this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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above all else, processed foods are designed to maximize profits.
Cool: define it objectively.
If it's cleaned, peeled, or cooked, is it processed?
Sorting is a process. If they took out any of the bad ones before shipping it, it's been processed.
They're talking about ultra/highly processed foods, which is what most people mean when they mention it.
Cool: define that objectively.
Cheese, fermented food, or baked goods: ultraprocessed?
I look at the food I (could) make at home or get in a restaurant and wonder what these words mean.
Ultra processed it when it's broken down and reassembled, often adding nutrients, preservatives and other additives.
Oat milk is a good example.
Cheese blocks and bottled wine are not ultra processed but American "cheese" is definitely ultra processed.
This is not the gotcha, no one really knows, shrug that people pretend it is. There is no gray area.
Given two similar products such as cheese, one can be ultra processed while the other is not. There is no cheese that is sort of maybe kind of ultra processed. There is a clear line that is crossed.
Pretending otherwise it only yo the benefit of the food industry who prefers we pretend it's a fuzzy concept because it would affect their profits.
American cheese is just Colby Jack and cheddar mixed with emulsifiers, it'd be a group 2 food on that chart unless you're specifically referencing something like cheese-in-a-can or whatever
Seems the pretense is clarity: even researchers criticize it.
How is cheese not ultraprocessed? It's acid & rennet or bacteria transforming milk significantly.
The Harvard article someone else linked to define ultraprocessed lists examples hotdogs, cold cuts, cakes.
Anyone can bake a cake from scratch. Anyone with a meat grinder can make sausages & mortadella traditionally. Without industry or a meat grinder, anyone can make hams or cured meats.
Is the hot sauce I make by passing peppers & garlic through a blender, then adding some salt, oil, vinegar processed?
Industry isn't necessary, only kitchen ability. You're making this about industry when the concept on examination is suspect.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10260459/
Cheese, fermented and baked goods are typically processed, but can be ultra processed depending on the specifics of production.
The image should provide a more concise feel.
Basically:
Unprocessed, minimally processed, processed and ultra processed, respectively.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification
It's not like this is a weird health nutter concept. It's also not like these foods are necessarily as bad as some people like to act. But it is definitively objectively definable.
Already criticized as not very precise or reliable. When tested, experts who agree on the intension of these definitions fail to settle on consistent extensions for them. Their difficult interpretation makes for unhelpful guidelines & discussions.
One of the articles cited pointed out that difficulty & inconsistent examples the definers offered to clarify.
Not claiming that it's fringe, only that attempts to define it with enough objective reliability & precision for anything serious have been largely inadequate. Researchers attempt to use it. Outside operational definitions of specific studies, it's hard to be sure what technically fits/doesn't fit the concept in general.
A definition that states extraction & chemical modification may seem clear at first glance. However, if you examine regular cooking with sieves, tea filters, baking, fermenting, cheese-making, or even salting meat before cooking to retain juiciness, they technically fit. Cooking is filled with everyday chemistry.
Okay?
People disagreeing on the boundaries or details of a definition doesn't make it not an objective definition.
It seems pretty clear to me that tea would fall into the ultra processed category, since it's an extraction of a highly processed ingredient. Home baking, fermentation and cheese making would all be processed because they're a transformation of unprocessed foods or processed food ingredients like flour. I'm not incredibly familiar with the classification system so I'm not sure where a piece of uncured beef, an unprocessed food, cooked with salt, a processed food ingredient, would go. I'm thinking it would be processed, like bread, but I'm not sure where seasoning falls.
Disagreement in the boundary conditions is pretty normal. Geologists disagree on exactly where different types of rock fall on the classification scales. Biologists disagree on a wide array of animal taxonomic boundaries.
You wouldn't say that geology lacks an objective definition of what is or isn't limestone, you'd just note that some people would disagree with the classification of some samples.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-are-ultra-processed-foods-and-are-they-bad-for-our-health-2020010918605
That's 1 presentation. Is there much uniform agreement on it? Is the classification objectively precise & reliable?
Their School of Public Health acknowledges problems with definition & attempted standards
Other scholarly review articles criticize the classification as unclear even among researchers.
Processed food classification: Conceptualisation and challenges regarding classifications:
Processed food classification: Conceptualisation and challenges regarding a single classification system (NOVA):
Some research articles find the leading definition unreliable: low consistency between nutrition specialists following the same definition.
If experts aren't able to classify "ultraprocessed" items consistently, then what chance has anyone? At the moment, "processed food" seems more buzz & connotation than substance.
It might make more sense to classify food by something clearer like nutritional content.
