Labelling The Ultra-Processed

Welcome back Food Junglers. Today, I’ve been inspired to share some ideas on the recent explosion of academic research, surrounding the dangers of ultra-processed foods.

Of course, I’d love to hear your ideas too, so please feel free to comment below and reach out with any thoughts. Let’s dig in.

Whether in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic or due to the increased scrutiny that huge food companies are facing, health has become a priority for many around the world. More specifically, research on the harmful effects of ultra-processed foods (“UPFs”) has become very popular in recent years.

It’s no secret that UPFs have been widely associated with health risks and high mortality rates. So, that being the case, how do we effectively regulate the sale of such foods?

What are UPFs?

In short, “ultra-processed foods” are made with ingredients you wouldn’t find at your local farmers’ market, like high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, food colourings and emulsifiers.

These are your energy drinks, chips, candies, chicken nuggets, lunch meats and Beyond Meat burgers.

On top of that, foods that have gone through many stages of production - like cutting, pasteurising, shaping or preserving - can also be labelled as ”ultra-processed”. 

The mounting evidence

There has been much research that has shown a correlation between higher consumption of UPFs and higher risks of both physical and mental illness.

For instance, a 2024 study of UPF consumption showed that these foods were associated with 32 health problems, such as heart disease-related deaths, Type-2 diabetes, anxiety and depression.

As a result, this has led to two-thirds of Europeans - for instance - to believe that UPFs are unhealthy and will cause health problems in later life, according to a 2024 survey of 10,000 people in 17 countries. 

And this is only scratching the surface.

Struggling for a definition

However, there are various, nuanced reasons as to why the sale of UPFs hasn’t been so readily prohibited around the world.

Firstly, the term “ultra-processed” is incredibly vague. Although the idea can apply to hot dogs and frozen pizza, it could also be applied to yoghurt and bread, which have known health benefits. So, in order to regulate the harmful UPFs, a narrower definition is needed.

Secondly, most studies on UPFs have been purely observational. So, while there is a large consensus within the nutritional community that UPFs are, generally, harmful there hasn’t been much evidence to prove cause and effect. 

And finally, many UPF products are sold by some of the biggest food conglomerates in the world that have immense lobbying power.

Data from the Financial Times, for example, showed that US food and soft-drinks related companies spent $106 million on lobbying in 2023 alone. That’s almost twice as much as the tobacco and alcohol industries combined.

So we can clearly see that this subject is much more nuanced than just labelling UPFs as “harmful” or banning them outright.

Potential options

Of all the potential solutions to regulate the sale of UPFs, I’m particularly fond of the Latin American approach.

Peru, Uruguay, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia now all enforce warning labels on the front of food packaging to show whether artificial sweeteners and caffeine have been included.

Much more, these countries mandate that excess levels of salt, sugar, and sodium be noted on the front of the packaging of certain goods. So, it is not the vaguely “ultra-processed” goods that are labelled with a generic warning, but the goods with an excess of certain ingredients.

And personally, I would love to see this implemented on a larger scale. 

My conclusions

In this short summary of the UPF saga, I wanted to convey that the issue of simply eliminating goods that are considered “ultra-processed” is much more difficult than you would think.

However, I have hope that if we know exactly what we’re trying to eliminate and if we shed light on the excess ingredients and additives used, rather than trying to ban anything vaguely in the realm of “ultra-processed”, then we could get somewhere.

Until then, as the author of the book “Ultra-Processed People”, Chris Van Tulleken puts it, the industrialised diet produced by transnational food cooperations will continue to win.