Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/26/health/ultraprocessed-hyperpalatable-foods-wellness

36•paulpauper•1h ago

Comments

direwolf20•1h ago

Up to 70% usually means 2%

monooso•1h ago

In this case, it seems to be lower than the figure quoted in the report abstract[1] (emphasis mine).

> Among 230,156 food and beverage products, the mean [Health Star Rating] was 2.7 (standard deviation (SD) 1.4) from a possible maximum rating of 5.0, and 71% of products were classified as ultra-processed.

[1]: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/11/8/1704

uniqueuid•1h ago

The dataset contains ~80% of food sold and inclusion in it is very probably skewed towards large volume. So the lower bound is something like 56% (if the 20% rest are not ultraprocessed)

uniqueuid•1h ago

Here it actually means 70%, but the paper is in a paper from mdpi which have been under criticism for predatory (i.e. fraudulent, junk-science enabling) practices.

From TFA:

"We report results of a cross-sectional assessment of the 2018 US packaged food and beverage supply by nutritional composition and indicators of healthfulness and level of processing. Data were obtained through Label Insight’s Open Data database, which represents >80% of all food and beverage products sold in the US over the past three years. Healthfulness and the level of processing, measured by the Health Star Rating (HSR) system and the NOVA classification framework, respectively, were compared across product categories and leading manufacturers. Among 230,156 food and beverage products, the mean HSR was 2.7 (standard deviation (SD) 1.4) from a possible maximum rating of 5.0, and 71% of products were classified as ultra-processed. "

hexbin010•1h ago

2% definitely sounds about right for the US...bahaha

TacoCommander•1h ago

Just don't buy those foods. Buy fresh vegetables, tofu, and meat from the edges of the grocery store. Simple. Done.

zeech•1h ago

This article equates ultraprocessed foods and hyperpalatable foods (foods designed to make people want to eat them more). While many hyperpalatable foods are classified as ultraprocessed, simply being hyperpalatable does not mean it's ultraprocessed.

Worth noting that the Nova food classificationvsysten (which this article references) completely disregards the actual nutritional content of foods.

For a good primer on a lot of the misconceptions around UPFs, check out [0].

[0] https://www.harvardmagazine.com/research/harvard-ultraproces...

delichon•1h ago

Food is ultraprocessed to make it cheaper, more palatable, or both. So while the definitions are orthogonal the goals align.

zeech•41m ago

I agree that many hyperpalatable foods are ultraprocessed so that they can be made more cheaply, but I don't think that's reason enough to say that the, uh, process of processing foods is entirely aligned with the concept of hyperpalatability.

margalabargala•1h ago

Headline is massively misleading.

The actual study cited by the article, measures this as 71% of food products offered for sale in the US, by count of unique items, are ultraprocessed.

Not that 71% of food products sold by weight or volume or dollar amount are ultraprocessed.

This is just observing that if you list all food products for sale in the US, "pear" appears on that list once but "Store Brand salty corn chips" appears 25 times.

ChrisArchitect•48m ago

(2025) OP

More recently:

Ultra-processed foods make up more than 60% of us kids' diets

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44823288

How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45605921

California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45525041

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