Published: November 18, 2025 Executive summary Editorial: Ultra-processed foods: time to put health before profit Series Ultra-processed foods and human health: the main thesis and the evidence...
Published: November 18, 2025
Executive summary
This 3-paper Series reviews the evidence about the increase in ultra-processed foods in diets globally and highlights the association with many non-communicable diseases. [...]
Addressing this challenge requires a unified global response that confronts corporate power and transforms food systems to promote healthier, more sustainable diets [...]
The totality of the evidence supports the thesis that displacement of long-established dietary patterns by ultra-processed foods is a key driver of the escalating global burden of multiple diet-related chronic diseases.
we explore policy options and focus on large-scale food system measures that target areas in greatest need of change, and their potential impacts. We also examine policies to protect, incentivise, and support dietary patterns based on fresh and minimally processed foods, particularly for lower income households
This paper, the third in a three-part Lancet Series, takes several steps to advance knowledge of these causes, and to inform a global public health response. First, we show that the UPF industry is a key driver of the problem, as its leading corporations and co-dependent actors have expanded and restructured food systems almost everywhere, in favour of ultra-processed diets. [...] Second, we highlight that the main barrier to advancing policy responses is the industry's corporate political activities [...] Third, we present strategies for reducing the UPF industry's power in food systems and for mobilising a global public health response. [...] A coordinated, well resourced global response is essential—one that confronts corporate power, reclaims public policy space, and restructures food systems to prioritise health, equity, and sustainability over corporate profit.
global proliferation of UPFs has become one of the most urgent yet inadequately addressed threats to human health in the 21st century. With growing evidence linking UPFs and ultra-processed dietary patterns to child malnutrition and ill health, the question is not whether action is needed, but why so many countries have yet to take meaningful action.
Foods that comprise healthy diets, such as fruits, vegetables, and legumes, are becoming increasingly inaccessible for many, whereas food products currently known as ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are inexpensive and widely available globally.
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Free to read with registration. Definition of UPF they use is the NOVA
The UPF industry generates enormous revenues that support continued growth and fund corporate political activities to counter attempts at UPF regulation. A handful of manufacturers dominate the market, including Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever, and Coca-Cola. A comprehensive, government-led approach is needed to reverse the rise in UPF consumption. Priority actions include adding ultra-processed markers, such as colours, flavours, and non-sugar sweeteners, to nutrient profiling models used to identify unhealthy foods; mandatory front-of-pack warning labels; bans on marketing aimed at children; restrictions on these types of foods in public institutions; and higher taxes on UPFs.
This seems like jumping the gun? Ultra processed foods is a wide group. I don't see any reason to point fingers at these things. In particular, it's not like people would drink watere if...
Priority actions include adding ultra-processed markers, such as colours, flavours, and non-sugar sweeteners
This seems like jumping the gun? Ultra processed foods is a wide group. I don't see any reason to point fingers at these things. In particular, it's not like people would drink watere if artificial sweetners weren't allowed, they'd just drink soda with sugar, which is far worse.
Ultraprocessed foods is just too broad of a category to make policy determinations on. It includes plenty of things which many people would consider healthy, whole foods. Pretty much every tofu that you can buy in the store is considered ultraprocessed, for instance, because tofu has an abysmal shelf life and preservatives are required for it to be sellable in a store.
I think findings like these are a good motivation to do further research into subcategories of ultraprocessed foods to find more actionable correlations, but by itself it's the definition of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I just rifled through my recycle bin to find the packaging of the last two packages of tofu and both had the exact same ingredients even though they came from different producers: water, soybeans,...
I just rifled through my recycle bin to find the packaging of the last two packages of tofu and both had the exact same ingredients even though they came from different producers: water, soybeans, and Calcium Sulfate the last ingredient isn’t a preservative - or at least if it is, it’s not the primary purpose for the ingredient, which is simply a coagulation agent. A traditional ingredient, no less; it’s been used in China for centuries.
