Can we stop bitching about UPF? They are tasty, so you eat a lot of them and get fat. Simple as that.

That's literally the issue? They're engineered that way on purpose so you eat more and more of it in the cheapest way possible. They're calorie dense but don't fill you up the same as as non-ultra processed foods.

The definition itself is stupid. Bread is ultra processed. Protein powder is ultra processed.

That's not the problem with the definition, it's the problem that most supermarket bread is ultra processed.

It's driving obesity and causing a whole host of health problems.

That's the thing. It's not as simple as that. Same amount of calories is going to hit differently between UPF and low or unprocessed. And what in some places is called bread is in other places legally defined as cake or rubber squeaky toy.

Here are some solutions.

If you don't have a lot of freezer space, go buy one. You can get a model that holds a lot of food and is the same side as a kitchen chair. Costs about the same as a week's worth of pizzas.

It takes the same amount of time to cook ten portions as it does to cook one. I like to make a huge pot of chili or stew or soup and freeze it in pint size containers. Five minutes to cook in the microwave. A big pan of lasagna will give you a dozen meals. Or you can cook a whole roast chicken on Sunday and eat it all week. Chicken and rice on Sunday, chicken tacos on Monday, green salad with chicken on Tuesday...

This isn’t propaganda and your eating problems with ADHD are your own. Stop skipping lunch instead of eating 2 pizzas for dinner and blaming UPF articles. Plenty of us have ADHD

Over 70% of America is overweight and UPFs are one of the primary drivers of that

Bread and pizza are not per se ultra processed. They can be depending on how you bought them.

Right like an apple is a plant. Harvesting, washing, slicing, and cooking it into a pie in your own kitchen is technically processing it, but it’s still a whole food as the slices are in their whole unaltered form.

Taking millions of apples, grinding them, emulsifying them and separating them into constituent components, enzymatically pre-digesting them then pressing that concoction into a mould shaped vaguely like apple slices and adding in a barrage of artificial flavors and sweeteners to make it resemble the taste of apple pie? These apples have been ultra processed. It’s done for the sake of corporate profit. Pies made in this fashion make more product per ingredient and are longer lasting on the shelf.

Research is showing foods like this are making us fat not just because they’re tasty and we naturally binge, but because they’re literally interfering with our body’s ability to self regulate hormonally.

The calories from these foods, while not breaking the laws of physics or anything, also come with baggage. The food is already extensively broken down by mechanical and chemical processes; things that our teeth and gut normally have to do. The result if you eat them often is having a bunch of meals that hits your system fast, basically like a runner’s energy gel packet. It’s taken us a long time to discover but research is indicating that this is inherently very bad for us.

This propaganda about good and bad foods has kept me underweight for most of my life.

That all being said, I agree with you, and I expect all of the nuance around this to get twisted and lost into yet another bead in the endless string of worthless diet fads and hacks that nobody can stick to and do more harm than good. I literally already see “wholesome” aisles popping up in some stores where they use all the same harmful processes to make the food but game their ingredients list to only be things that people can pronounce.

What a bizarre take

The definition itself is stupid.

I am still waiting for someone to standardize a definition that passes scientific rigor. The definition right now feels like "You'll know it when you see it". We've done a lot of stuff to this heavily processed item but it doesn't count, but then this minimally processed one does... When will the focus shift to the specific processes themselves that are causing issues and not a generic 'feeling' that some food or another has reached the point that it is probably not good for you.

Right now these studies are just "Food we personally feel like maybe might be bad for you proven bad" which is usually true but also not really useful. I feel like some day I'll wake up to an expose on how the whole thing is a large scale ad for the Paleo diet.

*calorie

*lose

Also as someone with ADHD

Create and maintain a regular daily routine, with the power of the expectations of others, if necessary.

This propaganda about good and bad foods has kept me underweight for most of my life.

Your failure to appropriately manage your ADHD has kept you underweight. Unless you are literally on death's door, no one with any sense would tell you the solution to your problem is to eat two pizzas every night.

There are absolutely millions in poverty in developed countries like the US who do not have any ability to buy fresh food.

Being able to eat healthily is a privilege in 2025, which is fucking disgusting, but absolutely true.

There are towns in America where the only place for a hundred miles they can buy food is a dollar store. These shops don't typically stock anything fresh or particularly healthy.

The people there will be too poor to live anywhere else and might be working multiple jobs (as is typical in American poverty) so will not have time/energy to attempt to grow anything themselves

We are lucky that we can eat healthily, but don't let yourself think that's a choice everyone gets

I consider this to be victim blaming. This garbage is designed to be addictive. The mass advertising is akin to cigarette commercials. They're associating* junk food with various emotion, sexuality (Coca Cola commercials especially), special events, holidays, sports sponsorships, and more. It's another capitalist evil entirely driven by greed.

Why do I feel like people bring these posts up so they can feel better about themselves by downvoting anyone who disagrees? Hm..

I guess because you lack empathy and refuse to acknowledge that reality is probably more nuanced than your singular lived experience?

Who is actually trying to make themselves feel better here: the person who's posturing as simply better than others because you don't struggle with your weight? Or the people down voting you because they recognize there are a myriad of other factors that might cause a person to struggle with eating healthy including: -food deserts -physical or mental disabilities -lack of time (some people are legit out there working 2 or 3 jobs) -inadequate cooking spaces (especially cheap apartments in big cities)

Why do I feel like people bring these posts up so they can feel better about themselves by downvoting anyone who disagrees? Hm...

Because you enjoy vice signaling, apparently?