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Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)

cnn.com

21–30 of 56 posts

Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)

#21
post #17

Just 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…

> The fresh kind from the grocery store bakery with no preservatives costs more and goes bad faster.

Lesson #1 when you become an adult, bread goes into the freezer when you get home so that it doesn't go bad.

Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)

#22
post #16

Just 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

This isn’t hard at all. Didn’t take me three minutes. It’s even a major brand available at a variety of US supermarkets. It’s not niche or “organic”.

https://giantfood.com/product/land-o-lakes-half-half-cream-1...

Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)

#23

Just 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.

Tofu is considered processed food, not ultra processed

Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)

#25

why does the USA not have the concept of buying home made meals from other people? I have never heard of a lunch box service or people buying one

We have health codes and regulations to prevent commercialization of food production in potentially substandard conditions. It prevents both good and bad things.

Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)

#26
post #17

Just 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…

An automatic breadmaker costs less than $50 and makes perfect bread every time for 30c of flour and electricity. It takes 5 minutes to set up and you just wake up to fresh bread. That's less time than you'd waste going to the grocery store every day.

I take your point about everything else, but bread is the wrong example.

Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)

#27

why does the USA not have the concept of buying home made meals from other people? I have never heard of a lunch box service or people buying one

We have health codes and regulations to prevent commercialization of food production in potentially substandard conditions. It prevents both good and bad things.

now that is absolutely terrible isnt it, if a person wants to start a cloud kitchen even at home, they should be able to do so unless it causes a disturbance to neighbors. as long as regular inspections can be arranged, this should be a non issue for starters. i have a feeling the BIG FOOD industry has rigged this section of the law so that their authority on ultra processed food is not challenged

Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)

#28
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This isn’t hard at all. Didn’t take me three minutes. It’s even a major brand available at a variety of US supermarkets. It’s not niche or “organic”. https://giantfood.com/product/land-o-lakes-half-half-cream-1...

I don’t buy half and half cream very often. I did not know that for a basic product they were selling items that aren’t just milk and cream. Ignorance on my part? Sure, but there is over a hundred different things I buy. It would be doing a audit everytime I go shopping.

Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)

#29

Headline is massively misleading. The actual study cited by the article, measures this as 71% of food products offered for sale in the US, by count of unique items, are ultraprocessed. Not that 71% of food products sold by weight or volume or dollar amount are ultraprocessed. This is just observing that if you list all food products for sale in the US, "pear" appears on that list once but "Store Brand salty corn chip…

Fair point. Here is some data on the fraction of caloric intake:

* During August 2021–August 2023, the mean percentage of total calories consumed from ultra-processed foods among those age 1 year and older was 55.0%.

* Youth ages 1–18 years consumed a higher percentage of calories from ultra-processed foods (61.9%) than adults age 19 and older (53.0%).

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db536.htm

The study is from 2023 and notes that there had been a decrease during the preceding decade.

Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)

#30
post #17

Just 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…

>It’s not like my grade school taught me this because I grew up in the wrong zip code.

When I was a boy they didn't even have zip codes . . .

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