This wasn’t me picking fancy stuff either; they were literally the cheapest firm tofu I could buy at the stores I were at. They also didn’t require me to eat it instantly; the last one I opened was a store special which had presumably been on the shelves for a while and the expiration date for it is January 9th. It’s not a local product either; it came from literally the opposite side of the United States.
Sure this isn’t anything like the 3 or so years that canned or desiccated foods can last, but it’s not like tofu rots as soon as it’s made so long as it is properly packaged.
Indeed, calcium sulfate is gypsum: Which means your tofu is Nova 1 unprocessed food + water + Nova 2 processed culinary ingredient = Nova 3, which is: I'm sure there are UPF tofu in stores though,...
Indeed, calcium sulfate is gypsum:
The main sources of calcium sulfate are naturally occurring gypsum and anhydrite, which occur at many locations worldwide as evaporites. These may be extracted by open-cast quarrying or by deep mining. World production of natural gypsum is around 127 million tonnes per annum (Wikipedia)
Which means your tofu is Nova 1 unprocessed food + water + Nova 2 processed culinary ingredient = Nova 3, which is:
Processed foods are made or preserved through baking, boiling, canning, bottling, and non-alcoholic fermentation. They often use additives to enhance shelf life, protect the properties of unprocessed food, prevent the spread of microorganisms, or make them more enjoyable.
Examples include cheese, canned vegetables, salted nuts, fruits in syrup, and dried or canned fish. Breads, pastries, cakes, biscuits, snacks, and some meat products fall into this group when they are made predominantly from group 1 foods with the addition of group 2 ingredients.
I'm sure there are UPF tofu in stores though, as we all like dessert tofu with HFCS. Which means policies and consumer pressure can quickly influence those products off the shelf, or shifting their formula back to sugar + soy + coagulant.
The other common ingredient is magnesium chloride. Which is the modern version of Nigari,, found in sea water. I don't know how one would actually derive MgCl2 and still have it be Nova 2 though:
Magnesium chloride is an inorganic compound with the formula MgCl2. It forms hydrates MgCl2·nH2O, where n can range from 1 to 12. These salts are colorless or white solids that are highly soluble in water. These compounds and their solutions, both of which occur in nature, have a variety of practical uses (Wikipedia)
Upon reading the findings, I am feeling conflicted: I am in the process of moving my family towards non-strict-veganism as a moral duty, but it will be so much harder without TVP (extruded and...
Upon reading the findings, I am feeling conflicted: I am in the process of moving my family towards non-strict-veganism as a moral duty, but it will be so much harder without TVP (extruded and ultra processed, no recognizable unprocessed ingredient left) and eating out alternatives like beyond meat (extremely highly processed).
But as with the rest of the move, perfection is the enemy of good. We can begin by immediately eliminating obvious culprits with easy alternatives, such as away from Twinkies and Soda towards locally baked Nova 3 pastures and sparkling water + actual Nova 1 juice.
I wouldn't worry too much about some amount of UPFs in the diet. You can eat just about anything and be healthy so long as you don’t eat too much of it. In the US, more than half of the calories...
I wouldn't worry too much about some amount of UPFs in the diet. You can eat just about anything and be healthy so long as you don’t eat too much of it. In the US, more than half of the calories consumed are from UPFs. If you can limit your family’s intake to just 10%, you’re already five times better than the average person. And I think it’s not too hard to aim for even lower; 5% can be done with relative ease but 1% would be challenging.
My personal take is that you should make as many foods as you can with Whole Foods, but on occasion you can treat yourself to something with something “bad” in it. Yesterday I went out with friends and ate chocolate chip cookies - something bad in my diet in just about every way. I’m not going to beat myself up over it, I’m just not going to make a habit out of it.
One thing that I might suggest to help your family is to try to get them off of sweetened foods. The more sweet you consume - especially when it comes to drinking it - the more you crave it. I think I suggested also trying to avoid eating out in the past to you but I know with kids that is particularly difficult.
