Does the War on ‘Ultra-Processed Foods’ Make Any Sense?
Once again, Americans are in a panic over what we eat. More than two-thirds of those surveyed now regard the industrially produced, ultra-processed foods, or UPFs, that dominate the U.S. food supply as addictive, according to a study published earlier this month in the American Journal of Public Health. That’s just the start of it. Most respondents said that UPFs are a major source of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and obesity. At least one-third blame these foods for causing cancer, ADHD, depression, and anxiety. And nearly half—corresponding to some 130 million American adults, if the survey’s findings can be extrapolated—believe that UPFs are simply “not what God intended for people to eat.”For the past couple of years, concerns about the potential health effects of UPFs have been highlighted in the media, and at nearly every level of the public-health establishment. New restrictions on the sale of UPFs have been introduced or passed in blue- and red-state legislatures alike. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said repeatedly that UPFs are “poisoning” Americans. And the World Health Organization is planning to put out global guidance on the problem.To some extent, this is nothing more than a rebranding of an old idea, that the foods being sold at convenience stores or fast-food restaurants are anything but good for us. These products, at least some of which are almost assuredly detrimental to our health, have gone by several different names. For those of us old enough to remember the 20th century, we didn’t use to call them “ultra-processed” foods, but simply “processed” foods or “junk” foods. Now an ultra- prefix has been added to the same fuzzy category. Ultra-processed in the world of nutrition circa 2026 is, first and foremost, just the latest synonym for unhealthy.Any more specific meaning, though, has been elusive. The U.S. government, for all of its UPF-related rhetoric, hasn’t even resolved the most basic matter of sem