> These studies and press releases seem counterproductive. If sliced bread or fancy nuts is in the same category as aerosol cheese or high calorie soda, a lot of people are going to struggle to understand what isn't ultraprocessed and give up trying to select better items at the grocery store.
Well, that's because they are. The question is why they are unhealthy.
Take an Apple. You eat it, it is healthy.
Slice it. You eat the slices, it's not making much of a difference. You are still eating whole chunks.
Make juice out of it. NOW it is no longer healthy. Not only because you have shredded fibers (so the fructose will absorb faster) but you are probably going to drink many more apples than you otherwise would. And your gut bacteria will be unhealthy. You are probably still fine if you drink a small amount.
Add sugar to it - now it's extremely unhealthy and it's basically a coke but with more nutrients and it's not healthy in any amount.
Or take rice. Cook the rice - fine. Polish the rice before cooking so you have white rice: no longer fine.
Food that's unprocessed, there's very little restrictions. You are going to get full eating them anyway, so it's fine. As you increase the amount of processing, you should eat less and less of them.
> high calorie soda
Note that calories are only relevant to laboratories. Living organisms work very differently. Calories are not fungible. An almond has a similar calorie content as a soda can, but it doesn't matter: we do not absorb all the calories in an almond. It's a similar thing when you eat an avocado: it's very calorie-dense, but a lot of it is in fats that will be absorbed very slowly.
Even simple sugars work very differently from one another. Our cells can readily use glucose(that will require insulin). Our cells, with very few exceptions, cannot use fructose. It goes straight to your liver to be processed by fructokinase. Most of it will actually become triglycerides and you will only burn that when you are burning fat. That process also takes a lot of energy(basically you get into debt to be repaid later). There's also a limited amount your liver can process and that's why people are getting fatty livers even without drinking - from the point of view of your liver, you might as well be drinking.