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Let’s get real about ultra- processed food

Concerns about ultra-processed food are growing due to how they’re designed to drive overconsumption, their impact on our health, and the risks they pose to children. Yet these products continue to dominate our grocery stores, schools, workplaces, and homes.

Meanwhile, Big Food companies exploit loopholes to introduce new ingredients to these industrial formulations without needing FDA approval.

SO WHAT EXACTLY IS ULTRA-PROCESSED FOOD?

Sweetened beverages

Sweetened beverages are industrial formulations containing additives like high-fructose corn syrup, artificial colors, and flavors. They offer no satiety, deliver rapidly absorbed sugar, and are linked to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
These beverages with refined sweeteners can cause significant blood sugar spikes, insulin surges, and increased cardiometabolic risk, and their liquid calories do not trigger the same fullness signals as solid food. Diet versions may avoid sugar, but emerging evidence suggests some non-caloric sweeteners may also contribute to inflammation, changes in the gut microbiome, and altered responses to sweetness.

Sweetened beverages

Savory snacks

Processed savory snacks such as chips, flavored crackers, and packaged snack mixes are typically high in refined starches, sodium, fats, artificial colors, and flavor additives designed to encourage repeat consumption.

Savory snacks

Sweet bakery products

Processed sweet bakery products like cookies, snack cakes, pastries, donuts, and packaged desserts are often made with refined flour, added sweeteners, industrial oils, artificial colors, and preservatives. These products are engineered to be highly palatable while remaining inexpensive, convenient, and shelf-stable.

Sweet bakery products

Pizza and Sandwiches (including Burgers)

Pizza and sandwiches, including burgers, are the single largest source of ultra-processed food calories in the American diet. Many are built from highly processed breads, processed meats, sauces, cheeses, and additives designed to maximize flavor, convenience, and shelf life.

Pizza and Sandwiches (including Burgers)

It often starts with a starch slurry

Ultra-processed foods typically begin by stripping corn, wheat, rice, or potatoes of their fiber, protein, and nutrients—leaving behind a refined starchy mush. Big Food companies then blend and rebuild this into products like chips, crackers, and other packaged snacks.
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For beverages, the process looks different, but leads to a similar result: water, sweeteners, and additives are mixed together in a solution engineered to maximize flavor and shelf life. These formulations are often the basis of sodas, as well as popular sugary fruit drinks consumed by children – many of which carry nutrition claims that can mislead parents into thinking they’re healthier than they are.

Flavors

“Natural flavors” and “artificial flavors” are often complex, proprietary mixtures designed to make products taste more intense, consistent, and desirable. These flavor systems can amplify sweetness, mask off-notes from low-quality base ingredients, and keep people coming back for more. They allow manufacturers to build craveable experiences from otherwise bland, highly processed inputs.

‍In real food: Flavor comes from the food itself—its ingredients, preparation, and freshness—without the need for engineered flavor systems to make it appealing.

Sweeteners

Ultra-processed food frequently relies on added sugars or non-nutritive sweeteners like stevia or aspartame to create a strong, often exaggerated sense of sweetness. This can make products more appealing and encourage over-consumption. Non-nutritive sweeteners are also used to maintain sweetness while marketing products as “healthier,” despite increasing evidence of health harms.

‍In real food: Sweetness is typically balanced and embedded within the whole food, often alongside fiber and other nutrients that support satiety and regulation.

Number of Ingredients

Ultra-processed food often contains long ingredient lists—frequently 10, 15, or even more—many of which serve industrial rather than nutritional purposes (e.g., preservatives, stabilizers, flavor enhancers). These complex formulations are often designed to maximize taste, convenience, and shelf life.

‍In real food: Ingredient lists are short and recognizable, often consisting of one or just a few items that directly reflect what the food is.

Colors

Many ultra-processed food products use added colors to make them look brighter, fresher, or more flavorful than they actually are. These visual cues are not about nutrition—they are designed to attract attention and shape expectations, especially in regards to children. In many cases, color is used to compensate for the fact that the underlying ingredients are low quality, highly processed, and not inherently appealing.

‍In real food: Color reflects the natural properties of the ingredient itself—ripeness, nutrient content, and freshness—not added dyes designed to sell the product.

Meanwhile, we’re left navigating confusing labels, mixed messages, and relentless marketing designed to distract us from the real cost of these so-called “convenience” foods: our health.

That’s not by accident. Big Food companies have long prioritized profit at the expense of our health—keeping prices artificially low and offloading the health costs of their products onto consumers. At every turn, they’re also undermining regulatory efforts that would keep us healthier, like clearer food labeling, limits on marketing to kids, and strong oversight.

What policymakers can do

Ultra-processed food makes up half of U.S. adult diets — and close to 70% for children.

The truth?
Our food system is failing us.

THAT’S MESSED UP!

SO WHAT EXACTLY IS ULTRA-PROCESSED FOOD?

This didn’t happen by accident.