On Processing, Pt. 2
Let's land this UPF plane.
a reminder from part 1: UPF = ultra-processed food(s). ok, carry on.
It’s hard to ignore the glut of food products that have hit the market in the last decade or so. Colloquially referred to as Consumer Packaged Goods (or, CPG for the internet savvy among us), the space umbrellas a broad range of food stuffs. It’s also expanding so much that experts are forecasting at minimum a billion dollar growth in the next nine years1. Yikes on bikes.
Obviously, that must mean we’re eating more processed foods now, right? Do we have a “processed food addiction,” like all these talking head wellness influencers claim? As to say who is addicted, that is complicated. There is science that demonstrates that receptors in our brain respond positively to sugar consumption, and will emit neurochemicals that are similar to the ones activated via recreational drug use2.
To link them definitively is dismissive of the actual DSM-5 classification of addiction, and is pretty flippant. Consuming sugar does encourage the brain to release dopamine, but not to the same scale in reaction or physical changes in the brain. At worst, sugar could maybe be classified as “habit-forming.”
The most substantial difference is that the human body actually requires sugar to function. Big Wellness does not like to admit this(!!). They would rather eat their own faces than admit that big bad sugar and carbs, when metabolized in the body, help with cell turnover3 and brain function. You know, the process your body more or less goes through every day. Though, some will use that as a launchpad to talk about sugar proliferating the spread of cancerous cells, but I do not have the time or energy to get into that right now4.
In general, processed food consumption is about the same as it was in the 1920s, but the needle leans towards more these days56. There’s certainly an increase of diversity in the average person’s day-to-day eating habits, as we simply have access to, well, more foods. And not just as a matter of sheer amount, because that’s certainly increased—from 5 percent to 60 of the available food market, in fact—but things like saturated fat sources have shifted. You may have heard about this in various MAHA headlines7, but there were originally more saturated fats from animal sources, but over time there were less of those, and now there are more polyunsaturated fat sources from vegetable oils.
Oh, did you think seed oils8 WEREN’T going to come up? Loud, incorrect buzzer.
At the same time, non-communicable disease rates started to rise. Therefore, NCDs got inversely correlated to animal fats. And, that’s just kinda wrong. It’s a big talking point in MAHA, though. Sure, certain fats can influence conditions like cardiovascular disease and diabetes9, but they are one of many, many factors within our modern society.
Some of those other factors include lifestyle habits like smoking—which is bafflingly on the rise again—and even things we can’t personally control like the lengthening of the average lifespan, more accurate diagnostic tools, and, sadly, microplastics. Like, of course if we’re going to live longer there’s a larger chance our bodies develop something. Hopefully it’s benign like a weirdly long chin hair, but hey, aging is a gift.
Overall, the average American does consume more calories now10. From the late 70s until 2018, the average calorie intake rose by 15 percent, from under 2000 calories a day to slightly over. Also, the consumption of processed foods are up, but markets show that the purchase of canned foods, which are considered to be in the processed foods category, is largely downscaling11.
Fresh produce is now more widely commercially available than it was in the 20th century, which is changing the numbers on canned and pre-prepared foods. Yet, snack foods were less prevalent in the typical American household. (The potato chip was commercially introduced in the 1930s,12 while the first flavored chip was marketed in 1954.) People are farming, fishing, and hunting less13, but they don’t need to, as most grocery stores provide everything the standard consumer needs.
Portion sizes were different too. You’ve seen the infographics. Movie theater popcorn buckets tripling in size, bottles (well, cans) of soda doubling, a fast food hamburger towering over its predecessor.
Governmental interventions like corn subsidies and sugar tariffs have also broadly influenced the UPF space. Corn subsidies from the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 created a glut of corn14 because of government pressure on farmers, which then crashed the price when there was—shocker—too much corn. Sugar tariffs15 made sugar very expensive. This economic incentive was used to create and manufacture high fructose corn syrup so cane sugar could be replaced with cheap(er) corn syrup.
But! We also do stuff like multitask more—because of capitalism and the 8-hour work day and the 24-hour news cycle—which utilizes more of our glucose and glycogen stores than it did a century ago, so scientifically we do need more sugar and carbohydrates in our diet to restore our brain function16. Or, as I do like to say, access to modern culture would put a Victorian child in a coma. And that’s based in science, not meme!
