. Brown rice vs white rice makes no difference.
Ice cream didn’t make much of a spike - all that fat. Waffle with maple syrup and peanut butter is completely different profile than waffle without peanut butter.
Most important thing for my blood sugar was portion size. Eat a lot, get a big spike.
Frustrating to me that people argue so much about “processed” vs “unprocessed” food. The real issue I believe is portion sizes.
By this definition, a cooked egg is ultra processed, but a raw egg isn’t?
That depends!
A boiled or fried egg is processed, but not ultra-processed. (The ovalbumin matrix in egg is denatured but not destroyed by just heating it up. Just like the protein matrix in a steak is denatured-but-not-destroyed by just heating it up.) It's still a whole food, per se.
But scrambled eggs, or an omelette, are closer to being ultra-processed; simply because you've mechanically emulsified the egg together, and in the process, have broken down that matrix. (Same reason that ground beef is ultra-processed.)
At that point, very small further additions can push what you might still think of as "just cooked eggs" into being ultra-processed. For example, just adding a sufficient amount of salt while cooking scrambled eggs could produce an ultra-processed result, since the disrupted matrix allows the salt to get in and break down cells and tissues, and then cooking those lysed cells and chemically-denatured tissues results in higher resulting lability / bio-accessibility of nutrients than cooking would have on its own.
But also, on a separate point: raw egg, like milk, is already one of those rare naturally-labile foods. (That's why developing embryos can make use of the nutrients therein. It's also why salmonella loves raw eggs.) Raw egg is not necessarily especially easily digested by humans (none of our gut enzymes are particularly good at taking apart a non-denatured ovalbumin matrix), but many species have evolved into obligate ovivory for a reason.
The Nova classification is generally how people interpret this stuff. Generally speaking ultra processing isn't something you do in your own kitchen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification
> Generally speaking ultra processing isn't something you do in your own kitchen
I don't think that's a useful distinction. Many people make pasta noodles or sausage in their own kitchens, for example, and both of those are ultra-processed by every definition.
Also, IMHO, it's a mistake to think of UPFs as only finished food products you get from the grocery store or from restaurants. Many ingredients people use in what they would very much insist is "home cooking", are themselves UPFs, and so cause the resulting "home-cooked" food to be a UPF.
The FDA's recent categorization of sandwiches as generally being UPFs, for example, is due in part to people using UPF breads like Wonderbread for sandwiches; and in part due to people using reconstituted/preserved deli meats in sandwiches; but it's also due to even people who think they're being healthy, smearing a UPF "sandwich spread" onto their sandwich bread at the end. (A grilled cheese grilled in butter is a highly-processed food. A grilled cheese grilled in mayo is a UPF, because shelf-stable grocery-store mayo is a UPF.)
No, none of pasta, noodles or home made sausages are UPFs by the Nova classification.
Another confusing point: a cooked steak is labile, but salted beef jerky is not. Can we draw any health conclusions from this?
Yes and pretty much all baby formula is bad. Vegetable oil is often the #1 ingredient and is not even close to having the same density as breast milk. It can be life saving, but it’s not an example of UPF being generally good.
Also supermarket whole wheat bread is very different than real bread if you look at the ingredients. It’s more like bread adjacent.
> Vegetable oil is often the #1 ingredient and is not even close to having the same density as breast milk
Density of what?
my wife describes ultra processed food as food that is basically pre digested for you before you eat it, which seems like a pretty good definition to me
That’s why we cook food. Cooked grain is way more nutritious than raw grain. The kitchen is an external stomach.
theres a difference between cooked rice and ritz crackers
ritz crackers are basically already digested before you eat them
Seems like that would include all fermented foods.
> UPFs include:
> * Ultra-processed whole wheat bread
> * Ultra-processed yogurt products
> * Literally all baby formula
> * Ultra-processed plant-based meat replacement
> * Ultra-processed hummus brands (again: stabilizers and emulsifiers)
There, fixed that for you.