Yes, we both agree on this. Organic, natural, etc. are all, scientifically, ill defined, advertising labels. However, in this particular discussion, people are pointing towards the way it is used in common lexicon, rather than a scientific, or technical one. When your average person says these things, they mean things that have gone through more processing than what was traditionally done, before the point of making a meal from it, or the after processing it goes through to make a meal have as long a shelf life as possible, etc. These processes include things like introducing additives to make the color better, the introduction of extracts, synthesized chemicals, etc., to enhance flavor, improve presentation, extend shelf life, etc. That are not traditional things like salting, smoking, drying, freezing/cooling, etc. That page from Harvard isn't trying to be an authoritative statement on exactly what "ultra-processed" means to an industry, rather than to be a common framework, for the most general level of understanding, of the contemporary processes that food is put through, that are beyond traditional methodology.
Cool.
Which also isn't very clear and seems mostly buzz & connotation. While it means something, it can get awfully vague.
In common parlance, "processed" is often in context of health & medical claims attributed to scientific research: the page from Harvard is an example.
Food that contains a synthetic additive or preservative uncommon in households is certainly different. Other mass-produced food merely seems like scaled-up foods I could make at home with varying effort: bread, pastries, cheese, fermented foods, ham, sausage, sauce, etc. If they were presented with wrappers removed, I wouldn't honestly know where it came from.
Salting, smoking, adding some preservatives like vinegar, lemon, or salt are also traditional. Extracts like vanilla don't require much industry (about as much as coffee or tea) and are often used in home cooking.
When I critically examine the food we make, the label "processed" more often puzzles me than tell me anything helpful. Avoid processed foods. Cool: which? It often causes me to wonder if the person saying it has cooked, looked at cooking shows, or seen other cultures cook.
Ok a recent example I have come across.
I recently had my partner grab a loaf of pumpernickel, or other dark rye, while she was out shopping. Instead of going to the bakery we normally shop at, she grabbed a bag of "pumpernickel" off the shelf, at the super market. It is less than 2% rye. The flour mix is processed with cocoa and an unspecified alkali, to achieve the color, in the absence of enough dark rye flour. They also add an unspecified caramel coloring into the dough to complete the coloring. They then add natural, but otherwise not traditionally used, flavoring to better achieve the flavor of "pumpernickel", again, minus the proper flour mix. They then add an extract propionic acid, mixed with a synthetic sorbic acid, to extend shelf life. They use synthetic monoglycerides to improve the stability of the emulsification, which both improves texture, and extends shelf life. They add soy based lipid extracts to preserve the "moist" feel of the bread.
This is what people have in mind when they say ultra-processed. This is, in no way, how you would normally make pumpernickel. This is like a farce of this bread, that is cheaper, and much longer lasting, approximation of bread.
Right, that supermarket bread is definitely way more processed, probably ultraprocessed.
However, is the bread from the bakery ultraprocessed? Where'd that flour, yeast or baking soda, sugar & other purified ingredients come from? Do the ingredients not have strange, synthetic additives? Is that enough to qualify as ultraprocessed for nutrition guidelines? Could we be biased not to count it as ultraprocessed just because bakeries feel better?
I suspect the supermarket bread is worse, but I'm also aware I could be wrong, or they could both be so bad the difference doesn't matter, so I honestly don't know.
If the bakery bread is definitely better for you yet ultraprocessed, then that label isn't particularly useful. It's really unhelpful if avoiding industrial ingredients would have gotten us the same results without the overanalysis.
They do not, each ingredient has to list everything that went into the product you get, and it will say only the stuff you want. If you buy a bag of flour, it will say (type) flour, and maybe give you the average protein content of the flour. If you buy a spice it will say the only ingredient is that spice. So, smaller scale bakers, as in not the "bakeries" in places like Walmart, will not have any of that in their food. If there is something that is heavily processed, in a not traditional manner, it will usually be an aspect that stands out, and you can simply ask them about what they use, like coloring in icing. If they make bread, they make normal bread, that will harden over night, and start molding in a couple days. A lot of places like this will also be happy to explain exactly how they make their products too, as they know that information can be crucial due to allergies, cultural stuff, etc. Most bakeries I know, now, exclusively use coloring that come from juices, spices, herbs, etc., that have vibrant colors. The trade-off is that they will not stay that vibrant for more than a day or two. If you request abnormal colors that are not sourced that way, they will inform you that they will have to use a dye that may be synthetic. I realize this isn't everywhere, but I live in a small, dying, rust belt, city, so if I can get this kind of service, it should be fairly common outside of truly rural places. Though you might have to leave your suburb to get something in the city.