If it feels like you've been hearing about ultraprocessed foods a lot lately, it's not your imagination. In fact, the "first week of the year felt very much like Ultraprocessed-Food Awareness Week," writes dietician Jessica Wilson at Slate.
- The New York Times had a five-day "challenge" on the subject, complete with a quiz educating readers on how to recognize and avoid UPF products.
- The Washington Post also offered a guide to choosing them.
- The New Yorker asked, "Why Is the American Diet So Deadly" in a piece focused on UPF products.
And this is on top of previous coverage amplifying a similar message: UPF products are everywhere and they're slowly killing us. "To me, this all seemed overly dramatized and incredibly reductive," writes Wilson. For one thing, "ultra-processed food" might sound like an authoritative term, but the definition is a little squishy. For example, the aforementioned Times quiz declared that Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice is not ultraprocessed because of its simple ingredients, while the NOVA Food Classification System declares that ice cream is always ultraprocessed. Often, determining what takes a food from minimally processed to ultraprocessed is a "judgment call," writes Wilson.
The dietician didn't just pontificate, though. She went to Trader Joe's and loaded up on ultraprocessed foods and made them the center of her diet for a month. At the end of which, she felt ... better than she did at the start. She didn't skip meals or have "decision fatigue" on what to make because it was all so easy—and tasty. It's a tradeoff, she writes. Yes, it would be lovely to come and cook veggies from the garden every evening, but is that realistic for most people? Her advice would be to supplement UPF dishes with veggies and such as much as possible, and go easy on fast food, chips, and cookies. "I look forward to a society that supports us all affording and eating minimally processed food, and in the meantime, I will eat my Trader Joe's Eggwich in peace." (Read the full piece.)
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