(I don't know about baby formula, but granting you that one.)
> * Ultra-processed plant-based meat replacement
There, fixed that for you.
I think that it's also literally all plant-based meat replacers (meaning products intended to mimic meat, rather than just replacing meat with plants).
Tofu is often used as a meat replacement and is Nova classification 3 at most.
Most of the things you listed are highly processed foods that are not good for you and will contribute to obesity.
They're not 'highly processed' in a way that makes them contribute to obesity any more than the same thing made at home.
Maybe true as long as you make it the same way at home as the ultra processed version from the store. But you usually can't since you don't have the machinery.
Homemade wheat bread made of just wheat/water/salt is an entirely different thing from most "whole wheat bread" in the food industry.
Same for yogurt etc.
That's the point. Homemade white bread and store bought have the same nutritional profile. They're both hyper-palatable. The super fine milling of the flour and removal of the bran makes it super tasty and enables the body to convert it into glucose super quick.
A whole-grain bread made with stone milled flour is going to be far healthier for you than steel ground white bread even if the brown bread is technically UPF and the white bread is home made.
The true "natural" alternative would be a cracked-wheat porridge. That's about as far as you can get from hyper-palatable.
> The super fine milling of the flour and removal of the bran makes it super tasty
I disagree on this. Speaking only about homemade, white bread is tasteless and wheat bran and germ adds taste.
White bread pretty much tastes exactly like the sugar you pour into it, and wheat is the sort of mix of sour and sweet that makes an addictive taste - why Kool-Aid and soda are largely citric acid(sour) + sugar(sweet) + [random other stuff]. You can drink a larger volume of sugar in a shorter time through drinking Kool-Aid than you can eat in marshmallows.
Wheat bread as some sort of health food is a scam, though. You get a few more micronutrients, but the problem is that its a ton of carbs. Brown foods being associated with health was just some weird advertising heuristic that got hammered into us our entire lives.
Wheat bread simply tastes better. All of the seeds and gritty parts that they add to some of them are honestly just more marketing to people who think that things that are more difficult to eat are intrinsically better for you. There are plenty of other places to get your fiber than your bread.
It tastes better to you. Good for you. White bread continues to exist as a category because it's hyperpalatable; in fact, it's one of the canonical HPFs.
You don’t make home made whole wheat bread, because you don’t have a wheat mill. You use flour, which is ultra-processed.
Your homemade bread is ultra-processed. But the process of turning wheat into flour is not magically unhealthy. It doesn’t work that way.
That's what I meant, but you put it a bit more clearly.
I do know a lot of people who grind their own flour fresh - that is real homemade bread and not ultra processed, and agreed, not magically unhealthy.
Whole wheat is not ultra processed though?
It is processed but not ultra-processed. You can look into this by a simple search: “is flour ultra processed” and I got a number of results explaining the difference.
White flour though, generally is
Also not “highly processed” in ways that weren’t common 80 years ago or more, which cuts against the correlation->causation connection here.
Japan has ultra processed foods and they don't seem to have an obesity epidemic.
They do have a strong education system that teaches cooking and food budgeting and related.
They also don't have a marijuana epidemic.
Japan is probably evidence that the surrounding food culture matters at least as much as the existence of UPFs. You can sell plenty of processed food without getting the same outcome if portion sizes, eating habits, school meals, and daily activity are different. The marijuana comparison feels like a non sequitur, though.
>Japan has ultra processed foods and they don't seem to have an obesity epidemic.
Most of that's from a much stronger national guidance on weight control + societal expectations, but IIRC they also are gaining weight. Their ultra processed foods (in the salt and preservative sense) are also why they have one of the highest rates of stomach cancer.
> They also don't have a marijuana epidemic.