Very much in agreement with the sweetened foods. That's probably the biggest downside of lab condensed sugars and artificial sweeteners and the like: while they may not absorb the same, they...
Very much in agreement with the sweetened foods. That's probably the biggest downside of lab condensed sugars and artificial sweeteners and the like: while they may not absorb the same, they absolutely train our tastebuds to expect food to be that sweet, and therefore find real food to be bitter and bland.
It's great to see a comprehensive look at ultra processed foods, and in The Lancet. The cynical truth is that, as they pointed out, the international food conglomerates will fight hard every step...
It's great to see a comprehensive look at ultra processed foods, and in The Lancet.
The cynical truth is that, as they pointed out, the international food conglomerates will fight hard every step of the way to protect their profits. In the US, where corporate political influence is particularly strong, we won't see meaningful changes when it comes to processed food until there's a huge political shift. If we're being hopeful, the 2030's maybe.
Fortunately there are countries where that's less true. The other problem, though, is that a lot of people are defensive about their food. People don't want to hear that the stuff they've been eating since childhood is now maybe bad for them. Food comes with all sorts of emotion. It's security, nostalgia, safety, survival. People have big reactions.
Refined sugar, refined carbs in general, is a good example of this. The science has been there, undisputed, for decades. Not just a little science, A LOT of it, and that's despite the research money being sparse for much of that time. But we're only now, sort of, arriving at a place where it's becoming commonly accepted that it's one of the most dangerous things in the food supply (at the volumes many people consume). Also the most dangerous part of a lot of ultra-processed food. Part of the reason is industry money, both political and marketing, but the other part is that it's a key ingredient in delicious things that make people happy.
I don't really agree with their main thesis that ultra-processesd foods are bad because they're so poorly defined. They say it's because of harmful additives. But can't actually name any real...
I don't really agree with their main thesis that ultra-processesd foods are bad because they're so poorly defined. They say it's because of harmful additives. But can't actually name any real harmful additives. It's not the level of processing that makes these foods bad. It's just that they're nutritionally hollow and food science makes them delicious.
The core concern they can't seem to articulate is that we're able to make cheap delicious calorie dense low nutrients foods. On a population level this is causing a lot of unhealthy outcomes as people choose these foods over better less appealing options.
Their targeting artificial sweeteners which is very dumb as it only has beneficial effects. Then the color and flavor additives aren't harmful other than making the food attractive. Which could be equally applied to healthier foods which would promote better diets.
Even still they sort of get on the right track in terms of policy? If they're able to integrate how attractive/tasty a food is with it's nutritional profile and give that food a score where only tasty & healthy foods do well you could promote that to the public as an easy signal for what foods lead to a better diet.
Note: when I say delicious I mean at the population level, like in-general people prefer foods that are soft versus hard.
Yeah I feel like food dyes, artificial sweeteners, and especially preservatives get scapegoated in UPF discussions. Those things can be harmful, but you need actual scientific evidence of it. UPF...
Yeah I feel like food dyes, artificial sweeteners, and especially preservatives get scapegoated in UPF discussions.
Those things can be harmful, but you need actual scientific evidence of it. UPF as a category is absurdly large of a category, and we know there's another element of UPFs that leads to poor health outcomes: having hilariously bad macronutrient mixes.
I am particularly miffed by the weird anger directed at preservatives. Preservatives are a good thing - it prevents food waste, makes different kinds of foods accessible to more people. The story of human agriculture is in many ways a story of finding better and better ways to preserve food. Unless there is either strong correlative evidence or causative evidence that they are bad for your health, these are the last things I think we should get rid of.
I'd take a loaf of whole grain bread with preservatives over a homemade white flour biscuit that's 30% butter health-wise.
Update: San Francisco to sue food giants over ultra-processed products : City argues corporations profit while communities bear the cost of diseases linked to ultra-processed foods (Guardian)....