Ok, so if you wanted to identify a UPF in the wild, and are concerned about cutting back on processed food consumption, what the heck do you look for? You can reach for the NOVA system17 again, and broadly strike out packaged foods that use vegetable gums, commercial emulsifiers, food coloring, and hydrogenated oils.
If you get on Reddit, there are hundreds of queries on what constitutes a processed food. And, much like the scope of the internet, no one has even come close to a consensus. That’s because you can talk your way into almost anything being a processed food. Oh no, we’re going to have a talk that some people won’t like.
You know your greens powder you love to have every morning because consuming all the vitamins and minerals you need through so many servings of veggies kinda feels like a chore? That’s a processed food product, baby18. (I’m doing finger guns, you can picture it.) Just because it’s billed as healthy doesn’t mean it’s good for you, or that it negates the whole literal process it went through to get to you in the form that it is presented in19.
Creatine powder, the supplement everyone in fitness is gaga over? Processed. That mushroom “adaptogen” blend20? Processed. Your multi-vitamin? Processed. Protein or collagen powder? So, so processed.
And here’s the issue: Supplements and powders are deregulated in a way that CPG foods are simply not, thanks to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 199421, which was partially brought about because of a targeted ad campaign from Metabolife and Mel f!cking Gibson22. I wish I were joking.
In the 80s and 90s, Congress started to put together bills around newly brought-to-market things like pills, shakes, powders, etc. Stuff like, standardizing labelling and ingredient disclosures. Oh no, big scary. These scammers like Herbalife, Metabolife, SlimFast (literally, just throw out any diet company name), wanted to be able to claim whatever they wanted about their products. The DSHEA passed basically under the guise of, you don’t want your government meddling in your nutrition. WHAT.
It’s why that broad phrase of “these claims haven’t been verified by the FDA” are on all those labels. Because the FDA isn’t allowed to test them! Therefore, to this day, supplement makers do not have to prove that an ingredient is safe before taking it to market. Let me reiterate that. These companies do not have to prove anything in their product is safe before selling it to you.
If you’re thinking that is the crux of the argument a lot of wellness people claim: processed foods are “hiding” things from us to make us sick. Well, they are, just not in the way they’ve been saying. Unlike the supplement industry, packaged foods adhere to pretty strict labeling and testing guidelines per the FDA23 before they can hit the market.
Now, medical professionals are seeing a rise in NCDs like liver damage and organ failure directly tied to use of these unregulated supplements. Not from UPFs, not from fast food, not from junk food; from “health” supplements24.
Studies have shown that from a pool of over 700 various supplements produced in the 21st century, at least 20 percent of them included undisclosed pharmaceutical ingredients like anabolic steroids and anti-inflammatories. That’s scary enough, but even something not harmful in face value, like vitamin K, can interfere with other medications like blood-thinners.
The less you know about your food and what you’re putting into your body, the worse off you are. Sure, a label to a potato chip doesn’t exactly come off nutritiously sound, but what you see is what you get. That makes a difference.
https://www.towardspackaging.com/insights/consumer-packaged-goods-cpg-market-sizing
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2235907/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2605583/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41419-024-06808-1
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8805510/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12766976/
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/20/health/heart-disease-maha-dietary-guidelines-wellness
https://www.wcrf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/WCRF-NCD-A4-WEB.pdf
https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=105955
https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2025/07/25/canned-food-declining-in-popularity-in-favour-of-natural-food/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/potato-chip
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/Farming-Fishing-and-Forestry/
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-10254/pdf/COMPS-10254.pdf
https://www.fas.usda.gov/programs/sugar-import-program
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6331362/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10261019/
https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2026/01/15/the-20252030-dietary-guidelines-for-americans-avoid-the-term-ultra-processed-foods-prompting-both-praise-and-criticism/
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B
stuff like this hilariously named powder https://moonjuice.com/products/sex-dust
https://www.fda.gov/food/information-consumers-using-dietary-supplements/questions-and-answers-dietary-supplements
https://www.fda.gov/food/guidance-documents-regulatory-information-topic-food-and-dietary-supplements/labeling-nutrition-guidance-documents-regulatory-information#nutrition
https://weillcornell.org/news/liver-damage-caused-by-supplements-is-becoming-more-common