Not sure if I'd categorize the US as in a marijuana epidemic (and this is coming from someone who doesn't consume it and dislikes being around it) but even if we were, the states with the highest marijuana usage (west coast and NE) and the states with the highest obesity rates (deep south) are almost non-overlapping circles. If we're tying a drug to be obesity rates I'd be much more willing to believe it's the American propensity to chug large amounts of cheap 100-120 calories a pop beer.
Japan is one of the countries where people smoke literally everywhere. As for marijuana, it's highly illegal, it's one of the remnants of the colonial history there as everything apart from smoking and drinking is considered evil due to how China was devastated with opium.
Maybe 20 years ago, not so much today. There are a few places around town and a few indoor restaurants where public smoking is still permitted, but this is no longer true in most public spaces. Not on train platforms, not indoors in the vast majority of public spaces, it's just not that common and the number of smokers in Japan has significantly diminished over the last several decades.
There are 'smoking boxes' on some train platforms, but I rarely see those in use by more than a few people out of the several hundred who may be waiting. Marijuana is also 'highly' illegal but also not exactly hard to find for people who are 'hip' and it's also not aggressively enforced, much like speeding.
Also, Japan doesn't actually have a 'colonial history' having never been colonized by another nation.
I'm thinking you have just heard about Japan by rough description?
> Also, Japan doesn't actually have a 'colonial history' having never been colonized by another nation.
It was never colonized but I've often heard it talked about in a similar way due to the effects of the Commodore Perry and the post WWII occupation (i.e. see their infamous pornography laws), as well as neighboring affects from China's colonial history.
The infamous 'anti-pornography laws' actually predate Perry by a significant period of time. Those were a Tokugawa era law originally. Post WWII occupation has had very little actual impact on Japanese culture, no matter how impactful the occupiers think they were.
It's the first time I've seen this put forward, I thought the effects of occupation were obvious and undeniable. To me at least there is a clear influence in art/music/cinema, technology, and food. Though over time, it fuses to the point of being its own thing.
Yeah I was going to say I don’t remember seeing smokers anywhere other than the ‘box of shame’
People definitely do not smoke everywhere in 2026.
They walk everywhere. That is, they have a transit system that allows them to walk (and bike) everywhere. That combines with smaller portions and strong social pressure to remain trim.
Couple caveats:
1) There is a tradeoff in lower average body size/height, which doesn't seem to bother them as a whole, but which any individual athlete/model/actor/businessman might curse.
2) I know of several Japanese men in the 240-400 pound range. Many of them seem to enjoy being larger, but for those who don't, being Japanese in Japan wasn't a silver bullet.
> They also don't have a marijuana epidemic.
I don't see this mentioned in the transcript. What is the basis for you mentioning it? Seems like a weird thing to throw in without explanation. I say this as someone that does not consume cannabis, btw, so this is not a defense of cannabis usage.
Japan may come up a lot in discussions about longevity, but doesn't Japan have a drinking culture that is very unhealthy? It's pretty well established that alcohol has a serious impact on health in numerous ways. There is even a condition called alcohol-related dementia.
Ultra processed food is about 50-60% of American calories, versus 38% in Japan [1]. Also try visiting a Japanese 7-11, there's tons of fresh-made food options with vegetables and such.
Still Japan is developing a weight problem too.
1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10260628/
The concept of 'ultra-processed foods' in Japan has some significant differences from the rest of the world. The food safety regulations are actually quite strict. What follows is a list of some synthetic materials found in US foods which are PROHIBITED in Japanese consumables. So the statement 'Japan has ultra processed foods and they don't seem to have an obesity epidemic.' is a misunderstanding of what food might look like American Ultra-Processed food and is missing any of these toxic ingredients.
1. Flour/Dough Treatment Agents (Bleaching, Maturing, Conditioning)
Azodicarbonamide (ADA) : Dough-conditioning/bleaching agent; oxidizes flour proteins to improve elasticity and whiteness. Currently found in some supermarket sandwich breads and hamburger/hot dog buns.
