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Ultra-processed foods: why it pays to eat fewer of them

Updated Six Habits Editorial Team
A woman pushing aside packaged snacks and ready meals while chopping fresh vegetables
The short answerUltra-processed foods are industrial products made from ingredients you would not usually find in a home kitchen: soda, chips, hot dogs, packaged desserts. They make up more than half of the calories Americans eat. In an NIH randomized trial, an ultra-processed diet led people to eat about 500 more calories a day. A large umbrella review linked high intake to cardiovascular death, type 2 diabetes and anxiety.

Key points

What ultra-processed foods are

Brazilian researchers developed the NOVA classification, which divides food into four groups:

  1. Unprocessed or minimally processed: vegetables, fruit, grains, beans, eggs, milk, meat.
  2. Culinary ingredients: oil, salt, sugar, flour.
  3. Processed foods: cheese, canned vegetables, simple bread.
  4. Ultra-processed foods: soda, chips, hot dogs, sweetened cereals, packaged snacks and desserts, many ready meals.

In the U.S., ultra-processed foods provide more than half of the calories adults eat, and an even larger share for children.

What the research shows

A randomized trial at the NIH. Twenty adults lived in a research unit for four weeks: two weeks on an ultra-processed diet and two weeks on a minimally processed diet, matched for calories, sugar, fat, fiber and sodium on offer, and they could eat as much as they wanted. On the ultra-processed diet they ate about 500 more calories a day and gained about 0.9 kg (2 lb); on the minimally processed diet they lost about the same (Hall et al., 2019).

An umbrella review. An analysis of 45 meta-analyses covering almost 10 million people found that high intake of ultra-processed foods was linked to higher risk of cardiovascular death, type 2 diabetes, anxiety and common mental disorders, with weaker evidence for other outcomes (Lane et al., 2024).

Why they may be harmful

Most of the evidence is observational, so the researchers call for caution: not all products in the group are equally harmful, and whole-grain bread made with additives is not the same as soda.

How to cut back

  1. Shop the perimeter first: produce, beans, grains, plain dairy, fish.
  2. Cook simple meals in batches for the week.
  3. Read the ingredient list: the shorter and more recognizable, the better.
  4. Swap one ultra-processed snack a day for fruit, nuts or yogurt.

Frequently asked questions

Are all processed foods bad?

No. Frozen vegetables, canned beans with no added salt, whole-grain bread and plain yogurt are minimally or moderately processed and can be part of a healthy diet.

How can I recognize an ultra-processed food?

A long ingredient list with items you would not find in a kitchen: flavors, flavor enhancers, emulsifiers, modified starch, high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils.

Sources

  1. Hall et al. (2019). Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain: An Inpatient Randomized Controlled Trial of Ad Libitum Food Intake. Cell Metabolism 30(1):67-77.e3. doi:10.1016/j.cmet.2019.05.008
  2. Lane et al. (2024). Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review of epidemiological meta-analyses. BMJ :e077310. doi:10.1136/bmj-2023-077310
  3. Afshin et al. (2019). Health effects of dietary risks in 195 countries, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. The Lancet 393(10184):1958-1972. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(19)30041-8

Prepared according to our evidence methodology and the principles of lifestyle medicine. For education only; it does not replace advice from your doctor.

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