(city’s attorney, David ) Chiu’s lawsuit, which will be filed in the San Francisco superior court on behalf of the state of California, will seek unspecified damages for the costs that cities and counties bear for treating residents whose health has been harmed by ultra-processed food.
San Francisco accuses the companies of “unfair and deceptive acts” in how they market and sell their foods, arguing that such practices violate the state’s unfair competition law and public nuisance statute. It also argues the companies knew that their food made people sick but sold it anyway.
Archive.is. Not paywalled but want people to free sign in.
Published: November 18, 2025
Executive summary
Editorial: Ultra-processed foods: time to put health before profit
Series
Ultra-processed foods and human health: the main thesis and the evidence
Policies to halt and reverse the rise in ultra-processed food production, marketing, and consumption
Towards unified global action on ultra-processed foods: understanding commercial determinants, countering corporate power, and mobilising a public health response
Comments : Protecting children from ultra-processed foods
Comments: Global action on ultra-processed foods: a health, equity, and sustainability imperative
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Free to read with registration. Definition of UPF they use is the NOVA
(Feel free to retag move thx as always)
The editorial is not a long read
This seems like jumping the gun? Ultra processed foods is a wide group. I don't see any reason to point fingers at these things. In particular, it's not like people would drink watere if artificial sweetners weren't allowed, they'd just drink soda with sugar, which is far worse.
Ultraprocessed foods is just too broad of a category to make policy determinations on. It includes plenty of things which many people would consider healthy, whole foods. Pretty much every tofu that you can buy in the store is considered ultraprocessed, for instance, because tofu has an abysmal shelf life and preservatives are required for it to be sellable in a store.
I think findings like these are a good motivation to do further research into subcategories of ultraprocessed foods to find more actionable correlations, but by itself it's the definition of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I just rifled through my recycle bin to find the packaging of the last two packages of tofu and both had the exact same ingredients even though they came from different producers: water, soybeans, and Calcium Sulfate the last ingredient isn’t a preservative - or at least if it is, it’s not the primary purpose for the ingredient, which is simply a coagulation agent. A traditional ingredient, no less; it’s been used in China for centuries.
This wasn’t me picking fancy stuff either; they were literally the cheapest firm tofu I could buy at the stores I were at. They also didn’t require me to eat it instantly; the last one I opened was a store special which had presumably been on the shelves for a while and the expiration date for it is January 9th. It’s not a local product either; it came from literally the opposite side of the United States.
Sure this isn’t anything like the 3 or so years that canned or desiccated foods can last, but it’s not like tofu rots as soon as it’s made so long as it is properly packaged.
Indeed, calcium sulfate is gypsum:
Which means your tofu is Nova 1 unprocessed food + water + Nova 2 processed culinary ingredient = Nova 3, which is:
I'm sure there are UPF tofu in stores though, as we all like dessert tofu with HFCS. Which means policies and consumer pressure can quickly influence those products off the shelf, or shifting their formula back to sugar + soy + coagulant.
The other common ingredient is magnesium chloride. Which is the modern version of Nigari,, found in sea water. I don't know how one would actually derive MgCl2 and still have it be Nova 2 though:
edit link
Upon reading the findings, I am feeling conflicted: I am in the process of moving my family towards non-strict-veganism as a moral duty, but it will be so much harder without TVP (extruded and ultra processed, no recognizable unprocessed ingredient left) and eating out alternatives like beyond meat (extremely highly processed).
But as with the rest of the move, perfection is the enemy of good. We can begin by immediately eliminating obvious culprits with easy alternatives, such as away from Twinkies and Soda towards locally baked Nova 3 pastures and sparkling water + actual Nova 1 juice.
I wouldn't worry too much about some amount of UPFs in the diet. You can eat just about anything and be healthy so long as you don’t eat too much of it. In the US, more than half of the calories consumed are from UPFs. If you can limit your family’s intake to just 10%, you’re already five times better than the average person. And I think it’s not too hard to aim for even lower; 5% can be done with relative ease but 1% would be challenging.
