Whether “ultra-processed” food is bad for your health depends on what food it is!
(I migrated this post from Tumblr, where I had posted in on 29 June 2025; here it was last updated on 18 July 2026.) As the argument “ultra-processed” comes up over and again to malign certain food groups (like plant-based alternatives), I thought compiling a short overview might be in order… In classification systems like “NOVA”, the category of “ultra-processed” food (UPF) is ill defined and it lumps together a hotch-potch of different foodstuffs, some of which can be bad for your health, some are neutral, and some may even be beneficial. Whether one should be concerned about eating a “UPF” very much depends on which kind of food it is. (It’s bad if it’s made of meat or relates to sweetened beverages.) Generally, judging an outcome based on the process it was made with is not a very rigorous approach: Forging iron is not bad because it can be used to make swords. After all, it can also be used to make plough shares. What may be bad are swords. This means the final products (swords v...