The International Food Information Council defines processing as “any deliberate change in food that occurs before it’s ready to eat.”

Processed foods fall on a spectrum from minimally processed to ultra-processed. Basically, if you didn’t pick an apple off a tree or kill a chicken, you’re eating processed foods.

1. Minimally Processed: fresh, frozen, or dried fruits, veggies, grains, legumes, meats, fish, and milk.

2. Processed Foods: foods made with ingredients you have in your kitchen and would cook with. Example: salt, oils, table sugar, canned foods, cheese, nut butters.

3. Ultra-Processed Foods: “formulations of several ingredients which, besides salt, sugar, oils, and fats, include food substances not used in culinary preparations, in particular, flavors, colors, sweeteners, emulsifiers, and other additives used to imitate sensorial qualities of unprocessed foods or minimally processed foods and their culinary preparations or to disguise undesirable qualities of the final product.” Examples: soda, packaged snacks, packaged baked goods and desserts, chicken nuggets, frozen meals, instant noodles.

Ultra-Processed foods typically has 5 or more ingredients and contain things you wouldn’t cook with, have in your kitchen, or even be able to buy at the grocery store.

Ultra-processed foods make up almost 60% of the US diet and contribute to 90% of our added sugar intake. The World Health Organization suggests that no more than 10% of total calories come from all sugars (natural and added). For a 2000kcal diet, that would be 200kcal per day. People who ate the most ultra-processed diet were getting 80% of their calories from sugar! Only those Americans who ate 20% or less of their calories from ultra-processed foods stayed within the WHO’s recommendations.

So how much ultra-processed food could you eat and stay within the guidelines? 20% would be 1 in every 5 meals. If you eat 4 meals per day, you could have 1 ultra-processed meal every other day. If you eat 3 meals per day, you could eat 1 every 3 days.

Fast food is absolutely ultra-processed. For most restaurants, you have to consider the meals ultra-processed because you don’t know what the restaurant or the supplier added to the food to make it more flavorful, last longer, or weigh more.

Most of the processed foods I eat generally have “normal” ingredients. The  most highly processed foods I eat are pizza and ice cream (both vegan and gluten free). I have pizza once per week and ice cream maybe once every two weeks.

What’s the problem with these chemicals, additives, and preservatives? They increase the risk of obesity and cancer and at the very least, many have been shown to be endocrine disruptors. A pilot study showed people eating ultra-processed foods typically eat 500kcal more each day compared to when they eat whole foods. Researchers hypothesize that the unnatural combination of these ingredients interferes with your brain’s ability to recognize that you’re full. You’re not getting the appropriate signals to stop eating. The endocrine system is your hormones. You have over 50 hormones. There are sex hormones, cortisol (stress hormone), oxytocin (the cuddle hormone), melatonin (for sleep), ghrelin (tells you to eat), leptin (tells you to stop eating), insulin, dopamine, hormones that control your heart rate and BP, just to name a few.

Bottom line, read the ingredients. Cut back (or eliminate) ultra-processed foods.

Sources:
https://lactobacto.com
https://www.healthline.com
Scientific American Oct 2019