What is ultra-processed food and is it really making you fat?
What are ultra-processed foods?
The term ultra-processed seems to get thrown around a lot and with varying degrees of consistency as to what people mean when they say it. The NOVA Classification System* defines ultra-processed food as food made entirely or mostly from substances extracted from foods (oils, fats, sugar, starch, and proteins), derived from food constituents (hydrogenated fats and modified starch), or synthesized in laboratories from food substrates or other organic sources (flavour enhancers, colours, and several food additives used to make the product hyper-palatable). Manufacturing techniques include extrusion, moulding, and preprocessing by frying. In simple terms its any food or food product that barely resembles something you would find in nature and the back of the packet’s ingredient list requires a wiki tab open to understand what you are eating.
I would include any food that comes from fast food restaurants, and large chains into this definition too, as the need to mass produce near identical dishes generally requires them to use stabilisers, emulsifiers, and other laboratory ingredients to allow them to consistently serve the same items at hundreds of locations from order to plate in under 10 minutes.
*The NOVA classification system was designed by the Center for Epidemiological Studies in Health and Nutrition, School of Public Health, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. This definition is recognised by : (World Health Organization (WHO), Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Cancer Research Fund International (WCRF), European Public Health Association (EUPHA), Brazilian Ministry of Health, French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM), Public Health England (PHE), National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública (INSP), Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Carlos III Health Institute, Italian Society of Human Nutrition (SINU))
Is it making you fat?
On its own in a calorically equated environment, no. If you eat 6000kcals a day of McDonald’s Chicken nuggets, chips, and milkshakes you will get just as fat as you would eating 6000kcals of grass-fed beef, quinoa, and spinach. However, the latter would be significantly harder to achieve. This has been evidenced famously by many people who have eaten exclusively McDonalds and still lost a significant amount of weight. Most recently Kevin Maginnis, 57, from Nashville says he ate half-portions of McDonald's thrice daily and lost about 60lbs (26kg) in weight.
The problem lies not in the food itself but how easy it is to consume. Ultra-processed and food produced by large companies has millions of dollars a year put into research and development to make it as tasty and easy to consume as possible to drive their profit margins. Which is how and why it is making you fat.
Does that mean its healthy?
Healthy as a term is not defined particularly well but ill try to answer this question in a way that gives you some actionable steps for your nutritional habits. In terms of negative health benefits experienced due to being fat , losing fat is the first stone to turn over and if in doing so you include some ultra-processed food to make that journey more sustainable and allow you to stay at a healthy weight then that is absolutely fine. However, if more of your diet is comprised of these foods you are less likely to be getting your RDA’s of micronutrients and minerals as this isn't a massive concern to the companies producing these foods which may lead to negative health outcomes and feeling worse day to day whilst eating them. As for the laboratory ingredients which are so often demonised as “chemicals.” The same rules apply as in the dosage defines the poison and this is very inconsistent ingredient to ingredient some may be perfectly fine to consume regularly and some may have long term negative health outcomes but we don't know if that is the case because the ingredients themselves haven't been around for long enough to ascertain whether or not this is the case or the data that we do have remains not entirely convincing.
What should YOU do?
If you are currently overweight and proactively trying to change that your first step is to gauge the amount of calories you are currently eating through a tracking app, photo food diary or equivalent and decrease that number until you begin to lose weight regardless of what those calories are comprised of. Eating whole foods* will help you feel better during this process because you will be consuming larger amounts of micro nutrients and minerals and will be able to generally speaking consume a large volume of food per calorie consumed keeping you sated and making the dieting process less psychologically demanding. If eating some Ultra-Processed food along the way provided it is within the calorie allotment you need to stick to to lose that unwanted weight it will not cause you to gain weight or immediately get ill and may keep morale up week to week to get you to your desired weight.
*I’ll define these as foods that are easily identifiable as coming from an animal or plant.
