I don't mean that the people selling UPFs are part of a grift, but the people that talk about it are.

It's targeting middle class people and says you should feel bad about eating cheap and easy to cook food. As such, it feeds into product differentiation and empowers capitalism, by telling people with more money that they have a moral necessity to eat more expensive food.

Alienating and bullying poor people is just a side effect of the grift.

The reason I say it is a grift, is because the whole thing is run entirely on vibes. The people selling the idea of UPFs struggle to say if particular foods are UPFs or not, and they can't identify harms that make it meaningful to talk about them.

Are there foods that are bad for you? Yes.

Are they all UPFs? No.

Are all UPFs bad for you? Also no.

Is it true that most UPFs have almost zero nutritional value? Absolutely not.

So instead of engaging in a meaningful debate about specific harms and what can be done about them, UPFs just tell you to spend more time and money on food or feel guilty.

The environmental harms are the same. The article made no attempt to actually say what the harm is e.g. per packet of m&ms, but because of economies of scale and their long shelf life means they can be shipped slowly, we should be very suspicious of any claim that they are particularly bad vs. more gourmet alternatives.