My problem with it is that it’s a circular definition without a mechanism for why they are bad for health.

Discussions I’ve seen for why they are bad always basically boil down to “it’s the ingredients” without wanting to say this.

Yeah the whole definition is bogus. i.e. "mechanically separated meat" is considered ultraprocessed food? Why? By this logic putting apples into mixer and creating pyre is ultraprocessed food too.

I always assumed ultra-processed means that the food is loaded with preservatives like phosphates or BHT. I guess that's part of it, but maybe the efficiency of digestion should be considered. I remember Ben Krasnow (Applied Science) measured the calories in poop, humans are not very efficient at extracting all calories leading to very likely large efficiency variance between foods. But extending this further, the calories lost during preparation should be accounted for...

So how about: calories * digestion-efficiency - calories you personally need to expend to prepare or acquire it. The higher this number, the more processed is the food. So cane sugar is very bad, unless you personally harvested it.

Bad news for highly paid programmers.. basically all food should be considered ultra-processed since no physical labor was needed to acquire it.

The easy answer that encompasses 99% of the target foods is:

Avoid any foods that involve multiple rounds of processing, a term that includes baking, frying, adding preservatives,sugars or oils. Generally, if it has a lot of sugar or oil and has a weirdly long shelf life, be suspicious.

Drift towards: easily washable (smooth/peelable) fruits and vegetables, 100% whole wheat bread products, simple meat products like whole animal parts or deboned animal parts.

Dairy lives in the middle ground. If you have zero lactose problem, most dairy is mostly okay, just watch for sugar levels and recognize that most dairy products are calorie dense. Nuts are in this group too for the same reason but oil instead of sugar.

Bonus points for consuming real pro and pre biotics when you can. In the United States this is pretty limited to live culture yogurts, refrigerated kimchi, and refrigerated sourkraut.

> but you also have french fries, popcorn and even some nuts there

For popcorn at least, I'd assume it's the prepackaged microwavable popcorn that gets flagged as UPF, where it's encased in hydrogenated oils, salt, and preservatives. It's hard to think that popcorn you make at home could be considered UPF, considering that it's literally one ingredient with heat applied to it (and oil I guess if you're popping it on the stovetop rather than an air fryer).

I buy normal food and it’s plenty cheap tbh

Probably because "ultra-processed" is a bogus definition that doesn't prove what exactly is unsafe or why, which the authors of the study even acknowledge directly in the article:

> Critics argue UPF is an ill-defined category and existing health policies, such as those aimed at reducing sugar and salt consumption, are sufficient to deal with the threat.

> Monteiro and his co-authors acknowledged valid scientific critiques of Nova and UPF – such as lack of long-term clinical and community trials, an emerging understanding of mechanisms, and the existence of subgroups with different nutritional values.

It's not "processing" in itself that is causing problems, there is something specific (possibly a set of common ingredients used in many such foods) that we just haven't identified yet as what the actual harm is, so people lump all processed food into the harmful category and tell people to just stay away from all of it, which is not a realistic solution given current food production practices.

dafuq is "normal" food? if by normal you mean usual or typical for a supermarket, then that would be mostly highly processed foods full of sugars and fats. Now that I think about it, what one actually wants is the not-normal foods, the raw unprocessed minority