Potassium Bromate (KBrO₃) : Oxidizing agent that strengthens gluten structure and increases dough rise/volume. Classified a possible human carcinogen (IARC 2B); banned in the EU, Canada, and UK; California has banned it starting 2027. Still federally permitted in the US in trace residual amounts. Regional and bulk/wholesale bakery bread products.
Chlorine Gas / Chlorine Dioxide : Bleaching and maturing agents for wheat flour. Currently used in "bleached flour," a listed ingredient in many cake-mix and biscuit-mix products.
Ammonium Chloride (synthetic) : Yeast nutrient/dough conditioner that accelerates fermentation. Used in some commercial bread and cracker doughs as a processing aid.
2. Synthetic Antioxidants & Preservatives
Butylated Hydroxyanisole (BHA) / Butylated Hydroxytoluene (BHT) ; Synthetic antioxidants preventing fat/oil rancidity. NTP lists BHA as "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen." Some current chewing gum and packaged-snacks.
Tert-Butylated Hydroquinone (TBHQ) : Synthetic antioxidant preservative used at very low levels to extend shelf life of oils and fried/processed foods. Pop-Tarts (Kellanova) and Little Debbie snack cakes.
Propylparaben : Antifungal preservative. EU treats it as effectively banned over endocrine-disruption concerns; California has banned it in food starting 2027; it remains FDA-permitted and is under an active FDA chemical-safety review opened in 2024. Advocacy groups (EWG) have specifically petitioned makers like Entenmann's and Sara Lee to remove it.
Thiodipropionic Acid & Dilauryl Thiodipropionate : Synergist antioxidants used alongside BHA/BHT in fats and shortening.
Stearyl Citrate : Antioxidant/chelating agent in margarines and oil-based dressings.
Ethoxyquin : Antioxidant/color stabilizer, originally developed as a pesticide; used to preserve color in ground spices. Bulk and store-brand ground paprika and chili powder spice blends.
Stannous Chloride : Antioxidant/color-retention agent for canned foods. Canned white asparagus.
3. Emulsifiers, Stabilizers & Texturizers
Polysorbate 60 & Polysorbate 80 : Emulsifiers for oil/water blending in baked goods, ice cream, and creamers. Cool Whip (Kraft) and Coffee-Mate liquid/powdered creamers.
Synthetic Carboxymethyl Cellulose (CMC / Cellulose Gum) : Thickener/stabilizer preventing ice-crystal formation. Common ingredient in many mainstream ice creams (store-brand and name-brand alike — check the specific carton) and low-fat salad dressings.
Sucrose Acetate Isobutyrate (SAIB) : Weighting agent keeping citrus flavor oils suspended. Used in some citrus-flavored sports drinks and sodas currently on the market.
Dioctyl Sodium Sulfosuccinate (DSS / Docusate Sodium) : Wetting agent improving dispersibility of powders. Used in instant cocoa/hot chocolate mix formulations.
Oxystearin Anti-crystallizing agent keeping liquid vegetable oils clear under refrigeration. Used in some refrigerated bottled vegetable/salad oils, typically store-brand.
4. Synthetic Colorants
Titanium Dioxide : White opacifying/color additive. Banned as a food additive in the EU (2022); still FDA-approved federally (up to 1% by weight), under an open FDA safety review since 2023, and subject to a pending California ban effective 2027. Per FDA data cited by food-safety reporting, over 4,300 candy products currently contain it, along with many white frostings, powdered coffee creamers, and donut glazes.
FD&C Citrus Red No. 2 : Colorant with one narrow legal use: coloring the skins of Florida oranges (not the flesh, not general food products). Currently applied to some Florida orange peels sold in grocery stores.
Fast Green FCF (FD&C Green No. 3) : Synthetic green dye, low usage volume relative to other approved dyes. Currently found in some mint-flavored candies and canned green vegetable products with added color.
