Ultraprocessed foods have a terrible reputation.
Studies have linked them with multiple chronic diseases. Journalists and health influencers characterize them as poison. Some public health experts call for a global halt to producing and consuming them.
But the debate around ultraprocessed foods is not nearly as settled as it may seem. As a researcher who studies social movements for healthy and sustainable food, I have been documenting the history of processed foods and examining debates around the science and politics of ultraprocessing.
In basic terms, ultraprocessed foods are mass-produced, industrial formulations that use ingredients not typically found in a home kitchen, and that generally contain little to no intact whole foods.
Yet the very definition of ultraprocessed is highly contested. While a growing number of advocates say that ultraprocessing is dangerous to public health, skeptics counter that the fervor around the topic has become a moral panic, and insist that some ultraprocessed foods can be part of a healthy diet.
A brief history of food processing
People have been processing food – that is, transforming crops and animals into food ingredients and products – for all of human history. Cooking, which historians generally consider the first form of food processing, goes back as far as 2 million years. In the millennia and centuries that followed, people developed and refined other traditional food processing methods, including grinding, baking, fermenting, drying and pressing.
New types of food processing were created during the industrial age, beginning in the mid-18th century. Canning, pasteurization and refrigeration were among the major innovations that reshaped not only how people eat but society as a whole.
Before that time, nearly all food was local food – that is, produced within a few dozen miles – and people consumed fresh foods quickly to avoid spoilage. Food processing promised to improve food safety, shelf life, quality, convenience, taste and healthfulness. The world became more urbanized as regional and international supply chains developed. Geographically dispersed farmers were connected to retailers and consumers across the newly modern food system.
From the mid-20th into the 21st century, food manufacturers added a host of complex technological innovations to the food processing playbook. Their efforts made processed foods more standardized for the mass market and more convenient for consumers. But public health experts warned that processed junk foods were packed with salt, sugar and saturated fat – problematic nutrients linked to obesity, diabetes and other diet-related diseases.
Food processing and the NOVA framework
By the mid-2000s, some healthy food advocates began to argue that the nature and extent of food processing, rather than the presence of specific problematic nutrients, explained diet-related chronic disease. The journalist Michael Pollan famously implored his audience to avoid “edible food-like substances.” Instead, he advised: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
Brazilian epidemiologist Carlos Monteiro coined the term “ultraprocessing” in 2009 as part of his work on what he and colleagues called the NOVA classification. The NOVA framework establishes a four-category system that characterizes a food based on its level of processing.
NOVA Category 1 includes unprocessed or minimally processed plant or animal foods that are close to their natural state and contain no additives. Category 2 refers to processed culinary ingredients – that is, products derived from Category 1 via pressing, grinding or similar techniques. Category 3 describes processed foods made by combining Category 1 and Category 2 using traditional methods, such as baking, boiling or canning.
NOVA Category 4 foods are ultraprocessed foods, often described as industrially manufactured food products that can’t be made at home. Examples of ultraprocessing include separating whole foods into substances, chemically formulating foods or using cosmetic additives such as food dyes. According to the framework, corporations design ultraprocessed foods to be convenient, hyperpalatable and highly profitable. They are packaged attractively, marketed intensively and intended to displace other food groups. Today, ultraprocessed foods make up an increasingly large share of global diets. They account for more than 50% of total calories in the United States, with many low- and-middle income nations not far behind.
Unsettled science
Since the NOVA framework emerged, researchers have tried to test whether food processing can explain how certain foods affect people’s health. The vast majority of this work has explored correlations between consuming ultraprocessed foods and developing health problems. One consistent result stands out: People who consume more ultraprocessed foods are at higher risk for multiple chronic diseases and early death. However, even that conclusion is more complex than it appears. It turns out that certain categories of ultraprocessed foods – such as sweetened beverages like sodas and processed meats like deli meats – are consistently associated with negative health outcomes including heart disease and stroke. (The Conversation)