Oh man, this story hits hard for me. I'm a single guy so I don't cook a lot. It's tough to make a meal for one. So I rely on pre-made foods - a lot! I know it's not the best of diets, but it does keep me alive (so far, more on that below). But new research shows some pretty significant side effects!

Ultra-processed foods, or UPFs for short, are those prepackaged foods that can be forgotten in your pantry seemingly forever and still taste great when you happen upon them. UPFs are your sodas, potato chips, granola bars, protein bars, protein powders, instant noodles, candy, and even most types of store-bought bread. These foods are already  familiar to anyone who has ever stepped foot into a grocery store, a gas station mini-mart, or a fast food restaurant.

Today, the average American consumes some 60 percent of their calories from ultra-processed foods. UPFs tend to be calorie-dense, high in fat and sugar, and easy to overconsume, so it’s not surprising that eating more of these foods has long been linked with increasing prevalence of obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

But emerging research has also linked UPF consumption to other diseases and disorders, including depression, anxiety, inflammatory bowel disease, and autoimmune disorders. Studying the impacts of nutrition on human health is notoriously tricky given how so many factors — such as race, income, genetics, and the like — can play a role. However, according to researchers and epidemiologists, when you look across all the available research together, there is an overwhelming sense that UPFs negatively affect human health.

UPFs are intentionally made to be addictive. Specific combinations of salt, sugar, fat, and carbohydrates are considered “hyperpalatable,” and trigger the brain’s reward system in the same way that addictive drugs do. UPFs are also low in satiating nutrients such as protein and fiber, again making it easy to overeat these foods. When you consume a lot of UPF, you are consuming a lot of sodium, saturated fats, and sugar.

To be clear, almost all of the food we eat is processed in one way or another, but there is a sliding scale of food processing. We cook meat; pasteurize milk and eggs to kill harmful bacteria; can vegetables to store and preserve them. Processing not only makes food safer to eat, it allows us to spend less time and energy feeding ourselves each day.

When you cook, pickle, or cure foods, they largely retain their original identity — steamed broccoli still looks nearly identical to raw broccoli. Ultra-processed foods, however, are made of ingredients that are extracted from whole foods through a series of industrial processing steps and then recombined with additives to give you this whole new food that’s shelf-stable.

The hard thing about nutrition science is that it’s notoriously difficult to untangle all the different things that impact health on top of understanding why people make the food decisions they do. The strongest data shows that increased UPF consumption is associated with a higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, depression, and anxiety.

Some studies have even identified a possible link between UPF consumption and cancer.

Now excuse me while I go make a salad!