5. Anti-Caking & Coating Agents
Synthetic Magnesium Silicate (Synthetic Talc) : Anti-caking agent absorbing moisture in powders. Used in some current powdered spice blends and pre-shredded cheese as an anti-caking coating; brand presence varies enough that I'd want you to check the specific product's label rather than take a brand name from me.
Sodium Ferrocyanide (Yellow Prussiate of Soda) : Anti-caking agent in table and processed salt. Present in some current table salt formulations, including certain Morton's products, and in salt used within processed snack seasoning blends.
Modified Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) Coatings : Glossy protective film coating on high-sugar snack pieces. Yogurt-covered raisins and pretzels.
Synthetic Petroleum Waxes : Food-grade paraffin/microcrystalline waxes for candy shine and moisture barrier. Hard candies and chocolate-coated candy shells.
6. Chelating & Minor Functional Agents
Calcium Disodium EDTA : Chelating agent binding trace metals to prevent oxidation/discoloration. Kraft Mayo and Miracle Whip-type sandwich spreads, and in canned beans and some canned soft drinks.
Zinc Lactate : Zinc salt used for anti-cavity/breath-related function rather than classic preservation. Sugar-free chewing gums marketed for dental benefits (e.g., certain Trident and Orbit formulations)
7. Fortification Agents
Synthetic Iron Sources (Carbonyl Iron) : Reduced elemental iron powder fortifying "enriched" flour. Wonder Bread, most white sandwich breads, and in many fortified breakfast cereals.
8. Processing Solvents & Residues
Acetone : Industrial solvent used in extraction of some resins/oleoresins and fat/cocoa-butter processing; trace residues can remain.
Methylene Chloride (Dichloromethane) : Solvent used for coffee/tea decaffeination via direct extraction. FDA permits a 10 ppm residual limit specifically for this food use. "Traditional process" decaffeinated coffees that don't specify "Swiss Water" or "CO2 process" on the label .
9. Agricultural & Livestock Inputs (Not Added Directly to Food , Present via Animal-Derived Ingredients)
Ractopamine : Beta-agonist fed to pigs and cattle before slaughter to increase lean muscle growth. Banned in the EU, China, and Russia; still FDA-approved for US livestock. Because it's a feed input rather than a processing additive, it never appears on any processed-food label.
Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH/rBST) : Synthetic hormone used to increase dairy cow milk yield. Banned in the EU, Canada, and Japan; still FDA-approved in the US. Most major retailers and chains (Walmart, Kroger, Starbucks) now source rBST-free and label accordingly, so current use is concentrated in dairy supply chains that don't carry that label. Think about all the 'strawberry milk' and 'chocolate milk' drinks without this label.
So, no Japan does not have the same kinds of Ultra-Processed foods as the US, and for MANY other reasons doesn't have an obesity crisis.
They do have a functional educational system, and have plentiful availability of fresh fruits and vegetables within walking distance of nearly every citizen. The idea of US inner city 'fruit free' areas is perplexing in the extreme to their perceptions of "American Greatness."
They also have society self enforced limits on bringing harm to society restraining capitalism
I recently discovered just how much food engineering goes into products like potato chips and similar items, not only in the flavor, but also in the texture and even the sound it makes.
There's someone at the factory who basically spends their time eating samples from new batches to ensure they're exactly as expected.
Not sure why this comment by KurSix is marked dead:
>What stands out to me is that the real transfer wasn't a specific ingredient or recipe, it was institutional knowledge: how to engineer repeat consumption and then market the hell out of it
But this really is the gist of it. The execs from the Tobacco industry saw the writing on the wall, and moved over to the food industry where the knowledge of making things addictive to consume was applied to food.
agreed. the comments in here feel reactionary, not taking into account the sheer amount of influence marketing has on society. beyond just hyperpalatability, the tobacco companies also leveraged all they learned from their extremely successful advertising campaigns and applied it to foods
that meme image of Garfield saying 'you are not immune to propaganda' comes to mind. it's always the people who are the most confident that they aren't influenced by marketing that also have some of the most irrationally strong brand loyalties
Is Huel ultra processed food too? They promote themselves as healthy meals and I am long time subscriber. I keep telling myself that even if it is not like cooking from raw ingredients, it is still far from a greasy junk food at kebab shops and McDonalds.
