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Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)
11–20 of 56 posts
Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)
#12[deleted]
Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)
#13(2025) OP
More recently:
Ultra-processed foods make up more than 60% of us kids' diets
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44823288
How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45605921
California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches
Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)
#14This article equates ultraprocessed foods and hyperpalatable foods (foods designed to make people want to eat them more). While many hyperpalatable foods are classified as ultraprocessed, simply being hyperpalatable does not mean it's ultraprocessed. Worth noting that the Nova food classificationvsysten (which this article references) completely disregards the actual nutritional content of foods. For a good primer on…
Food is ultraprocessed to make it cheaper, more palatable, or both. So while the definitions are orthogonal the goals align.
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Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)
#15This article equates ultraprocessed foods and hyperpalatable foods (foods designed to make people want to eat them more). While many hyperpalatable foods are classified as ultraprocessed, simply being hyperpalatable does not mean it's ultraprocessed. Worth noting that the Nova food classificationvsysten (which this article references) completely disregards the actual nutritional content of foods. For a good primer on…
Food is ultraprocessed to make it cheaper, more palatable, or both. So while the definitions are orthogonal the goals align.
I agree that many hyperpalatable foods are ultraprocessed so that they can be made more cheaply, but I don't think that's reason enough to say that the, uh, process of processing foods is entirely aligned with the concept of hyperpalatability.
Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)
#16Just don't buy those foods. Buy fresh vegetables, tofu, and meat from the edges of the grocery store. Simple. Done.
Go to your grocery store and see if they have half and half or whipping cream with just milk and cream as ingredients. At lot of grocery stores I've been to don't have any cream it's a recipe with cream guar gum and a few other ingredients. They shouldn't be able to call that recipe the same name "cream". My point is even trying to just buy these ingredients is itself complicated
Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)
#17Just don't buy those foods. Buy fresh vegetables, tofu, and meat from the edges of the grocery store. Simple. Done.
Simple in theory, snobby in practice.
Making food from scratch is a time luxury. It often benefits from good/expensive kitchen equipment unless you want to spend even more time and labor.
Let’s take bread as an example. I can buy it from the store for a dollar or two pre-sliced with preservatives and processing, or I can make it myself, which doesn’t really save any money.
The fresh kind from the grocery store bakery with no preservatives costs more and goes bad faster.
I work two part time hourly jobs and my only way to keep up on bills is to pull extra hours.
When am I getting extra time to bake bread?
How am I getting extra money to buy a $300 stand mixer to make baking bread less painful?
Who is educating me to do all this when the industry has lobbied to keep ingredient disclosures confined to tiny fine print with no industry requirement to prominently display negative health aspects? It’s not like my grade school taught me this because I grew up in the wrong zip code.
For example, the sugar cereal has fun characters and colors at eye level of children and it has a bunch of advertising copy on it that makes nearly-false claims of its health benefits. But you’re saying “just don’t buy those foods” when trusted institutions are telling us the opposite.
We can also talk organic reduced pesticide vegetables, which cost more. Want to buy eggs from chickens that weren’t abused? Costs twice as much. Milk from cows that are farmed responsibly? Costs twice as much.
Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)
#18Just don't buy those foods. Buy fresh vegetables, tofu, and meat from the edges of the grocery store. Simple. Done.
Simple in theory, snobby in practice. Making food from scratch is a time luxury. It often benefits from good/expensive kitchen equipment unless you want to spend even more time and labor. Let’s take bread as an example. I can buy it from the store for a dollar or two pre-sliced with preservatives and processing, or I can make it myself, which doesn’t really save any money. The fresh kind from the grocery store bakery…
In countries with a richer lower quartile (basically the Nordics) most people eat this way.
Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)
#19Just don't buy those foods. Buy fresh vegetables, tofu, and meat from the edges of the grocery store. Simple. Done.
Tofu is heavily processed, try again.
Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)
#20This article equates ultraprocessed foods and hyperpalatable foods (foods designed to make people want to eat them more). While many hyperpalatable foods are classified as ultraprocessed, simply being hyperpalatable does not mean it's ultraprocessed. Worth noting that the Nova food classificationvsysten (which this article references) completely disregards the actual nutritional content of foods. For a good primer on…
Food is ultraprocessed to make it cheaper, more palatable, or both. So while the definitions are orthogonal the goals align.
It also be processed to remove ingredients that can be sold at a higher price when used in another way.