My personal take is that you should make as many foods as you can with Whole Foods, but on occasion you can treat yourself to something with something “bad” in it. Yesterday I went out with friends and ate chocolate chip cookies - something bad in my diet in just about every way. I’m not going to beat myself up over it, I’m just not going to make a habit out of it.
One thing that I might suggest to help your family is to try to get them off of sweetened foods. The more sweet you consume - especially when it comes to drinking it - the more you crave it. I think I suggested also trying to avoid eating out in the past to you but I know with kids that is particularly difficult.
Very much in agreement with the sweetened foods. That's probably the biggest downside of lab condensed sugars and artificial sweeteners and the like: while they may not absorb the same, they absolutely train our tastebuds to expect food to be that sweet, and therefore find real food to be bitter and bland.
It's great to see a comprehensive look at ultra processed foods, and in The Lancet.
The cynical truth is that, as they pointed out, the international food conglomerates will fight hard every step of the way to protect their profits. In the US, where corporate political influence is particularly strong, we won't see meaningful changes when it comes to processed food until there's a huge political shift. If we're being hopeful, the 2030's maybe.
Fortunately there are countries where that's less true. The other problem, though, is that a lot of people are defensive about their food. People don't want to hear that the stuff they've been eating since childhood is now maybe bad for them. Food comes with all sorts of emotion. It's security, nostalgia, safety, survival. People have big reactions.
Refined sugar, refined carbs in general, is a good example of this. The science has been there, undisputed, for decades. Not just a little science, A LOT of it, and that's despite the research money being sparse for much of that time. But we're only now, sort of, arriving at a place where it's becoming commonly accepted that it's one of the most dangerous things in the food supply (at the volumes many people consume). Also the most dangerous part of a lot of ultra-processed food. Part of the reason is industry money, both political and marketing, but the other part is that it's a key ingredient in delicious things that make people happy.
I don't really agree with their main thesis that ultra-processesd foods are bad because they're so poorly defined. They say it's because of harmful additives. But can't actually name any real harmful additives. It's not the level of processing that makes these foods bad. It's just that they're nutritionally hollow and food science makes them delicious.
The core concern they can't seem to articulate is that we're able to make cheap delicious calorie dense low nutrients foods. On a population level this is causing a lot of unhealthy outcomes as people choose these foods over better less appealing options.
Their targeting artificial sweeteners which is very dumb as it only has beneficial effects. Then the color and flavor additives aren't harmful other than making the food attractive. Which could be equally applied to healthier foods which would promote better diets.
Even still they sort of get on the right track in terms of policy? If they're able to integrate how attractive/tasty a food is with it's nutritional profile and give that food a score where only tasty & healthy foods do well you could promote that to the public as an easy signal for what foods lead to a better diet.
Note: when I say delicious I mean at the population level, like in-general people prefer foods that are soft versus hard.
Yeah I feel like food dyes, artificial sweeteners, and especially preservatives get scapegoated in UPF discussions.
Those things can be harmful, but you need actual scientific evidence of it. UPF as a category is absurdly large of a category, and we know there's another element of UPFs that leads to poor health outcomes: having hilariously bad macronutrient mixes.
I am particularly miffed by the weird anger directed at preservatives. Preservatives are a good thing - it prevents food waste, makes different kinds of foods accessible to more people. The story of human agriculture is in many ways a story of finding better and better ways to preserve food. Unless there is either strong correlative evidence or causative evidence that they are bad for your health, these are the last things I think we should get rid of.
I'd take a loaf of whole grain bread with preservatives over a homemade white flour biscuit that's 30% butter health-wise.
Update:
San Francisco to sue food giants over ultra-processed products : City argues corporations profit while communities bear the cost of diseases linked to ultra-processed foods (Guardian).
Archive.is. Not paywalled but want people to free sign in.