Hyper-ultra-processed, yes. But, as others point out in these comments, a food's degree of processing doesn't determine its health value, although those two things are correlated.
Personally, my instincts would favor Huel over fast food, too. I'd be very interested in any study that tested this rigorously. Huel is far from anything "raw," but so long as all the nutritional components are still in there, one has to wonder if it's just as healthy.
This is kind of the point. We simply don't have a sufficiently good understanding of food and nutrition to be able to say "smoosh these nutrients ands other food derivatives together and you get a healthy food".
UPFs is exactly the smooshing, and is generally done to maintain palatability whilst saving money, not even in an attempt to make a healthy food. Sure, Huel has a different goal, but I'm not sure the end result is any different. Just because it's not hyper palatable, it doesn't mean it's healthy.
We eat engineered low-quality material, not real food.
mostly petroleum derivatives
Companies should be required to provide the full supply-chain of the ingredients. On the packaging. With addresses. And no PO-boxes.
Check out what the UN UNTP is working on for supply chain. Step in that direction. Of course, unlikely in USA.
Great to see this. The food industry has reached a complexity that is unfathomable. It is about time.
Reading through this and thinking about the problem in a blame-free way leads me to see the tobacco companies as a through-line for product packaging optimization that transcends any specific use. "The first patented cigarette-making machine was invented by Juan Nepomuceno Adorno of Mexico in 1847." [0] This puts high volume manufacture of cigarettes right at the cusp of the second industrial revolution with improvements in "steel-making processes, mass production, assembly lines, electrical grid systems, large-scale manufacture of machine tools, and use of advanced machinery in steam-powered factories." [1]
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
Blame free works with humans where you assume good intent.
It's harmful and dangerous with corporations with a proven history of lying and disregard for human lives and well being. Especially ones with a record of developing and optimizing addictive products.
any more "ethical" tobacco company got out competed. result: blame tobacco companies that survived.
People still smoke. any lies the tobacco companies sold to the public were either so old that few alive heard them, or believed them when they were told.
When people or companies do bad things, they're bad even if they get away with them. They should absolutely be blamed.
I think I mis-spoke when I wrote "blame-free" because while I come from a psychological-safety inquiry perspective, the term isn't quite descriptive. The purpose of dropping "blame" is that stopping inquiry there without understanding what lead to the "bad thing" leaves a lot of valuable knowledge on the table.
This is a interesting point. I gave some thought to the nature of what was being processed. In some ways another New World agricultural product gone industrial, cocoa, brought about some companies that at a minimum rival the tobacco companies for contributions to ultra-processed foods, examples Nestle and Coca-Cola.
Like tobacco, cocoa is not an essential food and also has psychoactive components. Thus companies formed around industrializing the material must develop methods of persuasion and navigate oppositional socio-political pressure. Like the sibling comment's observation that "any more "ethical" tobacco company got out competed," the most successful were especially suited for adopting other food production lines both from an industrial-technical and a socio-political perspective.
If you're listening to the podcast or video, the presentation starts at 8:58!
some other light reading on this topic:
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2026.3085...
> Buying into the food industry also facilitated the tobacco companies in applying the knowledge, skills, and strategies developed from their tobacco businesses to another business domain in ultraprocessed foods and beverages. For example, Philip Morris applied its aggressive marketing tactics developed from its tobacco businesses to market ultraprocessed foods to the US public. Furthermore, US tobacco companies and their food companies were systematically involved with developing hyper-palatable foods, which have elevated addictive properties.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.16332
>Tobacco-owned foods were 29% more likely to be classified as fat and sodium hyper-palatable foods (HPF) and 80% more likely to be classified as carbohydrate and sodium HPF than foods that were not tobacco-owned between 1988 and 2001 (P-values = 0.005–0.009).
https://tobacco.ucsf.edu/cigarette-giants-bought-food-compan...
> Tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds led the transition to sweetened beverages in 1963 when it purchased Hawaiian Punch from Pacific Hawaiian Products Company, according to the documents. The beverage previously had been promoted to adults as a cocktail mixer, but R.J. Reynolds sought to beef up the drink’s “Punchy” mascot – a counterpart to the “Joe Camel” cartoon character the company used to promote cigarettes – and featured it on toys, schoolbook covers, comics, tumblers, clothing and TV commercials. Punchy became the “best salesman the beverage ever had,” according to tobacco industry documents.
> In the ’60s and ’70s, the company conducted taste tests with children and mothers to evaluate sweetness, colors and flavors for Hawaiian Punch product line extensions. The children’s preferences were prioritized, the authors noted.
> By 1983, R.J. Reynolds introduced the nation’s first juice box, marketed as a “handy little carton that comes with its very own straw.” This innovation was largely responsible for a 34 percent jump in sales, according to industry documents.
other fun things might include just reading the Wikpedia pages on major food companies like Kraft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraft_Foods_Inc.#Financial_exp...
> At the end of 1988, Philip Morris Companies purchased Kraft for $12.9 billion. In 1989, Kraft merged with Philip Morris's General Foods unit—makers of Oscar Mayer meats, Maxwell House coffee, Jell-O gelatin, Budget Gourmet frozen dinners, Entenmann's baked goods, Kool-Aid, Crystal Light and Tang powdered beverage mixes, Post Cereals, Shake 'n Bake flavored coatings and numerous other packaged foods—as Kraft General Foods. Its aggressive product development was reversed after the merger, as it became slow in addressing issues on its product lines due to its size, and also company politics.[4]
> In 2000, Philip Morris (renamed Altria in 2003) acquired Nabisco Holdings for $18.9 billion and merged the company with Kraft Foods the same year.[212][4] Also in 2000, the company acquired Balance Bar.[213] In 2001, Philip Morris sold 280 million Kraft shares via the third-largest IPO of all time, retaining an 88.1% stake in the company.
> In the early 1960s ...
Huh? Ultra processed foods got very popular long before the 1960s. Wonder Bread came out in 1921. Kellogg came out with corn flakes in the 1900s. Etc.
Pop tarts contain like 100 (hyperbole) different types of elements/molecules/chemicals in them lmao they’re mass manufactured in a factory.
Very different from some basic corn flakes or bread being mass produced.
Okay... Pop Tarts are also Kellogg's, not a tobacco company. But let me pick some other examples.
Eggo waffles predate RJ Reynolds getting into this by 10 years.
Twinkies were introduced in the 1930s.
I'm not defending ultra-processed foods nor tobacco companies. I'm just saying the authors have a major blind spot if they think the concept or popularity of ultra-processed foods started in the 1960s.
The Twinkie of 1940 is very different from the Twinkie of 2000. Lots of old and sort of OK things got corrupted when pulled into the corporate-Zerg-slime
This is a bit of a strawman. The authors, if you read the article carefully, are not saying either of what you're attributing to them.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, it seems.
Interesting, but I wouldn't oversimplify this to one cause. Home cooking of meals and making of lemonade/fruit punch used to be a norm. Society chose to move towards taking a lazy way out with microwave dinners and takeouts. On the other hand, Asian countries have healthier fresh made bento boxes in convenience stores so it's not time saving alone. At the end of the day, companies deliver what consumers want and try to discern demand, what else are they supposed to do?
Companies attempt to manufacture demand all the time. It’s one of the core functions of marketing.
Liquid Death is a perfect example of manufactured demand.